For a long time after the ceremony went wrong, everything was quiet confusion. Mirabel stood silently by her parents while Abuela tried to reassure the village that everything was fine. That the magic was strong. They were not sure, yet, what it meant that the youngest Madrigal had not received a gift, but that it was nothing to worry about.
Abruptly the shock wore off. Dolores heard her prima's breath catch, her heart speed up. A strangled gasp escaped Mirabel, and both parents moved to comfort her, arms reaching out towards their youngest daughter.
Mirabel pulled away, tears streaming even as she struggled to hold back the sobs trying to fight their way free of her tiny frame.
"Mira!" Tia Julieta reached out again, and the girl bolted.
Blinded her tears, Mirabel's escape attempt was cut short when she plowed into the wire-thin frame of Tío Bruno, who in spite of looking more and more distracted as the evening went on, somehow managed not only to not go sprawling in a tangle of legs and distraught child, but to scoop the girl up in arms that trembled ever so slightly under her weight.
Young as she was, Dolores could see that her uncle was not well. She had almost learned how to tune him out during the ever-increasing restless nights when sleep escaped him, and like her older primas, had figured out from watching their parents that any mention of his irregular eating habits only made him more self-conscious and therefore less likely to finish a meal. She had learned, early on, by unfortunate accident, to never bring up anything she heard, however faintly, coming from her Tío's room after he had had one of his visions.
His gift wore on him, she knew, worse than her own did her, even more so than her mother's did her. Dolores had stopped asking her uncle to pick her up on her eighth birthday after he nearly dropped her when she threw herself into his arms in excitement. Isabella had of coursed noticed and stopped as well. Luisa had followed her sister and older cousin's example, but Camilo and Mirabel, both small and too young to understand the sort of things that generally went unsaid in the Madrigal household, still regularly threw themselves into their tío's arms. So far he had managed to catch them each time.
Mirabel buried her face in her uncle's chest, now sobbing freely, and Tío Bruno wrapped his arms around her, rubbing her back and looking desperately around the room as if for help before turning his attention back to his youngest sobrina.
Dolores did not know whether he had always been so soft-spoken, or if that had happened after she had gotten her gift, but she was not surprised when he murmured a quiet "Mirita" that the rest of the room most likely did not hear. Nor was she surprised when he offered nothing else in the way of consolation.
When looking for advice, Tío Bruno was not the person to go to. Reassurance wasn't really his thing either. If anything, words seemed to only get in the way where Dolores's tío was involved, with the man nearly stuttering and stumbling awkwardly as he tried his best to answer questions that he quite possibly didn't know the answer to.
On the other hand, Uncle Bruno was the perfect solution to feelings that were too big or too complicated for words, always content to simply sit and hold a niece or nephew close, keeping them safe from the rest of the world and the pressures and responsibilities of being a member of la familia Madrigal, while those feelings worked themselves out, quite often in the form of tears. He was also always willing to listen, if and when the words finally spilled out, without scolding, without judgment, and without comment, until there was nothing left to be said.
Mirabel's sobs finally quieted to whimpers, and Abuela shifted.
"Bruno, I need you." Her tío's heartbeat quickened, and his head snapped up. His arms tightened instinctively around the child in his arms, and a look of betrayal flashed in his eyes for all of a second before vanishing.
"Mirabel, she-" Tía Julieta was already there beside her brother, reaching for her daughter.
"I've got her, Brunito. Thank you,"
"Of course..." Tío Bruno agreed, hesitant. Nonetheless he relinquished his hold, allowing his hermana to gather her daughter into her arms.
"Bruno," Abuela admonished, more sternly this time, and he nodded.
"Si, Mami." Relieved of his burden, he turned. Offering his arm to his mother, he allowed her to lead him up the stairs. They stopped in front of his door and exchanged a glance before Tio Bruno turned and disappeared into his room.
Though not a word had been spoken between the two, they all knew what had happened.
Abuela wanted answers, and she had charged Tío Bruno with finding them.
Perhaps Dolores was too young to understand the situation properly, but to her it did not seem fair.
Tio Bruno did not come out of his room for days.
No one interrupted him; even the younger family members knew that some visions were more difficult than others, that some took more time than others. The rest of the family waited, not entirely patiently, definitely worried. Trusting (hoping?) that he would come down from his tower only when he found an answer.
The rest of the family did not have Dolores's gift.
From her spot at the dinner table she could just make out the faint sound of swirling sand settling as the first of what would be many visions ended. Barely audible over the sound of clinking forks and knives came the sound of Tío Bruno's breath catching in his chest, accompanied by a strangled sob.
A string of words she had never heard her uncle use before followed, soft and angry and desperate.
A deep breath. Movement. Sand pouring out in the shape of a circle.
A match striking.
Sand swirling up and around in circles as another vision was summoned.
Sand settling once more.
More swearing.
More sand.
