Antonio returns fairly quickly with Mirabel's mamá in tow. Mirabel quickly explains the situation, but try as she might, her mother can't make any sense of the pictures either.
"He looked sick," Antonio tells his aunt, not for the first time. The woman sighs, looking up from the paintings.
"Brunito?" she tries, and the boy stops painting. He also tenses. "I know you haven't been talking..." she says, her voice careful. "And that's okay, but it would really help us if you could tell me what these are."
The boy refuses to look at her.
"Please," she says. "If it's something-is it a vision?" Brunito shakes his head. Julieta frowns. "Is it something that happened?" He stares at the floor, still silent, and Mirabel's mom tries to scoot closer to him. "Did something happen to you?"
Brunito's head jerks up and he stares at her, eyes wide. His breath is coming in shaky, uneven gasps. "Brunito-" Mamá reaches out toward him, and the child bolts.
He's up and out of the room in less than a second, running for all he's worth. By the time Mirabel and her mother make it out into the hall he's already down the stairs and headed for the front door.
Tío Félix comes through said door just in time to catch him; pure reflex makes him scoop the kid up before he can crash into the older man's legs, and both Mirabel and her mamá both breathe a sigh of relief.
It is a relief that is short-lived, because Brunito immediately starts screaming. He doesn't stop, either, not even when Tío Félix hastily sets him down, apologizing and asking what's wrong.
Brunito slides to the floor, screaming the entire time, his body practically melting until he's sprawled face down on the floor, the ground doing absolutely nothing to muffle his screams.
Dolores makes a brief appearance, hands clamped tightly over her ears, only to disappear again almost immediately.
Mirabel and her mother make their way down to the boy, and both bend over, trying to talk to him. Mirabel is reluctant to touch him at this point, and it seems her mother is too, but it doesn't seem to matter what they say; Brunito ignores them.
Bruno arrives, coming from the same direction Dolores just vanished into, his expression resigned and his jaw set. He drops into a sitting position beside the boy, leaning forward to drag the screaming child into his lap.
Brunito fights him, swinging wildly, but Mirabel's tío doesn't so much as flinch when a tiny fist impacts with his temple, gently catching his younger self's tiny wrists and pulling their owner into a tight hug.
He's muttering in Spanish under his breath again, words meant only for this younger version of himself and no one else, and though the child does not stop struggling, he does stop screaming.
The sound is replaced with whimpering sobs, and Bruno rocks them both back and forth as the child gradually calms, still muttering in Spanish. All Mirabel can do is stand and watch the scene play out. Her mother watches as well, with no more understanding of what's happening than her daughter.
The entire family has gathered by the time the boy goes silent, but Bruno ignores them. His attention is entirely focused on the small child in his lap.
Mirabel sits down beside them. Not too close-she doesn't want to upset Brunito all over again. Her uncle looks up as she does, briefly, and the girl flinches at the raw pain in his eyes.
Whatever the pictures are, they mean nothing good for either Bruno.
Mirabel's mother eventually sits down as well, her voice hushed as she apologizes, as she quietly explains the events in the nursery leading up to this.
Bruno stands when she finishes, lurching to his feet and somehow miraculously keeping his balance with Brunito is his arms.
"Excuse me," he says, and though the words are quietly spoken, there is real anger in them, plain enough that Mirabel's mom flinches away from him.
He ignores the rest of la familia as well, stalking past Pepa as if he doesn't even see her. She turns and calls after him, but her hermano doesn't hesitate as he makes his way back upstairs, past the nursery, and straight into his own room.
Bruno does not come out for dinner, and since Brunito has pretty much stuck to the man like a tiny shadow, neither does he. The door, when Mirabel goes to check on them, is locked.
When Tía Pepa rolls her eyes and mumbles a soft, "Casita," the latch clicks, only for them to realize that the door has been barricaded shut. Mirabel's aunt swears and bangs on the door.
She receives no reply.
Dinner is quiet, save for the thunder rumbling exclusively over Tía Pepa's head. Antonio is quiet and scared, and Mirabel has reassured him at least three times already that none of this is his fault.
"But the paints were my idea," he insists, until all Mirabel can do is hug him.
Nobody else seems to know what to say. Or what to do about Bruno shutting himself up in his tower.
Nobody knows what the paintings mean either. Because by now all the adults have seen them, and have spent the last several hours pouring over them, trying to figure out them out.
Mirabel isn't entirely sure that it's the right thing to do. It feels like an invasion of her uncle's privacy, even if they all mean well. She wishes she had thought to hide the paintings.
