Chapter Text
The rain had quickly spread across all of the Encanto as Pepa walked down the streets of the town, drenched in water from head to toe. She had a big cloud above her head, that unlike the ones in the sky, were thundering and occasionally hitting her with lightning. Her emotions were everywhere and the anger and sadness were becoming worse and worse with every second, and she saw the dirty looks from the townsfolk as she passed by. It wasn’t supposed to be like that.
“Clear skies, clear skies,” she whispered to herself as she let her hands run through her messy braid, trying to calm herself down with the familiar motion. Instead, it made the young woman more stressed out than before as she tried to bottle up her emotions, everyone around her was staring at her, knowing she was the cause of the bad weather, and they expected her to fix it in an instant. “Clear skies, clear skies.”
She couldn’t, even if she tried. She did her best, tried as hard as she could, just like her mother had tried to teach her, but it didn’t work. The stress of everyone expecting the rain to end was too much and caused it to instead flare up more, and she hated it. Sometimes she despised her powers, how everyone could always read her emotions by looking up at the sky and go, “Oh, looks like Pepa is in a bad mood again.”
It was pathetic, really. She let out a loud groan when she heard thunder coming from the sky, no longer only confined to the tiny cloud above her head, and without thinking she pulled at her braid. She was on her way to create a full blown storm simply because she got mad after a silly argument with her sister, so silly that she had already forgotten what they were arguing about. But she was still angry, and she was still sad, and now she also felt stressed and hopeless. Her mother would be so mad when she saw her later, her gift was supposed to help the Encanto, not flood the crops and cause a town wide starvation.
As she neared the edge of the town she sat down on a stray rock before going back to combing her fingers through her braid, whispering to herself in the process. The less eyes on her, the better. And she truly thought she was alone until she heard him.
“This is some heavy rain, isn’t it?”
Hearing a voice when she didn’t expect one startled Pepa and she jumped backwards on the rock,t falling over into the mud as she got hit by lightning from her tiny cloud. Great, now you’re embarrassing yourself . And the mud was such a disgusting texture that made her skin crawl as she wanted to shake it off as a part of her mind screamed, it felt wrong.
As she looked up she saw a young man her own age stare at her, short, with coily dark hair and a look on his face she couldn’t quite place, she’s always been bad at faces. He held out his hand, reaching for her.
“Sorry about that, I didn’t mean to startle you,” he began as Pepa grabbed his hand and he pulled her up. His voice had a sweet and caring sound to it, and as they stood eye to eye she saw that she was taller than him. “I really didn’t mean to, I just wanted to cheer you up.”
He seemed so… cheerful? In a way she couldn’t explain. Happy, as he stood there, seemingly unbothered as the rain drenched him. She nodded, not really knowing what to say.
“It’s fine. I should be the one saying sorry, the rain is all my fault,” she replied, before once again muttering a few clear skies as she tried to get it to stop. “I’m Pepa, the weather one.” She gestured in the direction towards Casita.
“Nice to meet you Pepa, I’m Félix.”
He sat down on the stone, gesturing for her to do the same.
“But it’s raining and you’re all wet, shouldn’t you go inside?”
“I could, but then I would leave you alone out here, wouldn’t I? Who would I be if I didn’t keep you company? You looked a bit lonely.”
“You’d… keep me company out here in the rain?”
“Of course, if that’s what you want. It’s such a nice day, isn’t it?”
She couldn’t stop herself from letting out a small laugh.
“Nice day? It’s a storm!”
Pepa had never been more confused in her life, but Félix seemed like such an interesting man. So kind, so gentle, and seemed to do his best to cheer her up, and with her laughter in the air and the storm slowly turning into a light drizzle, it seemed to work.
After their encounter during that rainy day, Pepa noticed Félix everywhere she went. He was new in the town, having recently moved there to start a new life after saying his last goodbyes to his family that was no longer living, and he spent most of his days walking around helping with odd jobs of all kinds. Helping to build new buildings, helping at the fruit stands, tending to the crops at the fields. All with a big happy smile on his soft face, even when he looked tired from all the labor, he still smiled.
Every time Pepa saw him, they waved at each other, and Félix always greeted her with a happy grin before he asked how she was feeling and doing. Sometimes they even spoke to each other for a few minutes, and sometimes the stray compliments Félix gave her made her feel all warm and flushed. In return, she called him stray pet names and told him that it was literally impossible to be as happy as he was, and he would always answer with, “Why would I not be happy when I have everything I want in life? I’m trying to live to the fullest, querida .”
The first time Félix had called her that, she had been so surprised that she had struck them both by lightning, only for Félix to laugh it off while Pepa thought she was about to die from embarrassment.
“Looks like you got my attention, didn’t you?”
“Shut up. Come on, I’ll get you one of my sister’s arepas. Your hair smells burnt.”
