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What the Sun Melts Through

Summary:

"You have a choice to make. It won’t be fair, and it won’t be easy, but the choice is yours.”

A joyful day takes a tragic turn, leaving Camilo fighting for his life while the rest of the family tries to cope in the aftermath. Old wounds reopen as long-buried secrets are brought to light, and while the house remains intact, Mirabel is left with the feeling that they are facing the collapse of something far more important.

Notes:

(See the end of the work for notes.)

Chapter 1: Cold

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

“Are we sure mami is not sad?”

With the snow almost the height of Antonio himself, the youngest Madrigal has been forced to the back of the line, walking in the furrow his family members have trudged before him. Camilo turns to face him, arms spread towards the endless whiteness surrounding them.

“Yep!” he says with a contagious smile to banish his hermano’s frown. “This snow isn’t hers. It’s all ours!”

To prove his point, he gives Antonio a light shove – and it’s enough to send the kid falling face-first into the snow. The landing, however, is soft, and Antonio remains still until Mirabel picks him up and puts him back on his feet.

“Leave some of the snow for the rest of us,” she calls out to Camilo and is rewarded with a snowball straight to the face a second afterward.

“Here.” Camilo flashes a mischievous grin. “Saved some for you.”

Sharing the nursery for the first part of their lives has practiced both Camilo and Mirabel in the art of roughhousing. Now, without the supervision from either of their parents, it doesn’t take long before the air is filled with snowballs and laughter and feral screams.

Soon, their siblings and cousins have joined them. The fun is the reason why they are out here in the first place.

Officially, the reason why they are out here, beyond the walls of the Encanto, is because they are a responsible and helpful family who knows to live up to their responsibilities. Explained in simpler terms: with the mountain cracked open, new possibilities have opened as well. It’s not the first time Luisa, Dolores and Isabela have stepped outside the Encanto. Alongside some of the other adults in the town, explorations have been taking place, resulting in new paths alongside the river, leading out and into the Encanto.

A few travelers had already appeared, and when the winter skies had finally calmed down and left the surrounding mountain sites in a heavy layer of snow, Alma had worried for any poor souls that still dared to try and find their way towards the Encanto. Luisa and Isabela had offered to take the trip and help mark a proper trail, should anyone need it before the snow had melted. Luisa would clear out the snow-blocked passages, and Isabela would mark their path with newly sprouted tall plants. The outside, though slowly becoming less of a perceived threat, is still unfamiliar, and so Dolores had tagged along to keep an ear out for any dangers.

The other adults had stayed behind. Julieta is far too busy tending to the town – it appears that Camilo had managed to spread his cold to most of the inhabitants before he’d finally collapsed inside Casita where he’d been holed up for a week. That, and the girls had expressed a wish for this trip to be their own shared adventure.

And so the younger Madrigals had begged to come along as well. It’s not just the outside that lures them. It’s the snow.

They know snow. Of course, they do. But with Pepa in control of the weather, snow isn’t something you celebrate. It’s definitely not something you play in.

Things have changed since Casita had been rebuilt, and Pepa is now so happy, most of the snow inside Encanto has already melted away.

Begging to have their first actual snow day (and it’d taken a lot of begging. Especially from a very restless Camilo who’d been kept inside for too long), and with the older grandchildren offering reassurances, the adults had eventually caved in after outfitting the grandchildren in their warmest outfits.

Though Camilo, Mirabel and Antonio have promised to be of help, they all know they are officially there to have a fun day – which is why Bruno has been forced along as the designated adult.

It’s how their parents had finally allowed them to go. You see, it isn’t just a day to create fun memories in the snow – it’s a day to create fun memories with their newfound tío! And that’s important stuff!

Luisa’s arms raise a snowball the size of a boulder above her head. Not sure which one of them is the target, Mirabel and Camilo both duck (or in the case of Camilo: shrinks into a smaller size), and the ball soars over their head and knocks directly into Bruno who’s finally caught up with the group.

There’s a whoosh and Bruno is sent flying back the way he came. Once he’s checked that all his ribs are still in the right place, his hand waves to calm a stunned (and very guilty-looking) Luisa.

“Fun,” their tío croaks as he sits up and brushes off snow from the new thick ruana Mirabel has made for him.

“Are you alive?” Luisa asks and pulls him up the rest of the way, and Bruno manages to regain his balance before he can fall straight into another pile of snow.

Rubbing his now red face, Bruno’s brows furrow in wonder. “I can feel my nose tip. Are you supposed to be able to feel your nose tip?”

The group, now all focused on their own noses, is about to give their answers when Dolores’ head snaps towards Camilo. “I heard that.”

Camilo has collapsed on his knees and smashes his face against the undisturbed snow. With his face hidden, he gives his sister a thumbs-up.

The rest are too busy to notice. Mirabel especially has her hands full – more specifically; filled with snow as she prepares a snowball double-throw at her oldest sister. Isabela, however, is faster, and a palm tree leans to the side to drop all of its snow onto an unprepared Mirabel.

“Unfair!” she cries and gets her mouth stuffed by the snowball that hits her square in the face.

“That one’s fair!” Camilo cheers with his arms in the air. “A totally normal not-special snowball right to the face!” With a gleeful shriek, Camilo shifts into Señora Mora as he dodges her revenge snowball with an ease earned from many hours of playing fútbol with Casita.

“Maybe we should play in the snow after the job’s done?” Luisa suggests as she moves between them, effectively ending their fight. “I don’t want to feel cold before we’re even halfway.”

“Good point!” Bruno says, barely keeping his teeth from clattering. In his hurry, he grabs Antonio and places him on top of Parce who’s been trying to find a thrown snowball in the midst of the snow it’d landed in. “Let’s move! Very quickly.”

The group begins to move again, albeit slowly, and Camilo ends up walking next to his shivering uncle. “You could have just stayed home.”

“I really couldn’t,” Bruno sighs. “Your mamá made that very clear.”

“He loves spending time with us,” Mirabel says on their tío’s behalf. She’s become the family’s unofficial Bruno-translator as she knows him the best, and Bruno, born with a foot in his mouth and grappling with the aftermath of a decade of solitude, is still learning how to properly communicate with his family members.

“I do!” Bruno nods frantically. “It’s just … la nieve.” He glares in the direction of the snow, but unlike Pepa, he doesn’t have the intensity to make it melt before him. “I can’t see the appeal of it.”

“We’ve never played in snow before,” Antonio says from Parce’s back.

Immediately, Bruno’s stare softens. “I –“ A snowball barely misses his face, brushing his ear.

Mirabel spins around to hiss at her cousin. “Camilo.”

“What? We’re teaching him how to have fun. Throw one back at me!”

A bewildered Bruno stares at his sobrino. “Wha- No.”

C’mon.”

“I don’t want my hands cold,” Bruno says, hiding his gloved hands beneath his ruana. “And we just decided to save the playing for the trip back. Vámonos.”

There’s a distance between them and their older siblings now, and with Bruno waving his hands at them, they are forced to pick up the pace.

“Antonio, do you think you could ask the birds to carry snowballs?” Camilo wonders out loud, gesturing towards the crowd of animals that always follow his brother around. Even here in the cold, a pair of toucans follow them, landing on every palm Isabela uses to mark their trail. “What? It’s for the army. The other side has Luisa.”

“The other side can hear you,” Isabela yells from the lead.

“And that’s why we need the army!”

“Parce doesn’t like the snow,” Antonio says thoughtfully and leans forward to scratch the big cat behind his ears. “He says it makes it easier to be tracked.”

The jaguar lets out a low rumbling sound as it trudges through the snow, keeping Antonio above the white edge.

Camilo walks right behind the cat, stepping in its pawprints and earning a tail-whack against his ruana. “Doesn’t it also make it easier to track?”

Antonio just shrugs. “Parce doesn’t need the extra help.”

“Good to know –“

Camilo gags as his mouth and nostrils are suddenly filled with snow.

“A normal not-special snowball,” Mirabel says sweetly, leaning toward him in a mockery of a bow. “Just for you. Payback.”

“I like snow,” Camilo says despite his look of disgust as he wipes his face clean. “But at least balls bounce.”

“I’ll play ball with you when we come home.”

A big smile warms Camilo’s face at his brother’s offer. “Gracias, Antonio.”

“I’ll play too.” Without Antonio’s charm and with the playful look in her eyes, Mirabel’s offer just sounds like a threat. “Then we can team up and play against Camilo.”

“Can Bruno join Camilo’s team?” Antonio looks over his shoulder to ask, though it’s unclear whether the question is directed at Bruno or Camilo. “Then it’s even.”

Camilo’s eyes dart toward Bruno who lets out a doubtful noise. “Actually, this trip was supposed to tire you all out,” he says and shrugs. “We’d figured you’d drop dead the moment Casita welcomed you back.”

“So you underestimated us?” Camilo concludes and it doesn’t surprise him. Sure, he doesn’t mind Bruno tagging along, but to him, Bruno is still a stranger trying to get to know them. He’d be surprised if he wasn’t underestimated considering how awesome he is.

“The day’s still young,” Bruno says and shakes some snow off his leg.

Mirabel comes to a halt to wait for him. “Well, we should –“

“I heard that.” Dolores doesn’t even turn towards them this time, though you can’t mistake exasperation in her voice. The thing is, they all know Dolores hears everything. It’s the way of life, pretty much like how gravity keeps their feet against the ground.

A reminder from Dolores in that tone serves as a special form of scolding usually reserved for Camilo.

“Heard what?” Mirabel spins around, her hems brushing up snow, to face her cousin who’s turned his back on all of them.

“Nothing,” Camilo croaks, but then they all hear it – and see it. His form quakes as he coughs, and then they are all staring at a doubled-over Señor Flores whose wig falls off after one more cough.

It’s an amusing sight – and familiar rather than worrisome.

Isabela is the first one to sigh. “Camilo.”

Her stare is more pointed than Luisa’s whose expression is crumbled into disappointment. “You told mamá you were all fine.”

Camilo had spent the last week fighting off a cold, and they’d all grown aware (though not quite used to) of Camilo’s weird magical side effects to such illness. He’d been treated with cups of tea, Casita throwing blankets at him, Julieta cooking soup, and several kisses from Pepa. While Camilo never became bedridden, the house almost wished that had been the case – the unwilling shifting had resulted in broken plates, dented doorframes and bruised foreheads, random baby voices, and a miserable Camilo – and Camilo is loud when miserable.

It'd been a relief for all of them when Camilo’s breathing got lighter and the coughing had stopped, and a reluctant Pepa had eventually agreed to let him tag along.

“Basically not a lie,” Camilo croaks. “I’m not sick. I just… cough once an hour! I’m not going to miss this for that!”

The group watches unimpressed as he coughs again – shifting into a miserable-looking and red-nosed Agustín before falling back into his own shape.

“That’s twice,” Dolores says. “And it’s not been an hour.”

“It’s been five minutes,” Mirabel corrects her, and Antonio, who is clinging to her skirt, shakes his head.

“Two,” he says helpfully.

Camilo is doing his very best to glare down his cousins and siblings, but his attempt is interrupted by Mirabel who slaps a hand against his forehead with enough force for them to all hear the smack.

Ay!”

“No fever,” Mirabel declares but keeps her palm in place. “Actually, you feel cold.”

“Maybe that’s from the snowball you just threw in my face.”

Mirabel’s lips twitch in a suppressed smile. “Maybe.”

“Are we taking him back?” Isabela asks, eyes landing on Bruno who flinches, obviously unprepared to make any kind of relevant decision.

“It’s a long way to go …” Camilo tries with an innocent smile.

Mirabel, taking this into account, turns towards her sister. “Luisa, how far could you throw him?”

Luisa eyes Camilo’s slim form first, then her eyes drift toward the mountain in the background. She lets out a thoughtful hum in consideration as they all await her answer with curious excitement.

She never gets to reveal whether or not she thinks she could manage such a shortcut as Bruno leaps between the group, arms spread to shield Camilo from any throwing-attempts. “No! No,” he says frantically. “The designated adult says no. No throwing.”

“I thought that was Isabela,” Camilo points out dryly, and his prima tilts her head to the side.

“Aaaaaand,” Mirabel cuts in helpfully, “Isabela says throwing is fiiine!”

Isabela’s eyes twitch but she remains silent, and instead it’s Luisa who adds, “It’d be a soft landing.”

No,” Bruno tries, doing his very best impression of a stern adult. Camilo has seen better actors – and counts himself among those way better actors. His impression of Alma scolding her grandkids is actually very good, should anyone ask.

“So I get to stay?”

With a sigh and his fingers pressed against his forehead, Bruno looks down at this smiling sobrino. “You already have a cold … And if your mamá asks, you could say the cough came back on the way home.”

“We could say that,” Camilo agrees, grin growing wider with every word.

But,” Bruno holds up a finger, “it gets worse, you tell.”

“Of course.” When his tío continues to look doubtful, Camilo tries again, this time in the shape of an innocent-looking Antonio. “Of course, tío.”

A shove from Mirabel sends him headfirst into the snow. “Don’t leech on Antonio’s cuteness.”

“Don’t make his cold worse,” Dolores warns her in turn.

In the snow, Camilo goes poof as he grows back into his own body. He lies still for a moment before waving his arms up and down in his first attempt at a snow angel.

Antonio laughs and jumps from Parce’s back to join his brother in the snow, matching his movements so they leave two disfigured holes in the snow behind. Mirabel picks him up while Dolores walks over to offer Camilo a hand.

“I’ll tell mami when we come home,” she warns him while pulling him upright. However, she does note the smile on his face and how it doesn’t look flushed like the week before.

“Eh. I’ll achieve what I want either way.”

Dolores sighs but doesn’t press her point further. Instead, she joins Isabela and Luisa who have continued to march onward.

Luisa, who is having a blast forcing their way through the tall layer of snow, smiles at the sight of snowflakes falling through the air. “Snow is so … soft.”

“It could use some color, though,” Isabela says while sprouting a bush with bright red berries on it. Less than a minute later, they’ve been eaten by Antonio’s toucan friends.

Once again in the back of the line, the younger Madrigal kids ignore the temptation of the snow to bother their tío instead. Naturally, Camilo is the one who initiates things.

“Hey, Bruno.” His voice alone is enough to startle his uncle who jolts before meeting his stare. “Is snow better than sand?”

The surprised expression quickly falters into one of pure thoughtfulness. “Eh,” he says, weighing his options by tilting his hand to each side. “It’s colder. It makes your clothes wet. It doesn’t fly well through the air – except for the snowballs.”

The kids nod in understanding, hands itching to start another snowball fight.

“I’d say sand is better,” Bruno finally concludes with a satisfied nod. “Much better.”

With a long trail still ahead of them, Camilo isn’t willing to let the conversation rest just yet. Plus, there’d been a rare eagerness in Bruno’s eyes when discussing sand and its properties. Camilo supposes his uncle is boring enough to have sand as a relevant hobby.

“How about salt? Better than sand?”

“Both hurt to get in your eyes,” Bruno replies right away. “Salt tastes better. It’s better for luck. But sand is – is pretty great. Makes me think of home. I’ll say sand.”

“But sand itches.”

“But sand can be warm.”

Camilo doesn’t have many memories of his tío before he disappeared (except for the rats that’d made a greater impression than his uncle, apparently), but he does recall hanging out in Bruno’s room. Warm sand between tiny fingers that had shaped castles and houses, and his mamá’s sigh as she’d shaken the sand out of his ruana afterward.

Absentmindedly, he nods. He’d liked sand back then, at least.

In front of them, Antonio has come to a halt. “Mira, look!” Parce is making himself useful by rolling a big ball of snow with its forehead, and by the time it’s the size of Antonio himself, the youngest Madrigal begins to shape it.

“Aw.” Mirabel walks over to admire the work. “What a sweet snow capybara!”

“That’s a jaguar,” Antonio says, and next to him, Parce growls. It’s hard to tell whether or not it’s good that it’s the cat, and not Antonio, that’s offended by her lack of creative imagination.

“I’ll help finish it, then!” Mirabel says with a strained smile that quickly turns genuine as she turns away from the jaguar and kneels by Antonio instead. Together, they add and remove handfuls of snow to slowly shape the pile into something recognizable.

“We’ll catch up with you, Dolores,” Camilo says. His sister and his other cousins have disappeared from sight, having rounded the big boulder up ahead. “This might drag out a while.”

It does. Making a tail out of snow is an impossible task, and Camilo bites back curses when it keeps crumbling between his fingers. Bruno remains completely helpless as he watches them work – obviously torn between wanting them to move on and enjoying the sight of them having fun.

By the time Camilo can almost recognize the thing to be a cat, three coatis have joined the scene. One has climbed onto Antonio’s shoulders while the others are carefully sniffing at the snow jaguar.

“At least it has some admires,” Camilo says dryly, and the animals move away when he stands up to brush snow off his knees.

“They say their nest is filled with snow.” Antonio frowns as he shares this gossip with them. “It’s made it wet.”

“That’s what I’m saying!” Bruno stumbles his way towards them, almost stepping on Parce’s tail in the process. “Snow! Blargh!”

“We should go help.” The coati nuzzles its head against Antonio’s before jumping down, moving away from the trail to join its friends. Antonio turns to stare at them. “They don’t like to get their paws cold.”

There’s no way to say no to Antonio. Mainly because his eyes are a bit too cute to disappoint, but also because this is serious business. It’s Gift-related. They’ve all been taught to be useful throughout their entire lives; rejecting Antonio the chance to make a difference is just setting a bad example.

Antonio takes the lead, walking on his own legs as Parce has decided to remain behind with his new friend. The jaguar is lying on its back, desperate to get the snowy version of itself to play with him. It would have been a sad sight had it not been so amusing.

The coatis scramble away from the path, going in a western direction. There is no true fear of getting lost – even without the big palms Isabela has created to mark the path to Encanto, they can always find the rest of their family by following the furrows in the snow.

The layer of snow has begun to dwindle ever so slightly, allowing Antonio to pick up the pace as he follows his new friends. The remaining three Madrigals do their best to keep up, though they are slowly starting to feel the exhaustion that comes from spending the day in a snowy landscape. Maybe Luisa had a point about preserving the strength to also walk the way back home.

Camilo suddenly freezes, then spins around with enough speed to make his ruana fly dramatically. There’s no way of hiding his cough, however, as he is transformed into a twitching José.

Heard it,” Bruno and Mirabel say in unison.

Camilo is quick to shift back into himself as Mirabel marches over, hands lifting her skirt. There’s enough force in her steps to make Camilo back away, but his cousin is faster, desperate to get into his personal space.

“Stop trying to slap me!” Camilo cries as Mirabel’s hands reach for his face. To keep the fight fair, he tries to hit her back, and suddenly Bruno is staring at a scene that might as well be two battling toddlers.

“I’m trying to check your temperature!”

“I’m so glad your mamá’s the town’s the healer! Ow!” Mirabel, having wrestled him into a headlock after stepping on his foot, slaps a hand against his forehead. “You’re wearing a glove. We can all see you wearing a glove! Bruno, help me.”

Bruno does, in fact, not help him. “Your mamá is going to be worse,” he says in a dark tone. “And she’s going to blame me.”

“No, she’s not.” Mirabel lets go of a struggling Camilo to give their tío a calming smile. “Not when you insisted that we went straight back to the Encanto the moment Camilo let out the first cough, and we all listened to you, and that’s exactly what we did.” She nods gravely, remaking the truth into this, before sending Camilo a final glare. “Don’t you dare get a fever from this.”

“It’s not my plan.”

“Best try to avoid it,” Bruno advises him as well, brows furrowed. “I don’t want to see snow mixed with a hurricane.”

Keeping track of Antonio from the corner of their eyes, the group begins to move again. Camilo, now nursing himself a sore foot and an aching torso, presses a fist against his sternum when no one is watching. It doesn’t really hurt, not like when he’s been actually coughing his lungs out earlier this week, but there’s a hollow ache that’s remained and it keeps nagging him.

If he doesn’t think about it, it’ll probably go away. Nudging his tío with his elbow, he restarts the previous conversation. “Hey, if you used snow for your vision, do you think you’d end up with like, a slab of ice?”

Thoughtfulness creeps back into Bruno’s expression, and Camilo makes a mental note that discussing sand (or the lack of sand) is a great way of distracting his uncle. “That’d be impractical. And cold. Did I mention cold?”

But –“ Camilo clicks his tongue, “That way, you could always get rid of the evidence. Mira found your broken vision after a decade. But if it’d been made out of ice, it’d had melted. Gone. Forever.”

“And I don’t think that would have been a good thing.”

Camilo briefly considers a world where they’d kept ignoring all the problems and all the cracks, all the secrets and the hurt, and winces. “True.”

“But it would have saved me a lot of –“

Antonio!”

Both of their heads shoot upwards at Mirabel’s cry, terror rushing through their bodies and filling them with a sensation colder than the snow.

They run and realize with terror that the dwindling snow has disappeared and turned into ice instead. Before them is the usually calm river, frozen solid, and in the middle of it is a wide-eyed Antonio.

Mirabel is standing at the edge, hands outstretched and trembling. “Don’t – don’t move!”

Coming up next to her, Camilo can hear what she’s noticed – the faint sound of cracking. Dolores must hear it too, and he turns his head, almost expecting his sister to come running, but there is nothing but a snow-covered landscape. How far ahead is the rest of the group?

“Oh no,” Bruno breathes behind them, eyes wide with fear and looking just as helpless as Mirabel.

Camilo inhales, instinctively knowing what to do next.

“I’ll go get him,” he promises and shifts into the smallest walking kid he can think of – little Alejandra years ago. “Coming, Antonio!”

His brother is frozen on the spot, not looking at any of them. Instead, he is looking down at the cracks spreading at his feet. The coatis he’s been following have gathered at the other side of the river, watching the scene unfold quietly.

“Don’t move!” Mirabel calls out, and she isn’t sure if she can actually hear the ice crack, small pops breaking the silence, or if the fear is messing with her senses. “Camilo, be careful.”

She receives a grim nod from Camilo who takes his first small step on the ice. There’s fear somewhere buried deep inside his chest, along with the ache that’s been growing ever so steadily.

But he is also painfully aware of his role in this; that is his hermano out there, in danger, and this is one of the rare times where his Gift can actually make a difference.

They hadn’t intended for him to hear, but he knows the adults were whispering the night of his ceremony. He knows his abuela had asked questions his mamá could not answer; how could they make use of his Gift? Where would he make a difference?

It’d been a slow journey of discoveries to find his usefulness. From reaching the tall shelves to babysitting children to making people laugh. But he’d never been like Isabela who could have the whole town gasp in awe, or Luisa who’d saved people’s lives by moving boulders and breaking down doors.

Then again, he’d never been like Mirabel either, so who is he to complain?

There’d been the few instances where Camilo could feel the difference he’d made, and where Pepa would shower him in kisses and proclaim her pride; the time he’d turned small enough to fetch Amaia from the hole she’d fallen into, or when he’d tricked Señor Meza into telling where he’d hidden Señorita Cano’s precious old books back when a love drama had taken place in town.

The thing is, you don’t ever truly need Camilo for those things. There’s always someone else who, in theory, could have done the same. Camilo just … changes himself into whatever they need from him to make a difference.

And right now, his brother needs rescuing.

Camilo takes step after step with his borrowed small legs, arms outstretched to keep his balance. It’s difficult to choose between looking at the ice, fearing the sight of cracks, or keeping eye contact with Antonio to keep him calm.

He is so close now that he can see how his brother’s lip trembles. “Milo.”

Camilo can feel it building in his chest. His ribs feel too tight, his heart beating so fast he can hear it echo in his ears (is this how Dolores feels?) when he steps closer to the cracks beneath Antonio’s small body. For a horrible second, they widen –

- and then they hold steady when Camilo takes his final step.

A shaking arm is outstretched until his fingers brush against Antonio’s. “Got you.” They curl around his wrist in a tight grip, and Camilo allows himself a brief moment to breathe.

There’s a trembling beneath his feet.

“Antonio! It’s going to be okay!” Mirabel cries from the river bank.

Camilo cannot turn to look at her or Bruno, and right now, he cannot bear to look at Antonio either.

So he closes his eyes.

He can feel it. Maybe that’s the worst part. The hollow ache within his chest that’s begun to claw at his insides – he’s grown familiar with it this week. He knows what it means.

The moment is over, and Camilo’s eyes snap open. “Mirabel,” he croaks, and he wants to say more, but he finds himself biting his lip to hold it back. Changing his arm into the one belonging to Luisa, Camilo swings Antonio towards their cousin with the strength he has left.

It’s enough. Antonio skates across the ice faster than they expect, and when he reaches Mirabel, it’s by slamming into her legs, knocking them both over. In another setting, it’d be funny.

Maybe they can laugh at it one day. Camilo hopes that.

There’s a fire in his chest, and it makes his eyes sting as he looks at Antonio in Mirabel’s tight and relieved embrace.

Faintly, he can hear his sister’s voice, carried by the wind. It’s not strong enough for him to make out any words, it’s just enough for him to notice, and there’s another pain striking through his chest. Dolores.

He cannot hold it back, and it tears through him mercilessly. In a borrowed body, it has the opposite effect, and this time, when Camilo coughs, he turns back into himself.

He hears the ice break. He’s gone before Mirabel’s scream reaches his ears.

Camilo is cold. He is cold, he is cold, it’s so cold, he’s surprised he isn’t completely numb. Maybe that would be better. This is painful, like needles digging into every part of his skin, his own skin for once, and it’s only pure instinct that keeps his mouth from opening into a scream.

The next sensation is panic. In his fall, his ruana has embraced him, clinging to his face and arms, the heavy fabric pulling him down. In this darkness, Camilo flails in his weightlessness. He kicks out with his legs, arms trying to claw their way towards the surface, but he isn’t even sure which way to go. For a brief moment, he has enough control of his Gift to shift – he doesn’t even know who, he cannot even feel it, he isn’t even sure if his limbs are still attached – and his ruana disappears, allowing him to stare into a blueish darkness that still renders him lost.

Then the moment is broken, and Camilo is back in his own freezing body. It hurts, it hurts. He wants to swim to the surface, and his limbs twitch in a fruitless attempt to find his way back to his family – to the air his lungs desperately need. They are burning, and it’s strange – this fire in his chest alongside the excruciating cold.

Mami! Mami! He cannot scream, though he can feel the losing battle as his jaws tense, chest twitching as he keeps his lips squeezed shut. Mami, help!

The golden fabric drifts to the side, releasing his face, but it’s a little comfort as Camilo still doesn’t know where to go – and even if he did, the pain of the cold has begun to fade into a terrifying numbness.

A flash of green.

Bubbles escape from his mouth as Camilo is rendered stunned by the sight. Far below him, into the darkness – it glints, stealing his attention and replacing his panic with a deadened confusion.

He knows that green. That’s Bruno’s. That’s one of Bruno’s visions at the bottom of the river.

Maybe it’s the cold getting to him, maybe it’s some kind of Madrigal instinct, but Camilo lunges towards the green color, hand outstretched, body flailing –

And then a moment of clarity hits him, and he kicks out with his legs, pushing himself away from the sliver of green. His limbs twitch, every movement jerky and desperate as he follows the bubbles upwards, towards air, towards -

Camilo’s head smacks against unyielding ice, and the painful fire within him dies down with the final spasms of his tired body.

The water trails a long, crimson ribbon from somewhere beneath Camilo’s curls, but his vision has gone dark before he can see the blood. However, the blackness doesn’t last long this time.

A warm speck appears, fluttering its wings as if greeting him. It’s joined by another, and another, and another …

Content, Camilo lets himself be swept away by a swarm of golden butterflies.

Notes:

"There is nothing in the world as quiet as snow / when it silently falls through the air / it softens your steps / hushes you, hushes gently / the voices that talk too loud" - Helge Rode in "Nothing in the World", translated from Danish by me.

 

I can't believe I haven't written a proper whump fic for this fandom so here we are. Time for me to be evil for a while.

Hope you all enjoy!

Thanks for reading.

Chapter 2: Sounds

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

“Tío Bruno is right,” Isabela says after brushing a layer of snow off her shoulder. “Snow is overrated.”

It’s pretty, and Isabela likes pretty. But it’s white and it’s bland, and all three of the older grandkids remember the snow that covered the Encanto after Bruno left. There are memories attached to the cold, even if they did have their share of laughter today so far.

“It is cold,” Dolores agrees while adjusting her gloves. She can hear her siblings laugh and play around, however, so she cannot truly complain. While magical snow might be her mother’s grief, it brings her brothers happiness today.

A large boulder goes flying through the air after Luisa has marched straight into it, hidden beneath the snow. “Is it because of the plants?” she asks her sister, a thoughtful frown already growing on her face. Her strength doesn’t rely on anything but her own muscles, but she could imagine it must be hard if your magical plants suffer in the cold.

“There are hardly any out here!” Isabela grumbles with her arms crossed. “And they’re all covered in white. You try pushing a rose through all this snow.”

She flails an arm to prove her point, and a moment afterward, yet another palm tree shoots through the layer of snow to mark their path.

“I think you are doing a great job,” Luisa says after admiring the tiny spot of green. They’re doing well so far, and maybe this will give the adults more trust in letting them adventure more in the future.

“Well.” Isabela’s brows twitch, the corners of her lips slowly being raised into a smile. “Playing in the snow was fun .”

All three girls giggle at the memory of the pure chaos they’d taken part in. The snowballs and the laughter and the shrieks for mercy.

“Did you see Camilo’s face when Mira hit him?” Luisa says while she covers her mouth with her hand to muffle her amused chuckles.

She fails to do so, however, it hardly matters as they all break out in loud laughter at the memory.

“He’s going to take revenge later,” Dolores says knowingly.

Isabela moves up to link arms with her cousin. “Are they even trying to catch up with us?”

Listening to her brothers’ voices, far but not too far away behind them, Dolores senses no movement. “No.”

“They’ll probably still come home and tell everyone how hard they worked.”

“Knowing Camilo: yes. They will.”

Luisa lets out an amused huff while Isabela rolls her eyes. “Do you two think Abuela will let us go even farther when the snow’s melted?” she asks while trying to eye what has to be the road up ahead. “I want to see what’s out there.”

There are now possibilities waiting for them, a new future ahead now when she’s been released from the life-long expectations.

Luisa hums thoughtfully. “Maybe. They’ll probably want to –“ She finally comes to a halt, looking over her shoulder to see her cousin perfectly still, her arm still intertwined with Isabela’s. “Dolores?”

“What do you hear?” Isabela asks, watching first-hand how the smile fades from Dolores’ face. The air suddenly seems colder than before, tension rising with every fallen snowflake.

“The ice.” The whisper that leaves Dolores’ mouth is so quiet that Isabela can barely hear it. “ Antonio .”

Dolores tears herself loose and runs off, practically leaping through the trail they’ve left behind in the snow. The sisters share one brief worried glance before rushing after her. Luisa, being the fastest, loops an arm around Isabela until they’ve caught up.

“What’s happening?!”

“Camilo’s going for him,” Dolores says breathlessly, eyes wide in panic.

This piece of information only leaves them more confused, except –

Isabela thinks of the word ‘ice’ leaving Dolores’ mouth as a whisper, and a chill goes through her whole body. Her eyes dart towards the frozen river, then back towards the road that’s curling around a hillside, hiding what’s behind it.

They pick up the pace.

“Wha-“

“Shh!” Dolores snaps at Luisa. She needs them to be quiet. She needs to listen harder to get every detail; the creaking ice, the slow footsteps, Antonio’s whimpers, Camilo’s halted breath. How hoarse his voice sounds then, the way he seems to be choking on his breath. And she understands – the sound has grown familiar this last week. It’s a cough being suppressed. “ Camilo !”

She flings herself forward, needing to see, needing to be there instead of just listening to the scene –

The ice breaks, and she hears the horrible sound of splashing water, of Mirabel’s screams.

NO! ” Dolores shrieks, and her knees buckle, sending her straight into the cold beneath her. But then there are hands pulling her up, giving her support as they all rush down the curving trail, finally revealing the scene Dolores has heard:

Antonio crying, Mirabel yelling, Bruno praying, all of them staring at the hole in the ice. She can hear the water splashing against the broken edge, but down there, in the world below, everything is muted.

CAMILO !”

Dolores is already out on the ice by the time Isabela manages to grab a hold of her cloak. Pulling her cousin closer, Isabela grips her forearm tightly, then her waist, clinging to Dolores even when she twists and flails.

“Let go!” Dolores yells, gloved hands pounding and clawing Isabela’s arms. It’s the first time Dolores has ever yelled at her, and it leaves Isabela’s ears ringing.

“You’d fall through!”

“He can’t get up! The ice – He can’t get –“ Hearing something the rest of them can’t, Dolores doubles over, and Isabela follows her movement, refusing to let go. In her restraining hug, she can feel her cousin’s body shake as Dolores lets out a bone-chilling howl. Instantly, Isabela’s eyes widen, a single panicked thought echoing inside her mind: This is bad, this is bad, this is bad .

Dolores, still haunted by the damning thud , falls to her knees, Isabela collapsing with her.

With a wordless yell, Luisa walks past them and slams her fists against the ice, cracks spreading from the impact. They grow, reaching across the frozen river like a spiderweb, and when the first pieces begin to sink, they all stare desperately at the dark water.

They hold their breath; hoping Camilo is doing the same thing.

“There!” Mirabel cries, pointing wildly at the broken ice, and Isabela follows her finger, trying to see something between the white ice and black water. She blinks her tears away, wondering if that’s why she sees no trace of her cousin.

Luisa, however, lunges forward, preparing herself to jump into the water when a sharp yell from their tío makes her freeze on the spot.

No !” he barks, and the surprising firmness of his voice is enough to make Luisa stand back like a loyal dog. At some point in the middle of their frantic staring, he’s thrown off his heavy ruana and boots. He pulls his shirt over his head, revealing his skinny, goosebumps-covered torso as he hurries onto the ice. “You have to stay. Be ready.”

“Bruno!” Mirabel cries, and for a second it looks like she is about to follow, but her arms are filled with a crying Antonio. With a hand cupping his head, she shields his face against her skirt as the rest of them watch their tío lower himself into the freezing water.

Luisa’s mouth falls open, limbs twitching as she struggles to stay in place. “Wha- What?” She’s the hero, she’s the protector, and like the rest of the grandkids, she is painfully aware that Camilo needs saving right now.

“Camilo! Camilo!” Dolores wails, and Isabela doesn’t dare to let go of her in the fear that she might just jump into the water in her despair. Instead, her fingers dig into her cousin’s shoulders as she inhales and concentrates.

It takes effort, to call forth life – and a lot of it – in this cold. But slowly, with narrowed eyes and sweat beaming on her brow, the sprout pushes through the layer of snow. The green stalk grows, taller, thicker, and the green colors turn brown as the tree manifests.

The snow shifts beneath them, heavy roots binding it to the ground and ensuring its sturdiness as the trunk grows thicker and thicker. Isabela lets out a wordless yell of frustration as she calls for the tree to grow decade-old in a matter of seconds. Its branches stretch longer and longer above them, casting shadows upon the ice and water.

Once satisfied, Isabela calls for the final and most important details; from the longest branch, vines appear, uncurling themselves until they dangle just above the surface of the water.

The moment Bruno breaks the surface, a limp head covered by a mess of wet curls leaning against his shoulder, Isabela springs into action. The vines wrap themselves around her uncle, pulling him back towards the shore, leaving Bruno with the single task of not letting go of Camilo.

It’s hard. The freezing cold has left his body tense and numb, but through the pain he’d felt nothing but sheer relief as his fingers had grabbed his sobrino’s shirt, curling around it so tightly that his palms are now bleeding. He won’t let go, not now, not when he’s the only thing keeping Camilo above the water. He’s unresponsive, head dangling against him, limp legs brushing against Bruno’s, chest unmoving …

It suddenly hits him that he is holding on to a corpse, and that horrid, sickening thought almost causes his grip to falter.

