Extended Summary:
When Abuela nearly lost everything, letting go was the answer. Her death years later poses the question. Mirabel was in no way ready to assume the role left to her, or really, ready to confront impermanence at all. Bruno still runs and hides from the misery of his family as a habit of decades. But when it matters, he shows up for Mirabel. The two of them walk forward into love, fate, and the bewildering hurt of doing the wrong things for the right reasons.
Time steals sunsets and sunrises, the ones we love, the people we could be. Does it make sense to mourn while they are still here?
Mirabel learns to accept loss, and Bruno learns to accept love.
In plain terms, the Madrigal family deals with grief. Spoilers- Mirabel and Bruno have always been in love.
Please bear with me, they have a long way to go.
Part 1
What's the Point, if You're Not There?
It took three months after the death of Abuela for Bruno to realize that he had abandoned his family to their troubles once again. It had been simple, and that horrified him.
After the rise and fall of Casita years ago, when Abuela was able to finally speak about Pedro (the man she knew and not the saint), she had said that the first couple of years after his death were the hardest. But Bruno couldn't imagine anything worse than the first couple of months after hers. It had been sudden- no illness to signal a decline and start adjusting before she was gone. Painless for Abuela, thank god. Cruel for everyone else.
After the impetus of her funeral, the village idled rudderless. The air in each room was a vacuum of stunned silence, else cottoned with useless niceties. What happened at all, happened behind closed doors. Who would want to break the silence after Madrigals had lost so much?
Bruno circled the house just after a grey dawn, when only the first couple of birds had begun their morning songs. Massive philodendron leaves drooped with dew. The Madrigal family still slept in their rows of rooms on the second floor and weren't due for breakfast in hours yet. Bruno was scattering small pinches of salt around Casita's boundary- a ward to keep out misfortune, malicious energy. He quietly knocked on all of the wooden window shutters as he passed. He hoped it helped, because it felt like all he could do.
Bruno had suffered enough tense silence, even after his decade of isolation, to know that he had not grown better at navigating high stakes conversations. Bruno said the wrong things, or the right things when it was too late. A joke when sympathy was due. The opposite.
"It's not like it was unexpected, at her age-" he had told Madame Guzman, approximately the same age.
The day after the burial, Bruno accompanied Pepa to return about fifteen novels she had borrowed over the years to Abuela's now empty room. He tried for levity, god help him, remarking that at least she couldn't collect any late fees. He had to apologize over and over, and individually dry each page of the water-damaged books at Casita's stove.
At the funeral, his family had clung to each other in the pews while he fiddled with stray threads on his ruana, feeling a sham. It was just that he had known, and he had a lot longer to mourn.
So it had been easier to slip away. Bruno had decades of practice living with his head down, watching his feet travel pace by pace on the same path.
In Abuela's death, he had lost another tether to the Madrigals as a whole. His sisters each had their own families to see to, and a tangle of interpersonal relationships between them. Bruno pivoted around them, sustaining himself on the murmurings of those families, the sounds of work in the kitchens and laundry room. The salt was a wish more than anything. A spell for the family fortune, just as he had once mended the walls.
All of this to say, when Bruno turned the corner and found Mirabel tucked between a palm tree and the walls of the Casita, his first feeling was panic. Not here, he thought. Not with someone as important as Mirabel.
Bruno cursed himself inwardly. He knew this hiding place. He and his sisters had discovered it as teenagers when trying to smoke. Bruno remembered how the acrid pang of Ica Mazinga mingled with the scent of begonias, dispersing off the palm fronds above. It felt like everyone was older than them, then. Bruno took a step back
A fallen palm frond crunched beneath his feet and Mirabel's eyes snapped up to him. Well, so much for that.
Bruno was a little glad of it, really. He could imagine the guilt later if he didn't even spare a nod to the first family he imposed on in weeks.
"Hi there!" Bruno said, hating the chipper way it came off. He grabbed his arm and tried not to glance over his shoulder too obviously.
"Hi. Um, occupied?' Mirabel said, attempting to smile.
