Title: A Heavy Lift
Fandom: Encanto
Rating: Teen
Length: 3,748 words
Content notes: Angst, Family feels, Dysfunctional family, Canon-typical mild child neglect/emotional abuse-ish ((skip) Abuela's attitude towards Mirabel and Luisa, mostly)
Author's notes: Spoilers for the recently released movie, Encanto
Summary: The cracks are a lot older than anyone realizes. Even Bruno.


The cracks are a lot older than anyone realizes.

Bruno remembers how it began. He and his sisters were given their gifts to help the village. Bruno, who could see danger approaching, Pepa, who could help the crops grow, and Julieta, who could heal people. In their small group that fled the violence, there had been no doctor, so her gift was probably the most crucial.

But as the years passed and Bruno watched, he saw people forget. They forgot how to do simple things for themselves. No one saw a sprain as a sign that they were working too hard, or doing something wrong. They just went to Julieta and were fixed in seconds. They didn't change their ways, didn't rest, they just got back to work.

He saw that affect Luisa, the most.

But there were others; people who became lazy or irresponsible because they knew Julieta could fix anything they broke. Bruno thought about pointing it out, but that was how she met Augustín, and anyone could see that they were genuinely in love, so he kept silent.

Perhaps he should have spoken out then.

But he'd tried that with Pepa, and it had backfired on him horribly. Bruno should have known better — people never understood him — but he kept trying.

When they were younger, Pepa had had more control over her gift. The three of them used to spend their afternoons playing in warm summer rains, And the nights looking up at the stars through remarkably clear skies. None of it was tied to her emotions; she could change everything with a thought. When the heavy, wet winter clouds rolled in, she could make them release snow, and everyone in the village had fun playing in it. They relaxed and celebrated the end of the harvest, the end of a year's work, and all was well.

But Mamá began to change. Bruno understood why, once he looked for the answer; the candle — the Casita — had been given to her out of everyone in their encanto. At the very beginning, people had asked why she deserved it when they did not. Most of that grumbling was offset by her having three tiny babies to take care of, and no one to help her.

And she did her part for the village — even before it was a village — so the grumbles soon died down. With babes of her own, she would watch the other children, keeping them out from underfoot while the adults built the rest of the houses. She let the abuelas use her amazing kitchen, where Casita always had what you needed close at hand, to feed everyone else in those first few months.

It only made sense, then, the morning that they woke up and discovered 3 new doors in Casita, each bestowing yet another gift onto her family, that she felt she needed to stop the others from grumbling with jealousy. So she encouraged them to use their gifts to help the village, and for a while it was alright.

But Pepa; eventually people got annoyed with her. The rain that the crops needed had made someone slip and fall. Someone's wagon had gotten stuck in the mud caused by the rains, or slipped and fell on the ice made by the winter snow. Why would she make it rain on someone's wedding day? Why had she not stopped the winter winds before they blew down palm fronds and made a mess?

So eventually, Mamá taught her that she needed to keep the skies clear all the time. They stopped having fall and winter, and even summer rains. Pepa became so stressed, holding back what nature wanted — needed — to do, that when she became distracted or upset it burst free. And eventually everyone forgot that it wasn't just her bad moods that made bad weather happen.

Bruno had tried to help her; he thought Félix was the answer. Félix was funny, and he made Pepa laugh and smile, and for a while she forgot the stress and pressure of keeping everything perfect. That was why, on their wedding day, Bruno had joked about the rain. When they were younger, and people complained about the sweet summer rains, Pepa had always stoutly insisted that she'd welcome them on her wedding day, and she and her husband would dance in them together.

Félix was the kind of man who would have done it, too; would have laughed and twirled her around and caught rain drops on his tongue like they had when they were kids. But she didn't remember; she'd spent so long making perfect clear skies that she'd forgotten. So instead of a sweet summer monsoon, they'd had a hurricane.

Bruno was used to the people of the village not understanding him, but it hurt to realize that even his sisters had grown apart from him. That was the first time he'd really thought about leaving, while Mamá yelled at him about ruining Pepa's perfect day.