“Antonio, stay with Parce,” Mirabel says, painfully pushing the boy away from herself and the river as they all rush to the aid of their frozen family members. Luisa pulls them both out of the water, and while Dolores throws herself over Camilo, Mirabel focuses on their uncle, helping him get back in the warm clothes he’d taken off beforehand.

Isabela falls to her knees next to her cousin, watching in horrible detail how Dolores tries to rouse her brother back to life.

Camilo’s head falls limply to the side, water trickling out of his nostrils and open mouth. For some reason, Isabela finds himself staring at his dark eyelids, then his freckles, so stark against his pale skin. The world becomes muted as her brain slowly tries to keep up with the situation, but it’s the color red that finally snaps her out of it. There, like a gruesome halo, blood has begun to stain the snow around his wet, darkened curls.

Camilo! ” Dolores cries, shaking him by the shoulders. “Milo! Milo!”

Minutes ago, Isabela had been forced to come to the horrifying conclusion that Camilo’s name tearing itself out of Dolores’ throat is the most chilling sound she’d ever heard.

Now, the shrill sobs coming from her prima’s mouth achieve the impossible and break Isabela’s heart further.

“I can’t hear it, I can’t hear it, Ican’thearitIcan’thearit -“

Isabela pushes her aside, instincts taking over as she gets lost in an old memory. Her mamá is a healer. A magical healer, yes, but Isabela has witnessed her share of stomach-churning injuries. And among those Julieta has treated, there’d been a few tragic cases where she couldn’t feed them her magical food right away.

She’d been taught what to do. Luisa and Mirabel both know, too, as the healer’s children, but Luisa’s strength has always been too much of a risk, and Mirabel is busy trying to get Bruno to speak full sentences.

Besides -

Isabela is the oldest grandchild. She bears the responsibility. And right now, her cousin lies dead in front of her, and before her brain can fully comprehend this grave fact, she has clasped her fingers around Camilo’s freckled nose and breathes into his mouth.

When Isabela moves her hands to Camilo’s slim chest, Luisa squeezes her eyes shut, but not in time to avoid the sight of Camilo’s body jerking beneath Isabela’s palms, a gulp of water spilling from his open mouth.

“Antonio, look away!” Luisa cries, unable to see if the small child follows her instruction.

Mirabel, having finished wrapping a shivering Bruno in his ruana that’s steadily turning more and more wet, stares at the scene with horrified eyes. “No,” she whispers.

Bruno is quiet, his pale lips trembling as the air is filled with Antonio’s crying, noises from Dolores that might as well belong to a wounded animal, and Isabela’s heavy panting as her body trembles from the effort.

Please, ” Dolores begs. “Camilo. Isa, please -“

She gasps at the same time as Camilo’s chest convulses. Isabela practically slaps his head to the side as the first cough forces more water out of his bruised lungs.

“Milo!” Dolores drags him into her lap, covering every inch of his cold face with kisses. “Camilito, it’s okay, it’s okay!” He doesn’t stir, cold and wet and limp in her arms, but she swears she sees his dark eyelids twitch.

Isabela looks down at her empty, burning arms, heaving as her muscles scream at her. The cold is gone, and under her heavy clothes, a layer of sweat is covering her entire body. Her mamá had made it look so easy …

With her older sister stunned, Luisa comes closer. Carefully, she nudges Dolores away so she can rip Camilo’s wet shirt from his body in one swift movement, revealing the bruised chest underneath.

“Where’s his ruana?” Mirabel pipes up. She’s aware that it’s a stupid question, and it feels weird in her mouth, but it’s terrible – it’s terrible to see Camilo so small and wounded and without his ruana. It’s his, and now it’s gone.

Luisa flings off her own coat, swaddling Camilo with the blue, heavy fabric. Only his face is still unconcealed, the pale skin making his blue lips so much more apparent.  

“Luisa.” They all spin around to look at Bruno. Despite his quavering voice, his stare is unyielding. “ R-run.

Luisa understands, then, why he’d told her to stay put. She’s the fastest. She needs to get them home. She picks up Bruno first, his green ruana clinging to his wet skin, and ignores his squeak of protest. Isabela has managed to pry Dolores off Camilo, and Luisa then carefully settles her limp cousin on top of Bruno’s chest. Their tío embraces him, wrapping all his limbs around the boy to share what little warmth he has left.

Sharing one long look with Isabela, Luisa is given a nod, and then she spins around, strengthening her hold on her weak family members, and runs back towards the Encanto as fast as her strong legs can carry her.

The others watch her take off, a flurry of snow trailing behind her.

“Camilo.” The name leaves Dolores’ mouth as a whimper. “Mi hermanito, mi manito –“

Isabela’s arms haven’t stopped trembling, but after a quick exhale, she regains her posture and the sense of leadership that belongs to the status of being the oldest grandchild. She looks around, seeing Antonio with his face pressed against Parce’s fur, Mirabel looking paler than when Casita had collapsed, and Dolores bowed over in prayer.

“Up,” Isabela says with numb lips. Feeling oddly cruel, she pulls Dolores up by her forearm, forcing her to stand. When her cousin’s knees buckle, she wraps an arm around her waist to support her. “Mirabel, take Antonio. We need to go now.”

Mirabel nods wordlessly, turning around to pick up her littlest cousin. “Is Camilo gonna die?” Antonio whispers into her neck.

The wind carries his small voice towards Isabela who freezes on the spot. First now her brain fully acknowledges the experience she’s just gone through, reactivating her senses. She recalls his cold, blue lips, his ribs bowing under the pressure from her palms, the way his limbs would tilt and swing like one of Antonio’s stuffed toys.

He’d been dead, she realizes. She’d been clutching her dead cousin’s body…

She retches, but a second afterward she’s put on the emotionless mask that fits her face so perfectly after so many years of practice. It’s okay. She can keep it in. Just for a bit longer, just until she’s carried her siblings and cousins through this.

She’s the oldest, and she needs to be strong.

“No,” Mirabel tells Antonio who won’t stop crying. “No, it’s going to be alright. Luisa is going to take him to mamá, and she’s going to fix him.”

Desperately, she looks at her sister for reassurance that Isabela wishes she could give herself. “Let’s go,” she says, taking one step forward and dragging Dolores with her.

A few steps later, and she notices the red stains on her pale gloves. Isabela blinks, trying to remember when she’d tried to brush away Camilo’s curls, stroking his head in the process. Looking over her shoulder, she sees that the freshly fallen snow has already begun to cover the crimson circle they’ve left behind.

“I can hear him,” Dolores tells her quietly. She’s a heavy weight against her, only standing due to Isabela’s support. “It sounds – it sounds wrong – but I can hear him. I can hear him, Isa, I can –“

Isabela leans her head against hers and leads the group forward.

By the time they can see the cracked mountain in the distance, the sky suddenly flashes with furious lightning. They look up, seeing the grey clouds move faster and faster as the storm gathers.

“Mami knows,” Dolores says quietly, closing her eyes as the tears begin to fall again.

The wind picks up around them, sounding like a mournful howl, carrying more and more snow with every passing second. It encircles them, almost the same way as the sand will fill the air through Bruno’s visions, but there are no images to look for, no certain future to be read.

Only cold unforgiving snowflakes that tear at their skin and soak their clothes.

“Come on,” Isabela says and forces the group, step by step, through the storm.

Notes:

"There is nothing in the world as pure as snow / swan's-down from the white wings of Heaven / On your hand, a fluff / like a single tear / white thoughts dance around." - Helge Rode in "Nothing in the World", translated from Danish by me.

A short chapter, sorry, but I felt like you've been stuck with a cliffhanger for too long.

Thank you for all the amazing support! It means so much!

Chapter 3: Blizzard

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Camilo, bless his never-ending hunger, does not like capers, and so Julieta puts them aside in their own bowl. The soup is simmering, broth growing strong while she continues to add vegetables so she can be sure the kids’ stomachs will be full. They’ll be cold when they return after such a long day in the snow.

She’s happy they can have this adventure together today. It’s another step towards something new, towards a bigger world than the one she’d grown up in, and they are exploring it together, growing together, and Julieta is so, so proud of each and every one of them.

Snow had been a rarity in her childhood, brought about only through magical, and thus unfortunate, circumstances . Julieta remembers when she was a child and Pepa had been sad enough to cover her entire room in pillow-y white flakes. She can’t recall what had caused her heartache, but Julieta can still vividly see Pepa’s young, shocked face after Bruno’s snowball had hit her with an improvised but ultimately successful attempt at cheering her up.

In the Encanto snow is…complicated. Like most of the Madrigal family, the sight of snowflakes had initially caused concern for Pepa, but as a purely natural phenomenon, Julieta can appreciate the beauty of it. However, the cold means extra work for her, and Julieta just hopes more townspeople don’t get sick.

There’s both pride and comfort in her duty as a healer, offering her meals to soothe each ailment. Her magic cannot heal what’s not broken, what’s not injured or torn, but good food is good food, and there isn’t a cold her soup hasn’t eased. Even Camilo, with his cough and stuffed nose and terrible mood, had brightened in the end.

Should she add some cream to the soup, just to make up for Camilo’s lost appetite from earlier this week? It wouldn’t hurt the boy to gain some weight. He reminds her of Bruno in that way.

A glance towards the sky reveals it should still be an hour or two before they expect the kids back. She’d like for Casita to help her prepare for their return with a pile of blankets and a blazing fire.

“-má! Mamá!”

Casita opens the window shutters, allowing Julieta to hear her daughter’s voice clearly. It’s easy to recognize, though to hear Luisa in such a panic is a cause for concern. 

“Luisa?”

Unsure of what exactly to fear, Julieta furrows her brows and moves towards the gate so she can meet Luisa immediately. Even from a distance, she can see the urgency; Luisa is moving at a breathtaking pace, even when taking into consideration the added weight she’s carrying in her arms.

Julieta’s stomach drops.

“Mamá!” Luisa cries again, now close enough for her mother to see her pale, tear-streaked face.

It shouldn’t be her first concern, not with the panic and the tears, but Julieta cannot help but notice the fact that Luisa is no longer wearing her cloak. The sight of her bare arms almost makes her shudder. Her poor girl must be freezing. She has to help warm her up before she catches a cold, too.

Then Julieta’s eyes settle on the bundle in Luisa’s arms.

Mamá ,” Luisa screams, her tone somewhere between relief and anguish.

It’s not the first time people have been brought to Julieta in a hurry. She knows what to do; her kitchen is prepared, but none of that stops her heart from beating painfully against her chest.

“Take them to the kitchen,” she says, and by the time they enter the room, Casita has already prepared the table, tilting it so various bowls and towels are out of the way.

Everything is prepared for her patient. A patient she still can’t see.

The cloak is heavy, swallowing in size—perfect for Luisa, but few others—and covered in snow, and before Julieta can peel the fabric away to look at her client, she realizes her own brother is staring at her from below the bundle.

Bruno .”

He’s pale, frighteningly so, hair wet and frozen at the tips. His lips tremble, but she can’t tell if he’s trying to say something or simply reacting to the cold. His arms are wrapped around the bundle, limbs stiff as she pries them away to open the cloak.

“Camilo fell through the ice,” Luisa weeps as Julieta unwraps her nephew.

His lips are blue. His lips are blue , and Julieta has her fingers pressed to the side of his neck before she can fully take in all the details; the frozen curls, the slack jaw, the eyelids so dark against his pale face they looked bruised.

Julieta holds her breath, but it’s there, slow but there. A pulse beneath her fingertips.

Flames soar in the fireplace, mindless of the soup cooking above it, and the tiles push a chair beside the hearth. Luisa, still upset but thinking somewhat rationally through her tears, picks up Bruno and places him in it. Casita already has a plate ready, and before he can try to utter a word, a hot buñelo is shoved into his mouth by Luisa’s trembling fingers.

“Camilo?” Julieta doesn’t expect a response, not truly. She can feel just how cold he is, freezing skin pressed against her palms as she cups his face. Something scarlet catches her attention; mostly hidden by the dark curls, crimson liquid runs down the side of his face, leaving both wet and flaky blood trailing along his hairline. With stilted breath, Julieta moves her fingers into the stiff curls, searching the back of his head, and when she retracts her hand it comes back covered in red. “ Camilo .”

The cloak is wet, partly frozen, and it has served its purpose. Julieta tears it off, every instinct telling her to get this boy warm, only to be met with a colorful display on his chest.

The marks are stark against his pale skin. Julieta knows what they mean, the bruises, the placement…she knows . She stares, waiting for her brain to fully comprehend what she’s looking at.

“Isabela did it,” Luisa says, sniffing loudly. “Just—Just like you taught us. It worked. It worked, mami!”

Julieta pauses. While the magic inside of her surges with the need to heal , a different part of her is frozen by the realization that her nephew had died. Camilo had died, and her daughter had brought him back, and now he needs her help.

When did she last see his door? Had it been flickering? Had it been dark? Had they noticed? Is it glowing now?

“What’s happening?”

Julieta looks over her shoulder to see a frowning Pepa in the doorway.

“I saw Lu—” Green eyes take in the scene — the weeping Luisa, a half-frozen Bruno by the fire, her pale sister, and beneath her, on the table— “ Camilo .”

Pepa rushes to his side, knees buckling after a few steps. She nearly collapses on top of him, covering her son’s body with her own and touching whatever part she can get her hands on. He’s so cold, so terribly cold it makes her moan in pain. She sees the bruises too, but unlike Julieta, she doesn’t understand. Not yet.

“Pepa,” Julieta says, assessing the room for a plan despite the growing chaos. “Pepa, hold him.”

“Milo,” Pepa cries, pressing her forehead against his. “Camilo, baby, wake up.” Her son is supposed to be warm; he’s her sol , full of laughter and life and sunshine. This cold, limp body cannot be him — the mere thought brings tears to her eyes as she desperately begs. “Despiértate. Please.”

Julieta turns her back to her howling sister, focusing on pouring hot soup into a cup instead. It’s a difficult task with her blurry vision and shaking hands. She needs to remove the vegetables, any lumps he might choke on.

Behind her, the wind picks up, almost undoing Luisa’s work as she tries to rub some warmth back into her uncle.

The room fills with a chorus of grief, the wind howling alongside Pepa as she strokes Camilo’s hair, begging for him to wake up, and pressing her lips against his icy skin. She only pulls away to scream for her sister’s help—

Red. There’s red staining her fingers.

Pepa goes quiet, mouth falling open in soundless horror.

The first snowflake falls.

And then the blizzard breaks loose.

“Pepa. Pepa !” Julieta almost drops the cup, having to shield her face as the merciless gale obstructs her vision, a thin layer of snow already blanketing the kitchen. Squinting, she sees her husband enter the scene, almost slipping on an icy patch on the floor. “Get Félix!”

Agustín tears his eyes away from Camilo and his mother, nodding wordlessly before turning on his heel at a sprint.

Snowflakes cling to Julieta’s eyelashes, and she blinks furiously, eyes stinging. “Pepa!”

But her sister doesn’t hear her. She doesn’t see her. Her stare is fixated on the hand covered with her son’s blood.

Though it breaks her heart to do so, Julieta pushes her sister away from the table, taking her place as she leans over Camilo, trying to shield his frozen body with her own. Casita leaps into action as well, stacking chairs against the edge of the table in a desperate attempt to shelter them from the worst of the wind.

“Pep—“ Bruno tries to speak, but Luisa cuts off his croak by squishing him a bit too tightly in a protective hug.

Amidst the storm, Julieta tries to focus on the task at hand. Camilo still lies unconscious, and while this is only the first step out of many, she needs to tend to his injuries. Holding on tightly to the cup of soup, Julieta attempts to pour some into his mouth, but her hand trembles and the gales are merciless, and she winces on his behalf when the scalding liquid spills down his chin.

She wishes she could be annoyed at her sister, that she could throw her frustration at something, but how can she do anything but let her heart break in sympathy?

Julieta has been with her sister through so many storms, through the cruelest winds and the heaviest downpours, and yet, she cannot remember ever feeling so cold.


The sky darkens in a matter of seconds. Even Félix — who is more than used to being in the middle of changing weather — tilts his head back to behold the mass of clouds now shrouding the Encanto. They are grey, heavy, and lively, churning with the threat of downfall.

A sudden gust of ice-cold wind almost knocks him over, and the plaza echoes with gasps and exclamations as supplies and hats fly from their owners. Several faces turn to stare at Félix, expecting an explanation. They’d joked once that he must be able to forecast the weather better than anyone else. That he can take one look at the sky and know what it means.

But here’s the thing: when you are married to a woman whose mood affects the weather, you don’t keep your eyes on the sky; you look at your wife.

And right now, Félix just knows this: he needs to be at Pepa’s side. Now .

His optimism fades with every rapid step towards Casita, and it disappears entirely when a gaunt-faced Agustín meets him by the edge of town, coming from the direction of their home. He doesn’t even need to ask Félix to follow.

“Pepa?” Félix asks breathlessly, his stomach dropping once more when Agustín shakes his head.

That leaves three names — three names which Félix quickly raises in a silent, hurried prayer — and braces himself for hearing any of them.

“Camilo.”

The storm has engulfed the Encanto by now, but the center is easy to find. Casita’s usual warm and welcoming kitchen is now a frozen core of a mother’s grief, every surface encased with snow and ice. The moment they step inside, the wind tries to shove them away — Agustín, with his luck, is hit by a towel in the face.

Félix continues onward by himself, hand raised to shield his eyes, braving the storm to get closer to his wife, who stands unmoving, shellshocked as she stares at her hands.

“Pepa!” he cries out, reaching for her. He can calm her down. He’s tried this before. It’s his gift — very unmagical, but amazing nonetheless. He just needs to reach her—

“Félix, help me!”

“What—“ Félix’s hands drop as he takes in the scene. Julieta shaking with terror and cold and adrenaline. Desperate eyes staring up at him. Her body bowed over Camilo.

Camilo . His son.

His son with blue lips and a pale face, sprawled across the table and much, much too limp.

Whatever he’d expected — feared — this still stuns him.

Though it’s painful, he leaves Pepa alone, fighting his way towards the table instead as Julieta beckons him. “Tilt his head. We need to keep him from choking.”

Pepa doesn’t hear them. Her fingers twitch, hand stretching for something she cannot hold. Unbothered by the wind that tears her braid back and forth, she slowly turns her head. Camilo is hidden from her, Félix’s broad body obstructing her vision as he tends to him, and Pepa takes one step towards them, a single sob leaving her mouth.

Her baby. Her child who’d left their home with the biggest smile this morning. She doesn’t understand; she doesn’t know the full story. All she knows is that he’s hurt, he’s cold, he is much too quiet, much too still, and it breaks her heart every time she tries to think instead of feel.

A hand closes around her wrist, pulling her in the opposite direction. “Pepa.” Alma squeezes her hand, and, with surprising strength, begins to remove her daughter from the scene. “Come.”

“No.” Pepa is still staring at her husband’s back, tears streaming from her eyes. Though she shakes her head, she doesn’t fight her mother’s grip. “ No .”

“He is with your husband and sister. Those are good hands. Vamo,” Alma says with the same firmness in her voice she’d used to raise triplets. It still works wonders. Pepa sobs once, but lets herself be led away. The moment she steps past the doorway, the door slams shut, protecting the people inside from the wind.

The storm follows her, of course it does, and now it roams free inside the courtyard. Isabela’s poor flowers are torn apart, framed photos tremble against the wall, and Alma acts obliviously to it all as she makes Pepa sit down on the nearest bench.

The moment Pepa curls in on herself, Alma puts her hands on her shoulders, tugging her closer until her daughter buries her face against the front of her dress. As Pepa trembles, Alma rubs her back with one hand, using the other to cradle the back of her head.

“Mija,” she mutters, breathless. The cyclone howls painfully, but it slows down ever so slightly.

It’s not the first time they’ve calmed a storm together. Alma remembers a small girl hugging her tightly, hiccupping, a cloud following her even when she’d yelled at it to go away. But there’s a difference between a cloud and a storm as Alma had been forced to teach her from an early age.

“My baby,” Pepa weeps. “I need to be with my baby.”

“Respira.” There’d been rules. Guidelines. Procedures. And just when it had seemed like Pepa had finally been in full control, puberty hit. Oh, Alma had pitied the town at times, their weather and crops at the mercy of a teenager’s mood. And not just any teenager. Pepa . And though Alma had tried, she’d never managed to tame her daughter’s fiery spirit. Now, she is so, so thankful for the fact. “Breathe.”

“I can’t—I can’t—“

Just like when she’d been five and upset, Pepa’s breathing only quickens as she tries to squirm out of her mother’s hug. “Let me go!” she cries, but Alma’s hold is unforgiving.

“No.” She squeezes Pepa’s shoulders once more, adding pressure to keep her daughter on the bench. The snow is slowly soaking their clothes, its chill seeping in. But when Pepa looks up, there’s something powerful in her wet eyes.

Good. Good . Anger Alma is used to handling. Grief is…a delicate matter. Grief is familiar in the worst ways.

“You expect me to be calm?!”

“I do not expect you to, no.” Alma moves her hand to stroke her cheek. They’d sat like this for hours once, Pepa hiccupping until the clouds were spent. But now—now they do not have the luxury of time. “But you need to calm down.”

“My son needs me!”

“He needs his mamá, not a blizzard.”

“You—“

Pepa flails but Alma moves with her, placing both of her hands on her face to lock eyes with her. “ Breathe ,” she says, and inhales deeply so her daughter can follow her lead.

With tears clinging to her eyelashes, Pepa blinks, trying to shake her head, but Alma keeps her still. Unable to escape her mother’s hands, Pepa finally does what she’s told, though her breaths are shaky.

Satisfied, Alma pulls her close again, letting Pepa rest against her chest. “Good girl,” she says, hoping her own heartbeat doesn’t betray her. She needs to be calm; she needs Pepa to be calm, but how can she ask that of her if she cannot be the example? Alma does not know the whole story. She hasn’t even seen Camilo yet.

But she’d seen his door flicker on her way down to investigate the chaos, and it’d told her all she needed to know in that moment.

Though Pepa continues to cry, the wind is no longer trying to tear their faces off. It’s still cold, it still hurts, but it’s grown weaker. “I need to go back. Please let me go back,” she whispers into her mother’s wet dress. “He needs me.”

“Mija.” Alma’s eyes twinkle with fondness and unshed tears. “We do not blame you for your storm. You have every right to let it snow. And you can release it. Later. But for now, I have to ask you to keep it in here.” Wrinkled hands cup something invisible in the air, as if the grief, the worry, and the frustration could be so easily held, and moves it toward her chest, pushing it to the center of her ribs, and shoving it straight into her heart. “And then, afterward, you come to me. And you let it out.”

Pepa meets her eyes once more, and upon seeing the promise in them, she exhales.

The tears keep coming, but the trembling of her body stops. So do the clouds above her, halting as the storm dies out. The sky remains grey and threatening, but when the last howl fades, there is silence.

Her fingers curl around the fabric of Alma’s dress, clenching into fists while Pepa inhales and empties her head of rainy thoughts. She imagines clear skies before finally straightening her back. Alma helps her stand, supporting her as she heads for the kitchen, for her son, with shaking legs.

The storm is gone, if only for a moment, but the snowflakes continue to fall oh so quietly atop their heads.

Notes:

"There is nothing in the world that can soothe as snow / Hush, listen until the silence rings / Oh, how wonderful a sound / like silver bells singing / they ring inside your heart."- Helge Rode in "Nothing in the World", translated from Danish by me.

You guys said you preferred faster updates over longer chapters so here we are.

Thank you so much to AlabasterInk who is now my beta. They will help me both grammar and plotwise, and they have made sure there will be so much pain and comfort, so give them a big hand!

Chapter 4: Home

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Félix has good hands. They are sturdy; they are large. They cannot conjure up flowers or break a boulder into two, but they can raise a hammer, swing a broom, pluck the strings of a tiple, and hold his wife and children.

Right now, they are cupping his son’s face, and Camilo has never seemed smaller, his head leaning limply against his father’s palm.

Despite their best efforts, a fine layer of snow has covered the boy. Félix brushes it off, careful not to think about what little difference there is to be felt between the snow and his son’s skin.

His glance lands on his boy’s ribs where a circle of bruises bloom. The sight is enough to make his stomach clench. Just like the blue tint of Camilo’s lips, the colorful display has no business staining his son’s body. 

“Juli?” He whispers, expectation lacing his tone. He lives in a house full of miracle workers, but Julieta is the supportive pillar you cannot help but rest against. Julieta will feed you, heal you; Julieta will be the voice of reason. She will fix things.

And though Félix knows it to be unfair, he cannot help but cling to the hope that she will magically save the day once again.

“Can you hold him up?” She asks, holding a cup of warm soup. Pulling Camilo against his chest, Félix keeps his head upright and watches as Julieta does her best to feed her unconscious patient. The spoon is barely half-full as she slowly tilts it inside Camilo’s mouth, and they hold their breath, watching as much of the liquid trickles out from between loose lips and down his chin. Félix brushes it aside with a flick of his thumb, but a small amount must get through as the bruises fade away from his torso.

Julieta puts away the cup and spoon to run a finger down his ribs instead, making sure the damage is gone.

She finds nothing, but he isn’t any warmer as Félix gently puts Camilo’s head back on the table, cradling it between palms he can’t help but notice are now stained crimson. A quick glance of his shirt reveals a trail of dark blood, and, like Pepa, he freezes, but the cold storm within him only causes his voice to go oddly numb as he asks, “What happened to his head?”

“I—I don’t know,” Luisa says, looking at her uncle with wide, lost eyes. “I don’t—”

“Luisa, can you fetch us some blankets? As many as you can.” Julieta is sure Casita would have brought them some already were the kitchen door not firmly closed to shield them from Pepa’s wind, but she doesn’t begrudge the distraction.

Her daughter nods and is quick to close the door behind her, stepping into the snowy gales currently wrecking the courtyard.

That leaves Bruno shaking alone by the fire-pit, while Julieta and Félix stare at each other for a moment too long. The blizzard might be gone, but the cold lingers. It sits in the air, burning their lungs, and no matter how big Félix’s hands are, he fears they aren’t big enough to envelop his son in the warmth he needs.

“Mijo,” he mutters wistfully, reaching out to pull Camilo back against him.

“Careful. Don’t move him too much.”

Though it pains him, Félix knows to follow Julieta’s advice. For a moment he contemplates taking off his own guayabera in the desperate hope that the thin fabric could provide some sort of warmth until Luisa returns with the blankets, but Casita is doing its best, steadily raising the temperature with every crackling flame.

Julieta’s fingers clasp around Camilo’s thin wrists, measuring his pulse, and Félix prays for her brow to smooth out of the worried furrow it’s crumpled into.

“His chest.” Félix’s dark eyes linger on where the bruises disappeared — in his mind, he still sees them clearly. His lower lip twitches before the rest of his face crumbles under the weight of realization. “He drowned.”

His complexion grows ashy, and, for a moment, Julieta thinks Félix has collapsed, but as she moves to put a hand on his shoulder, she sees that he’s only hunched over his son, arms draped around Camilo’s body, offering what warmth he has until the blankets arrive.

“Isabela brought him back,” she tells him, softly, as if she can wrap the true meaning behind those words into something less terrifying.

A raw, low keening escapes from the back of Félix’s throat as his expression contorts into one of devastation. Like Camilo, Félix thrives when he can make people laugh, when he can be the life of the party. There are no jokes to be made now, and with Pepa gone, no reassurances to distract his heart.

Wordlessly, he kisses Camilo’s hairline. Julieta opens her mouth to say something — anything — to soothe away that foreign expression, but a trembling bowl of water atop the counter steals her attention. Sensing the house’s intention, she dumps a rag into it and wordlessly hands it to Félix. It fixes nothing, but it gives his hands something to do as he quietly washes the blood out of Camilo’s half-frozen curls.

The fire burns brighter, and Julieta finds comfort in the sweat that now trickles down the back of her neck. There is a steady sound of dripping as the snow melts from the furniture and creates little puddles along the tiles. With Camilo stable for the moment, her eyes land on her second patient.

“Bruno.”

“I’m—” Clattering teeth cause Bruno to bite his tongue, and he winces. “Okay.” There are tears in his eyes, glistening in the light from the fire, but Julieta doesn’t comment on them. She can’t imagine she’s looking her best at the moment either.

Casita opens the door to the kitchen, letting Luisa shuffle in. She’s sniffing — the task had given her something to focus on, but witnessing Tía Pepa in Abuela’s arms brought on the waterworks all over again. Agustín follows, rubbing her back while she shakes the blankets to rid them of any freshly fallen snowflakes.

Julieta steals one of them and immediately wraps it around Camilo. Félix helps her tilt the unconscious body, and Julieta’s hands work with the memory of all those years swaddling babies. She leaves only his face untouched; the curls tucked away as she engulfs Camilo’s head in warmth.

Félix is reaching for a second blanket when Julieta holds out a hand to halt him. Putting her face near Camilo’s unmarred chest, she examines how it rises and falls, following the motion upwards to his face, her ears almost touching his nose as she listens to his breathing. Unsure of what to look for in her expression, Félix just stares.

“How long was he in the water?” Julieta asks, still hovering above the blanket-covered Camilo as her head turns towards her daughter.

Luisa looks like she wants to answer but physically cannot. Her hands fly to her mouth, trembling fingers trying to hold back the memory of the ice breaking beneath her hands and the awful waiting that followed as her foolish, optimistic heart had believed Camilo’s curly head would break the surface the moment she’d cleared the way for him.

Luisa.

“I—I don’t know. We weren’t there when it happened. We just—Dolores heard, and we ran back, and I broke the ice, and Tío Bruno said I should keep out of the water, and then he jumped in, and Isa dragged them out, but Camilo—Camilo wasn’t breathing, and Isa brought him back, and Bruno said to run, and I did. I did as fast as I could, but I couldn’t—I couldn’t see if he was okay, and I couldn't decide if I should stop and check, and I didn’t, but maybe I should have; I just ran. Is he okay? Mamá? He’s going to be okay, right?”

Julieta can feel all eyes in the room land on her — Luisa and Agustin’s red-rimmed browns, Bruno’s too dark, too familiar hazels, just shy of sparking with a future she’s afraid to hear, and Félix, vulnerable and shimmering in a way she’s never seen before and never wants to see again.

“Yes,” Julieta says, raising her head. “But we need to warm him up. Gently.”

“We can take him to my room.”

They all turn to look at Pepa, standing in the doorway, covered in snow but with no clouds in sight. Her voice is steady, perfectly calm. Julieta cannot help but compare her to a deep inhale, a breath being held.

“I’m sure Casita has already lit the fire,” Pepa says and looks at her swaddled son. It’s not the first time she’s had to warm herself or her children near the flames; Casita has outfitted her room with a fireplace to help dry the family after any encounter with a rain cloud or worse.

Félix holds out a hand towards her. “Amor.” Stepping into the kitchen, she takes it, letting Félix gently stroke her knuckles while she presses her forehead against Camilo’s. Together, the couple wrap another blanket around him, before settling him in Félix’s arms.

Julieta bites her lip, fingers itching to help her nephew further, even knowing her options are limited. She’s given him her food, but raising his body temperature has to be a gradual process. There’s no magic available to fix that, nothing outside the fire and the blankets and the warm arms of his parents. At this point, she would have to force Pepa and Félix off their son — something she’d rather leave for emergencies. Though it goes against all her sensibilities as both a healer and an aunt, Julieta gives the parents a moment to themselves.

Maybe that’s what she would have wanted, had it been one of her own, except her heart can’t allow her to imagine that scenario. It’s hard enough with it being Camilo.

So while it’s not privacy, not insomuch as they deserve, Julieta shifts her attention to the corner, where Bruno has turned around, unable to look at Pepa. He sits hunched over, curled in on himself as if trying to hide beneath the blanket Agustín quickly threw over him.

Julieta’s job isn’t done yet.

“Place Camilo near the fire,” she tells her sister and brother-in-law. “Warm up some extra blankets, too. Call for me if there are any changes. I just need—I’ll be up with you in a moment.”

Félix gives her a solemn nod and shifts, lifting his son with an ease that concerns her. Pepa follows right behind him, her hands wrung so tightly it has to be painful.

They don’t take more than a step before a limp foot falls from the entangled layers of blankets. It’s pale, and Pepa stumbles with a strangled gasp, rushing to her husband’s side to tuck it back in, but not before giving it a gentle kiss. Her eyes widen as her lips brush the cold skin, and it’s all she can do not to let go of the blizzard in her heart as she follows Félix out into the courtyard.

“Get in some dry clothes, too, mija,” Julieta tells her daughter, putting out the fires one by one. “I’ll tend to your tío.”

The glance she shares with her husband is quick, but Agustín doesn’t need words to know what she’s asking. Luisa has always been a daddy’s girl, and she leans into him as he wraps a comforting arm across her back, gently guiding her out of the room and towards her glowing door.

With only one other person left in her usually calm and quiet kitchen, Julieta takes a moment to just close her eyes and inhale. “Hermanito?”

Bruno flinches when she comes over to help rid him of his half-frozen ruana, replacing it with a thick blanket instead. “S—sorry,” he says, trembling with every syllable. “Sor—ry.”

“You’ll be okay.” He’s in a better state than Camilo, at least. The awareness in his eyes helps keep her calm, though she doesn’t like the sight of his bony ribs. He’s always been too skinny in her opinion, and it’s something she’s tried to fix since he came back. “Can you hold this?” She places a bowlful of soup in his hands and is pleased to see that he can at least bring the spoon to his mouth without spilling it all on his lap. “Good. Eat.”

It'll heal; it’ll give him warmth. It’s the best way she can help.

“M—my fault.”

There’s something in Bruno’s eyes that Julieta cannot read. It’s mixed with the shame and fear she sees before he turns his head away to stare at the flames, and while habit tells her to let him be, she’s spent ten years lamenting every inaction. She won’t let him hide from her again.

“You jumped in after him. You saved him. That’s quite a difference.” Julieta doesn’t know the full story yet, but from Luisa’s retelling, Bruno has once again proved to be more brave than expected. She folds a blanket near the oven, along with his ruana, letting it warm up before wrapping it around her brother.

Bruno eats quietly, the sound of clattering teeth slowly dying out, while Julieta prepares another batch of soup. It keeps her hands busy, and they are going to need it.

It’s been a very cold day.

“Milo?” Bruno eventually asks her.

“Will need to warm up, too,” she says, choosing her words carefully. There have been bloodier patients in her room. She’s treated head wounds, and, over the years, there've been a few unfortunate accidents with the river. She’s saved lives before, multiple times. Only the hypothermia is new. Cold is a rare occurrence in the Encanto, but she spent hours as a young woman reading about its effects in her preparation to become the best healer she could be. She’d prepared as much as she could. 

But everything all at once?

Julieta cuts a potato with more force than necessary, dropping it all into the pot for the next soup. She can keep cooking for as long as needed. “And then there’ll be plenty of soup for him when he wakes up.”

Bruno says nothing, but she can see the dark thoughts lurking in his eyes.

She wants to ask, but Casita interrupts by jolting her cutting board — she’d been about to cut her thumb rather than the pepper. “Thank you, Casita,” she says and steadies her hands. A good healer needs steady hands. However, all attempts at clearing her thoughts fade away as the rest of the grandkids appear outside the window, skirts fluttering as they barrel up the road.

Soup, blankets, hugs. Julieta will keep her family warm in any way possible.


“Camilo!”

The moment Dolores sees their house, she begins to yell. It’s foolish. She knows her brother cannot hear her; not the same way she can always hear him.

Antonio, however, is the first one to reach the house, Parce spiriting him up the hill faster than any human legs could boast. The gate opens to reveal Alma waiting for them, gaze solemn as she helps Antonio off the big cat.

Abuela,” Mirabel cries, almost knocking the elderly woman over as she crashes into her waiting arms. Alma’s joints ache with cold, her old bones haunted by the remains of Pepa’s storm, and she shakes in time with every sob that wrecks Mirabel’s body.

“It’ll be alright,” she promises, resting her chin against Mirabel’s curls. “Oh, mis nietos.” She looks at them, taking in their wet and frightened faces, and her heart mourns at the thought of the danger and fear they’ve faced today.

