By Love_Lucigoosey on Ao3
Warning: chronic pain
Summary: Bruno had always struggled with the side effects of his gift, but with the magic gone he's realizing he's not alone anymore
Bruno was used to the headaches.
When he was younger, he would refer to them as his dolor de visión - vision pain. Sometimes they came randomly, typically preceding an involuntary vision, and at first, while annoyed by the sudden bursts of pain that split through his skull, Bruno was happy for the warning, and took it as a sign to isolate himself into his room until it was over. It quickly became a nuisance when he started getting up from the dinner table to run to his room whenever he felt the slightest bit of pressure growing behind his eyes, and it didn't help that sometimes, rarely, but sometimes, it happened to just be a regular headache, with no visions to be seen. During those moments, Bruno would ask his sister for a quick bite of whatever she happened to be making - it seemed foolish to ask her for food every time he got a dolor de visión, so he was sure to make it scarce. Only when absolutely necessary, like if Mamá was hosting an event he needed to show up for.
If not, Bruno would simply grin and bear it. There wasn't much else to do, and he wasn't going to let Julieta waste her food on him when someone could need it for something life-threatening. So what if he got migraines to hell and back, migraines that sometimes had him throwing his lunch up in the toilet, migraines that sometimes made him pass out for hours on end, migraines that sometimes lasted hours or days or weeks, migraines that got worse and worse as he grew.
Because as he grew, he learned how to suppress the visions. When a migraine started, Bruno shut the visions down before they could come, slamming the metaphorical door in his mind and locking it. And yeah, it hurt. The first time he managed to successfully suppress an incoming vision, his head throbbed for days on end, and not even Julieta's arepas could help the pain. Such horrible, nauseating, blinding agony. But he stuck to his guns, he faltered but didn't break. And when the next dolor de visión came, same thing; he managed to suppress the vision itself, and accepted the pain that followed. It brought him to tears, made him want to scream, but it was worth it. It was worth it because he didn't have to see someone's beloved pet die, he didn't have to see someone get hurt. He didn't have to see, and so he didn't have to get blamed for it.
The downside was that it required a great amount of concentration, and even the slightest lapse in his resolve could and would result in a cacophony of visions flooding his mind, one after the other in rapid succession. He made the mistake a few times, daring to let his guard down, and it was just… one vision after the next, with barely a lapse of peace in between. And it hurt. It hurt bad enough that he passed out from the pain alone, and woke up in another vision. It took him a good few hours… maybe a day… to get back to normal, to be able to start suppressing it again.
When he needed to have a vision, well, that was where his ritual was put to good use. He came up with it not too long after he started suppressing the involuntary ones. It changed and grew over time as he learned new things - throwing the salt over his shoulder before he started, for one, soothed his nerves the slightest bit. The sand was another neat thing he had thought of; his sisters thought it was odd and a little scary when he'd shown them, but it was just soothing. It kept him calm even as he stared down the burden that was his gift, and sometimes gave him something else to focus on when there was a particularly difficult vision to watch unravel. He also really just liked how it felt when the vision was over and all the sand crashed down on him.
It was also nice to… take a step back from his mind. His ritual allowed him to watch it unfold in front of him; before, the visions had simply engulfed him. His vision, his body, his mind, his soul. And it was like he wasn't in control of himself, during those moments. He just couldn't feel himself. His ritual helped with that. It ensured he was still in control of his own body, his own mind, and he could stop whenever he wanted. He could close his eyes, and just stop seeing it. That eased his nerves a little bit, as well. He couldn't control his vision, but his mind was still his.
And the headaches. Dios mio, the headaches. Bruno learned to tolerate them, almost to the point where he didn't even… feel the pain, as much. Sometimes there were worse days, something deep inside of him clawing at his brain, pounding on the inside of his skull, screaming for attention. During those days, Bruno would curl up in his chair with a few of his rats, and he would fuera de zona. He would simply zone out. Stop existing for a moment, and stop thinking. By the time he came back to himself, the pain was tolerable and he was ready to seize the day. He learned other ways of distracting himself, and the pain and his visions were put behind him.
And then- and then, and then, and then-
His first vision after ten years was… relieving, if you ignored the inner turmoil that raged through him at the beginning, the anxiety and fear that plagued his mind. It was relieving because it felt like a release; the pressure and pain in his head let up for the first time in so long, even just a bit, and he could think. He could think. He could feel where he'd gotten a blister in his thumb when he'd fallen in his room, he could feel pain in a place on his body that wasn't just his head. And yeah, it was pain, and pain sucked regardless - but it was like a murky cloud surrounding his brain had been lifted all at once, and it was so utterly relieving to have that pain just… stop. Even if he knew it wouldn't last very long, and that it may even be worse when it returned, he relished the fact that it was gone, just for the moment. And the vision was good. That was nice.