Dolores wondered if she should mention that her Tio was making himself sick over this, but young as she was, she knew Abuela would not be satisfied until she had an answer.
Dolores supposed so much was at stake. The miracle. La familia. The magic.
Still, a tiny part of her wondered if their gifts were worth the pain he was putting himself through.
The door to Tío Bruno's room opened and everyone stopped what they were doing to stare at the man as he emerged.
He made his way carefully down the stairs, weaving unsteadily past family members as if they were simply obstacles in his way rather than people waiting for answers.
"Bruno? What did you see?"
For the first time in all the years Dolores had been alive, Abuela asked a question that went unacknowledged as her Tío all but stumbled into the kitchen.
He sank into the nearest chair, not bothering to find his own. Dolores heard it scrape against the floor and heard him sigh as he settled.
Tía Julieta's footsteps made their way from the stove, where she had been preparing dinner, to the cabinet, back to the stove, at last coming to a stop near the table. Another chair scraped the floor as it moved.
"Hermano?"
Her uncle's heart stuttered. His breathing quickened.
"Please, don't."
"Bruno..." A long pause. Dolores guessed her aunt and uncle were silently sizing each other up.
"I, I can't, Juli. Please."
Another silence.
"Surely you can tell me something." There was a note of desperation in the woman's tone, no match for the panic that had been in Tío Bruno's each time he had spoken. "Bruno, even if it's bad, knowing can only help us prepare-"
The sound of a teacup slamming into the table cut her off. Liquid splashed, hit wood, cloth, and skin and went ignored.
"I don't know what I saw, Juli!" Tío Bruno's voice was raw, harsh, and louder in Dolores's ears than she could ever remember. "Over and over and over and none of it made sense! Useless!" Whether he meant the visions or himself was unclear.
"Brunito." Tía Julieta addressed her brother in that voice specifically meant to calm people down. It usually worked. Tío Bruno settled just a little. "Why don't you tell me what you saw, and together maybe we can figure it out."
For a long moment everything was quiet. Tío Bruno stopped breathing for so long that Dolores's lungs began to burn out of sympathy.
When he remembered to breathe again, he stuttered out an answer. "I... need more time. To sort through everything. Then we can-we can talk about it, okay? Maybe it'll make more sense to you."
It reminded her of the time she had asked him to look into the future and see if she would ever fall in love. Specifically, it reminded her that he had made the excuse that he was tired, maybe next time, and then spent the next week and a half avoiding her.
She hadn't understood why at the time, but shortly after she finally managed to corner him she had more than enough reason to regret asking.
Another sigh, this one Tía Julieta's.
"I'll try to keep Mama off your back."
"Thanks, Juli." A chair was pushed back. Footsteps crossed the kitchen, and Tía Julieta appeared in the door frame. So quiet that Dolores was certain that she was the only one who heard, Tío Bruno added, "I'm sorry."
He bolted then, into the walls of the house themselves. He had been doing it for years, Dolores knew, though she had never been able to find any of his bolt holes. She assumed the family knew as well, but no one ever talked about it, so she also guessed that it was simply one of those things no one was supposed to talk about.
He needed space. Dolores understood that. She also understood that people tended to barge into his room even if he refused to answer, assuming that he couldn't hear them over the sand.
Dolores did not understand that. Tío Bruno's room was more designed to keep sound in than out. Even she had trouble hearing anything that went on in there unless she was focusing really hard. Sometimes, when everyone was home and la familia was louder than usual, she couldn't hear anything.
She had tried to ask her mama once and had been waved off. She had also noticed that no one ever went after him when he disappeared into the walls, so she assumed that they all knew and had unanimously decided that he went there to be left alone.
No one asked after him at dinner. It was not uncommon for Tío Bruno to miss meals. If he was thinking about his vision, trying to understand what it meant, then it made sense that he would be absent.
The way he was pacing, muttering under his breath in thoughts too disjointed for her to even begin to follow, Dolores doubted he was getting any closer to understanding any of it.
They were disappointed when Tío Bruno did not appear at breakfast. Abuela was angry, Tía Julieta and Tío Augustin worried. Mirabel was still miserable. She had finally cried herself to sleep late the night before and was now exhausted in addition to being crushed at not having received a gift.
By lunch time Abuela was furious, and even Mama was getting annoyed. It occurred to Dolores that maybe she wasn't the only one who couldn't find Tío Bruno's bolt holes, or they would have gone after him by now.
By dinner time Mirabel and Camilo both were crying for their uncle. Dolores couldn't blame them. Even a five-year-old could figure out that it was his absence that was upsetting their parents and Abuela, even if they couldn't understand why.
Three days later Dolores tried to remember if her Tío had ever stayed hidden this long, but clearly, he did not want to be found. He remained hidden in the walls, moving as little as possible, as quietly as possible. That night she heard him sneak out into the kitchen and start rummaging through the cupboards, only to scamper back into hiding seconds before Tía Julieta entered the room.