A few days after the lightning incident, Pepa was once again back in the town, this time only a small cloud above her head while the blue sky was still clear (for now). She had been fighting with her mother about her not having enough control over her gift and that she needed to stop acting strange with her flapping her fingers, running her fingers through or biting her braid, or spinning around as she made occasional high pitched sounds as she looked at the pretty fabric of her dress, and without thinking she had stormed out of Casita without a real goal in mind, which is how she suddenly found herself eye to eye with Félix. She suppressed the quick urge to look away.
Without thinking, her mind had taken her to him, and she started to understand why. Félix was special in a way she couldn’t explain, and unlike her own hurricane of constantly changing emotions, Félix was always happy and nice, and so kind to her no matter how she was feeling. He made her feel happy in a way she couldn’t explain, safe, even.
“Hola, querida, how are you?” he had asked her as he had seen her from the distance and waved at her, the sweetest and biggest smile on his face, and for a split second Pepa forgot that she was feeling sad in the previous moment, until some more water fell down over her head. Right .
“To be honest, with the way I’m feeling I’m surprised the rain hasn’t spread to town yet,” she said in an annoyed tone as she pointed up towards the cloud over her head. She was drenched, and mentioning said weather caused the rain to become heavier.
“We can’t have that, can we?” Félix said as he took her hand in his own and stood close to her, so close that the cloud was drenching him too. “Come on, walk with me querida, tell me about what happened.”
Pepa does. She tells him about how confusing her powers make her feel, how she can never control them and how her mother acts. She tells him about the way she sometimes acts and how she’s encouraged to stop with that too, and how all of that is making her feel exhausted and heavy. Félix never interrupts her and listens with a heavy heart and nods, holding Pepa’s hand tighter as they walk through the town.
“You shouldn’t have to act like someone you’re not because of other people. It’s not good to bottle your emotions, and there's nothing wrong with the way you act. We’re all human, aren’t we? And you’re Pepa, and you’re amazing just the way you are. That’s what I like about you.”
Félix is kind and comforting, and with him Pepa feels seen and heard, even if he makes her feel so confused. He makes her feel happy, and she still couldn’t believe that he was there beside her, willingly holding her hand and walking with her under her cloud even if it meant he got as drenched as she did. It’s like she was sharing that annoying burden of her gift with someone else that didn’t find her strange or weird. At that moment, it felt like she never wanted to let go of his hand.
As they enter the town square, they’re both drenched, and her cloud is still raining, but instead of a wild downpour it has now become an average sprinkle. Félix tells a joke and she laughs, loud and clear as she flaps her free hand in happiness, not a care in the world.
Then she hears the first whisper, and sees the first person who secretly tries to point at her and it feels like all of her body freezes to ice and she realizes they aren’t alone, but surrounded by so many people that have all judged her since she was a small child. She’s the center of the gossip, the living weather forecast of the Madrigal, one of the two hated triplets that only causes misery to the town. She was the strange one that never acted quite “normal”, not like the others. The way her brain seemed to work differently than how other people’s did, and for a split second she sees herself as a small girl being scolded by her mother to behave like a proper girl and stop her nonsense. She swallows nervously and seconds later she hears the sound of thunder coming from her cloud. She steps closer towards Félix without thinking about it, wanting him near.
Félix for some reason hasn’t reacted to the people around them yet, it’s like he had blocked out everything that wasn’t her. He didn’t hear the whispers and he didn’t see the wait people pointed at her with disgusted or annoyed looks. He did hear the thunder, however. But he just looked at her with that stupid smile of his and said, “Lovely weather, isn’t it?”
That line confused her so much . The weather wasn’t lovely, she was thundering and both of them were soaked, and she could feel how it was mere seconds away from getting worse as she felt the control slowly slipping away.
Come on Pepa, clear skies, clear skies .
How could he think all of this was lovely? All of her? She was a living hurricane that couldn’t be tamed, and she just made life harder for anyone around her. Yet there Félix was there, seemingly completely unbothered about the cloud, just looking at her like how a prince looked at the princess in the storybooks her mother had read to her, Bruno and Julieta as children. Dreamy and happy, and it confused her.
But just before she was about to ask him about it, they were interrupted.
“Lovely weather, are you blind?”
It was a young man speaking, from what Pepa could remember he was the older brother of a girl that her mother had tried to set up with Bruno only for it to fail miserably. He got their attention, as well as the attention of everyone around them, and Pepa immediately felt trapped as all eyes were on her like thousands of jaguars about to bounce on their prey. Her grip around Félix's hand became ten times as tight and she swore she could hear bone break as she was shaking.
“There’s never any good weather when that freak is around. She can’t control her powers at all and we’re all just suffering because of her,” the man continued and Pepa hears several “yes” and sees some people not in disapproval. It’s too much, and thunder can be heard from the sky as the rain begins to fall down as a strong, horrified wind almost blows her away into the air. The only thing keeping her from running away was Félix’s hand.