And then.
Then it was gone.
Gone.
All gone.
The pain, the pressure, the visions, his gift. It was gone. It was all gone.
There was a short while, after Mirabel returned and everything had settled down for the most part, Bruno just… panicked. Panic, he was used to. It was almost a fucking coping mechanism. He panicked because it was new, because it was scary, because for the first time in forty-five years he wasn't in pain. He sat and waited while the hours ticked by, waited for a dolor de visión, and nothing happened. No pain. No vision. He couldn't even force it, and he tried - he did the ritual and everything, and nothing happened. His gift was well and truly gone, he had lost it.
The weird part was that it felt like he had lost a part of himself, like someone had reached into his soul and carved out a piece of it and taken it away. And it didn't hurt, per se, but he could feel the absence. He watched his familia struggle with themselves over having lost their own gifts - Luisa and Camilo seemed particularly perturbed - and… a part of him was almost saddened, as well. His gift had caused him nothing but trouble for so long, and for a while, even, Bruno had begun to think of it as more of a curse than anything. But recent events had shown him that he could have good visions, with good outcomes, and he could be useful and helpful. And then… then he just… lost it. Right when he started to realize that maybe it wasn't so awful.
But there was also such… relief. A blinding, breathtaking sense of pure and utter relief that overtook him. No visions. No weight on his shoulders. No longer the harbinger of death and misfortune. No more 'Bad Luck Bruno'. He was just Bruno. Bruno Madrigal. That was all he was.
No visions. No pressure. No migraines.
And he couldn't stop marveling over it, the way his head just didn't hurt. He couldn't remember the last time he'd gone this long without either being in excruciating pain or having to have a vision just to make it go away. He felt like he could relax, like he could lower his mental walls just a little bit and soothe his mind with the fact that he had nothing to consistently fight against. He watched his familia slowly adjust to it, as well. He watched Dolores gradually become louder, speaking freely and excitedly to Mariano and her brothers. He watched Luisa settle back and relax with a smoothie every now and again, trading shifts with her sisters. He watched Pepa, oh, Pepa, she was so happy. Every now and then she would check over her head, as if expecting to see a cloud - and every now and then he would see her face light up when nothing happened.
And maybe this was a good thing, Bruno reasoned. They had no gifts, but they didn't need them. They just needed each other. Their family. Mama was right, they were the real miracles.
Being outside of the walls was another trip entirely. At night, he couldn't sleep. He found himself unable to do little more than lay back in the grass and just stare at the stars, a good distance from his familia so he didn't risk waking up his hermanas or sobrinas and sobrinos. Contentedly, he would sprawl himself across the ground, flat on his back, stretching out in a way he hadn't in so long, and he would cross his arms under his head and he would just gaze up at the stars. And he wondered often, as he used to, if his father was up there, gazing right back down at him.
Sometimes he wondered what Pedro must think of him. Alma had told him, once, in a fit of anger, that he would be disappointed to know that he had sacrificed himself for his only son to turn out the way he did. She had apologized profusely almost immediately afterwards, with tears and hugs and all, but Bruno had remained silent throughout the ordeal, not trusting himself to speak. He distantly remembered just burrowing himself into the sand in his room not long after, curling up and sobbing quietly into his arms as the day's events unfolded and played again and again in his mind. It was never brought up by either of them after that, but Alma always looked at him with a hint of regret that he sometimes, perhaps mistakenly, thought was disappointment.
He could never be sure if she had meant what she'd said. She had apologized, yes, but Bruno knew things said in anger could either be horrible, twisted words just simply meant to hurt - or that they could be the truth, spilled from the lips of someone caught in a rush of pure passion like water bursting from a formerly clogged pipe. He couldn't be sure, but he didn't dwell on it. At least, he tried not to. Those words would stick with him forever whether he liked it or not, but he could make the choice to ignore them, ignore the whispers in the back of his mind, the pain, the-
"Brunito," a hushed voice whispered somewhere behind him, and Bruno flinched.
Sometimes, even during nights like this with the stars over his head, he forgot he wasn't alone. That there were other people nearby, that they could see him, they could speak to him and touch him and interact with him, whether he liked it or not. That he was there, he was present. Sometimes he didn't even feel present. Sometimes he'd just… go back to that place, that place in the walls. Mentally, he would be there, and he would be alone, and everything was quiet and sad and confusing and then he would snap back to himself just in time and everything would be loud, and someone would be holding onto his arm or tapping his shoulder or calling his name…
Bruno heaved himself into a sitting position, flicking a blade of grass off of his ruana, and twisted his head around to look up at his mother. The sight of her always stalled his brain to a dead halt. It made his heart flutter with excitement and his stomach twist with anxiety and his brain numb with fear. So naturally, he froze up as she approached him, pulling a magenta blanket around her shoulders in place of her usual shawl and coming to a stop near him. "What are you doing?"
