Archive of Our Own

Bruno couldn’t possibly overstate how happy he is to be surrounded by his family again.

Nor could he overstate his terror.

The two creep together hand in hand as he walks down the open street beside them. Feels the glowing joy over his proximity to them even as he shrinks from their footsteps and tries to hide himself away in the weight of his ruana.

He can still feel the echoes of warmth and pressure from the hugs they’d given him the moment they saw him. The fond look on Mamá’s face as she brushed leaves out of his hair feels imprinted on the backs of his eyes. He feels flushed and happy from the way Pepa had laughed at something he’d said earlier, the way Julieta kept reaching out to touch him every time there was a moment of silence, the thrilled look on Maribel’s face as she watched it all happen. 

Still, though, there is a cold terror certainty that something terrible is going to happen. Bruno knows more than most that the worst is never just in the past, and he can feel the conviction that there is more to come creeping up the back of his neck. He hasn’t grappled with the urge to have a vision so bad in a long time, but he couldn’t do anything about it even if he did give in. He’s not close enough to any wooden thing to knock the feeling out of reach. He hasn’t been out in the open like this for so long; it’s painful.

Were things this much before he’d hidden himself away? The way the air moves freely over his skin, the seemingly endless field of vision all around him, the complete lack of barrier from the noise of their voices, the crushing weight of strangers’ eyes on his back, the unfamiliar smells and steps, everything that used to be just in reach now completely out of it (even if the inverse is true now too). 

Bruno knew every board of the floors, every crack in the stone, every split in the wood.

Even if he had left the house more when he was younger, he wouldn’t know these streets anymore at all. 

Toc, toc, toc, toc, toc, toco madera, he chants inside of his head, tongue tracing out the syllables behind his teeth, fingers twitching, but there’s no wood in reach, and he doesn’t like the open space at all.

At least the footsteps of his family are as familiar as ever. Bruno watches their gaits as they walk in front of him, putting sights to the sounds that he’s been hearing for so long, and swallows, swallows, swallows back the urge to run back to hide in the ruins of his home.

None of it is there anymore, he knows, nothing but an empty space where its silhouette on the hill should go. All of the crawlspaces are collapsed and gone, all of his things buried under the rubble, the safety of the walls broken and absent. But the walls have always been there, a childish piece of his brain insists. His feet tangle in the warring impulses as he hops from cobblestone to cobblestone.

“Are you okay, Tío Bruno?” Mirabel asks, startling him as she comes up on his side. Bruno does his best to keep from flinching, keeps his eyes focused on the ground, toes stepping carefully over every crack.

“Oh, sí, you know, I’m fine,” he chokes out, shifting his weight carefully - he can’t risk messing it up.

He can see grains of dirt and sand between every tile, and the sight makes him feel sick. The powers are all gone, he knows, but all he can think of is the way the wind whips around him, how even the smallest accidental curiosity could pull up visions that could swallow him whole - especially here, so far away from the enclosed safety that kept them all at bay.

Even if Bruno had failed to choke back the urge to prepare a ritual, the walls were too small for anything to take hold. He knows that the house is broken and the candle is burned out and the milagro is faded, but none of the knowledge feels as safe as the visual reassurance of the walls had. 

He feels a kernel of sand grind under his chancla and grimaces. Scrapes it beneath his foot again, again, again. Stuck on the tile until the compulsion breaks and he dances carefully to the next stone. Sana, sana, colita de rana , but there’s nothing to fix anymore, and Bruno doesn’t know what to do with his hands. He doesn’t want to look up to see if the others have moved ahead without him, if they’ve left him behind. 

It used to happen often enough, when they were younger. Bruno has never had the single-minded focus and self-control that the rest of his family has. He hasn’t walked alongside them in so long, he doesn’t know if they’d remember to look behind to check where he is. If they’d still think to call out his name to make sure he catches up. 

Something sticky and hot rises in his chest at the thought; he doesn’t know if it glows or aches.

“Abuela said we could stay at Matias or Rosa’s houses tonight,” Mirabel tells him, which means that she, at least, is somewhere close to his side. “Do you have a preference?” 

Bruno struggles to put the names with faces. He’d hated leaving the house and venturing out into town even before he’d resolved to never leave the walls again. He hasn’t thought about anyone outside of the house in years. Matias’ prized tomato crops were killed by a maggot infestation one year. Rosa’s little cousin that she was always watching over almost cracked her skull open falling down the stairs.

He tries not to grimace. 

Instead he keeps his eyes on the tiles, just familiar enough to be tolerable even if they aren’t anything like the ones inside Casita. He feels too aware of Mirabel’s feet in the corner of his vision, the way she strolls easily over the cracks where Bruno hops carefully between them, and tries not to grit his teeth. “Where, uh, where are you and your mamá staying?” 

Her face is out of his field of vision (is that a relief or something sickening? There’s too much space out here now, how is Bruno supposed to feel safe if he can’t see everything right next to him?), but he sees her hands clench happily in the fabric of her skirt, twirling it a little. “Probably Rosa’s house,” she tells him. “Mamá used to go over there to teach her husband how to cook.” 

Could be better. Could be worse. 

“There, then,” he tells her, and swallows, swallows, swallows the impulse to run and hide at the sight of the happy little skip she does at the words - her foot landing square center over a crack. 

(He tosses salt over his shoulder, to even it out. It doesn’t feel like enough.)

The walls of Rosa’s home are not big enough to slip behind, there is no Casita there to open a space for him. He knocks, knocks, knocks, knocks, knocks, knocks against the wood and can’t hear any hollow safe spaces behind them. He keeps checking, holding his breath against the way Rosa stares at him, and comes up empty again and again.

It shouldn’t be, probably, but it’s terribly disappointing. 

“Do you maybe want to take a bath, Bruno?” Julieta asks, voice soft.

Bruno does not really want to. It’s Saturday, which is the wrong day for that sort of thing. This is not his house, which is the wrong place for that sort of thing too. He thinks of Pepa blurting out that he stinks and the soft giggles of her boys when they’d overheard. The way Rosa’s cousin (the scar on her forehead a bright spot against her skin) and new daughter wrinkled their noses at him when they were introduced.

“Uh, sí,” he says, because that’s what he should say. Bruno doesn’t live in the walls anymore, and knows that he needs to start learning how to do these things again. Start doing the things he’s supposed to do, so that he can keep up with the others. 

So now he sits, quiet, in the tub. He owns only the clothes that he’s wearing, so he hasn’t bothered to take them off, and the water weighs them down over his shoulders. The water is going yellow all around him, from the stiff fabric of his clothes and the dirt on his skin. 

He presses his forehead against his knees and tries not to think about it. 

The line where the air meets the water tickles unbearably against his skin, all around him. He finds himself rocking, and the gentle crests of the water make it a little easier to tolerate. He can hear people talking softly through the door, and the sound makes his teeth grind against one another. 

He’d piled all of his salt up by the door, so it wouldn’t dissolve. It’s too far away to grab without making a mess and ruining it all anyway.

The soap is sitting on the edge of the tub. Perfectly within reach and still completely out of it. 

(Today is Saturday. Bruno only bathes on Sundays, when Casita was empty and the church was full. It’s not right , and the unfamiliar scent of the soap here does not soothe the wrongness at all.)

His hands are curled into loose claws under the water, the currents little barriers of pressure he carves through as he flaps them loosely under the surface. His cheek hurts, but he doesn’t lift his head off his knee. The water shifts around him restlessly. Uneasy, just like him. Rita chitters as she explores the little bottles of soaps in the corner. 

Bruno crosses his fingers without stilling his hands and holds his breath. 

Closes his eyes so he can’t see the water or all the unfamiliar walls around him. 

(It’s a waste, he can’t help but think. Today is Saturday and not Sunday. He could have filled up all of his pilfered cups and bottles and still had some left over. Thinks of the house and the days that passed, sometimes, before he’d gotten a chance to slip into the kitchen unnoticed. What a waste.)

“Brunito?” his hermana calls through the door. “Are you alright?”

The answer ‘No’ hops to his tongue and dissolves there. His chest hurts. He remembers to breathe out again, finally. “Estoy bien,” he says instead, and the spell is broken. He lifts his eyelids, lifts his head, and lifts his cupped hands to drizzle water over his shoulders and hood. 

Rita pushes the soap closer and slips down the side of the tub, tumbling into the water. Her nose cuts through the surface as she swims, briefly, in a quick circle before she starts scrabbling at the sides of the tub. There’s no traction for her little hands to climb.

Bruno gets a hand under her rump and pushes her back up to the ledge. She chitters in irritation, and when she starts grooming through her soaked fur, Bruno reaches under the surface of the water to find the soap, and does the same for himself. 

(He wonders if any of the others made it out. If he’ll ever find them again. Resolves not to think about it.) 

They clean themselves together, in the quiet, and Bruno thinks What a waste.

He looks anywhere but at the water when he stands up so the bath can drain. His ruana is heavy over his shoulders - drip, drip, dripping into the bottom of the tub. Reluctantly, Bruno sheds all the clothes so he can wring them out as best as he can. 

Holds his breath against how vulnerable he feels. He can hear the distant echoes of sound bouncing off the tile walls, feel the air shift too freely over his skin, can still hear people talking through the door.

Rosa’s husband (he can’t remember his name; isn’t so sure he’d even known Rosa was married at all) gave him a towel, which he uses to squeeze water out of his hair, and then presses more out of his clothes. 

The white fabric looks a little stained when he’s done. Bruno can’t decide what that means, or how he feels about it, but his clothes smell sharp like clean soap, and he decides that’s good enough to count for something. 

Mamá is sitting at Rosa’s table when he comes out. Pepa and Julieta are next to her. Bruno stalls in the doorway, and chokes back the urge to slam his head against the doorframe.

(His hand reaches back instead; toc, toc, toc, toc, toc, toco madera.)

They all look over at him in the sudden quiet. He feels their eyes like weights over his skin. He hasn’t been seen in so long - he’s not used to standing underneath it. What do they see now? What do they think of him?

Rita nips at his collarbone where she’s hidden under his ruana, and Bruno startles forward a step, and then makes himself keep walking.

Mirabel and her sisters are already laid out in the living room. They feign sleep well, but the house is quiet enough that Bruno can hear their breathing, and knows that they’re not.

He wonders if that’s weird. Figures it probably is, but can’t do anything about it. 

“Come sit,” Julieta says, and he does not want to. What choice does he have? He wants to as much as he doesn’t; he doesn’t know how to ask for space without being given too much. He keeps his eyes on the floorboards, stepping carefully between each one, and tries not to think of the weight of their eyes on his trek. 

He chokes under the stares anyway, and holds his breath instead of crumbling, fingers crossed. Out of the corners of his eyes he sees Pepa smoothing over her braid, fingers catching on tangles and tearing through them without pause. Julieta’s hands wring with nothing to fill them. Mamá is still looking at him with wide surprised eyes, like she still can’t quite believe he’s there either. 

“Juanito left some clothes for you to change into,” Pepa tells him, too loud in the quiet. 

Bruno hadn’t noticed. “Oh,” he says, for want of anything else. His clothes settle damp and cold around him. He wouldn’t have changed anything even if he had seen. “Cool.” 

They glance at each other uncertainly. Bruno traces his fingers over the grain of the wooden chair he’s sitting on and thinks of Hernando.

The quiet stretches, stretches, stretches, and Bruno breathes so quietly he can barely hear it at all.

“Bruno, mijo,” Mamá says finally, sounding lost. He and his sisters startle at the sound of her voice, and Bruno still can’t help but relish the way it rings so clearly through the air instead of being muffled through flat boards of wood, even as his stomach sinks guiltily over putting that tone in her voice. “Why did you leave? Where were you?” 

Bruno opens his mouth, and the words don’t come. 

(Of course they don’t. Bruno has never been able to help his family the way they deserve, and finally the only thing he could think to do was hide so he couldn’t make things any worse. If he was quiet, and if they couldn’t see him or hear him or notice all the strange things that made him, maybe he could make things easier for them. Maybe he could shield them all from his jagged pieces that no one ever knew what to do with. Bruno couldn’t cut those pieces out of himself, but he could cut himself out of their lives, and if that was the only way he could protect them, then that’s what he would do.)

(He’s still protecting them now. If he lets the words out, they’ll only serve to cut and hurt his family, and Bruno can’t let that happen.)

He can see the steam rising from the mug of tea Mamá has cupped between her palms. His hand darts out and grabs fingerfuls of sugar to toss over his shoulder before he can stop it, and he cringes at the surprised noise she makes. Pepa glances between them, and gives him a subtle thumbs-up after seeing whatever look he has on his face.

“Uhm,” he chokes out, knuckles rapping against the underside of the table. His brain feels empty except for the distant echoes of “Bruno didn’t care about this family” and "We don't talk about Bruno" and “My brother Bruno lost his way in this family” . If he lets them know he knows, will they feel guilty? Or will they stand their ground?

