Chapter Text
The four people sitting around the table were silent after Elena and Mirabel returned from her bedroom. Mirabel hadn't wanted either Pedro or Alma to be in there with her when Elena had been examining her. It was bad enough that they had had to help her last night after...that little hiccup.
Mirabel’s hands were shaking now, as she hid them in her lap. Her stomach roiled wildly, like one of Tia Pepa's mood swings when she'd been pregnant with Antonio, rain lashing at the windows, threatening a hurricane one moment, calm wind and gentle sunshine a few minutes later, no in between. In front of her was a steaming mug of chocolate santaferano that Alma had placed in front of her when she'd come back in and sat down without saying anything. Pedro was pouring whiskey into his cup, and Alma had her fingers in her mouth, absently biting at the nails. Mirabel felt a hysterical giggle bubbling in her throat that she kept having to swallow down. And to think Abuela had on more than one occasion admonished Mirabel, her hermanas or her primos not to chew on their fingers because it was a dirty, disgusting habit. Just on principle Mirabel wanted to reach out and yank the woman's hand away and tell her to not do that.
“Elena?” Pedro asked, lifting his eyes, gesturing toward Mirabel, throat constricting as he tried to find the words to ask the question they were all thinking.
Evidently he couldn't bring himself to force them out, as he let out a soft breath and his jaw went tight as he stared the midwife down, waiting for an answer. Mirabel didn't blame him, she couldn't even bring herself to think those words. Not just yet. Maybe her suspicions were wrong, maybe it had just been gas or, or a tapeworm? Or something? She glanced up at the man and then almost immediately looked away, back down into her untouched mug as if it held all the secrets of the universe within it and she wanted to find them all.
Mirabel felt a little, just a very little frightened at the intense look of contained anger she had seen in Pedro's eyes, melting together with fear and grief that they even had to question this. Had he looked like that the night he--no, she shook her head sharply at that thought. Had he looked like that, it was surprising that the men had continued to pursue the surviving villagers before the Miracle sealed Abuela and the rest of the Encanto's original inhabitants off from their would-be-murderers. Besides, there was nothing she could do about that just yet. She didn't know exactly when the raids had started, only that they would come a few weeks after Mama, Tia Pepa and Tio Bruno would be born. And that wasn't for almost seven months yet. She still had time to think up a solution to both saving Abuelo's life and ensuring the Miracle came to be without any problems. The Other let out a low, rumbling growl of agreement at the thought. They would find a solution. Mirabel would not allow her abuelo to die, not when she had finally gotten to know him. It wouldn't be fair for her to have this chance, and Mama, Tia Pepa and Tio Bruno to never know their father.
"Mira, do you want us to step outside?" Alma asked quietly, twisting an embroidered handkerchief between her fingers. Her eyes were firmly on the table.
Mirabel considered saying yes, before shaking her head in denial. She reached out and grasped the hand of the woman who was, at this very moment, carrying her mama, tia and tio. Besides, they all already suspected. And they would be there in the aftermath of whatever decision she made. If there was even a decision to make, and Mirabel prayed that she was wrong, that she'd jumped to conclusions and was not pregnant after all. She nodded to Elena to go ahead with whatever she was going to say.
The older woman pursed her lips, meeting Mirabel's eyes. Finally, after a long pause Elena spoke the damning words that rang through Mirabel's head like a death knell as she sat there, gripping the table so hard she was sure her nails would leave indents in the wood.
Pregnant.
Five months.
Almost half way through. Mirabel. Was. Pregnant.
Mirabel shuddered, closing her eyes, wishing that this all was nothing but a horrible, confusing nightmare. “No.”
She shook her head desperately. The denial that she had still been clinging to the threads of since last night were being brutally ripped down by Elena's words, even as she fought to hold onto it, fruitless as it was. When she peeked up from her drink, all three adults were sitting there, watching her. Pity. Grief. Guilt. Anxiety. All those emotions playing together on their faces. Mirabel despised it.
It reminded her too much of her botched Gift Ceremony. Of Antonio's Ceremony, when the guests had watched her, 'poor, Giftless little Mirabel Madrigal,' walking her cousin down the aisle only for him to receive both a Gift and a Room from the Miracle. That had felt like a slap in the face and she had left Casita while they were partying. Was her Gift so horrible that she wasn't permitted to be a full member of the family? That she should be pushed aside and forgotten until she made herself known, forced herself among them? Was she doomed to be rejected as Tio Bruno had been, to the point where she, like he had, would choose to abandon the Encanto entirely?