The next day they finally started looking for him. By this time Dolores had worked out that whatever Tío Bruno had seen, whatever it was that had made him try to rework his vision over and over, he did not want to share it with anyone. She was old enough to know that Abuela would not take no for an answer.
She doubted that he could hide long enough to make Abuela forget, but apparently he was going to try.
It took them a week to stop looking.
"Bruno has abandoned this family," Abuela declared, looking more tired than Dolores could remember.
She doubted that Tío Bruno would come out for that, not when he had managed to stay out of sight for so long.
She tried to ask her mamá what the longest time Bruno had hidden from the family was before, but Mamá only shook her head and tried unsuccessfully to shoo away the rain cloud that had appeared above her head.
The light in his door went out. Dolores spent the day trying to figure out what that meant.
"Mama, the door." But her mamá refused to look. "But Tío Bruno-" Thunder appeared above her mother's head, and Dolores fell silent and went to find her father.
"Papa, Tío Bruno's door went dark." Her father's expression changed abruptly.
"Never mind, mija," he told her gently, but firmly.
"But what if he's hurt? Or dead?" But she knew he wasn't dead. She could hear him.
"He's gone, mija. Your tío left us." Dolores stared at her father.
"But he-"
"Enough," her papá said, in a tone that told her he would not discuss the matter anymore.
She tried to tell Tía Julieta that Tío Bruno wasn't gone, not really, but all that happened was that her aunt pulled her into a bone-crushing hug and told her, "I miss him too."
By dinner time she had figured out that Tío Bruno wasn't coming back out and that someone would simply have to go in after him. She took a deep breath to calm herself, then another, and turned to face her Abuela.
"Tío Bruno-"
"Tío Bruno left us. He abandoned his family when we needed him most." Abuela replied, addressing not just her but the entire family. "He is gone. We will speak no more of this. Of him."
Dolores stared at her Abuela. Gone? Abandoned? He was right here in the walls, how could he have left and still be right within the walls?
He had refused to share what he had seen. He had hidden away instead of telling them. Did that count as abandoning the family? What if he had seen something bad? What if something bad was going to happen to the family?
Dolores was old enough to know that people didn't like it when Tio Bruno gave them bad news, and that it wasn't just the villagers that got upset. She still remembered her mama's reaction to the vision she had begged from her uncle.
Would they have been angry if he had told them something bad would happen? Would Abuela have blamed him? She didn't think he had any control over whether bad things happened or not, but a lot of people seemed to think he did.
Maybe he thought if he if he didn't tell anyone it wouldn't happen, but Dolores didn't think his vision's worked like that either.
She decided to try one more time.
"But Tío Bruno, he-"
"We don't talk about Bruno." Her Abuela intoned, such finality underlying the words that the girl fell silent, stunned.
On the other side of the wall she heard his breath hitch, his heart stutter in his chest.
She hated herself for staying silent, but Abuela had spoken.
Dolores's room was soundproof, for the most part. It blocked out as much noise as she wanted it to, allowing her to sleep at night, mostly unhindered by the sounds of her family as they slept, or sometimes didn't, offering her a safe refuge on the days when being able to hear everything all at once became too much, but still allowed her to hear as much as she wanted to at any other time.
Tonight she zeroed in on the space behind the kitchen wall, tuning out anyone and everyone else, listening as her tío paced and muttered and argued with himself, his words somehow too soft, too broken, and too half-formed for even her to make out.
The pacing abruptly stopped, as did the muttering. For a long moment all she could hear was ragged breathing as his heart continued to beat far faster than normal. Then she heard a thump, the unfortunate sound of knees hitting wood floor, and a muffled cry.
Muffled sobbing reached her ears, quiet, but not quiet enough, and Dolores could feel the tears trickling down her nose as she sat on her bed, her head bowed, her heart breaking because she knew he had been with them at dinner, she knew he had heard every word Abuela had uttered, and she knew, because Tío Bruno never let himself break down when he thought she could hear him, that he had somehow held himself together until he was certain that everyone was asleep.
Dolores couldn't understand how anything he could have seen could be so bad that he felt he had to hide instead of simply telling them.
She didn't understand how they could say he had abandoned the family when he was still, quite obviously, right here.
She didn't understand how they could simply erase him from the family, refusing to even speak his name, even if he had left.
She wondered, as her tío finally cried himself to sleep, hidden somewhere in the wall behind the kitchen, if maybe it was better just to leave him be.
Clearly, he did not want to be found.
Clearly, the family no longer wanted to find him.
Author's Note: I am obsessed with this movie. Like, all of it. And the characters. Like, all of them. And the music. And, especially, the rat-man. I love Bruno with all my little heart. And oh yeah, babes. There's plenty more coming.
Disclaimer: Encanto does not belong to me.