Bruno's Trans Son

Chapter 7

He shows us to his room and refuses to meet me gaze ever since I brought up the whole leaving me fact.

All the rats were there, hanging around and to be honest, it kinda freaked me out a bit.

"You never left," Mirabel mentions, taking a look at his makeshift house.

"Well, I left my tower," he stutters, "which was, you know, a lot of stairs."

I go around looking at his room and everything he has laying around, "it really is," I remark.

He pretends I didn't say anything, going on, "and here, eh, kitchen adjacent. Ooh, ooh plus. Free entertainment," He says picking up a rat and placing it on the stage.

He rambles on about something, I wasn't paying attention any more, picking up a cup and examining it.

"No, I don't understand why you left, but didn't leave," I hear Mirabel asked.

"Yeah I'd like to know that too Papa. Did you really hate us so much you didn't want to be around anymore, but still stayed around to watch us suffer," I ask harshly, placing down the cup and turning to him angrily.

He winces, "no no no no. I could never. I would never. I just, the mountains around Encanto are really tall and, free food you know," he explains poorly.

Mira goes over to a crack in the wall and looks through it, waving me over from my place of glaring at Bruno.

I look through and see our kitchen, a perfect view of everything that could happen there, I turn back around with confusion in my eyes.

I then look down to see a makeshift plate on the table with rusted silverware. I touch it softly, feeling sympathy and sadness for him.

"Yeah, my gift wasn't helping the family. But, uh, I love my family and my son and I get scared when you're not there for dinner," he mentions, turning to me with a smile, telling me he excepts who I am, "I just don't know how to. I just don't know how to..." he trails off.

"Well, anyway, I think you should go because... well I don't have a good reason but if I did you'd be like 'I should go because that's a good reason'," he says solmely, sitting back down in his chair.

"Why was I in your vision? Why was Mateo hurt in your vision?" Mirabel presses even more. "Tio Bruno?"

"I just, wanted to make my family proud. Just once. But if I should stop, if I'm hurting my family, if I'm hurting Mateo, just tell me," she says pleads to him.

"I can't tell you," he answers sadly. Mira sighs, "because I don't know."

He picks up the pieces of the vision and starts to lay them out.

"I had this vision the night you didn't get your gift. Abuela worried about the magic. So, she begged me to look into the future. See what it meant. And I saw the magic in danger, our house breaking.

"And then, I saw you. But the vision was...different. It would change. There was no one answer, no clear fate. Like your future was undecided," Mira changers her view and it changes so she's standing outside a not broken Casita to a broken one.

"As for Mateo, it was all in the same vision. In one part I saw you and the next I saw myself, standing over him as he was there, injured and hopefully just unconscious," he explains to me, flipping it over and showing my part.

And he was right. I was there in a pile of ruin with wounds all over my body while Papa stood over me.

"But I knew how it was going to look. I knew what everyone was going to think because I'm Bruno and everyone always assumes the worst, so..." he trails off, looking down.

"You left to protect, us?" Mira concludes. He nods.

"It absolutely broke my heart to leave you, Mateo. You were so young but I didn't want to hurt you. I didn't want to be the reason you may be dead," he says to me.

"And I don't know which way it'll go but my guess, the family, the encanto, the fate of the miracle itself... Well it's all going to come down to you."