He doesn’t want to tell them anything, but the reason he’d left in the first place was because he’d known that they wouldn’t let him go without some kind of answer, and knows that nothing has changed in that regard at all. “I, uh, my vision,” he manages, because they already know that part, and that makes it easier to force his tongue out of its stillness. “I knew that no one would, uhm, would read it right. And I didn’t, I didn’t want Mirabel to have to bear it.” 

Bear the same flavor of burden he’d been carrying for so long. Bruno makes bad things happen; he didn’t want Mirabel to become another scapegoat. He doesn’t take his eyes off the table. Doesn’t want to see what the words are doing to their faces. 

“I broke, I broke, I broke the vision glass,” he continues. “But I knew that if I was still around, then you all would ask. And if you kept asking, then I might, I’d slip up eventually, so uhm. So I just couldn’t be around for you to ask.” 

“But where were you?” Julieta asks, almost pleading. “Were you in the woods, where Mamá found you?” 

Ah. Bruno hadn’t realized Mirabel hadn’t told them, although he supposes she didn’t exactly have the time. There were bigger things going on. He debates lying, for a very long moment, and then realizes that Mirabel and Dolores already know, and he might as well give them this so it can’t come back to hurt them later. 

“Ah, no,” he says. Toc, toc, toc, toc, toc, toco madera . “I was, hm. Casita shifted the walls and made a space there, and then. Then that’s just where I was. I was in the walls.” 

A beat. 

“Bruno! The walls?” Pepa cries incredulously, and Bruno wonders if she’s thinking more of his strangeness or of Dolores, and laughs over Julieta’s protesting Pepa!!

“I mean, you know me,” he says, breathing a little easier because the scandalized tone of her voice has not changed at all, not even with him. “I could, I could barely go anywhere outside even on a good day. And I couldn’t stay in town anyway, and I couldn’t, I didn’t know what else there was besides the town. So I couldn’t, I couldn’t stay, and I couldn’t go. So I just, I left without leaving,” he says, thinking of the way Mirabel had phrased it.

There’s more to it than that, of course. Of course there is, but Bruno can’t just say any of it. He can’t, he knows better. No matter how hard he tries, he always says things wrong, and every word he manages to get out over his clumsy tongue only ever does more harm than good. 

Bad things are always around the corner, and the worst is never just in the past, but no one likes to be reminded of it. He’s learned better, by now.

Honesty is good for other people, but Bruno isn’t other people and never has been. 

The quiet stretches, and Bruno can’t figure out how to fill it. He knocks the backs of his fingers against the edge of the table. The others look between him and each other, like they don’t know how to fill it either.

“So close?” Mamá asks, lost, and Bruno feels his face crumple, just a little. 

(He thinks of the way they had shouted for him, when his absence had stretched for long enough that they’d realized it wasn’t just him hiding like usual. The cracks in their voices, from emotion and strain, in and out of the house and all throughout the town. The way he’d curled himself so small it hurt every bone in his body and hid his face so deeply against his legs that he could barely breathe, so that they couldn’t hear him crying too.)

(He thinks of “Your fate is sealed when your prophecy is read” and “Bruno left because of you” and “Why did I talk about Bruno?” )

“Perdóname, Alma,” Rosa says, cringing in her own doorway and still managing to make everyone jump. “I’m so sorry, pero Alaina is…”

Mamá shakes her head, like she’s coming up out of water. “No, excuse us,” she says. “It is late. Pepa and I should go back to Matias’, before it gets any darker.” 

Pepa’s face scrunches like she wants to argue, but she doesn’t. Bruno sinks in his seat so that they can’t see the relief he’s wearing instead. 

She and Mamá both lean down to hug him, crushingly tight. His skin crawls at the closeness, and he wants them to never let go. He barely gets the chance to free his arms to return it before they’re already hurrying out. 

“You can take the couch,” Julieta offers, after waving to Rosa and welcoming Agustín back from wherever he was. 

“Oh, nah,” he says, forcing his tone to come out easy instead of weak. He’s already folding himself in the armchair in the corner - it’s bigger than his own was, and the texture is all wrong, but the shape of it is close enough that Bruno can almost pretend. 

“Ay, Bruno. You can’t sleep like that,” Julieta protests, half laughing. “You’re too old.” 

He’s never really thought about it. “It’s fine,” he tries to reassure her. “It’s all I’ve slept on this whole time.”

It’s meant to be a consolation, so that she and Agustín can sleep on the couches themselves without worrying. Instead, it makes her face crumple into sadness, and Bruno doesn’t know how to fix it anymore than he understands how he’d caused it.

He tucks his head into the crevice between the back of the chair and his own knees so he can’t accidentally say anything worse. Holds his body so still that his muscles feel frozen and stiff. Watches Rita settle herself in his lap, and doesn’t look up again. 

He hears her whispering to Agustín until he falls asleep, and tries not to understand any of what they say.

It’s fine. Probably, at least.

What other option is there?

Bruno does not exactly feel well, and he thinks it’s only getting worse. 

He’s trying so hard to find the space to breathe, and despite the abundance of it all around him, he can’t seem to manage it. His family helps but there’s only so much they can do to stand against the whole of the world. Routines refuse to settle, in this limbo of a life that Bruno has emerged into, and he feels more like a caged animal now than he’d ever managed over the past ten years.

It wasn’t supposed to happen like this.

(He was never supposed to come out of the walls at all.)

He doesn’t really know what to do with himself. The town is coming together to help rebuild Casita and learn to rely on each other instead of only the Madrigals. The family is coming together to have new conversations with each other, and is spending time learning how to navigate their lives without their gifts. Bruno skirts on the edges of both and doesn’t know how to handle any of it.

The presence of the townfolk in his space makes him cringe, and he doesn’t know how to talk to them anymore than they do him. He doesn’t miss his gift and had only used it once in the past ten years besides, and is grown enough to admit to himself that he’s avoiding the conversations the everyone else just as doggedly. 

(He wants them to be happy that he’s back. He wants to be happy that he’s back. Instead, Bruno can’t quite catch his breath. No amount of avoiding cracks or knocking on wood is pulling the encroaching dread off of his back. No amount of shrinking in on himself or tugging on the edges of his ruana is diminishing the crawling ache spreading through his skin. He wants to be happy that he’s back, he wants them to know that he loves them, that they haven’t made a mistake. He wants to, but he can’t. The words don’t come, and he doesn’t know if he could trust their safety anyway.) 

Things have changed in the ten years they’ve been separated from each other. Of course they were always going to, but Bruno can’t seem to find his footing in it despite the anticipation. Mirabel and Camilo don’t think his Hernando and Jorge characters are as funny as they used to when they were little. Isabela and Dolores don’t cling to each other as much as they used to. Luisa doesn’t seem like she’d be as inclined to draw in the sand with him as she used to be. He doesn’t know Antonio at all, and Pepa and Julieta and their mother have only gotten older, just like he has.

Somehow it still feels like the weeks that are passing now are changing things far faster than they did in the house, and Bruno doesn’t know how to deal with that either. 

Then again, Bruno’s always been the family disappointment. 

He doesn’t know how to be anything else, really. 

So the others learn to talk to each other, and they learn to listen, and Bruno listens like he’s always listened and keeps his mouth shut just the same. He sits on the edge of the foundation and mixes cement and spackle so he won’t get in the way. He trails behind everyone else on the streets, dancing over cracks in the roads to keep everyone safe. He wakes up before everyone else in the morning and dreads and dreads and dreads until he finally works up enough courage to leave when everyone else does. He goes through the day and dreads and dreads and dreads until he finally works up enough courage to follow Julieta’s family into the house of whichever family has opened their doors to them that night.

He misses his walls. 

(Misses the constant steady routine that they held, the way nothing could sneak up on him, the way no one could see him, the way nothing really had to change at all.)

Can’t help but notice that crawl spaces aren’t being built into this new home with every other thing that used to be there. 

(Is that them telling him that they want him? Or that they don’t? Bruno is too scared to ask, afraid that the question will shatter the indulgent silence they’re letting him rest in, afraid that he’ll prove himself to be a failure once more.)

“It’s good to see you again,” some of the kinder people in town will tell him, and Bruno grins awkwardly to agree and doesn’t tell them that he’s not sure it’s good to be seen again. 

Things are changing, and Bruno knows that it’s all for the better, but that doesn’t make it any easier to deal with. Bruno has never been good at handling change, and this is far too many of them all at once for him to keep up with. He misses the walls, where he could just as easily hear it all shift as pretend that none of it was happening at all. 

He clings to every hiding spot he can grasp instead, in a weak attempt to placate himself. Behind Mirabel’s shoulders, underneath the hood of his ruana or his bucket, between his sisters’ sides, at his mother’s elbow. None of it is ever enough. It’s too bright, and too loud, and too open, and too different, and Bruno dreads going into a building every night as much as he dreads leaving it every morning. 

He doesn’t know how to ask anyone for help. Doesn’t know how to ask them for anything. Isn’t even so sure he knows what he needs.

He can feel something terrible brewing in his chest. In the way his calves and toes ache, the way the bruises on his knuckles are settling in deeper, the growing raw spots on his scalp, the darkening bruises under his eyes. 

He can also see Camilo stop startling at the sight of him. Adjusts to Isabel and Dolores and Luisa as much as he can see them adjust to him. Gets to know Antonio. Feels the reassurance of Mamá kissing the top of his head when she passes him again. Cannot get over the joy of reuniting with everyone, of being close to them, being a part of their lives once again.

Can’t bring himself to ruin it by admitting that some elusive part of it is just not quite working.

The panic and the joy aren’t mutually exclusive. They’re not even caused by the same things at all.

Still, Bruno’s just not sure which one is going to break him first.

Bruno misses Julieta’s food, the familiarity and comfort of it, but he can’t quite bring himself to say anything about it.

Most of the rubble has been cleared away, and a lot of their things have been dug out as it's all been moved. Most of it is almost surprisingly undamaged, considering. It’s something to hold onto as they’re moved around, but the house is still being cleared away, and they’re still guests in every place that they stay in.

Julieta offers to cook at nearly every meal, but everyone insists they do it for her. She’s a guest, after all; it would be rude to ask her to make their meals. 

Bruno sees the way her hands wring, though, with nothing to occupy them.

But she doesn’t say anything, so neither does he.

He isn’t sure if she’s noticed him noticing, or wanting. She’s noticed plenty else anyway - the way he keeps forgetting to bathe, and eat, and drink, because he forgets that he doesn’t have to wait for just the right moment to do it anymore.

He does think she’s the only one who has noticed that, which is good. He doesn’t, doesn’t mean to worry her, and doesn’t want to upset anyone else more than he has to. He’s never gone without, has never been in danger, but timing is everything and Bruno hasn’t been able to find a new rhythm here, not with everything in life so off-beat, and can’t help wishing it didn’t have to change at all. 

“Don’t you ever take off that ratty ruana?” she asks him, dropping down next to him on Vieja Sofia’s grandson’s couch and tossing an arm over his shoulders. 

Bruno glances down at it, circling an edge of the fabric between his fingers. Is it ratty? He supposes it must be, even if only because Rita still tucks herself underneath it more often than not. He cleans it as often as he cleans himself though, to make sure it won’t smell anymore. There are holes, but he’s kept it in as good a condition as he could - surrounded by nibbling rats and loose nails and years of wear. 

“No,” he says plainly. 

He likes its weight, its familiarity. Bruno has always worn ruanas as much as he could, ever since he was a little kid; has never liked the wind on his skin even before he’d grown used to the stale air trapped between the walls. His body underneath it is nothing good anyway. He doesn’t want her to see how scrawny he’s gotten. He’s always been teased for being too small, and well…

He can’t decide what would be worse: to be teased the same way all over again, or to know that he’s reached a point beyond funny and into upsetting. 

Either way, he likes to be underneath it. He eats better now, when he remembers that he can. Julieta reminds him, stacks his plate for him almost every night - when he’s too scared to walk so brazenly through these unfamiliar kitchens - and Agustín sits with him to eat and ask if he wants even more once he’s done.

His family wants him to eat well. There’s no good in showing them how he’s been failing at it for so long. 

(Maybe one day, he considers, but can’t quite picture it)

She snorts a little. Other people always seemed to find Bruno’s frankness irritating or off-putting, but Julieta has always thought it pleasantly funny, he remembers, and is glad it hasn’t changed. 

“Well, would you consider letting me borrow it for a while?”

He bristles a little, gripping the edges of it tighter. “What for?”

“It’s covered in holes, hermanito,” she laughs, gentle instead of mocking. “I can fix them for you.” 

He glances down. She isn’t wrong. The fabric has seen better days, and he’s been worried about the fraying for a while, all honesty. Even if he hadn’t hidden himself away, the woman who had weaved all of his ruanas since he was small had died, and he doesn’t want to learn a new person’s craftsmanship. He likes the idea of it being reinforced, fixed, so that he doesn’t have to fret anymore.

