Chapter Text
Shhhhhh shh shh. Shhhhhh shh shh. Shhhhhh shh shh…
He rocked his torso swiftly back and forth, holding his knees closer to his body and closing his eyes in desperation. Shhhhhh shh shh. Please stay quiet, p-please stay quiet. I-I-I know you're scared, but we’ve got to stay quiet. Shhhhhh shh shh.
Bruno was huddled in the corner of his room, wedged beside several crates of heavily worn books and an unfinished wall. His rats skittered frantically in front him, unwilling to leave him to go hide as their instincts called them to, but also unable to keep still in the oppressive panic that thickened the air. He moved his hands from his knees to his ears, but even with his palms pressed as hard into his head as he could manage, he could still hear the screaming.
Shhhhh….Sh-Shh…Shhhh…
The pattern of his breath broke slightly at the horrible sound and he lost his tight grasp on his voice, a whimper slipping past his lips. SHHHH shh shh… he struggled to regain a measure of control. Shhhh shh shh…
She’s okay, she’s okay, she’s going to be okay.
She sounds like she’s dying.
She’s not dying, she’s not dying, it always sounds like this, you remember. Remember? E-each and every time, thunder and lightning and hail and screams, but that’s, that's how it’s supposed to go, right? Well…maybe except the lightning…
A wail intensified and then broke into agonizing sobs, and Bruno felt a matching sob escape his own chest.
No no no, you have to be quiet, p-please be quiet…Shhhhh…Shh…Shh…
We don’t know this time. We don’t know if it’s going to be okay. We didn’t look, we let her down, we just let her come to it alone without anyone checking if-if-if it will be okay…
It will be okay…
Please God let it, let it be okay…
He’d known this moment would come, and that it would come soon, even without his gift to jab warnings into his brain. He could feel it coming in the shift of the atmosphere around Casita, a vaguely familiar misty quality in the air, charged, like just before a storm, and even within the walls it had grown a bit more intense each day. Then, this morning, just as Bruno reached to smear spackle across a fresh crack that had emerged over the door of his room, the flash of lightning had suddenly blinded him and the thunder had reverberated through every wall in the house, nearly knocking him from his ladder, and he'd felt an icy chill cut into the air as the sharp clatter of hail began to sound from the wall to the dining room. And not long after, the horrible screaming had begun.
He pulled his hood lower over his head.
The labor itself usually didn’t scare him–not as much as it awakened in him a rare tinge of gratitude that he was himself , that no matter what burdens he came to bear, he would never have to bear the burdens of childbirth. Caray, had he dodged a bullet on that front, being born the only boy among girls. It was perhaps the only successfully dodged bullet of his life. He was well acquainted with labor though; he’d heard childbirth five times already, in the actual present, and countless other times in the roaring whirlwind of his vision cave. With Julieta around, labors usually went just fine, if not enjoyably so. It sounded awful, but he knew it would turn out okay in the end.
But that was it, wasn’t it?
He’d always known it would turn out okay. He’d dragged himself, shaking, into his vision cave each and every time his sisters had announced their pregnancies, forcing himself to look with terrified eyes to make sure baby and mother would make it through okay. And they always had. He wouldn’t exactly call a vision of his sisters screaming in agony a good vision, but it still ended well, and that brought him peace. He was always careful to avoid actually looking at the babies in his visions, though—he wanted to be surprised, to be fully in the present moment when he got to meet them for the first time, without the future crawling down his back. He’d watch just enough from within the sand to make sure he heard that first gasping newborn cry before letting the sand fall and clutching the glass to his chest in order to calm his thundering heart. He didn’t know what he’d do if he lost either of them…
…but he had lost them already, hadn’t he?
There was no comforting vision to tell him that everything would be okay this time, because he’d lost his gift and his sisters and his family already, in all the ways that felt real, that mattered. He hadn’t hugged them in five years, hadn’t spoken to them in any way they could actually hear. Hadn't even heard them speak his name. He sat with them at dinner, closed his eyes and pretended to be sitting beside them, but there had been a crack-filled wall dividing him from his family for five years now, a wall he had put there, and sometimes he felt so incredibly lost behind it.
