#lf1

People often forget that Bruno Madrigal, despite having The Sight, was not actually omnipotent. He could see the future, see who was going to go bald, get fat, the exact time and place of your beloved goldfish’s demise; but, he couldn’t see through walls.

Which is for the best, really, mostly because people already thought he was creepy enough as it is. But even more importantly, if he’d seen through the walls of Señor Sanchez’s house on the night of Gabriele Sanchez’s quinceanera he would have known that when Leandra, the goat herder’s daughter, dropped a plate of food on Pepa’s lap she was actually doing Pepa a huge favor.

If he’d seen through the walls, he would have seen Cicero, Pepa’s current crush/almost boyfriend, prepare a drink for Pepa at the punch bowl. He’d have seen Cicero slip a little something extra into the drink when he thought nobody was looking. He’d have seen Leandra’s look of panic as she realized what she was witnessing.

But Bruno Madrigal could not see through walls, so all he saw was red as Cicero, Pepa’s latest crush/almost boyfriend, laughed at her. 

Pepa stared down at the food staining her dress, her brand new dress, a storm cloud forming over her head. Her bottom lip wobbled but she clenched her jaw and turned a glare on the woman and the overturned plate in her hand.

Leandra leaned down and hissed something to Pepa, Bruno couldn’t hear what she said, but he saw the way Pepa’s face fell as she looked first at Cicero, who was bent over double, then at her half empty drink.

Cicero’s bark of laughter had drawn the attention of the other people standing in the Sanchez’s garden. As heads turned their way Pepa’s cheeks reddened and the cloud over her head began to drizzle. She glanced around, looked at Cicero, then looked to the woman standing over her. 

“I’m so sorry Pepa,” and she sounded so genuinely sad that for a second Bruno’s anger abetted, but then she finished, “I tripped.”

Bruno expected lightning to flash at this blatant lie, he expected Pepa to shoot to her feet and call the other woman out, he moved to stand behind her left shoulder, mirroring Julieta who stood behind her right. They both crossed their arms and glared at the lying witch, ready to back their triplet up in whatever fight broke out.

“That’s ok,” Pepa said, slowly rising to her feet and brushing the food off her lap, “I-it’s not your fault.”

Bruno exchanged a shocked look with Julietta who opened her mouth to say what they were both thinking, “But she-.”

Pepa held up a hand with a small shake of her head, “I better g-get home and wash this stuff off.”

“I’ll walk you,” Cicero offered immediately, having reigned his laughter in and slapped on a charming smile. Bruno frowned at him, he figured the least the man could do was apologize for his initial reaction.

He was so busy frowning at Cicero that he missed the way Pepa paled at the offer.

“No,” the lying, envious, witch, yelled as she turned quickly to Cicero, “I need… I was actually coming over here to discuss buying some of your father’s wine for an event. An event to um… sell more cheese.”

Cicero smirked, clearly coming to the same conclusion that Bruno had, that she had spilled her food on Pepa specifically to steal Cicero’s attention for herself. 

“Oh, but I-,” Cicero started to say, holding a hand out to Pepa. Pepa gulped as she looked in between Cicero’s hand and the goat herder’s daughter.

“Wanted to dance? Great! We can dance,” she put herself between Cicero and Pepa, snatching up his hand.

Bruno felt his lip curl in disgust, this time he was the one who opened his mouth to say something to the lying, envious, conniving witch.

“That sounds like a great idea,” Pepa said, cutting Bruno off as she strung her arm through his, “Bruno, Julietta, will you two walk me home.”

“Of course,” Julietta said, with one more glance at Cicero and the lying, envious, conniving, horrible, witch that had attacked their sister. 

Bruno just glared at the couple as Pepa tugged him away, even craning his neck to send one last dirty look at the lying, envious, conniving, horrible, evil, witch as she smiled nervously at Cicero. When they were clear of the party, Pepa’s drizzle turned into a downpour, soaking all three of them through. Julietta softly asked why Pepa hadn’t wanted to call the other woman out on her lie but the only answer she’d received was a quiet sob. They’d walked through the village, which was thankfully empty due to everybody being at the party, in somewhat awkward silence only broken by the occasional crash of thunder.

“A-at least the rain should keep the stains from setting,” Bruno said, as Casita came into view.

Pepa laughed wetly, then sucked in a breath, “God, I’m so embarrassed.”

Cicero had been pushing at her boundaries lately, asking for a more physical relationship than she was ready to give him unless he made some sort of commitment to her. There had been a time or two where she’d had to physically push him off of her, aided by the wind at her command. Both times it had happened, he had seemed apologetic, told her he was just so crazy about her he had gotten carried away. 

Whenever she had asked why he hadn’t committed to being in a monogamous relationship he had had so many answers ready, each more logical sounding than the last. Pepa had started to think that she was being crazy, asking for him to commit without any promise that she would make it worth it for him.

She had ignored so many red flags. She felt like such an idiot.