But his whole body freezes at the thought of having to take it off. If he takes it off, then he won’t have it. Won’t have any familiar touchstone to hold onto when the others have to go off and work without him. Won’t have anything to hide in the whole time she’s fixing it.

“Ah, no,” he manages, pulling back from her side just a little. Brushes his hands against the pocket filled with salt to make sure it’s still there - another thing he can’t afford to lose. Taking salt away from his own family’s kitchen was one thing, but he doesn’t need to give other people in town a new reason to find him annoying. Adjusts his grip so that he doesn’t touch any of the holes and risk tearing them wider. “No, I think… No thanks.” 

He already can’t stop thinking about the way the air moves over the exposed parts of his arms already. The way other people brush against his sides, against his skin. The way his shoulders feel terribly vulnerable, in those moments during bathing when he has to take it off. The way it would all get so much worse, if he wasn’t wearing it at all. He feels enough like he’s falling apart already, and knows that it would only get worse, if the lost the only barrier between himself and the rest of the world, now that all his walls are gone.

His chest goes tighter at the thought. He reaches behind himself and knock, knock, knock, knock, knock, knocks on wood to ward them all away. Crosses his fingers over one another to feel the pressure, and doesn’t look at Julieta’s face until he’s sure he can handle seeing whatever might be there.

She looks sad. He keeps putting that expression on their faces and doesn’t know how to stop. It used to be his visions, but that’s gone, so what else is left but himself? He doesn’t know how to ask why, and is too afraid that the answer will be that it’s just him to ask what he could do to stop it.

“What if,” she says, and he pushes back a little further, afraid despite himself that she’ll reach out and just take it from him anyway. “What if we just made sure to sit down together every night, and then I can fix the holes without you having to take it off at all. Just a little at a time.”

His throat goes strangled tight at the suggestion. He holds his breath and crosses his fingers and toc, toc, toc, toc, toc, toco madera, again and again and again until it fades enough to breathe again.

“Yeah,” he chokes out finally. Feels hot and overwhelmed and can’t decide if it’s good or bad. “Yeah, that, that could work.” 

Julieta smiles like he did something right, and the sticky feeling in his chest grows, and Bruno doesn’t think he minds it.

It tastes like good luck on the back of his throat. Maybe that’s why he decides to push his a little further. “Do you think Angelo remembers that his abuela used to like me?” he asks her.

Bruno, at least, still remembers being eighteen and trembling when she’d asked him to look ahead for her. Stammering through every word in his admission that she would die within the week, already dreading the anger and revulsion that would surely spread over her face at the news.

Instead she’d smiled, and pinched his cheeks until he’d bent enough for her to kiss his forehead, and she’d thanked him. She’d spent that last week with her family, able to tell them everything she’d wanted to say, and still somehow found the time to tell everyone how grateful she was to Bruno for giving her an early notice so that she could get everything settled in time.

It hadn’t done much, really, but Bruno has never forgotten it. 

“Probably?” Julieta hedges, confusion all over her face.

Bruno grins a little. “Think he could be convinced to let you use his kitchen if you tell him how much I miss your cooking?” 

The smile she gives him - understanding and conspiratorial and pleased - stores enough luck in his chest to last through the whole week.

With the Madrigal house gone, the town seems to have run low on buildings big enough to host the entire population. It’s nothing short of a new miracle that Bruno has managed to retreat to the sacristy to get away from the noise of what seems to be the entire town catching up in the church’s sanctuary. 

Probably he shouldn’t be here, but Bruno has discovered that he cares very little for what spaces in a building are meant to be off-limits, and he’s desperate enough for an escape that he cares even less than that. What matters is that it’s quiet, and no one can see him, and that is what this little room is giving him, so that’s good enough to risk it. 

(Maybe someone would offer to go with him if he asked to leave. Maybe Mamá would make excuses for him like she did when he was little, so that no one else would bother him about missing out. Maybe they would all even agree to go somewhere quieter together. Bruno doesn’t want to ruin their fun, so he doesn’t ask.)

He paces around the small room in circles, chanclas left over by the door so that he can feel every floorboard and ensure that he never slips over onto the cracks. He raps his knuckles against the wall as he goes, knocking against the side of his head every time the sound outside threatens to crest into something overwhelming despite the distance. Hums and whispers and breathes as quietly as he can manage, only loud enough for himself to hear. Trying in vain to calm himself down enough so that staying around the others won’t make him fall apart. 

At least until he hears a soft, “Tío Bruno?” and startles so bad that Rita almost tumbles off his shoulder. 

He balances back a step, wide eyes searching the room that he’d been so certain was empty for whoever is calling him. “Huh?” he asks, and sees a tiny hand wave from underneath a bench in the corner. 

Oh. He shudders at the thought of Antonio being there; how long was he hiding and how much did he see? Hear? The moment stretches, and Bruno knock, knock, knock, knock, knock, knocks on wood the panic away until he can unlock his muscles and drop onto his belly to take a look. Just in time to see Antonio shuffle off to the side, and after another handful of hesitant breaths, Bruno wiggles himself into the empty space that’s been opened up for him.

“What’s going on, hombrecito?” he asks. Feels tension warring in himself from this new change - he wants to keep moving, he doesn’t like than Antonio has been around when Bruno had thought he was alone, wants to know why the kid looks so dejected. Also can’t help the way the cramped space settles something between his shoulder blades so easily. 

“How are you friends with your rats, even though they can’t understand you talk?” 

Hm. Bruno has never really thought about it. He’s been putting words into their mouths for so long he thinks he’d forgotten they couldn’t really understand him long before he’d even moved into the walls alongside them. They’ve always made good companions - small enough to fit inside a pocket and warm against his fingers, smart enough to train, easy enough to convince to come to him for food instead of thieving from the kitchen. 

“Well,” he says, instead of any of that. “I can sort of understand them in other ways, I guess.” 

Antonio dwells on that a moment. Bruno spends it rapping his knuckles against the underside of the bench and marveling at how comfortable it feels. He remembers hiding under furniture as a child, but it’s been so long that he’d forgotten he could still make himself fit. 

“What do you mean?” Antonio asks. 

“Uh,” Bruno says, then fumbles around inside his poncho until he finds Rita and puts her between them on the floor. “Well, you can tell by the way they move their bodies,” he explains. He strokes a finger along her back, and she flattens herself contentedly like a pancake against the floor in response. “See, that means she’s relaxed, with her legs all tucked up under, and see how her ears go to the side instead of forward?” 

It’s a funny thing to explain, considering that Bruno knows that humans speak their own form of body language that he’s never been nearly as good at learning. Still, he hasn’t had the chance to talk to anyone about his rats in a very long time, and it’s been even longer since someone could listen with genuine interest instead of only an indulgent silence. 

“But then,” he continues, and very gently prods at the tip of her tail with one of his fingernails. Her fur bristles, “See how her ears go forward, and her back arches? That means she’s mad at me.” She chitters angrily in seeming agreement, until Bruno digs around in his pocket for the last grains of his sugar to offer in apology. 

“It’s a lot of watching, mostly,” he says. “Uhm, and then just doing your best to be nice; same with people, I guess. Don’t do the things they don’t like, and do the things they do like.” 

Antonio hums, a happy little squeaking sound that makes Bruno’s head wiggle. “How can you ask them stuff though?” 

“Well, that’s the same sort of,” Bruno decides, skipping over the issue of endless trial and error training for now. He cups a hand against the floor near her side, and she shuffles out of reach. “See? That’s her saying no.” 

He flattens the back of his hand against the floor instead, and she scrambles into his palm happily, so he can tuck her back up on his shoulder. “That’s her saying yes. They’re all, they’re all different, sort of, but it’s not all that hard, I think.” 

It’s also not the same as what he’d seen of Antonio’s easy back and forth conversations, but the kid is still watching, a little starry-eyed, and Bruno flusters under the expression. 

There’s an odd sort of dread, that wants to rise when he sees it. That makes him think of the way the townspeople whisper, and how the little kids he’s seen seem to stare even more than the adults and startle into running every time they’re caught, the odd gaps in crowds that open up when he passes. The awe already a reminder of how quickly it can sour, and Bruno tosses salt over his shoulder to ward off the thought.

Antonio leans over to knock his temple against Bruno’s chin, and giggles as he runs off, crowing about the texture of his beard. Bruno feels himself smile but doesn’t get up to follow him back out. He stays tucked under the bench, and raps his knuckles against the bottom of it until the skin splits; licks up the blood and prays to Saint Mary it’s enough to last them a little longer.

Panicking quietly has never been a skill that Bruno considered himself particularly grateful for. Until now, he supposes. 

Nothing had even really happened. He’d been content enough at the Moreno’s dinner table, listening to Dolores regale them with a story as he’d chewed idly on the inside of his cheek. At least until Luisa accidentally scraped her fork against her plate trying to scoop up the last of her arroz rojos, and startled Bruno so badly he’d bitten down on his cheek hard enough to spill blood all over his tongue. 

He draws blood accidentally often enough, but never this bad. It’d only taken him a moment to realize how much there was, and he’d barely been able to hide his mouth enough to garble out an excuse before he could stumble to the bathroom. Mere moments away from gagging at the taste and smell - like old copper - before he could get over a drain and let it all spill out. 

“Sana, sana, colita de rana,” he whispers to himself, as blood drools out of his mouth. “Si no sana hoy, sanaras mañana.” 

He can’t think of the last time something like this had happened. He picks and bites at his skin all the time, but has never lost himself so thoroughly that he’s hurt himself this badly. It feels like a bad sign, for it to have happened so suddenly.

It’s unsettling, he doesn’t like it at all. He tosses salt over his shoulder without thinking and then hurriedly has to clean it up so no one can accuse him of making a mess.

He doesn’t understand; things should be better, shouldn’t they? He doesn’t understand why he feels like a raw nerve, why everything seems so much bigger and scarier and worse than they usually do. Doesn’t know what he’s doing wrong or what he’s supposed to do to fix it. Shouldn’t this be enough?

Why isn’t it? 

He lingers a little longer, to make sure the bleeding has stopped, and spares a glance in the mirror to look at the wide split inside his cheek. The flesh there is scarred enough, but there’s no relish in the making of new ones, only a confused sort of fear at the sight of it. 

Still, he’s taken too long to get back already. If he waits any longer, someone will come to check on him, and as much as the thought warms his chest it’s the last thing he wants. 

He rinses his mouth out and cleans the blood up off the tiles and goes back outside.

“You alright, Tío Bruno?” Dolores asks, head tilted. 

“Fine,” he tells her, and can’t help but be relieved that she can’t hear well enough to call him out on the lie anymore.

Bruno has never really liked coffee much, but the quiet routine of making it with his mother is something he’s always been fond of. 

He remembers when she’d taught him, when he was small. How to grind the beans, and heat the water, how to blend the two and sift the grinds out at the end. The weight of her hands on his as she’d led him through each step. The way she’d teased about how he should learn to read the silt at the end, a way to keep people satisfied without asking after visions. The reassurance that the tasks stayed the same no matter what.

Bruno has always been fond of ritual. 

He’s too old, now, to be led through the task the same way, but when Mamá comes to the window in the morning to ask for help, Bruno is more than thrilled to be the only one awake. 

“Do you want to share a cup with me, before the rest of the herd storms in?” she asks, once the pot is filled and the cups are laid out. 

(The ones from home had broken, but Señor Florez has somehow already found the time to make them a new set. Mamá carries all twelve cups almost reverently from house to house - the only bit of home they can take without becoming more of an imposition than they all already are.)

“Sure,” he says, grateful enough for the invitation of company to withstand the flavor.

At least the way it makes his face scrunch up makes Mamá laugh and say, “Some things never change” with so much fondness Bruno’s teeth almost hurt. 

“Here,” she says suddenly, reaching into the pockets of her dress. Bruno puts down the cup and wrings his hands, half-curious despite himself and half-hoping it’ll keep her from noticing the scabs on his knuckles. 

His chest goes hot, though, at the two little bottles she takes out and puts into his hand.

“Sugar,” she says, tapping on the one with a red ribbon tied around the neck, “and salt,” for the one tied with green. “I worried you might be running out, so I asked Señora Moreno if she had any to spare last night.” 

Bruno can’t quite catch his breath. He closes his hands around the bottles and looks up at her with too-wide eyes, and can’t find any of the words he’d need to start thanking her. 

She just smiles at him, reaching out to pat his hands, and Bruno is too caught up to even worry if she’ll feel the swollen ridges of his knuckles. “I want you to feel safe,” she tells him. “If you need more again, all you have to do is ask.” 

“Gracias,” he chokes out, surging forward clumsily to pull her into a hug, and she wraps her arms around him, and for just a few moments, Bruno feels safer than he has in months.

Bruno can’t sleep. 

