Author's Note: So I saw Sicario recently and LOVED it! It's the best movie I've seen all year. Kate and Alejandro were both super interesting characters to me and personally I didn't see Alejandro as a "bad guy". He does bad things but he has like a, maybe not "good" but at least "understandable" reason. And I feel like those moments we see of him with Kate, like checking up on her after her attack or even when he wipes her tears away show us that maybe he's still has a little bit of a human side left to him. Anyway, this fic was born from me thinking a lot about that. I'm not sure I've got any of these quotes 100% but I feel they are along the lines of what was said and I'll fix them when I can see the movie again. Anyway, I hope you all enjoy!

Also the title of this comes from "Ode To Sleep" by twenty one pilots and it is posted on my AO3.

"You're wife would not approve of what you've become."

The words have rung nonstop in Alejandro's head for the past few days and now, as he sits here with a gun to the throat of a shaking Kate Macer, he almost believes them.

Almost.

The fact of the matter is that he doesn't know how his wife would feel because she's not there anymore. She was nothing but a head in a box and a body in a pitiful excuse for a grave.

Part of him knows his wife wouldn't approve of him killing the innocent. He remembers talks with her in the kitchen, when their daughter was asleep, about how she just didn't understand how the cartels could be so cruel as to murder women and children. She once asked him how one could murder the innocent without even flinching. He told her he didn't know.

The other part of him tries to reason that his actions are right. These people weren't truly innocent, living the high life on money made from blood. They're guilty by association.

Besides, it's as the old saying goes: an eye for an eye.

Makes the whole world go blind.

The words pass through his mind and he can't help but think that perhaps that's what's happened: he's blind to what he's become.

But justice is blind too and maybe that's what he's become: justice, only in an unconventional form. He thinks about all his time as a prosecutor seeking "justice" through the law but never finding it. Who would have thought it would take becoming a hitman for people who worked around the laws to truly find justice?

So he hasn't done anything wrong; he's only done what's just. Which is why Kate has to sign these papers.

So even he pushed the gun harder against her neck and she begins to cry. Alejandro can't help but just stare at her for a moment. He's been around men whose hearts have been hardened to stone for so long that it's rare to see any emotions.

Seeing tears takes him back to the times of placing a band-aid on his daughter's skint knee when she fell playing soccer or the times he would hold his wife while they lay in bed, trying to reassure her when she was upset that nothing was going to happen to him when he was working those cases.

So he can't help but to reach up and gently wipe them off her cheek. Her skin is soft and warm and it only helps to remind him of those he's lost. He can almost picture his wife and daughter but he quickly shakes the thought away and returns to the matter at hand.

"Sign the papers," he begins, "and this will all be over."

Kate looks at him again and he's almost afraid she's going to refuse again and honestly he doesn't know what he will do if she does. He knows he'll have to shoot her but a part of him almost can't.

Almost.

Thankfully, she just quickly scribbles her name onto the page and he can see the last bit of light in her eyes leaving. She's gave up her strength for the ability to stay human and he gave up his humanity for the ability to get stronger.

Now, he's certainly stronger than the man who let his wife get beheaded and his daughter rot away in acid. In fact, he's so strong now he's doesn't even feel human anymore.

In Aztec mythology, the god of death is Xolotl: a man with the head of a Mexican gray wolf. Perhaps that's what he's become. He's a bringer of death. He's a sicario. He's a wolf.

And she's not. She still believes in the law and the system and the idea that she can make a change. He knows she's not tough enough to survive the world that she's been brought into. So he tells her so.

"You should move to a small town somewhere where they still believe in the rule of law," he begins as he pulls the gun away from her and stands up. "This is the land of wolves now...and you are not a wolf."

With that he leaves her and heads back out toward his car. He doesn't even need to turn around to sense she has a gun pointed toward him. Still, he turns to look at her, standing on the balcony, gun held tight in her shaking hand.

Alejandro knows she won't shoot; she won't allow herself to become what he's become.

He can't really blame her for that; sometimes he wonders how he let himself become what he has. He knows that his wife wouldn't approve, even though he's done what he's done to get justice for her and their daughter.

Sometimes he almost prays for forgiveness; he's almost sorry for what he's become.

Almost.

Reviews and constructive criticism are much appreciated! ;D