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amorhedera:

I saw an au on Tiktok where Bruno is Mirabel’s father and I couldn’t stop thinking about it, so here you go.

• Bruno falls in love with a girl in the village that has moved there to get away from her demanding and overbearing family. They elope and have Mirabel before her family finds out and takes her away.
• Devastated, the only comfort Bruno has is Mirabel. He sings to her and tells her stories about his sisters and him growing up together.
• On the night of Mirabel’s gift ceremony, Alma has a feeling that Mirabel will get a gift that will be just as much of a problem as Bruno’s is. Using better words than this, she asks Bruno to look into the future and see what will happen.
• He gets the vision we see in the movie of Casita breaking because of Mirabel. Terrified that his family would blame both him and Mirabel for this, he thinks about running away, but decides to lie to him mother instead. He tells her that he couldn’t see anything, and that her future was still unwritten.
• When Mirabel gets no gift, he immediately knows that Casita will break because of it. The family will treat her like an outcast just like they do him, and she will grow up hated by the masses. He knows he has to leave Mirabel without him to give her a fighting chance, but he can’t bring himself to do it. Casit lets him hide in the walls, leaving him little cracks in the walls to watch his daughter grow up.
• She cries for days and days after her gift ceremony, for her Papa to come and console her, but he never does. From behind the walls, he spends days and days crying and murmuring apologies that only Dolores could hear.
• The adults have a family meeting and declare that Bruno has left and abandoned his daughter for not having a gift. They make him out to be a villain, because when don’t they. They come to the decision that Juliéta and Agustín will be her parents now, that she is young enough that she will be able to be transferred like this.
• Agustín comforts her, and tells her that her dad is here, and she is so upset that she doesn’t even question it. She needs someone to be there for her, and he is. After a bit of confusion from the kids and the town, the story cleans itself up. The village picks up on the change and accepts it, quickly moving Bruno into the “Never Ever Talk About” category. Isabela and Luisa pick up on it but they know that she isn’t their sister, that she’s Tio Bruno’s daughter. Luisa pretty quickly just starts to think she imagined it and ignores the idea and accepts Mirabel as her sister, but Isabela takes her confusion out on Mirabel.
• As the years go by, people forget that Bruno was her father. She forgets, the town forgets, and her new sisters forget. Isabela’s resentment to Mirabel seemingly comes from a place of her not having a gift. Juliéta and Agustín spend lots of time full of guilt for doing this to their hermano Bruno, but Alma is always quick to remind them that Bruno left Mirabel and they just didn’t want the poor little girl to have that on her shoulders.
• Bruno, watching from the walls, is absolutely livid about this development. But as time goes on, he realizes that the secret makes Mirabel more welcome to everyone in town. If she’s Juliéta’s daughter as opposed to his, people will be more willing to like her. He slowly accepts that this is good for her, but he resents his mother for thinking he would just run out on his daughter like that.
• He watches her grow up, and he watches the family grow, and he watches as Mirabel becomes more and more like her mother every day.
• When Antonio’s gift ceremony comes, he’s been sealing up hidden cracks for almost two years now, and desperately hoping that his vision was wrong and Mirabel isn’t doing anything. He sees her tell the family about the cracks and watches as Alma dismisses her with such anger and such vile words, and he nearly throws up. He’d thought that leaving her behind, that letting her Julieta’s daughter would make everything okay for her, but he should have known that he can never stop his visions from coming true.
• He sees Mirabel with the vision that he destroyed, and he feels like his world is falling apart. He can’t save her from this, and he knows it, and he feels like a horrible father. He’s so panicked about it that he doesn’t even notice as she finds her way into his secret passageways.
• He runs because he doesn’t know what else to do. He thinks she’ll hate him for leaving her, for letting them lie to her, for the vision, for not being there. But then she falls. His heart drops down to his feet, and he immediately runs to catch her. The drop is shallow (he knows, he’s fallen down it several times) but even so, he’d never let her fall. Hearing her voice, begging for help from Casita, he can’t just leave.
• She sees where he lives and she seems shocked that he survived this long. He doesn’t mention to her all the nights when he’d sneak out into the kitchen for food, the living room for blankets when it was cold, or to the nursery, just to see her without boards in the way. He also doesn’t tell her about the nights before Antonio was born where he would sit in the rocking chair by her bed and sing songs to her while she slept, just like he used to. She doesn’t need to know that.
• She wants a vision from him, and he wants to say no, because he doesn’t want to curse her with the vision that will come, but he could never say no to her. The vision has her hugging Isabela, and he calls her Mirabel’s sister over a lump in his throat. She doesn’t need to know. It’s better if she doesn’t know.
• As soon as he gets back to the walls, he cries because she saw him and he saw her and she’s so big and she’s perfect.
• He watches as she helps Isabela, as they hug, as the candle burns brighter, and then it all goes to shit.
• She says to Alma the things that have been stuck in his throat since his own gift ceremony, and he couldn’t be prouder of her.