He’s never kept much of a schedule, really. He sat for meals with everyone else, most of the time, but that was the only real timed consistency in each of his days. There was no sunlight breaking through the stone, no schedules that demanded he be busy during the day and asleep at night. He’d never had calendars, even though he’d had numerous routines. 

Walking the walls, pace through the crawlspaces around the exterior, to ward off bad luck and bad dreams and bad thoughts for everyone inside. Slip out here and there to pilfer food or drink or salt. Keep an ear out for when the house was empty so he could sweep the floors or finish the dishes. Patch the cracks in the walls, and do everything he could to keep everyone inside safe. 

He doesn’t know this house, though. It doesn’t feel at all safe like it should. He’s getting tired of new places, he doesn’t want to see any more of them, but he knows that he can’t complain. Them accepting him into their home at all is a miracle in its own right - Bruno shouldn’t push his luck. 

Still, it isn’t safe. He keeps Rita firmly in his pants pocket and won’t let her come out. There’s a mousetrap in the corner of the kitchen pantry Bruno doesn’t want to think about. The windows don’t have curtains. The walls have little hollow spaces that Bruno could never fit into, and he can almost hear the house breathing in and out through them all. 

His muscles are so tight they ache, curled in on himself in the little space between the couch and the wall where he’s hidden himself. He can’t sit still, but he can’t move until everyone else is asleep - he doesn’t want them to worry about him, doesn’t want to keep them up when they should be sleeping, doesn’t want them to feel unsettled by him. They’ve been better at helping rebuild the house than he has been, they need the rest. Bruno’s always been very bad at figuring out what to do with himself when there are other people around, and the only thing he can decide on without being directed is to sit in one place and measure out gravel and sand for the cement. 

So he sits and hides until he’s sure that everyone else is asleep. He can’t fit behind the walls of this house, and he can’t wander in and out of its rooms to trail along the whole exterior wall, but all of Julieta’s family is together in the salón anyway, and Bruno can follow the edges of that space well enough, at least. 

His family sleeps, and Bruno paces. Dances over the floorboards, fingers brushing against the walls for stability, balancing his weight so carefully he hardly makes a sound at all. Whispers little incantations under his breath. Keeps an eye on all the windows and doors. Doesn’t let any little thing escape his notice - he feels too aware of all the air and space and echoes to miss something anyway. 

He wants to calm down enough to speak. Wants to make sure nothing slips by and hurts anyone. Wants to store up all of the good luck in his lungs so that he’ll have enough to make it through the next day without worrying anyone.

Wants to stop feeling like breaking stone more often than not. 

“¿Tío Bruno? ¿Qué estás haciendo?” Isabela asks groggily.

“Just getting some water,” he replies, rapping knuckles against the kitchen wall so softly it doesn’t hurt the scabs at all. “Go back to sleep.”

He lingers in the kitchen until he’s sure it’s safe again, and then follows the wall back out and resumes his circuit.

(He doesn’t stop until the sun is peeking up over the mountains, he can’t. The static under his skin hasn’t faded, he doesn’t feel any safer, and he doesn’t feel any more prepared to face the day, but time marches on and seems to care little for what he feels. His calves ache as he settles back into his place, and hopes that no one will notice the fact that he’d left it in the first place.)

Pepa stands up in the middle of Sunday’s choir song to stalk briskly out into the vestibule, and after a moment of deliberation, Bruno follows. 

(Okay, so, in the moments that he’s rising, he’s mostly just forgotten that people can see him now. As soon as he realizes, he wants to sit back down, to avoid drawing attention, but he’s already on his feet, and surely sitting back down would just be stranger, right? He forces himself to commit either way.) 

He finds her sitting on the edge of the sacrarium, knees pulled tight to her chest, fingers brushing frantically over her braid. 

“What’s wrong?” he asks, settling in beside her.

It feels a little strange, still, to sit next to her like this. Stranger still to be dry to do it, but Bruno finds he doesn’t mind this newness too much.

“I, it’s too loud, and the lights are all wrong,” Pepa confesses, voice cracking and face twisting, hands never halting in their desperate moving. “And I have to move, but I can’t.” 

He can see her muscles straining, body practically shaking from the effort of sitting still, discomfort in every line of her frame. Her hands are the only things spared from the suspension, fingers tracing over the strands of her frizzing hair. If she was a rat, her fur would be standing straight on end, all her whiskers clumped together and pained. 

“How come?” 

She scoffs at him, the same Isn’t it obvious? scoff she’s used since they were little. “You know why,” she hisses. “We’re not supposed to, remember?” 

Bruno is already rocking where he sits, and realizes from the settled shock of sensation where his spine hits the back of the sacrarium that he’s been doing it since he’d sat down. His body freezes briefly, as her words pull up the memories of their mamá holding their hands together in their laps, her silent hand on their shoulders to encourage them to stay still, little hisses through her teeth every time they forgot themselves.

Gentle, loving, well-meant agonies. 

But Bruno had forgotten that instinct at some point when he’d been hiding, and his body starts again before long. 

“Oh, yeah,” he says, and tries to remember when things had shifted for him. No one could see him in the walls, and Bruno had always had trouble noticing when his body was moving in a way it wasn’t meant to; with no one to remind him, he’d forgotten he was supposed to pay attention at all. It wasn’t as if the rats had ever minded. “Well, uh, it’s just me and las paredes here,” he says, gesturing loosely, and makes himself keep rocking even as his body wants to stiffen under the attention when she finally looks over at him. “And I have it on good authority that neither of us care how you move, so…” 

She looks at him, staring, and Bruno just sits there - rocking and waiting. She was always better at following Mamá’s rules than he was; he’s not sure if he was just worse at learning or if her rains and the power of her storms gave her less of a chance to slip under the radar. Either way, he still remembers when they were little, when she’d sneak away to the top of Bruno’s tower where no one could find them or stop them from playing however they wanted. When they were teenagers, when she’d gotten mad and yelled that if he was just better at being normal then maybe people would like him more. When they were in their twenties and she wouldn’t talk to him for days after he’d accidentally ruined her wedding. 

He’s spent ten years in the walls all alone with no one but himself and the rats, but he still loves her more than anything. When the lights and the sounds and the smells and the touches hurt his brain, he moves, and it hurts less. He wants Pepa to have that same freedom; he doesn’t want her to hurt if she doesn’t have to. If this is all it takes to hurt a little less, why shouldn’t they take it? 

So he pulls his hood up until it covers his eyes, and he can’t see her anymore at all (nor the too-bright sun cutting through the stained glass windows), and keeps on moving. “There, now not even I can see you,” he says, in his Hernando voice, “and you can be scared of nothing too.”

The silence between them stretches, and Bruno listens to the muffled voices of the choir in the sanctuary and the gentle ripple of the holy water behind them and the sound of her breathing next to him, and waits. 

Pepa laughs. 

She giggles, and Bruno feels the corners of his mouth lift into a smile. The edge of his ruana shifts when she starts to rock back and forth too, her shoulder brushing against his every time they move past each other. When he finally peeks out from under his hood to look at her, he sees that she has the top layer of her skirt pulled up over her face too.

They laugh and rock together, and for just a couple of minutes, Bruno doesn’t miss the walls at all.

They make it back to the service as soon as the singing is done. Mamá gives them both a look like she knows exactly what they were up to, but it fades into something fond when Bruno just smiles guiltily at her. 

Pepa elbows him right in the ribs and mugs at him. He scrunches his nose right back, swallowing back the joy of being able to tease and be teased. He doesn’t want his presence to be a stunned exception forever, but if it’ll keep him and Pepa from getting in trouble for leaving mid-service then Bruno will take advantage of it just this once. 

He feels buoyant throughout the service, even though he’s never been very good at understanding Padre Julio’s voice.

Of course he comes crashing back down. 

It shouldn’t be a big deal. It isn’t, probably, except that it is. They leave the church and Mamá and the others linger in the road, talking and catching up with their friends even though it couldn’t possibly be more than a couple of days since they’d seen each other last. Bruno usually doesn’t mind it so much - content enough to sit on the steps and wait until everyone is done.

Today he sees a black butterfly and feels the little light in his chest burn cold. 

He holds his breath until it passes, but it isn’t enough. As soon as its out of sight, his breath releases and Bruno can’t seem to catch it again. He can feel the dread and bad luck crawling up his back. 

He thinks he can feel the sand stirring around him, but it’s probably not real. Just the wind, or his imagination, or both.

It’s definitely not his powers, he knows that. Their house is nearing closer to finished every single day, but she is cold and still, and Bruno tries not to feel the relief cut like a betrayal.

(He loves Casita and will miss it so much. He loves his family and hates to see them hurt and grieve the loss of their gifts. In a way, he loves this town and hates to see their solid ground shift. Yet, Bruno cannot stand his own powers, and he will not grieve if they never return.)

He can’t catch his breath. He stumbles back a half-step and feels the dip of a crack beneath his sandal and cringes. Throat working around a whine, he goes back to where he was and steps back again, again, again until he does it right and the sensation fades. Then he goes further, until he can reach the banister and knock and knock and knock and knock and knock and knock on the wood, again and again and again, trying to get the fear to leave him. The scabs on his knuckles ache, but he ignores them. 

“Tío Bruno!” Antonio chirps, and Bruno’s breath chokes in his lungs all over again, he wants to hide but there’s nowhere to go. He doesn’t want to scare him, but Bruno’s too scared to not be scary, isn’t he?

Hasn’t that always been his biggest problem?

“Tío Bruno, do you want to play rayuela with us?” Antonio asks, coming all the way up to tug on the edge of Bruno’s poncho. He looks down and feels like his eyes are too wide, his face is too pale, his panic too obvious, but if Antonio notices at all he doesn’t show it, nor does he seem frightened by it.

“Uhm, sí,” he manages to force out of his mouth. He doesn’t know why he does, he shouldn’t move, he tries to hold his breath but can’t quite manage it. A bad sign. He’s a bad sign. Bad Luck Bruno is at it again - making terrible things happen no matter how hard he tries.

But Antonio is grinning wide, turning back to his friends excitedly. “See? I told you he’d play,” he says. “He’s gonna be really good at it too, we’ve just gotta draw it in the dirt.” 

“What? How come?” whines a kid already holding a little piece of chalk. 

Antonio is pulling him forward, and Bruno’s legs feel shaky and weak underneath him as he does his best to follow.

“He can’t step on cracks, see?” Antonio says, pointing to the way Bruno’s feet turn and hesitate to keep from crossing any of the boundaries between stones. He freezes a little, caught out by the attention - is it worse that they’re all staring now or worse that Antonio has noticed it so often that he’d known to point it out in the first place? But his weight isn’t steady enough and he’s forced to step forward again to keep from tumbling over. “If we put it over the stones he’d be at a disadvantage,” he continues, sounding out each syllable of the word with the pride of a child who has just learned it. 

Bruno thinks of the way people used to tug their kids out of his path, like they were afraid that his behavior was catching. The way they’d tell their children not to stare so obviously and teach them how to gawk like a grown up instead - out of the corners of their eyes. The way Mamá would come home and beg him to try harder so that he could be approachable and uphold the Madrigal reputation properly.

None of these children say a word about it. They nod like what Antonio says makes sense, and one little boy even says, “Wow, it’s like you’re practicing all the time,” like he’s impressed. Bruno’s smile feels stretched and strained and weak, but none of them recoil from him.

None of them seem afraid at all. 

They draw the grid into the dirt with a stick, and whoop and cheer as Bruno hops from square to square the same way they encourage each other. The panic is still coiled up at the base of his throat, too present for him to think about feeling embarrassed over playing a children’s game like this. All of his focus goes instead into the stone and the squares, the clear reassurance of where he cannot step, and the weight of his body falling solidly onto his feet with no cracks to worry about. 

“Woah, hopscotch!! Mind if I play too?” Mirabel asks, bouncing up, and the children all cheer at her arrival. 

She smiles like a reassurance as she passes him, reaching out to take and squeeze his hand where it’s shaking around the edge of his ruana . There’s no fear in her gaze either. She lingers long enough for him to smile weakly to let her know that he’s okay to keep going, and then launches herself into the game with the same energy as the children they’re surrounded by.

The fear doesn’t fade, but it settles a little. He glances back over his shoulder, seeking out his mamá and his sisters and brothers in the crowd. Pepa standing with her and Félix’s arms wrapped comfortably around herself, Agustín laughing at something Mamá is saying, Julieta watching Mirabel play with a warm, fond look on her face, winking when she sees him looking. Bruno’s breath comes just a little bit easier at the sight, and he turns his attention back to the game. 

It’s something, at least. Sometimes that’s all you can get.

The others are learning honesty and Bruno honestly doesn’t want to.

It isn’t that he doesn’t trust them, it’s just that he doesn’t want anyone to get hurt. Bruno has never had any misconceptions about the sort of things that rest in his brain, and the damage they can cause to other people. Even without his visions haunting the back of his skull, he knows that there is very little good to be found inside of him. 