“Clear skies, clear skies, clear skies.”
She’s frantic, a raw panic in her voice. This wasn’t how anything was supposed to happen. Now she was proving the villager’s point and Félix would hate her just like everyone else. She didn’t want to lose him.
“See? She’s already going crazy!” The man screams, and all Pepa wants to do is to sink into the earth and disappear, but she’s all cold and frozen, and feels a pain in her head as she’s suddenly hit with a big piece of ice, hail. This is even worse than she thought, clear skies, clear skies .
Félix let go of her hand, and Pepa is seconds away from falling down onto the ground to cry, grieving about the loss of whatever it was they had. After a whole lifetime of being judged and being told she was useless, she should be used to this, but the thought of losing Félix terrified her like nothing she has ever felt before. Anything but Félix, clear skies.
But instead of turning against her and telling her she’s a burden like everyone else did, he walked up to the boy with anger in his steps, all of his body stiff. The happy, always smiling Félix had a huge, angry frown on his face, and at that moment, Pepa was terrified.
“What’s wrong with you?”
His scream echoes through the town, ringing in Pepa’s ears as she sees him screaming at the man, throwing around his arms into the air out of pure anger.
“What do you mean?”
“How could you ever think it’s okay to treat someone like this? All of you here in town! You should be ashamed of yourselves! Pepa is nice and wonderful and should be able to experience all emotions like the rest of you and not feel like she’s forced to lock some of them away just because of her powers! She’s a human like everyone else here and all of you are feeling the same emotions, do you think it is easy for her when her emotions are basically always on display for anyone to see? The way you’re treating her is shameless! Is this really how you’re supposed to treat someone, especially one of the people that is giving back to the community every day? Would you want to be treated like this?”
Pepa is more tense than she had ever been in her life, watching the interaction with big, confused eyes. This was all so new, so strange. He was defending her, and something in her warmed. Yes, the thunder was still going strong, but some of the rain became lighter, and the temperature went up at least five degrees, making the air hot and humid.
Félix kept screaming at the townspeople who looked like a mixture of ashamed and startled. He went on and on about the proper way someone should treat someone and that Pepa deserved so much better than how the townspeople acted. It warmed her heart, she was speechless. No one had defended her like that before except her siblings, and the fact that it was sweet and caring Félix that she had been convinced couldn’t even be mean to a mosquito made it feel so much more special. She felt her heart beating quickly and heavy in her chest and she intertwined her fingers and squished together hard to distract herself as everything almost became too much. Too many sounds, the thunder was loud, and all eyes were on her and all she wanted to do was to bite her braid to try to calm down, but she couldn’t in front of all these people.
Eventually Félix stops screaming and the townspeople look like they have seen a ghost, the man who had started it all looks pale and slithers away. Félix turns around, and he immediately sees that Pepa is in distress and reaches for her with his hand. She takes his hand, and he looks up into her eyes for a split second until she looks further down into the ground.
“How are you feeling, querida?” he asks and Pepa can hear the worry in his voice.
“Too many people,” she manages to say and Félix simply nods before he starts walking, taking her out of the heart of the town, towards the edge of the forest. They walk in silence, the thunder in the sky slowly stops and the sky is once again blue, but the cloud over her head is still there, a light drizzle of confusion. The heat is still warm and humid, and every time she sneaks a glimpse at Félix’s face she swears it becomes warmer.
Soon, she’s sitting down on the stone where she met him for the first time. They’re alone and she finally takes her braid and lets her fingers run over the nice soft texture of her hair, and Félix gives her a small smile.
“Just a second,” he says before he disappears behind a bush, and half a minute later he is back, holding a single tiny flower in his hand, with the biggest smile on his flushed face. He gently places it in her hand, and Pepa looks at him in confusion. “For you, to make you feel better. A flower almost as pretty as you.”
The cloud over her head disappears, her eyes light up and a warm smile forms around her face as she feels the excitement build up in her chest. The way Félix had called her pretty had awoken something in her she couldn’t explain, and before she knew it she saw a big colorful rainbow up in the sky. She turned away in embarrassment as Félix let out a laugh, his voice was so sweet .
“Thank you,” she said. “For the flower, and for standing up for me. It means a lot.”
He takes her hand in his own, and she sees how his eyes twinkle when he looks at her. Before Félix had time to answer, something overtook her and Pepa felt braver than she had done in months, blurting out exactly what was on her mind.
“Do you want to go on a date with me sometime?”
She swore she had never seen such a big smile on Félix's face ever before.
“I’d love to, querida! How about this weekend? Lunch on me?”
“It’s a date.”
For the rest of the day, Encanto is blessed with warm weather and heavy sunlight, all created by pure happiness.