“Pepa, no, you have nothing to be embarrassed about! That, that… absolute puta is the one who should be embarrassed,” Julietta jumped to reassure her, Pepa shook her head and said something that was swallowed up by the sound of thunder.

“I’ll wash the dress,” Bruno volunteered, the moment they crossed through the threshold of their home, “m-make it like tonight never happened.”

He usually hated doing the laundry, mostly because it was the chore he got stuck with the most. He’d complained to Felix, when the slightly older man had stopped by to drop off an order of corn flour, and Feilx had asked if Bruno was good at doing laundry. Bruno had reluctantly admitted that stains bothered him, and even though he was bored of the task, he couldn’t bring himself to do a bad job because then he would have to put up with seeing the stains. 

“Well, there’s your problem right there, hermano,” Felix had said, patting Bruno on the back.

Bruno liked Felix, most people did, but Bruno privately missed the days when Pepa was too busy pining over Felix to waste her time on idiots like Cicero. Ah, to be twelve again.

Pepa nodded sullenly, “Thank you Bruno. Julie, w-will you stay with me?”

“Of course,” Julietta said, “would you like anything to eat?”

Pepa stopped abruptly at the base of the stairs, looking somewhat stricken. Bruno detached himself from her and hared off to get the wash basin ready, he heard her blubber something to Julietta but couldn’t quite make out anything other than Cicero’s name. He heard Julie’s response loud and clear, and he briefly paused to gape at her over his shoulder. He didn’t know that Julietta knew how to curse like that, it was a good thing that they hadn’t stopped to grab their mother on the way out of the party. She would not have been pleased.

Of course, in the morning, when Julietta would quietly explain the night's events, their Mama would let out a few curses of her own.

While Bruno was busy prepping the wash basin, Pepa was beginning to feel the effects of the drug Cicero gave her. The weather inside Casita grew steadily worse as the last scraps of hope Pepa had held, hope that Leandra was wrong, hope that Cicero wasn’t that sort of man, slipped away like water through clenched fingers.

While Julietta quietly handed Bruno the delicately embroidered dress for him to wash, Pepa laid in her bed, staring at the ceiling and tried her very best to hold onto consciousness. The weather calmed as her attempts failed.

Bruno had started to hang the now clean dress up on the line, by the time Pepa regained a semblance of consciousness. And that was only because Julietta had shook her awake in order to offer her a bowl of arroz con leche. Upon realizing how truly helpless she was, how horribly wrong the night could have gone, Pepa summoned a great tornado that patrolled through the courtyard and corridors of Casita. Bruno extended his neck to look into the house at the perilous wind, then added more clips to the dress. He threw some salt over his shoulder then knocked on the nearest piece of wood, before finally sending out a little prayer that the dress would stay put. 

He wasn’t sure what saint to pray to for laundry related concerns, but he figured at least one of them must know the frustration of coming back to the clothesline to discover that your previously clean clothes had fallen in a mud puddle.

The tornado faded as Julietta reiterated her promise to stay with Pepa all night. There was nothing her food could do to cleanse the drug from Pepa’s body, but she could help heal any lingering after effects Pepa might feel in the morning.

“Ros- Rosalie,” Pepa slurred, “this happened to Rosalie last year.”

“It did,” Julietta whispered, calmly petting her sister’s hand.

“Everybody thought- Padré g-gave that sermon about alcohol.”

“He did.”

“She was telling the truth.”

“She was.”

Rosalie had woken up naked in a haystack in her family’s barn. She had been found by Florez, who worked for her father. When asked, she had sworn up and down that she hadn’t touched a drop of liquor and had left the party by herself the second she had started to feel a bit tired. Her friends had corroborated her story, but there was no denying the hand shaped bruises around her hips, or the baby she gave birth to nine months later.

When she had started to show, Rosalie had sobbed and begged her father to believe her, to help her figure out what had happened that night. He hadn’t. He had thrown her out and she had become a cautionary tale.

Alma had taken the girl in and made arrangements for her and her child to live with Señora Ruiz, the kindly old weaver who was in need of an apprentice. Rosalie barely wandered into town these days, unless it was for church. Even then, she usually arrived as late as she could without being rude, and left just as quickly.

It wasn’t that Pepa and Julietta hadn’t believed Rosalie, after all, both Mamá and Bruno took the woman at her word, why should they do any different? It was just… hard to accept that anyone in Encanto could do that to another person.

“They were friends, si?” Pepa asked, massaging her temple. It hurt to keep her eyes open. 

“Rosalie and…?” 

She gestured down at her lap where a plate’s worth of food had provided a convenient excuse to get away from Cicero, “What’s her face.”

“Oh, si. Still are, I think, might even be closer than they were before. I-I don’t know, they both live so far out of town,” Julietta sighed, realizing she didn’t really know much about the woman that had saved her sister tonight.

