@ratsalong; BRUNO
❛ it’s easy for you, after all. ❜
she was too far gone to even pretend to control her emotions. it would be polite to do so, but this was bruno. bruno who wasn’t a stranger, wasn’t a tourist, much less a friend. bruno was her brother, as reliable and permanent as her left hand.
she would chop off her hand with a dull knife right now.
there is a phantom pain along the top of her head, prickling down the back of her neck, and gone with an exhale. she doesn’t have any weather to control and there is none of the tug that had always come with it for the last forty-five years. it’s only been a handful of days since they’d found mirabel, a handful of days of not shouldering the responsibility of the sun and clouds.
( she’s still not sure if this is better. how does one start over with grace when their downfall didn’t hold any? she is someone who had felt rock-bottom many times over within the safety of her room and the sanctity of church. yet, there was always a level lower waiting her arrival. would this be the final descent? )
her rage exploded as the wisps of bygone static left her nerves be, a release granted in the knowledge that if anyone would get hurt now it would just be them. there was no need to worry about the rest of their family or the encanto. spanish flew off her tongue, her voice low even as her cheeks burned hot.
“easy? you think it’s easy for me to talk because i’m not the one who hide away the last fifteen years? you think that it’s easy to look these people in the eyes and know that it was my storm, my feelings, ME — i’m the one that caused their windows to fly off and their fences to break? do you think i don’t have blood in my face, in my chest, that i don’t know shame?"
pepa’s face was not close to touching bruno’s, but she could see herself reflected in his green eyes. once upon a childhood, they joked that they shared their eyes. once upon a childhood, they shared lives. tears gathered in her eyes, and pepa closed them as she pulled herself back. her hands fisted, elbows bent with hunched shoulders in a posture that clearly screamed to be left alone. but she had to get the words out or they would find a way to drown her.
“none of this has ever been easy. not all of us could hide away. but if you’d stayed then...” her cowardice overtook her survival and she choked. she would drown later. “if you’d stayed then you would know,” came its weak replacement.
