Chapter Text
If she had a power, it would be her emotions controlling the weather.
Everyone in her life – even from a young age – had always told her she needed to keep her emotional state under wraps, always being too emotional, or completely devoid of emotion, there was no in between.
Leaving home, though hard, had been the best choice she could have made for herself.
"How do you feel about marriage?"
"Huh?" She shook her head, turning to look at him. "I… don't know. Haven't really thought about marriage much. Why?"
He smiled, taking her hands in his and cradling them to his chest. "Because I love you, mi vida. I just wanted to know."
The discovery had broken her all over again. He had gotten his hands on her heart, made it feel safe so it kept beating, then shattered it twice in mere hours.
"Pepita, has he ever hit you?" Bruno's voice was stern, like a booming echo that reverberated through her skull with no remorse.
She met his eyes, nodding. "Yes, a few times, years ago. But that's all he ever did to me! I swear, and I thought it was okay, that… that's what partners did."
His haze softened, "no, mi hermana. That's not normal, and it's not okay. Why didn't you call me when it happened? I could've gotten you out of here."
"Because… I loved him?"
She had loved him, soothed him when he broke his arm, sat by his side when his mom practically disowned him, only to have to endure his mom's wrath after he had been shot.
She called Bruno, telling him everything. It had taken her a while, her family's numbers buried at the bottom of her call logs.
Turns out he had been dictating who she called.
"Why did it take so long to call me?"
"Your contact was buried. It took me a while to find it."
"I thought your familia was pinned to the top?"
Pepa sighed. "He wanted me to unpin everyone and just pin him there, for easy calling. So I did."
Now, walking through the airport for the small town she grew up in, and the very same place she had run from, Encanto, she couldn't remember much of the past few days.
First, handing in a resignation to her boss had been difficult. The lab had been where she met him, Samuel. She knew, no matter how long Bruno had convinced her to stay in her hometown, she wouldn't be able to walk through the lab doors without remembering.
Secondly, she had left his funeral to his family to plan. She wouldn't have been able to stand there and mourn, not after what Bruno had told her.
"Did you know he was trying to get you pregnant so you wouldn't ever leave him?"
Pepa gasped. "No! I mean, we had been talking about a baby for a while, but… I always said I wasn't ready."
"Well, he was."
"How do you know?"
Bruno held up his phone, open on messages with one of his friends.
And, lo and behold, he and his friend had been talking about baby trapping Pepa. Bruno put the phone away before she could properly register the messages.
Looking back, she'd seen how big a mistake he was.
Pulling herself into her brother's car had been difficult, the memories nearly knocking her over. In all the eight years she had been in Brooklyn, he hadn't gotten a new car. It was still the same blue jeep, the same license plate, the same two hourglasses dangling from the rear-view mirror.
There was still a small carving in the back of the center console, where too many times Bruno had snuck Pepa and Félix out of town, drawn a small heart with " P + F " inside.
Too many sleepless nights, Bruno had taken her out of town to go sight-seeing.
He had taken her on a road trip in this very vehicle.
And now she was here, in the parking lot to an airport that eight years prior she had run to, buying a ticket in the middle of the night with Félix and ultimately changing the course of their lives entirely.
"Pepa?"
She glanced up, meeting her brother's hazel green hues, filled to the brim with concern. "Yeah?"
"Are you sure about this?"
"You're the one who convinced me to come back, tonto. "
He laughed, placing a pale hand on her knee. "That I did, yes. Isa and Luisa are excited to meet you."
"Who?"
Bruno turned, confusion clouding his gaze. "Julieta and Agustin's kids. You know, we sent you letters?"
"I didn't get any letters. Who is Agustin? Is it that scrawny kid we always saw in school? The one who would always follow Julieta around like a lost puppy?"
"Yep."
"She married him?!"
"Also yep."
"Dios mío."
" And they had kids?"
Bruno chuckled, focusing his eyes to the tarmac as he pulled out of the lot and onto the road. "My dear hermana Pepita, you've missed a lot."
The first thing Pepa saw when Bruno pulled into the driveway was two tiny faces in the window, twenty small fingers squished against their cheeks. She'd had to smile, opening her door and stretching the second she stood to her full height.
(She was still taller than Bruno, and she'd always hold that over him.)
The front door (still coloured as brightly as the day she was born. Tiny yellow handprints, mingling with similar blue and green ones, littering the wood with lighter shades inside the smallest) swung open, her mamá and papá standing on the other side, faint smiles ghosting their cracked lips.
Julieta pushed between them, almost tripping on the pavement as she ran to her sister, immediately gathering Pepa into her arms.
As soon as Pepa's shock had dissipated and she went to hug back, Julieta pulled away and punched her shoulder. Four times.
"That's for not being here when I got married!" She stated after the first punch, followed by: "and that's for missing the birth of Isa and Luisa‐" double punch– "and for me!"
"Okay—"
"How about we let her get settled in before we start… punching her and singing kumbaya?" Bruno interrupted, shooting Pepa an apologetic smile.
Mamá nodded, pulling papá back inside. "Come, Pepa, your old room is still set up."
"They all miss you."
She hummed, not looking up from the paper she had been signing.
"It's true. Mamá took all your pictures down, but I see her in her room looking at them with Papá."
She glanced up, meeting Bruno's eyes- so full of love and devoid of hatred. "It's true. Julieta talks about you all the time, too. Papá tries not to show it, but your absence hit him, probably the hardest."
"We never had the heart to change it,"
Bruno's voice startled her out of her memories.
Memories of her and Félix, curled up in her bed in the darkest hours of the night. Helping him sneak out the window before dawn, and back in just after dusk. The remnants of a smile as she curled back into bed, hugging the pillow he'd used and deemed as his as close to herself as possible.
It was the past, and she wasn't ready to face that kind of admiration again.
"Yeah. Apparently," she'd whispered, voice too soft to possibly be heard. But Bruno never let her down, coming up behind her, short as he is, and wrapping himself around her shoulders.
"I wasn't wrong when I told you we all missed you, as angry as they all were you never showed up for Julieta. They'll understand, in time," he stated, too calm, too full of love.
She turned in his arms and lifted him off the floor, not listening to his protests as she hugged him, squishing her hermanito against her.
"You know, I always thought it'd be you leaving the family, not me," Pepa said quietly, putting Bruno back on the ground.
The youngest triplet smiled, a dorky vision that Pepa had greatly missed. "I almost did. After you and Félix, I was thinking about moving out to Brooklyn to be with you, because I figured you'd need me. Félix caught me before I could go, though, and convinced me you were fine. So I stayed. I wish I hadn't."
"You always were the most lovable."
"And you always were a hurricane," he retorted, descending the two youngest into a laughing fit.
"You ready?" He asked, tapping her shoulder and nodding toward the front door.
She took a deep breath, staring at their childhood home like it had stolen her favorite blanket, "honestly? Not really. I haven't seen this family in, what, almost nine years? For god sake Bruno, I wasn't here when Julieta got married. Had kids. I'll probably never be ready. So let's go, before I change my mind."