Work Text:
Bruno didn't know what started the argument.
It felt like he never knew anymore.
All he knew is one moment he was having breakfast with the familia after little Camilo and Mirabel had begged him to, and the next he and his mother were in the courtyard screaming at each other. None of the kids anywhere to be seen.
And well, as everyone liked to say after the kids were born—when Abuela got mad, the house got mad.
Quite frankly, the seer didn't feel like dealing with any of it right now. Not his mother, not Pepa, not Casita scolding him in a way only a sentient house could, not nothing.“I am out of here!”
“Bruno Pedro Hernando Jorge Madrigal Botero, if you leave this house you are DEAD to me!” His mother looked horrified the moment the word’s left her mouth but it was too late to take them back.
Casita went silent—no longer ruffling her floorboards or keeping Bruno in place.
Félix gasped.
Pepa started thundering.
Agustín stared.
Julieta cried out, “MAMÁ!”
And Bruno?
Well, forty years of crawling on his knees and doing his damnedest to please the town who kept asking and asking for more, only to cry and say he cursed them when one vision out of five turned out to be bad all boiled up inside him as the memories came flooding back.
Roberto manipulating Bruno until he was lying about what he saw in his visions and dressing in clothes that he found uncomfortable to please the townspeople. All while his sisters and mother pestered him about it.
Seventeen year old Pepa implying that his vision had caused the hurricane to happen.
Roberto showing his true colors and hurting his family and killing Francisco Padilla—one of Bruno's few other friends, who'd actually been trying to look out for Bruno. The man who's cloak Bruno still wore.
People blaming Bruno for what Roberto did as if the older boy wasn't three or more years older than him.
His childhood doctor, Claudia Mijares, quitting because he told her about her husband leaving her when she asked what he saw in her future that day when he was seventeen.
Hernán Otero saying Bruno cursed him because he assumed Bruno's vision was about Julieta not liking him back.
Bruno trying to warn the kind Señor Pinnelas, only for the man to take his awkwardness as amusement and accuse him of cursing him to get hurt. As if he'd do such a thing.
His mother telling him that if he didn't learn when not to say anything and that if he only saw bad things he would be the loneliest boy in the Encanto.
Him scaring his sisters and mother because he was losing time.
People asking whether they'd have a nice Sunday, whether they'd win a contest, or pass a test and so many other dumb things.
Osvaldo talking about his stupid gut and the dead fish lady (who he didn't even give a prophecy to despite her begging) and her husband still complaining about their stupid dead fish even twenty three years later.
Dolores crying her eyes out because of her prophecy and Pepa fuming.
His mother's well meaning worry always turning into unintentional scolding.
All of it and more from the years blended together.
“I WISH I WAS DEAD!” Bruno screamed, not caring who heard—at least not then—as he stormed out of the house and slammed the door behind him. Refusing to meet his family’s eye as he did.
(And the worst part was, Bruno meant it).
A line had been crossed. One that couldn't be uncrossed.
They didn’t talk about it when Bruno came back that night.
They probably should have but they didn't.
A week later, Mirabel's ceremony failed and Bruno was gone along with their chance to talk about it.
None of them adults said it, but they feared the worst—the argument still stuck in their minds. They didn't talk about it. And eventually, they stopped talking about Bruno.
(All while Bruno rotted away in the walls, forced to watch as his family fell apart around him—forced to watch as Mirabel became him, in a way. All while he was unable to do anything more than leave an unsigned note.
Bruno became a ghost in the walls of his own home.
Wasn't it funny that he wasn't even dead?
Wasn't it funny that Bruno had become a ghost in the walls of his own home long before he even disappeared?
He was the only one who knew about the passages, after all.
Maybe he'd been dead this entire time and just hadn’t realized it).