Mamá talks about Papá for the first time in years, and Bruno listens with a cold sort of grief in his chest over every word. He’s always figured that she’d been talking around things in that story - Bruno was no stranger to brutality and knew all about the ways things sounded when they were being cleaned up for the sake of someone else’s protection.

Still, she explains the fear of losing her home with a waver in her voice that makes Bruno’s throat tight. How she’d forgotten them as individuals because she was so afraid of losing the miracle that protected their Encanto from whatever might be outside it now. How she’d been so anxious over what Mirabel represented for the magic that she’d lost sight of her too.

If things were changing, she’d worried, would they all still be safe?

Bruno knows that sort of question intimately. 

He loves that his mother has found an acceptance of it. He loves that she can apologize to Mirabel for pushing her to keep up with the work of the others, and for the way she’d lashed out in fear when the cracks in their home had begun to show. He loves that she cups his and Pepa’s faces and apologizes for how she’d made them try so hard to conform. How she hugs Isabela and apologizes for not stopping to be sure of how she’d felt about the engagement. How she holds his own hand and apologizes for not seeing how badly he’d been hurting, how afraid he’d been, until the only choice he’d thought he’d had was to run.

But it scares him too. 

Things are changing so quickly that Bruno can’t keep hold of them. He can’t say that the changes themselves are anything bad; he turns every single one of them over in his mind and can’t find any faults in their logic, in their use. He doesn’t hate them, doesn’t long for the tense silence of Before or every unspoken hurt that had been hidden there. He doesn’t mind the changes, individually.

He just thinks he hates how many of them there are.

He just, he wants to go back to the walls. He wants to go back to where everything was familiar, down to the smell of dust and spackle and the cracks in the floor. When he knew where to put his feet, where he knew what to expect, when he knew where he fit . 

Things are changing, and Bruno doesn’t want to be left behind.

But every truth that finds its way free from him seems to do no good. When Dolores grabs his wrist to get his attention and her fingers can touch, her face crumples in grief. When Bruno lets slip that he knows exactly what kind of tea Pepa likes when she’s trying to calm down and she realizes she doesn’t know his, she looks stricken. When Mamá catches him talking to himself and Rita with more ease than he can manage with anyone in town, he sees the shine in her eyes. 

He doesn’t have his gift to blame it all on anymore - it’s all just him . 

Bruno doesn’t want to hurt his family more than he already has. 

(And even quieter than that, is this terrible fear that wraps around his lungs and squeezes. The What If’s that haunt every step he takes. What if he steps out where they can see him fully and they still find him wanting? What if he tells them the truth and they think he’d deserved it? What if they agree that he can’t keep up and leave him behind sooner? If they hurt him on accident because Bruno has been hiding, then it’s his own fault for hiding. But if he stops hiding and they hurt him anyway - how could he recover from that? Bruno is so scared of hurting them and of them hurting him that he can’t let himself risk it. He just can’t.) 

He’s afraid that if he tells them, then they’ll blame themselves too. Bruno doesn’t know how to tell them that they shouldn’t - no one left him in those walls, Bruno chose not to be found. 

But what if, what if, what if? What if they blame themselves anyway? 

So Bruno can’t tell them. He can’t let them find out all the ways that he’s been hurt and hurting over the years. He can’t let them see how badly he’s still struggling. Bruno has been the guardian of terrible things ever since he was five years old, and these secrets are nothing new nor different. 

He listens to their truths and takes every one of them into his own chest to protect alongside his own. He gives them everything of him that they can already see, and swallows back everything that they can’t. 

It’s not as easy as it used to be - there isn’t anything to hide behind anymore (there are no walls, there’s no longer a slowly growing number of stairs to climb, no deepening pit to leap). It’s not as if they aren’t looking, after all, Bruno’s just good at not being found.

He’s been hiding so long he’s not sure how to be honest anymore, and that’s no one’s fault but his own.

Bruno is hiding from an excited dinner in a stranger’s stairwell, fidgeting with the new strings of thread that Julieta has used to darn a hole in his ruana, when the light suddenly gets blocked by a giant shadow.

He glances up to see Luisa standing over him, face impassive as she stares down the end of her nose at him. 

“Uh, hi?” he offers uncertainly. 

She drops to sit on the step below him in a swift movement that startles Bruno despite himself, mimicking his shrinking curl despite her bulk. 

“Tío Bruno?” she asks, voice soft. Bruno has always been quietly endeared by the tone of her voice - the way she’s so aware of her size and is so careful to avoid seeming intimidating. He remembers when she was little, when Mirabel had just gotten her glasses and still dropped them constantly, and the careful way Luisa would pick the frames to put them back on Mirabel’s nose. He’s always preferred it to the way half his words seem to come out too joking while the others come out too ominous. “Can I ask you something?” 

He pulls himself out of the memories and tries to imagine what it could be; comes up short. “Uh, why?” he asks without thinking, then flaps his hands to wave away the words. “Wait, I mean, of course you can,” he amends. Then pauses. “But why?”

“Mirabel says you’re good to talk to,” she tells him, and Bruno scrunches up his noise. He’s not displeased, exactly, but that girl has definitely been exaggerating his capabilities. “But also, you can keep a secret if you need to.”

Well, Bruno can certainly do that. Part of him stops to wonder if hiding really counts as secret keeping - although he supposes that no one can find out your secrets if they can’t find you in the first place. The other part wants to hide all over again just from the realization that she knows this about him so assuredly. 

“Yeah, okay,” he decides anyway. “What’s up, conejito?”

The affectionate term doesn’t taste strange on his tongue, but it sours in his mouth when he wonders if it’s odd in her ears. Does she know him well enough to accept that kind of thing from him? He’s been around all of them this whole time, but she hasn’t been around him, not really.

She doesn’t say anything against it, at least. 

“I don’t-,” she starts, then stops, curling up even smaller on the step. “I’m still stronger than almost everyone, even without the magic,” she says, which he’d noticed. It’d taken her a while to figure out the necessary effort behind every action, but her muscles have never been just for show. “But…” 

She hesitates, chewing on her lip. Bruno’s body fills the silence with a knock, knock, knock, knock, knock, knock on wood that thankfully makes her snort fondly instead of seeming slighted. 

“But even though Abuela has been talking about how to keep everyone from being overwhelmed, all I can think about is that…” her breath hitches, just a little, “if I don’t want to do it all by myself - is that what makes me really weak, after all? Shouldn’t I want to carry it all for everyone else?” 

Bruno thinks of all the secrets locked in his chest - little shards of glass he locks inside his own heart so they can’t cut anyone else but him - and does not feel at all qualified to answer this question for her. Does she know what he’s been hiding? Is that what this is? What else could it be - what does Bruno know about strength, after all? 

But Luisa has always been a particularly direct child, and Bruno can’t imagine her being so underhanded. Part of him wants to tell her to ask anyone else, but can’t bring himself to do it. He’s the one that she chose to come to - even if only because she knows he’s a liar - and he can’t just turn her away, not without hurting her. 

Bruno has been trying too hard to keep from hurting them just to do it anyway because he’s scared. 

“Well, uh, from this perspective,” he tries, because it’s the only one he has, pressing a hand against his chest demonstratively. “Admitting that is already the strongest thing you could have done.” 

She looks confused. Bruno feels his own face scrunch as he tries to figure out what he can admit and what he can’t. 

“Well, it’s like, with my vision,” he says, since that should be safe enough. “I was trying to protect everyone from it, all by myself, but nothing got fixed because no one can fix everything all by themselves, you know?” 

He can’t quite bring himself to look at her to see what her face is doing, but she’s not interrupting him to argue, so he keeps going. “I never could get even a scrap of the courage I would have needed to ask for help. Without, ha, without Mirabel, I would never have left the walls at all - I was too scared.” He crosses his fingers over each other, holds his breath; 1-2-3-4-5-6. 

“I was too weak to ask for help,” he says, which is only a lie inasmuch as he’s still too weak to ask for it. “Sometimes, admitting you need help is the scariest thing there is, kid. Of course there’s strength in it.” 

Her eyes fill with tears, and panic tangles Bruno’s tongue wholly before she leans over to yank him into a hug.

Bruno’s always been smaller than his sisters - he’s no stranger to being manhandled, but it still makes him yelp, hand coming up to knock against the side of his head before he can stop it. Once he gets over the shock, though, it’s kind of nice in a way. Like wiggling between two perfectly placed walls, feeling comfortably squished and enclosed. 

“Do you really think so?” she asks against the top of his head. 

Bruno thinks of the terror rotting through his lungs, the one he’s too weak to let out and too scared to let go of. He thinks of the way Mirabel and Antonio had to lead him out of the walls, holding his shaking hands in their much smaller ones. The way he still shrinks from them anyway, because he’s never been brave and doesn’t know how to be.

“Of course I do,” he says, and means it.

Does it count as hypocrisy if he knows that he’s just too weak to follow his own advice?

Despite his hopes and wishes, Bruno isn’t really anticipating finding any more of his rats. He isn’t happy about the thought, but he’d only had time to save Rita, and while the others were quick and smart, it is a lot to outrun a collapsing house.

He doesn’t say anything about them. His family has always been more understanding of his pets than the town had been, but surely the grief over the house and the focus on rebuilding it is more important than Bruno mourning a bunch of pests. 

No matter how important those pests were to him. 

Instead, he tries to just content himself with Rita, and the little stuffed animal that Mirabel made him (small enough to fit in his pocket and filled with arroz to be heavy. He doesn’t know where she’d found the time to make it without him seeing, but the weight of it in his hand when she’d given it to him made him squeak and hop delightedly before he’d remembered to pull her into a hug in thanks). It’s enough, it has to be. 

Besides, he doesn’t have the space that he used to have for them to run around. None of their toys or treats or any of the other enrichment he’d constructed for them over the years. It wouldn't be fair to make all of them squeeze into his pockets to hide all day.

It’s enough, it is, but Bruno still can’t hide his joy when Camilo comes over while Bruno is measuring out sand and water to point out into the grass and ask, “Are those more of your rats?” 

Bruno looks up and blinks at them. Three little shapes, half-hidden in the grass, blink back at him. 

He squeaks, hopping to his feet and almost overbalancing in his haste to go grab them. They chitter amicably as he picks them up and starts looking them over, balancing them between his hands and wrists as he checks for who it is and makes sure they’re not hurt. 

“Ah, Luis, Alberto, Sarah!” he croons, digging crumbs out of his pockets to give them. They’re too domesticated now, to have been hunting well; they must have been starving.

“Guess that’s a yes,” Camilo says, amused and snapping his fingers excitedly. 

Bruno shifts the rats onto his shoulders and reaches out to squeeze his nephew’s hand. “Thank you,” he says. “I was so worried none of the others made it out.”

“Well, I didn’t do much,” Camilo protests, but he musses his hair bashfully at the praise anyway. He reaches out hesitantly to let the rats sniff at his hands, and Bruno tilts his shoulders down a little to make it easier on them both. “Do you think you’ll be able to keep them all hidden?” 

He sounds innocently curious, but Bruno’s joy flags a little at the question. He’s been hiding Rita in his pockets so he doesn’t upset any of the hosts they’ve been staying with, but he doesn’t think he has enough to get away with keeping all four. They get rowdier when they’re around each other too, which would only make it harder to keep them quiet and still. 

“Oh,” Bruno hums, looking them over worriedly. “I don’t, I mean, they’ll, they’ll probably stay close to here, now,” he says, but that just invokes a bigger fear of them getting crushed by moving materials or accidentally stepped on by someone who wasn’t paying attention (or worse, exterminated on purpose). “And I can keep, uhm, checking on them.” 

He brushes the tips of his fingers over them anxiously. Now that he’s gotten them back the last thing he wants to do is leave them out in the open like this, but it really will be too difficult to hide so many of them all by himself. 

“No te preocupes, Tío Bruno,” Camilo says suddenly, flattening a palm to let Luis scramble into it. He cups his hand around the little rat and pulls him closer to his chest protectively. “I can take this one, and Antonio can take another. I bet Mirabel will help too, that way they’re easier to hide.” 

Bruno blinks. “You would?” he asks, half-hoping half-stunned.

“Duh,” Camilo snorts, already waving Antonio over to introduce him to this new task. “That’s what family does.” 

He reaches up to take another rat off of Bruno’s shoulder to pass to Antonio, listening attentively when the kid starts to excitedly rattle off the knowledge he’d gleaned from Bruno’s own rambling. Bruno sees the easy way his rats accept his sobrinos handling, the easy way his family stepped up to help him, and wonders how he’d gotten so lucky.

The town is having a picnic for some reason. If there is one at all, Bruno hasn’t been paying attention to know what it is.

Still, it’s nice, to get a little space from too-small tables packed with people Bruno doesn’t know in addition to his family. To instead be sitting in the grass, a bit further away than most of the others, idly shredding tortillas for his rats as he waits. He’d been too nervous to get his own plate again, so Pepa had walked between all the tables with him to fill his alongside her own.