Antonio clings to Dolores’ hand, while Isabela shuffles in from behind, quiet and pale as a ghost. “He—is Camilo still sleeping?” The boy asks as they all step into the snow-covered courtyard.

“Sí,” Alma tells them. Mirabel refuses to let go of her, gripping her arm so tightly it breaks her heart before it causes any pain. “He is resting upstairs by the fire with your parents. He’ll wake up when he’s feeling better.”

Dolores jolts, her body jerking towards the stairs like she’s about to make a run for her parents’ room, but Agustín blocks her path, having left Luisa on her own to join the kids at the bottom of the staircase. With a strained smile, he puts a gentle hand on Antonio’s shoulder. “Why don’t we put on some dry clothes, hm? Get all warmed up. I’ll tell your parents you’re home.”

Dolores understands, though her expression remains conflicted. With their hands intertwined, she leads Antonio up the stairs, their uncle following as if worried they’d collapse if he didn’t. Agustín quickly peeks into Pepa’s room and exchanges a few words before heading towards Antonio’s door to comfort and help the five-year-old out of his wet outfit.

As half of the group leaves, Julieta steps out of the kitchen, eying both of her daughters before extracting her youngest from Alma’s arms and pulling the crying Mirabel into a hug. “Mija,” she says, removing her glasses to wipe the fresh tears away. “What happened?”

Mirabel sniffs, lips trembling as the question makes her cry even harder.

“I…didn’t see what happened,” Isabela shamefully admits, taking a step closer. “Luisa, Dolores, and I first saw when he—he’d already fallen through. But Dolores—she said—”

“He was saving Antonio,” Mirabel cuts in. She runs a hand down her face and accepts the glasses Julieta hands her after wiping off the tears and melted snowflakes. “We—he was suddenly out on the ice and it started cracking and—and Camilo used his Gift to get to him and he did! He saved him! He threw him back to me, but then—then the ice broke and—” She squeezes her eyes shut, trying to get that image out of her mind. “Luisa broke the ice and Tío Bruno jumped in after him and Isa—” When her eyes open, they are filled with astonishment, looking up at her older sister with open admiration. “She pulled them out and then she—she made Milo breathe again. She was amazing.”

Julieta reaches out to touch Isabela’s arm. “It was just like you’d taught me,” her daughter says with a brittle smile. Her eyes drift downwards, towards her bloodstained gloves, and Julieta doesn’t miss the way she blanches, staring at the fabric before composing herself through sheer force of will and habit. “I—I’m going to get changed, too.”

She climbs the stairs in a rush, little white flowers slowly drifting downward in her wake.

“Where’s Tío Bruno?” Mirabel asks after one final sniff.

“In the kitchen, getting warmed up.” Managing a weak smile, Julieta puts a reassuring hand on her daughter’s cheek — so warm, flushed red compared to Camilo who hadn’t even stirred at her touch. “They’ll be okay.”

“That’s what I told Antonio.” Mirabel wipes her nose with the back of her hand and looks up at her mamá with glistening eyes. “Because—because I have the most amazing mom who’ll make it all better.”

Pulling her into an embrace, Julieta hugs her daughter just a tad more tightly than she usually would. Mirabel can’t see — won’t see — the way Julieta bites her lip, remembering the clouds in Bruno’s eyes and the blue of Camilo’s lips. “Ay, you’re cold too, mija.”

“Not—not like Camilo.”

“No, not like Camilo, but we still need to get you warmed up,” Julieta says as she pulls away, but not before kissing her daughter’s forehead.

“I just—I’ll join Tío Bruno at the fire for a bit.”

Julieta wants to protest, but Alma softly calls out, “Julieta,” gesturing for her daughter to follow her to the privacy of the living quarters.

With no small reluctance, Julieta steps away from Mirabel and moves to follow, but she comes to a halt when her shoe almost crushes the top of one of Isabela’s flowers.

With trembling fingers, she lifts the flower to her eyes, finding comfort in the familiar task of admiring one of her daughter’s stunning creations. It’s beautiful, as always; a pale-white lily speckled with red and as soft as the snow it had lain in. She places it gently in the nearest flowerpot to save it from the cold floor, and goes to face her mamá.

Mirabel watches her go, missing her embrace for a moment, before wiping her cheeks and entering the kitchen. Immediately, she is met by the heat Casita has created for them, and it feels like her mother’s arms continuing their hold.

“Tío Bruno?” she asks quietly, spotting his blanket-wrapped body at the fireplace. “Bruno, how are you—?”

Mirabel stops, frozen in place, when she realizes her uncle’s shoulders are trembling with something that cannot be blamed on the cold.

Notes:

Thank you so much for all your amazing comments, it means so, so much to me, and it keeps me so excited for this fic.

I once again give major credit to my beta Ink who is literally a miracle-worker.

Chapter 5: Blanket

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

“Clear skies, clear skies.”

It’s a mantra that’s been haunting Casita for 45 years. Félix has grown familiar with it; loving Pepa means loving sunshine and clouds. The way her fingers will frantically stroke her braid, just as much a part of her as the gap between her front teeth. He loves it, all of it, but he’s come to loathe the phrase. For years, it’s broken his heart to see Pepa mutter it through a fake smile, and his heart had shattered the moment he realized his children were repeating it in their moments of stress.

And yet, he’d never asked her to stop. How could he, knowing it’d brought her the comfort and strength to continue upholding the pillars of perfection upon which the house had rested.

But the house had fallen, and then, with no miracles or magic, they’d rebuilt.

These past few months of watching Pepa learn to keep her eyes from the sky and simply not care about the incoming clouds, have been some of the happiest of Felix’s life. She spent so long trying to only bring sunshine, that she forgot there isn’t a big difference between rain and tears. Between a hurricane and anger. Pepa’s emotions are natural, she just has plenty of them, and though Félix has always claimed to love all sides of her, her current devastation only causes a lump in his throat.

He wouldn’t mind calling for clear skies now, if the lack of clouds meant good news.

“Pepi.”

His wife shakes herself out of his gentle grip on her forearm. “Oh, so I can bring him a blizzard, but not some sunbeams? What good is my Gift, then?” Pepa closes her eyes and tries to remember all the small things that will usually fill her with joy: Dolores’ singing voice, Antonio’s warm, small hand sliding into hers, the gap between Camilo’s teeth when he shows off his widest grin, the way his eyes sparkle with mischief, how his laughter is loud enough to be felt through your own body.

It’s such a stark contrast to the wrapped-up body in front of her, and Pepa knows from the cold inside her chest that she won’t find the sun today. A groan of frustration escapes her lips when the first cloud pops into existence above her head. “He needs the sun. I should be able to help him. He’s my son. He needs warmth, so I’ll give it to him.”

Her fingers burn with the need to touch him. To pull him into her lap and rub his cold skin, to play with his hair and kiss his forehead. But he’s hidden from her, wrapped up like a body prepared for the pyre, and all she can do is gently caress his nose and pray for the color to return to his face.

As she adjusts the blanket once more, pulling it up past his chin, her eyes can’t help but linger on his purple lips. Raindrops hit the brown blanket, leaving wet circles behind.

“No. No. Why–” Pepa sniffs, pulling away from her son to shield him from her rain.

There’s a metallic rattle as Casita pushes a bin towards them from the corner of the room, and Félix is quick to reach down and grab the umbrella within it.

He holds it above his wife’s head, and, to bring himself shelter from the rain as well, he scoots closer to her, wrapping his free arm around her waist as she leans into his embrace.

“Gracias,” she mutters, and leans backward in her seat, away from Camilo so her cloud can’t reach him.

They sit in silence; there isn’t much to do, and there are subjects they don’t want to talk about yet. For now, all they can do is wait for him to wake up, but Camilo hasn’t even twitched his nose.

The fireplace burns ever hotter.

“Is Bruno going to be okay?” Pepa asks, never removing her stare from the bed they’ve placed Camilo in.

“Julieta thought so, yes.”

“Good. Then I’m going to strangle him.”

Félix sighs, though the anger is not unexpected. He can feel the cloud rumble slightly, like the way Parce will growl when hungry for a treat, and he pulls her closer. Anger is not something that often flares up in him; usually, he’ll let Pepa bring out enough thunder for both of them. So, while he knows the relationship between Bruno and Pepa is stronger than ever, there are still bridges to be rebuilt, and when stressed, Pepa will fall into old habits. He can’t blame her for trying to push away her sorrow by replacing it with anger, but they do not need lightning strikes right now.

“Pepa.”

“You—”

“He jumped in after him.” 

Félix doesn’t know the full story yet — though he doubts his feelings regarding Bruno will change after that — but he knows this: Bruno saved their son. Camilo might not be here if not for him. 

The cloud goes quiet. Pepa purses her lips, but whatever she’s prepared to say slips away as she huddles closer to him with a deep sigh. “I’m never letting him out of my sight again.”

“Mhm.” Camilo had been so happy when he’d left the house — and Félix had shared his joy, relieved to get the teenager out of his hair. He loves the boy, probably more than Camilo knows, but last week had been long as a tired, annoyed, and sick Camilo let everyone know just how much he was suffering.

Today—it wasn’t meant to turn out like this.

Félix opens his mouth to say something, but he’d rather not focus on what happened outside the Encanto. By unspoken agreement, Julieta and he decided it best to keep Pepa in the dark, and what parts Félix knows of the story can easily turn into minefields. He doesn’t want to remember the bruises, how the blood had melted the snowflakes in Camilo’s hair.

In his silence, Pepa sniffs again. “Clear skies, clear skies.”

The phrase still makes him want to wince. Félix moves his hand up and down her arm in gentle strokes. “Juli said it had to be gradual. Give him a chance to warm up, and once he stops looking so—”

“Dead,” Pepa cuts him off, her tone numb. “He looks dead.”

“But he isn’t,” Félix reminds her — and himself. “And when he wakes up, we can tell him about all the ways we plan to spoil him this week.”

“Month.”

“Three weeks,” Félix counterpoints and is pleased to hear an amused noise from the back of Pepa’s throat. He’s still out of his element; this is no time to joke, but he will do what he can to lighten the mood in the long hours of waiting.

“Rest of his life,” Pepa says while counting the freckles on Camilo’s pale noise, still clinging to the desperate hope that his mouth might twist, or his eyelids stir. Her stare falls on his lips, still displeased with the blueish hue. “Why are they still so—”

A soft knock on the door interrupts them, and while they had expected Julieta to enter their room eventually, it’s a surprise to see Agustín’s head peeking in.

“Sorry,” he says, eyes darting between them and the bed. “The kids are home. They want to see him, and I don’t think there’s any stopping Dolores and Antonio.”

Pepa and Félix share a glance before the latter nods. “Of course.”

The door closes, allowing them peace once more. The rain has stopped, and Félix puts down the umbrella, shaking it a few times to get the water off. He’s torn between the relief of having the rest of the kids home so he can finally scoop them all up the way he longs to, and the dread of adding them to this tense scene. He’d rather they avoid the worry, the stress, and the grief, but he knows there is no way to save them from this.

“I don’t want Toñito seeing him like this,” Pepa mutters. “He’ll get nightmares, I know it.”

“I think he’ll need it.”

“I know. I just wish—wish this wasn’t happening.” Lowering her face into her hands, Pepa bows over as if in the middle of a prayer. “I should have just melted all that damn snow.”

Maybe, Félix hopes, when Camilo wakes up, it’ll bring Pepa enough happiness to melt all the snow that’s covered the Encanto in a layer of white.

The door opens once more with a creak. “Mami?” Dolores asks quietly. Her eyes are impossibly wide, with Antonio plastered against her side, face half-hidden by her skirt.

Pepa’s lip trembles at the sight, eyes watering. Her children are home, all of them, and she cannot bear the thought of letting them out of her eyesight ever again. “Ven aquí.”

Dolores, ever the daddy’s girl, goes straight for Félix, collapsing into his arms with a choked squeak. Pepa expects Antonio to come running for her, but her son surprises her. Slowly, he steps into the room and goes straight for the bed. He’s barely tall enough to peek over the edge of the mattress, and, with enormous eyes, he stares at the blanket covering most of his brother, looking for something to hold. When he can’t find Camilo’s hand, the first sob escapes him.

Pepa’s heart breaks at the noise. “Toñito—” She opens her arms just in time for him to jump into them. 

“I’m so—orry!” he wails into the fabric of her dress, already wet from melted snow. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

Above Antonio’s curls, Félix and Pepa share a confused glance. “It’s okay,” Pepa says, pressing kisses against his hair.

As Dolores stiffens in his hold, Félix connects the pieces. “Mijo. Mijo, what are you—”

“He saved me.” Antonio’s voice is garbled, sobs breaking every other word. “Milo saved me.”

“Antonio got onto the ice,” Dolores explains in a hushed tone. “I wasn’t there, but I heard it crack and—and Camilo went out and he saved him, and that’s when—” A pained squeak causes her to tremble again, eyes squeezed shut at the memory of Isabela dragging out his body. He’d been a body, then. She doesn’t know which image is worse: Camilo’s pale face with his blue lips and slack jaw, or the dark water that had kept him hidden.

“It’s my fault,” Antonio whispers. He’s finally raised his head, revealing a wet, anguished face, and Pepa immediately cups it with her hands.

“No. No, cariño, no.” She presses her lips against his forehead. Blinking away tears, she kisses him once more. “You—it’s not your fault. None of this is your fault. And—and when Milo wakes up, he’ll tell you the same thing. Because you have a very brave big brother who loves you very much, and he wasn’t going to let anything happen to you.” 

“But, but, I—“ 

“Shh,” she kisses him again. Harder, more desperate, the thought of his tiny body falling under the ice causing a smattering of snow to escape her cloud. “No. None of that. It’s okay, now. You’re home, with mami and papi, and Milo’s going to be just fine.”

“Mirabel said tía would fix him.”

“She did,” Félix tells him. “She healed his chest and his head. All that’s left is rest.”

With Antonio on her lap, Pepa turns in her seat so they can both look at Camilo. From up here, Antonio can finally see what little of his face remains in view. It’s strange; Camilo had already looked weird without his ruana, but here, stripped of his golden clothes, his curls, and his usual smile, there’s little left to recognize. Sensing his distress, Pepa loops her arms around Antonio in a hug.

“But Camilo is very cold,” Félix continues, reaching out to rest a hand on what he can only hope is Camilo’s knee somewhere beneath the blankets. “And we have to warm him up slowly.”

“And then he’ll wake up?”

“Then he’ll wake up,” Félix says as a promise to his whole family. The words leave his mouth feeling dry.

Dolores lets go of her father to step near the end of the bed. She can hear Camilo’s breathing, his heartbeat. Thesilence will haunt her for a long time. When Bruno had broken the surface with Camilo in his arms, she’d felt relieved. It wasn’t until they’d dragged him onto land that she understood what was missing.

While she remembers the day she heard her brother’s heartbeat for the first time, the days before are hazy memories, full of sounds she was still learning to differentiate. She’d been an only child then, not realizing anything was missing until his hummingbird heart pierced the din and burrowed inside her own.  

Today—

She never wants to experience that silence again. Her delicate fingers brush against his cheek, caressing a freckle. “I’m sorry, too.”

“Dolo—”

“I’m the oldest,” she says, raising her head to meet her parents’ stares. “And I left them behind.”

“No.” Pepa shakes her head, clutching Antonio against her chest. “This is not on you. And—and it doesn’t matter. Camilo matters. Now matters. I have all of my niños home, and I couldn’t be more grateful. Your brother just needs to regain his strength. Ay, no—”

Raindrops are falling again, and she has to let go of Antonio to wave the cloud away from Camilo. Félix has opened the umbrella in a matter of seconds.

“Get out of the rain,” he gently tells Dolores, who immediately frowns.

“Papá.”

“We just need to wait now. We’ve got it handled.”

“Do you think he’ll wake up soon?” Antonio asks him, sounding so hopeful it makes Félix’s heart twinge. But it’s good. It’s good that his son dares to be optimistic when he could so easily think the worst.

“Hmm.” Meeting his big brown eyes, Félix winks. “Camilo does like to sleep in.”

“Félix,” Pepa says sharply. She knows Félix, and she knows what he’s trying to do, but she can’t find it in herself to appreciate one of his jokes now.

“We’ll call for you when he stirs,” Félix says instead. “And then we’ll all help spoil him.”

Antonio’s mouth opens, but just as they expect his quiet voice to ask a question, he slams it shut. Before they can probe him about it, Julieta opens the door. “There’s hot soup waiting for you downstairs,” she says, with a nod towards her sobrinos. “It’ll help with the chill.”

She’s carrying a tray with a steaming bowl and a pair of cups, and though Dolores finds it difficult, she knows they must leave to let their tía have full access to Camilo. Reaching for Antonio’s hand, they bid Camilo goodbye with a final, sorrowful glance.

With the newfound space around the bed, Julieta quickly moves to Camilo’s side. She puts down the tray on the bed table, seeking his parents’ eyes. “Any changes?”

“Are there supposed to be changes already?” Pepa asks, so tense that they can feel the air in the room change.

“Not necessarily.”

Julieta puts a hand against Camilo’s skin, humming quietly before she uses her thumb to pull up his eyelid.

“Why isn’t he waking up?” Pepa asks, trying to look over Julieta’s shoulder while she works. “Is it because of the cold? Or—there was blood. On his head.”

She looks down, seeing her hands tremble in her lap. Remembering her mamá’s words, Pepa tightens them into fists and keeps the blizzard at bay. Not now. Even if the memory makes her feel sick to her stomach.

“I healed the wound. His body needs to warm up more than anything, but I can’t say his head isn’t a part of why he’s unconscious. Either way, we have to wait.”

“I don’t—what happened to him? Why was he bleeding?”

Julieta loosens the blanket, just enough for her to wriggle a hand inside to rest against the side of Camilo’s neck. “They aren’t sure,” she says while counting inside her head. “It must have happened in the water. Against the bottom or a rock. Or the ice.”

“It must be the ice. Pobrecito mío.” Pepa leans closer to the bed again, fingers digging into the sheet when she can’t hold her son. “Maybe—maybe when he fell, that’s how he bruised his ribs, too. Against the ice.”

Félix moves with her, still in charge of the umbrella. Soundlessly, he holds up a single finger, and once he meets Julieta’s eyes, he briefly shakes his head. She understands; they are treading on thin ice — and, oh, that metaphor leaves a bitter taste in her mouth now.

“My poor hijo,” Pepa sighs, oblivious to their silent conversation. “Brave hijo.”

Julieta’s face hovers above his mouth again, one hand resting on top of the blanket to feel his chest’s movements.

“What?” Pepa asks, frustration twisting her face into a childish pout when her sister ignores the unspoken question. “I can see you frown.”

“His breathing is slow, but that’s to be expected.” Once done counting, Julieta pulls away from Camilo and turns towards his parents. Her movements are slow, as if invisible weights are dragging down her limbs. “Pepa, I won’t lie to you. I haven’t exactly tried all of this before. I have to handle this one step at a time. And I will,” she says, raising her head with the promise. “His face looks a little better.”

As expected, Pepa brightens with the sound of improvement. Félix and Julieta are both experts in navigating around Pepa’s weather. Alma, though having tried her best since Pepa was born, always comes off too blunt. Bruno…Bruno tried. He still is trying. But Julieta knows how to read Pepa’s expressions, the same way Félix can feel a storm growing before a cloud has appeared. It’s not manipulating, it’s not lying, but they both know when Pepa wants the truth, and when it’s best to delay it.

“I want to get some more liquid in him when he’s ready,” Julieta shares the next step of her plan. “I have hot soup waiting downstairs if this gets cold. I—There isn’t much I can do right now. I’ll hover, but let me know if anything happens.”

“Gracias.”

Grabbing the cups from her tray, Julieta hands them to the couple with an expression that makes it clear they can’t decline the offer. “Tea. For you.”

Félix, personally, would like something stronger — at least once Camilo has woken up, and his chest stops feeling this tight.

“I shouldn’t have let him go,” Pepa mutters into her cup once her sister leaves the room.

“Pepa…”

“He should have stayed home. They—the Encanto is safe. Why would they leave it?” She bites her lip, clutching her cup to where she fears the ceramic might just shatter. “They shouldn’t have left. We shouldn’t have let them leave. I shouldn’t have let Bruno be in charge.”

“Mi—”

“What was he thinking?!” Hot liquid spills over her finger as the wind picks up, angrily tearing at Félix’s umbrella. “I asked him to keep an eye on the children and they come home like—”

Mi vida.”

A shaky breath lets the cloud dissolve. “I know. I know—I know, I just—” The hysteria is looming around her, a pitfall that just takes one misstep to claim her. She needs a clear head — clear skies. “I love my brother, but the man can barely keep himself alive, and now I threw my kids at him and expected him not to mess it up? It’s Bruno. I —this shouldn’t have happened .”

She leaves her seat to lean over the bed again. It feels like an altar; she cannot hold him, cannot grasp what she needs, but she can hope, and she can pray.

“Mi hijo. Oh, mi pobre sol.”

Félix stands behind her, as always, holding the umbrella in time for the rain to fall. “We got him,” he says as he puts a hand on her shoulder. “Casita’s got him. We’ll warm him up.”

Raindrops drum against the umbrella, deafening loud.

Clear skies, clear skies.”

Félix stays silent.


“Bruno.” With every step Mirabel encroaches on her uncle, she begins to understand the severity of the situation. Now, standing right in front of him, between him and the fire, she realizes he isn’t even aware of her presence. He might as well be both blind and deaf. “Bruno—hey.”

Her gentle hand on top of his shoulder is enough to make him jump. “ Mirabel .” His green eyes, filled to the rim with shock and horror, rise to meet hers.

“Hi.” Mirabel gives him a small wave, her smile forced, though it’s a relief to see him acknowledge her presence. “It’s going to be okay. Mamá says he’s going to be fine.”

Bruno furiously shakes his head, hands shooting out of the blankets to clutch his wet hair. “I should have sent him home. I should—”

Mirabel swallows. She understands his train of thought, she truly does (she is already retracing her own steps, trying to find out what she could have done differently), but she also knows her uncle well enough to be aware of the dangers that come from letting his thoughts run wild. “Hey,” she says, giving his shoulder a squeeze. “We were the ones who convinced you not to.”

“A responsible adult wouldn’t have listened to you. You’re kids, and you’re stupid—well, you’re smart, but this was stupid. This was so, so stupid, and it’s my fault.”

They’d laughed at it, how Bruno had been the designated adult. It’d been funny, then. “No, it isn’t—it’s—” Fresh tears are welling up in her eyes again, threatening to stain the glasses her mamá had just cleaned for her. “What if we had sent him back? And Antonio would still have walked onto the ice and…”

Bruno whimpers, and Mirabel realizes she might as well just have kicked him.

“But—but you got him out of the water and Isa—” She tries, only to inhale sharply as the memory of her sister leaned over Camilo. How his body jerked with every forceful push against his chest. “He’s going to wake up, and then we can all apologize and call him stupid, too. Right?”

Her smile hadn’t been strong to begin with, and the only reason she’d tugged her lips upwards had been to comfort her tío, but as she looks into Bruno’s eyes, she sees a shame that goes beyond what she’d feared.

Bruno turns away from her, and while he sometimes struggles to meet Alma’s or Pepa’s eyes, he hasn’t seemed afraid of her since he’d been dragged out of the wall.

Her mamá’s soup is boiling near the fire, the potent smell of broth and herbs enough to make anyone’s mouth water, but right now, Mirabel feels sick to her stomach.

“Did you—Bruno, did you have a vision about this?” The silence is damning, and Mirabel’s eyes go straight to the wall, expecting to find cracks. It feels like something is broken; that what they’ve worked so hard to rebuild is now crumbling. “What—”

“Tío, do you want me to carry you to your roo— Mirabel .” Luisa steps into the kitchen, wearing a new dress, but comes to a halt when she sees her sister. The moment her eyes water, Mirabel has already rushed over to wrap her arms around her.

“You ran,” Mirabel pants, struggling to keep her composure, “ so fast.”

“The snow slowed me down a bit,” Luisa admits thickly, brushing away tears with a quick movement of her hand. The entire way home feels like a blur after being forced to leave her sisters and primos behind. It’d been too painful to think about what she was holding; how the water had seeped through Bruno’s ruana, how none of them had said a word, how she’d feared Camilo would stop breathing again without her noticing. Instead, she’d kept her thoughts on how to keep moving, on every step taken through the snow.

“You were fast enough,” Mirabel tells her, and a shudder runs through Luisa’s tall body. She needed to hear that.

Julieta appears from behind Luisa, placing a hand on her arm. “Girls,” she says, smiling softly at the sight, before her face falls. “Your tía doesn’t know what Isabela had to do, and I don’t want her to hear about it until Camilo is awake. It’s—It’ll be easier, then.”

Mirabel, still cold from the blizzard she’d walked through, winces. “That makes sense.”

“It looked… scary,” Luisa says with a sniff. “When Isabela…”

“But it was exactly what needed to be done,” Julieta says, reaching up to cup her daughter’s cheek. She pats it before turning to face her hermano. “Bruno.”

He cowers like a scared puppy, though Julieta seems unfazed by this.

“Coffee or tea? Don’t give me that look — you are going to your bed, and you are going to drink the whole cup before it gets cold. So, coffee or tea?”

“Coffee,” Bruno says, knowing better than to challenge his sister on this. He grimaces; though tea sounds wonderful for his nerves, he honestly just wants something to keep him awake. He cannot bear to face his dreams right now.

Mirabel opens her mouth, ready to continue her interrogation, but then Julieta shoves a cup into Bruno’s hands just in time for Luisa to pick him up.

“Luisa, please come back down here once he’s settled in,” Julieta calls out as she turns to face the counter where the tiles jump back and forth to greet her.

“Got it.”

Mirabel watches her uncle be swept away, promising herself that she’ll ask him more questions later.

“Soup,” Julieta says, offering her a steaming bowl. It’s not a question, so Mirabel accepts it without resistance.

There might be no injuries to heal, but her mamá’s food always soothes her, anyway.


It’s rare that Félix enters Isabela’s room. When he does, it’s mostly to sweep away stray petals. He doesn’t knock, and his unexpected arrival causes Isabela to look up with widened eyes. She drops the flower she’d been studying with shaking hands, walking towards her door to meet him halfway.

“Tío?” she asks with a raised eyebrow. Her confusion quickly turns into dread. Why else would he come for her? “How is he—”

Félix only hastens his pace, and Isabela lets out a surprised squeak — much like Dolores’ — when he reaches out to grab both of her hands. His calloused skin is warm against her, but his grip is fragile as he leads her hands to his lips, kissing them so gently all she feels is air. “Thank you,” he says shakily, gratitude spilling from him alongside the few tears that trickle down his cheeks. “Thank you.”

Instantly, Isabela tears up as well. “Of course,” she says, at a loss for words. It’s not a situation she ever imagined herself in, and she hates it, loathes it, and wishes it’d never happened. “Tío, I—” But she’s interrupted, all air forced from her lungs as Félix pulls her into a tight hug.

It’s been a while since he’s embraced her like this. Her tío always has some of the best hugs, only beaten by Luisa on the level of bone-crushing. It makes her feel small again, like he could throw her up in the air and catch her the way he’d done when she received her Gift, a shower of petals raining down around them. She wants to bury herself in his arms and never let go; wants to settle in the warmth and safety he provides. Maybe, if he holds her long enough, holds on tight enough, she can pretend today never happened.

When he finally pulls away, she finds she isn’t ready. The urge to burrow her head against his chest and cry as if she were still that little girl is almost overwhelming, but her eyes drift, falling on the bloody spot staining his guayabera and the urge is swept away under a current of nausea. “Tío…”

“Ay.” His hands move to cover the spot as he coughs in sudden discomfort. “Lo siento. You shouldn’t have seen that.”

“It’s okay.” It’s not. Isabela has already thrown out her gloves, still stiff with frozen blood. Her cousin’s blood. Camilo’s blood. 

“No, no, I, uh…I should get changed,” Félix tells her, awkwardly patting at the spot as if it will rid them both of the sight. “Your mamá is feeding the others downstairs. You should join them. It’ll chase the chill out of you.”

“I just,” she takes a deep breath, “I just need a moment.”

Félix nods, reaching out a hand to cup her cheek and gently stroke away the tear that traitorously breaks through her mask. There’s so much more he wants to say, so many things he wants to tell her, praises and affirmations he wants to lay at her feet, but how can he put all of that into mere words when just thinking them threatens to suffocate him under the weight? There aren’t enough words in the world to describe his gratitude.

He settles for a gentle kiss to her forehead. Her skin carries a chill and he pretends he doesn’t feel her shake against him, before quickly backing out of the room to grant her privacy. The decision to pay her a visit had been impulsive to begin with, but he sees the bruises every time he closes his eyes and the idea of what could have happened had his sobrina not been there…

How can he ever thank her enough? He owes her everything; today is merely a start of paying her back.

Oh, how Pepa will squeeze their girl once they dare to give her the full story.

He almost chuckles at the thought as he pushes his wife’s golden door open — the smile on her carved face warming his heart — only to walk right back into a fear so thick he’s choking on it. It’s like slipping off safe ground into ice-cold water.

Pepa is on her knees next to the bed, hands folded in what he believes is a prayer. He watches her lips move, fervent whispers too low for his ears, before one spills from her tongue, louder in her desperation. 

Papá…” It hangs in the solemn air: a plea, a challenge, and — well. 

It’s still a prayer. But mostly, it’s a conversation between a daughter and a father, and Félix silently backs out of the room before he can overhear something he shouldn’t.

Notes:

Sorry for the delay - so much stuff has happened in my life, and so many new stories are being planned.

A big thank you to the amazing Ink for being my beta <3

And thank you for all the lovely support! This story is far from over yet!

Chapter 6: Promises

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Isabela isn’t hungry. She doubts anyone in her family has any appetite left, even with the house full of the wonderful smell of her mother’s cooking. She doesn’t even crave the company of the people gathered around the dining table. Instead, she fights the urge to crawl into bed, to tear the flowers from her hair, and escape from her thoughts.

But her sisters need her. Not to mention Dolores, who’d clung so tightly to her arm the entire way back to the Encanto that it left bruises, trembling and whispering words that were lost to the furious winds.

Deep inside, Isabela knows she needs her sisters, too.

As she walks out on the balcony, having changed into her nightwear for a faster escape to her bed later, she passes a sniffling Antonio and Alma, who keeps a hand on his shoulder. The five-year-old has one hand nestled within her skirt, gripping the fabric and keeping her from stepping out of his reach.

“Buenas noches,” Isabela tells him, recognizing that Alma has tasked herself with putting the youngest family member to bed — a difficult task tonight, Isabela supposes. “Everything will be better in the morning.”

Antonio doesn’t say anything, but wipes his face with his sleeve once more. In one of those unspoken moments where Alma meets her eyes, Isabela sees the gentleness in them. She’d seen it even before the house fell, when those eyes dimmed in Mirabel’s direction. But with Isabela, they’d always been soft with pride. Tonight, they’re filled with so much emotion that it makes Isabela swallow when Alma strokes her arm in passing.

As she reaches the last step on the stairs, she hears Antonio’s door close. For once, her mother isn’t in the kitchen. Instead, it’s her father’s arms that embrace her as she steps inside.

“Mija,” he says, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. His eyes are glistening behind his glasses. “I am so proud of you.”

Félix's hugs are strong enough to bend bones and fill her whole body with a pleasant warmth, but Agustín has a way of moving his slim limbs around her so that she feels she belong there — like she’s fallen into place.

“So much like your mamá,” Agustín says while she makes sure the crumbled flower in his breast pocket blooms once more. “Saving the day.”

“Don’t sell yourself short, papá.”

He snorts, tapping her nose like he did when she was little, before turning back to the stove. As Agustín prepares dinner for Pepa and Félix, Isabela grabs a bowl for herself. All three heads at the dining table snap towards her the moment she enters the room.

“Isa?” Luisa’s lower lip is already trembling.

Isabela takes a seat next to her so that Luisa can wrap an arm around her shoulders. The grip is so tight it almost hurts, but the firmness grounds her, and Isabela gladly leans into it.

Her eyes drift towards her youngest sister, her eyes swollen as she tries to smile. Across the table sits Dolores, gaze facing an untouched bowl of soup. She says nothing, but Isabela has always been good at reading Dolores and her quiet. When she reaches out a hand, Dolores takes it, and it’s a full minute later that she pulls away.

“I don’t think we’ll ever be allowed to leave the Encanto again,” Mirabel sighs half-heartedly. To think of how happy they’d all been at the start of the day.

“Do you think the Miracle just…stops?” Luisa bites her lip, and, in her distraction, the metal spoon bends between her trembling fingers. “At the border? And that’s why something bad could happen to Camilo?”

They all turn to stare at Mirabel, expecting she knows more about the Miracle than the rest of them. She considers it and realizes the thought has never occurred to her before. She hadn’t been afraid to leave the Encanto, but now, looking back, maybe she should have. “I…don’t know,” she admits with a frown.

“I don’t think I want to leave ever again.” Dolores’ voice is a whisper, but it’s the first time she’s spoken since leaving her parents’ room. “And I doubt mami will let Camilo out of her sight after this.”

“He’s going to hate it,” Mirabel pipes up. Her lips twitch like she’s about to smile, but can’t quite find it funny yet. It’ll change once she sees Camilo’s pouting face, though.

“He deserves it,” Dolores says. She’ll gladly help her parents keep track of her little brother from now on, never letting his heartbeat mingle with the background noise again. “I—I want to hear—” She squeezes her eyes shut, and the faint sounds get to her: Agustín’s quiet sniffle, the fabric folding beneath Isa’s hands, the way Mirabel keeps swallowing. “I’ve never hated silence that much before.”

Her primas have nothing to say to that, no proper words of comfort left, but Dolores pushes past it, trying to find the heartbeat she’d prayed so desperately for. She wishes they’d move Camilo out of the bedroom so her Gift can reach him. For once, she wouldn’t mind if the noises from her family kept her up at night.

“I heard him,” she says, followed by a low squeak. “I heard him cough. Then the ice broke.”

“He…he’d shifted into Alejandra,” Mirabel explains, as the only current witness to the accident itself. “Very, very small. And when he’d pushed Antonio away…he became himself. The ice couldn’t bear it and it took—it only took a second. And then he was gone.”

The truth slowly sinks in like cold seeping through their warmest clothes.

“He should have been sent home,” Isabela finally says, hands curled tight to prevent any more unwanted flowers from sprouting. Just like Dolores, she keeps her tone low to keep the conversation quiet and out of the adults’ ears.

“Look.” Mirabel furrows her brows, her determined eyes still glistening with tears as she tells them, “Tío Bruno is already feeling guilty—”

“He should be.”

Isa.”

“We’re all to blame for this. It’s—” Isabela inhales sharply before her gaze falls on Mirabel. “You, Antonio. Camilo. You’re kids, but we’re adults, and we should have known better. We have to reflect on our mistakes.”

Mirabel thinks about how Isabela’s words are almost the same as Bruno’s — and how she’d feel if she knew that.

“Just don’t tear into him, okay? I don’t think he can take that.” His darkened eyes still haunt her: the shame, grief, and secrets hidden within him. She’s already promised herself that she’ll visit him again later and push a little harder to make him talk. “And don’t go around blaming yourself, either. It was an accident.”

Casita agrees with her, apparently, as tiles swing in a nodding fashion.

Despite this, the frown remains on Isabela’s face. It’s hardened in that familiar way they haven’t seen since the disaster of a wedding proposal. 

“Do you really think Camilo is going to wake up and blame you?” Mirabel tries and watches as her sister crosses her arms.

“No,” Isabela admits. “But only because he’s stupid.”

“Very stupid,” Mirabel adds, and a sad, weak laugh claws its way up her throat. Resting her face against her hands, she takes comfort in the simple fact that at least the exhaustion will make it possible to fall asleep tonight.