• He dives out of the house as it goes down, and it’s the first time he’s seen direct sunlight in years, but it doesn’t even matter because he needs to find Mirabel, to make sure his mom doesn’t blame her, to make sure she’s okay. He doesn’t realize until he’s halfway through the forest that his so-called gift is gone.
• He follows whatever paternal intuition he has and finds her with his mother in the lake clearing by the mountain. He starts to tell his mother that she didn’t do anything, that it was his vision, to just blame him, that he doesn’t care what she thinks of him but to keep his daughter out of this, but she cuts him off with a hug. Mirabel just tells them they have to get back to the house.
• They ride back to the house, and his mother asks all types of questions about where he’s been that he’s reluctant to answer with Mirabel right next to them. She’s horrified to find he’s just been living in the house, the walls, this whole time, that he’s seen everything and heard everything she said about him.
• He tells her it’s okay, because Mirabel is safe, and that’s all that matters. Mirabel asks why her specifically, and then they’re at Casita’s remains.
• They decide to rebuild the house, and his sisters are there and they missed him and they don’t hate him and Juliéta apologizes over and over again for taking his place, but he tells her that it’s okay because Mirabel is safe, and Mirabel jumps in with a “and what exactly do i have to do with whatever your taking about?” and Juliéta says “mija…” and he knows that it’s time.
• He holds his sister’s hand and cries as she tells Mirabel the truth. His daughter stares at him, and his eyes fall to the ground, he can’t look at her, she’ll hate him, and she’ll never want to see him again, and he should just leave she’ll never care for him the way she does Agustin, it won’t be the same, he should just let them all be, they were fine without him, and oh, she’s hugging him.
• She doesn’t call him dad, or any other variation, but she isn’t calling Juliéta “mom” anymore, and they just sit together sometimes at night after long days of rebuilding Casita and she’ll ask him questions and he’ll do his best with them.
• What was her mom like? Beautiful, brave, headstrong, just like you. Why didn’t she stay? She wanted to, but her family was of great importance in a father away town and they made her leave. Why did he leave? To protect her, always for her. Did I call you Dad? No, you called me Papa. I called you Mi Mariposita, you still are. What was I like as a baby? Perfect, quiet, happy, ready for anything, mine. Did you know I wouldn’t have a gift? No. I hoped, in my darkest hours, after bad visions, or horrible nightmares, I hoped you wouldn’t be shackled to one like I was mine, but I never meant for it to be like this.
• When Casita is finished, he gives her the doorknob with a big “M” on it, for Madrigal, but for Mirabel, too. She cries, and she hugs him, and tells him “Gracias, Papa.” and he cries too.
• For some time, she alternates between calling him Bruno and Papa, but she’s a lot more open about it now.
• She gets her own room for the first time in her life, and Casita lines the wall with green butterflies. She makes him a new ruana and he doesn’t take it off for a week.
• She finds out that after Casita came back, he hasn’t gone to his room, stealing sleep on the couch or an armchair or anywhere but his tower, so big and cold and lonely and far. She holds his hand and they go in together, and the tower is gone. It’s just a room decorated in green with pictures of his family, and a prophecy room off the end. He cries and she holds him and he tells her everything about all of it.
• He talks about her mother, about her beauty and her stubbornness, her courage, her love, how Mirabel is every bit as strong and amazing as she was, how he can see her in Mirabel’s quiet comfort and her loud love. He talks about why he left, about why he didn’t come out and tell her as soon as she started calling Agustín Dad like wanted to, and the nights when he would sit in her room and just watch her. He tells her about how the family made him feel, his paranoia, the pain of suppressing visions, the horror that floods through him at the idea of having another one. About how fast she’s grown, how amazing she’s become, how proud he is of her. They cry and cry and cry and she talks about how she’s always felt like she was on the outside even separate from not having a gift. About how she could tell that something was off, the heavy air of guilt that followed through years of her childhood, about what her childhood could have been, about how she still doesn’t really forgive Abuela, not yet, and she doesn’t know if she ever will. They spend the whole night on the floor of his new room and by the time morning comes she’s calling him Papa and never looking back.
• Sometimes Bruno will see a look on Juliéta’s face that makes him know that regret the decision as she does, she misses being Mirabel’s mother. The mild flinch that passes Agsutín every time she calls Bruno Papa, and the look of devastation that they both share when she starts calling them Tío and Tía. In years to come, it will get easier. They will forget how easy it was to be her parents, and they will move past it. But sometimes, in the middle of the night, Bruno can help but hate them just a little bit for the fact that they got to be there when she was growing up and he could only see her in the middle of the night of through the cracks in the walls.
• Life goes on. It gets easier. Dolores and Mariano get married. Isabela finds a nice village girl and falls in love. There are children, and there are gift ceremonies, and there are celebrations. Bruno learns how to be a father again. Luisa and Isabela start to call her primita instead of hermanita, and the pained looks that accompany it fade with time. Juliéta learns not to run to her the second she calls for help, and to let Bruno get to her first. Alma learns to focus on them as people as opposed to their gifts. They all grow, and they all move on.