A snarl in her head had Mirabel snapping her head up. Her other self growled lowly, pressed close to Mirabel's mind. Images flashed between them, of her familia, of the woods, of the man she had killed years ago for hitting his wife and scaring his daughters. Of the story her Papa had told her, of his scar and the dangers of the lands outside of the Encanto. No, her Gift, unlike Tio Bruno's was unknown. Also unlike him with his visions which could not be controlled, Mirabel could control her Gift--mostly. She would be safe, as long as she managed to get back to her own time. No one would ever be able to force themselves on her ever again as soon as she figured out how to break down whatever was preventing her from transforming.
“Mira?” Pedro asked, carefully stretching out a hand toward her from across the table.
She rocked a little in her chair, startled out of her quickly spiraling thoughts. The faintest pressure on her back brought to mind the strange, spiny ridges that sometimes popped up from along her spine—as if she needed another way to kill or maim humans. Mirabel stared at her Abuelo's hand like it was an alien thing. Long, strong fingers—artists hands her Papa would have said. Pianist hands. Pedro's other hand was still wrapped around the mug in front of him, the palm wrapped up in a white bandage from scraping his hand on a rock. There were a few flecks of blood that had managed to seep through the cloth, and Mirabel unconsciously licked her lips at the faint taste of iron and life that hung in the air. She glanced up at him, a rush of some unknown emotion rose up as she met his warm, pitying gaze and she wanted to sink her teeth into someone, let their hot blood slide down her throat, feel the pulse speed up before slowing down as she tore flesh from bones and her victim died screaming.
“I…I’m sorry, Elena. But, I…I can’t be pregnant. I—” Mirabel felt the tears that had been pricking at her eyes overflow and start to stream down her cheeks. “I’m fifteen,” she whispered.
She closed her eyes, and the image of Abuela, as Mirabel had always known her appeared. The version of Abuela in her mind's eye frowned down at her, wrinkles on her face deepening in disappointment and concern. Just like she had the day after Mirabel's Gift Ceremony went awry and she'd been found standing outside the nursery, in front of where her Door had been waiting for her the night before. Waiting for it to come back. Mirabel could almost hear the despairing “Mirabel, what trouble have you gotten into this time?”
“I’m just fifteen!” Mirabel choked out, feeling like her throat was closing up from the tears. Standing up, she nearly turned the chair over in her haste to leave the table. No one tried to stop her as she ran and locked herself into what she had begun to think of as her room, rather than the guest room. There, she pulled up her shirt to stare down at her stomach.
There was no soft roundness, no glow to her skin like Mama had claimed that she had had while pregnant with Mirabel and her hermanas. And she had no idea about the possible physical symptoms Tia Pepa may have gone through in her pregnancies with Dolores and Camilo, though the everchanging weather that had ripped through the Encanto hourly when she’d been pregnant with Antonio was unforgettable (that had been a bad year for the farmers).
Mirabel turned to examine herself in the cracked mirror that hung on the wall. Twisting and turning as she tried to find some sign that she might have missed. Mirabel was aware enough of her body to not have been blind to the fact that she'd been gaining a bit of weight, but she'd put it down to Alma's and Pedro's mother Rosa's cooking (Mama had gotten her talent for cooking delicious foods rightly it seemed). Adding to that Senora Rosa kept trying to feed her and Alma every time the woman saw them. But looking at it critically, she knew that it couldn't have just been that. Aside from the time she'd been laid up in bed recovering, she'd done her best to keep as active as she did in the Encanto, trying to put it all behind her, aside from that night that Marco had covered for her and she'd avenged herself. She hadn't wanted to think about it, hadn't wanted any reminders.
Mirabel grimaced as she continued to examine herself in a new light, as she was forced to reckon with the fact that she'd been willfully blind the last five months. It was evident now when she wasn't hiding from it. A dark chuckle spilled from her lips as her hand dropped to cup her lower abdomen, and she could almost imagine that she felt a small push into the palm of her hand. But that was probably her own mind playing tricks on her. An image of the small vials of poisonous substances that Elena had been bringing her those first few weeks after the attack came to her mind, and she shook her head, realizing only now exactly what the woman had been trying to do for her. Now that she was thinking about it, Mirabel did recall Elena trying to explain what they were for, had tried to convince her to take them as a precaution against anything that that monster had left her with. You stupid, stubborn fool, Mirabel shook her head bitterly. She had been adamant that she didn't need them, that she wasn't pregnant and now look at her.
