Bruno wakes up feeling better than he has in a long time, both mentally and physically. He sits up, yawns, and realizes his nieces are still asleep.

He decides to let them sleep.

Bruno gets up, makes his way to the kitchen where Señora Garcia is working on breakfast.

"Buenos dias," he greets her. He doesn't offer to help, knowing full well she'll refuse.

"Good morning, Brunito." The woman smiles at him and offers him a cup of coffee. "How are you, mijo?"

He ducks his head as he accepts the mug. "Bien," he says, and he thinks it might almost be true. He sits down at the table and takes a sip of coffee.

It's still hot, and burns his tongue, but Bruno doesn't care. Hot coffee, hot tea-hot food, really-haven't been a thing these last ten years, with him sneaking into the kitchen at night and stealing what he could find (and be certain would not be missed).

It really is almost indecent, the way his body reacts to hot coffee now. It's been six days, and the woman, bless her, has made sure there was hot coffee and food waiting for him when he got up on every single one of those days, and he has yet to get used to it.

He takes another sip and briefly considers proposing.

Bruno knows, in spite of how good he's feeling now, that he needs to be careful. He needs to pace himself. He overdid it before, and it did not turn out well. He needs to keep things at a manageable-no, sustainable-level, even though right now he wants nothing more than to throw himself into the midst of his family and pretend he never left.

He's self-aware enough, by now, to know that this house has become a bit of a safe haven for him, and that as soon as he steps outside at least some of the anxiety will come back. He needs to make sure he can handle it.

He raps absently on the wood table, frowning as he catches himself at it. He needs to figure out what to do about that too, because he knows that he has way too many nervous habits, and it was one thing to indulge them in the walls where they helped keep the visions and the madness at bay, but it's a completely different matter to subject anyone around him to his tendency to throw salt-and sugar-over his shoulder every couple of minutes, or to rap on every wooden surface he comes across, or to hold his breath and cross his fingers while crossing every threshold, or to-

He somehow manages to stop his madly whirling mind, and focuses on his coffee.

He's on his second cup by the time Dolores and Mirabel rouse themselves, greeting them as they stumble into the room and Dolores heads straight for the coffee.

Like her mamá, the girl seems to wake up little by little with each sip. Mirabel tries yet again to get Señora Garcia to let her help with breakfast.

"How's your shoulder?" Mirabel asks as they sit down to breakfast. Bruno blinks at her for a moment before remembering that his shoulder does, in fact, hurt more than it usually does after spending the night on the floor.

He shrugs. "It'll probably take a while to heal all the way. Your sister, who is not an old man, should be good as new long before then." He chuckles.

Mirabel looks at him. "But you've been letting your injury rest," she insists, and Bruno feels a sudden warmth bloom in his chest.

"Yes, yes." He smiles at her. "Your mothers made sure I didn't get into much yesterday."

Camilo and Antonio are waiting on the steps when Bruno finally leaves the house, Mirabel and Dolores with him. Antonio, predictably, launches himself at his uncle, jumping into his arms, and even Camilo can see that the man barely manages to catch him.

"Toñito, como estas?" he asks, setting him down, and the child immediately launches into a report of the previous day's work: namely, teaching the rats to jump through hoops.

"I thought I heard something about that." Bruno looks impressed. "You know, they never would do that for me. They must really like you, mijo."

Antonio smiles up at him. "Wanna see?" he asks. Their tío nods.

"We gotta get Luisa, remember?" Camilo interjects. "She's still got Alejandro, and she wanted to be there when we showed him."

"Oh, yeah, Luisa helped too!" Antonio tells Bruno, excited all over again. "Let's go find Luisa!"

Mirabel and Dolores wander off, and Camilo and Antonio drag their uncle along to look for their cousin.

They find Luisa sitting a bit away from where they're rebuilding the house, watching people working, stroking the rat in her lap absently while she tries not to fidget.

""Luisa!" Antonio waves and runs toward their cousin. Camilo keeps pace with Bruno. He looks a lot better than he did the other night, except his hair is still a complete mess.

"Maybe you should let Isabella do something with your hair," he says. Bruno turns and looks at him for a moment, and Camilo has no idea what the man is thinking. Bruno reaches up a tentative hand and runs his hair nervously through his tangled curls.