But that was still entirely different than really losing them, in losing them like his papá was lost to Mamá, in losing forever –much more than just a wall between them. The loss of his leaving was infinitely different from the loss of death: that permanent drop from the rushing flow of time that no powers or miracle could ever, ever call back.
He couldn’t lose her, he just couldn’t.
God, please let it be okay….
Shhhhhh Shh Shh…
Suddenly, the screams fell silent, and the quiet rang in Bruno’s ears. His heart stopped, his breath caught. Then he scrambled to his feet and raced out the door of his room.
He stumbled over stairs and holes and landings, grabbing with desperate hands at pipes and boards to pull himself through to the second floor of the house, and there, behind a thinned stretch of boarded wall that he knew was the other side of Pepa’s room, he paused with bated breath and pressed his ear to the wood to listen.
And then he heard a cry, a tiny, raspy cry, and it was the most wonderful sound he’d ever heard in his whole life. He heard Pepa crying, too, laughter breaking through her tears, and heard the soft patter of rain replacing the hammer of hail on the other side of the wall. He felt another sob escape him, but his hand was already clasped tightly over his mouth, muffling the sound. He turned his back to the wall and slid to a seat on the dusty floor, forcing himself to take slow, deep breaths to calm his frantic trembling.
She’s okay. She’s okay. They’re both–they’re both okay.
He sat there for a long while, breathing slowly, quietly, and listening to the muffled garble of happy tones carrying through the wood to him. He smiled and let his eyes fall closed, feeling a couple of his rats approach and climb onto his shoulders. He tilted his head toward them, whispering imperceptibly, really more mouthing than whispering, She did it. She's okay.
Gradually the house fell into a contented murmuring quiet, the kind that only comes in the heady joy of a new birth. Everyone walks more lightly on their feet, their heads full of clouds and sunlight. Everyone speaks in slightly hushed tones, out of instinct before the tender new ears, out of reverence before the wonder of new life.
Bruno couldn't see his new sobrino (“A sobrino!” he'd heard Agustín exclaim loudly with delight when it had come time for him to come visit, only to be shushed goodnaturedly by Julieta) but that was okay. Really, it was totally fine, because Pepa was okay, and the baby was okay. He didn't know the baby's name yet, hadn't been able to catch it among the muffled soft voices that came to Pepa's room. But they were okay. That was all that mattered. He didn't need to know.
He didn't need to be any closer.
And in the quiet of the evening that eventually fell, when mother and baby and father and abuela and tíos and primos and hermanos and all the Casa Madrigal had fallen for just a moment into a quiet, exhausted stillness, Bruno whispered that to himself.
It's okay. I'm okay. She's okay, and so it's all okay. I'm okay.
I'm okay .
Shhhhhh shh shh. Shhhhhh shh shh. Shhhhhh shh shh.
Bruno closed his eyes and allowed himself to get lost in the diverting pull of the past.
—
Shhhhhh shh shh. Shhhhhh shh shh. Shhhhhh shh shh…
He rocked his torso swiftly back and forth, holding the bundle closer to his body and closing his eyes in desperation. Shhhhhh shh shh. Please hush, please hush. I know you’ve got to be tired, monadita. Shhhhhh shh shh.
He’d only come downstairs for a drink of water. And yet, here he was now, markedly without any beverage to speak of, alone in his room instead with a baby that was wailing like she was being tortured, desperately praying que Dios tenga misericordia de ambas de sus almas and would ease the kid into some sort of peaceful sleep that neither of them seemed to be able to even fathom any longer.
How did he even get himself in this situation?
He’d woken up at an ungodly hour of the night, (...or perhaps it was morning? He wasn’t sure) impossibly tangled in his blankets, mouth filled with sand.
Most nights his dreams were…unusual, but not alarming, filled with strange ephemeral glimpses of futures far beyond himself. Sometimes he enjoyed his chaotic half-dreams, allowing himself to float through whatever carried him each night, gazing in passive, detached wonder at things that drifted above him, like a swimmer reclining lazily in the water of a slowly flowing stream. There were no expectations in his dreams. He didn’t have to pay attention, look look look look, don’t miss a thing. He didn’t even have to remember, though he often did anyway. He could just be as it all enveloped him in an cool embrace that was both unsettling and yet comforting in its familiarity.