Her voice lacked the judgment it would have carried ten years ago, genuine curiosity and a gentle sort of confusion in its place. Bruno's head spun and his mouth felt dry and there was a bitter taste on his tongue regardless, the familiar impulse to apologize and explain himself rising.
"Lo lamento, Mamá," he began softly, hesitating. "I was… I was just- I didn't mean to…"
His Mamá's face scrunched in confusion. Bruno drew further into himself, shoulders hiking up to his ears in alarm when she abruptly moved to settle down in the grass beside him, but she didn't give him a chance to open his mouth to apologize again, or to perhaps ask what she was doing. "You did nothing wrong, mijo, there's no need to apologize." While her words worked through his brain, filtering through the cogs and wheels churning in his mind as they struggled to register, Alma's hand came up to rest against the side of his face, cupping his cheek. She moved so slowly, but the touch felt so sudden it was a wonder that he merely jolted under the contact and didn't completely fling himself away from the touch, flinching slightly but not quite moving away.
After a few seconds, even, he moved closer, leaning his head forward and nearly letting his entire body melt into the touch. He didn't, but his Mamá moved closer, and tugged the blanket around both of them, wrapping them both up in the warm, comfortable fabric with a soft sigh. Bruno grabbed onto one of the corners, pulling it tighter around him, and snuggled closer to her.
"I didn't wake you up, did I?" He mumbled, finding himself hugging his Mamá's arm. Her other hand raked through his hair, fingers gently combing through locks that Julieta had brushed the tangles out of just earlier that day. The sensation weakened him to every core of his being, chest shuddering through soft, shaky breaths as he nuzzled even closer to his mother, quietly relishing in the physical contact and affection that he had spent so long - too long - deprived of. Sure, he was used to rats crawling over his body, hiding in his sleeves and hair, but human touch was different. It was softer, it was gentler, it was warmer. And his Mamá… there was so much love in her touch, carding through his hair so carefully, it made the grown man want to cry.
He flinched a little when his Mamá suddenly shifted him to lean further against her, maneuvering them both so that he was curled up against her side with her arm now wrapped around his shoulders, his own arms folded against his chest with his head tucked just underneath her chin. "No, mi corazón. You don't have to worry so much," his mother whispered into his hair, gently kissing the top of his head. His eyes warmed as he felt her hand brush against his cheek, clutching tighter at the blanket wrapped around his shoulders and swallowing back a quiet sob. He couldn't remember the last time he felt so loved, especially not within his Mamá's embrace.
"Where have you been?" His Mamá whispered suddenly. "Where did you go, Brunito? How did Mirabel find you? Why did you come back? I-" She stopped herself, albeit somewhat reluctantly. Bruno sat as still as possible, stayed as quiet as a mouse, scared to answer her questions. Afraid of whatever her reaction may be, be it anger or guilt or even just the most profound sadness. He had caused her so much grief. Did he regret it? He didn't know the answer to that. Would he do it again? In a heartbeat, for his familia, his sobrina, if he had to make that choice.
But how was he supposed to tell his Mamá that the son she thought she had lost had always been there, so close and yet so out of reach? How was he supposed to tell her everything he had seen and heard and endured over the past ten years, all alone, by himself, in the walls? How was he supposed to tell her he had been there the whole time, and she just hadn't known?
He wished he could tell her differently. Perhaps that he had left the Encanto entirely, that he was safe, and he was happy. That he hadn't spent the past decade alone and depressed and afraid.
Bruno didn't answer. His Mamá held him close, squeezing him gently.
"I'm just glad you're home, mi estrello," she breathed. "I'm just glad you came home. Te quiero."
"Te quiero," Bruno mumbled tiredly back in response, mustering a faint smile before it faltered from his lips again. He hid his face in the fabric of the blanket and pressed his head closer to her chest, silently listening to the gentle ba-bump of her heartbeat until his eyes grew heavy and his muscles grew weak and tired, until his face drooped with exhaustion and the mere effort of holding himself in an upright position became too much. He almost pulled away, not wanting to fall asleep on his mother, but she pulled him right back against her, quieting his protests with a gentle 'shh' as she guided him to lay down, securing his head in her lap and pulling the blanket from around her shoulders to wrap it around him completely, cocooning him in warm, soft fabric.
"Rest," his Mamá murmured, knuckles grazing lightly against his cheek. Bruno blinked a few times, tired and warm and content, and let his eyes flutter shut again, fighting back a yawn. Exhaustion weighed him down, and it wasn't long before his thoughts slowed to a peaceful pace. No headaches, no visions. For the first time in so, so long, he was content, he was okay.
Everything was okay.