Nobody has much of an appetite, except for Camilo, who is somehow always hungry. Most of the meal goes uneaten.
It's late, and Mirabel is in her room, working on one of her projects, or trying to. She can't sleep. She's too worried.
Worried about her uncle. Worried about that little boy.
Bruno still hasn't come out of his tower. The adults are worried, and angry. Tía Pepa has complained more than once that her brother is 'too old to be acting like this.' Mamá, even though she hasn't said anything, is worried about losing him again.
Mirabel doesn't think he's going to leave. She does think that maybe all of this has been too much for her tío, and that in spite of his best efforts, he's gotten overwhelmed and instead of asking for help, has fallen back into old habits and hidden himself away.
He did it a lot when his gift first came back, she remembers. Either because he didn't want to bother anyone, or because he was afraid of what people would think of him, or simply because he panicked and forgot that he didn't have to hide anymore.
It took time, but gradually he got better.
And this-this feels like a step backwards, maybe, but Mirabel can't even begin to imagine what this must be like for him. There's a lot of attention on him. A lot of pressure.
A tiny knock sounds at her door. Mirabel is so deep in her thoughts that she almost doesn't hear it, but then the knob turns and the door creaks open just a hair. She waits, but it doesn't seem like it's going to open any farther on its own.
"Come in?" She keeps her voice hushed, because it's late, after all. The door slowly starts moving again, an inch at a time, until there's just enough space for a raven-haired child to peek through, his dark green eyes fearful but determined.
"Hey," she sets aside her project, but doesn't get up. She doesn't want to spook him.
Brunito slips inside, crossing the room and coming to stand before her, his hands behind his back, shifting anxiously on still bare feet (they really need to get him some shoes) as he stares up at her.
"What can I do for you?" she asks, even though she knows he's probably not going to answer, because he looks like he wants something. To her surprise, he reaches out a hand towards her.
Mirabel takes it, and rising from her seat, allows herself to be led out of her room, down the hall, and straight toward Bruno's room.
The children have a rule: never go in Bruno's room. He doesn't like people in his room when he isn't there, and he usually isn't, because he still doesn't really like his room after all these years. And if he is in his room, they don't go in there either, because he only retreats to his room when he's feeling overwhelmed and needs somewhere to get away from people.
None of them can figure out why the adults don't seem to understand that last bit. If anything, they seem more inclined to bother Bruno when he's in his room.
That probably explains the barricade earlier today, Mirabel thinks.
Brunito pushes the door open and steps across the threshold as if it's nothing, his small hand tugging hers insistently, and Mirabel has no choice to follow.
She's been here once before, when they first got their gifts back, so she knows that Brunito is leading her back towards the small alcove where Bruno sleeps. She wonders if it still looks as empty as it did before, or if he's managed to add any sort of personal touches to the area.
She has just enough time to notice the ruana she made him is prominently displayed in one corner before her attention is drawn to her uncle, lying on his bed, curled up in the fetal position, eyes tightly closed as his hands clutch at his head.
"Is he having a vision?" Mirabel asks, looking down at Brunito. The boy shakes his head. "Is he hurt?"
The boy looks away, briefly. When he looks back, that determined look is back in his eyes. He takes her hand again, drawing her away from her tío and back toward the mountains of sand that seem to make up most of the base floor of his room.
Worried for her uncle, Mirabel reluctantly lets herself be pulled along.
He releases her hand and crouches. Reaching out, he begins tracing in the sand.
There are no colors this time, but she recognizes the drawing all the same. It matches his earlier paintings, though the lines in the sand are no easier to decipher than the paint was. He stops when she lets out a small gasp, looking up to make sure she understands.
"This is about the paintings." He nods. "How long has he been like this?"
Brunito looks at her. Mirabel takes a guess.
"Since he locked himself in." Another nod. Mirabel's chest hurts. "What do you want me to do?" she asks. "I'm just a kid. He won't talk to me. You should have gotten Mamá or Tía Pepa instead. Even Dolores would have been a better choice."
The boy frowns and shakes his head, taking her hand again and pulling her back towards the alcove. Mirabel doesn't want to go-she feels helpless and scared-but she can't refuse Brunito either, not when he's looking up at her like that.
He points to her skirt, then at the ruana in the corner.
"I made that," she confirms. Brunito nods as if he suspected as much, then drags her over to a bookshelf, which is still mostly bare except for a few things the rats saved from the ruins of his room behind the walls after Casita fell, and points again.
There, on one of the lower shelves, still in pieces but carefully reassembled, is the vision of Mirabel.