It wasn't just the future that Bruno could see, but the past. He'd looked back and seen Mamá and Papa fall in love. He'd made it into a vision, when they were eight, and taken it to Franco, the painter. He'd painted the picture of Papa that now hung on Casita's stairs, and the three of them had given it to Mamá on her birthday.

He saw the history of this valley, saw the ancient people at work and play, and saw far off lands that no one in the village had ever even heard about. In the tropical oasis in his room, he traveled all around the world.

But everyone always wanted to know about the future, and only the future. And they never asked the right questions.

Will my goldfish die? Yes, of course. Everything dies. You might as well ask if the sun will ever shine again. Which, with Pepa around, was a certainty.

Will I grow fat? Yes, because you will become so prosperous that you can afford to eat only the best the village has to offer. You will have strong sons to continue your family business, allowing you to rest and become a round, happy elder.

Will I lose my hair? Yes, just like your father, and his father before him. One of the things Julieta couldn't do anything to fix was the stuff that was passed down in the family line; but your own stress will hasten the process.

Half of the questions people asked Bruno about were things that were going to happen so long from now that there was no point in worrying about them. But they asked, and worried, and stressed, and it all became his fault.

Why would you ask if you were going to die before your husband, when it was so much more interesting to ask about how and why? Dancing a salsa with him at ninety nine years old, during the wedding of your great-great granddaughter, surrounded by your abundant family, when your heart gives out from too much love? And he follows you within months because he promised you would never be apart? That's way more interesting and complete a picture than just asking which of you will die first; and then taking his simple yes/no answer and spinning it into a great tragedy that was going to happen any day now.

But no one asked the right question, and no one wanted to hear detailed answers. No one wanted his gift, — even his own family — so while Pepa and Julieta found partners, no one in the village wanted to spend time around Bruno.

Bruno used to tell the children stories, once Pepa and Julieta had them, about the far off places and histories he had seen, but eventually they grew old enough to hear the whispers of the village, and the way Mamá looked at him with disappointment, and they too pulled away.

He didn't blame Mamá; if his gift scared the village, then that would endanger the family. But she was the one who had encouraged them to share their gifts instead of hoarding them, because that too would endanger the family. Mamá was so fiercely protective of her family, and Bruno wasn't sure exactly when that transitioned to needing everything to be perfect, or to needing to be at the beck and call of everyone in the village. Once upon a time appeasing the others had helped protect the family, but since then it had twisted into something else; something like perfectly clear skies and instant cures and forgetting that people were more than their gifts.

It might have happened before they even got their gifts, for all he knew. He could probably look back, and try to see the moment, but he knew better than anyone that it wasn't so simple. There was no one moment when people changed, unless something catastrophic happened. If he tried to see when Mamá had become this person, he would have seen the night that Papa was killed, because that was what changed the course of her river, but that didn't explain the little shifts in her landscape over time.

If anyone had asked Bruno, he would have said that Isabela's gift was supposed to be a reminder to them all. But no one asked, because no one wanted to hear whatever negative thing they would interpret from his vision.

She made the flowers grow, though, and when he thought about it, that was almost a perfect summary of Bruno and his sisters. Flowers — all plants, really — needed sun and rain, and nurturing, and someone looking out for them. Just like Pepa, and Julieta, and Bruno's gifts. But just like the rest of their family, it all went wrong.

It was spring, and Mamá's roses were thriving in her window box when Isabela turned five and got her gift. Bruno thought that, if it had been any other season, things might have turned out differently. But when Isabela opened her door to a carpet of Mamá's favorite roses, and heard how perfect they looked, her path was changed.

Once upon a time, Bruno had seen an image of Julieta, surrounded by all kinds of gorgeous plants and butterflies, but when he tried to look for it again after Isabela's gift, the image was gone. A lot of people didn't realize that his gift wasn't infallible — other people could change their fate drastically sometimes.

Isabela should have been able to grow all kinds of plants, not just roses. But as the seasons changed — ever so slightly, thanks to Pepa's stranglehold on the weather — and Mamá sighed about the roses fading away, he saw Isabela vow to keep Abuela's roses around all year long. Bruno wasn't sure when she forgot that promise, or forgot that she should be able to make any kind of plant; not just roses. He could probably go looking, but it would likely be a series of mundane moments, as little bits of memory flaked away, just like trying to see when Mamá had become so controlling, or trying to keep the sand in his room from slipping through his fingers.