Dried tears had made tracks down the sides of her cheeks. Her skirt seemed rumpled, slept in, and she didn't seem to mind that her heel was grinding a corner of it into the dirt.
"What are you doing here so early?" Bruno was unable to keep the disbelief out of his voice. Shouldn't she be asleep? Or commiserating with the rest of Julieta's family? He belatedly realized the insensitiveness of his question. It was pretty clear she had stolen away to mourn in private, where no one was likely to overhear her.
"Sorry. Crying, right?"
Obviously! But Mirabel just hiccoughed and nodded. She patted at her face with her hands, as if putting everything back into place. Bruno hovered, half bent as he tried to decide whether it would be more awkward to crouch to her level or run away.
"It's fine." She said, voice reedy with strain. "Just trying to get away from-" Mirabel made a gesture around her, and then lowered her eyes, unable to continue. The entire edifice of Casita, the cornerstone of the village and the Madrigal family.
You and me both, kid. Bruno was intimately familiar with the instinct to hide- in large clothing, noncommittal humor, isolation.
"Wait, do you want me to also-" he realized, but Mirabel just waved her hand. He could stay. But what should he say?
"Julieta's going to be making cuchuco for breakfast," Bruno had seen the ingredients laid out in the kitchen. Mirabel didn't respond and Bruno could kick himself for the pointless small talk, even as he continued to babble down to Mirabel's crouched form. "Nutritious. Um, hydrating. Seems like you could probably use it."
Mirabel gave him a look of skepticism plainly legible through her puffy eyes. "Hydrating? Like a tear refill?"
"Well…" Yes, that was his thought.
Mirabel let him stew in discomfort for a half a second and then laughed, small huffs of air more than anything else. Bruno almost sagged in relief. Just teasing. Things couldn't be all that bad if she still had it in her.
"Should have seen your face…" she breathed.
Mirabel looked at him with clear eyes then. She had a way of observing a person that Bruno liked, like a beam of warm sunlight that could throw every secret into relief, smooth its edges. The expression was more like he remembered before the tragedy.
Then, inexplicably, her face sank and tears welled in the corners of her eyes. "Oops," Mirabel said, scrubbing them with her hands. Oh no. What had Bruno done?
"Give me a moment." Mirabel buried her face in hands again, curling inwards on herself. The muscles in her back strained as she held herself together for his benefit. Bruno hated this. He wanted to say it was fine to cry, and it was! Right? Family was supposed to comfort you when you did.
He reached a hand out to her- and then hesitated. A spike of caution coursed through him, like the warning throb of a headache when he had tried to see too much in the future.
While it was true that family was supposed to comfort you, he'd always been terrible at it. He didn't know what to say. Never really knew how you were supposed to hug someone except in casual, jovial ways.
He'd make things worse somehow. In the silence that followed, Bruno could hear the whispers of a stream that snaked around Casita and into the valley.
"Mirabel," he started, not really knowing how he was going to end the sentence.
"I'll be fine," Mirabel asserted, miserable. She bowed her head to allow more unruly than usual curls to cover her face. Her hands clenched tightly around her forearms. Bruno took a step away. And then another.
"I'm just going to…" He trailed off. "Yep," Mirabel choked.
"Right." Bruno said, stealing around the corner and walking quickly in the opposite direction. Coward, he thought.
What was the point of coming back if you're not there when your family needs you?
So Bruno went to Julieta- because when his back was to the wall, he always went to Julieta.
He found her in the kitchen, working a large bowl of masa with her palm and humming Salsipuedes to herself. He paused in the doorway a moment, soaking in the first wisps of sunlight glinting off the kitchen's yellow tiles. Salsipuedes, tierra de amor, salsipuedes, por ti soñé - one of the older generation's favorites, though the meaning of the word itself had been lost to the isolated village.
A large pot of cuchuco bubbled on the stove, the smell of charred herbs and peppers filling the air. It was about an hour before the family usually took breakfast.