“I just wish we could skip ahead in time,” Luisa’s voice sounds faint, almost as if she’s speaking to herself. “To a point where everything’s okay and normal again.”

The wish is universal, and while Dolores starts to cry once more, and Isabela quickly pulls her in for a hug, Mirabel looks upwards towards her uncle’s tower. Speaking of time…

Tomorrow. She’ll talk to him tomorrow.


Bruno is the next name on Julieta’s list. He’s not meant to be at the bottom, but there have been many souls to tend to. After having Luisa carry Bruno to his room, she’d tended to her daughters, tried to get poor Dolores to drink something warm, and asked her mamá to take care of Antonio. Then she’d checked on Camilo again and again, finding relief in how the cold has left his body, before somehow finding the time to ask Agustín to bring some dinner to Pepa and Félix, trusting the latter to bully her sister into eating something.

Now it’s time to visit her brother because she knows him well enough to know he won’t take care of himself. It’s a good thing the Miracle declared her the caretaker of the whole Encanto because Lord knows no one else could have managed.

He’s emptied his cup of coffee, and Julieta brings a replacement as she sits beside Bruno on his bed. He’s still wrapped up in a blanket that is pulled tightly over his head, as if he can hide from the world beneath it.

Bruno drinks the coffee with no objection, though his fidgeting increases when Julieta doesn’t make a move to leave the room. He’s knocking his knuckles against the wooden board of his bed by time she finally sighs.

“Bruno, I have something to ask you.” As the knocking grows more frantic, she reaches over to slide her thin fingers between his. “Did you have a vision about Camilo?”

His hand grows limp in her hold, and he swallows twice. “No.”

“Bruno.”

“I didn’t have a vision about Camilo,” Bruno insists, and for a split second, he turns his head towards her so she can meet his big, teary eyes. The green color is so deep, it feels like it could swallow her. Then he’s facing the floor again, mumbling, “I promised Pepa. After—after Dolores—”

Julieta remembers that storm. Pepa’s rage had been terrifying, but it’d been Dolores’ quiet tears that had left the biggest impression. It hadn’t escaped Julieta the way her sobrina would look at Isabela afterward, silently wondering why only one of them had received a good vision.

It’d taken weeks before Bruno joined them for dinner once the storm had calmed down, leaving behind only bitter winds.

“I believe you,” Julieta says and feels his hand twitch in her hold.

“Do you want me,” Bruno has to force every word past his teeth, a low whine escaping the back of his throat, “to have a vision about Camilo?”

“No.” There is no hesitation in her voice as that catastrophe plays inside her mind. Pepa’s fury is one thing — her devastation is another. And Bruno cannot last long as the bringer of bad news once more. “Bruno, please. Even if Pepa asks you—”

“She won’t.”

“But even if she did.” She tugs his hand closer to herself, forcing her brother to turn and face her. The wet trails down his cheeks don’t escape her notice. “Promise me, Bruno. We need to be careful. You know Pepa is…”

There are many words to describe Pepa. She is wonderful, first and foremost. Félix will have a whole song and dance ready about her amazing attributes. To Julieta, her sister has been a pillar of support throughout her entire life, and by leaning against it, she knows both its strengths and its weaknesses.

Both she and Bruno have witnessed Pepa struggle — not only with her Gift, but her own emotions. They’ve been yelled at, hugged, defended; faced their sister’s wrath as she glared them down and stood behind her as she bowed to the glares of others. They’ve watched her bask in the praise for her laughter and sunshine, and they’ve seen her curl in on herself, trembling as her desperation and sadness were laid bare for the whole Encanto to see. Pepa is their sister and they love her to the moon and back, but loving her is to love her storms as much as her sunshine. 

“I know,” Bruno whispers and pulls up his legs so he can hug them. He’s so small, her hermanito, easily knocked over and thrown off balance by Pepa’s strong winds.

Julieta is better at standing her ground, but then again, she hasn’t faced the brunt of Pepa’s anger the most.

“Bruno, I know Pepa is upset, and who can blame her?” She wonders how she’d fare herself had it been one of her girls and prays that she never finds out. She can’t imagine feeling worse than this. “But once Camilo wakes up, she will want to thank you.”

Bruno shakes his head, a short, bitter sound leaving his mouth at the mere thought.

“Give her time,” Julieta says and squeezes his hand.

“Will Camilo wake up soon?”

“I’ve healed his injuries. He’s getting warmer. I can’t say when — his body decides that — but soon. I hope.”

“And you’re sure?” Bruno turns his head to watch her, and though his lips tremble, his gaze remains steady. “That he will wake up?”

Once upon a time, Julieta had looked into her brother’s glowing eyes and been in awe of the knowledge in them, all from the Gift of seeing the unknown. As the years passed, the heavy burden of knowing too much darkened the glow she once found so beautiful.

She sees that in Bruno’s eyes now — knowledge accompanied by shame and fear. It makes her blood run cold, and she opens her mouth to call him out on it, only to find that no words will leave her lips. 

For once, Bruno doesn’t look away, and Julieta has to break the gaze between them. “You should visit him,” she says while lowering her stare so it lands on a red smear on her apron, left behind by bloody fingers. “He’s not so cold anymore.”

“I can’t.”

“You should.”

“I saw him dead. Not in a vision, but in the water. Our sobrino. And I—” Bruno groans, tearing his hand loose to pull at his tangled hair instead. “I need to make myself forget.”

Julieta’s brows furrow as he leans in on himself, reaching for the nearest piece of wood to knock his already reddened knuckles against. She sighs; she knows a losing battle when she sees one. 

“Leave my aguardiente alone, then. Those bottles are for celebrations,” she tries with a hint of a smile. It quickly fades when Bruno winces at a soft nudge against his shoulder. “Like when Camilo wakes up.”

Three quick thuds, and Bruno goes from knocking the bed railing to wringing his hands so tightly she can hear the joints pop. “I have a headache,” he stutters, face half-hidden by the shadows. “I—I have to be a—a…”

“Alone?” Julieta finishes for him. “You don’t have to be alone any longer. You understand that?”

Bruno nods, and the blanket falls further down his face.

They are both quiet. Bruno with his lie, and Julieta with her hesitation. She wants to trust him; she wants to believe that he’s better…

But her fingers itch, and there’s a sister she needs to take care of, too.

“I need to tend to Camilo,” she says, trusting her brother not to disappear the moment she turns her back to him. “Be gentle with yourself, and know that we are here to help you.”

When she closes the door behind her, she can still hear the echo of knuckles against wood.


A slim hand rests in Julieta’s palm to be examined. He takes after his mamá, she muses quietly as she holds out every fingertip to check for frostbite. Camilo appears perfectly unharmed. The cold lingers in his flesh, but there’s a difference between cold and freezing. His once blue lips are now pale, and Julieta hums affirmatively at the sight. She presses her lips against the limp hand before tucking it beneath the blanket once more.

“He’s looking better,” she says as she unwraps his head. He’ll need the blankets and piles of warmed cloth, but the need to swaddle him to the point of restricted limbs has passed. It’ll be gentler on the eyes, his body looking asleep rather than prepared for a pyre, and hopefully a gentler awakening. “There’s some color in his face, too.” 

Pepa’s dark cloud lightens in color, and the temperature rises a few more degrees in her excitement. For the first time since the news, Félix has pulled his lips so far up that they reveal his white teeth and careful joy.

They hold each other even closer, with Pepa nuzzling her face against her husband’s throat as both of their bodies tremble with a sigh of relief. 

“Camilo,” Julieta says, her firm tone raised to gain his attention. It reminds her of all the times she’s had to call his name in the kitchen to warn him against running near the fire. He’d listened, then. Now he remains limp, and when she pulls up an eyelid with her thumb, she can only see the whites of his eyes.

“Wake up, por favor.”

“He’s getting better, Pepa. We just need to give him time.”

Pepa pouts, and the childlike innocence almost makes Julieta hug her once more if Félix hadn’t beaten her to it. 

“I can’t keep doing this. The waiting is driving me insane.”

There’s no storm. No snow or lightning, but the cloud casts a shadow upon her, and there’s no use in trying to chase it away. Félix knows this, and while his wife’s self-control impresses him (but does not surprise him; the current calm winds result from a lifetime of painful practice paying off), he keeps the umbrella resting against his chair.

“There’s nothing else to do, Pepi,” he says. “I doubt telling him to hurry will work.” It’s never worked before. Félix wants to smile at the memory of all the times Camilo has groaned “five more minutes” into his pillow, but the fear has stretched across those precious moments and tainted them.

“Can I bring you anything?”

Félix looks up at Julieta with a raised eyebrow. “Have you eaten?” he asks, and he doesn’t truly need an answer; he knows Julieta with her big heart and her selflessness. 

Julieta sighs, and he will take that as a no. “We’re trying to send the kids to bed,” she says, letting them in on what’s been happening outside their own little circle of despair and love; a limited space where only the now and here matters. “I know they want to see him, but I’ve told them to wait. Antonio is sleeping, but I’ll let Dolores in. I’m sure she wants to wish you a good night.”

Pepa nods without removing her tired eyes from Camilo. It’s Félix who reaches out to pat Julieta’s hand as she heads for the exit. “Gracias.” They owe her, and just like he’d tried to thank Isabela in the most sincere fashion, he will make sure Julieta knows how much they appreciate her once all of this is over.

“It’ll be alright, mi amor,” he promises Pepa again, who cannot keep her hands still; not now when she can finally touch their boy. She keeps herself busy by stroking his hair, adjusting the blanket, and touching his cheek. “He just needs some rest.”

They all do. This is becoming more and more obvious as the stress and fear take their toll on their bodies. They’re too old for this, Félix wants to say with a playful snort, but he can’t quite find the mood for that. The fear is a heavy burden to carry; its layer is cold and thick, much like snow, and it mutes the joy that usually flows so easily within him. Félix likes to imagine it’s the same way his family feels about the magic — as something strong and warm belonging to you, as natural as your blood and beating heart.

But now is not the time to be tired. Félix has to be strong — for his wife, Camilo, and the rest of his kids.

They sit in silence — there are no more promises to be given, no more reassurances to be heard — except for Pepa’s quiet humming as she tends to Camilo’s curls. Félix hopes he got rid of enough of the blood, if only for his wife’s sake.

Dolores enters the room like a ghost, quiet and pale. “Mi vida,” Félix calls for her, brows furrowing as he takes in her haunted expression. “Did you eat anything?”

She squeaks out something that might be confirmation, before walking past him and making a beeline for her brother. Any other day, and her clear care for Camilo would warm his heart, but right now all it does is break it further. 

Alma follows after her and they all watch as Dolores sweeps delicate fingers along her brother’s cheek. “Wake up soon, Milo,” she says before quickly kissing his forehead.

“Julieta brought us good news,” Alma says and moves to stand by her daughter’s side. “Our boy is strong. And very brave.” 

When Pepa reaches for her hand, Alma is quick to offer it, rubbing soothing circles in her palm like she’s done a dozen times before. She’s made mistakes, yes, but she’s also weathered through every storm, and this time, she will make sure all her family members remain when the winds die down. “He made his family very proud.”


Julieta knows what Agustín is going to say before he opens his mouth. 

“You need to rest.” Slim arms slip around her waist before she can try to get away. “Amor, you’ve been working all night.”

Even Casita turns against her now as the clock swings back and forth on the wall, revealing it’s been hours since it struck midnight.

She’s tired, yes, as they all are, but Camilo hasn’t woken up yet.

“They’ve needed me.” Julieta leans back against him with a sigh, fighting the urge to cave into the exhaustion and let him be her pillar, to let him keep her upright when she has nothing left to give. To fall asleep and escape tonight’s fears and duties. “They still need me.”

“He will need you when he wakes up. When something changes. And you need to be ready, then.”

The bowl of capers is still sitting untouched near the windowsill. She’d put them aside, expecting Camilo to thank her for the thoughtfulness, as always. Dinner should have been filled with laughter and chatter, with Camilo wrinkling his nose in teenage exaggeration every time the bowl passed by him. She hadn’t expected this. Never this. Casita, sensing her grief, is quick to tilt a tile and dispose of the capers in the nearest bin.

Julieta closes her eyes, and it takes a long time before she finds the strength to open them again. When she finally does, Agustín has moved around her to hold her tired head between his hands.

“You can’t do more for him right now,” he whispers as she leans into his touch. “You need sleep, too.”

“What I need is for Camilo to wake up.” 

“And he will.” Agustín brushes her cheek with his thumb. “But amor, you can’t keep this up. The dishes,” he nods towards the sudsy stack of bowls she’d been cleaning, “will keep till tomorrow.” 

“It’s already tomorrow,” she murmurs, trying to be funny, but lacking the energy to do so. Still, Agustín — blessed, wonderful Agustín — huffs with amusement anyway, as he always does even when her jokes are terrible and the mood wrong. 

“Not what I meant.”

She knows that. Of course she does, but, “I can’t, mi vida. I have to—I have to get this done. I have to stay awake. I have to make sure—” 

“Julieta.” He tilts her head to make her look at him. “You have to sleep. Please. This right here, these dishes, they aren’t important. You are. What is it you’re always telling me? That a good healer knows to take care of themself before taking care of others?” 

“Don’t do this.” 

“Do what? Be right?”

She shakes her head, weakly attempting to pull away, but unable to do so. He’s right and she knows it. “A good healer also puts others first.” 

“And you have. All day.” He rests his forehead against hers and she soaks up his warmth, involuntarily relaxing against him. “But there’s nothing left to do, and it’s time to take care of yourself.”

“I can’t.” 

“You have to.” Agustín leans back, taking in the sallow skin and sheen in her eyes, and knows it reflects his own. “One more check. One more and then you go to sleep.” 

“But—”

“Juli.” 

Her body sags against him and he knows he’s won, though the victory is hollow. She nods into his palms. “Okay. One more check.” 

“Then bed.” 

She sighs. “Then bed.” 

They leave the half-washed dishes to soak as they half-lead, half-lean on each other across the courtyard and up the stairs to Pepa and Felix’s room. Little has changed since the last visit, but their stomachs still drop as they notice the lack of movement from the bed. Their sister and brother-in-law watch through bright eyes as they enter and Julieta tries to hide her disappointment behind a reassuring smile. 

“Don’t worry. I’m just checking in.” 

Julieta crosses her fingers as she looks Camilo over once more. She’d hoped to see his hazel eyes at least once before caving into exhaustion, but the boy is still dead to the world. Her only consolation is that, for all his rest, at least it looks like true slumber and not the corpse-like state of earlier. Camilo might not be awake, but at least he isn’t cold any longer.

“Is there anything we should look for?” Félix asks with his hands outspread, ready to grasp any solution she can give him. “Can we rouse him?”

“Look for movements. Anything.”

“But he hasn’t moved at all,” Pepa whines with her fingers entangled in Camilo’s hair. Her cloud rumbles ever so slightly while a pained noise claws its way up her throat despite Félix’s immediate embrace.

Agustín watches the couple with a misty stare. Oh, how he doesn’t envy them. His heart is shattered, and yet, he knows the already unfathomable pain must feel even worse when it’s a parent’s heart that is bleeding.

“Go to bed,” he urges them, and he knows they will be even harder to convince than Julieta.

“I can’t.” The cloud growls once more as fury brings back light to Pepa’s reddened eyes. How dare he. How dare he even suggest such a thing when she knows where her place is: right next to her wounded son. “He needs me to be there when—”

“And you need to have your strength and wits about you when that happens. No reason for him to open his eyes if you just nod off the next second,” Agustín continues gently. “It looks like an already long night is going to be even longer. Let me sit with him. I’ll wake you up at the slightest change.”

Shaking her head once more, Pepa’s already tangled braid almost comes undone after hours of frantic stroking by shaking fingers. She whimpers, hiding her face in her hands while Félix rests his hand on her back.

“Pepa,” he says, voice low and steady. “We need it.”

“He’s my son, I—”

“He’s our hijo, too,” Agustín says with a small smile that still offers so much comfort. “I’m just going to steal him for a bit.”

The final blow comes from Julieta, who puts her hands on Pepa’s shoulders to soothe her. And though Pepa finally caves in, she also pulls away from her sister’s touch to lean over her son instead. “Mami loves you so much,” she whispers, kissing his brow, his cheek, his nose. “Wake up soon, mi sol.”

Félix helps her stand up on shaky legs, and now, having taken the first step away from the bed, they come at a loss for what to do next.

“Sleep in our room.”

“Juli.”

“Please. Get some sleep. I’ll stay in the nursery and swap with Agustín if needed. Just for tonight.”

Pepa hovers near the bed, whispering wishes of pleasant dreams and swift recovery and so many promises of love, while Félix grabs some necessities from the closet.

“Dulces sueños,” Félix tells Camilo with a last kiss to the forehead before he leads his distraught wife out of the room.

Julieta counts the steady pulse beneath her fingers, and even when she’s found her reassurance, she cannot bring herself to let go of Camilo just yet. It’s such a comfort, touching his skin and not being reminded of snow.

“Sleep,” Agustín tells her again. “I’ve got him.”

Julieta trusts her husband, and with a final kiss goodnight, Agustín is alone with his nephew. He falls into the chair by the bed, still holding onto Félix’s warmth after so many hours of waiting.

“Mijo,” he sighs while he removes his glasses to clean them. Sentimentality is such a quick way to stain one’s glasses. “Always causing trouble, eh? Always making us worry. It’s because we love you so much.”

Reaching beneath the blanket, he finds Camilo’s hand and gives it a quick pat.

They might not share blood, but he is Agustín’s hijo. He loves his daughters with all his heart, but it’s no secret that the bros of Casita, as Félix calls them, were overjoyed when Camilo was born. 

They might be two sets of parents, but they’ve raised their children together.

And this shared love for Camilo makes the seconds, the minutes, the hours of waiting pass so painfully slow.

It seems fitting how the first sign of life comes with the rise of the sun, the orange glow falling silently through the window.

Agustín looks up, having drifted to the thought of returning to his piano soon. It’s been a while since he’s played, and the memories of a giggling Camilo slapping the keys with eager hands had been enough to make him drift into daydreams. When he’d grown older, right before he’d received his Gift, Camilo had performed his little shows to the tune of Agustín’s music. It’d be nice to do it again. 

“Camilo?” he whispers, leaning over the bed as he sees the body tremble. He expects a twitching hand, some fluttering eyelids, maybe even a hoarse voice calling out…

But Camilo’s eyes are closed, and Agustín’s smile freezes as the reason for the movement dawns on him.

It’s a cough that jolts Camilo’s unresponsive body, and it doesn’t just sound painful — it breaks Agustín’s heart all over again.

Notes:

Once again, thank you to the amazing Ink for beating.

And thank you for all the amazing support!

Originally, this story was only meant to be around four chapters long. It should be obvious that this is no longer the case. Hah, we've only just about reached the sick-fic part of the story which is gonna last a long while (and there'll be a comfort arc, too, I promise). The plot is all planned, with different characters' arcs tangled into it, but with this in mind, I plan to do some over all changes. The title will stay the same, however, do not be surprised if the summary for "What the Sun Melts Through" changes, as well as the chapter titles and tags. This no longer feels like a "simple" whump/angst fic, but while the story surely focuses on the incident, this has become more of a character study - therefore, tags (and character tags) and the summary needs to be updated. The story itself will not change - if you see any revision to previous chapters, it should only be fixing of typos etc.

I haven't settled on the new summary yet, but I just want to warn you before it's changed.

I hope you enjoy this piece! The next chapter is coming along nicely, and I have several later parts of the story written (and I wrote too many snippets for a bad end au of this. Woops. Might release them one day), but I am swamped with work lately (we're talking 50+ hours a week here) and I don't have much time to write. This will all change in a month or so, but please be patient with me.

Take care! And thank you! <3

Chapter 7: Trust

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Félix dreams of strong winds. They carry him through town, force him down alleyways, across rooftops, and around corners. They carry a sound with them, faint but familiar; a burst of laughter.

There. 

In the corner of his eye, there’s a fluttering of yellow fabric. It’s gone with every turn, only to tease him with a flicker a moment later. 

There. 

Félix spins. He stumbles. He lunges.

The ruana is always just out of reach.

His empty hands twitch around phantom fabric as he wakes. Despite the warm weight of his wife against his back, a chill lingers in the air. It’s a harsh reminder of what awaits him outside the safety of dreams.

The ruana is gone, and Camilo is still asleep — he must be, since no one has come to wake them. Félix closes his eyes again and wonders if this is a good thing. No news means good news. That’s the way an optimistic person would look at it, and so Félix tells himself that’s the case.

He keeps still, hardly daring to move a muscle, but he opens his eyes to stare at the glowing door. He expects it to open any minute, for Agustín to come running, for something to happen — for better or worse.

But let it be the better, he prays silently, and feels Pepa shift against him. 

It’s a relief that exhaustion claimed her in the end. She needs the rest, even when she denies it. Camilo is the same, in so many ways just like his mamá, and Félix hopes that all this waiting will pay out in the end — that Camilo will open his eyes and they’ll sparkle with life and mischief and energy. He’ll lament the bedrest of course, moaning and groaning through it as he did last week’s cold, but Félix will take it all if it means he’s well enough to be restless. Restless means energy which means movement, and Félix has never been so grateful that his son inherited this one trait from him as he is now. 

It’s that same lack of patience that has him caving in as he leaves the bed with a sigh, every movement slow and careful to not wake up his wife. He hopes Pepa dreams of a calm breeze, of sunshine and blue skies.

He leaves the bedroom that doesn’t belong to them and closes Julieta’s door behind him. His eyes dart toward Camilo’s door — still glowing, still golden, though Félix’s treacherous eyes search for flaws and wonder if it’s a tad dimmer than yesterday — before he treks to his own.

Well, not his, but after twenty-five years it may as well be. Félix has never had the experience of walking to his door, but he’d seen his children hold their breath as they reached for the doorknob, their inner being and future laid bare for the whole Encanto to see. The excitement in their eyes just barely masking the fear.

Inhaling deeply, Félix opens the door, his eyes closed as he tries to find the courage to face what awaits him on the other side.

“—I’m not sure. I’m just—” Agustín sounds too alarmed, words too rushed and frantic. “I was just happy he wasn’t cold. I didn’t check—”

“Pobrecito,” Julieta sighs. She’s blocking any sight of Camilo with her body, her nightgown brushing the ground as she leans over him. 

“I—” Agustín looks up, one hand raised to rub his tired eyes, but when he notices the new presence in the room, he jolts, almost dropping his glasses in surprise. “Félix.”

Félix comes closer, and though he doesn’t ask, the question still hangs in the air. They both move aside for him, allowing him a clear path to the bed.

Something’s changed. He sees it clearly the closer he gets; Camilo is still pale, but his cheeks are redder than Pepa’s hair. Sweat is covering every bit of his scrunched-up face, white lips parted as he inhales at a steady rhythm.

“He has a fever,” Julieta explains, just in time for Camilo’s limp body to jolt in a painful coughing fit. “And his cough has returned.”

Camilo stills, eyes closed, while Félix hovers, hands outstretched but not close enough to touch his warm skin.

“What does that mean?” Félix asks, stinging eyes searching for Julieta. “I need you to explain it to me.”

Her hands twitch at her sides, longing to wring the apron she’s usually wearing. “There is an infection in his lungs,” she says, voice calm and face straight — while her brother had earned the title of being the Bearer of Bad News a long time ago, she’s delivered plenty herself throughout the years. “And that means Camilo has to fight even harder to come back to us.”

“But you can fix it.” Félix sways on his feet as if fighting one of Pepa’s winds. He can hear it roar in his ears, leaving him light-headed. “Right?” He licks his lips, trying his best to swallow despite the sudden dryness in his mouth.

Julieta meets his desperate stare without a single flinch. “I have herbs to help with the fever,” she says, her fingers still wrapped around Camilo’s thin wrist. “And we need to get some liquids in him.”

Félix’s wide-eyed gaze moves from the hand, up the arm that’s still hidden by blankets, to take in his son’s face — the way his lower lip trembles, the drop of sweat rolling from the bridge of his nose, how visible his freckles are on the pale skin. A gulp of air gets stuck in Félix’s throat, mouth open in silent despair.

Julieta’s eyes are on Camilo — Agustín, however, sees his brother-in-law about to faint on the spot. “Félix.” His hand is outstretched, but the movement comes to a sudden halt when Félix’s burning glare snaps toward him.

“You said you would wake us up if something happened.”

Agustín stutters. The words won’t leave his open mouth — they stumble against each other, ending up as an indistinct sound from the back of his throat.

“He fetched me.” Julieta tucks Camilo’s hand back beneath the blanket. “To deal with the issue. We would have woken you up the moment I finished examining him.”

“A lot has changed,” Félix speaks through numb lips. “While we slept. We—” 

He’d convinced Pepa to cave into her exhaustion. He’d rubbed her back and told her it’d be okay. He’d thought of Camilo with his eyes open, staring up at them, bright and alert.

Félix’s brows furrow as his expression struggles to remain constant. The conflict pulls at his wrinkles, washing away the sadness of his frown, replacing it with something steelier, colder.

“You should have told me.”

Agustín’s gaze falls to the floor as Félix advances.

“I understand tiptoeing around Pepa.” When the other man opens his mouth to protest, Félix holds up a hand. There is no anger in his eyes, reddened from exhaustion, but his pained frown is worse than any thunderstorm. “No. I am asking you to be gentle with her. But me? You make me a promise, I expect you to keep it.”

“L—lo siento. But I promise we weren’t going to keep it a secret. We just needed to be sure what we had to tell you — before we could tell you.”

“He’s my boy.” Félix’s thumb presses against his nightshirt, stained by black smears from Pepa’s mascara. “I need to be here for him.”

Swallowing despite the painful lump in his throat, Agustín finds the strength to look up again. “Of course.”

“The next time,” Félix says slowly, voice trembling with something Agustín doesn’t want to name, “you wake me up.”

It hadn’t been a conscious decision to let them sleep. Instead, Agustín had panicked, almost stumbling over his chair in his hurry to wake up his wife. Bring help first — his miracle of a wife would make things better. He’d wanted so badly for Félix and Pepa to wake up to good news, to a groggy boy with a small smile on his face, muttering for his parents as they’d rush in to hug and kiss him.

But Félix is right. Of course he is. They deserve any update, good or bad, and while he’d meant no harm, Agustín can recognize his mistake. “Sí,” he says thickly.

Félix’s burning glare finally moves away, turning to Julieta instead. “How bad is this?”

“I’ve dealt with much worse fevers,” she answers truthfully, preparing a wet rag to put on his forehead. “But I don’t want it to climb.” 

Félix nods absently. He wants the same, but doesn’t know what he can do to help. The sense of uselessness flares up again when he stares at Julieta’s hands wringing the rag. He’ll have to trust the Miracle then, and his family.

“Can you fetch Pepa? If we can rouse him a bit, maybe we can get some water in him. He’s going to need it.”

That is something he can do. Félix runs a hand through Camilo’s sweaty curls before turning around on the spot, not sparing Agustín a look as he marches out of the room.

The house is quiet. Even Casita remains still in these early morning hours, letting the residents sleep in. It’s well-deserved after a day like yesterday. Right now, Félix almost wishes he’d stayed in bed. But it wouldn’t have changed anything — Camilo would still be asleep, and now sick, when he found the strength to get up.

A door creaking open breaks the silence. Mirabel’s curly head peeks out, and when she spots Félix, she makes a beeline for him. 

“Tío!” she says, smiling. “Good morning! I was thinking, do you think we can visit Camilo today? I’ve been up all—”

“Not—” Félix hesitates, looking away from her hopeful eyes. “Not right now.”

Her face falls immediately, smile withering into a worried frown. “Oh.” While it’s clear she understands just what his solemn tone means, her mouth opens as if she’s about to ask something — then she bites her lip, stopping herself.

“Can you—” Félix clears his throat. “Mira, do me a favor and look out for Antonio?”

“Of course,” Mirabel is quick to promise, finding her smile once more. Félix looks more tired than she’s ever seen him, and if he’s running on fumes, so she’ll share what little energy she has left.

Babysitting Antonio is nothing new, but she knows it’ll be a harder task than usual. Antonio will have questions she won’t have the answers to — answers she longs for herself — but if she has to wait to check on Camilo, it’s nice to have a chore to pass the day.

Félix moves past her, into her mamá’s room, where they must have slept in for the night. The lack of delicious smells from the kitchen makes it clear that, for once, Julieta is not busy cooking. She has to tend to Camilo, of course, and this means Mirabel can make herself helpful by preparing breakfast.

She lights up at the idea of how to ease everyone’s burdens, just for a moment, and heads down the stairs with a determined look in her eyes. Just as she reaches the last step, a loud bang makes her head snap upwards. 

Pepa has slammed open her door, running the short distance between her sister’s and her own room. An icy wind follows her, blowing all the doors open as Pepa practically flies into the bedroom, Félix following her heels.

The incident wakes up the rest of the house, and people are quick to look out of their newly opened doors, hugging themselves as the chill spreads through the air. Dolores lets out an alarmed squeak before rushing to Antonio’s room, closing the door behind her.

Alma hesitates in the doorway, already fully dressed, before following them inside Pepa’s room. There’s no sign of Bruno as the remaining sisters gather in the kitchen, all of them wearing heavy frowns.

“Do you know anything?”

Mirabel shakes her head at Isabela’s question. “Tío said we can’t visit him yet.”

“...Then we wait,” Isabela says, while Luisa bites her lip. The oldest sister takes charge, and Luisa and Mirabel let her, grateful for her instructions as she quickly delegates preparations for breakfast. Casita helps, finding cutting boards and bowls for them to use. The sight of a stack of unused plates makes Mirabel pause, knowing Camilo’s chameleon-decorated one is somewhere amongst the pile.

They all hear movement on the balcony, halting their movements until a tired-looking Agustín wanders into the kitchen. He seems surprised by their presence, pulled out of his own heavy thoughts when they gather around him, unspoken questions hanging in the air.

“Camilo is still asleep,” Agustín says stiffly. His hands finally let go of the tie he’s been trying to adjust so he can shift his glasses, running his knuckles against tired eyes. “And we think it’s best you all wait to see him until he’s awake.”

His daughters share a glance. Agustín’s lack of reassurance and smile doesn’t go unnoticed.

“Papá,” Isabela says carefully. “Are you okay?”

“Sí. As well as anyone. Just—just tired.”

It’s obvious that he’s exhausted, but it’s just as easy for them to tell that the word “just” is a lie.

“Get some sleep, papá.” Isabela runs a hand down his arm before turning him towards the exit. “We’ll prepare breakfast.”

He nods, leaving with no objections, and once he has his back turned, the sisters share a worried glance. Something’s happened — something the adults won’t tell them, and the not knowing is the worst part, they think.

Isabela talks them all into eating a small plate of breakfast, even Antonio and Dolores, who’ve huddled together in the courtyard. They leave the rest for the remaining family, hoping they’ll eventually take a break to eat.

Alma is the first one to join them, thanking Isabela when she’s handed a bowl. She doesn’t falter under the many glances on her, but tries her best to meet all of their eyes. “Julieta thinks Camilo might wake up within hours. There’s been much improvement,” she says with a strained smile.

“Then why is mami not happy?” Antonio says, leaning into Dolores’ embrace as they shiver from the cold. Though Pepa’s wind left no snow, the chill lingers.

“She will be,” Alma promises them, “when Camilo wakes up.”

Antonio ends up pushing his food back and forth on his plate despite Dolores’ insistence, and to be good examples, the girls eat despite their lack of hunger.

While they clean the plates — including the stack from yesterday — Alma clears her throat.

“This is not a task. This is your choice. You will have no chores until we’re all in a clearer state of mind,” she says with her hands raised. “But. I know the waiting can be hard. Will be hard. So if you wish to go into town for a distraction, know that you are not required to stay here.”

The girls look at each other. They want to stay, and they want to help, but at the moment, there isn’t much they can actually do but comfort and encourage each other.

“Maybe,” Luisa says while sniffing, “a trip out would be good. I kind of want to punch some stuff.”

When Isabela and Luisa leave the kitchen to convince Dolores and Antonio to join them, Mirabel finds herself rooted to the spot. Alma’s face is difficult to read, stoic but calm, though her eyes have hardened in an unnervingly familiar manner.

“Abuela?” Mirabel swallows, stomach twisting at the very thought. “Is Camilo…?”

Alma reaches out to put a hand on her shoulder, giving it a comforting squeeze. “Have faith in your mamá,” she tells her, using her free hand to stroke her cheek. When Mirabel leans into her touch, she gives her a smile, soft and sad. “And your primo.”


Clearskiesclearskiesclearskiesclea —” The words blend into a desperate whine, clawing and tearing its way up Pepa’s throat. “Pobrecito. Niñito mio, oh Camilo. How did we let this happen?”

Pepa wants to crawl into the bed to be as close to Camilo as possible. Her forehead presses against his, feeling its warmth, while she listens to his raspy breathing and quickened heartbeat. It’s there. She can feel it, she can hear it, and that’s all she has to cling to in this never-ending nightmare.

“His lungs had just about recovered. They were prone to another infection. It’s—”

Pepa looks over her shoulder in one quick movement, wild eyes looking past an unraveled braid to stare at her sister. “So what,” she says through gritted teeth, “do we do?”

“I want him to drink,” Julieta says firmly. A cup of water stands ready on the table, but it’d been tricky enough to get a spoonful of soup in him yesterday. Magical food is one thing, but all bodies need water — even before the fever became a threat. “I believe you can help rouse him. He usually listens to his mamá.”

She tries to smile, but it quickly disappears when her suggestion comes true; Pepa holds Camilo’s head up by her palms, tears gathering along trembling eyelashes as she begs for him to wake up.

“Camilo.” When her voice breaks, Pepa bites her lip, inhaling deeply before she tries once more, louder this time. “Camilo, Camilito. Listen to me. Listen to your mami. Can you hear me?”

Félix hovers near the bed, and his hand shoots out to touch his wife when they see Camilo’s eyelids flutter. They both hold their breaths as Camilo’s heel moves against the sheet, right before his lips twitch.

“Wonderful boy, that’s it,” Pepa murmurs. The fever terrifies her to a point where she doesn’t dare fully think about what it might mean, but it’s better than the cold — better than the corpse-like, frozen body she’d held yesterday. “Come back to me, mijo. You can do it. Camilo, Camilo—”

When he finally moves, Pepa feels light-headed. Her baby is alive, her baby is about to wake up. When his mouth opens to let out two raspy coughs, it sounds so much like the first sounds he made in this world — how, after a too long, terrible silence, he’d finally let out a mighty cry, and she’d been able to breathe again. The rainbow had been so lovely as Julieta had placed him in her arms.

Félix is holding Camilo’s hand, thumb stroking his knuckles while Pepa continues to beg.

“That’s good, that’s good, baby. Open your eyes, Milo. Let me see them—”

“Ay.” Julieta moves closer, ready with a cup and rag. “ Camilo .”

He trembles in Pepa’s embrace, a low whine leaving his mouth once the coughing has stilled. He blinks, revealing just the edge of the color hazel.

“You’re okay, you’re okay,” Pepa promises as she rocks him back and forth. “Mami’s here, you’re going to be okay, mi vida, Camilo, oh—”

Every word is another nudge. Julieta can see it, the way Camilo is following his mother’s voice back from oblivion. “That’s good,” she says, relief sinking in as the practical thinking of a healer pushes aside the tía begging for her nephew’s smile. “That’s good, Camilo.”

She moves closer to the bed, gently brushing against Pepa as they work in tandem. Pepa holds him up against her chest, his head lulling against her shoulder from lack of strength. But there — Julieta kneels, meeting Camilo’s eyes. They’re dazed, not fully seeing them, but he is awake and responsive enough for her to take the chance.

“You’re parched, mi amor. You need to drink.” She holds the cup against his dry lips, slowly tipping it backward and sighing in relief when he instinctually swallows, opening his mouth for more. “Good boy.”

A bowl of cold soup waits on the table, but one thing at a time. This is a step in the right direction, and Julieta knows they can’t rush things — besides, her magic has fixed what it could.