"Maybe," he agrees, shaking his head.

"Sorry, that was rude." Bruno shrugs.

"I haven't really been able to do much with it lately." he admits. "It's getting to be unmanageable. I just don't want to-I don't want to..." he trails off, as if unsure how to finish.

"Isabella loves doing people's hair. She bullies someone into letting her do theirs at least once a week. She and Dolores have a 'spa night' at least once a month. Trust me, she would love a chance to get her hands on you."

Bruno chuckles, just a little bit.

Luisa and Antonio have the hoops out by the time they catch up. The rats are ready to go. Luisa holds the hoop steady in front of Rosalita first. On the other side of the hoop Antonio holds a treat-he smuggled some crumbs from breakfast just for the rats.

"Jump, Rosa," he says. Camilo and Bruno watch as the rat jumps elegantly through the hoop and claims her prize. Bruno claps, and when she's done eating, the rat finds him, climbing his clothes and coming to perch on his shoulder.

Fernando follows suit, his jump less graceful but plenty energetic, and then it's Alejandro's turn. Alejandro sniffs cautiously at the hoop first, turns a circle once, twice, three times-and jumps through the hoop, his tail just brushing it.

Bruno claps each time, and each of the rats find him after eating their treats, Fernando settling on his other shoulder while Alejandro takes refuge in his hair.

"That was amazing!" Bruno declares, grinning. "You know, I never could get them to jump through hoops for me. I don't know how you managed it."

"Oh, it took the whole day," Camilo tells him. "Lots and lots of food."

"Did you teach them any other tricks?" Antonio wants to know. They're smart-I bet they know other things too."

"I made them a maze," Bruno admits. "Fernando was the best at it. But it's gone now."

"And you can call them." Antonio remembers, beaming at him.

"I can," he reaches for Rosalita, picking her up of his shoulder. He sets her down gently. "Stay," he says, backing up several feet. "Rosalita, ven aqui."

The rat runs straight into his outstretched palm, and Bruno offers her a crumb. "Sit," She settles down on her haunches, and receives another crumb.

Bruno has her stand, shake hands, and even clap her tiny little hands together. Antonio enjoys every minute of it. So does Luisa.

Camilo has to admit, it's kind of cool.

Bruno clicks his tongue, and Rosalita leaves his hand, backs up several feet, and then turns around and looks at him, waiting. Fernando and Alejandro have left their own perches and joined her, waiting as well.

"What are they doing?" Antonio asks, looking from the rats, who seem to be watching Bruno intently, to the man himself.

"Waiting," Bruno murmurs, sitting down. He makes that clicking sound again, and they approach carefully, setting little hands on his knees before jumping into his lap, nuzzling against his torso gently before Rosalita makes her way daintily up to once again sit on his shoulder, where she noses against his neck for a moment before going still.

He smiles at Antonio. "Rosalita, go to Antonio," he says, tossing the boy what looks like a piece of an arepa. Rosalita watches the morsel arc through the air. Antonio, surprisingly, catches it.

"Go to Antonio," Bruno says again. Antonio holds out the treat. Rosalita scrambles down Bruno's ruana and crosses the distance between him and his nephew.

They repeat the process several times, and Camilo feels like the other two rats are watching with just as much interest as he and Luisa.

Bruno moves on to Fernando after a while. It doesn't take him long to catch on. Alejandro takes a while-the rat is timid, and nervous, and has a tendency to get halfway to Antonio before bolting back towards Bruno in spite of the time he's spent with Antonio and Luisa the past couple of days.

Camilo is impressed that the man never loses patience with any of the rats. He's also surprised that Bruno can focus on one thing this long-he's not sure why, but his uncle strikes him as the sort to be easily distracted.

Alejandro finally gets it, and Bruno celebrates as if the rat were a child taking his first steps.

They spend the rest of the morning teaching them to go to Luisa and Camilo as well. The more time they spend on it, the better the rats get. They also teach the rats to come when each of the children call.

Antonio is having the time of his life, and Camilo and Luisa are both enjoying themselves as well.