Bruno had missed her, he realized. He hadn't seen much of his family lately by choice. Guilt darkened the edges of the moment. Perhaps Julieta sensed it, because she glanced over her shoulder to find him lingering in the doorway. Her eyes widened a fraction. Then she turned around in the opposite direction with an open countenance.
"Hungry?" she asked, putting aside the bowl and wiping her hands on the dish cloth tucked into her apron.
Bruno nodded and slid into one of the chairs at the chipped green table in the center of the kitchen. Not really, but it made as good a reason to emerge as any.
Julieta began to hum again and grabbed a handful of masa, rolling it between her palms and placing it on the cast iron stove. She cracked an egg next to it and plucked a sprig of cilantro from her windowsill herbarium to sprinkle over the top. She was taking pains, cooking a breakfast just for him. Bruno felt absolutely horrible for his behavior the past months.
He cleared his throat, preparing to say what he came to ask her. "So how've you been?"
It wasn't what he wanted to ask. Julieta probably knew it. She paused in her cooking to give him a patient, just a bit withering glance, before carrying on.
"Fine, given everything. And yourself?"
Julieta flipped the egg with a spatula and patted it down for a second before transferring it to a plate that Casita rolled down from the cupboards.
"Great," he responded, grabbing his arm. "I mean, fine."
As the pause lengthened, he wished he'd brought one of the rats with him. Something to do with his hands. Julieta, to her credit, didn't goad him. But she must have known he didn't show himself to exchange pleasantries.
'Ah, and is the family doing okay?" Bruno added. "Mostly," said Julieta. "It's tough."
Duh.
"Just checking," he said, folding and refolding his fingers nervously in front of him. He recalled the sight of Mirabel tucked behind Casita, clutching her own arms like she was holding herself from flying apart by force of will. "Has Mirabel in particular seemed okay to you? I mean, given everything, like you said."
Julieta continued to poke at the masa and the egg for a second, as if she hadn't heard him. Then she
heaved a deep sigh and turned from the stove.
"She seems fine," Julieta said with emphasis on "seems." She grabbed her apron strings and twisted them between her fingers, a childhood tell. "She has been so helpful keeping things running now that Abuela's gone…"
Bruno nodded. It checked out.
"Abuela would have been proud," he guessed. "Seeing all that training pay off. Huh?"
Bruno remembered the years of Abuela transitioning Mirabel into the role of organizing and moral center of the village. It hadn't always been pleasant for either of them.
"She's doing great."
Julieta retied and tucked her apron strings away, definitively.
There was a tense pause. Mirabel hadn't seemed that great to Bruno, but he wasn't supposed to see that. He took a moment to look at his sister more closely, examining the edges that unraveled around her appearance. A couple of extra hairs out of place, a few more lines around her eyes than he remembered. Abuela's loss had taken a toll on all of them, especially those who others came to for support. Julieta had Luisa, Isabella, Mirabel, and an entire village worth of ails to heal.
"Do you think-" Bruno began.
"She won't talk to me!" Julieta blurted, a clatter of spatula against the kitchen counters causing both of them to jump. Then, she walked back her frustration, smoothing over the outburst with more bustling around the kitchen.
"Skipping meals, avoiding me and Agustin … You know how these young ones are."
Julieta moved the bowl of masa she had been kneading to the table, and then changed her mind and moved it back.
"Loss is so new to them. I don't think they know how to deal with it. And they are just old enough that they don't confide in their mothers, huh?"
She was on a tear.
"We could tell them, if they'd listen. Remember when we were their age and- Miercoles!"
The last statement was directed to the masa on the stove which had started to smoke. When she turned it over, the bottom had blackened. She tossed it into a basket of compost, grumbling to herself about the waste.
"I remember," Bruno was forced to admit.
It was about when he started to fall out of favor with the village and the family, lost his last of his childhood friends. Not so young and cute anymore, still telling the future in the least tactful way possible. Julieta was right that the young people in the village had never experienced the loss of someone so integral as Abuela. Death seemed to have pervaded his own generation's entire life- the shadow of Pedro's sacrifice over the Encanto. But to this new generation, especially with Julieta's healing powers, death had been forestalled for decades.