“Oh, Camilo,” Pepa continues, just to keep talking. Her eyes close in a bid to keep more tears from falling. “Oh, mijo, I—”

There’s no warning. His body lurches forward as his torso convulses with deep coughs. The sudden movement forces Julieta to drop the cup, spilling water all over the blanket as her hands wrap around Camilo instead, keeping him upright.

He trembles under her palms, the coughing only broken by frantic wheezes as he tries to breathe. One of Pepa’s clouds casts a shadow over the bed while Julieta stands frozen, tired mind scrambling to make it stop—

Félix pushes her away, slapping a hand against Camilo’s back.

The sound it draws stills the room, Camilo’s chest rattling with exertion. His body drags in air with greedy desperation, but Félix almost can’t hear it next to the panicked gaze Camilo traps him under. They’re begging him, pupils blown wide with the subconscious terror of a child who knows there isn’t enough air in the world to satisfy him, but is afraid to find out what happens when he stops trying. 

Camilo’s fingers claw upwards, and Félix lowers his free hand, using the other to hit his son’s back as coughs fill the room. He doesn’t care about the heat radiating through Camilo’s sweat-soaked nightshirt, he just wants it to stop — anything to wash away the terror, the struggle, the rattling in his boy’s chest that echoes with the river’s rapids. It doesn’t work. The moment their skin touches, Camilo grasps his wrist, clinging to him with an unexpected intensity.

He’s drowning, Félix thinks numbly. My son is drowning. And for the first time since the incident, he’s reminded of that day years back when he first taught his son how to swim. It’s so clear in his memory: Agustín’s quiet humming as he tended to Mirabel, Camilo’s squeals filling the air, shrieks, crying, a shivering child against his chest, and a promise whispered to his wife late in the evening as she cradled their boy to her breasts. The most important one he’s ever made. 

His son clings to him like a drowning man clings to safety. Like Félix clings to a promise a decade old. 

“Breathe, mijo,” he pleads, feeling every whimper and gasp as Camilo struggles to listen. Fear and grief constrict his own lungs, and Félix doesn’t care if that makes him a hypocrite because he no longer knows who he’s begging. “Just breathe.”


“I was thinking,” Mirabel says, tone purposefully light, “that Camilo is going to need a new ruana. But I need to buy some fabric to make one. You could come with me. Help me pick what color it should be.”

Antonio clings so tightly to her skirt, she’s practically carrying him through town. She knows that if the choice had been up to him, he would have stayed inside Casita, asking over and over when he could see Camilo. 

It’d broken her heart every time he’d been told no. The adults practically crowded Pepa’s room — it was clear something had happened, but they hadn’t been told what. And, honestly, Mirabel is afraid of the answer.

“Yellow,” Antonio mutters with his face half-buried in her skirt. “He likes that.”

A soft noise escapes Luisa, who’s been on the verge of tears since breakfast. Isabela ventured into town on her own, muttering something about chores, but Mirabel doesn’t dare move away from either Antonio or Luisa, knowing it’s just a matter of time before one of them cries again. 

“Yeah, but maybe a different shade of yellow,” she suggests. “So we don’t just replace the old ruana — we make a new, better one!”

Antonio looks skeptical, but Mirabel will take a wrinkled nose over flooded eyes any day. 

“Plus, Camilo’s old one was stinky.”

“No, it wasn’t,” Antonio cries on his brother’s behalf, and there’s something about the amusing, aggrieved tone that lifts a burden from Mirabel’s heavy heart.

“Sure it was! He never took it off. Tía Pepa had to wrestle it off him to wash it.”

“One time,” Luisa joins in, voice warbly, but with a fond smile tugging at her lips, “he tripped in the mud, and instead of getting cleaned, he just used his Gift to make the stains disappear. He did that the whole week until tía found out and dumped both him and the ruana in the water basin.”

Mirabel nods. She remembers that day: Camilo’s pouting and Pepa’s surprised squeal. She remembers laughing at him, and how he’d used his Gift to conjure up a ruana, the perfect illusion as if he was still wearing his. But it’d been fake, and he’d let it go after a minute, hugging himself tightly while waiting for his beloved clothing to dry.

She reaches down to tug Antonio’s hand into hers, giving it a squeeze. “Like I said: stinky.”

“Bruno’s ruana is the stinky one.” 

Though defensive of their uncle, Mirabel doesn’t really have a comeback for that one. She’s hugged Bruno plenty of times; she knows he smells of hay and dust. “...Yeah.”

“I like it, though. It’s very big.”

Seeing Antonio discover the joys of playing with Bruno’s ruana had brought back long-lost memories of her and Camilo hiding under the green fabric, giggling while accidentally choking their tío when they pulled it too hard. Sometimes, Camilo will join Antonio in such games — using his Gift to change into his five-year-old self, he’ll giggle alongside his brother.

Imagining Camilo’s contagious grin leaves her stomach feeling uneasy. Maybe it’ll get easier after hearing his laughter again. She wonders how long she’ll have to wait for that.

Luisa sniffs, and Mirabel puts a hand on her arm, acknowledging her struggles. They all know it’s okay to cry — they all did a bunch of that during all the talks that had followed the destruction of Casita — and Mirabel feels like weeping, too, but Antonio is there, and she wants to shield him from as much grief as possible.

Her poker face isn’t as strong as her dad’s — he always wins during the family game nights — since the shopkeeper is quick to ask what’s wrong. Alma had gently asked her to keep things quiet for now — while they would appreciate the town’s concern, there’s no reason to make things harder for poor Dolores who’d have to listen to all the discussions and rumors that’d spread like a wildfire.

Mirabel forces herself to smile as she lies about everything being perfectly fine before pulling out rolls of fabric. None of them have the chameleon pattern they’d specifically designed for Camilo, and replicating it will take time. Mirabel isn’t patient, and if she has to embroider every single chameleon herself, she’ll make do. As long as the color fits the scheme of Pepa’s side of the family, it’ll be fine. Camilo will love it, and seeing him twirl while wearing her gift will make Mirabel happy, too.

“What about this?” she asks while unfolding a yellow roll. “It’s a bit more gold than his other one, but I could find some thread that matches. I’m sure Camilo won’t mind sparkling when he goes into the spotlight.”

Antonio nods absentmindedly, fingers playing with a pile of loose threads. “Do you think Milo will be awake when we come home?”

“Maybe.” She hopes so. It’s difficult to tell when no one gives them the truth. Sure, she’s still technically a kid, but she’d thought the spring’s events would have proven her worthy enough to be included. “But it’s okay because my mom and your mom and dad are all looking after him while we’re gone.”

“I want to give him a gift, too.”

“That’s a good idea,” Mirabel says, and the smile on her face almost feels real for a second. “Maybe you can make a nice drawing? He likes those.”

She chooses the roll, and with that task done, they need something else to spend their time with before she can return to Casita and start cutting the fabric. She muses out loud on all the amazing things Antonio can draw, eventually getting him to come up with suggestions on his own, while they watch Luisa help where she’s needed. Quieter than usual, she moves crates and adjusts houses.

But mostly, Mirabel looks at the sky. Even if they aren’t told what’s happening, Pepa’s Gift will reveal any big changes. There’s a heavy layer of gray clouds above them; they haven’t changed since the storm yesterday. They allow no sunlight to reach the Encanto, but there’s also been no rain, and the light snowfall stopped last evening.

Maybe—maybe the clouds will break apart soon, and it’ll be a nice, sunny day. Maybe there’ll even be a rainbow.

“Mirabel.” 

Mirabel’s head snaps upwards in a wave of curls, realizing she’d almost collided with a familiar face. “Hola, Padre Flores,” she says politely, feeling her sister come to a halt behind her.

“Has the church been leaning again?” Luisa asks, eager for a new task to make time pass a little faster. She’s distracted, and powerful muscles don’t work well with a wandering mind: she’s left behind cracked bricks and crooked fences from having used too much force, muttering apologies over and over while trying to patch things up the best she could with trembling hands.

“Everything is fine here,” Pastor Flores says, eyes darting between the sisters. His kind smile doesn’t fade with his furrowing brows. “I was wondering if the same can be said for your family? I don’t mean to pry, but we all witnessed the storm yesterday. We worry.”

“We…” Mirabel locks eyes with Luisa, and from the way her lip wobbles, it’s clear she won’t be the one to answer the question. Clearing her throat, Mirabel struggles to phrase the issues. How does she even begin? “Camilo was in an accident yesterday. Mamá says he’s going to be fine, but he hasn’t woken up yet.”

She knows Alma wants the news contained, but the pastor is one of the most trusted elders in the Encanto — surely, he’ll need to be told eventually.

Not—not because they’ll need his services, of course! But there’s no way it’s right to lie to a pastor.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Flores says after a moment of hesitation. “We’ll be sure to mention him in our prayers, and please let us know if we can help with anything.”

Mirabel can feel Antonio hide behind her skirt again. “Gracias,” she says while reaching out to put a hand on top of his head.

“Let us hope the sun returns to us soon,” the pastor says, but when Mirabel looks up, the heavy clouds remain.

Why hasn’t Camilo woken up yet?

It’s strange how only a day ago everything was different. The outside world had seemed alluring, with snow glistening in the sunlight. It’d been beautiful. Now, it’s like she’s lived a whole other lifetime in the span of 24-hours.

A nudge to the shoulder interrupts her heavy thoughts, and Luisa gestures towards the other end of the square, where Mariano is having a conversation with Isabela. While everyone is satisfied with Dolores and Mariano’s relationship, Mirabel has noticed Isabela’s strained smile and awkward stare every time she’s been left alone with her ex-boyfriend. It’s great the way things turned out, but that Isabela had been dating Marino longer than Dolores has at this point always leads to some awkward conversations during dinner.

“Uhm, should we go help her?” Mirabel asks, and Luisa nods.

Isabela is wringing her hands, head held unnaturally straight. “—mean a lot. We—” The moment she notices her sisters’ arrival, she falls quiet.

Mariano, oblivious as always, smiles in their direction.

“Mariano.” Mirabel waves with her free hand, holding onto Antonio with the other. “Hi.”

“Mirabel,” he greets, eyes crinkling at the edges. “Luisa. Antonio. Out shopping?” 

“Mmhm.” She fiddles with the cloth, stomach twisting with a sense of exposure. It’s silly, she knows, but for some reason, just the acknowledgement of her purchase seems to highlight the absence of Camilo. “Tis the season and all that. What with the holidays and birthdays and…”

It hits her; a battering ram to the chest. As if she was the one who drowned and was suddenly brought back to life. Birthdays. Camilo’s birthday. He’ll be sixteen in a few weeks. Sixteen and insufferable and he hasn’t stopped crowing about it for months.

She’d forgotten, and judging by Luisa’s sharp inhalation and Isabela’s pallor, she isn’t the only one.  

“Mirabel?” 

“Sorry.” She blinks, not daring to think about the sting in her eyes or the pit in her stomach. “Sorry, I—uh, breathed wrong.” 

But Mariano is dumb, not stupid. “It’s okay. Isabela said…well. She told me what happened. How are you doing?” The softness in his voice transforms the otherwise casual question into something that makes Mirabel’s lips twist with barely concealed emotion. She regrets all the mean comments she’s made about Mariano in the past, and instead, two thoughts hit her; a) Mariano looks like he gives good hugs, and b) if he enters the family in the middle of this, they are going to need those hugs.

“It’s, uh,” she sniffs, only holding the tears at bay due to Antonio’s hand in hers. “It’s pretty tough.”

“So is Camilo.” Mariano lowers himself ever so slightly, gaze focused on Antonio as he gives him a small smile. “He’ll bounce back.”

“Milo always bounces back,” Antonio mumbles, echoing years of family quips as if they’re a certainty. As if it doesn’t make something inside Mirabel twist up with knots. 

“Exactly. He just wants to keep us on our—”

A groan steals Mirabel’s attention, and she spins around to see her sister with a hand pressed against her forehead. “Isa? You okay?”

“Sí.” She sighs, eyes focused on Casita in the distance, the grey sky a foreboding background. “It’s just hard to concentrate like this.”

Luisa’s arms practically swallow her in a hug. “Yeah,” she says as Isabela leans against her, hand coming up to lie on top of hers. “I knocked over Señor Morena’s fence today. Twice.”

Mirabel tightens her grip on the golden fabric. Camilo’s birthday gift. It’s a small comfort, but she finds herself grateful that she at least has this project to keep herself busy. She’ll have to come up with a new game for Antonio, too; something to distract him.

“I’m going home,” Isabela finally decides, and the group hums in agreement. “Being out here is just making me more restless.”

They bid Mariano farewell. Holding Antonio in one arm and supporting Isabela with the other, Luisa leads the group back home. Mirabel goes to follow but hesitates for a second, halted by the thought of the eerie silence that might await them back in Casita.

A sliver of white drifts into the corner of her vision. Immediately, Mirabel’s world goes cold. Even before the blizzard engulfs the Encanto. Mirabel wonders if it will ever end, if the cold will ever leave them. Because if it’s snowing now — Oh god.

She’s spent hours looking at the sky, waiting for a bit of sunlight to crack through the heavy layer of clouds. She hadn’t expected this — she’s hardly dared to imagine the thought. If it’s snowing—

Before she can sink to her knees, she sees that the whiteness drifting towards her is not a snowflake; it’s a flower petal. Relief settles in alongside the confusion, and Mirabel stumbles around the corner to find an alleyway covered in white, stacks and stacks of white flowers leaning against the walls.

Obviously, they must have come from Isabela — but why? And why hidden away like this?

Mirabel leans against the wall, legs still trembling from the initial shock. “Wha…?”

“Mirabel?”

Hearing Luisa’s call, Mirabel looks over her shoulder, seeing her family further up the street.

“You’re coming home too, right?” Antonio asks from Luisa’s arm, brows furrowed in the frown that hasn’t left his face since the incident.

“Of course!” Mirabel peeks around the corner once more, just enough to reach out and grab one of the white flowers, and shoves it in her mochila before joining the others. “Then we can go visit Camilo. And get started on his gifts.”

From above, through the tower’s window, a pair of green eyes watch the group huddle together and make their way back to Casita’s gate. 

Bruno bites his lip, reconsidering his decision once more. For someone who should know the future and all it contains, he sure is bad at making decisions for himself. What to do, what to do.

His room shakes once more — or is it just his own body trembling? He hugs himself tighter, squeezing his eyes shut as he imagines the stairs growing taller and taller, stretching into endlessness.

There is nothing to do but wait.

Crimson knuckles rap against the wood, leaving bloody trails behind.

Notes:

WE ARE BACK, BABY! With a new look! Summary has been updated, as well as some tags - more tags might be added as we go on.

Thank you for the patience, and I hope you are ready for this painful journey. And the comfort that will eventually come!

Also shout-out to my beta Ink, who, when I went "so I've been thinking of maybe doing this but maybe it's too much, or maybe I should -" and then just. Wrote it and put it in the chapter. So that's been decided, lmao. Thank you, Ink, straight to Angst Town we go!

Chapter 8: Distance

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Casita has a way of knowing what they need before they do. 

They’d all shared Mirabel’s joy when a new room had been created for her in the wake of Casita’s rebuilding. No glowing door, but instead a colorful door they’d all worked together to decorate. Oh, the look on Mirabel’s face when they’d taken off the blindfold.

Even nowadays, Dolores can sometimes spot Mirabel caressing the painted wood with a trembling hand, marveling at the touch. It’s not magical, it’s not glowing, but it’s real, it’s hers, and it’s beautiful.

Still, with Mirabel moving into her new room, filled with sewing supplies and surrounded by walls covered with family photos and drawings from Antonio, it’d been a surprise that the nursery remained. Alma had gleefully wrapped an arm around Pepa, mentioning that it must be a sign that they would need that space in the future.

Eyes had fallen on Dolores, and her cheeks had grown warm from the immediate thought of Mariano. Perhaps she would be the first one to bring a new baby to Casita.

Eventually. Maybe. And perhaps not five in total. 

But now it seems like Casita has saved the room for Camilo.

Dolores didn’t want to push, but she is very satisfied with the decision to relocate her brother to his old childhood room. It allows the adults to sleep in their own beds, but most importantly, the non-magical room lets Dolores hear her brother’s heartbeat through the walls.

It’s steady. A little fast due to the fever, but it’s there. She can hear it; almost feel it too when she concentrates hard enough. It’s joined by her parents' hushed worries, prayers, and reassurances. 

It’s comforting to be considered old enough for the family to freely give her information about her brother. She understands that some things need to be shielded from Antonio and Mirabel, perhaps even Luisa, but she is an adult. She has a right to know, even if she is also Camilo’s sister. She wants all the news, bad or good. After all, that’s what her Gift is for.

Her mother’s voice is so soft, using the same tune that had been reserved for their bedtime stories when they were younger.

“It’s okay, Camilo. Mami’s here, papi’s here.”

Every now and then, she can hear Camilo, too. Nothing coherent; the noise cannot be considered to be words, but instead, she can recognize groans and choked gasps. She knows whenever he moves by the sound of sweaty limbs pushing against the sheets. The worst is the coughs. Loud and hoarse, followed by a whine from deep within his poor lungs.

At least her Gift makes her useful. When Julieta had asked Félix to fetch some cold water to help lower his temperature, Dolores was ready with a bucket outside the nursery door the moment he opened it.

His eyebrows had shot upwards when she wordlessly handed it to him, but before he could ask, his eyes had landed on the teal door and widened in realization. “Mija.” His voice had been gentle, accompanied by a big sigh. “You don’t have to listen if -”

“I want to,” she’d told him. “Por favor. I know I cannot help, pero … I want to hear him.”

He’d nodded solemnly and placed the bucket on the floor so he could wrap his arms around her, pulling her into a tight embrace. However, in the middle of the hug, as Félix’s fingers dug into the fabric of her shirt, Dolores couldn’t help but feel as if she was the one hugging him rather than the other way around. That no matter how desperately she clung to him, she was the one holding him upright. As if he needed her, even though she was painfully aware that she couldn’t give him what he was wordlessly asking for.

It scares her. The desperation of it all.

Dolores closes her eyes, focusing on the steady beat that is the only true comfort in all of this. It feels better to listen to that than to her tía’s tired reassurances or the hushed rumors already spreading through the town. Even Mariano’s promise to her from the other end of the town, that he will come and check on her as soon as possible, doesn’t melt the cold fear within her.

“Dolores?”

Alma is in front of her, her weary, wrinkled face pulled into a frown.

“The others are coming back,” she replies, never needing to hear the actual question. She can hear them, even if her cousins’ voices are lower than usual, even with Mirabel’s attempt to cheer up Antonio. She appreciates it, though. It is nice to focus on how big Camilo’s smile would be at the sight of his new ruana.

She thinks about the birthday Gift she’d planned for him; a tiple with an orange pattern on its front. She’d hoped she would love it, that he would play for her …

Antonio runs straight into her open arms the moment he spots her at the gate. It is getting more difficult to pick him up and hold him with how big he is getting. Time flies by so fast.

“Can we go see Milo now?” Antonio asks her while playing with her collar. 

After adjusting her hold on him, she reaches upward to brush some stray curls away from his face. “No,” she says and rests her forehead against his. “Camilo is sick. So they’ve moved him to the nursery so he can rest and get better.”

She can hear it; Luisa’s eye twitching, Mirabel’s choked gasp, Isabela’s heart skipping a beat. But her gaze never leaves Antonio who squints. “But he isn’t cold?”

“No. He has a fever. And he is coughing.”

Mierda.” 

Isabela’s curse is so quiet, Dolores is the only one who hears it.

“Like last week?” Antonio asks, and even though Dolores knows he is thinking of the days when Camilo would huddle in the corner of the kitchen with a blanket and a sullen expression, she nods.

“Sí. So now we just have to wait for him to get better again.” With a squeeze, she holds him tighter and prepares to move up the stairs. “I want to give him a drawing, too. We could work on it together?”

She knows her cousins have questions, and as always, it is her role to bring people the news they ask for, but she is too tired, too occupied with the concern for her brothers. It’s not fair to leave them behind, but she knows they will ask questions that will bring her to tears, and she refuses to cry in front of Antonio who needs her to be strong.

Before she can fully flee with her brother, Mirabel reaches out, putting a hand on Antonio’s arm when they walk past her. “I’ll come and see your gift later, okay?”

As the youngest Madrigal is carried away, the sisters remain in the courtyard while the news – and the lack of it – slowly sinks in. 

Isabela is the one to finally voice their shared thought.

“This is bad.”

“Mamá is helping him. He’s going to be alright,” Mirabel is quick to say, linking arms with Luisa who’s lowered her head. “I’m - I’m just so happy you all have your Gifts back.”

“You know mamá can’t just miracle away illnesses. The body’s not broken, it’s-”

“Yes, but - You still used your Gift to save him,” Mirabel reminds her. Suddenly, she thinks of the tree that had reached out and saved both Camilo and Bruno. How it will remain there by the river, marking the very spot, while its long vines swing in the wild winds. “If you hadn’t been there, Isa, I …”

“It’s - Ow.”

Isabela’s hand flies to the back of her head, and Luisa flinches guiltily at her sister’s accusing glare. “Sorry! You had something in your hair.”

Between her fingers, unscathed in her gentle grip, Luisa holds a single white flower with red streaks.

For a second, Isabela just stares at it, brows furrowing. Then she snatches it from her sister’s hand and swiftly disposes of it in the nearest flowerpot.

“You left some of these behind in the town, too,” Mirabel cannot help but muse out loud, recalling the alley covered in white. Isabela turns her burning gaze at her, and Mirabel quickly adds, “They’re very pretty! It’s just - Are you okay?”

Isabela actually hesitates, lips twitching as she considers her words carefully. “I’m stressed,” she finally says, a bit too stiffly. “The situation calls for that -”

“You’re scared,” Mirabel cuts in, and Luisa nods behind her. Both faces are perfectly sympathetic with eyes sharing her grief. “And that’s okay, too.”

“I’m -” Isabela shakes her head, causing her long hair to fall and shield her face. It hides the way she bites her lips as her eyes drift upwards, toward a teal door that had once been hers too. “They moved him to the nursery. Not to his own room.”

Mirabel’s eyes widen. Until now, she hasn’t even latched on to that detail. She’d been thinking about the cough, instead, and the fever. How she’d thought Camilo would just - wake up, open his eyes, laugh, and bring everything back to normal.

“Why?” Luisa asks them both. “Why do you think they did that?”

“Maybe all the mirrors would get in the way? And Camilo’s room is so big, it takes forever to reach his bed.” Mirabel isn’t sure, and so she looks towards the oldest sister, hoping to see agreement. “Right, Isa?”

Isabela is busy wrangling yet another flower out of her hair. “I -” Her head snaps upwards at the sound of a door softly opening and closing. A moment afterward, they can see their mother’s blue skirt through the railing of the balcony. 

“Mamá,” Isabela breathes, and all the girls gather at the end of the stairs.

Even Julieta’s gentle smile cannot erase the exhaustion from her face. For a moment, Mirabel wants to believe that her mother has always looked like that - but then she comes face to face with the truth that her parents are getting older, and that realization makes her swallow painfully.

“Mijas,” Julieta says, cupping Isabela’s cheek with her palms.

“How’s Camilo?”

“You’ve heard about the fever?” They nod, and Julieta gives herself a moment to inhale and exhale. “He woke up to drink a bit. I gave him a few of my herbs before he fell back asleep. Now we wait for the fever to break.”

“Did he say anything?” Mirabel finds herself wringing her hands when her mother shakes her head. “Is - This is a lot of sleep. Even for Camilo.”

“Mija, his body gave out yesterday. To be brought back - it wrung all the energy out of it. We all have to be patient with him.”

Mirabel doesn’t want to be patient. She wants to shake Camilo by the shoulders and yell for him to wake up and make them all smile like he used to. Maybe she should consider herself lucky she hasn’t been allowed to visit him yet. Camilo is calm, quiet, and dead to the world - that’s not something she can imagine, and she doesn’t want to see it become reality. 

But her abuela told her to trust in both Camilo and her mom, and Mirabel will do just so. She knows how amazing her family is, Gifts or no Gifts.

“Mamá, you look exhausted. Come sit.”

While her sisters tend to their mother, Mirabel sees her chance to slowly back away and rush up the stairs toward Bruno’s door. She isn’t sure why she’s hit by a sudden sense of secrecy; she’s allowed to visit the tower now. Even so, her hand lingers above the doorknob before she twists it.

The moment she walks past the shower of sand, she tilts her head back and frowns. Is the staircase longer than the day before? Ever since Bruno moved back in, steps would disappear; the distance between him and the rest of the family fading with every shared laughter and conversation, with every new memory he got to create with his nietos.

“Tío Bruno?” she calls out, the name bouncing against the cold walls. “Bruno! Are you okay?”

She braces herself against the nearest wooden post, holding her breath in the silence that refuses to end.

Well, no answer is also an answer. Worried, Mirabel climbs the very first step. She doesn’t look forward to the long journey ahead, but she has to find something to do while she waits. She could start working on the ruana, but that would require a steady hand and a collected mind. Maybe, if she’s truly unlucky (though she wouldn’t complain), her mother would call out that Camilo is awake the moment she’d reached the very top of the stairs. Mirabel would gladly run the whole way down, then.

Hopefully, her mother will call way sooner than that.

At the thirty-seventh step, Bruno’s voice echoes through the whole tower.

No.” 

“Please, tío. I’m worried! For you, and Camilo. And I could really, really use a hug!” Mirabel tries and fakes a hopeful smile on her face - a stupid move, actually, since Bruno can’t see it. In the following silence, she drops it and lets out a huff of frustration instead.

She clings to her determination, pulls up her skirt, and continues her climb. She’s done it before, and she will do it again. She hasn’t pulled Bruno out of the walls to see him scurry back into isolation at the first incident.

The situation right now … is the absolute worst. But for all the pain and the fear, this is exactly when a family needs to stick together.

And actually, Mirabel could really use a hug from her uncle. And then she’d hug him back and tell him it isn’t his fault.

Even though he’d been the one in charge. Even though he’d allowed Camilo to stay. Even though he’d been the only adult there when it’d happened. Mirabel had stood next to him at the edge of the ice, clinging to her uncle’s sweaty hand as they watched a tearful Antonio in danger.

And then, before they could even react, Camilo had made his choice.

She remembers it; the sound of the ice cracking, the splash. And she hadn’t even seen it. Her eyes had been on Antonio, and by the time she’d pushed herself up, Camilo was gone.

That’d been it. Opening her eyes to see the absence of Camilo. A black hole where she should have been looking at a yellow ruana.

It had made her heart skip a beat and forced the air from her lungs as her brain struggled to keep up with what was unfolding before her eyes.

Even now, the memories leave her breathless. She clings to the wooden pole next to her, struggling to keep her legs from shaking. The tears in her eyes leave her vision spinning.

Camilo hadn’t even hesitated.

Had he known how dangerous it’d be? Had he looked at her when she’d been focused on Antonio?

How scared had he been beneath the ice?

Mirabel yelps when her foot slips. One leg goes over the edge, but she manages to cling to the post while digging her knee against the hard stone step. The floor below, so far below, is blurred in the middle of her spinning vision.

Mirabel!

She doesn’t dare to look up until she’s her dangling leg. Through her tears, she can just barely see the green smudge that must be her uncle’s hood-covered head above, peeking over the edge.

“I’m okay!” Mirabel cries but when she tries to stand up, her knees buckle once more. “Pleeaaase come down, tío! Por favor!” Her heart beats painfully fast as she scurries away from the edge, pressing herself against the wall. “Will you come down for dinner?!”

A moment passes. Then:

“Yes.”

Mirabel closes her eyes, already turning around to prepare for the climb down. “Gracias,” she says, but it comes out too low - she’s not sure if Bruno can hear it.

It’s not defeat. It’s just another sort of victory. Obviously, Bruno needs his space, and he’s agreed to come down on his own. That’s better than Mirabel dragging him down by brute force and declarations of family love.

Even so, the way down feels longer than the way up. Her stomach still feels queasy, even when she tries to think about anything else than yesterday. 

She sniffs - and then she straightens her back and raises her head. They are the Family Madrigal. They are going to be fine. Things are tense and it hurts - a lot. But her mother told her to be patient, and Mirabel will follow her advice.

Just as she reaches the bottom step, the door creaks open. The curtain of sand is broken as a large leaf pierces it to shield Isabela as she comes to stand at the edge, hands on her hips.

“That’s where you are,” she says, ending the sentence with a sigh as she looks down at her.

Something about her hardened glance makes Mirabel feel like they’ve fallen out of pace. Since their hug, they’d finally seen eye to eye, but right now, they feel uneven, twisted, and too far away from each other. There’s a sharpness in Isabela’s voice and a wall in her eyes.

But Mirabel understands. Everyone is wearing their feelings on their sleeves at the moment. They’ll have another sisterly hug when they can all breathe easily once more.

“Mamá fell asleep on the couch,” Isabela lets her know while Mirabel crawls up the piles of sand to join her. “We’re trying to prepare her cooking in the kitchen. Make things a bit easier for her.”

“Good idea.”

“Are you going to help?”

“Of course!” Mirabel practically yells in eagerness. Should that even be a question? She’d help Camilo, but she cannot, and so she welcomes any chance to aid their mother. Even so, she hesitates and takes a moment to look back toward the bottom of the stairs, and there’s a pang in her heart at the thought of her uncle all alone at the top. “Isa, I -”

But by the time Mirabel has turned her head, she’s alone in the hallway. There’s a flash of purple in the doorway, and then Isabela is gone.


“I don’t know what to draw.”

Dolores watches Parce nudge his head against Antonio’s shoulder. It doesn’t remove the frown from the boy’s face, even as he reaches out to pet the cat.

The animals must sense his sadness, Dolores supposes. She cannot talk with animals, but it hasn’t stopped the capybara from crawling on top of her lap and nuzzling its face into her skirt. The warm weight helps keep her grounded. It’s so quiet inside Antonio’s room, despite the waterfall and the squabbling birds.

The beat is gone, and Dolores longs for it. She wants to go back to the balcony where she can listen to what’s going on in the nursery - or even better, join the nursery herself.

But Antonio is her hermano too, and she misses seeing a smile on his face.

“Maybe Parce?” she suggests with a hum. Papers and crayons are spread out in front of them as they sit cross-legged on the floor. “You are really good at drawing him.”

Parce makes a noise of agreement, but Antonio looks away from his own blank paper, staring at Dolores’ instead.

“What are you drawing?”

“Mhmm. Some butterflies. And flowers. And a chameleon.”

“Sitting on the flower?”

Dolores nods, trying to finish the lines of the tail. She’s not that practiced at drawing chameleons, and honestly, she probably should have stuck with flowers and butterflies.

But -

“Mi camaleón. Por favor, drink a bit more, please -”

Even if she cannot hear them at the moment, her mother’s begging still rings within her ears. A single teardrop lands on her piece of paper, but Dolores is quick to color around it before Antonio can notice.

She’ll draw a chameleon, even if it ends up looking more like an abstract doodle than an animal. Camilo will hopefully laugh at how bad her drawing is. He loves stuff like that.

Dolores looks up, away from her own mix of colors, to see Antonio staring at his gift with big, sad eyes. The paper is practically blank. The only thing he’s drawn so far is a yellow square …

Her heart aches when she recognizes what it is.

“Antonio …”

“Do you think Camilo will be mad at me?”

“Never.” The answer is immediate, and Dolores knows it to be true. Then she pauses, tilting her head before asking him, “Why would you think that?”

Antonio sniffs, and his head is lowered as he continues to color the square, movements stiff and jerky. “Because it’s my fault he lost his ruana,” he whispers shamefully.

Ignoring the capybara’s displeased grunt, Dolores pushes it out of her lap and scoots over to embrace Antonio instead.

“Antonio,” she says and looks down to meet his wet eyes. “Camilo would much rather have you than his ruana.” When he sniffs, she is quick to brush the tear away from his cheek. “Besides, I know Mirabel is making him a new one. And Mirabel always creates the most beautiful things. He’ll love it.”

“Maybe we can find the old one,” Antonio whispers, nuzzling his head against her shoulder. “After the ice melts.”

A squeak escapes her before she can stop it. Unlike Antonio, she’s fully aware that their mother is never going to let them outside the Encanto again. But there’s no reason to crush Antonio’s hope. “Maybe.”

Antonio wriggles out of her embrace to lean over the paper once more. She watches as he adds a circle on top of the square, completing the drawing of Camilo with a big wide grin on his face and bright green dots for his eyes.

She reaches for her own gift and the chameleon stares back at her, almost accusingly. Fine. She’ll make it even uglier on purpose. For Camilo’s sake.

“Can you hand me the yellow crayon?”


The kitchen is quiet, and Casita doesn’t like it. Mirabel can sense the house’s restlessness. Now and then, a tile will jump up and down, breaking the silence that feels so thick, they are almost choking on it.

But Isabela is still so tense that the best choice seems to say nothing. Besides; Julieta is asleep in one of the armchairs in the hallway. She needs whatever rest they can give her.

They cannot cook the food for her, not when they need the magical ability, but they can cut vegetables and prepare the measured ingredients. Mirabel is in the middle of pouring flour into a bowl when she hears Isabela hiss.

Ow.” 

She spins around to see Isabela cradling her hand, blood dripping from her cut finger. The arracacha she’d tried to cut in half rolls over the edge of the table to bounce against the floor.

It might as well have been an alarm clock; in an instant, Julieta is in the kitchen, awake, and tending to her daughter. “Mija. You okay?”

Mirabel isn’t sure how she does it, how she always knows when they need her. It’s part of the magic of being a mother, she supposes.

“Let me see.” Julieta tsks after examining the finger, immediately turning around to start cooking for her daughter.

“We tried to prepare for a batch of cocadas,” Luisa says while showing her the bowl full of sticky coconut. “For Camilo.”

Julieta takes the bowl from her and presses a kiss against her cheek. Then she gets to work, placing spoonfuls of coconut on a tray to go into the oven.

Then she remembers Isabela; her entire body jerks upright before she rushes towards a counter, the urgency wrestling with the sense of guilt for overlooking her need in the first place. “I think I may have some old ones left around -”

“It’s okay, mamá,” Isabela says while rapping a rag around the small cut. “I’ll keep.”

Julieta hums with her mind moved on to the next task. With the cocadas in the oven, she fetches a pot and looks at the pimientos Luisa is in the middle of cutting.

“Can you chop them into smaller pieces, mi amor? I need the soup smooth for Camilo.” Luisa nods, and Julieta is already looking at the dough Mirabel has prepared. Before Mirabel can even say a word, she has plucked a piece from it, rolling it between practiced palms.

“If I bake these for the town, can you help keep the stall open?”

“Of course, mamá. But don’t worry about the town. They know you are needed here.”

That makes Julieta pause, just for a moment. “How much do they know?” she asks as she shapes another ball of dough.

“Well … They all saw the storm. And we told Padre Flores,” Luisa admits, almost shamefully.

“That’s good. Gracias. For helping.” Julieta’s brows suddenly furrow as she turns her head to look at them all. “Let me know if any of you start to feel ill, too. You were all out in the cold.”

“We feel fine,” Mirabel insists, looking at both her sisters. “Right?”

They all nod. Sure, the cold lingers inside Casita, a felt symbol of the worry they all share, but even though Mirabel’s heart stings, her throat doesn’t, and she hasn’t coughed even once.

In the corner of her eye, she sees Isabela form a fist with her unscathed hand. White petals stick out between her fingers, revealing what she’s crushed before she can hurry out of the kitchen.

While Julieta and Luisa remain busy, Mirabel quickly follows, catching up with her sister at the other end of the courtyard. She has to grab her arm to halt her.

“Isa, what’s going on?”

“What?” Isabela hisses while white lilies fly from the hands she throws into the air. “When we’re stressed, it affects our Gifts. You know that.”

“And that’s why I’m worried,” Mirabel continues softly. “I - If I had your Gift, I bet I’d be leaving behind a trail of cactus or something.”