It wouldn't have killed you, a viscous voice whispered in her head accusingly. It would have hurt, sure, but she'd seen how her Gift tried to work through the confines of time-travel that time she'd sliced her hand open a few days before the attack. While she couldn't transform outright, her body healed itself at the same rate as it always had since her fifth birthday, quicker than a human, but not as instantaneous as Mama's cooking allowed for. She could have taken the vial and it would have dealt with this whole thing before it blew up into a bigger problem.
Once again, her fingers dug into the flesh of her stomach, as she remembered the movement she’d felt last night.
“I can’t be a mother,” Mirabel whispered to herself. She slid down the wall before landing on the floor, curling up and staring at where she could see her bag sitting half under the bed. She wondered if the magic would heal a self-inflicted wound, or if there was a limit to what the magic could heal. It wasn't like she'd ever tested it. And as far as she knew, no one in the Encanto had ever used Mama's Gift to heal self-inflicted wounds either.
Mirabel tried to think critically, beyond the panic that was cresting over her like waves on a beach as the tides rose. She was fifteen years old. She was fifty years in the past, when her mama, Tia, Tio and Papa weren’t even born yet. The Encanto didn’t exist yet. Abuelo was still alive, and Abuela didn’t know her as anything other than her young friend that she and Pedro had taken in after Mirabel had wandered out of the surrounding jungle. And now Mirabel was pregnant with a child she had never asked for, and could barely stomach the thought of wanting. She closed her eyes, trying to imagine what a hypothetical child of hers might look like, but all she could see was the face of the man who had done this to her.
It wouldn't be all him something whispered to her in her mind. And this time it wasn't the Other trying to communicate with her. A large percentage would be from her, realistically she knew that...there might be a chance that the child could turn out good. Could be better than Mirabel was. But no, Mirabel shook her head as guilt rose up and started to overtake the panic.
This place and time wasn't safe for a child to be born just yet, not until the Miracle, and Casita came into existence. And that wouldn't happen until after the raids Alma and Pedro's village, after Pedro's murder. Given the stories that she'd overheard over the years about how many people in the village had died during the initial attack--Mirabel shuddered. Without her Gift she couldn't protect herself from even one human--how could she protect herself, Alma, Pedro, Mama, Tia Pepa and Tio Bruno along with this one from those men? She simply couldn't...not without losing one of them. And from the stories, Mirabel knew several infants and toddlers had been lost when fleeing, whether from panicking villagers or from the raiders or even after the Encanto was born, from illness and lack of supplies. Her tia, tio and mama would make it...but there was nothing to be said about the one she was carrying. How could she condemn a child to that cruelty of fate? (Granted, there was nothing in Abuela's stories that hinted that Mirabel was here either, but she had to hope that she would get home...but, remembering the too bright light, the stinging pain of the sandstorm lashing out at her, whipping around her, burning her skin, trying to tear through her flesh as her body had healed itself, and the cycle repeated until she'd landed in the middle of a dense jungle--if the return trip was anything like how she had gotten here...there was little doubt in her mind that a fragile human infant would be ripped to pieces no matter what she did to prevent it.
Feeling bile rise up in her throat, she scrambled to her feet and dashed for the open window. Leaning her head out she spat the bile out. The bile burned her tongue and Mirabel felt like she wanted to cry. Or scream. Instead her stomach revolted and she vomited. Her guts clenched tightly inside her abdoman, and a faint flutter could be felt lower down.
"Not right now, please," Mirabel gasped as her stomach twisted in on itself again and she gagged again. Mercifully, the fluttering stopped.
The episode was over almost as soon as it had begun, and Mirabel felt her knees go weak as she staggered away, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand, leaning against the bed.
Kneeling down, she crawled under it, to where her bag was lying against the wall. She snagged the strap between her fingers and carefully crawled out into the middle of the room. Sitting down, she opened it and started to rummage through, checking the small napkin that held the remaining food that Mama had made and the person who had gone and taken her belongings and stolen the food had left in there (Mirabel tried not to think about it, as every time she felt embarrassment and a wave of irritation that someone had dared to go into her room the nursery and go through her closet). At least whoever it had been had chosen this bag, and not one of the others. She stroaked the flowers she had embroidered onto the leather at age four, clumsy and misshapen as they were, with a faint smile as she broke off a small corner of one of the arepa con quesos and popped it into her mouth, absently chewing as she studied the bag, tears springing to her eyes as she spied the shaky hourglass that she'd stitched on the inside, covered by a large flower on the outside of the bag.
Tio Bruno had given her this bag, she sighed, scrubbing at the tears ruthlessly, feeling an old ache in her chest over the reminder of her long-lost uncle. Well, technically, he had tossed it to four-year-old Mirabel when she'd mentioned wanting to practice the embroidery stitches that Abuela had been teaching her on something, but Mama and Papa had forbidden her to try on her own clothes after she'd accidentally sewn two of her shirts together.