Bruno can tell he's getting tired when Isabella and Dolores steal him away for lunch. He suspects, by the way Dolores looks him over, from head to toe, that she can as well. He tries not to feel guilty.

He's still not used to eating much at once, but tries to get enough down that the girls won't worry, even if it makes him feel bloated and uncomfortable. He doesn't want them to worry, and he's caught more than one of his sobrinas eyeing him while he eats.

"You don't have to do that," Dolores says abruptly, almost as if she can read his mind.

"Not if it's going to make you sick." Isabella adds airily. She somehow manages to make it sound as if she doesn't care either way, and while Bruno is aware of what she's doing, he's not entirely sure why she's doing it.

All the same, he's a little relieved as he sets the rest of his meal aside.

"Have you told them about the telenovelas yet?" Dolores asks. "Camilo's a bit of a drama queen, you know. And Antonio would love the stories."

"Ah, yes, the telenovelas." Bruno isn't sure why he's suddenly embarrassed. It's not as if it never occurred to him before that she could hear them. There's a reason he stopped doing certain stories, after all.

"Telenovelas?" Isabella asks. "What's a telenovela?"

"Stories," Dolores tells her. "Ones he makes up. Drama, romance, forbidden love...They're wonderful."

Bruno catches himself scratching absently at his arm. "I don't know about wonderful," he says, looking down. "I mean, it was a way to pass the time..."

"They were great." Dolores insists. "And I'm still waiting to find out what happens between Juan Felipe and Ricardo, the tortured lovers."

Bruno feels his heart seize in his chest. After a moment, he manages to say something.

"They get married and live happily ever after." His voice is flat, and Dolores is staring at him in disbelief. He forces himself not to look away.

"But what about Ricardo's step-mother? What about Maria? How Juan Felipe escape? How-" Bruno holds up a hand, and she falls silent.

"I don't do those stories anymore, Dolores. They're not-" he hesitates, trying to find the right words. He has no idea how to explain without giving too much away. "They're not good stories. For me-they aren't good. So for me, Juan Felipe escapes and he and Ricardo live happily ever after. That's all. The end."

She doesn't understand, and he really can't risk saying any more. "I'm sorry, Dolores. Just, please, just trust me on this."

She nods, slowly, and Bruno feels some of the tension leave his shoulders.

Isabella looks from Dolores to Bruno. "So, are you going to let me do your hair?" she asks. Bruno rolls his shoulders, trying to dispel some of his uneasiness. He itches to knock on wood, but there's none nearby, and anyway he's trying not to do that anymore. "It doesn't have to be right now."

"Sure," he says, before he can change his mind. "I mean, if you want to, sometime."

Isabella grins at him. "I'll need time to gather up some supplies."

Bruno manages to disentangle himself from his oldest nieces after lunch and tries to slip away, out of sight and out of mind, just for a little bit. It's more than he could have hoped for, really, for his sobrinos to accept him so wholeheartedly, but he needs a minute.

He's spent too much time hiding in the walls. He'd almost gotten used to being alone, and now, being surrounded by at least a couple family members at any given time-it's going to take some getting used to.

He lies down in the grass, content to stare up at the sky, trusting the green in his ruana to shield him from casual view. If someone comes looking for him, they're not likely to miss him, but that's okay. It's nice to think that someone might come looking for him.

Augustín finds him, after a while, and Bruno knows it was not by accident. His cuñado smiles, nods to him, and sticks his hands in his pockets.

"Checking in on me?" Bruno can't find it in him to be anything but touched. He and Augustín were never particularly close.

Augustín shrugs. "You seem to be doing all right," he says. "I can go, if you'd rather be alone."

Bruno shakes his head. "Can't say I really care for it." He ducks his head, slightly. "Just needed a break from, well, from..." he trails off. He's not really sure how to explain that he would spend all day with his sobrinos if he could, but right now they take a lot of effort and energy, and he only has so much of either in him.

"Sometimes you just need a moment to recharge." Augustín has a knowing look in his eye. "You know, Julieta and I were always grateful when the kids went looking for you, demanding stories and games and whatever else. It gave us a break. They could be a handful. Still are, at times."

Bruno smiles.

Augustín finds his own seat in the grass, leaning back, and staring up at the sky.