For all of his sister's strength and emotional acumen, Bruno didn't envy her position.
Julieta deliberately formed a new handful of masa and placed it on the stove. The only sound in the room was the sizzle of the oil and the clinking of her spatula.
Like Mirabel, Bruno had fought for his place in the Encanto. He had struggled to not let his family down, justify the loss of Pedro with his own success.
Bruno's resolve grew. He couldn't take care of the entire family the way his mother had, or the way Julieta did for her daughters. But surely he could help the one? Bruno stewed in his uncertainty. It was one thing to help Mirabel by vanishing for a decade, and another altogether to remain.
Finally, Julieta handed him a sopa that she had dressed handsomely with salsa, guacamole and a fried egg. Bruno accepted the emotional entreaty on a plate.
"Could you look after her?" Julieta asked. "You're her favorite, you know."
Bruno shrugged, surprised and somewhat uneasy at the title if he was honest. It wouldn't be the first time that Julieta revealed some insight about Bruno that he didn't already know himself.
But he couldn't refuse her request. He already intended to do so.
"Make your family proud," said Mirabel, hand on the door knob of her room. The sun through the curtains reflected on the wall, shifting in the breeze like the ebb of a wave. She could hear the family awakening around her- bumps in each room, muted conversation in the halls. She was due at breakfast, then the village, then chores, then home again.
Her hand rested on the door, refusing to move. Dread twisted in her chest, indiscriminately dimming the commonplace joy of the morning. It was this moment in her daily routine that decided if she'd be working or finding a place to cry.
"Make your family proud," said Mirabel again. This time she wrenched the door open.
Abuela's old door was across from hers in the courtyard- the first thing Mirabel saw every morning. No one had decided what to do with her room, even months on.
She floated through Calentado breakfast. Not a bad showing today. Julieta, Isabela, most of Pepa's side except Camilo and Dolores. Varying excuses for each empty chair at meals. Mirabel didn't have it in her to keep track and find reasons they should come. Especially since she was guilty of it too, sometimes. She downed a cup of coffee in one sip, wincing as she drained it and got a mouth full of grounds.
Mirabel saluted a farewell to her family without turning her head. She'd get emotional at even trivial goodbyes, and she had a lot of work to do. She pulled a sheet of parchment paper out of her mochila- missing the times when she used to keep sketchbooks and embroidery projects in there instead. These days it was lists of names and tasks. She brought the paper up- Abuela's stationary still smelled like rose and sandalwood. Mirabel had the box of it in her room.
"Okay, first up- Madam Guzman and Señor Perez," Mirabel declared, rummaging within herself for crumbs of enthusiasm.
Abuela had given Mirabel more responsibilities in the past years. In retrospect, trying to prepare Mirabel for this very time when she was gone. She had devised the paper for Mirabel- a to-do list of various responsibilities, people to speak to, things to not forget. Abuela would mark it up at the end of the day and rewrite it with notes for the day after. Mirabel hadn't felt herself up to Abuela's
comprehensive task managing before. She preferred to act moment by moment. And she had no idea how Abuela did it without the paper.
But she kept it up.
Mirabel sometimes thought she saw her- Abuela. The places she should be, in the corner of her eye. Sitting in her favorite chair, stooping to light a candle in front of an icon at church, sipping coffee with a group of other abuelitas. She wondered if it would be worse if it never went away, or disappeared forever. Abuela had been kind, but never nice.
One conversation later, Mirabel left with a promise to reconvene yet again. Pointless, she thought. And then she felt incredibly guilty. Mirabel set off to the next item on her list.
Señoras Rodriguez and Garcia, the east side of the village. She rounded the last corner and the two older women were waiting for her at the top of the street. Then the next conversation- by the levy at the river. She was already so tired.
And the next- Casa Enriquez. The big spanish-style house with the cobblestone path. How could she already be so tired?