But sometimes… sometimes his dreams would suddenly become clawing and fearsome as he found himself desperately grappling with a half-vision that seemed to pull him down with it even as he tried to help it surface, trying and failing with all his rudimentary instincts to keep them both above the waterline. He’d wake up panicked with only flashing glimpses of what the vision actually entailed, covered in sand that he’d pulled from all corners of his room to surround himself in a half-conscious, reflexive attempt to push the terrifying future from his mind. Sand in his mouth, sand in his eyes, sand in his bed… ay dios mio. I need water, he’d thought tiredly when he’d finally managed to get his bearings in the present, but something stronger than water didn’t sound half bad either.
He’d planned to slip downstairs on careful, silent feet to search for something to wash the sand from his mouth and the broken vision from his mind, not at all expecting to be met by any living soul. When he opened the door to his room, however, he was immediately met with the quiet but shrill sound of a baby crying, and the disquieting undertone of his sister murmuring back between muffled sobs. The sound had frozen him in place for a moment, as shocking and unexpected as it was.
Should…should he get someone to help? He took a half step in one direction, stepped back, pulled nervously on his own fingers. Should he get Agustín or maybe Pepa or…or…oh but then a disorienting rush had bubbled up in his brain, and his eyes had for a moment been blinded by a still, diaphanous portrait of his own hands reaching out to take a blanketed bundle from the arms of his sister. It was an after-image, glowing in haunting green, that shivered before his sight no matter where he looked, like when he stared too long at a flame. It was a remnant from the vision that had rudely awakened him.
When the image faded and he could again see the world around him, he took a shaky breath and crossed his fingers wryly at the heavens before heading in the direction of the crying.
Julieta was in the kitchen, pacing too and fro before the window, bouncing a crying Luisa and sniffing harshly between impossibly gentle murmurs of comfort and reassurance.
“Juli?” he whispered raspily, and she jumped in surprise, rolling her eyes despondently to the ceiling as the movement caused a resurgence in the wails from the bundle in her arms. "Sorry, sorry!" he hissed, putting up his palms toward her and wincing.
She looked at him then with wide, frantic eyes that scared him more than just a little bit. Yikes . When was the last time she’d slept? She looked…unhinged. That was typically his thing, and he didn’t like seeing it on Julieta. It unnerved him.
As the initial moment of shock passed, he saw her shoulders straighten, and she quickly mounted the effort to cover up her tears. But when she opened her mouth to whisper back to him, her tone did nothing to mask her shaky desperation.
“She won’t sleep, she won’t eat, she’s not wet. She won’t take milk, so I can’t heal her if she has a stomach ache or, or gas, or if something else is wrong, and Agustín has been up with her all night and I can’t make him take her again, but I’ve got to be up in two hours to start the buñuelos and the arepas for town, and…”
Bruno stepped forward and tentatively held out his arms, like he’d seen a copy of himself do just a moment ago. Julieta hesitated, drawing her mouth into a line that looked an awful lot like Mamá’s disappointed scowl (oh, but he would never utter that thought out loud, he’d learned his lesson on that front). He was taken aback at first, but Julieta’s eyes were unfocused, and Bruno realized after a moment that the all-to-familiar look of disappointment was aimed not at him, but inwardly at herself. He took another step forward.
“I’m already up,” he urged gently. “I’m…uh, I’m a bit sandy, but I don’t think she’ll mind, right?” He shrugged, proffering his open arms out a little farther. Julieta’s gaze refocused on him, and she gave him a small smile that quivered ever so slightly. She crossed the rest of the distance between them and passed the screaming baby to Bruno. He slowly and cautiously pulled the bundle close, ignoring the tiny shiver that crawled down his back as his dream-vision of the future aligned perfectly with the present.