Félix finds the two of them still sprawled out, staring up at the sky. Bruno's just started to doze off as the man arrives. Augustín raises an eyebrow in warning, and Félix changes direction, coming to sit on Augustín's other side rather than next to Bruno.

The man startles upright anyway, and it is all Félix can do not to laugh at his brother-in-law. This much, at least, has not changed. Bruno may not be entirely the man he was before, but some things have apparently remained the same.

"I was feeling left out," Félix jokes. "You've had quality bonding time with everyone else since you came back.

Bruno rolls his shoulders and tries not to look away. Félix is certain he knows it's a joke, and that there's no animosity behind it, but he can also immediately tell that Bruno feels guilty at the realization.

He laughs and shakes his head. "Hey, when I feel like we need to talk, I come find you and we talk. Remember?"

They've mostly been content to leave each other alone, or had been, in the years before Bruno left. They both love Pepa, they both love the kids. For a long time that was all Félix ever thought he needed from the man.

Now he's reconsidering, after Bruno abruptly disappearing ten years ago and coming back just as suddenly. After finding out that the whole reason he left in the first place was to protect Mirabel.

Maybe he'd like to get to know his wife's strange, future-reading brother a little better than he does.

Maybe that's why he's here.

"You thanked me for helping Dolores." Bruno nods sagely, as if their last real conversation had been only a few days ago rather than over a decade.

Félix recalls that when Dolores was younger, sometimes her gift would get to be too much for her. Somehow it had always been Bruno who noticed first, and usually Bruno that had actually been able to do anything to help her.

"Now I'm here to tell you I'm glad you're back."

Bruno's eyes grow large and suspiciously watery; Félix hopes he's not about to cry. He doesn't want to make the man uncomfortable, not so soon after his return.

"It's good to be back." Bruno practically whispers; he's fiddling with the hem in his ruana just to have something to do with his hands.

"Anyway, I'll go. Didn't mean to interrupt your nap."

Bruno looks up, suddenly, caught off guard. "You don't have to." There's a bite to the words, one that Bruno himself doesn't seem to understand. "I mean, you don't have to stay, but you don't have to go, either."

Félix accepts the statement for what it is: an invitation from a man far too used to being denied to dare to hope for anything else, somehow still trying to ask anyway.

"I don't have anywhere else I have to be," he says, making himself comfortable.

Bruno lays back down and tucks one arm under his head, but the other is tapping a staccato rhythm against his leg. Augustín ignores it, and Félix ignores it, because Bruno has always been an anxious man, and sometimes there's only so much he can do to control it.

Gradually the tapping slows, and the man starts to relax again-at least as much as he ever does. His gaze is glassy and unfocused, his thoughts most likely elsewhere.

It is Augustín who eventually risks ruining the moment, when he shifts, and in a low voice says, "I haven't thanked you for what you did for my daughter."

Bruno blinks, eyes coming into focus. The tapping starts again. "Didn't really know what else to do, and anyway, it's not like I was doing the family any good by staying."

It's exactly the sort of thing he would never have dared to say in front of his mother, or in front of his sisters for that matter, though for an entirely different reason. Félix can only assume he would never dream of saying something like that in front of the children, given how protective he can remember the man being of them. Only here, caught half-dozing, would he ever admit to such a thing, and that only to his cuñados, both men who had married into the family and as such had the sort of distance from its magic necessary to be able to accept the truth of such a statement without feeling the need to argue against it.

It also shows just how screwed up the concept of 'earning the miracle that somehow found them' and 'each new generation must keep the miracle burning through work and dedication' actually was.

Bruno had all but stopped sharing his visions with the town by the time Mirabel was five. He was tired of always bringing bad news. He was tired of being hated and feared by the people in town. Félix could understand that. Even he had eventually gotten to the point that every time Bruno opened his mouth, he braced himself for some sort of proclamation of doom.

But Abuela hadn't seen that he was tired of disappointing everyone. Instead she had seen it as him shirking his responsibilities. Worse, she felt that in refusing to use his gift he was betraying the very miracle that gave it to him.

Poor Bruno was a disappointment either way, because even when he did try he failed-Abuela simply insisted that maybe tomorrow would be better. Tomorrow he would do better. Tomorrow he would see something good, something happy. Something better.