(Maybe it’s a little bit similar to how Félix trails behind Antonio to fill their plates too, but Pepa doesn’t tease, so Bruno doesn’t care.) 

“You didn’t have to wait!” Julieta admonishes when she and Pepa finally come find him to sit next to him. 

He tosses the rest of the tortilla scraps to the side and looks up to smile at them as they arrange their skirts to sit next to him, putting their plates down next to his full one. “I wanted to eat with you,” he tells them truthfully, and grins when they roll their eyes and shake their heads at him, hiding how pleased they’re both trying not to be.

They spend most of the evening talking about people Bruno doesn’t know, but he listens intently anyway, and loves every second of their company. 

Bruno’s family wants him to eat well and he wants to eat beside them, and nights like these when both are possible are starting to become his favorite.

For obvious reasons, it’s been a pretty long time since Bruno has been able to hang out with Félix and Agustín. Still, he wishes he was a little better prepared for it when they decide to switch up the usual sleeping arrangements in favor of having a ‘Boy’s Night’ - Bruno, Camilo, and Antonio included. 

“You ready for this?” Félix crows, shuffling a deck of cards with expert ease. 

“No,” Bruno says plainly, eyes a little wide. He hasn’t played poker in years, and wasn’t very good at it beforehand anyway; he doesn’t remember any of the rules at all.

“Don’t worry, Tío Bruno!” Antonio offers cheerfully, plopping his little jaguar plush next to the trio of rats on the table. “I don’t know how to play either! We can learn together.” 

Camilo laughs, bright and loud. “Don’t worry,” he says. “My papá is so bad that you two might still stand a chance.”

Félix groans - a loud exaggerated noise that makes Bruno grin even as he flinches back in surprise. “Mijo, you cut me so deep every day,” he laments. 

The game is, of course, a suitable disaster. Bruno wasn’t good at schooling his expressions even before he’d spent a decade alone - and it takes several horribly lost hands before the others tell him this. After that, they sometimes do him the courtesy of not looking in his direction at all during the games, but even that doesn’t do much for Bruno’s chances. 

“Aren’t you supposed to be the future guy?” Camilo teases, and Bruno snorts.

Antonio is the one that catches onto the rules better than almost anyone else, which doesn’t serve anyone particularly well. It’s a good thing that they’re playing for coffee candies instead of actual money.

Bruno’s a little surprised by how easy it is, all things considered. He doesn’t feel overwhelmed by the noise of their conversations or lost in the chaos of it all. He still doesn’t talk very much, but they don’t seem to mind it. No one calls him creepy for listening without talking, and no one calls him stupid for constantly forgetting all the rules.

It’s nice.

Still, Bruno’s energy has been flagging more and more lately, and he feels himself falling asleep far too early. He doesn’t want to give in and leave, but the corner that he’s tucked himself into makes it far too easy to lean his head against the walls, and no amount of gently hitting his head against the wood keeps himself awake for very long. 

At some point he feels himself almost wake up - the back of the chair digging into his back, temple pressed against the wall, a warm weight on his shoulder.

“Bruno,” Félix says softly in a dream. “Go to sleep in a real bed, man. You’re almost fifty.” 

Bruno laughs a little. “I’ve never had one of those,” he teases, tongue thick. 

The quiet conversations in the background sour with wet breathing and hissed whispers, but Bruno forgets it soon enough.

He dreams of sleeping on sand piles and dusty corners, and can’t figure out why Agustín looks at him so sadly the next morning.

Bruno realizes far too late that this casual gathering has switched into a party at some point, and isn’t at all prepared for the fireworks when they start going off. He doesn’t listen like he used to - he wasn’t prepared for it at all. But even if he had known, what would he do? He has no place to hide out here anyway. 

He startles up to his feet and can’t hear anything but the crows of the crowd and the too-loud crashes of the explosions. They seem too loud, for some reason; he doesn’t think the walls would make this much of a difference. They hurt. Someone reaches out for him, but he ducks away, and runs without having any idea where he’s going. 

There’s nowhere to hide, here. People have invited his family into their homes, but no one would invite him alone. There aren’t walls to hide in, anyway. No insulated corner where he can curl up as small as he can manage and cover his ears and hum to block it out. No shelter from the bright lights that dig into his eyes and ache. No distance from the press of bodies all around him. 

Are people watching him? Seeing this panic? They must be able to, and that knowledge just makes the panic worse. 

He stumbles through the crowd, trying to find any break in it, any place where he can go and not be seen. The noise is inescapable but surely there’s some place where he can go and not be seen. Somewhere he can be safe. 

He runs and doesn’t know where he’s going. Too late, the noise in his brain stops to worry about getting lost - he doesn’t recognize these streets like he used to be able to. Things have moved around too many times to be the same; if Bruno had places outside of his home where he felt safe, they don’t exist like they used to anymore.

Everything keeps changing and Bruno can’t keep up with it.

Another burst of light illuminates the road and Bruno spots a gap between two buildings and runs into it without pause. Curls up with his knees pulled up to his chest and buries his eyes against his knees and tries to catch his breath. Rocks back and forth and can’t get his hands to loosen their grip around his legs to cross his fingers or flap his hands. Shuts his eyes so tight his ears ring. 

The next explosion startles him so badly he hears himself cry out. His fists pound against the sides of his head; 1-2-3-4-5-6, 1-2-3-4-5-6, 1-2-3-4-5-6. He knows that he's hurting himself but can't bring himself to stop. It hurts, but the pain is enough to diminish the agony of the noise, and Bruno will take that if he can't get anything else.

He forgets, again, that he is not hidden.

He hears mamá sigh and the tears come harder.

"Ay, pobrecito," she says, voice gentle as she settles down next to him. Had she been running after him this whole time? Or had someone pointed out where he'd gone? Either way, he feels bad for ruining her night, even though she doesn't sound mad at all. "Come here." 

She doesn't grab his wrists to stop him from hitting, doesn't knock them away from his head or hiss at him to do it himself. She pulls him around his shoulders, until he's pressed against her chest, and her arms wrap around him tight enough to knock (knock, knock, knock, knock, knock) the pain and pressed out from under his skin, just a little.

He sobs. She combs her fingers through his hair and presses a dry kiss to his forehead. 

The fireworks cut short, the street quiets, until all Bruno can hear is her heartbeat under his ear and the sound of his own hitched breathing echoing down the street. His hands stop hitting and start clinging back to her instead. She rocks them both and doesn't say a word, just hums softly under her breath, as he tries to calm himself down.

This isn't hiding. This is bad of him, to be so obvious. He could hear the grief in her voice when she'd found him. He isn't making things better like this, only worse. 

But Bruno is at his core a selfish thing, and his mamá hasn't had the time to hold him like this since he was small, and he doesn't want her to let go.

So he doesn't fight the way she's folded him up against her. Doesn't pull away from the soft, familiar texture of her shawl under his cheek. Doesn't shrink from the realization that she'd known the noise would scare him and had come to find him, that she knows to hum for something better for his ears to focus on. 

He sits and doesn't move and cries and can only resolve to do better next time.

Eventually he calms down enough that he knows he's just wasting time prolonging things. It's more difficult than it should be, to finally pull away and rub the tears off his face with the back of his hand. To look at the wrinkles his clenched hands have left on her sleeve and apologize. 

"Está bien, mijo," she says, a sad sort of smile on her face. "I'm sorry we forgot to warn you about the fireworks." 

He shakes his head and takes her hand when she offers it. She leads him back to where the others are waiting, and Bruno still can't bring himself to wrap his mind around the thought that there might not be a next time at all. 

The house is nearly done. Bruno heard someone say that they should be able to move back in by the end of the week.

Bruno, long tired of shuffling between strangers' homes and never being able to shake the thought that they don't want him there, is more than looking forward to it.

(He's also, predictably, scared. Some part of him has gotten used to sleeping with all the others so close. Some part of him worries about not having the walls anymore, about having to get used to his own room all over again, about what he'll be expected to do once the house is no longer the project everyone is working on.) 

He sits on the finished steps and tries to imagine what changes will come next. 

He thinks of family dinners. Of being able to eat without people he doesn't know included at the table, and of eating with his family without having to peer through a crack in the wall, of having a real plate again, of being able to respond to their questions with more than whispers only Dolores can hear.

He thinks of having his books back. Most of their things were dug up out of the rubble without too much damage, but they've been kept together out of the way instead of having to be dragged from place to place. He thinks of being able to give his rats someplace nice to live again, rebuilding their ramps and baths and toys. Of learning new floorboards and tiles and getting back the surety of knowing where every footstep is meant to go.

Will the rhythm of the family stay the same, with him inside of it? Even has he grows used to being in their presence again, as they grow used to him, he's still more timid than all of his family. Will he slow them down? Will they remember where he used to fit in their lives and open the spaces back up for him?

Will Julieta still let him help her grind up spices? Will Mamá still have him sit next to her on the sofa to twine yarn around his hands so she can wind it into balls without it tangling? Will Pepa still ask him to help sort through her dyeing herbs?

Will they make new spaces for him too?

Agustín spots him sitting and calls his name, waving him over. The others glance around, making silent head counts, and grin when he wanders up to join them.

He realizes that they already have, and jumps in quiet excitement at the thought.

Dolores sees and smiles, small and conspiratorial, and none of the dread still biting at his heels can stop Bruno smiling back. 

Mirabel puts the new doorknob in place, and Bruno is so excited for his family that he almost forgets to be disappointed for himself.

He wishes it could have lasted, but it never does.

The celebration kicks up into full swing, and Bruno is pulled into his first family photo in ten years and could almost cry. There's a smile on his face he can't quite wipe off, as he sees everyone excitedly re-acclimating to their powers, wrapped up in bounding energy Bruno hasn't had since he was a little kid. 

There's only the slightest pause, a brief moment of stillness around him as everyone wanders off to new corners, and already Bruno can feel the twist just under his diaphragm. 

Reality crashes in hard around him. It's been months, but all Bruno can think of now is the sand settling between the floorboards, the thought of it kicking up around him. The backs of his eyes ache. He freezes, holds his breath and already knows it won't make any difference, won't get any of the terrible things off of his back.

Already he can't shake the itch at the tips of his fingers, to light a match and just be done with it.

Bruno's been swallowing that urge for ten years though, steadfast and successful, tucked up into corners so small that nothing could have taken root even if he had given in to setting up the ritual. This temptation should be easy to quash, even if it has been months since he's had to worry about it.

It should be, at least. 

Instead it feels like the final crack in the glass. Everything is too loud all of a sudden, too close. All he can see of the people around him is the potential to look into their futures and see what horrors and disappointments lie there. Even the sight of la familia using their gifts makes his stomach twist nauseatingly.

Without thinking, his feet lead him into the dining room, to the back wall behind Mamá's chair at the table. Someone's hung the family tree back up, new layers of paint to cover the spots where rubble scraped it off, and the crack at the bottom has been patched over and fixed.

A couple of the tiles under his feet shake.

"Hola, Casita," he says softly. He knocks against the wall, and hears no hollow space behind it.

He tries not to feel it like a betrayal. 

Instead he turns and leaves, not sure if he's supposed to feel relieved or if he's allowed to be upset. He doesn't want to go back to the way things were, but he wants to have the security of knowing that the burrow was there regardless. He wants that place to retreat to, where he can have all of the same comforts without the inability to leave. 

They've been building this house for months, but seeing it finished and filled with furniture again, Bruno finds himself slinking along the walls, trying not to be seen again. It's nearly unsettling, to be out in the open again, visceral in a way it could never get in houses that weren't his own.

He tries to get himself to pull back from them, to walk in the center of the hallways like everyone else does, but it's one difference too many and Bruno can't care enough to force it. Instead he tries to remember which room the sofa is in so he can sit there and not think about the place where he'd hoped to feel safe and how it no longer exists, even now.

"I'm sorry, Tío Bruno," Isabela asks, startling him out of his thoughts. He doesn't know how long he's been sitting here, rocking back and forth with increasing desperation as he stares out the window and tries not to think at all. "Do you mind if I sit next to you?" 

He blinks. "Sure?" he says. "Why are you sorry?" 

She huffs, sitting heavily next to him, her skirt billowing up around her. Colored pollen flies off of it, and Bruno wrinkles his nose at the burst of conflicting smells it all carries with it. He wonders if she won't have more success, learning to dye things from Pepa, instead of just coating herself in loose powder, but he keeps it to himself for now. It doesn't seem the time. 

"People still seem surprised that I have more to my personality than roses," she complains quietly. There's a reluctance to the words, and Bruno - familiar enough with the opposite end of this spectrum of expectations - knows it well enough. "And it's rude," she continues, slightly apologetically, "but you're, like. People still sort of go around you, and no one could look at us and say that I look too dirty. I'm hoping people will just, leave me alone for a little bit. I'm sorry." 