Isabela huffs and looks away, and it’s the way she doesn’t meet Mirabel’s eyes that makes her realize her anger isn’t directed toward her. Keeping that in mind, she finds the courage to keep pushing.

“These are very pretty,” Mirabel assures her. She’d liked the cactus too, the prickly one that’d appeared alongside Isabela’s reveal after the proposal dinner. But while the display in the past had been honest, beautiful, and messy all at once, these lilies are strange, almost intimidating with their elegance, and the contrast between the crimson red and the flawless whiteness.

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“... I think we both know what can happen if you don’t talk about the things that are hurting you.”

Isabela does know. That’s why she hesitates, taking the time to reconsider her words. “You wouldn’t understand,” she then says, almost bitterly, while plucking a white flower from her hair.  “And I’m happy that’s the case. Let’s - let’s just focus on Camilo.”

But Mirabel knows that they are both thinking about Camilo. That they are both worried. That they are both trying to cope. And Mirabel is willing to bet her best mochila that Camilo would hate to see his family fighting over him.

“You’re not helping Camilo by botting things up.”

“We’re not helping Camilo at all,” Isabela hisses, spinning around so that Mirabel has to take a step back to avoid the hem of her twirling skirt. “We could have helped him if we’d sent him home when we realized he was still sick! The moment we heard him cough, that should’ve been the end of it!”

Remembering Isabela’s words from yesterday, how Isabela is convinced that Bruno should feel guilty for causing this, as if it’s even his fault, Mirabel crosses her arms as a defensive sense of justice flares within her chest. If only Isabel could see what she sees - how this has left Bruno a trembling wreck who doesn’t even dare to face his family.

“Bruno couldn’t have known, Isa! It was just a cough -”

“And you egged him on!”

“I know Camilo; he wouldn’t have gone home even if Bruno had told him to!”

“But he didn’t tell him to! And now look at what happened!” Isabela yells back at her, but Mirabel doesn’t as much as flinch. Her defiance causes her sister to practically loom over her as she enters her personal space with a thumb pressed against her own chest. “If I’d been in charge instead of Bruno, I would have sent him home! And Camilo would be fine instead of -”

She’s cut off by the sound of thunder above them. Both pairs of brown eyes widen as the sisters look upward, toward the balcony where a pale Pepa is standing, clutching the railing so tightly that it almost cracks beneath her fingers.

A flash of lightning divides the sky as their tía spins around to sprint toward Bruno’s tower.

Notes:

Thank you for your patience. Especially when it comes to Camilo. I swear, this Camilo-centric fic will actually have him doing something at some point.

Chapter 9: Downpour

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Once upon a time, Bruno would tell them good things. He’d see things they would look forward to. Presents. New games. Proposals. Holidays. Good weather. 

There had been excitement when he was overcome by a vision, they’d hold his hands and stay and wait to see the future together. 

Then - Bruno isn’t sure whether he or his Gift or maybe the future itself changed, but things had been different, and the excitement had been replaced with fear and anger.

And while Bruno had now received many apologies from his family members, he too had held strong negative emotions against his own Gift. If the village had cowered when his eyes began to glow, Bruno had wished to rip them straight out of his head.

Especially when he’d be so unlucky to see his sisters’ future. Though the memory of Julieta kissing his cheek and thanking him for Isabela’s vision still warmed his heart, the wrath of Pepa after the disaster with Dolores would haunt him for the rest of his life. The worst of Pepa’s storms always brew from the protectiveness and love for her children …

MY SON!” Pepa roars right when the door slams open. Her wind parts the curtain of sand as she advances upon her brother. “I left my son in your hands, and this - ¿cómo pudiste hacerlo?! How could you?!”

Bruno doesn’t move from the spot where he’s been waiting. What is about to happen is inevitable and a long time coming. Though he’s tried to brace himself for this moment, he is easily knocked to the ground by the gales.

Did you know?!”

Bruno says nothing, but Pepa knows the answer to be yes. Bruno always knows. That is his curse.

The words won’t come, but Pepa doesn’t need to hear them. “You -”

“I’m sorry-” Bruno whimpers, staggering to his feet. “I’m sorry, Pepa, I’m -” His voice is still raspy from his time in the cold water, but Pepa’s ears ring with the sound of Camilo gasping for air, every cough that would wreck his slim body.

The winds catch the sand on the floor, flinging it into the air. They tear at Bruno’s skin, blinding him. It’s like being caught in the middle of a blinding blizzard. Or a vision with nothing to look for.

“You knew he was sick.”

Bruno’s hands fly to his blinded, stinging eyes. “Sí,” he admits. “We were - We were already outside the mountains. He - he coughed, and we heard - He didn’t have a fever,” he adds weakly. “Mirabel checked.”

“Mirabel checked,” Pepa repeats, her voice as cold as the water beneath the ice.

“He wanted to stay. We - He promised to tell us if it got worse, I would have -”

“You would?”

Thunder clashes above them.

“If you had -”

Lightning strikes, illuminating Pepa’s shadow behind the layer of sand.

“- and you could have -”

Bruno slaps his hands on top of his ears, wondering if this is how Dolores feels on daily basis, but nothing can shield him from Pepa’s truth.

“ - but you didn’t, and you let it happen to him! You could have stopped it, you could have stopped him!”

Sand sticks to Bruno’s wet cheeks, and though his lips tremble, no words leave them. He is silent, watching the scene unfold, just as helpless as when his visions reveal all the terrible things to come.

Lightning strikes again, this time so close, Bruno falls backward to not be struck. The smell of heated sand fills the room.

“You let my youngest son walk on the ice, and you let my oldest go after him - And look. Just look at what happened!”

Bruno looks. He sees it all, again; the storm, Pepa advancing, the lightning strikes around her, the endless streams of tears, the madness in her eyes, the grief etched into every one of her features. He hadn’t dared to imagine what could cause her this amount of pain, though, watching Pepa become a mother, he’d always had a growing, terrible suspicion.

And how the vision had ended - Pepa, the storm, the bolts of lightning, the fury; all directed at him.

Now he has the whole truth. Now he knows what he’d done. And how can he live with it - this terrible guilt?

Oh, he’s witnessed Pepa’s anger many times before. Children's tantrums, common among siblings. They’d turned less frequent though more serious in character as they’d both grown up. Bruno remembers Pepa’s face when he’d told her that Pablo wouldn’t be her true love, when it’d started to rain during her wedding day, when he’d given Dolores her vision, when a well-meaning Agustín had said that the seven-year-old Camilo looked like his lost uncle, and Bruno had watched his sister’s angry anguish through a crack in the wall.

There’d been so many storms.

But nothing like this before.

“Pepa!”

Julieta appears through a sandy gust, clinging to her sister’s side the moment she can see her through her grainy vision.

“He knew!” Pepa sobs. “He knew, he knew!”

“Pepa!” Julieta has moved to stand in front of her, oblivious to the flying sand, holding her by the shoulders where she can feel every tremor that wreck her sister’s body. “You need to calm down, and then we can talk about it -”

“Will talking help Camilo?!”

“It will help you!” Tightened her grip, Julieta stands firm against the storm. “You are upset, and you have every right -”

I’m not upset,” Pepa spits out through gritted teeth. She hates that phrase, hates how many times it’d been said to her throughout her life. As if that statement would blow away the clouds and not turn them bigger, darker.

“Estás bien.” Julieta, returning to her constant role as a healer, starts listing her symptoms, her injuries, her emotions. “You’re angry, you’re scared -”

Pepa already knows this. She tries to push past her sister, to get to Bruno, to make him answer her questions. “Why didn’t you -”

“What is going on here?”

Alma doesn’t yell. There’s no need. Her voice cuts through the storm that cowers before her, allowing her swift passage to the middle of the scene. It reminds all of them of several incidents in the past.

Siblings fighting, crying, pointing fingers at each other. Alma has handled scenes like this before where her children would cling to her and demand her support and justice. It’s not easy raising triplets.

Julieta was the peacekeeper, rarely the cause of the commotion. Pepa was as wild as her fiery hair, her temper flaring up on both sides of the blame game. And Bruno, born well-meaning but with a foot in his mouth, often stepped on toes amid his apologies.

Her son is the target of this storm, and Pepa collapses against Alma with a broken sob. 

“Camilo was sick - he was sick when he left the house, and then he fell into the water, and now he’s worse. And Bruno was in charge, and he heard him cough, he knew - he knew, and he didn’t send him back home, and he could have stopped it, and he didn’t -” There’s a childishness in her rant, and Pepa knows it too, but there’s no stopping it. A whine accompanies her halted breath when she looks at Alma with pleading eyes. “He knew, mamá.”

Her green eyes are glistening with tears, and so are Bruno’s when Alma turns to meet his watery stare. His face is pale and wet, turned grim with something she reads as both guilt and resignation.

“We will get to the bottom of this,” she says, refusing to prop the sore matter further. While the information she’s been given is unnerving enough, Alma can see no point in tearing into Bruno at the moment - it looks like Pepa has already done a too throughout job. “But your anger won’t help your son, Pepa.”

Behind the two of them, Julieta runs a hand down her face, knowing fully well that their mother, though with good intentions, has just said the wrong thing.

As a result, the wind howls once more.

“I know! Nothing is helping - he won’t stay awake, he won’t -” Pepa curls in on herself, feeling like the small, scared child that is screaming within her. “He only wakes up to cough, and it’s even worse than before, and it’s Bruno’s fault,” she says, crying just as hard as her brother now.

“It wasn’t!” 

A new voice joins the cacophony, and all heads turn to the side where Mirabel and a quiet Isabela are looking down at them from a perch, having followed the other family members inside.

“It’s my fault, tía,” Mirabel asserts, and no one acknowledges Bruno’s choked sound of disagreement. “He wanted to send him home, he did! But Milo wanted to stay!”

“Mirabel,” Julieta says with a pleading glance. She understands what her girl is trying to do, and she appreciates it, but this scene is chaotic enough without her daughters’ presence.

“Bruno went into the water to get him!”

“But my baby still fell through the ice!” Pepa cuts in. “I shouldn’t have let him, I shouldn’t have let them go, I shouldn’t have let you take them -”

The storm has changed. There are no more lightning strikes, but the sky refuses to rest. The rain begins, not with gently falling raindrops, but as an ice-cold cascade.

“If we’d had sent Camilo home, then no one would have been able to rescue Antonio - Okay, no, that was the wrong thing to say,” Mirabel says, crying as well. She cannot hear her aunt’s sobbing, but she can see her shake and hide her anguished face in her hands. “I’m sorry. Tía, if you need to blame anyone, you should blame me. I agreed with Camilo, I -”

She is pulled back by Isabela who shakes her head.

“Pepa,” Julieta says on her daughter’s behalf. “It was an accident.”

Pepa says nothing. She hugs herself tighter, ignoring her mother’s hand on her shoulder. But Julieta feels it - a shift in the wind.

“Girls. Leave.”

Isabela wraps an arm around Mirabel who refuses to tear her flooded eyes away from Bruno, even as she is led away and out of the room.

Alma tries to reach for her daughter’s hand, but when Pepa flinches away from her, she goes to her son instead. Bruno is still on the floor, covered in wet sand, but when Alma offers him her hand, he shakily manages to stand upright.

It’s been a long time since he’s spoken. Pepa has been loud enough, and both Julieta and Mirabel have tried to speak on his behalf. But it doesn’t change the fact that Bruno owes his sister some words. An apology, an explanation, a plea -

“I - I saw -”

“You saw?!”

His sister misunderstands. Of course, she does; he’s so horrible at this, to put his Gift into words, to meet people and their expectations, fear and grievances.

“No - No, no, Pepa - I mean - Yes - No, I mean no -”

“Bruno -” Julieta looks at him, eyes darkened with grief and disappointment.

“Pepa, you need to calm down -”

“Mamá -”

“We cannot let this family get even more hurt -”

“I - “ Pepa hisses, her entire being lashing out like a thunderbolt to find the source of this horrid pain, to feel just a little bit less helpless. “He -”

She’s been trying to keep it in. Ever since the talk with her mother in the courtyard, she’s locked the emotions away. She’d tried to keep the skies clear - for Camilo who doesn’t need her snow or rain. But it’s terrible; it’s torture to crave such a level of restraint from a grieving mother.

The feelings never went away. They just brewed within her, and now, with Camilo safe from the storm inside the nursery, Pepa watches Julieta take a protective stance in front of Bruno, and it all breaks.

“I have one sibling who should have seen this coming and stopped it, and one who can’t even make my boy open his eyes!”

Pepa!”

A stricken Alma needs a moment to close her eyes and inhale before she can continue. “Your brother,” she says shakily, “has made mistakes that we will address, but without him, Camilo would still be in the water.”

“Without him, he wouldn’t have been on the ice.”

“Think of your son. Your hijo. Think of nothing else.”

“And that is supposed to keep me calm?!”

“Sí,” Alma says firmly.

Pepa looks from Bruno - cowering, shameful, pleading - to Julieta - hurt and worried, all at once - and asks, “Can he die from this? Can I lose my boy from this?”

The rain falls harder as Julieta hesitates.

That’s enough of an answer.


Félix can feel the house tremble, but it is not enough of an excuse to leave his son. The storm doesn’t surprise him, honestly. It’s a matter of time before Pepa would break. Félix will tend to her, of course, but he’s spread thin enough as it is between Camilo and his other children.

“Wouldn’t mind your help cheering your mamá up, Milo,” he mutters, stroking his thumb across Camilo’s knuckles. His son’s hand is so small, dwarfed by Félix’s palm. 

He’d been his little boy once. He still is, but things have changed since Antonio’s birth. Camilo had seemed so grown after that, so helpful and willing to assist his parents and sibling. Still a bit of a troublemaker, but Félix wouldn’t change that part about him. Not when it brings so much joy.

But Camilo is still a child, much too young to have - to have died, as Félix’s brain refuses to properly acknowledge. He is Félix’s little hijo, and he should have protected him. That’s his job, and it’s his promise.

How worried Pepa had been the day he and Agustín had taken their youngest to the river near the town for their very first swimming lesson. It’d been spring, but the water had still been cold enough to make Mirabel squeal. She’d sat on Agustín’s lap, watching him swing his feet back and forth in the water while he carefully told her the things she needed to know, how to move her arms, her legs, that he would be there to make sure nothing happened to her.

Camilo, the moment Félix had turned his head, just for a second, had jumped into the water. Maybe he’d forgotten he didn’t know how to swim yet. Maybe he just didn’t care. Either way, he’d taken the leap with no sign of fear or second thoughts.

Félix had jumped in after him, pulled him out, and stared at him wide-eyed while Camilo simply laughed, entertained by the sight of his father in soaking wet clothes and oblivious to the danger he’d been in.

“You never hesitate,” Félix says and closes his eyes. The coughing fit had wrung all of the energy out of Camilo, and while Félix is relieved to see his breathing somewhat stable, the unconsciousness scares him more than he likes to admit.

No storm follows his wife when he enters the room. She is soaked to the bone, looking far worse than Félix feels. He wasn’t there to hold the umbrella during the downpour, but he can offer his support now.

“Pepi,” he says, already spreading his arms. When she shakes her head in a gentle rejection, he knows to give her time now and nudge her later.

“I’m okay,” she says, and both her face and the weather – rather; the lack of any - prove the statement to be true. “Let me hold him.”

Félix loves this woman with every inch of his body. Where others may see her for her Gift, her weather, her outbursts, Félix sees the restraint, the willpower, and the strength it takes for Pepa to not let it show; her emotions, her weather, and her struggles. He sees the Gift for what it is - a burden that his wife has learned to carry gracefully a long time ago.

Things have changed. He knows this, and he appreciates this.

But nothing has prepared them for this. He doesn’t know how to handle Pepa’s emotions, let alone his own.

While Pepa practically climbs into the bed to join an unresponsive Camilo, Félix realizes this is not where the damage control is needed.

Wet footsteps that trail back to Bruno’s tower tell him where to go.

“Look, I knew Pepa would end up exploding from bottling things up. You tell her to put on a brave face, at least one of us will end up soaked in the end. This - this is a lot, and it is taking longer and expected, but - what just happened?” 

He comes to a halt, fully taken in the chaotic mess that Pepa has left behind.

“I think you need to tell me. Now.”

Julieta is crying, her face hidden by Alma’s embrace, and to everyone’s surprise, it’s Bruno who breaks the silence. “Lo siento,” he cries hoarsely. “Lo siento, lo siento.”


Pepa watches a drop of sweat roll down Camilo’s forehead, and she tells herself that this is still better than when he was freezing cold. It has to be. Her sanity cannot handle anything else.

Maybe it’s wrong to blame Bruno when there’s another sinner. 

It’s the magic. The sacrifice her father gave his life for, the magic she’s been taught to appreciate. Even when it wrung her inside out, revealing what she wanted to keep hidden, punishing the entire Encanto for a single mood swing. Even when it’d pulled her brother away from the family, forced him behind the walls. When it’d overworked her sister and scarred her niece. When it’d lured Antonio onto the ice and given Camilo the ability to follow him.

The clouds over Encanto darken. The storm had caused wreckage inside Bruno’s tower, but now it can no longer be contained. It spreads; framed photos tremble against the wall, hanging pots swing back and forth in the courtyard until the rope breaks. Wares fly from their stalls in the square, trees bend, roof tiles loosen.

Inside the nursery, nothing is out of place as Pepa strokes Camilo’s reddened face. It is silent, it is warm, and Pepa will keep it safe.

Everything is perfectly calm in the eye of the hurricane.

Notes:

I swear, this chapter has been half-written in my documents for months. It was a tough one to write, but I hope it turned out okay.

Thank you so much for all the lovely support <3

Chapter 10: Arms

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Several petals fly from Isabela’s sleeves when she throws her hands in the air. “What was that?!” she cries, spinning around to face Mirabel who still has her eyes glued to Bruno’s door.

Its golden hue should bring her comfort and remind her that the family is whole once more, that despite the arguments, there are no cracks, no darkened doors (her eyes stubbornly avoid Camilo’s flickering door in unspoken fear), and that Bruno is with them again - and that he won’t leave.

“I was telling tía the truth!” Mirabel insists because that is the point of it all - that it is all one misunderstanding. After all, Bruno is not to blame. Not solely. And not like this. All of this yelling, the storms, the fear - it’s not supposed to be a part of their family. Not again.

“And we promised mom we wouldn’t tell her the truth!” Isabela shouts back at her. “Not now, not before -”

“But it’s not fair to let Bruno take the whole blame! It’s not! He’s finally returned to this family, and he was feeling so much better, and this would ruin him! And you know it!”

Judging from the conflicted grimace that flashes across Isabela’s face, Mirabel hits a sore spot. “I was just saying the truth-!” Isabela begins, only to realize she is going against her own argument.

Mirabel has opened her mouth, but then they hear the doorknob turn, and Isabela drags her to the side, out of the way in time for Pepa to storm down the balcony with a dark cloud above her. The wind sends a layer of cold toward the girls, making their hair stand on end. 

Instinctively, Isabela’s grip on her little sister tightens. “Come.” She pulls her toward the kitchen where it is still warm. Their mother has always called this room the heart of the house …

While Mirabel braces herself against Casita’s trembling counter, Isabela moves to stand behind her, and there they both look out of the window, toward the darkened sky. The thick layer of clouds turns into a black–and–white painting when lightning tears the canvas apart.

Isabela can feel it when the palm trees bow to the wind, leaves flying toward the village below. Rain accompanies them, drops sharpened by the cold but not quite turning them into flakes yet.

Mirabel flinches and she wonders - fears - if it is enough to tear tiles from the roof. “Oh dios,” she mutters numbly when Casita turns its shutters to protect them from the worst of the storm. “I hope no one is still outside…”

Isabela is now looking in the other direction, toward the courtyard and the balcony above where she can see the shadow of Félix march toward the tower.

“This is bad…”

“It already was bad!” Isabela snaps and turns just in time to watch Mirabel attempt to leave.

“I need to go check on Bruno.”

“Don’t interrupt them. They need space!” Isabela grabs her wrist, ignoring the vines sprouting down her arms, reaching for her sister. “You cannot keep pushing like that, didn’t you see what just happened?!”

“The family falling apart?” Mirabel pulls back, but Isabela is blocking the doorway. “Because that’s what I saw, and we can’t let that happen again.”

The ‘we’ takes Isabela by surprise, leaving her mouth agape and unprepared for what Mirabel says next.

“Do you really think this is what Camilo wants to see when he wakes up?”

Isabela knows her sister is right - at least partly - but at the same time, the truth is not that simple. She wishes it was. She wishes she had Mirabel’s trust and hope - and naivety. A fit of ingrown jealousy hardens her face. “You -”

“Mijas.” A weary Agustín appears behind Isabela who flinches in surprise when his hand brushes against her shoulder. “I think it’s time to go to your room. Dinner is –“ He winces, knowing there will be no family at the table tonight. “I’ll bring something up for you. We’ll talk it all through in the morning, yes? When things have calmed down.”

Judging from the increasing wind, that is not going to happen any time soon. It tears white flowers from Isabela’s hair as she races up the stairs, and when one smacks Mirabel in the face, she crumbles it between her fingers.


Agustín has just reached Bruno’s door when it swings open. Félix walks past him, curses under his breath and eyes looking at everything but his brother-in-law, and Agustín decides not to go after him. Instead, he waits for his wife who stumbles into his arms. Behind her, he spots Alma, torn between all three of her children, and he gives her a nod, letting her know he will handle this for now.

They cling tightly to each other against the strong wind. It leaves the framed photos on the wall hanging crooked, and Agustín just hopes nothing will shatter. But there are greater things to worry about, and he’s dealt with broken glass before. Luckily, Julieta’s door isn’t far, and they slip inside, wet and cold and Julieta trembling in his embrace.

“Juli,” he breathes, reaching up to wipe her wet cheeks.

“She’s right.” His wife shakes, eyes darkened with a sense of grief he recognizes from all the times she has lamented Bruno’s fate. “I can’t help him.”

“Look at me.” She does, but only after a too long, too painful moment of hesitation, and Agustín reacts by holding up her head with the tip of his fingers. “You know how hard you work. With or without magic. You are giving everything you can. And it’s not your fault when it’s not enough.” Oh, the times he’s had to comfort his daughter for lacking a Gift, and oh, the times he’s had to support his wife to help carry the weight of her magic, her role. “Sometimes, we need miracles. And sometimes, we are lucky enough to get them.”

At what cost, Julieta doesn’t dare to ask out loud. The question is accompanied by a soul-wrenching longing for her father. She misses him, she realizes, though she hasn’t met him. But it can be felt when she sees Agustín with the girls, when they get to witness the father she never had, whenever the pressure from her mother would grow too heavy, or now, when she feels scared, she misses that sense of comfort that was traded away before she even had a voice.

She doesn’t argue against his sacrifice, not truly, but with her longing, she wishes things could be different. Especially now.

It’s difficult, only knowing your father through stories. And as Julieta grew up, she learned to tell the nuanced differences between the stories apart. Her mother has told them about Pedro, about his sacrifice, about his death. But those are not the same stories, and it took a while before they were told what they wanted to know. Even now, Julieta still has questions.

What a strange life, to grow up with magic and a living house, but not a father. Seeing Agustín with their girls is her proof that fatherhood is not something rare hidden in fairy tales, but something real, something she never had.

But she has a family. She has never been alone. For that, she is eternally grateful.

“I cannot blame her,” she admits and reaches up to rest her hands upon Agustín’s. “I’d fear my own reaction if it was one of my own girls. This is bad enough.”

What can she do? Stay mad at her sister, stay hurt? Keep her distance? Camilo needs her, and Julieta knows her responsibility, her role in all of this, her place. Then her pain can wait.

“It is not fair,” Agustín mutters into her graying hair as he rocks her back and forth, “to be his healer and his tía at the same time.”

So many things are unfair. So many things that Julieta cannot bring herself to say out loud. Instead, she makes a promise.

“I’m going to save him.” 

Agustín’s response is the tightening of his embrace, the halt in his breathing, and the closing of his eyes.


Her knees are too old to kneel comfortably in the sand, but even so, she sits down next to Bruno and lets him lean against her as he weeps. She holds him, and like decades earlier, when the infants had competed to scream the loudest, she wishes her arms were longer, that they could hold more. She misses Pedro’s arms.

There won’t be a time good enough for this question, but she waits until Bruno’s breathing is somewhat steady.

“Did you have a vision?” she asks while holding his hand.

“Yes,” Bruno admits, staring at the dark sand Pepa left behind with reddened eyes. “But not about Camilo. Gods, he didn’t - he didn’t even exist then. It was before him, before any of the grandkids.”

That surprises Alma, but she holds any questions back behind pursed lips. To have carried this secret, this burden for so long … On both sides of the walls …

“I saw Pepa angry. At me. And she wasn’t just angry, she was heartbroken, and there was - there was lightning and sand, and her face … You just saw it.” He flails a hand towards the chaotic scene the storm left behind. “I didn’t know what it was about. It didn’t know when it was going to happen. I just knew I was going to hurt her, and I’ve been waiting more than twenty years for my mistake to be grave enough.”

Alma doesn’t know what to say. Like all the times Bruno cowered before her, the right words won’t come to her lips. She inhales, breathing in the scent of smoke and newly fallen rain, and pats his hand once more.

For Bruno, that is enough. 

“She was so angry at her wedding. But I knew - I could see this was going to be worse. And I didn’t even dare to think about what I could have done.”

When Alma doesn’t let go of his hand, Bruno is forced to try to bury his face with only one palm.

“I didn’t think - Oh god. He’s my sobrino. I should have -”

“Bruno,” she says firmly, and his tired eyes widen, tears clinging to his lashes. “Listen to me. What you have to remember from today is this:  You brought Camilo home.”

That causes him to crumble once more, and while Alma holds him, she curses her arms, how short they are, knowing there are more hurting souls, more comfort to be given, more pain to be soothed, and she simply cannot embrace it all.


Antonio is a small ball curled up on her bed. Once upon a time, Camilo would sleep in her room too, convinced that a monster (“Four eyes and four wings, I swear, Lola!”) lived beneath his bed. He had trusted her ears would keep him safe, and Dolores had indulged him, thinking about how frightening it must be to sleep surrounded by mirrors.

He would keep her up all night with his snoring, but Dolores had survived until their father had looked under the bed and made a promise with Casita to keep bad monsters away.

Dolores wonders when Antonio can sleep on his own again. She wonders if she can ever miss the silence again.

Antonio’s sniffling has stopped, and sleep has slowed down his heartbeat. Dolores walks slowly so as not to wake him, though the strength of the wind takes her by surprise when she unlatches the window shutters. She barely manages to hold on, preventing them from slamming against the wall.

The noise of the storm rolls over her like a wave; the screeching of the wind, the pebbles trembling against the paved paths, wood groaning, doors slamming, and worse, inside the houses, worried questions being asked. Another storm? And it’s worse than yesterday - The poor boy - This cannot bode well - Do you think - Do you know - How awful -

Dolores lets the cold wind caress her face, but then, out of fear of waking Antonio, she leaves the window only by open by an inch. Just enough for her to reach past all the chaos and gossip and find Mariano’s voice instead.

All evening, he’s been offering his support in the shape of a distraction, reading out loud from one of her favorite novels. She knows it by heart now, no cliffhangers can distress her, and instead, she can tune in to let the familiar sentences lull her into a sense of peace. He’ll come and visit tomorrow, he promised, and Dolores prays a better scene will await him then.


Isabela is still awake when the door creaks open. Her argument with Mirabel has kept her up, scenes replayed inside her head, the words she wishes she hadn’t used, the cold tone that had lashed out from her like a wild vine breaking a nose -

Panic blossoms within her; she isn’t ready to apologize just yet, she hasn’t managed to turn her thoughts into proper phrases, how to shape the truth into something manageable.

“Mirabel -”

She pushes herself up on the bed, white lilies falling off her blanket, but the silhouette in the doorway can only belong to Luisa.

“Hi,” Luisa mutters, and Isabela scoots to the side, making room for her on the bed. Either her little sister doesn’t notice or maybe she decides not to bring it up, but there are no comments on the white flowers Luisa has to walk through to join her sister’s embrace.

Though the height difference is unfair, it doesn’t change the fact that Isabela is the big sister. And it’s something that Luisa hasn’t forgotten in times like this when she curls up against her for comfort.

“I’m just scared to go to sleep,” she admits, voice thick with unshed tears. “Because if we wake up and things aren’t better - that means it’s really bad, and they can’t hide it anymore.”

And their parents are trying their hardest to hide it. Like Isabela, Luisa is an adult, and she can see through their father’s fake smiles and feel the tension in the air before the storm and the yelling had broken out.

Forcing life into Camilo’s breathless body is the worst moment of Isabela’s life, topping the terrible evening when Casita fell. All the fear and the grief and the panic - but worst of all, the responsibility that had threatened to crush her as she’d kept pushing the broken ribs. The knowledge that she might save him, knowing she’d never recover if she failed.

That was supposed to be the worst of it. Then why doesn’t it feel like that anymore?

“Mirabel says that it’ll be okay. And I know she isn’t lying, but -”

“She could be wrong,” Isabela finishes for her. “She just doesn’t realize it yet.”

Mirabel is wise beyond her years, but her love for and faith in her blindness has granted her the childish naivety that Isabela desires. 

It hadn’t happened often, but it had occured; souls that their mother couldn’t save. Death is still inevitable in the Encanto. The kids had been whisked away to be shielded from such hard scenes, but Isabela recalled watching her mother cry by the windowsill and, knowing her magic always made her abuela smile in pride, she’d offered her a flower to make the sadness stop. Julieta had thanked her, embraced her, and promised that there was nothing to worry about.

But then came the aftermath.

Isabela learned to keep her woes hidden, and while Mirabel now knows the burden she struggled to carry, Isabela doubts that her little sister ever thought about how a part of her job was to decorate the caskets for every funeral in the Encanto.

Luisa has a hand pressed against her mouth, trying to stilt her sniggling.

“It’s okay,” Isabela says while patting her arm.

But her little sister rightfully shakes her head. “Not really. Not yet.”

That’s the core of it all.


Mirabel is never truly alone inside Casita. Especially tonight the house is sure to keep her company. Pillows are propped up around her in the bed in a makeshift hug, and while Mirabel appreciates it, it doesn’t feel like it’s enough.

Usually, she would go to Antonio as it wouldn’t be the first time the two of them stayed together for the night - they both miss the time they were roommates, and sharing a room is a comfort she misses now more than ever. But he’s with Dolores, and she doesn’t want to disturb her; nor does she want to wake up her sisters, though she knows they would comfort her, too.

Even Isabela. Mirabel has promised herself to talk with her in the morning. Their argument was a bitter reminder of how their relationship used to be, and Mirabel refuses to let their communication break once more. Isabela talked about needing space - sure, Mirabel will use the night to plan how to make things better then.

Talk with Isabela, help with breakfast, and then - then they get to see Camilo, right? Mirabel’s eyes drift to the roll of yellow fabric. That’s something she could do. And seeing the new ruana might cheer up tía Pepa too, and it’d give Camilo something to look forward to in his recovery.

It’s not magic, but it’s what Mirabel does. Sewing. Fixing things. Helping the family.

That is going on the list of things to do tomorrow. Closing her eyes, she tries her best to imagine the pattern - where to put the needle, where to pull it through, and which colors to use.

It’ll look pretty once it’s done. It’ll be better than before so Camilo won’t have something to mourn.

She misses him, Mirabel realizes in her dark room. She misses her primo, her first roommate, his snoring and his bad jokes, his stupid smirk, and the way he could always make her smile. That, she misses so much it makes her chest hurt.


Félix latches the window close, making sure the wind cannot get inside. Though, with Camilo’s fever continuing to rise, the cold might just help. But the storm only rages outside their little temple, and he doesn’t want the peace to be broken.

Camilo shifts, his wet face twisting in a grimace while Pepa whispers soothing words into his ear.

Tending to him keeps her calm; her eyes are kind and full of love, her smile comforting and touch gentle. This is how he knows her, though he’s lived through her storms before. He knows that side of her, too, and that doesn’t change his love for her.

There are bigger things to worry about - Camilo is right there between them, needing help they cannot give - but while they wait, Félix won’t stay silent.

“Pepi,” he says and her eyes dart away from their son. “You need them. Don’t push them away.”

“Are you not angry?” It’s not an accusation, but a genuine question. Her whole life, Pepa has doubted her own emotions, being judged whether they were right or wrong.

“I’m worried for our son. Just like you. And that’s all I can focus on.”

She nods slowly, listening to his words, clinging to them.

“But we have a wonderful, strong boy. And an amazing family,” Félix continues and wipes a drop of sweat away from Camilo’s brow. “And we’ve been given miracles before. That’s what we have to think about, too.”

“I can’t think.” Pepa curls in on herself and by instinct, she moves away from Camilo in case it might rain. “It’s all too horrible, if I think, it’ll get worse. I can’t do it. I can’t stay calm, I can’t be patient or rational or all the things I should be if I think - if I think about my son and what’s happened to him and what could happen to him. If I think about - about those damn bruises.”

Eyes widened, Félix stands up to be next to her, watching as she hugs herself.

“I’m not stupid,” she whispers. “I know what they meant. I just can’t think about it, I can’t -” 

Before she can double over, Félix is there, cupping her head and holding her upright. He kisses her forehead with an unspoken promise and lets her cry. Tears or rain, it doesn’t scare him anymore. Oh, if it was his inner being laid bare - That’s a thought that scares him.

“I need to talk to Bruno,” Pepa says against his neck. “I have to apologize, I didn’t mean it - you know I didn’t mean it. I - I need him. I need him to look and see something good for him -”

She falls silent when the door opens. That is a surprise; Félix had figured this was going to be a long night. He doesn’t blame Julieta and Agustín for wanting to stay in their room, and to be honest, he isn’t sure if he would let anyone keep watch over Camilo tonight. Félix will be there for him, he will stay awake.

Before he can stop her, Pepa has pulled away, rushing to her door to collapse against her sister, fingers digging into her shoulders.

Julieta, as always, wraps her arms around her, though her pale face stays weary.

“Lo siento,” Pepa weeps, her whole body shaking with every word. “I’m sorry, Juli, I’m so sorry.”

Silently, Julieta just holds her.

“You know I didn’t mean it.”

Her sister agrees with a tired sigh.

“I can’t be mad at you.” Pepa trembles, shifting in the embrace to grasp Julieta’s hands, and she squeezes them with what strength she has left. “You’re my big sister, and you make everything okay.” 

Her green eyes shine with tears and desperation, matched by a heartbroken smile bordering on lunacy.

Please make everything okay.”

Notes:

For every sad chapter, there will be a chapter in the comfort arc - yeah, this story will be long as hell. Hope you all stick around <3

Thank you for all the support <3 again, sorry for the lack of overall actions, but this is more of a character study. Though things will happen. And there will be a climax and everything -

Chapter 11: Lilies

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Tío.” 

The word is practically an exhale, just barely above a whisper, but it might as well be thunder with the way Bruno jolts and curls in on himself.

Then his niece is in his arms, and Mirabel hugs him so tightly that his spine straightens in response. There’s something magical about Mirabel’s hugs, something that can soothe pain and mend cracks, something that will always tug at the corner of Bruno’s lips.

For a few stunned seconds, he simply leans into the embrace. Then he remembers that he’s the one who should be comforting her, that Mirabel is just a child and is seeking reassurance that Bruno should be able to give.

“Why are you up?” Mirabel asks as their hug ends. She is in her nightgown, glasses hanging crooked on her nose. They’re stained with dried tears and the trip to the kitchen has showered them with fat raindrops. 

“I - Uh-” Bruno swallows and looks away from Mirabel’s curls, towards the trembling shutters blocking the window. The wind howls and weeps on the other side of the wood. “The storm.”