He didn’t know if it was the change of position, or maybe just the shock of new arms around her, but Luisita slowly quieted into tiny sputtering gasps as Bruno began to mirror Julieta’s bouncing, and his sister brought her hands to cover her mouth in surprise and relief. Bruno grinned goofily at the unexpected triumph, and Julieta smiled behind her hands at the increasingly rare sight.
“Go sleep,” he said to her with a more subdued, crooked smile, trying for Julieta’s sake to hide just how surprised he also was at the baby’s sudden calm. Project confidence, Bruno, reassurance, or she’ll never go take care of herself. I’ve got this, I’ve got this, I sincerely hope I’ve got this… “We’ll be okay.”
“You’ll come get me? If she’s hungry or she wakes up upset, or…”
He nodded in time with his slow bouncing, adding a bit of an exaggerated eye roll into the mix for good measure, and Julieta hissed at him quietly in return, gently smacking his shoulder. But then she leaned forward and kissed his cheek, leaving it a little wet with tears he couldn’t see in the dark of the kitchen, before tiptoeing back up toward the stairs, looking back every five steps to Bruno, who nodded encouragingly at each glance.
And then it was quiet.
After a few minutes, Bruno turned and bounced Luisita across the room with exaggerated bends to his knees, gradually making his way over to the dining room. He sent out a careful hand to pull a chair free from the table and gingerly lowered himself down in it. He slowly stopped bouncing…and immediately regretted the decision with all of his being.
“Oh, oh, no, no, no, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he whispered frantically as he rose again to his feet and resumed his bouncing, but it was too late, he’d disturbed the fragile peace and Luisa was off in another round of screams. Bruno grimaced anxiously up toward the ceiling where he knew his sister had likely just fallen into bed, and hesitated only a moment before flying up the stairs and into his room, shutting the door firmly behind him and looking down in shock and fear at the wailing infant in his arms. Within the walls of his room, Luisa’s cries echoed piercingly and he felt panic begin to rise in his chest.
He’d helped with the babies before. He’d held and sushed and rocked and changed, patted and bounced and swung and engaged in all manner of unusual movements to soothe his little sobrinas, but that was years ago. They were both toddlers now, and the baby in his arms was an entirely different manner of child than he remembered his other two nieces being. She was tiny, barely over a month old, but ay, the strength of those lungs! The dedication, the commitment! He’d actually be rather impressed if he also wasn’t completely horrified.
He began to walk circles around the room, muttering it’s okay, it’s okay, we’re okay as much to himself as to the baby in his arms. He shifted her onto his shoulder and began to sway from foot to foot instead, engaging her in a strange, halting waltz across the floorboards. She continued to cry.
He hummed, he sang– oh, nope, nope, that made it worse, no singing –he babbled and begged, but Luisita continued to cry.
That’s how he found himself collapsed, somewhat defeated, on the floor in front of the red leather chair that occupied the corner of his room, his hand rubbing desperately up and down her tiny back. In his mindless grasping at any and all methods for soothing, he’d stumbled into a pattern of quiet shushing that he repeated now.
Shhhhhh shh shh. Shhhhhh shh shh. Shhhhhh shh shh.
Lindita, monadita, dulcita, Luisita… he mumbled hushed endearments into the soft top of her head between batches of shushings, and slowly, almost imperceptibly at first, he felt the tension leave her tiny body as she finally seemed to run out of strength to cry.
Shhhhhh shh shh. Shhhhhh shh shh. Shhhhhh shh shh.
He didn’t dare stop this time, leaning back on his chair but continuing the strange makeshift lullaby even as he closed his own eyes, exhausted.
Shhhhhh shh shh. Shhhhhh shh shh. Shhhhhh shh shh.
He didn’t remember falling asleep, but that is how Julieta found him the next morning, head back on the cushion of his chair, mouth open and quietly snoring, Luisita nestled peacefully on his chest.
She'd smiled, hand to her heart, and tiptoed back out of the door, leaving them to sleep a bit longer among the lullaby of falling sand that quietly hushed through the room.
—
Shhhhhh shh shh. Shhhhhh shh shh. Shhhhhh shh shh.
Quiet, quiet, quiet…