"That doesn't mean I can help," she points out. Then she sighs, because through all of this her uncle hasn't so much as twitched, and she can't leave him like this. "I'll try though," she promises.
Brunito nods and retreats to a corner, sitting cross-legged on the floor with his hands in his lap.
Mirabel carefully settles at the very edge of the bed. "Bruno?"
She can hear his labored breathing, the way he's struggling and failing to calm down as he continues to take in air in stumbling, stuttering gasps intermingled with sobs and short pauses where he stops breathing altogether.
It doesn't get worse when she sits down, though, so Mirabel takes that as an invitation to stay.
"I'm not going to ask if you want to talk about it, because I'm pretty sure that even if you did, it wouldn't be to me," she says, reaching out to gently pat him on the knee. It's something Antonio does a lot, and it usually seems to work.
She's not entirely sure how or why the youngest out of all of them seems to be the best at interacting with their uncle, but somehow Antonio always seems to know exactly what the man needs in terms of comfort.
Bruno flinches, but doesn't pull away, and Mirabel resettles so she can see part of his face. It's obvious he's been crying, and that he's fighting not to start again. It's equally obvious that he's losing that fight.
She scoots a little closer, putting a hand on his arm, and he tenses. Uncurling ever so slightly, he opens his eyes and forces himself to look up at her.
Again there's that raw pain, and it's clear that her tío is suffering. Mirabel wants to pull him into her arms and hug him the same way he did with Brunito earlier, dragging him into his lap and holding him until he calmed down, but she doesn't know if it will work.
She doesn't know whether it will help, or make things worse.
"Anything I can do?" she asks, brushing his hair gently back out of his face. He shakes his head, closing his eyes again, but not before Mirabel catches a glimpse of regret.
She sits with him until he finally cries himself to sleep, his breath slowly evening out as he drifts off, his body never fully relaxing, but losing enough tension to allow himself to uncurl into a slightly more natural sleeping position.
She hears movement and looks; Brunito is standing up, brushing his pants off, and looking around the room.
He apparently finds what he's looking for. Crossing to the opposite corner of the alcove, he bends over, picking up a small sliver of glowing green. He then joins Mirabel, holding it carefully out to her.
It's a piece of a vision. Mirabel goes to take it from him, but drops it when the edge slices into the tip of her finger.
It's sharp!
Brunito catches the sliver, wincing as it cuts into his hand, but doesn't make a sound. Looking up at her expectantly, he offers it to Mirabel once again.
She takes it more carefully this time, and sets it on the end table beside the bed. It's the wrong thing to do, she realizes immediately, as Brunito looks at it, then at her, and heaves a weary sigh.
He picks it up once more, carefully so as not to cut himself again, looking around the room briefly before shrugging and carefully slipping it into his back pocket.
"I can take it," she offers, but the boy shakes his head. "Are you sure?" she asks, and Brunito nods. "Okay, then," she says, because he looks like he's waiting for her to insist that he give it to her anyway, based on the way he's hunched over. "Let's go get these cuts taken care of. Unless you think we should stay with Tío?"
Brunito tilts his head almost sideways to study the sleeping man, then shakes his head. Reaching for Mirabel's uninjured hand with his own, he leads her away from his older self.
They find food in the kitchen, and Brunito is apparently starving, because he eats an entire arepa and half of a second one before slowing down. Mirabel's not sure what the difference is between now and earlier, that suddenly he's able to eat, but she has to admit that it is a bit of a relief to see.
After he's finished, he wanders around the kitchen for a bit, studying the counters and cabinet doors and walls, and Mirabel has no idea what he's doing. He does look as if there is a purpose behind his actions, however, so she lets him be.
Eventually he finds what he's looking for. Mirabel watches as he retrieves the piece of vision-glass from his back pocket and carefully slides it in the crack between the wall and the cabinets.
"Watcha doing there, Brunito?" she asks, but the boy only shrugs. Yawning, he holds his hands out to her, silently asking her to pick him up, and she can't resist. "Tired?" she asks, and the boy nods. "Well, we have a few options. I can put you to bed with Tío Bruno, or we can put you in the nursery, or I suppose you could sleep with me, just for the night, and hopefully the grown-ups will have figured out something for tomorrow."
He's all but limp against her. Mirabel smiles down at him. "Tío Bruno's room?" she asks. The boy shakes his head. "How about the nursery?" Another no. "My room? Just for the night, mind you. And only because you're so stinking cute."
She gets a sleepy smile in response, and feels like her heart just might melt.
Author's note: Tragedy, trauma, and angst, anyone?
Disclaimer: Disney's Encanto does not belong to me.