“I couldn’t sleep either.” The thoughts had kept her up, but the storm hadn’t helped. She’d stayed in her bed, feeling the storm shake the foundation of the house with its strength. Camilo’s birthday gift had been on the list for tomorrow, but Mirabel had looked up at the ceiling with wet eyes and decided that, theoretically, it was already tomorrow. It’s past midnight anyway. So she’d grabbed the golden fabric, stroked it, and let the work keep her busy. “So I started working on Camilo’s birthday gift. I - I’m making him a new ruana. So he won’t miss the old one, you know?”

Bruno nods wordlessly, wishing he, in fact, didn’t know.

“But my fingers - They must be tired. I keep messing up.” Mirabel sighs, rubbing her eyes and knocking the glasses even more askew. “So I was hoping there might be some coffee around. I don’t mind it cold.”

When she’d realized she wouldn’t be alone in the kitchen, Mirabel had hoped that meant a pot of coffee was already brewing. But no, Bruno had just been sitting at the empty table, and so Mirabel moves to receive two cups from Casita’s shelves.

The house does the rest of the work, already pouring the coffee beans. That allows Mirabel to rest her hands against the counter, body bowed from the weight of guilt she can’t let go of. “I’m sorry.”

“Mirabel.” Bruno is by her side in a second, holding onto her arm. “No. It’s not your -”

“But I helped Camilo convince you.” Mirabel has closed her eyes, oblivious to how the house has already swung a hook and prepared a cloth for her to wipe away the tears. “If I hadn’t sided with him, you would have sent him home.”

Bruno bites down on his lip to prevent a foot in his mouth. He can’t dare to voice his thoughts - those traitorous thoughts that remind him how bad an uncle he’s been, that they shouldn’t have given him the title of the designated adult when they all know he can’t make a proper decision (not after ten years spent behind the walls and the thought process that had led him to that hiding place). The thoughts that say that Mirabel is right.

“No. That’s not how it works,” he says instead, and deep inside, he knows those words to be true as well. “You shouldn’t feel bad about this.”

“But I do. And I just know that Camilo wouldn’t want it to storm.”

As on cue, the wind howls. With every gust tearing at the shutters, Bruno imagines his sister sobbing in unison. He swallows, gratefully accepting the cup of coffee the tiles nudge against his hand. 

“I’m just so scared that it’ll - that it’ll all break again,” Mirabel admits while her fingers clutch the edge of the counter until her knuckles turn white. “That the house will crack because we are all so angry and -”

“No, nono.” Bruno puts down the cup, almost knocking it over in his hurry to grab Mirabel by the shoulders, his gaze seeking hers. “Mirabel, this isn’t - this isn’t anger. Your tía’s scared.”

“That’s not better.” Mirabel rubs her eyes again, even taking the time to quickly wipe her glasses with the cloth. She readjusts them, and when she looks up, it is as if she finally sees clearly. She takes in the scene again, this time putting together the details; Bruno, alone, in the middle of the night, red-eyed, no coffee, no indication of him sitting down any time soon, as if he might not stay... “Wait - why are you - are you leaving?” Even before Bruno can answer, Mirabel has tightened a fist around his ruana. “Tío, you can’t-”

“I’m not!” Bruno gasps, shame burning in his cheeks as he sees the pain that’s everywhere on his niece’s face. “I’m not leaving you, Mirabel.”

“Camilo needs you too!”

“I’m not going anywhere,” he tells her again, letting her fall against him in another embrace. “Have you seen the storm outside?” It’s supposed to be an attempt at humor, a weak one, and it doesn’t work.

Mirabel wipes her wet and snotty face against his ruana, only feeling half-bad about the action.

“Miraboo.”

They both know it’s Agustín before they turn around to see him in the doorway with a bucket in his hands, a puddle growing beneath his slim silhouette. With his luck, the storm has not been kind to him, and his wet shirt sticks to his skin, drops falling with every movement. He hasn’t even removed his vest, having spent the whole night awake so far, helping where he can inside the nursery. They’d all abandoned the idea of getting any sleep with Camilo’s temperature hitting a new height every hour.

But that is something for the adults to deal with, not his kids. “You should be sleeping,” he says, though he fully understands why his daughter is here right now, and he appreciates Bruno for giving her the comfort she needs.

“I don’t think anyone is right now,” Mirabel says, and Agustín wishes that he could tell her that she’s wrong.

“Your mother is trying to deal with the fever.” Remembering why he came down here in the first place, Agustín lifts the bucket to the counter so the water can be replaced. They are going to need more rags too, trying to cover as much of Camilo’s skin as possible. “I’m just helping where I can.”

“Is there something I can do?”

“Rest,” Agustín tells his daughter, sending her the strongest smile he can manage. “Someone needs to be able to stay awake in the morning.”

There’s a truth in that which Mirabel recognizes, and after a quick final hug, she grabs her cup of coffee, bracing herself before hurrying her way through the storm toward her room.

Agustín ensures that she makes it there safely, squinting through the butterfly-shaped holes in the brick. “Bruno,” he says then, breaking the silence, and feels the green eyes dart toward him. “I’m going to need your help.”

Bruno blinks in surprise but is quick to nod. Of course. Of course, he wants to help, even if he fears making things worse.

“It’s difficult sometimes. Being a good uncle,” Agustín says, his tone lighter than his words. “But Camilo has two of them, and he needs both of us right now.”

“I -” Bruno licks his lips, hesitating. “I don’t think it’s a good idea if I step into the nursery right now.”

“It’s difficult being in there,” Agustín agrees, and though he understands that Bruno is avoiding Pepa, it’s Camilo that scares him the most. Seeing the boy this sick, this fragile, it’s breaking his heart. “It’s rising. His fever,” he says now when Mirabel cannot hear it. Even if Bruno won’t enter the nursery, he deserves to know what they are dealing with, though Agustín will save him the details of Camilo’s dry, cracking lips and the way his skin is pulled taunt against his sweaty face. “We are going to need a lot of cold water.”

Though Casita shelters them here in the warmth of the kitchen, Agustín can still hear the wind and the rain, the cold seeping through the cracks of the wood. “Alma wants to call for the Padre. But we have to wait until the storm’s calmed down. Or -”

Bruno’s throat tightens, and his fingers claw at his chest. He can’t breathe, he can’t breathe; the dark thoughts spiral the more he thinks about this plan, what it might mean. “I can -”

“Bruno.” Agustín’s stare isn’t piercing, however, it’s sharp enough to tear down his defenses. “You shouldn’t go outside in a storm like this.”

Tearing his tongue from the roof of his mouth, Bruno tries to respond to that, but he ends up nodding, the movement jerky like a doll attached to strings.

Then Agustín trips in the water that’s gathered beneath his soaked shoes, and when he catches himself against the counter, he knocks over the buckets in the process. He curses under his breath - an unexpected reaction - but it turns into a sigh when Bruno kneels next to him to help clean up the mess.

“We need to talk to the kids in the morning,” Agustín says while refilling the bucket. “Let them know that things will be… tense until the fever breaks. Julieta thinks we should let them sleep in. Then deal with it when they are ready. And - Antonio needs some special attention, and we can’t let Dolores handle it on her own.”

Bruno is on the floor, unfolding rags over the puddle. “I -” He reconsiders his offer before he’s even given it. He wants to be there for his sobrino, of course, but - but look at what happened with Camilo. Besides, Agustín is the only uncle Antonio had known for all of his life. “I can talk with the girls in the morning. Then you can - explain things to Antonio.”

“That’s a plan.” Agustín looks down at him with something akin to pity. “Pepa talked with Julieta. She’s really sorry.”

“I know.” That’s his sister; angry and sorry all at once, and both feelings are justified. “... Mirabel is sewing a birthday gift for Camilo.”

Augustín’s inhale is shaky, almost wet. “Of course she is,” he says, and his smile is only a weak twitch of his lips.


A cold breeze caresses Luisa’s cheek, waking her up. She blinks wearily, trying to rid the blur from her vision so she can focus on Isabela. She’s sitting by the open window, and any other day, it would have been a peaceful scene; beautiful Isabela admiring the sunrise and the Encanto she lives in. Today, from there, she can see Alma clutching her shawl as she walks across the bridge toward the town.

The storm’s over, but as Luisa comes closer, she can see the soft snowflakes in the air.

“Isa?”

“It’s pretty bad,” Isabela says softly, but it doesn’t make the blow hurt any less.

Immediately, Luisa’s eyes water, but the tears don’t stop her from noticing the white blanket surrounding her sister. However, it’s first when she steps on one of the flowers that she understands what the cover is made out of. All white lilies with red smears. “Woaw.”

“Sorry,” her sister says absentmindedly, and a pair of flowers join the growing bunch. They are in her hair, too, woven between curls.

“Are you okay?”

Isabela snorts, and it’s a short, sad sound. “Is anyone?”

Luisa tries her best to avoid crushing any petals on her way to the sister, but she knows it to be futile. After hopping around like when Antonio’s small capybaras flock around her, Luisa finally gives up on minimizing the damage and instead marches straight through the flowers to get to her sister.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

It takes a few seconds before Isabela shakes her head.

“Do you want a hug?”

That’s an offer Isabela cannot reject, and she practically leaps into her sister’s arms.

The house is quiet once they leave Isabela’s room. With the storm over, for now, the silence has turned the sad scene somehow even more unnerving. It’s late too - on any normal day, Mirabel would have woken them up for the whole morning routine. But any sense of normalcy is gone, and they deduct that the adults must be working, and the family members who are actually sleeping have been allowed to rest for as long as necessary.

They find Bruno downstairs by the kitchen table, surrounded by three steaming pots of coffee. He looks like shit, putting it lightly, which is saying something since Bruno usually wears the look of a chronic insomniac. 

“Where is abuela going?” Isabela slides into the chair next to him, skipping the usual polite morning greetings. The mood doesn’t call for them, anyway, and she is so, so tired of pretending.

“The storm finally died down a little. I think Pepa might be asleep.” Bruno takes a sip of coffee before continuing with surprising ease, “Abuela didn’t want to wait, so she left now. She wanted to speak with Padre Flores. Something about prayers.”

Both girls turn rigid, and Bruno looks up from his cup with a grimace.

“I’m really bad at this, aren’t I?” He sighs and pours coffee for the two of them. He’s been awake since his talk with Agustín, and the lonesome hours left him with plenty of time to overthink. He’s promised to talk with the girls, and he’s prepared so many scripts inside his head. None of them felt right, though, and instead, he’s sworn to be productive by preparing liters of coffee for the family, making sure something hot would always be ready for them. It’s not much, it’s barely any help, but, dios, they need it, and it’s something he hasn’t managed to screw up yet.

“I appreciate the bluntness,” Isabela says, downing half of her cup in one go. “It’s better than when they lie to us to make it less painful than it is.” She exhales, tearing a white lily from her hair. “So how bad is it?”

“The fever is climbing. Which is bad. Your mother is working on it, though.”

“So what can we do?” Luisa asks, voice and bottom lip trembling.

That’s actually one of the questions Bruno has prepared for, and so he refers to his mental script. “Wait for the fever to break. Look after Antonio. Take care of each other.”

Those are simple things. They should be simple.

Bruno is startled, almost jerking his hand away when Isabela’s come to rest on top of it. Then he recognizes the gesture for what it is, and he lets their fingers intertwine so he can squeeze her hand back.


The wind is picking up. Alma wraps her shawl tighter around herself, bony hands wringing each other to stay busy and warm. The trip itself feels longer than ever before, even when she’d hurried in fear of the storm returning before she has made it back home. 

She has often spoken with Flores, both sharing a great responsibility for the town, and so the conversations regarding death, faith, and hope are nothing new to her. Even so, it’d felt harder today.

Today, she’s asked for his thoughts and service, just in case. Her grandson needs all the prayers he can get, even when Alma is making an effort of seeming as calm and stoic as possible. The worry is there, hidden within, but so is the hope.

Alma believes in miracles. She always has, even before she was blessed with one.

“Señora Madrigal.”

She turns, unwilling to engage in more conversation than necessary, but her brows twitch in surprise when she sees the Gúzman boy.

“Mariano,” she greets, allowing him to catch up with her by the bridge. “Here for Dolores?”

“For your family,” he says, and his smile is polite and sad all at once. “Whatever help I can bring is yours.”

He is a good boy, just as Alma has always thought. He is a poor match for Isabela; Alma sees that now, and she regrets having pushed too far in the past. Nonetheless, she is glad that he will remain in the family, as long as her granddaughter bids him welcome.

“You make my nieta very happy,” she lets him know as he offers her a hand to help her past the half-frozen puddle near the gate. “Gracias.”

The statement is proven true the moment they step inside Casita where Dolores appears, practically throwing herself into Mariano’s arms. She shakes in his embrace, and Alma leaves them be, knowing that he is more than capable of granting her comfort.

She lets her wrinkled fingers travel along Casita’s railing, letting the familiar touch steady her. The house understands, she is sure, when its inhabitants are struggling, and so it must feel as helpless as her. Magic has its limits. And its price.

The door creaks as it opens, mingling with Alma’s sigh. Antonio’s room still amazes her, so big and lively. The children’s rooms are always the most creative, though the sight of the jungle still stuns her every now and then. Oh, the times she’s asked the grandkids to clean up their rooms … Antonio will have his hands more than full.

At least he is never alone. Alma is happy to see him surrounded by his animals and Agustín. The poor man is trying his very best to stay comfortable with coatis in his lap and on his back, holding up Antonio’s toys for him to play with.

The boy is off the grassy ground the moment he spots Alma, running over to give her a hug. He says nothing with his face buried deep within the folds of her skirt.

“You should get some rest, Agustín,” she says while cupping the back of Antonio’s head. “Flores has promised to be here by two. No matter the weather.”

Agustín nods stiffly, expression pained as he excuses himself.

“Toñito,” she says, leading him back into the middle of his room where his animals await. “How are you?

He says nothing, but she notices the stuffed jaguar in his hand. Mirabel’s work, the wonder. 

Alma then eyes the hammock Antonio sleeps in before she makes the decision to at least try. “Oh,” she says, almost losing her balance the moment she sits down on the fabric.

“Careful,” Antonio warns her. “I don’t want you to fall.” He comes closer, grabbing the edge of the hammock as if to steady it. “You have to tilt it.”

It’s an ungraceful affair, and Alma’s back will complain about it later, however, once she’s lying perfectly still, Antonio settles himself on her chest and laughs at her focused expression. That makes it all worth it.

Alma likes to believe that the room ensures she won’t fall, and she has to admit that the rocking motion of the hammock is rather calming. She remembers, suddenly; Pedro in their old home, resting in a hammock after helping out at the Peña farm, his hat on his face to bring him shadow while he slept, the way she’d ended up making them both fall to the ground when she tried to crawl in and join him …

“Maybe I should have one of these in my room,” she hums thoughtfully, and Antonio’s curls brush against her nose, tickling it.

“I want Camilo to wake up,” he whispers.

“So do I, cariño.”

“He’s sick because of me.”

“Your brother made a brave decision,” she says, resting a hand on top of his cheek. “That is something you must never blame yourself for.”

Oh, how she wishes she didn’t understand him so well. Or, rather; she wishes Antonio hasn’t made himself familiar with the guilt she’s been carrying for a long, long time. Now, she knows better than to blame herself, that the guilt is not something Pedro would have wished for. His sacrifice is a gift, life passing from him to their children, and look at all the wonders that have unfolded in his honor. 

He made a choice that faithful day. Looking back, Alma would still have begged him to stay, to shield her eyes from that horrific sight, but she is grateful, happy even, to be alive. To see her children grow, to see them live. She understands the choice he made, and she honors it.

Camilo made a choice on the ice, one that Antonio is too young and innocent to understand.

“When I’m sick Camilo always visits me to make me feel better,” Antonio says and pulls his stuffed jaguar closer so it rests against her arm. “When can I see him?”

“Tonight,” Alma says, surprised with how quickly she made the decision. A part of her does want to shield Antonio from the worst of it, from seeing Camilo in pain, hearing his wet uneven breathing, from feeling the heat radiating from him. 

But they are brothers.

Camilo was there for Antonio, and it would be cruel to deprive Antonio of the chance of returning the brotherly duty.

“Do you promise?”

“I promise,” Alma says, knowing she might have to fight Pepa on this, but she will stand her ground. “We will go see him together tonight.”


Agustín is ready to sleep. The fatigue has blurred his vision, even with his glasses on, and he knows that at this point, even the scariest thoughts won’t keep him up. He’ll be asleep before his head hits the pillow, ready for this blissful rest so he can be there for his family once more when he wakes.

He moves toward his bedroom -

- and steps on a flower. Agustín lifts his foot to see white petals clinging to the bottom of his shoe. A trail of white leads from the staircase to Isabela’s room, and Agustín knows that his nap must wait. He doesn’t sigh, but he inhales deeply and adjusts his already crooked tie.

He steps inside and is met with the sound of his daughter crying.

She is quick to try to hide it, muffling the sobs by pressing her hand against her mouth, but by then Agustín has already crossed the room, gathering her in his arms.

“Isa.”

“Sorry,” she cries, and for every tremor, flowers appear. The white lilies with red streaks from within. Their scent is sweet, almost sickening, and the pile beneath Isabela is large enough to reach Agustín’s knees. Petals cling to his shirt and vest, caressing his face as they fall.

Isabela notices, too, and tries to wave them away with her hand. “Oh, they’re everywhere.”

“They’re very beautiful.” Agustín picks one up from his lap, twirling it between his fingers in admiration. Like everything his daughter creates, he finds it magnificent. “And it seems like they want to be let out.”

“I can’t.”

Isabela hides her face in her hands, curling in on herself as if she physically has to hold it back.

“Mija.”

“It was easier when it was a cactus,” she sniffs but doesn’t move away as he strokes her hair. “It was so easy with Mirabel. That side of me - I’m proud of that. This? I just want to forget.”

Her shaking hand gestures toward the mountain of flowers, and Agustín squints, trying to see what he hasn’t noticed until now. The things he’s overlooked in the stress of it all.

“They look like -”

“They look like blood. In the snow,” Isabela concludes for him. Another flower grows between her fingers while she wrings her hands. “When we pulled Camilo from the water, we didn’t - we didn’t know he was bleeding but it all turned red so fast -”

Agustín doesn’t let her finish, and instead, he wraps his arms around her, squeezing his eyes shut as if it can shield him from the mental image she’s painted. The one Isabela had to witness in person.

He’d praised her, hugged her, let her know how proud he was. As if that had been the end of the story. But like their mistakes in the past, they’d failed to see what their daughters had hidden. The pain they tried to keep for themselves.

“Mija…”

“I should be so relieved that it worked,” Isabela sobs. “But it was horrible, so horrible -”

Agustín holds her head between his hands, keeping her from rocking back and forth. When she dares to look up, her face is fragile in a way Agustín has rarely seen; from the messy makeup to the running nose and the piercing pain in her eyes. “I am so proud,” he tells her, resting his forehead against hers. “And I am so, so sorry you had to go through that.”

“I tried my best.”

“You saved him.”

“Not really,” she says, sniffing again. “I thought I did, but -”

“And if you hadn’t been there?” Agustín cuts in, unwilling to let her thoughts run amok. There is no need for that, no use in it. “You saved him. But - but I think we all were so grateful, we forgot how heavy a burden that must be. To have his life in your hands.”

“It was horrible,” she admits, and a flowerpetal sticks to her chin, glued to the skin by tears. “I kept thinking - what if I do something wrong? I - I’ve always been scared of making mistakes, but that - it was so much worse.”

“I am always here for you,” Agustín promises her, keeping his words fierce and genuine so they will be remembered, “but I know you will not be alone with these thoughts when you talk to your mother. She’s held so many lives in her hands.” His hands engulf hers and lead them to her chest so her palms touch the spot right above her heart. “And like you, she keeps it in here.”

Isabela hiccups then, and there’s a childishness in the sound that brings back memories of his daughter, so small, crying over a tear in her dress, a chipped cup, spilled milk. For every small mistake, she’d cried like this, asking for forgiveness for what she’d considered to be flaws.

“Tío thanked me for saving Camilo’s life,” Isabela manages to say through her sobs before she collapses against his shoulder.

“You did, mi vida. You did.”

Agustín holds her as she cries, and for every broken sob, white lilies fall like snowflakes in the air.


“I agree with Pepa.” Félix’s arms are crossed even before he stands up, and he tries to keep his tone calm. He’s not angry, no, it’s something more akin to frustration. He understands why Alma has called for the pastor, and he knows what comfort it’s meant to bring, but it’s a scene he cannot make peace with. It’d make it too real, too nightmare-like. It’s difficult enough as it is. “I can appreciate his offer but no. He’s not needed in here.”

He’s not trying to start another argument - that’s the last thing they need right now - but his patience is worn thin and his nerves are frayed. He’s not good with fear, and he’s never been put in a situation quite like this before. Pepa might have her thunder, but she’s not the only one who can lash out and regret it later.

Julieta is busy wrapping another soaked rag around Camilo’s thin wrist. The touch is scalding at this point, and Julieta has bitten her lip raw with worry. Her hands - usually so productive, so helpful, so magical - are useless as she strokes Camilo’s forehead once more and whispers words of comfort into his ear.

She catches a glimpse of Padre Flores in the doorway before Félix blocks her vision. Pepa is quiet, her entire focus on her son as she wets his lip with the corner of a dripping cloth. She’s been so quiet since her apology, stuck somewhere deep within her own thoughts. Her face is perfectly neutral, her attempt at keeping another storm at bay, but Julieta knows her well enough to feel the shift in the air.

Her heart aches for her. For all of them.

Julieta wrings another wet towel, keeping her useless hands busy. It’s been hours since they managed to rouse Camilo enough to get some water down his throat, and it worries her more than she’d like to admit in front of Pepa. He needs liquid to keep his body functioning, and if this fever continues to climb, then Julieta fears the next stage.

She closes her eyes, halting her movement with her hands still in the bucket as she listens to Félix explain his stance to Agustín.

“- I know what Alma meant but then she can talk to him -”

Then the moment is broken, and Julieta springs into action, leaving her chair to grab her husband’s sleeve. “I’d advise you go inside,” she says, eyes darting from Agustín to the pastor. “Not here. But now.”

She can see Agustín’s confusion, but her husband knows her well enough to understand a healer’s order. He leaves, beckoning for Flores to follow.

When Julieta turns, both Pepa and Félix are staring at her, questions in their widened eyes. She doesn’t answer them, but her sister doesn’t resist when she pulls her up and away from Camilo, out of the room and to the balcony where the others have disappeared. Good. She needs them sheltered behind safe walls for this.

“Pepi,” she says, and her sister looks up at her with that terrible dull, glassy sheen in her eyes. “Pepi, look at me. I need your help. I need you to help me save Milo.”

Something sparkles within the green iris, awakened by the urgency. “What?” she says, and it’s such a quiet and fragile sound, Julieta has to blink away tears.

“Pepa,” she says, fingertips brushing away strands of wet, crimson hair from her sister’s pale face. “I need you to let it out. I need you to snow.”

There’s been anger and frustration, a storm tearing its way through the Encanto. It’s been mixed with the fear, all the ugly emotions. It’s left Pepa empty; drained after the pain that feels close to betrayal and hours slowly trickling by with the anguish growing for every muffled cry from Camilo, for every cough and choked inhale, for every measurement of the fever.

Feeling hollow doesn’t mean Pepa has nothing left to give. It means there are emotions left, pushed far deep inside, hidden, unwilling to meet the reality waiting for them.

Pepa faces her grief with an anguished shriek, and Julieta follows her as she sinks to her knees.

The sky breaks apart above them, tearing itself into flakes of white.

Notes:

This is the point where I repeat myself that there is an actual plot and at some point, we will move past Madrigals being sad scene. But - but for now, this is what the fic is.

I made Agustín too awesome in this chapter. In the first version, it was Julieta talking with Isabela, but I've really tried to write scenes with characters we really didn't see interact in the movie. And Julieta will face Isabela later.

Thank you all for sticking around. Oh wow, I missed the anniversary by one day. Yeah, this fic turned one year old yesterday, and Camilo still hasn't woken up.... sorry.

Chapter 12: Firewood

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

There is enough snow for Alma to leave footprints across the balcony as she hurries toward her daughter. “Mija,” she says, kneeling to be at the same level as Pepa who’s curled up against the wall.

“Why did you bring him here?” she asks, voice dull, and it takes a second before Alma understands that she is talking about Padre Flores. “I don’t need him. I can do my own prayers.”

“He only -” Alma stops herself then. She has several explanations ready; that it brings her comfort to have the Padre say his prayer, for her to find comfort in the words, for him to relay the situation to the rest of the town to let them truly understand the cause of the storms. 

The practicality of it all aids her in this struggle, but none of that matters when her daughter is hugging her knees, seeking comfort elsewhere. And so Alma sits down next to her, ignoring how the snow seeps through her dress. 

Julieta hovers, but Alma sends her a look to let her know that she will handle the situation. Even if Julieta doubts her, she still heads back to the nursery to fill her buckets with snow rather than water.

“I’ve prayed to papá,” Pepa says once they are alone. “I can’t lose him, I won’t -” 

Her green eyes drift to her boy’s flickering door, and she whimpers into the fabric of her skirt. Thick snowflakes gather in Alma’s lap as she huddles closer to her daughter, and from the corner of the balcony, Casita sends a basket down towards them. From it, Alma pulls out a blanket, nodding gratefully at the house while she wraps it around the two of them.

“I prayed to my Pedro, too,” she says, and as always, Pepa’s eyes widen in response to her father’s name. “To watch over our Camilo. And the rest of our family.”

Through the railing, she catches a glimpse of a green ruana before Bruno hurries out of the courtyard, away from the snowfall.

“I know it’s my fault, Pepa says thickly. “It doesn’t matter what people did or didn’t do. It all comes back to the snow and the ice and I - I could have gone with. I could have melted it.”

“They left for the snow,” Alma tries to console her. Oh, the bitter irony as she watches the snow fall heavily upon her home.

Pepa’s head falls to the side, leaning against her mother with a broken sound. “And now there’s no reason to leave,” she says, tone just as cold as the air around her. Then; a shaky exhale. “I’m sorry.” She bites her lip, drawing her knees closer to her chest. “For the cold. Are they - is the town staying warm? I -”

Alma recognizes the values she’s taught her children; to take care of the Encanto, even when they are the ones needing care. And so Alma takes hold of Pepa’s hands, flinching at the ice-cold touch.

“Mamá,” Pepa whispers, eyes drooping. “I don’t know what will happen if - I can’t even think about it.”

Alma holds her as she cries, brushing snowflakes out of her red hair. “This family believes in miracles,” she says, pressing a kiss against the unkempt curls. “That is where we must find our strength.”

She thinks of her grandchildren, venturing outside the mountains to play in the snow.

Now, that image seems impossible.


Félix takes the bucket from Julieta, unflinching at the cold metal. Camilo is swaddled once more, to protect his skin from direct contact with the snow. It’s a bitter reminder of the night of the accident, when their biggest worry had been to get some warmth in him.

Camilo had been so cold, and he’d been so, so scared back then.

He hadn’t imagined there could be something worse.

“Julieta,” he says, keeping his eyes on his boy while they begin to arrange the snow around his body. “I need you to tell me what we’re looking at here.” 

It’s his window of opportunity; he wouldn’t have asked had Pepa been here. She’s made it clear to him that she isn’t stupid - of course she isn’t, of course, he’d just tried to shield her from the brunt of the truth - and she is fully aware of how dire the situation is and … And they’ll all have to face the future eventually. This family knows that better than anyone else.

But this - this is a truth he seeks from Julieta who has to swallow before she meets his eyes. “I need to see improvement today.”

Félix doesn’t reply to that. He cannot.

Instead, he simply nods and leans down to whisper a request from Camilo.


Don’t stop fighting, mijo.

Dolores hears her father’s plea and she leans heavily against Mariano who’s tasked himself with keeping her warm. She keeps track of the house; Mirabel is still asleep, having spent the whole night awake and restless, her other cousins are trying to keep Antonio busy in his room, Bruno is knocking his hand against the kitchen cabinet, Agustín is being comforted by Flores while her abuela tends to her mother, and inside the nursery, her father and Julieta work hard to save Camilo. The sound of his coughs is cursed, her heart throbbing in agony every time he gasps for air he cannot get.

“Tía is worried,” she says, and Mariano squeezes her hands.

“Do you want to go to your room?”

“No. No, I like listening to his heartbeat.”

Her family is a melody. She knows the tunes by now, all the rhythms from so many heartbeats. It’s changed over the years, of course. Some hearts beat stronger now, more freely. Her ears were still getting used to her Gift when Camilo had been born, then Mirabel, both adding to the wonderful tune that was the Family Madrigal. Then Antonio and - and Mariano, too.

The melody is open for change. That’s how it works. But - but not through loss.

She cannot bear that silence again, an awful emptiness where Camilo’s heart should have been.

She listens to him now, too fast, too unsteady, and memorizes the sound.


Mirabel wakes up with her cheek pressed against the soft, golden fabric. She jerks upright in the fear of having left a wet drool stain, unwilling to damage the gift. She’d returned to her bedroom with a promise to her father to get some rest, and she hadn’t meant to break that promise, but -

She needs to have this ready for Camilo. In theory, it is a ruana. It could be worn, even if the edge still needs hemming. But even so, it’s a sad sight. Unlike the original ruana, where the fabric had been specifically designed for Camilo, it’s a rush job. There are no chameleons, and that is unacceptable.

It’d take time, but embroidering her own skirt - and, well, everything - had been a labor of love. Camilo’s new to-be-loved ruana deserves the same treatment. She needs at least a single chameleon on it before she can even think of gifting it to him.

She’d been in the middle of planning out where to start her designs when the exhaustion had overcome her stubbornness, and right now, she is just grateful that she didn’t collapse on top of her needle.

It’s morning - probably almost lunch judging from the amount of light in her room. That means there has to be news, right?

She opens her door and is greeted by white.

“Huh?”

The confusion lasts just a beat too long for the horror to truly set in. Mirabel stares at a courtyard covered in a thick layer of snow. In the distance, she can see the mountains wearing the snow like a veil.

“Mirabel?” Bruno calls, waving at her from the kitchen. She hurries down, arms wrapped tightly around herself. The pleasant warmth of the kitchen feels like stepping into a whole new world, like the house itself is giving her a hug.

“What happened?”

“They need the snow to try and fight the fever,” her uncle is quick to say. “It’s, uh. It hasn’t broken yet. So they’re worried.”

The relief that rushes through Mirabel is enough to make her feel lightheaded. Of course, it’s not good, but it’s not exactly bad news, right? It could have been worse. Just the thought of the worst makes her eyes sting.

“But mom’s helping him,” Mirabel says and, following her abuela’s advice, she trusts her mother. Not just her Gift, but Julieta herself and her way of always making things better.

“Yeah.” Bruno rubs his arms, looking off to the side. Just seeing him makes Mirabel feel just a tad better. He’d promised her he wouldn’t leave, and she trusts him - she does! - but just like last night, she takes comfort in his presence. The constant bags under his eyes are darker than usual, but his hands don’t tremble when he pours her a cup of coffee.

Behind her, the entire counter is filled with five pots. “...That’s a lot of coffee.”

“I don’t have your mother’s Gift,” Bruno shrugs, “but we can all be useful in other ways. Like making coffee. A lot of it.” He hands her the cup before inspecting the coffee pot closest to her. “This one’s getting cold, I should make some more.”

Mirabel honestly cannot tell. A single sip is enough to overwhelm her as Bruno always uses twice the amount of beans than anyone else in the family. This brew seems even stronger than usual, but it does its job. Her body wakes up, even as her mind still longs for the sweet timelessness of sleep.

Opening the window lets her know that it isn’t just late morning - it’s past lunch. The faint sound of laughter catches her attention. It’s not coming from inside Casita - how could it, with Camilo this ill? But a couple of the younger children from the town have ventured near the magical house to explore the hill covered in snow.

How can Mirabel blame them for not understanding the grief the snow contains when, two days ago, she’d played with her cousins and sisters just as innocently? Closing her eyes, she can still see Camilo’s big grin right after he’d thrown the snowball at her. How happy he’d been then, so satisfied to have come along …

“Where’s everyone?” she asks, closing the shutters once more before the chill can truly get to her. “Where’s Antonio? How’s Antonio?”

She’d promised Félix to take care of him, and she would, even if she doesn’t really have a way of making things better.

“Your abuela is with him now,” Bruno tells her while sipping from his own cup of coffee. “I haven’t - I think he is pretty sad.”

Mirabel thinks so too, and she hasn’t even seen Antonio today. But the only way to truly cheer him up is for Camilo to get better - and that’s what they are all waiting for, now.

“I’ll go check on him.”

“Your sisters are in the town. Trying to help. With the snow and all. There are some leftovers for breakfast. Late breakfast. Lunch. And coffee. If you want some - more. If you want more.”

They’re all just trying their best, aren’t they? Mirabel downs her cup of coffee - trying her best not to grimace - and wraps an arm around Bruno. He is here, and he is helping. It’s snowing, yes, but the storm has passed. Now they just have to keep each other warm while they wait, and Mirabel wishes she could embrace Camilo in a too-tight embrace and tell him to hurry up and get better.

“Thank you, tío,” she says, and Bruno’s face lights up like the sun behind a layer of clouds. It’s fragile, shining through cracks, but it gives Mirabel the strength to head up the stairs feeling lighter than when she awoke.

Bruno’s smile, however, fades as she turns her back to him.

Antonio’s jungle is even warmer than the kitchen, melting the snowflakes on Mirabel’s shoulders the moment she steps inside. Her cousin has been in good hands, and she is met by the soft sound of her abuela telling an old fairy tale.

“-so the jaguar jumped on top of the rock and - Hola, Mirabel.”

A big mushroom serves as a stool for Alma while Antonio sits on the ground, resting against Parce who looks up at her with half-lidded eyes. 

“Hey,” Mirabel says, smiling softly. “Can I join?”

“Of course,” Alma says, though Antonio remains quiet, even as she folds her legs next to him. Scattered across the grassy ground are books, toys, papers and crayons, all attempts to keep Antonio busy. Mirabel thinks of the needle and thread waiting for her.

“Are these for Camilo?” she says, her smile wavering when she recognizes the yellow squares to be ruanas. Antonio nods with his head still nestled against his jaguar. “They’re really good. When Abuela’s story is over, you can come to my room. I’m working on a Gift for him, too. Then we can share the creativity.”

Anything to pass the time.

Hurry up, Camilo.


Agustín is clumsy. He’s always been. But that’s okay.

He has a loving, forgiving healer for a wife, and a family that more than put up with his incidents. They take care of him, they help look after him, they laugh at the appropriate moments, and they forgive the messes he leaves behind.

He hasn’t broken something they couldn’t live without. 

Looking down at Camilo’s broken plate, Agustín wonders if this will be the exception.

“Oh no,” he breathes, staring because his hands won’t move. They’d been reaching for the plate to put it aside, knowing Camilo wouldn’t eat them today. It’d barely count as dinner, but Agustín would scrape something together for his family and then nudge them into eating, even if an appetite is an unheard term inside Casita at the moment.

He doesn’t want to think about Camilo and his usual hunger, how long it’s been since he’s eaten, how Julieta struggles to even get him to drink, melting pieces of ice against his darkened lips.

She’s worried. There is a reason why Agustín’s fingers tremble.

“Pa? You didn’t cut yourself again, did you? Casita can -”

Agustín is still frozen in horror, too stunned to even react as his daughter enters the scene. Therefore, he doesn’t warn her in time, and a piece of porcelain cracks further under the sole of her espadrilles

It takes a second before Mirabel understands what she’s staring at, and by then her mouth has fallen into a soft ‘o’.

Then she springs into action, kneeling on the floor to pick up the pieces. “It’s okay!” she says, quickly stuffing them into her mochila. “I’ll fix it! You won’t even see it was broken, I’ll take care of it, no one has to know.”

Agustín doesn’t reply. He had a fist pressed against his mouth, looking away even as Mirabel stands up. “Pa?” she tries carefully, unsure and unfamiliar with his expression.