Bruno surprises them both by laughing. "Ah, don't worry about it," he tells her. "If my reputation can give you a moment of peace, then maybe it's all been worth it." 

It hasn't been, but the joke makes her laugh, and that certainly is. 

"How'd you get so good at it?" she asks him, after a while of companionable silence. She coaxes moss to grow over the tiles under her feet and doesn't quite look at him while she asks.

Bruno isn't sure he's ever been accused of being good at something before. "What?" he asks her, curious to know what it is.

"Just," she says, "being yourself." 

She sighs like she's wistful. Bruno tries to come up with an answer and, as usual, finds himself falling short. He realizes all at once that he has no idea how to answer, much less how to explain whatever it is she wants from him.

Still, Bruno has never been good at dodging questions once they've been asked of him.

"Oh, well, you know," he manages weakly, hands pawing through his hair for want of anything else to do - he's sat too far from the walls to knock against them. "I know better, I just can never figure out how to be anything else." 

His foot stomps a little, half-spasm half-compulsion, skin smacking against the smooth tile before it's overtaken by a moss carpet. "That was before I spent ten years all by myself, anyway," he adds with a weak laugh.

Isabela is looking at him a little strangely. It's probably well deserved; Bruno feels like the frayed edges of his ruana looked before Julieta fixed them.

He's still not expecting her next question.

"Do you miss it?" she asks him, hair tumbling over her shoulder as she tilts her head curiously.

"Yes," his mouth says before he can stop it, and then he jumps to his feet. "Sorry, I have to go." 

He can't run, his brain is shouting so loud he doesn't have a choice but to hop from tile to tile, it takes too long to make a clean escape - he hasn't learned this new placement yet. He has to leave, though, and find someplace that isn't here and isn't his walls to hide where she won't find him and ask him to elaborate. 

Isabela watches him leave, but doesn't follow, and doesn't call him back.

Bruno feels too sick to be relieved.

Much later, when he finally calms down from his conversation with Isabela and the certainty that she'll come find him to demand more answers fades, he gathers up the courage to walk the steps to his door and finds it nothing but deadened brown wood.

He hasn't been in this place in years, he realizes, standing unsteadily on the top step, hands hesitating to reach for the doorknob. He'd known when the cave inside had collapsed; even if the rats hadn't returned with the rubble clinging to their fur, the realization that it was happening had settled right under his ribs, some half-numb connection to la magia lighting up at the intrusion. 

Bruno couldn't find himself too surprised. He thinks he'd always preferred that the cave would collapse to anyone finding that vision. Maybe it had heard him, responded to him, or maybe it'd broken because he'd weakened the foundation by not touching it for so long. Not that he'll ever know for sure which it was.

Part of him had been relieved anyway, when he'd put it together.

He doesn't know what he feels now.

But he knows he doesn't really want to go inside.

Still, what choice does he have? This house was not built with the hollow spaces he'd been comfortable in, and Casita has not reopened them for him like it has with everyone's rooms. Nothing but solid stone behind the wood and wallpaper, and Bruno knocks the bitterness off his tongue with the sweetness of Julieta's sopapillas and doesn't say a word. 

The wood is dead. No sign of the golden magic that swirls around everyone else's. He'd never bothered to revisit this tower, in all of the years he'd slunk around while no one was home. It's almost unnerving to see now, a certainty - despite himself - that he's doing something wrong by choking back the rituals building up inside his blood.

Frankly, he has bigger concerns though. 

He holds his breath, and crosses his fingers, and nudges the door open before he can think too hard about it any longer.

Despite the unsettled feeling in his gut, the sight of the sand shower is almost comforting, in a way. He did miss that, while he was gone - the heavy pressure of the sand falling over his head and shoulders. Like one of Pepa's rainstorms without the sharp pinch of cold water striking his skin.

He lingers there for a while, keeping his eyes shut against the grains of sand falling through his hair. Like a dust bath, a little. He feels weighed down and pleasantly sensitized, and stands there for as long as he can, but eventually has to admit to himself that he can't stay there forever.

Unfortunately.

His feet still twist to the side on instinct as he steps forward, to keep from sliding down the hill built up past the threshold. It bunches up over his feet as he tilts his head to look around. The hill covers more than it did before, whatever belongings he'd left here looks long buried. The tower goes up higher than it used to, much higher. It had been growing, for a while, before he'd left, but he's still surprised by how out of reach things have gotten. 

He wonders if it's his own fear pushing it up so high, or if it's meant to be a punishment, for how far away he's pushed the power himself.

His fingertips start to ache. He's been foolish enough to never stop carrying matchsticks, and he can practically hear the strike, feel the heat sparking over his skin, smell the smoke.

For a very terrible moment, he wants.

More than that, though, his chest is already aching from the thought of what he could see if he let himself look. He doesn't want to know how this tentative good can collapse into something terrifying. He doesn't want to see anything that could start to break apart this freshly laid foundation. Doesn't want to shatter the illusion of calm with something certain.

Doesn't want anyone to blame him for it all again. 

So he tears his eyes away from the stairs and doesn't bother going up to see if the cave has been rebuilt like everything else. Maybe the longer he sticks around, in sight once again, the more likely it is that someone will start making requests of him again. The more likely it will be that he won't have any choice.

For now, though, he does.

He doesn't go near the stairs. He doesn't bother trying to hunt around for wherever his old hammock has wound up. Instead he shuffles off to the side and moves aside armfuls of sand, digs a pit just large enough to collapse into, and does just that.

It's more comfortable than sleeping on the wood floors, he will give it that, but he misses his armchair anyway.

"Don't think you're going to get out of helping," Pepa scolds as Bruno creeps anxiously into the kitchen early the next morning.

He perks up a little, letting Julieta grab his hand and pull him further into the room. It's already pleasantly busy, despite the tight space. If the builders got anything slightly off, then it seems Casita has corrected it already, and they move through the room with coordinated ease.

Bruno feels a little clumsy and in the way, in comparison, but they don't seem to mind it at all.

Instead, they prod him through tasks and dance around his body in their space. Making room for him in the routine that he'd missed being a part of and listened into for so long. He mixes the eggs so Mamá can make la migas. His fingers have always been too sensitive to flip tortillas like Julieta can, but he's just as good at using the press as he used to be. Pepa reaches out to brush masa out of his hair as he stirs the rice in its pot.

Their voices rise and fall around him as they all work, and Bruno feels hot and overwhelmed by the heat of all the stoves in the best way possible. 

"It's good to have you back," Julieta tells him as he takes a bowl from her to bring it into the dining room, and he grins wide enough to hurt.

"It's good to be back," he says, and the joy only grows when he sees the table full of all the food he'd helped make, the plate with his name on it sat in front of an empty chair, the press of his family around the table as they fight to get to a seat. 

He already can't wait to do it all again later. 

Bruno keeps trying his best to fit the way he's supposed to. To return to his room every night and try to sleep off the buzz of anxiety that still refuses to fade. To fill the spot in the family that he had left open for so long.

But he doesn't last long. He feels like he should have seen it coming. 

It's just too big. It's not quite uncomfortable, in and of itself - it would almost have been easier if it was. The room is a perfect temperature, and the only thing he can hear is the soft shifting of sand over stone, and he knows with certainty that he's the only person around in it for miles.

Yet there are no walls, and the sky opens up for miles too, and there are no safe corners for him to tuck himself into. Nothing but the looming tower with his vision cave resting at the top, and the lingering dread of what it could hold.

He doesn't want to be there anymore. He doesn't have anywhere else that he can go.

One night he tries to sleep on the sofa, instead of going to his room at all. He sleeps and it's almost something restful, even if the walls are too far away for him to feel truly comfortable. But Mamá finds him there the next morning and asks if he's okay with a confused furrow between her eyebrows, and Bruno can't bring himself to ruin her day by telling the truth, and lies to her instead. 

Instead, he's resorted to just pushing sand up the hill and into the stone threshold to make a pile there to sleep. There was furniture here, once, but it's gone now, just like the paintings that used to line the stairwell to his door. He doesn't mind sleeping on the sand so much, and part of him likes being so close to the constant drone of shifting sand without having to rest under the shadow of the tower, but it still isn't right. 

No amount of begging Casita seems to be opening the walls for him anytime soon, though.

He can't be too surprised. Casita has always taken care of everyone, but it's always listened to Mamá and Mirabel more than anyone else. Mirabel's room - the nursery - used to be one of the only ones Bruno could actually get near to from the walls. He remembers sometimes overhearing her have entire conversations with the house. He can't be too surprised that they're overriding his desire to go back in the walls, now that they knew he was there.

Mamá and Mirabel want him to be home. To Bruno, the walls are just as much home as any other room is.

Though he can't blame them for not seeing it that way.

Still, he tries. He tugs absently on the paintings that used to hide his entrances and knocks on the wood to check for hollows and sometimes gives in to whispering quiet pleas to the halls. Assurances that he doesn't mean to go away forever or close himself off again, he just wants to sleep and for things to go back to the way they were without all having to go back exactly the way it was.

He's pretty sure that the only thing he's really accomplished is giving Dolores another reason to stare at him worriedly. Which doesn't help the anxiety at all.

All it does is grow and grow. He'd thought that it would start to fade, once they were home and no longer moving from stranger's house to stranger's house, but it hasn't. He is excited to be back home with his family, to be able to walk through the halls without worrying if they'll see him, to sit with them at the table and eat every meal right between Mamá and Pepa. He wants it to be enough.

But the panic still chokes him every time he hears footsteps approaching in the moments before he remembers that it's safe. He still whispers responses to the questions they ask at dinner before he remembers that he can speak loud enough to be heard. He still can't shake the bad luck or the bad sensations being chased up and down his skin. He still feels stupid and clumsy and in the way and has no place to hide from any of it.

From any of them.

He begs Dolores not to say anything to anyone. It doesn't feel fair to ask it of her; he'd never once asked her to not say anything during the years that he was hidden. The night he'd disappeared it had simply slipped his mind to worry about her entirely, and then once it'd occurred to him, he'd known it was too big a responsibility to put on the shoulders of an eleven year old. That hadn't stopped him from being sickeningly relieved when people thought she was joking, though, nor had it stopped him from being too weak to emerge to stand up for her.

(She'd started referring to him as one of his own rats at some point instead; Bruno misses it, in a very strange way.)

For some reason, she does. Maybe for the same reason Isabela doesn't seem to have told anyone what he'd let slip to her. Or the same reason Julieta still reminds him to eat and bathe without drawing anyone else's attention to it.

The guilt festers alongside his panic, but he can't bring himself to ask them for help.

He stays quiet instead. It's the only way he's good at hiding, now.

Bruno will take anything that he can get. 

It was never going to be as sustainable as Bruno wanted it to be.

Still, he doesn't know what changed.

He thought he was keeping a handle on things, managing just enough to keep from falling apart and making sure that no one noticed how difficult it was getting for him to keep control. Things still felt terrible, but hadn't Bruno felt terrible for years? He doesn't understand why things getting a little worse is making it so difficult to deal with all of a sudden.

He doesn't know what changes. Maybe nothing does. He just wakes up with a panic inside his chest that won't settle - it's like the dread of a vision, but wrong, like shattered glass. He can't settle; no amount of holding his breath, or crossing his fingers so drastically they ache, or pounding his fists against the sides of his head is pushing the feeling back. His pockets are empty of both salt and sugar and the bad luck is still encroaching.

He doesn't know how long he's been stuck, trying and failing to calm down. Nothing he does is enough to break through the pain or the anxiety. He can't get comfortable - the room is suddenly too hot, too bright, every grain of sand is suddenly agonizingly overwhelming. He can't calm down - his heartbeat won't slow, and he can't catch his breath, or get his stomach to stop twisting or churning.

When he finally gathers the resolve to move, he'd only meant to go to the kitchen and come back. He needed more salt, more sugar, anything to use to keep the panic at bay. He needs to be better than this, he knows it. He's no longer sure of what day it is, but he's already ruined enough - in his twenties and his thirties and probably all of his forties too - and he doesn't want to upset things enough that they forget all of the good that he's done since he's come back. He doesn't want to go back to the way things were - not in this. 

But he can't, his brain won't let him continue, he can't stop moving. He'd meant to go to the kitchen, but he'd gotten stuck in the hallway just outside the stairs to his tower instead. He paces up and down the small space, spinning and twirling as he plants his weight square center of each tile - avoiding the cracks deftly. He's learning these new patterns, but he doesn't know them all well enough yet, and maybe that's the problem, maybe if he can learn them then things can be okay.

He doesn't know how long he's been trapped out here either.

His feet have started to protest every step - shocks of pain tearing up from the bone every time he plants his toes on the floor. He's started to sweat, pant, get dizzy from the speed and exertion of his circuits. His knuckles have started to bleed again from the repetition of his knocking, regardless of how softly he does it to keep from waking anyone else up.

But he can't, he can't, he can't stop moving. 