Mirabel couldn't get through the list as quickly as Abuela. People liked to muse and chat, go back and forth on each prospective solution. Mirabel spared a look at the sun. Two o'clock, three o'clock perhaps.
And then, finally, she was done.
Mirabel gratefully folded the parchment paper and put it back in her bag. There was still relief in crossing off everything Abuela would have wanted her to do, and having her day back to herself.
She clipped through the village streets- stopping only to wave at the children and animals. The first of the rains had washed the clouds and mists from around the mountains surrounding the village.
The air was so clear that it felt like she could see individual palms and flower bushes on their ridges. She began to whistle as she walked- and then awareness hit her all at once like being doused with a wave of ice water.
Abuela's verse of "the Family Madrigal."
Still wasn't sure if she should rewrite it, so she just stopped whistling. She lowered her gaze to the ground, watching step by step carry her over the cobbles at the center of the village.
The worst part of it wasn't just the loss of Abuela herself, and Mirabel felt horrible guilt whenever she remembered it.
There was a math she could do- taking Abuela's age and those of her loved ones and unearth tragedy after tragedy hinging on that single point. Birthdays where her favorite people weren't singing, dances she'd never dance again, milestones on the Easter procession with people dropping off every time. She tried not to think about it, even as it clawed into the corners of her ordinary life and superimposed itself over every happy memory.
"Mirabel?"
At the sound of her own name, she blinked- taking in her surroundings for the first time in a while. The danger of letting herself do the math. She was in the middle of the village, a street framed on both ends by stucco facades and multicolored window trim.
Señor Rendon speaking. No doubt some questions about the irrigation line his family were putting in. The man began his question and of course it was. So much of the executive work Abuela did was linking people to each other over and over again.
"Ask Señor Guzman-" Mirabel said when he had finished speaking, though she knew the answer almost immediately. She explained it again.
Now, what was she doing? Mirabel realized she had a basket- she had picked up a delivery of pan dulce to Casita. Right, the last thing on the list. Mirabel re-oriented her path towards her home and began walking again.
The pan dulce from the bakery was never as good as Julieta's, but she had so much more to do lately- just like Mirabel. The last time she had made any non-healing, just for fun sweets was before Abuela's death. Mirabel knew she was being dramatic, but she would have savored them more if she knew at the time.
"Hey! Hey, wait!"
Mirabel blinked. She was already at the edge of the lawn dividing her home from the village. One of the young ones- Cecilia. She kept thinking of them as little children even though they had to be at least twelve.
"Yes?" said Mirabel, trying to give her full attention.
"I-" Cecilia began, and then cut herself off. "Juancho, Alejandra, and I wanted to know if we could still climb the tree in the back of Casita?"
"Yes, why not?" Of course they could climb the tree. Cecilia flushed.
"It's just nobody's climbed it in a bit, and I thought there might be a reason. Never mind!" The girl booked it towards the village, orange skirts flaring out behind her.
Oh well. Cecilia did have a point that the house was awfully… still.
There used to always be projects undertaken by Abuela or requested by the people of the village. But the Casa Madrigal was given a respectful berth. No signs of life save flowers left at the doorstep by the children of the village. Would it ever be like before?
Mirabel tightened her grip on the basket she was holding, until it almost seemed like it would break. Enough of that.
Mirabel's family was falling apart again, but she couldn't bring herself to do anything about it. Except, perhaps, by keeping her own worries from bleeding out to hurt them. The shadow of Abuela's mistakes. She glanced behind her to the window of Abuela's room- no ghost this time.
Abuela would be so disappointed if she were here. After all, she had suffered the loss of Pedro and then built the whole village from the ground, raising three magical children by herself.
Days passed slowly, and yet sometimes a week had gone by and she couldn't remember it clearly. And for some reason, Bruno was always around.
"Sorry, pass me a clip?"
Mirabel blinked. They must be… hanging laundry to dry. Bruno's voice was muffled as he
clamped his chin to his chest, trying to keep a sheet from touching the grass and staining.