She doesn’t get to approach him any further before a knock on the front door interrupts them. Dolores appears by the railing, Mariano looking over her shoulder. “It’s your abuela.”

“Oh.” His hand closes around her shoulder. “I will stay.”

“You don’t have to if -”

“I will talk to her.” Alma has appeared in the courtyard, ready to step in as the face of the family. She’d thought it might be Flores returning, but Elena Guzmán’s presence is even more unexpected.

Casita opens the door for her, and she is met by Elena holding a large basket, steam rising into the cold air. “For you,” she says, handing Alma the prepared dinner. “The Maríns will come by tomorrow with breakfast.”

Alma opens her mouth to speak, but the words are delayed, never quite ready,

“You have your hands full,” Elena says, “And we want to help.”

The basket is warm between Alma’s hands, the steam caressing her face. “Gracias.”

“You’re family. Please. Send my best wishes to the boy. We’re all thinking of him.”

Above, Mirabel darts across the balcony, only halting in front of Camilo’s flickering door. She’d gone downstairs to see if her sisters had returned, knowing she had to talk things through with Isabela eventually. But now, she has a whole new goal. The déjà vu isn’t lost on her as she swears to fix the plate her father broke.

It hurts to look at the door for too long, but Mirabel forces herself to read Camilo’s name over and over.

She adjusts her bag, careful not to justle the broken pieces.

Antonio had told her he was getting to see Camilo tonight … Then she should be able to as well, right?


“Juli!”

The bucket almost falls from Julieta’s hands as her head snaps upwards. Exhaustion had lulled her into a drowsy haze, her body moving on its own. Because she cannot stop. Camilo needs help, he needs improvement, and she won’t and cannot rest until things aren’t spiraling downwards.

She’d prayed the snow would help, and perhaps it had, but not in the long run. The fever didn’t break, and though every new batch of snow would give a moment of relief, the fever would climb, resulting in the “safe” temperature being a little bit higher for every round. 

Julieta’s jaw is painfully clenched, but she won’t voice her worry. Félix knows, however, and the feeling of letting them down makes the fear almost nauseous. She isn’t sure whether Pepa is aware of the countdown she’s given her husband, but Julieta will leave her be for now. 

The snow has calmed her down, but that just means that Pepa is keeping her feelings tightly within once more. Letting it all out has left her spent, and she sits dutifully by Camilo’s side, the despair in her face washed away by motherly affection as she tends to him. If Julieta closes her eyes, she can imagine the scene to be different; Pepa merely tucking in her son, kissing him, brushing his hair, swaddling him like when he was small enough to be cradled by her chest.

But the calmness is over now, and Julieta turns at Félix’s shout to see movement in the bed. Camilo’s left arm has town itself out of the sheet’s embrace, twitching against his mother’s hand as it jerks up and down in uncoordinated arches.

“Milo!” Pepa cries, hoping to guide him back to consciousness once more. “Milo, Milo!”

His eyes are open, aimed at the ceiling, his wet face trembling while his mouth moves.

The syllables are slurred, barely comprehensible, but Julieta leans closer and through the mix of coughing and gasping and sheer noises, she can make out a few words. Mostly names. She hears Mira and Lola, and then he repeats the word ‘rats’, his bloodshot eyes widening as he stares right through them. 

Whatever he is seeing, it’s not them. It’s not anything real.

“Camilo,” she begs, reaching for the full cup waiting for him. “Open your mouth for me. You need to drink.”

The wet coughs scare her, yes, but it’s dehydration that makes her hand clench with frustration. The boy needs water to live, even without the fever as a threat. She’d been watching his face closely the last hours, brushing away melted snow, fearing the moment when he’d stop sweating…

Camilo’s features tightened with pain as the coughs wreck his body, threatening to wring the final strands of strength from him.

“I know, mi amor,” Julieta tries to soothe him, her own eyes watering at the sight of Camilo’s darkened lips trembling with the need for air. “I know.” 

“We’ve got you, Milo.” Félix holds up his boy in the hope of easing his breathing, keeping him steady even as the frail body spasms. “You just have to keep fighting for us.”

The sight is too much for Pepa to bear. Her magic is only a hindrance, and how cruel is that, if the miracle itself won’t save her son? She curls in on herself, forcing the dark thoughts away to avoid another blizzard.

Please, papá.

She can’t handle it. Not the sight of what’s happening in front of her, or the idea of what - No, no her brain simply refused to go there. This family has miracles, and her son is more than worthy of one.

Pepa lowers her hands as the door opens and recognizes the purple smudge to be her mother. With her blurry vision, it takes a moment before she realizes that Antonio is at Alma’s side, clinging to her hand.

“No.” She stands up from her chair for the first time in hours. “Mamá, no. Not now. He can’t -”

“It’s his brother. He wants to see him.”

“Seeing him won’t help.” Pepa wishes it would. She understands why Antonio wants to enter the nursery, but she cannot give him what he desires. It’d been heartbreaking enough to see him with Camilo prone, cold and swaddled, and now Pepa has broken her promise to him; the rest has not brought Camilo any good.

What can she say if Antonio asks her such questions again? The cruel, terrifying suspense of the unknown is a heavy enough burden for her to deal with - she won’t share it with her youngest. Would he even truly understand, so innocent and young he is?

“Right now, he is stuck with his imagination. He wants to -”

While Alma and Pepa lay forth their arguments, Antonio is quiet, tightening his grip on his abuela’s hand. This room used to be his; oh, all the time he’s spent on these floorboards, drawing, playing, dancing. He loves his new room, and he is so happy that Casita has finally given Mirabel a room of her own, but it doesn’t stop him from missing the times they shared this nursery together. 

Camilo had lived in here too, once, before Antonio had been born. He’d told him all the story about how much fun he’d had in here with Mirabel, and he’d shown Antonio the doodles he’d left behind on Casita’s wallpaper.

The nursery looks so different now. It doesn’t feel as safe or colorful as before. It even feels smaller; the air heavy with something that makes it difficult to breathe. It’s so cold, too, though his abuela has explained to him why Camilo has been covered with snow.

Before, he was too cold. Now, he is too warm. Antonio had thought that to be an improvement. He’d once suffered a fever too, and he remembers lying in his bed all day while his mother stroked his hair, his tía brought him soup and Camilo and Mirabel took turns telling him funny stories to cheer him up.

He’d hoped to return the favor. He knows Camilo is very sick - that’s what tío Agustín told him this morning, looking very sad behind his glasses. That means Antonio has to tell the very best stories in order to make Camilo feel better. He’d planned to climb onto the bed to join his brother and boop his nose with his finger, even if Camilo was feeling too sick to change his hair and face as he usually would. 

He’d wanted to see him - to make Camilo feel better, to make himself feel better. 

But now, standing in the doorway, that wish crumbles out of existence.

He cannot truly see Camilo, but behind his mother, on the bed, he can make out his silhouette, wrapped up and covered with white. It doesn’t look like Camilo, and the wrapped-up body is just as strange and unfamiliar as the last time he’d seen his brother, but this time, Camilo isn’t quiet.

He coughs hard enough to make snow fall onto the floor, and between the raspy breaths, he moans. It doesn’t sound like Camilo. It doesn’t sound good or right or even human. The noises are desperate and full of hurt, so much that it sticks to Antonio, digging in the claws of despair. It twists his stomach, though he cannot name the emotion right away. When it hits him, he doesn’t want to acknowledge it; he doesn’t want to be afraid of Camilo. 

He shouldn’t be scared of his brother. His brother is the opposite of everything scary, and just the thought of his usual smile has the power to make Antonio feel better most days. But not now. Maybe it’s because the person in the bed doesn’t seem like Camilo at all.

Camilo, his brother, who can turn into any person in the village, and Antonio could still recognize him.

It’s like nothing like Antonio has seen before, it doesn’t sound like Camilo, and it shouldn’t be Camilo when Antonio can only describe the sound as bad. It’s frightening, and it’s enough to make tears well up in his eyes.

“I don’t want to,” he says, and when his abuela leans down to comfort him, he squirms, trying to turn on the spot. “No, I don’t want to go anymore. I don’t want to go!”

Toñito.”

His mother’s arms are around him, shielding him, holding him, taking him back to his room where the air is lighter and warmer, though the cold lingers deep within him. He’s sobbing, not even trying to explain why like he usually would so that his parents can tell him how to make it okay.

Because he is scared, and until now, he’d count on Camio to make him feel better. How can he ever feel better again, if it’s Camilo who’s scaring him?

His mamá doesn’t seem to know what to say either. She just holds and hums her lullaby while Parce curls up next to him. The song doesn’t contain any words either, and Antonio doesn’t stop crying for a long time, but when he does, it’s helped. Just a little bit. Not quite enough.


Julieta works quietly. Her hands are practiced, moving from task to task with swift but gentle movements. Félix has studied them, trying to copy them as they change rags, rearrange the snow, comfort Camilo.

Félix’s hands have never worked quite like this before, and yet it feels like an eternity since his life contained something else than this slow misery; Camilo’s raspy coughs, his feverish murmurs, his scalding skin that Félix caresses with his reddened fingers, swollen from the cold of the snow.

It’s not working. 

Julieta doesn’t need to say it. Félix’s dull stare move from her hands to her face, taking in the strained frown, the slight tremble of her lip, the weary look in her eyes. She’d exhausted. For good reason, of course. They all are.

…Camilo is, too.

Félix falls into a routine when his boy starts to cough again, propping him up against his own chest while Julieta hovers and wipes the mucus from his lips. They’re darker than usual, Félix notices, or maybe Camilo has turned even paler despite the fever burning strong within him.

Camilo shakes against him before falling limp once more, head resting against his father’s neck. Félix wants to keep him there, safe and secure, like the times he’d carry his boy to bed after Camilo had wrongfully claimed he wasn’t tired, that he wouldn’t fall asleep.

His little boy –

A choked noise forces its way up his throat, somewhere between a word and a sob.

Then Pepa is there, gently scooping Camilo into her own arms. She is silent, but she understands, perhaps better than he does.

Alma once praised him for reading the weather so well, as she put it, but it goes both ways.

“I need to -” he mutters, stumbling upright, back hurting after too many hours in that damned chair. “Can I?” He looks at Julieta, asking for permission, as if that is something she can grant him. It feels wrong, leaving, but he cannot be here right now.

She nods either way, and Félix flees the room, his speed increasing with every step.

Agustín spots him as he slings a jacket over himself in a hurry, just enough to shield him from the worst of the wind. He’s grown used to the chill of the snowflakes by now.

“Félix! Where are you going-”

Out.”

“Wha-”

“We need to chop wood,” Félix mutters because it is true; it is cold, and even if Casita keeps the house fire burning for them, it needs fuel. And it is so cold now, oh so cold. A layer of white grief has engulfed the Encanto, and Félix comes face to face with it as he pushes the gate open.

Agustín follows. As always. “I can do that -”

“No.” Curling in on himself, Félix shakes his head twice. The cold doesn’t bother him anymore, he’s already cold. “No, I need to go. Chop some wood.”

His cuñado doesn’t take the hint, and this isn’t something he can blame on Agustín’s naivety. No, behind his stained glasses, Agustín’s eyes are flooded with pity, and it’s enough to make Félix look away.

“Félix.”

His numb hands itch. He needs to do something, he needs to provide. Because upstairs, inside the quiet nursery, he is useless in a way that will haunt him for eternity. 

It doesn’t matter that it’s snowing, or that his exhaustion has left his movements sluggish, or that his hands are too swollen to properly hold the haft. He needs the satisfaction of wood splitting beneath his axe, of the relief that comes from yelling as he lets the blade swing through the air.

He makes the turn for the chopping block and then comes to a halt so suddenly that Agustín walks into him from behind. The man struggles with his balance before looking over Félix’s shoulder, eyes widening at the scene ahead of them; firewood already chopped, stacked on top of each other, with the axe resting neatly against the work display.

None of them have noticed, far too occupied with today’s catastrophes, and they won’t know who’s responsible, but it doesn’t matter; their town has provided for them.

It won’t fix the source of the cold, that’s the heartbreaking truth they’ve all come to realize, but they won’t let the Madrigals freeze.

Notes:

I know, it's super sad. It's gonna stay for a bit longer, but we are getting quite close to the climax - a few chapters from here - and I'm oh so excited. The next part will be super heavy and therefore probably super hard to write, so bear with me. Forever gesturing to the tag "angst with a happy ending" though!

I feel like I should clarify that Alma simply had a very bad timing here; all the times she'd seen Camilo, he'd simply been prone, and with Antonio growing more and more distressed, she wanted him to have another moment with his brother like when Antonio and the others had just returned from the river.

Thank you so much for your wonderful support!

Chapter 13: Embrace

Notes:

Warning: this chapter and the next one are super heavy and really center around grief. I point desperately at the "angst with a happy ending" tag, and I promise a comfort arc is coming. But we have reached the hardest part of the story, so keep this in mind before proceeding.

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

Mirabel has all the pieces, and the glue dries quickly, but it doesn’t truly feel like she is fixing it. Instead, she believes the plate itself is glaring back at her, Camilo’s written name appearing like an accusation. A crack had cut the ‘O’ in half, and even though she’s been as careful as possible, the damage is still visible after the pieces has been put together.

…Maybe Camilo would rather want a new plate? But does it matter; even now, putting the correct pieces back together, Mirabel still feels practically useless. It doesn’t change anything, not in the way that it should.

Not when her cousin is still sick, still fighting. How can she help him from her desk?

Antonio had said he’d visit him tonight. Why would she be denied the same thing?

She exits her room, leaving behind the drying plate and the unfinished ruana, needle still attached, to approach her mother who frowns before she’s even asked the question.

“I just want to see him,” Mirabel says, cutting to the case. There’s no need to lie about it, and frankly, her mamá looks so tired, she’d rather not waste her time. “I – I know I shouldn’t disturb tía and tío so I thought -  I just thought –“

Pepa had left to tuck in Antonio, reluctantly, and Félix is outside, adding to the growing pile of firewood, leaving the responsibility to her parents. Isabela has warned her, over and over, that she needs to be careful right now. What Dolores might hear, what Pepa might think – you need to be careful where you are stepping. But the warm-colored part of the family is asleep, and Mirabel is running out of time to take the chance.

Julieta’s frown only adds to the exhausted wrinkles weighing down her face. “Mija,” she says softly, a soft sigh hidden in her voice. “He is not doing that well.”

“I know.” Mirabel bites her lip, eying Camilo’s flickering door across the courtyard. “I want to help.”

The hesitation isn’t meant to exclude her. Mirabel knows they are only trying their best to shield their children through this, but this is, luckily, tragically, unfamiliar grounds they now have the tread. And with every passing day, Mirabel feels older than her age – the same way Camilo seems younger.

…Please let him recover in time to celebrate his birthday.

“Grab the bucket for me?” Julieta eventually decides. “Fill it with water. Cold.”

Mirabel does what she is told, eager to finally do something else than waiting. It fills her with an energy that she desperately needs, something to keep her going when she finally steps into the room and is met with the stench of illness. It’s sweet and sickening all at once, sweat hanging in the air, and even before she can see Camilo, she can hear him; raspy, desperate breaths, too fast, too uneven, trying to fill lungs that whine for mercy.

Her papá is sitting next to the bed, hands folded – had he been praying? – and Julieta must have prepared him as he does not seem surprised by her presence. “Mira,” he says and stands up to give his chair to her.

It’s difficult to recognize her primo. Just like when they’d tried to keep him warm, he’s swaddled, this time in sheets with layers of melting snow in between. His face is still visible and so are his hands, sticking out from the bundle.

Julieta is already working, removing the rag from his forehead to replace it with cloth dipped in the cold water Mirabel has brought with her. “Can you change the one on his wrist?”

She nods wordlessly, eyes lingering on Camilo’s face. It’s pale, though parts are flushed, so red it looks like her father’s bee stings. His curls are flattened against his forehead, wet with sweat. The lips – and they look blue again, though this time it’s not from the cold – have parted, and his entire chest jolts with every desperate inhale.

Mirabel untangles his wrist from the rag, flinching when she makes contact with the dry, hot skin.

She remembers how cold Camilo had been; his skin had been ice beneath her fingers, and the cold had traveled through her limbs, settling in her bones and reaching her core in a frigid dread. How terrified she’d been, then.

But that fear had been laced with naivety; she had really thought there couldn’t be something worse.

Once the rag has been secured around his wrist, water dripping into his palm, Mirabel lets her hand slide into his.

“You’re going to be okay,” she promises, squeezing his hand, and she hates how bitter the words taste, how desperate, reminding her of a lie.

She scoots back in her seat as Julieta suddenly hovers near his head, carefully wetting his lips with a soaked cloth. Most of the experience Mirabel has with Julieta’s healing is food stuffed into an open mouth, and she frowns, trying to recognize the medicine she might be using on Camilo. “What is that?”

“Water,” Julieta says simply while trying to get more drops past Camilo’s lips. “It’s what his body needs right now.”

“But you’re giving him food too, right?” Mirabel asks, sounding more desperate than she wants to be. There’s a tray on the table, a bowl filled to the brim with soup, and her stomach tightens at the sight. If Camilo is sick, then he needs the magical food that fixes everything. “So he can get better.”

Julieta’s hand drops, fingers tightening around the cloth. “Mija,” she says carefully, and Mirabel watches her face twist as she struggles to find the next words.

Mirabel doesn’t want to hear them. Her heartbeat quickens as the silence refuses to let her down easy. It feels heavier than the words Julieta won’t speak, and Mirabel’s mind works against her, filling in the blank spaces.

She turns her head toward Camilo just in time to see him cough again, dark lips parting to inhale much-needed air. His body convulses, and she tears her hand loose, needing to flee the room rather than staying and witnessing her cousin dying. 

Because that’s the unspoken part. The one she’s been too slow to realize.

She runs for Camilo’s room, the door opening so she can rush in, seeking familiarity, something that will remind her more of Camilo than what she’d witnessed in the nursery, only to find herself surrounded by mirrors.

From every angle, she watches herself fall to her knees, hands reaching for her wet face. It’s cold in here, she thinks, almost as cold as the snow-covered courtyard. The giant room around her creaks, moaning for its owner.

Why didn’t they bring him here?

Mirabel!”

Isabela’s hand is around her wrist before she’s fully registered her sister’s presence. Vines start crawling up her arms as Isabela tries to pull her out of the room.

“No!” she cries, trying to tear herself loose. “Isa, no! Let me go -”

But Isabela uses her Gift, and the struggle is lost. Between her sister’s own strength and the vines working in her favor, Mirabel is torn out of Camilo’s bedroom and into her own.

“You-!” Mirabel spins around as Isabela finally lets go, mouth open, ready to yell, only to have her jaw drop further as her sister simply embraces her. The hug feels tight enough to bend her ribs.

“We can’t be in there,” Isabela says, voice hushed. “Mira -”

Why not?”

“Because no one knows what happens to the room when the owner dies.”

Mirabel goes slack in her arms, and Isabela pulls her head under her chin. 

“We - we don’t know if it will happen. I think they are just being careful. And - that’s why they moved him to the nursery,” she continues softly, blinking away tears. “And because it’s a good room. I missed it after my ceremony. The nursery has always been something special. It’s so full of memories. Even before you drew them on the wall.”

She should have visited her sister more; Isabela knows that now, even though their relationship is currently stronger than ever. These days, she spends hours inside Mirabel’s new bedroom, watching her work as they talk about life and silliness, but the nursery is a whole other place, revoking fondness and bitterness inside her chest all at once.

She’d grown up in there, alongside Dolores and Luisa. Oh, all the hours they’d played in there, how big the room had felt back then. When they’d been given their Gifts, their lives had changed - in some ways that Isabela learned to regret. Watching Mirabel stay in the beloved nursery Isabela had been forced to leave behind, left untouched by burdens she’d learned to carry at the age of five, Isabela had grown bitter.

Her own room was wonderful, of course. Filled with flowers, beautiful, enormous. Empty.

“It’s been our room,” Isabela says. “To all of us, you know. I think he can feel us in there.”

“I went to see him,” Mirabel sniffles. “Mom let me. He looks so bad. Even worse than -” Thinking of the frozen river, she bites down on her lip, causing more tears to appear in her already wet eyes. “I thought that would be the worst. It felt like the worst.”

Isabela lets go, just enough for Mirabel to reach up and wipe her face.

“You knew, didn’t you? That he was dying.”

“Not exactly.” Isabela winces: though she knows this was bound to come, it doesn’t make the scene any easier. “I just - The fear hit me, and - and I wish I could have your faith in the magic.”

“But I’m so stupid.” Mirabel cries hard enough for Casita to open the drawer and offer a handkerchief. “I promised Antonio he’d be alright, I - I really thought -”

Isabela is the one who grabs the cloth and gently brushes away the tears, though it’s a battle she can’t win. The tender moment allows for shared understanding, a reflection on why they’d kept arguing the last couple of days, why they’d behaved the way they did.

Wanting to be more like her sister, to pull off the impossible like she’s done, to mend what’s broken, Isabela hugs her once more - and though it soothes, it doesn’t magically repair the true damage within their home.

Then Mirabel breaks away, practically leaping toward her desk, careful not to touch the repaired plate. Isabela blinks, reaching for her.

“Mira-”

“He needs his ruana,” Mirabel insists, already grabbing the yellow fabric. “I have to finish it for him, okay?”

It’s a gift without the capital G, but it’s all she can give him.

She knows now that she can’t afford waiting for it to be a birthday present.


In truth, Mariano isn’t sure if he’s allowed to be here, though, deep inside, he knows he should be because he’s needed. That’s why he is still here. It’s the first time he’s spent the night in Casita - proper manners won’t allow him otherwise.

But his own mamá has not come to fetch him, and when he’d stumbled into Félix, the man had come to a halt, looked at him from the corner of his dull eye, and placed a heavy hand, still cold from his venture outside, on his shoulder as a quiet thank you for looking after his daughter.

Honestly, Mariano fears running into Doña Alma more than Dolores’ parents, though he knows they would take the circumstances into consideration, forgiving the lack of tact.

But when he finally stumbles into a Madrigal in the middle of the night, it is Antonio, in his nightwear with tears in his eyes.

“Hey, Antonio,” he says, crouching to his level, careful not to spill any tea. “Why are you up?”

Hugging a stuffed jaguar in his arms, Antonio mumbles, eyes on the tiled flooring, “I had a nightmare.”

It seems like Dolores isn’t the only one suffering from bad dreams tonight.

“Ah. So did your hermana. I’m trying to cheer her up right now.” He nods toward the cups he’s holding, one in each hand. Bruno Madrigal has made his life easier by having hot tea ready in the middle of the night, after he’d ventured downstairs with a promise to make Dolores feel better. “Do you want to help me?”

Antonio doesn’t hesitate, nodding as he clutches the animal tighter against his chest. Dolores wants to support her brothers more than anything else, but Mariano knows it goes the other way around, too.

Her face lits up as they enter, only to fall into a worried frown as she recognizes her brother’s distress. “Antonio.” She spreads out her arms, and he is quick to join her in the bed, getting wrapped up in her blanket.

“Mariano said you had a scary dream too.”

“I did,” Dolores says, resting her head against his strong curls, finding comfort in the warmth and weight of his small body. “He was going to read to me to make me feel better. Do you want to join us?”

Mariano is already by the shelf, fingers trailing across the book spines until they linger on Dolores’ favorite. They’ve read this one before, they both know the ending, but tonight they don’t need the excitement; instead, the comfort is found in a soothing voice and familiar outline.

“Not that one,” Dolores says quietly before he can pull the book out from the rest.

“Why not?”

“It has too much romance in it,” Dolores says, and they both blush - familiar of the scene she is referring to.

“Ah,” Antonio says, wrinkling his nose. “Kissing.” He sounds so much like Camilo in that moment, Dolores cannot help but squeeze him.

“That one’s good,” she says as she watched Mariano pull out his next choice of a book. “It has pirates in it.”

Mariano sits down on the ottoman while Dolores scoops Antonio onto her lap. Just like he is clinging to his stuffed animal, she holds on to him as if her life depends on it. He remembers what she told him earlier this night - “They’re my hermanitos. With my Gift - I’m the one who should be looking out for them!” - and he understands.

He remembers Camilo, how his grin had faded away as he made himself taller, glaring down at him with a scowl as he hissed: “You better take care of my sister or else.”

Mariano is going to do just that.


Bruno cannot tell if time exists in the house or not. The daily routines have been thrown out of the window, and since someone always has to be awake, it means someone else would always be sleeping. Bruno continues his coffee duty, having decided the best way he can be of use is to simply stay awake and provide caffeine. After all, he’s great at staying awake.

Sleep deprival, however, does not go gentle on Julieta.

Due to her role as a healer, she spends most of the time holed up in Camilo’s room, and Bruno trusts Agustín to be the only one who can truly bully her into resting.

Even so, she looks worse than he’s feared. Pale, fragile, face haunted by shadows. She reminds him of a ghost, no; she reminds him of his own reflection on the worst days.

“Juli?” he asks as she drifts into the kitchen with her faraway stare.

Her hands are red from dealing with the snow, and they tremble ever so slightly as grabs a ciruela from the bowl. “Mirabel went to see him.”

That explains the scene from earlier. Bruno had heard the running, the door slamming, but he’d also seen Isabela lead Mirabel to her room, and, knowing she wouldn’t be alone, Bruno had decided to leave the sisters be. He trusts Mirabel to come to him - after all, she’s never been good at leaving him alone.

He thinks of his niece, her contagious smile, her loyal trust in this family. Then he pictures her face falter as she looks down at Camilo; and Bruno is not quite ready to imagine how his nephew looks right now.

“She doesn’t understand why he isn’t getting better,” Julieta croaks, putting the fruit back on the counter after a single bite. “She doesn’t understand because I should heal him, I should -”

Bruno hesitates because he knows he should step in now, he knows he should comfort his sister, he knows he wants to bring her the support he’s longed for so many times in the past. But the scene is unfamiliar, fragile like ice beneath his feet, and he loses his footing so easily.  “That’s not -”

“Bruno,” she says, and the tone is so unlike her; Julieta is soft, never sharp enough to truly cut, but this time, the dullness feels almost worse, rough and able to strip him off his layer in one slow pull. “Is it true what Agustín says? That he caught you here last night?”

Saying nothing, Bruno admits his shame by flinching.

“I know my fifteen-year-old stopped you last night,” she tells him. “And I am grateful Mirabel was there. Bruno, I –What were you thinking?”

Bruno opens his mouth, ready to stutter about guilt and blame, even if Mirabel has told him he shouldn’t bear the responsibility alone. “I –“

“Actually, I wish I had the time and the – the strength to deal with it, but I don’t. Bruno.” 

They both know she means well; that Julieta, as always, is willing to hear him out, to try and support him even when he denies the need for it, but she is running on fumes – there is so much hurt in the house right now, so many souls she needs to tend to.

And, in the most devastating way, Camilo is slowly no longer becoming her primary concern – there’s pain ahead, more than Julieta can imagine, and she needs to prepare for it.

When she finally spins around to face Bruno, there are tears in her exhausted eyes.  “Look at me. You cannot leave. You cannot leave because Pepa is going to need you. Do you understand that?”

Bruno has no words, but he does understand. He wishes he didn’t. He is no parent, and his own pain is already so great – to phantom what Pepa is going through is difficult.

“She’s going to break,” Julieta says, and her face is too numb to flinch. “And we need to be there to support her. You’re her brother. You cannot leave. You can’t. And you won’t.”

“I-“ Bruno doesn’t want to let her down. He’d stay even if it meant yelling, if it meant thunder in his face, rain and snow and Pepa’s blame and anger and threats – if it could soothe her in what small ways are left. But Pepa’s fury is gone, replaced by something much, much worse, and Bruno, as always, feels useless. “I don’t know what to do.”

“Neither do I,” Julieta admits in a choked whisper. “But we have to help her. And when she cannot see – that’s when we break. But to her – You need to be strong, Bruno. You don’t get to have another option.”

Bruno’s mind fills in the unsaid part, the one Julieta won’t admit, the part she might not even have realized: she needs him, too.

“He’s not getting better,” she admits, and now when it’s been thrown into the air, the truth lingers, colder than the snowflakes. “And I’m trying so hard, but the fever won’t break and I - How can Pepa ever forgive me for this? When I won’t even be able to forgive myself.” Julieta cries, turning away from him with trembling shoulders. “I save everyone, I –“

“No – You know that’s not true,” Bruno asserts with a surprising firmness, born from the fond love for his sisters. “And I know that you know that because every time you lost a patient, Pepi was there with you, and she told you what we know; that you did everything you could and it wasn’t your fault, and sometimes – sometimes you can’t save them.”

There have been losses in the past. They’d stood behind Julieta then, offering a shoulder when she needed to cry and the words she needed to hear to carry on.

But there’s no denying this; Camilo is their nephew. Camilo isn’t old, isn’t ready to face the end of his life yet. They aren’t ready to face that.

In the end, Bruno doesn’t think his words matter - how can any of them forgive themselves for this? - but he can see in something in Julieta’s eyes change as she too remembers the instances in the past where Pepa would always be the first one to embrace her and tell her that it wasn’t her fault.

Bruno can only attempt to do the same, and so he wraps his arms around his sister. After a trembling exhale, Julieta leans against him.

They both changed as they grew up. But in some ways, it feels like nothing has changed at all.

“You need to sleep,” he says when they finally pull away.

“Says you,” she mumbles back at him.

“M’yeah, but I can take it.”

Julieta stops in the doorway, allowing the cold wind to seep into the kitchen. “Bruno,” she says, barely able to push the name past her lips. The words she has to say simply won’t come, her body won’t allow it, but he understands the silence nonetheless.

“How, uh -” Bruno sags, feeling light-headed. “How long do you -”

“We let the kids sleep,” Julieta says, and Bruno cannot help but notice the snowflakes in her hair, the tears clinging to her eyelashes. “And then I think we need to let them see him.”

“Julieta,” Agustín calls from above, and Julieta is too exhausted to even argue. Bruno waits until they’ve closed their door before he ventures outside on his own. He doesn’t go to the next floor right away; instead, he lingers by his father’s portrait.

He doesn’t say anything - he isn’t ready for prayers, and he knows he won’t get his questions answered - and the painting looks the same as before; the one imaged he’s clung to his entire life. Bruno knows Pedro’s soft smile, the warmth of his eyes, and he’s memorized every part of it, ready to bring it forth even with his eyes closed.

His father won’t come back to life, and Bruno wonders how often they can rely on a miracle, on something magical, for the day to be saved at the very last minute.

There are no cracks in the wall, but Bruno now knows the power of a hug. That’s how he’s found the courage to approach Pepa’s room, but before he can make his way to the door, Pepa has stepped outside.

With the same goal in mind, they suddenly come face to face, staring straight into each other’s harrowed eyes.

“I’m sorry,” they say in unison, in the same manner they used to end every argument back in the innocent days of childhood.

Before Bruno can hug her, Pepa has sealed the action for him, flinging herself into his arms.

“I didn’t mean it,” she cries, fingers digging into the wet fabric of his ruana. “I’m so sorry. Help me, Bruno. Please help me. Perdóname.”

Bruno has the power to look into the future, but for now, he’d rather pretend that he couldn’t. Even if it could show him something comforting, there’s a greater risk that it wouldn’t, and he knows it’s not the future Pepa truly needs. It’s the present, as timeless and fragile as it is, that he has the power to make a different, and with his chin nestled against Pepa’s tangled curls, it feels like, just for a moment, that he’s done something right.


Despite the firewood prepared for them, Félix had spent an hour chopping logs into halves, needing his hands to be useful. But now, even with the blisters on his palms and reddened fingertips, the only true use for his hands is to hold his boy. 

So that’s what he does.

Pepa has left, having decided to seek out Bruno before some much-needed rest, and Félix had promised Julieta he would do just fine on his own, noticing how she’d been swaying on her feet.

It’s just him and Camilo now, in a room too small, filled to the brim with memories and stale air. The stench of illness lingers, and Félix can’t breathe.

And he can’t stay in this room that’s too cold and hot all at once, that doesn’t hold enough air for him and his boy.

“You need some fresh air,” he decides, knowing the cold would do him something good.

He keeps the damp sheet wrapped around him, and Camilo’s legs dangle limply from his arms as Félix scoops him up and carries him out of the room. The cold night air is more comforting than it should be like, refreshing in a way that makes Félix aware of the pain rooted deep within his body. It wakes him up, only to remind him of how tired he actually is.

There’s a bench waiting for him in the courtyard. It’s not the first time he’s held his children in the middle of the night like this; childhood illnesses would involve fever, and Félix knew this trick would bring them comfort.

Camilo doesn’t seem that much older; he feels so light now, just skin and bones, too hot, too fragile. But no matter how old he gets, Félix will always be able to carry his boy.

If the change of air brings him any relief, Camilo doesn’t show it. He’s still - no coughing, no trembling, no squirming, but Félix is too exhausted to deny the truth that these are all bad signs, that his boy is simply running out of strength - but he isn’t quiet. For every uneven breath, there’s a broken whine from tired lungs.

It pains Félix to listen to, and he can only pray that Camilo’s unconsciousness shields him, spares him from the agony.

He wishes so badly that Camilo isn’t suffering, that there is a way Félix could fight this battle for him.

Because Camilo is losing it, and Félix cannot blame him, cannot do anything but wish the fight was more than fair.

“I love you, Milo,” he says, and that is the easy part. He has a thousand different ways to phrase his love for his child, and he whispers them all into the slack curls plastered against his forehead. “I’m tired, too.”

Félix’s arms tighten around his son - too warm, too weightless - and as he presses another kiss against his hairline, he whispers, “You’re fighting so hard. It’s not your fault if you have to leave. It’s okay. Todo va a estar bien. Todo bien. You’re so tired. It’s okay.”

He could never say this in front of Pepa who still clings to optimism, whose brain won’t acknowledge the deterioration in front of her. He cannot blame her, not when he longs for the same distance from this misery.

He doesn’t want to tell his son it’s okay to stop fighting, not when he wants the outcome to be anything else, but the choice is being taken from him and Camilo too. He wants his son; he wants his son well and alive and with his life in front of him. But with the bleak outcome inching closer, Félix has realized this; he wants his son to find peace, to escape the pain, to be without shame for losing a battle they’d prayed he’d win.

It's the hardest words he’s ever been forced to speak, and they weren’t meant for anyone but Camilo. What parent would not ask their child to keep fighting?

A shadow falls upon the snow, and Félix’s aching heart skips a beat, turning his head to see a hooded Bruno leaning against Casita’s pillar for support.

Félix flinches, looking away before his brother-in-law can see his face contort in anguish and shame. Caught in the act, he has to worry about how much Bruno has heard – and how much he will tell the others.

Guilt gnaws at him, mixing with the already turbulent sea of emotions, Félix closes his eyes and adjusts his grip, feeling like the most vile person on this Earth. He curses himself, and then curses this damned situation in the first place. Bruno’s slow footsteps seem to echo in the otherwise quiet courtyard, and Félix considers leaving rather than facing Bruno’s judgment – but a second later, he looks up anyway, because despite Félix’s shame, he still knows Bruno. Bruno, who even now looks meek and awkward. Bruno, who is so used to being on the receiving end of judgmental glares.

But Bruno’s eyes only mirror his own sorrow, and the depth in them makes Félix realize that it’d be easier to face judgment than this hopeless sympathy. 

Notes:

Sorry for double-notification: I had to reupload this chapter, since something went wrong the first time and the fic didn't update properly.

Yeah. It's, uhm. My parents lost a kid before I was born, and, sadly, I'm trying to work with the emotions they've actually shared about this.

Like the first chapter note explained: this chapter and the next chapter will be heavy as fuck. Then we reach probably the most important chapter of the story, and then we are steering into the comfort arc, and ohmy god, I can't wait, I need to write about these characters being something else than sad.

Thank you so much for your amazing support.

Notes:

As always: English is not my native language so I apologize for any mistakes, and you can find me as RiaTheDreamer on tumblr and twitter.