Bruno Madrigal Oneshots

the miracle is you (not some gift just you)

By Love_Lucigoosey on Ao3

Warning: chronic pain

Summary: Bruno had always struggled with the side effects of his gift, but with the magic gone he's realizing he's not alone anymore

Bruno was used to the headaches.

When he was younger, he would refer to them as his dolor de visión - vision pain. Sometimes they came randomly, typically preceding an involuntary vision, and at first, while annoyed by the sudden bursts of pain that split through his skull, Bruno was happy for the warning, and took it as a sign to isolate himself into his room until it was over. It quickly became a nuisance when he started getting up from the dinner table to run to his room whenever he felt the slightest bit of pressure growing behind his eyes, and it didn't help that sometimes, rarely, but sometimes, it happened to just be a regular headache, with no visions to be seen. During those moments, Bruno would ask his sister for a quick bite of whatever she happened to be making - it seemed foolish to ask her for food every time he got a dolor de visión, so he was sure to make it scarce. Only when absolutely necessary, like if Mamá was hosting an event he needed to show up for.

If not, Bruno would simply grin and bear it. There wasn't much else to do, and he wasn't going to let Julieta waste her food on him when someone could need it for something life-threatening. So what if he got migraines to hell and back, migraines that sometimes had him throwing his lunch up in the toilet, migraines that sometimes made him pass out for hours on end, migraines that sometimes lasted hours or days or weeks, migraines that got worse and worse as he grew.

Because as he grew, he learned how to suppress the visions. When a migraine started, Bruno shut the visions down before they could come, slamming the metaphorical door in his mind and locking it. And yeah, it hurt. The first time he managed to successfully suppress an incoming vision, his head throbbed for days on end, and not even Julieta's arepas could help the pain. Such horrible, nauseating, blinding agony. But he stuck to his guns, he faltered but didn't break. And when the next dolor de visión came, same thing; he managed to suppress the vision itself, and accepted the pain that followed. It brought him to tears, made him want to scream, but it was worth it. It was worth it because he didn't have to see someone's beloved pet die, he didn't have to see someone get hurt. He didn't have to see, and so he didn't have to get blamed for it.

The downside was that it required a great amount of concentration, and even the slightest lapse in his resolve could and would result in a cacophony of visions flooding his mind, one after the other in rapid succession. He made the mistake a few times, daring to let his guard down, and it was just… one vision after the next, with barely a lapse of peace in between. And it hurt. It hurt bad enough that he passed out from the pain alone, and woke up in another vision. It took him a good few hours… maybe a day… to get back to normal, to be able to start suppressing it again.

When he needed to have a vision, well, that was where his ritual was put to good use. He came up with it not too long after he started suppressing the involuntary ones. It changed and grew over time as he learned new things - throwing the salt over his shoulder before he started, for one, soothed his nerves the slightest bit. The sand was another neat thing he had thought of; his sisters thought it was odd and a little scary when he'd shown them, but it was just soothing. It kept him calm even as he stared down the burden that was his gift, and sometimes gave him something else to focus on when there was a particularly difficult vision to watch unravel. He also really just liked how it felt when the vision was over and all the sand crashed down on him.

It was also nice to… take a step back from his mind. His ritual allowed him to watch it unfold in front of him; before, the visions had simply engulfed him. His vision, his body, his mind, his soul. And it was like he wasn't in control of himself, during those moments. He just couldn't feel himself. His ritual helped with that. It ensured he was still in control of his own body, his own mind, and he could stop whenever he wanted. He could close his eyes, and just stop seeing it. That eased his nerves a little bit, as well. He couldn't control his vision, but his mind was still his.