In retrospect, they should have been surprised that he hadn't left sooner. That it took the threat of one of his sobrinas taking his place as the family scapegoat to make him vanish into the night, leaving his tower dark and an empty space at the table that they were all too eager to fill when Antonio came along.

He's a little ashamed of how easily they filled his empty chair. How it was almost a relief when Antonio was old enough to take it.

"Your value as a member of the family shouldn't have relied on your gift." Augustín sounds a little choked up. "All the same, I'm grateful."

They've grown a little wiser, perhaps, in the ten years he's been gone.

Bruno sits up, and they can both tell he's agitated, so Augustín leaves it alone. He'll bolt if they push him too far-he's always been that way. If the situation gets too uncomfortable, he'll leave without another word.

Félix yawns and stretches. "I could almost go for a nap myself," he admits lazily, as if his spooked cuñado weren't visibly resisting the urge to flee. "The sun, the warmth, it's the perfect weather for it."

No more is said. Bruno settles again, bit by bit.

Luisa and Mirabel find Bruno when it's time for dinner, and he's starting to wonder if the kids are organizing things behind his back or something, because this is how it's been all day, rarely more than two of them at a time.

Breakfast with Dolores and Mirabel, both of them fading away afterwards, as soon as Camilo and Antonio found them.

They had then been joined by Luisa as well, but the three of them had also spaced themselves out further. At lunch it had been Isabella and Dolores. Two again.

Now it's Luisa and Mirabel.

Two again.

Bruno knows his mind is fully capable of finding patterns where none exist, of ascribing meaning to a mere series of coincidences, still, it feels like its intentional.

He tries to shrug it off, telling himself he'll worry about it later when he can no longer convince himself he's imagining things. He's not entirely sure it works, but it's the thought that counts, right?

"So how was the rat show?" Mirabel asks, and Luisa smiles.

"Great. And Tío taught the rats to come to us."

"Nice," Mirabel says. Bruno gets the feeling Mirabel doesn't like the rats as much as her sister, but that's okay. She doesn't have to like them. Lots of people don't. "I saw you with Papá and Tío Félix earlier. Did you have a nice talk?"

Bruno raises an eyebrow at his sobrina. He's fully aware that she's asking if her father and uncle did anything to upset him. She ducks her head sheepishly, acknowledging that he's caught her, but refuses to back down.

"It was, it was good, I think," he says. He doesn't want her to worry. Not about him.

And anyway, he thinks it was. Good. It felt good. A little uncomfortable at times, but overall-good.

"And what did you do today?" Bruno asks, mostly to steer the conversation away from himself.

"Oh, you know. Helped carry some stuff. Señor Moreno taught me how to use a hammer and nails, so that was fun. He wanted to know how Luisa was doing. I think he felt bad-it never even occurred to him to help with the wall."

"My back's better, but it still hurts, especially when I move the wrong way." Luisa admits. "I've been trying to take it easy, but it's so hard! I feel like everyone else is doing their part, so I should be too."

"Well they weren't doing their part to put up that wall or you wouldn't have been injured in the first place." Bruno points out mildly. He's a little surprised at how evenly the words come out.

Both girls stare at him for a moment.

"He has a point," Mirabel says, before Luisa can come up with an excuse. Her older sister looks uncomfortable anyway. "But change takes time. I think things are going to get better, but I don't think it's going to happen overnight. We've got bad habits to get rid of, old ideas and ways of thinking to change-it might be as much work as putting up a house."

Maybe more, Bruno thinks but doesn't say.

Isabella and Dolores are waiting when Bruno and Mirabel return to Señora Garcia's for the evening, brushes and combs and a multitude of other items scattered across the table, with the woman's blessing. Isabella is surprised at how taken Señora seems to be with her tío, but she's also grateful that someone in the village still thinks well of him.

Mirabel's eyebrows shoot up into her hairline. "What is this?" she wants to know, and Isabella favors her with her biggest grin.

"Spa night!" she declares, and Mirabel, predictably, groans. Isabella rolls her eyes, her hands on her hips. "You don't have to stay. We're doing Tío's hair."

Mirabel snorts.