Casita always gave them the room and the gift that they needed, not necessarily the one they wanted. And as the pressure began to press on Bruno, he stopped seeing the oasis in the middle of his room, and started seeing the crushing sand that surrounded it. He wasn't sure which came first, the feeling of pressure or the drying up of the deep sparkling river he used to love diving into, and he knows better than to try to see it.

Delores's gift was a warning, Bruno realized far too late, just as he didn't notice the drying up of his river until it was almost too shallow to swim in. She heard everything, just like Bruno saw it. And at first, she needed help, filtering out the distant sounds of animals just going about their lives in the jungle. She needed training, to allow her to hear distant danger approaching without going mad from every little thump of a jaguar's tail.

Bruno did what he could to help; he always found the sound of falling sand soothing, and he thought it might create a meaningless noise that she could focus on, when she needed to keep her mind off of everything she knew. He even ventured into the village, where everyone gave him strange looks or shied away in fear, to ask the blacksmith for help.

It wasn't exactly an hourglass, because there was no glass, and it was mostly made of metal, and filled with much more than an hour's worth of Bruno's sand, but he hoped that the steady trickle of falling sand would help her tune out the other noises when she needed to sleep, or just take a break.

The others saw it as some kind of omen, and asked what he was counting down to, and that was the real moment he realized that the rest of his family had started to think of him like the villagers did, instead of remembering who he was besides his gift.

After that, the signs were much easier to see.

The people in the village were worried about Delores's gift; they did all kinds of things that they didn't want anyone else hearing. So Mamá taught her to keep her mouth shut about what she heard. And soon, his quiet little niece became even more withdrawn, barely squeaking instead of talking. Her voice became a bare whisper.

He thinks that's when the cracks started, though he wouldn't find them until later.

Bruno tried to help her, tried to draw attention to himself instead. He couldn't do anything about the distant voices, but whenever he heard them start up around him, he would start muttering and mumbling, making them forget what Delores might hear and focus back on what he might see.

He never asked her, but he wondered if she ever wished that she could turn it on and off, like he was able to do with the visions. For all he knew, as she grew older, she actually gained that skill, but she simply never said anything. She didn't say much anyway.

But the more Mamá assured everyone that this new gift was a blessing and not an invasion of privacy, the more people believed her, and eventually the suspicion eased off. Of course, that was helped by Luisa coming into her own gift a few years later.

It took longer for him to notice, but Bruno realized that the same thing was happening to her that had happened to Pepa. She was strong — stronger than himself, Félix, and Agustin put together, and Mamá pushed her at the villagers. Only later would he wonder if she was doing it for Delores's sake or her own.

But just like with Pepa, he saw Luisa's gift put to work for the village. Since Pepa had spent years keeping the rain away, the farmers had to haul water from the river for their crops. With Luisa's help, they dug irrigation ditches, and she placed huge boulders in the river to divert it's flow.

Of course, then those further downstream who had relied on it for their washing and drinking water complained, and she had to figure out a way to do both. It was decided that, for a little while, she should shift the boulders at different times of day, but that was always supposed to be a temporary thing. Bruno wasn't sure when it became permanent.

And, just like with her mother Julieta, people seemed to come to rely on Luisa too much, to the point that they forgot how to do things for themselves. Every morning, Bruno would see her set off to the village to do her "chores", while the other girls played, and he wished there was a way to help her.

Every time he heard someone tell her that a donkey had escaped from the paddock, expecting her to carry it home instead of going and rounding it up themselves like they used to, he worried. Every time they asked her to move a building, for no reason that Bruno could see, other than to see if she could even do it, he got more anxious. Every time Mamá decided to eat breakfast on the patio instead of the kitchen, since Luisa could just move the table; every time she decided to rearrange the furniture; every time she called Isabela's flowers perfect before sending Luisa off to work… Bruno's uneasiness grew.

There was a fine line, between using your gift to help people, and being used, and Bruno wasn't sure when the family as a whole crossed that line, but he really noticed it with Luisa.