The goat herder, Raul Lopez, lived in the mountains surrounding Encanto, a reasonable place for a goat herder to live. His daughter, Leandra, was technically adopted, her birth family hadn’t survived the first few years in Encanto, but he loved her well enough and had given her everything he could. 

She was a bit younger than the triplets, but no more so than Agustín, Julietta’s boyfriend. In fact, she and Agustín were friends, weren’t they? Good friends, the last time she’d seen the two talk, Agustín had called Leandra “hermana” and he seemed to mean it.

Other than that, all Julietta knew about the other woman was that she had figured out how to make fine soaps and lotions by mixing lye and herbs into some of the goat milk. Leandra ran the market stall for her father, whenever Julietta had stopped by they talked about herbs and their different uses, or Agustín, never about themselves. 

All the same, Julietta had seen Leandra and her father move to sit next to Rosalie during Padré’s sermon on the dangers of alcohol and pre-marital sex. Which was a statement if there ever was one.

“Mami believed Rosalie,” Pepa suddenly said, after a pause so long Julietta had assumed she’d fallen asleep again.

“Do you want to tell Mamá about this?”

“No, but yes.”

“Do you want me to tell Mamá about this?”

“Si, por favor.”

There was a knock at Pepa’s door and Bruno poked his head in, “The dress is clean as new. D-do you need anything else?”

“What if I asked you to help me hide a body?” Pepa managed to ask, although it took effort to keep the words from smudging together.

Bruno grinned wryly, “Then I’d ask Julietta to be our alibi.”

Pepa snorted, then sighed, rubbing at her eyes in a way that Bruno mistook for her rubbing away tears. In truth, her head was beginning to pound from the effort it took to stay awake. Julietta squeezed her sister’s hand, then turned to Bruno.

“When Mama gets back can you let her know that I need to talk to her about something important? In the morning.”

“Claro,” Bruno nodded, “anything else?”

“There’s some extra arroz con leche in the kitchen if you want some,” Julietta offered softly.

“Have you had any?”

“Not yet.”

“I’ll bring you some. Pepa?”

Pepa grunted and shook her head. Bruno took this to mean that she was too upset to have more of her favorite dessert, he sighed and told Julietta he would be right back. By the time he arrived with a bowl of rice pudding for Julietta, Pepa had succumbed once again to the effects of Cicero’s drug. He decided he wouldn’t risk waking her but dropped a light kiss to each of his sisters’ heads.

Julietta squeezed his wrist and gave him a tight but warm smile, she was too caught up in thoughts of poor Rosalie for it to occur to her that Bruno didn’t actually know what was happening.

And because it didn’t occur to her that Bruno had no clue what was really going on, she didn’t tell him.

Meanwhile, Bruno sat down in the chair closest to Casita’s front door with his bowl of arroz con leche and continued thinking about the same thing he’d been thinking about since he’d left the party. That lying, envious, conniving, horrible, evil, petty, witch that had done this to his sister.

Bruno Madrigal was not what one would usually consider a confident man, when he was forced to make an appearance at a party he generally remained with one or both of his sisters. Lately he’d expanded his social circle to Agustín, so that was exciting, but even that was only because Agustín was dating Julietta. Otherwise, he kept to himself, avoiding human contact as much as he was able. 

As awed by his abilities as everybody had been when he was a child, once he hit that first growth spurt, once he’d started to lose the baby fat around his cheeks, their awe had turned to first irritation, then caution, and finally fear.

Bruno Madrigal was not what one would usually consider a confident man, because most only considered him a bad omen.

He wasn’t a violent man either, although his head danced with fantasies of throwing whole buckets of food onto the lying, envious, conniving, horrible, evil, petty, desperate, witch. Unfortunately, the thought of attacking another person in any way repelled him. Disgusted him, even. All the same, his sister deserved justice!

That lying, envious, conniving, horrible, evil, petty, desperate… he was running out of applicable insults. And it was getting much too long a descriptor, anyway.

Unfortunately, as previously stated, Bruno mostly kept to himself and well, he didn’t know her name.

He’d been to her quinceanera, he knew he had, because Mamá made them go to every quinceanera they were invited to. And, he’d bought cheese from her stall a few times. Bruno had even given her a vision once, and her father had sent her back with a thank you basket.

But he had never asked her name.

The village was small, and she had been in the grade below his in school. He sort of assumed that he should know her name by now, and it was weird that he didn’t, so he had always avoided calling attention to that fact.

He would call her la Reina Malvada, or Reina for short, after the evil queen in the play the school children had just put on. It made sense, obviously Reina was motivated by jealousy just like the evil queen in the story. The only women in the village who could compete with Reina’s beauty were the Madrigal sisters; it was only a matter of time before such a black hearted villainess went after one of them.

Well, Bruno wasn’t going to stand for this. He may not be a knight in shining armor, or a handsome prince, but he loved his sisters. And he wouldn’t let anyone get away with attacking them like this.