Tío Bruno looks distinctly uncomfortable. Isabella fixes him with a look. "Come on, we'll be gentle. And you'll feel so much better when it's done."

He hunches his shoulders. "It's just. It's really messy. I-uh-"

Dolores shakes her head. "She did Camilo's hair once. You'll be fine."

Isabella leads him into the kitchen, where they already have a chair set up in front of the sink. "You might want to take off your ruana," she says. "I don't want to accidentally get it wet."

He hesitates only briefly before taking it off and folding it neatly. Dolores takes it from him and sets it on the table. Isabella guides him to the chair, and he settles uneasily.

"Relax," she says. "I'm going to tell you everything we're doing, and if you don't want us to do something, all you have to do is say so. We're not going to cut all your hair off without asking or anything.

He nods, nervously, and leans his head back.

Tío Bruno yelps slightly in surprise when the water first hits his head, but doesn't jump from the chair. Isabella starts working through his hair, making sure all of it gets wet, and refrains on commenting on how dirty and tangled it is. She figures keeping clean was probably nearly impossible while he was living in the walls, and from what she can already tell trying to take care of his hair would have been an ordeal, if not virtually impossible. He likely did the best he could with what little he had.

Dolores offers up the shampoo; it's a gentle, mildly scented shampoo, and shouldn't bother their tío. Somewhere in the back of her mind is the thought that he used to be sensitive to certain smells, but she can't remember if it was only when he had a really bad headache and was already nauseous or it was a general thing.

Isabella works it gently into his hair, creating a nice lather, and notices her uncle is starting to relax. He doesn't even flinch when she goes to rinse his hair, and his eyes are half-closed, his gaze unfocused.

"Sure you don't want a turn?" Isabella asks Mirabel, who is watching from the table. Her sister shakes her head. "Your loss." She accepts a bottle of conditioner from Dolores and starts working it into Tío Bruno's hair.

Her uncle makes an odd sort of sighing sound, and she stops to check on him. His eyes are no longer open, and he's all but collapsed into the chair, the tension usually so present in his back and shoulders almost completely gone. She smiles and continues her work.

Dolores hands her a large wooden comb, and Isabella starts on the task of working through the tangles that make up most of his hair, trying not to pull or break any of it. She winces as the comb catches, but her uncle doesn't seem to notice, so she simply continues more carefully from there.

Her uncle makes a low groaning sound, the same sort of sound Camilo often makes over her mamá's cooking, when none of the adults are around to scold him for being rude, or the sound Isabella's mother herself makes when she finally all but collapses into a chair after a long day of cooking. It is a sound of both relief and pleasure.

On Tío Bruno's other side Dolores is trying not to laugh. Isabella grins at her, then over at Mirabel, who looks both surprised and impressed. Isabella knows her sister was worried, even if Tío agreed, that it would be too much for him.

Isabella is still working through a mass of tangles when both Mirabel and Dolores-her usual spa partner-start to get bored. Isabella shakes her head at them and waves them off-she's fully capable of handling things here.

Dolores wanders over to join Mirabel, and the two start whispering. Isabella is curious, but she can ask later. Right now she has work to do.

The comb catches again, and this time Tío Bruno winces. "Sorry," she says, but he halfheartedly flaps a hand at her, dismissing the apology.

"S'fine," he slurs. She gets the feeling he's not entirely paying attention to the specifics of what she's doing anymore.

"You've got a really bad rat's nest-sorry, I mean-"

"That's probably where Alejandro likes to hide." Bruno offers, a shy smile making its way to his face. "So rat's nest might actually be appropriate."

"I might have to cut it out." Isabella tells him reluctantly, but he waves her off again.

She reaches for the scissors, and while he tenses slightly at the sound of sharp metal cutting through hair, he otherwise doesn't react, and by the time she's rinsing the conditioner out of his hair, he's drifting again.

Dolores throws her a towel-Isabella catches it just in time to keep it from hitting their uncle in the face-and goes back to whatever she and Mirabel are plotting. Isabella starts working the towel through Tío Bruno's hair, trying to get it as dry as possible.

She knows it's going to take a while, and she doesn't want to cut it while it's wet, because his hair is curly, and she wants to be able to work with that.

