A/N: listened to dos oruguitas while writing this.

dream chocolate pie was eaten through my own tears.

and finally, we get alma's reaction! she and bruno were the two who i wanted the main reactions from. unless you guys want to see other reactions, the next chapter will start where this chapter ended.

i really did try to capture alma at the end of the movie here, and i hope i did her some justice.

crossposted over on AO3!

Hands clamped over her mouth, Alma was staring up at the crumbling house with a horror-struck face.

"The miracle is dying because of you."

The words haunted her brain, looping around and tightening into words that threatened to drown her. The look on Mirabel's face was just as unforgettable, flickering into existence occasionally in her mindscape. The sheer hurt, yet also the dogged tenaciousness that made up Mirabel's core rattled Alma to the core. It reminded her so much of Pedro. It ached in her center even now, as her hands pressed even more firmly into her mouth.

Her eyes could not be unglued from the scene even as the house surged under her feet, making the family stumble backward as it urged them to leave before it completely collapsed. Her granddaughter was already scrambling to get to the candle, something that the matriarch would have tried to do if she wasn't trying to get back to her feet. Alma was even more horrified to see that her second youngest grandson was trying to reach Mirabel.

Her breath hitched as he lunged for the roof, her eyes wide and terrified as her attention was brought to an even more horrifying moment: the sound of Bruno's tower as scarily huge cracks cascaded up the side like spiderwebs. It was degenerating quickly, large sections and pieces of stucco falling to the ground. If it wasn't for the flash of yellow and blue that occurred amidst the house disintegrating to pieces, Alma wasn't sure that she would have seen the movement.

The screams of her family around her were positively devastating to the matriarch. Her hands dropped to clutch at her black shawl, white-faced and stricken with the image of Casita's fall and the sudden disappearance of two of her children. Faced with the potential loss of more of her family struck her hard.

Pedro was gone. Had been for fifty years.

Bruno was gone. Disappeared for ten years. Any search for his body yielded no results.

And now…

Alma shrank into herself, wondering if it was truly her that had caused this damage. Her wide, worried (terrified) eyes scanned the rest of the Madrigals. Pepa's and Julieta's screams had been among the worst of them, Antonio and Luisa sobbing hysterically together. Felix was pulling his wife back with his own pained cries, while Agustin had fallen to his knees in front of the ruins in wide-eyed, pale silence. Dolores with her hands over her ears, quietly crying into her skirt. Isabela crumpled to the ground and bawled furtively into the dirt with no regard for her already messy clothing.

Camilo and Mirabel… fallen.

And Alma.. had failed in her duty as a grandmother, too blinded by seeking the approval of the village still. Too afraid to lose their home again. The sheer need to preserve their legacy and protect it had taken her by the lapels and gripped her, to the point where she had pushed aside her youngest granddaughter and turned her attention to those who had Gifts. She had pressured and pushed them to be the most perfect they could be, in the process stifling them and not allowing them to flourish as they wanted.

Bruno.

Alma pressed her hands to her face and breathed harshly into them, guilty and horrified tears prickling at the corners of her eyes.

There was an anguished cry from somewhere in front of her, one that sounded so familiar-

The sight of her long-missing son weeping frantically as he tore through the rubble stunned her. Alma's mind froze in the moment. Before she could stop herself, she rose to her feet and took a couple of steps towards him as she breathed out tentatively, "...Brunito?" The movement had the man snapping his head up to meet her utterly flabbergasted face.

Utter regret and shame filled her at the sight of him.

"Dios, somebody help me!" Her living son shouted, attempting to drag a large pillar out of the way as he tried to get the rubble out of the way. "Get them out, get my children out!"

How could she have forgotten?

Alma was at an utter loss for words, staring in remorseful stupefaction at the remains of Casita and Bruno doing his best to dig through the pile. From behind her, townspeople surged forward in an effort to dig the children out. The family, still weeping and in shock, joined them in their haste to see Camilo and Mirabel safe.

"You're the one breaking our home!" rang vividly through her mind, prompting the Madrigal matriarch to sit down heavily on a piece of the foundation.

And for a while, the only thing that went through her mind was the argument between her and Mirabel. Rewinding and pausing every now and then. Remorse, thick as the terror that weighed her down, would fill her like a man-made lake. Dammed up by the fear that she would lose her family.

