Chapter Text
He’s laid out on the couch, just enjoying the feeling of breathing without pain. He had been carried into the bathroom, regardless of the fact that he could walk perfectly fine after being healed from Julieta’s cooking. Pepa had rejoined them, and kept having to reassure Bruno that it was fine that he got the floor dirty. After being able to wash off the layers of mud and vomit and- and blood, he almost cried putting on new clothes, lacking the green ruana that Mama had gifted him all those years ago.
Mama walks in the living room.
“I brought you some soup, Brunito, please have some.” Mama places the bowl down on the table in front of the couch. She takes a seat next to him causing the couch to dip, and rests a hand in his hair.
“Mama?”
“Yes, mijo?” Mama’s voice is shaky. He tries to squish the guilt that flares in his chest at having been the cause of her distress.
“Where did you put my ruana? The one I was wearing?”
“I had to throw it away. It was filthy and broken. I can make you a new one though, so don’t worry about it.”
He has to force himself not to react. Regardless of the bad memories that ruana brought him, it was his best comfort when in relation to his mother.
“Ah, I’m sorry for ruining it.” He apologizes.
She taps his head twice and he meets her eyes. Her eyes are glassy and watery.
“Bruno, this is a very serious thing that happened.” She takes a deep breath. “I need- I need you to tell me who did it. Was it Andres’ boys? This can’t go unpunished.”
“No!” Bruno says before he can think, and crosses his fingers. “It wasn’t- wasn’t them. It was just some kids who thought, you know. They thought I was cursed. They heard about what happened with Adella.” It would be believable. He’s not sure why he’s defending the three boys, he tells himself. But he knows that he still feels guilt, and that maybe, deep down, he deserved all the pain that was inflicted on him. At least from the hands of Luis and Mateo and Felipe. Those boys had every right to hurt him. He would even understand if they killed him, or pushed him into the river to let the water do the job. He knows he can’t swim, and maybe they would have figured it out too when he doesn’t struggle against the current.
“You don’t need to lie to me.”
“I’m not! I promise! I just- I don’t want to talk about it. I swear I didn’t know the kids. Can you just stay with me?” He begs.
“I thought you were dead when I saw you on the floor- you were all bloody and beat and when I touched your skin it was cold.”
“I’ve always been cold Mama, you know this.”
“I can’t ignore this. You can’t ignore this. I will find out who did this even if you don’t tell me. I don’t care that your gift is cursed Bruno, you are still my son. I won’t let who did this get away with it.” She gets up off the couch, and leans down to kiss him on the forehead. “You should get some rest, Brunito. It’s been a long day.”
He wants to ask her to stay. To stay and keep brushing her hand through his hair, and holding him. To tell him it isn’t true that his gift is cursed. He nods.
“Okay Mama.”
—------------------------
He walks back to his room an hour later, finding that he can’t rest. Not while out in the open and not while Julieta kept trying to feed him more and more bread and Pepa kept trying to make conversation, and trying but failing to discreetly ask about who did it.
When he reaches his door, the engraving of an adult version of himself stares back like always. He supposes that means that he won't die while still a kid. He doesn’t know how to feel about that. He reaches a hand out, about to touch the door, when some feeling stops him. The way he’s doing it feels wrong- like he wasn’t supposed to touch the doorknob like that. He makes a sideways opening motion without touching the door twice, then opens it. It feels right. He chooses not to question why he just did that. He chooses not to question a lot of things, apparently.
There are stairs right behind the sand waterfall, but they are on the left side, so anyone who isn’t familiar with his room would fall right down the heaping mountain of sand (mountain is an exaggeration, it’s more like a hill).
He reaches back to pull his hood over his head but wilts when he realizes his beloved ruana was gone (beloved? When did it become beloved? He had been thinking about how much he hated it just yesterday?). He opts to cover his head with his arms to step through, feet finding purchase on the stone slab stairs that are hidden. He groans at the thought of cleaning sand out of his hair.
His room doesn’t have a bed, so he opts to continue drawing figures in the sand. Everytime his mind wandered to Luis and Felipe and Mateo, he shook his head until it hurt- until he changed his thinking to something else. He would not be thinking about what just happened, nope, not now and not ever. If he never processed what had happened, he would be fine with that. In fact, he preferred that option over anything else.
So he does meaningless tasks for the rest of the day until he’s called for dinner, which is an awkward and tense experience he would hope to never experience again. No one would talk, and everyone kept glancing at him, as if to see if he was really alive.
It was all worth it when they all stepped outside to watch the sunset (something they had never done together before, but Pepa suggested it) and Pepa turned to grab a cloth from inside to clean a smudge on the window, but before taking even one step, shrieked because of a small black beetle on the floor.
Bruno had seen what was going to happen, but it didn’t make it any less funny to watch, albeit his clothes got soaked in the process and there was now the corpse of a beetle laying in the same spot Bruno had been earlier.
He laughed so hard that Pepa thundered even louder and stormed inside in embarrassment. He would feel bad later, but he enjoyed the moment while it lasted. Even Casita had turned over tiles to make a clicking sound resembling laughter, which only served to make Pepa even more upset.
He goes to sleep in the sand and dreams of the beetle, laying dead on its back where Bruno had laid earlier. He wonders if someone else had been cursed with his gift instead of him, that they would have had a vision of Bruno dead on his back in place of the beetle, instead of him being carried away alive and well.