Warnings: Mentions of canon-typical violence. Mention of SA, drugs, murder, etc. Angst.
Alejandro never anticipated that he would have to learn the word “Mafioso” when he was learning sign language to talk to his daughter. He thought he might have to learn some words that surrounded his job as an attorney, but those conversations would come later, when she was older. He would only need to know things that were important to her and her world, such as her favorite foods, or colors, or her toys. He didn’t need to know the signs for “gun” or “kill” or “ransom.”
Sign language had been mundane, really. He picked up a sign here and there to repeat to his daughter so her world could expand a little bit.
Orange. Pork. Noodles. Horse. Television. Dress.
Each word was an experiment in dexterity and patience. It was hard enough for Alejandro to learn them, but it became increasingly difficult to teach someone who had never heard the word before. Sometimes it felt like he was trying to describe colors to a blind person. He could show his daughter pictures of a horse all day long, but she could never understand the feeling of letters in her mouth, how the sound rolled off the tongue. When she saw a picture of a horse, she would never first think, “Caballo.” She would think of her hands by her head, twisting them back and forth like the ears of an anxious animal.
It was after his daughter’s death that sign language became sacred, something he held dear to his heart. The fluidity of his hands and fingers, the way he could communicate soundlessly. All of it was locked away, never to be used again. He’d taken it for granted, had even been annoyed at times by how difficult it was for her to learn certain signs, but he would’ve done anything to have her back, to look her in the eyes and sign “I love you” once more. But he couldn’t do it. He couldn’t bring himself to do anything with his hands except ball them into fists and bloody his knuckles against bricks and drywall and anything within reach.
It felt like a miracle when he’d been recruited. He didn’t care who it was or why they wanted him, he was just thankful they’d given him a chance to use his hands again. But he didn’t use them for sign language. He used them to strangle, to stab, to claw, to shoot. He used them until they were broken and bloody, then he’d bandage them until they healed, and then he’d start again. Over and over again until his knuckles were swollen from scar tissue and his palms were rough from handling guns. He soaked them at night to ease his aching joints, and wrapped them in gloves in the morning so he wouldn’t leave fingerprints when he broke into narco homes.
It wasn’t until years after he’d been reborn as a sicario that he learned the sign for “Mafioso.” An informant was Deaf, and he’d needed to know all the words to use when interrogating him.
He hadn’t wanted to do it at first. It felt blasphemous to use his fingers, to use his daughter’s language, to spell out these words, this violence. The only signs he wanted to know were for candies and birthday parties and grading homework. He didn’t want to know how his fingers were supposed to twist to form the words for “blood” and “dead.” He didn’t want to imagine that the hands that had once held his daughter, that had worked so hard to learn a new language just to communicate with her, had become so violent.
It was Matt who convinced him otherwise. Hadn’t it been this very violence – cocaine, trafficking, gun dealing – that had killed Alejandro’s daughter in the first place? Alejandro had been an attorney, after all. It was his actions, trying to bring about justice in an unjust world, that had gotten his wife and daughter murdered. Wasn’t it sort of poetic, sort of vengeful, to learn these signs? These words for the things that had killed his daughter? Wasn’t it his right, his duty, as a father to give his daughter her voice back? If she’d grown up, after all, she’d learn these words anyway. She would’ve wanted to have long conversations with her father about his work. She would’ve wanted to know her father was a hero who was trying to clean up the streets. She would’ve been proud of him.
So he’d learned the words. All of them. He hated each one, but he hated the ones who perpetrated them even more. And he liked the idea that his hands could talk for him, in more ways than one. He liked that he could be completely silent in an interrogation and still have a thousand things to say. He liked that no one outside of himself and the one he was signing to could understand him.
He liked the idea that with every word he signed, it was his daughter, coming back to take vengeance on the men who’d hurt her.
He liked the idea that when he signed, he wasn’t alone.