"Any idea how long you want it?" she asks. When he doesn't respond, she stops and leans over to look at him. His eyes are fully closed, and she's not entirely certain he's still awake.

"Hmm?" he manages. It's soft, barely audible. Eyes open almost lazily a second later. "What?"

"Your hair. How long do you want it?" she asks.

Tío Bruno shrugs. "I don't know." His answer is entirely unhelpful. "I guess I've gotten used to it like this, but..." he trails off, but doesn't look particularly distressed. Simply indecisive. "I never thought to grow it out. It's just sort of gradually gotten longer over the years."

Isabella purses her lips. "So we'll just trim and shape it for now." She decides, because he seems incapable of doing so for himself, but also not particularly worried about it. "If you decide you want something different later, then we can change it."

He tenses again when she gets the scissors out once more, but doesn't complain. He does sit up, which Isabella appreciates, and pulls the chair far enough forward that she can get behind him. He sits still while she works, not entirely at ease, but still more relaxed than he's been most of the time since he came back.

Isabella finishes and trades scissors for brush, and her uncle nearly melts back into his seat. He seems to be really enjoying this, and his niece is glad, because she also enjoys a little pampering now and again, and she knows how rejuvenating it can be, not just physically, but on a spiritual level as well.

She spends far longer than she needs to brushing out his hair, and now that it's clean and neat and combed out, Tío Bruno's dark locks are soft and shiny and remind Isabella of her mother's hair.

His is maybe a little bit thicker, a little bit curlier, almost a halfway point between Mamá's hair and Tía Pepa's.

"I could braid it for you," she offers. "Lots of tiny little braids."

"That would take hours." Mirabel complains. Isabella rolls her eyes at her sister. They aren't mad at each other, not really, but the habits are still there.

"It would be very frizzy when I took them out." Tío Bruno sounds contemplative, but Isabella suddenly remembers that Camilo was the only person willing to let her practice on him when she was learning to do the rows and rows of tiny braids, and the eventual result when he took them out.

She still has nightmares over that.

She settles for styling it back, out of his eyes, out of his face. The end result-is nice. He looks good. Older than when he left them, perhaps. Certainly thinner. Maybe a little more tired. But overall, it looks good.

And he no longer looks like some sort of wild man who's been living in the walls for the last ten years.

He looks up at her and offers her a slow, sleepy smile, his eyes lighter and happier than she can remember seeing them. Isabella returns the smile and holds up a mirror.

"Want to see?"

He frowns at his reflection at first, his eyes flitting across his own face as if he no longer recognizes it, but then his gaze drifts to his hair, and he smiles again.

"It looks good," he says almost shyly. "And it feels good. It feels so much better, Isa, thank you."

Isabella pulls him into a gentle hug and is delighted when he doesn't freeze like he usually does. "I'm glad you like it," she says.

"It looks good, Tío," Dolores calls from the table. Even Mirabel has to agree. She even helps with the cleanup, gathering brushes and combs and whatever else off the table and returning it all to the basket Isabella brought it in while Isabella sweeps up bits of hair off the floor and Dolores insists on seeing their uncle's new hairstyle from all directions, making him spin slowly in a circle and in the process distracting him from doing any cleanup himself.

Isabella ends up joining them on the floor that night; Dolores and Mirabel throw all their blankets into a pile together and the three girls find themselves side by side by side, giggling and laughing and getting along in a way none of them have since they were little.

She's pretty sure they're keeping Tío Bruno awake but equally sure he doesn't mind, given how he's sprawled out on his own blankets next to them with his head close to theirs, listening to them carry on even though his eyes have refused to stay open since shortly after they lay down. Every once in a while he offers a tiny, quiet giggle of his own.

Mirabel is the first to lose the battle to stay awake, and their tío is only still awake in the vaguest of senses. Isabella and Dolores are quickly losing steam, more and more yawns interrupting, each yawn bigger than the last, until at last they give in and fall silent.

Isabella can't remember ever being this happy.

Author's note: This one took me so much longer to write-very busy with work and other life stuff-but I've been going over the scene with Isabella doing his hair for a while now in my head and I'm pretty happy with how it turned out.

Disclaimer: Disney's Encanto does not belong to me.