But there were two new babies, and life continued on, and for several years Bruno did his best to ignore the cracks that he felt like only he could see. Like the river Luisa had diverted, his own oasis was nearly gone, and he wondered if that was another vision of the future that he had misinterpreted.

He stopped going upstairs to his vision circle, and spent all of his time in the lower level, with what little remained of his paradise. No one wanted to hear what he saw in the future anyway, and he felt no pleasure in viewing the past anymore.

When the family asked him to use his powers, he would, and he did his best to present his visions in the best light possible. But he wasn't sure anymore if he even knew what the best version was.

He told Isabela her power would grow, because he'd seen her surrounded by exploding vegetation of all kinds, not the roses she always made now. And even as he said it he hoped that he wasn't lying, since that vision had faded to mere wisps in the years since he'd first seen it.

When he saw Delores pining over a man she thought she couldn't have, he hoped that she would take that as incentive to step out of the shadows and assert herself, but he knew better than anyone how hard it was to step out of the box that Mamá and the village had placed you in.

Bruno had struggled to see anything in Camillo's future, and at first he thought that his own gift was acting up, showing him the wrong person. Once Camillo gained his shapeshifting gift, Bruno realized why he had struggled so much. He could never see the gifts before they manifested — he'd been asked to often enough by Mamá — but he could see the results.

But with Camillo, how could Bruno tell which person in his vision was Camillo in disguise, and which was not? He might see that Camillo would grow into a big, strong, young man, but that could just be because he shapeshifted into Andrés the blacksmith for a day. Mamá and Pepa quickly stopped asking about his future.

Even without a vision, though, Bruno could see what was happening. Like Félix, Camillo could feel the stress in the family. But unlike his father, who was focused on helping Pepa maintain her iron control over the sunshine, Camillo wanted to make the entire family laugh.

He tried to make Isabela, with her insistence on perfection, lighten up. He tried to remind Luisa to have fun, though she rarely had time as she was given more and more chores. He tried to break past Delores' quiet shell and make her laugh, though Bruno rarely heard him get more than a muffled squeak. He even tried to make Mamá smile, as she had become more and more stern with each passing year.

Once upon a time she had laughed when Casita tipped over a bowl of flour, coating all three of them in white, snow-like powder. Now even the house quailed at her glare whenever anyone set a foot out of place.

And poor Mirabel. Everyone thought Bruno should have seen it coming, even though he'd never been able to see gifts before. It wasn't until he saw the cracks in the vision that Bruno realized he had been seeing them. Like with Luisa and the river, or Pepa and the rain. The cracks had been there, beneath the surface, and Mirabel brought them to the fore.

In his vision, seeing the cracks spread across Casita, Bruno wasn't even sure if they were supposed to be real, physical imperfections, or just a metaphor for everyone's tightly maintained walls crashing down. The one thing Bruno knew was that, like himself and his visions, and like Delores and people's privacy, like Pepa and the rain, and Camillo not knowing who he even was beneath the outer shell, Mirabel would be another one that made Mamá unhappy.

Bruno honestly couldn't tell why Mirabel hadn't gotten a gift, or whether the next family member would get one or not. He didn't know if the family magic had said, "right, that's enough; no more for you," or whether there was something else at play. He didn't know if the magic would fade away forever, like his oasis, or Delores's voice, or Pepa's gay laughter, or Luisa's free smile. He didn't know if this would be a blessing in disguise, or just another thing that made the villagers fearful, resentful, or too dependent on the more 'helpful' members of the family.

He didn't know when Mamá had stopped smiling, or why, and he didn't have the strength to look.

But when he saw little Mirabel, looking at her fading door in confusion, when he saw her in the sands, standing in front of a crumbling Casita, when he made the decision to break the vision rather than direct Mamá's anger at her… Bruno knew that the cracks had been there long before Mirabel. And the next morning, when he crept back into the yard and asked Casita for a place to hide, he saw that he had been right.

And just like before, when he'd tried to make Pepa dance in the summer rain, or tried to help Delores shut out the world with falling sand, or tried to leave to protect Mirabel, all he could do was patch the cracks. But he couldn't stop them from forming.

He wasn't sure if anyone could.