Mirabel suppressed a smile at the position he had contorted himself into and pushed the clips down along the line. Just a few inches to his hand. Bruno muttered to himself as he re-arranged the offending sheet, eyes crossed as he awkwardly aligned the corners.
Bruno wasn't particularly subtle about checking in on her, though he was never so obvious as the first time. Instead he appeared at her elbow like an afternoon shadow and would stammer out a hastily reasoned excuse for being there if she so much as raised an eyebrow. Mirabel tried not to. If she wasn't so miserable it would have been sweet.
Before this, Mirabel would have drunk in the attention. Bruno was still something of an uncommon figure to the family. Before Abuela died, he had reliably showed up to meals and important occasions, gladly explained the latest telenovelas to those who would listen. But he also spent plenty of time alone in his room, or wherever it was he got to.
Monopolizing him now was a treat. She could never say it aloud, but she privately considered Bruno her person. She had brought him back to the family, back to life in the Encanto. She accepted responsibility for anything that happened to him, and absorbed the reflected glow of his happiness. She tried to keep her own worries from spilling over to him.
Mirabel tugged the edge of the ruana she was pinning the line to check it was fastened, and then ducked down to help Bruno with the sheet.
"Two person job," Mirabel told him, hoping it didn't come out too brusque. The spring of nicety and humor that used to bubble up from her had gone dry.
"I was optimistic until about half way through…" He finally managed to tack his corner in place and the sheet bowed out in the wind between the two.
Mirabel sensed that he was being present in the way he could. Ready with a wry observation, an awkward distraction, an inexpert hand to lend to her chores. So was everyone in the family, probably- even Mirabel with her list of Abuela's busy work.
But all the light talk, even from Bruno, seemed like a farce. The absolute last thing they should be doing on a ship that was rapidly sinking. They were complacent! They had so little time to say everything they needed to.
Their birthdays were coming up- Julieta, Pepa and Bruno. The math. If Bruno only let her hug him under duress on each birthday, she could write down a plausible number for how many times she would hug him for the rest of her life. It wouldn't be enough, she thought, and she felt selfish for doing so.
She must have sighed aloud. Bruno turned to face her- the two were now seated on the bridge at the edge of the village, looking out over the river now that the laundry was hung. The wind stole into his curls as he evaluated her expression. She loved the guilelessness of the action on him, the small wrinkle between his eyebrows and tilt of his head. Still sad, Bruno. Just like the last time you checked.
She made poor company.
Bruno produced a rat from his ruana and began narrating a lively anecdote from a telenovela, clearly to cheer her. She didn't want to be cheered. But everyone had their ways of coping, and Bruno was going to bring about a conversational atmosphere if it killed them both. Mirabel
wondered what he'd do if she broke down into the sobbing clinging mess that was always latent within her. She wondered how long she could pretend.
Bruno held out the rat in front of him as a stand-in for the prima donna of the story - Helena, she believed, white with black spots and small for an adult rat. Mirabel held out her hand, and Bruno flinched more than the rat she was attempting to pet. She tactically switched to a single index finger. Helena sniffed it to make sure Mirabel wasn't hiding any treats. None found, the rat turned around to climb up Bruno's sleeve.
Mirabel didn't blame him for the invisible circle he drew around himself, a barrier he had demarcated at some point which solidified into a personal taboo. Do not touch. But Mirabel loved the way Bruno was with his rats too- entirely at ease as they clawed up his ruana, eyes glowing when he put his hand out and they clambered on to be held. The open affection gentled Bruno's face, vanishing lines of care and smoothing out the defensive way he held his face. Maybe Mirabel was a bit jealous.
Bruno was able to dote on his rats, and accept that they loved him back without any judgment. With humans, it had to be more complicated. He was wary of conditions- from Abuela, the rest of his family. Perhaps, the greater the sentiment, the more likely Bruno would be unequal to it. So Mirabel hid what she felt.
She stood abruptly, sending Helena skittering into Bruno's ruana. "Time to go?" Bruno leapt to his feet, confused.
"Probably going to rain again," she shrugged.
Mirabel was going to miss him most of all, and he didn't even know.