Whoever had yelled out about finding them penetrated through her darkening mindset. A rush of elation and relief flooded through her, making her jump back up and push her way through- Bruno stumbled into her unknowingly, practically shoving people out of the way as he made his way to the front. The next thing Alma knew, somebody screamed. Bruno had fallen to his knees.

The mixture of blue and yellow mixed together with splotches of deep red had nausea swimming up from her gut into her throat, chest tightening as she stared at her grandchildren in horrified guilt. A strangled sob emitted from Alma, a hand over her mouth as shouts and screams tore through the courtyard.

No. No. Not again.

A howl of agony- akin to hers when she had witnessed Pedro's death- ripped through the air. It pierced through her own sinking grief and remorse, striking against something deep within her. Instinctively, Alma knew it was her son. She was moving forward before she could register it, ushering townspeople out of the way as she hurried forward.

What happened through the scream stunned everybody who was witnessing it.

A shockwave of blue and orange magic pulsated outwards. It was shimmering, glittering shards that sparkled momentarily in the dying light of the sun. It reached through the trees and flora, some fauna startling out of their grazing in the woods. It arced through the Encanto, sparking and renewing everything that its light touched.

The ground beneath them shuddered in the tremor, new tiles spreading outwards and in the direction of a new area as the magic surged and kissed at their fingertips.

The Madrigal family, although they had seen it- felt their magic returning, even- only burst into renewed tears as it sank in.

A high-pitched keen warbled in front of them, Alma's both absolutely wrecked and disbelieving gaze settling onto the green-covered ball curling into the deceased bodies. Bruno's body was trembling under his wracking, heart-tugging sobs of grief. With a deep breath, Alma curled a gentle hand over his shoulder. Her own eyes filled with tears as she took in the sight of the children. The siblings were wrapped around each other, Camilo's body covering his sister's as if he was trying to protect her. As much as this hurt, as much as it throbbed and ached at her heart.. Bruno needed his mother right now.

Alma looked up into the tear-stained face of Luisa, who squeezed her other hand with a spasm of her hand. As gently as her granddaughter could, she tugged at her tio's wrists.

"No! No!" her son cried out, curling around them further. Just seeing it broke Alma's heart further. "I should have stayed! Let me stay, please!" The seventy-five-year-old exhaled heavily, her vision blurring and corners of her eyes prickling as she slowly rubbed a thumb into his shoulder. Luisa gently released his hands from their shirts, not bothering to rub her face as fresh tears fell. "They need me," he moaned out hoarsely, as if he himself was being stabbed through the middle.

The sound shot straight into Alma's soul, making her kneel down next to him slowly. Without thinking about it, she withdrew her shawl from her shoulders and wrapped it around Bruno. "Shhhhh," she crooned in his ear gently. "I'm here, Brunito." She murmured softly, so full of her own grief, regret, and remorse.

Carefully, she pulled him closer to her chest and embraced him tightly. Luisa's own arms came around them from behind her uncle. He sank into her grasp, either consciously or not. Alma's heart broke as the sound of agony coming from him sank into her chest, his hands gripping her thick dress just as tightly as he had to his children's clothing.

He was trembling and gasping in their embrace, with Alma's face pressed into her son's hair. She hugged him like she would lose him again, his curls dampening from her own sorrow and remorse. As much as she would love to know where he had come from, he was here now.

Him being here was something that filled Alma with such joy, but it was at the cost of Casita. At the cost of losing Mirabel and Camilo.

And as much as she wanted to bring her family tighter together and even safer so that they wouldn't lose their home again… she knew it would only bring more pain to what she had already wrought. Which was unacceptable. Her actions towards her family, what she had said to them...

Unbidden, her last words to Mirabel swept across her mind. "I don't know why you weren't given a gift, but it is not an excuse to hurt this family!"

Alma crumpled, squeezing her son even tighter as the two wept copiously. They clutched at each other like it was the last time they would see each other. Mirabel had never hurt the family. The family was broken because of Alma. Bruno being in her arms was enough to keep her grounded, enough to know that he was still there and not off somewhere else.

She could finally see what damage she had done.

And for now, that was all that mattered.