He doesn't know how long he's been out here, desperately trying to make sense of things. He'd never made it to the kitchen and his pockets are still empty. Rita and the others have retreated into the tunnels of Bruno's tower inside of his tower and even their comforting weights are missing. It's been too long, too many circuits of this tight little hallway, but his feet still land in the wrong spaces and Bruno can't let the bad luck get any worse than it's already gotten.

He can't let it get close enough to hurt anyone else. 

He's so, so aware of the burgeoning light in the sky that's started to creep through the windows (so aware of everything, of every strand of his hair against his neck, every seam of his clothing against his skin, every crack in the floor against his feet). Knows that any moment now someone might come out and catch him in the act, and once again they'll be confused and frightened by Crazy Tío Bruno and the strange things he does. All of the rapport and ease he's managed to accrue while silently losing his mind outside of his walls is going to crumble into dust and he's going to be left right where he started.

Knowing that everyone thinks he's terrible bad luck and still trying so, so hard to keep it from hurting them.

But Bruno cannot stop moving. 

(If he stops he's afraid he might die. Like every sensation the motion is holding back is going to lunge forward and swallow him whole. Like the bad luck he's holding back is going to swarm over the house and bring it all crumbling down around them all over again. Like the panic he can't get a hold on will finally overtake him and strangle him to death.) 

Mirabel is the first one to emerge. He should have known; it was her footsteps that woke him up more mornings than not. He should stop, he should at least get out of this hallway and back up to his room, or even just tuck himself into the stairwell and resume the circuit there - learn the boards of the stairs instead of the earthenware of this hall. He should get out of sight, and make sure that all of the work he's put into hiding these past months doesn't all go to waste right here. 

He can't bring himself to do it. His whole body stiffens at the thought, like there's a wall in place keeping him from moving anywhere but the circuit he's been tracing for hours.

"Hey, Tío Bruno," Maribel says slowly. She doesn't sound nervous yet, just confused - the same sort of tone in her voice that she'd used in the walls on the way to his little room. Something bewildered instead of frightened, but Bruno knows what's coming. He goes to throw salt and remembers he doesn't have any and knocks, knocks, knocks, knocks, knocks, knocks on wood to hold it back just a little longer instead. He isn't surprised when he hears her gasp (can't bring himself to look up from the floor to see what her face does), and say, "¡Tío! Your hand!" 

He tears his eyes away from the tiles for just long enough to glance at his hand instead. The knuckles drip blood sluggishly to the floor - the scabs he hasn't been able to heal have opened up again. He can't find the breath to reassure her that he's fine, and doesn't know what words he would use to convince her anyway; Bruno's never been good at lying once he was caught. Things aren't okay, of course they aren't; that's why Bruno has to keep moving.

She hasn't moved; he's scaring her, he knows it, but he can't stop. Can't find the words to reassure her that it's fine, he's alright, he only needs a moment, he'll find enough good luck to make it through the day right eventually. Can't find the self-control to stop moving and hide or go to her and make sure she's okay. Nothing is right, and Bruno can't stop until something is. Things just need to be a little less wrong, and then they will be fine.

Toc, toc, toc, toc, toc, toco madera.

There is a throbbing pain in his throat that has been steadily growing since he'd woken up, and hearing her hesitate just out of reach is making it worse. Like a match swallowed - burning through tissues and nerves (there's still some in his pocket, if it lights one and swallows it for real, will it help?). He's tired beyond the point of holding his breath, but he tries anyway. Anything to extinguish the coals just a little more.

Another door opens. "¡Mamá!"  Mirabel says, quick and stained with relief and fear in equal measures.

Bruno wants to run, wants it more than anything. He doesn't want them to see him like this. Every time he passes the stairwell he thinks of how easy it would be to run up there, to lock himself up in his room, up the miles of stairs where hardly anyone would bother following. Just in reach and yet impossibly out of it. Something in him won't let him stray from the path, because things will only get worse if he does.

(With how bad things are already getting, he doesn't want to find out just how much worse they can get.)

"Brunito, ¿qué estás haciendo?" Julieta asks, a little desperately. He hears her but can't get his body to let him react, can't look up to reassure her, can't find the words or the wherewithal to move his tongue to say that he's fine. 

His foot lands in something wet, and slips, just enough to knock him off balance but not enough to make him fall. A panicked whine tears free from his throat before he can muffle it - he goes back a tile, and forward, and back, and forward, not able to land quite right anymore. He can see the blood smeared on the tile but can't reach down to wipe it away so no one else will see. Instead his hand reaches for the wooden frame on the wall next to him, and knock, knock, knock, knock, knock, knocks on wood.

He hears Mirabel breathe in sharply, but Julieta misses it as she says, "Aye, I'll be right back," and runs off to her kitchen.

Bruno wants to ask her to bring salt back with her, but he can't find his voice under the knot in his throat to do it. 

More doors are opening. The quiet of the house is getting lost in confused whispers and heavy stares, and Bruno can't hear the soft sound of his feet hitting terracotta anymore, and he thinks he might hate it. 

Please, Casita, he thinks desperately, but can't move his mouth to ask it.

He can't stop moving, and he feels their eyes on him, and is terrified that one of them will pick him up or knock him down or hold him still. None of them have ever understood the future or luck like he has, and if they mess it up without realizing then it will still be broken, and the bad things will still come, and Bruno won't be able to protect them at all.

"Brunito, what's going on?" Mamá asks, and Bruno feels the knot in his throat tighten so painfully that reflexive tears spring to his eyes.

Toc, toc, toc, toc, toc, toco madera. He wants to stay to knock longer, but can't keep his feet to stay in one place long enough to manage it. He wants to run but can't manage that either. Wants to stop hurting but isn't sure anymore that he deserves it.

"He misses the walls," someone says. Maybe Mirabel, maybe Isabela, maybe Dolores, maybe someone else entirely. Too many people know and not enough of them understand." 

Mamá gasps. "¿Qué? Did something happen?" she asks, like her heart is breaking, and Bruno hates himself fiercely for putting that note in her voice yet again. "Do, do you not want to be with us anymore?" 

Bruno can't stop moving, he can't catch his breath to answer, he can't take his eyes off the floor. A sob catches in his throat, loud enough to hear, and he can't stop moving but his head shakes and his hands lift away from the walls to pound against his temples instead. He can't tell her that she's wrong, that she's so unbelievably off the mark, but he needs to. He needs her to know that it isn't her at all, it isn't any of them; he doesn't want them to leave him behind again, not even if they think they're doing him a kindness.

Félix and Agustín are pushing the kids away, he hears them arguing, the overlapping voices pressing into Bruno's ears until his hands press over them instead, but it doesn't help. It's too much, there's always been too much, and something has happened to make him less able to stand it - he can't carry its weight anymore. He can't hide it anymore. He can feel blood trail down the side of his hand and feels like his entire self has been replaced with the gore of an open wound.

"It's too much, isn't it?" someone asks, voice sad, and Bruno doesn't get a chance to figure out who before he hears the shudder of Casita's walls shifting, the nearly imperceptible creak of hidden hinges, and doesn't waste a second in throwing back the painting and diving through the hole that has just opened back up for him.

He thinks of running deeper and deeper and never being found again. Of hiding himself so well that this time he'll never be found at all. Of making sure that he's far enough away to never hurt them again. He doesn't get a chance to do any of it. Bruno barely makes it through the entrance at all before his ankles are giving way underneath him, body pulling away from the tenderized skin on the balls of his feet and the screaming muscles in his calves on an instinct he can't control any longer.

He falls to the ground instead, and curls up around himself and buries his face in his knees and is barely able to muffle his sob of pure relief. 

The bad luck and the terror recedes, and Bruno breathes for what feels like the first time in months. Lungs full of stale air and dust and muffled silence so thick it feels heady.

He curls up and rocks, knocks his knuckles against the sides of his head until the pain fades enough for him to stop, and then crosses his fingers instead. He keeps expecting that the others will follow him, that they'll come into this little space he's gotten back and try to pull him straight back out of it, but they don't. When he calms down enough to hear anything over the roar of blood in his ears, he can hear them talking to each other on the other side of the painting, but no one pulls it open, no one pulls him out.

Bruno breathes and breathes and breathes. 

But he knows that he can't hide from them forever. All of his effort has gone to waste again, and he's going to have to face the music, sooner rather than later. He waits until he can think as clearly as he's going to be able to, until he can hold his breath for long enough for the panic to recede further, and the only thing that's left is a smothering exhaustion and a tired resignation to what has happened.

He reaches out and knock, knock, knock, knock, knock, knocks on wood.

The whispering quiets, and he can hear their footsteps creep closer to the frame he's hidden behind. He should come out, so that he can talk to their faces like an adult, but thinks that the only way he'll make it through this conversation is if he stays hidden. Maybe he wouldn't mind it so much if they came in, but he knows that he can't go back out, not yet.

They don't come in, though, and Bruno is a little relieved despite himself. Someone knocks back on the painting from the other side, and Bruno thinks of them knocking on top of the tables he'd hid under as a child and finds just enough energy to smile.

"Hermanito, I have a tortilla here for you," Julieta says. "I know it's easier on your stomach; will you eat?" 

He feels a little bit like the aches of his body are part of what's keeping him grounded. If it goes, will the panic come back? Right now, the pain is overwhelming every other sensation that had been a different kind of agony since he'd woken up; he doesn't want to risk it all coming back if it goes.

"No," he says, tongue clumsy. "Not yet."

Not yet, not yet, not yet. He doesn't want to hurt forever, he doesn't want to hide forever, he doesn't want to be left behind. He can't find the words for all of it, but he hopes they hear it all anyway.

"Well, can you tell us what happened?" Pepa tries instead, and Bruno tries not to squirm guiltily even though they can't see him at all. 

He doesn't want to tell them. Not that he really knows what's been going on or why, but he doesn't want to try to explain it. He's been trying so hard to keep them from worrying, and he doesn't want to heap this onto their plates now that things were finally getting back to normal. 

The walls are open again, isn't that good enough?

"I-I don't know," he says weakly, and it isn't a lie, not really. He doesn't understand why things were suddenly so much closer and so much worse than they have been in so long. The only thing he can guess is that it's too many changes all at one time, but he doesn't want to tell them that and make them worry that he doesn't like what's been happening in the family. He's never been good at explaining things in ways that sound right.

They groan, and Bruno shrinks in on himself. 

"Bruno, you need to talk to us," Pepa sighs.

"I can't!" he cries despite himself, some of the panicked nerves surging back until he stops and holds his breath and toc, toc, toc, toc, toc, toco madera. He breathes out. "I don't want to make everything worse again," he admits, so soft he hopes they don't hear him at all.

But they do. He hears Mamá sigh. "Ay, mijo, you won't make everything worse," she says, sounding sad and grieved and pained and everything Bruno has been trying so hard to protect her from feeling. "Hiding isn't helping anyone - it's hurting you, and it hurts me to see you like this, mi vida."

It's not a reassurance at all. It makes him feel worse. Even when he tries he can't do anything right. Hiding had helped him plenty, he thinks mulishly, already knowing it isn't exactly true. He'd been the one fixing the cracks all by himself. He thinks about getting back to his feet and running, wedging himself into a crawlspace so small that no one will be able to follow him, and never coming back out.

He crosses all of his fingers over each other again and says nothing. Ring finger over his middle, index finger over the first knuckle of his ring, pinkie over the last knuckle of his ring. 

"I know that before I might have said you should try being useful," Mamá says suddenly into the silence, when it becomes clear Bruno is not going to fill it himself. "That you should not focus on what upsets you, because that is how I did it, when your Papá died. I couldn't let myself feel how bad it hurt me, because it hurt so badly I could barely stand it at all. So I kept busy instead and thought that was the best way."

He holds his breath and she tells him, "But it wasn't; all it did was hide the wounds and let them fester. That's what Mirabel showed us, ¿sí? I'm sorry I could not teach you right to start with, mijo, but we want to help you. You try so hard to hide it, but we can see that you aren't happy, but ratoncito, if you don't let us see the wound, how can we heal it?" 

Bruno curls up smaller. Pushes his face against his knees so hard it hurts him. Tries to crouch even smaller below the jagged edges of this new entrance, so that even if they opened it they wouldn't see him at all. Wants to run to where he can never be found, wants to have never been found to begin with, and wants them to forget about him entirely.

The silence stretches, and they do not leave him, and they wait.

Bruno feels like he's never been more frightened in his whole life.

"I'm scared," is torn out of him finally, the words pulled from his mouth like teeth, and he can almost taste the blood of them on the back of his throat. His voice is so small he's not even sure they can hear, and the knot that has been rotting through his throat for hours feels like it's going to kill him dead, he's so afraid. "All of the time." 

"Okay," his mamá says, steady and strong. Like it's easy, like she understands, like she isn't afraid of him and doesn't hate him.

Like he isn't ruining anything at all.

"Okay," Mamá says. "Let's talk about it."

And so Bruno opens his mouth, and he tries.