Tio Bruno hadn't ever asked for it back, and after he had disappeared, she had refused to part with it, squirreling it away inside the Nursery, safely hidden from sight lest someone recognize it and take it away from her. All the other reminders of Tio Bruno had been removed before her sixth birthday, save for his floating place on the family genealogy, and the picture of him and Abuela on his fifth birthday, not to mention the mural in town. The bag had laid hidden, untouched and forgotten underneath the dresser for months, overlooked even after her mama and papa convinced her to allow them to unpack the boxes that they had put all of her belongings into in preparation for moving her into her now nonexistent room.
Until then she had been only taking out a few things every day as she needed them, washing the dirty clothes and packing them back into the boxes. A bitter chuckle died on her tongue as she was reminded of that little girl, who had been fully convinced that her Door would reappear any day now, that it had been a mistake that her door had disappeared. She had a Gift, even if she didn't know how to explain to her family that she knew that for a fact, having felt the magic settle inside her bones and irrevocably change something inside her, though her Gift had yet to show itself then. Surely her door would have come back! No one else in the family had Gifts and no doors after all. But her Door had never materialized from its place between Luisa and Isabela's Doors as it had been in the weeks leading up to her fifth birthday. Any hope that it would return, and she could finally move out of the nursery as she should have, had eventually died, and Mirabel had been left in the nursery.
As voices reached her ears from outside the door, too faint to be standing right outside, Mirabel was reminded that she had people waiting for her. Slowly, she dragged herself up from the floor and made her way over the washbasin sitting on a small table by the door. She reached her hands in only to freeze as she realized that there was no water waiting in it for her. "I miss you Casita," she murmured to no one.
It was still difficult, all these months after her arrival, to remember that there was no helpful, sentient house rattling about aiding in the care of the family who lived sheltered within those walls. But Mirabel would endure, she had to endure. At least until she found a way to get home to her familia. And hopefully found a way to keep Pedro alive.
Grasping the handle of the half-full pitcher she poured a small amount of water into the basin before splashing it onto her face and arms. It was cold, sharp and stinging, but Mirabel ignored the discomfort. She needed all of her wits about her for the discussion ahead of her. She didn't know how any of them would take the way that her thoughts were turning. But if there was one thing Mirabel knew, that she was entirely sure of, it was that she was not ready to be a mother. And with her Gift, she wasn't sure if she could even be a good mother to any child. Especially to this one, given how it had come to be, and that she had killed its father.
(Granted, he had been lower than the dirt on her shoe, and if she hadn't killed him he could have gone off to hurt someone else. But would a child understand that? Would his child? And what if it somehow inherited the worst of both of them? She didn't think she could stand it if she raised it and it turned out as bad as its father.)
A wave of anger and grief and so much hate mixed up together welled up inside her at the reminder of that hijo de puta. So much so that felt like she could choke on it even as she tried to swallow it back down before she let it out to poison her and everyone around her. It was like a fire, burning inside her as she glanced into the mirror, twisting her features into a cold mask to hide behind. It didn't look very convincing. She was certain that most of her familia would be able to see though it.
But her familia weren't here, were they? No, just a man who wasn't yet dead, a woman who was not yet the hardened family matriarch that Mirabel remembered, along with Pedro's two younger sisters and parents...two great-aunts that Mirabel didn't remember ever meeting, or being talked about in relation to Pedro. She shook her head as the ever-present curiosity of the fates of Valeria and Marisol crashed over her again. She couldn't think about that now. It would be seven months before the attack that would birth the Encanto and cost her familia their patriarch. She had time to make a plan, to avert the damage. Else why would she be here if not to ensure that Pedro and his familia were not lost to his wife and children?
With that thought at the forefront of her thoughts, Mirabel turned to the door and grasped the handle. Feeling something move inside her, a flutter more than anything, she paused. Letting her hand rest on her lower belly, Mirabel grimaced, feeling her eyes sting with tears and lifted her other arm and scrubbed at her eyes with the back of her hand. She'd wasted five months in denial, five months while that man's spawn grew inside her. Elena had made it clear that if she didn't want the child, that they had to deal with it as quickly as possible before it was too late. And it nearly was too late.
Taking a deep breath, she opened the door and carefully made her way back to the kitchen. Pedro, Alma and Elena all turned to look at her, their eyes boring into her, and Mirabel swallowed, her foot catching on the loose floorboard Pedro had mentioned he needed to fix. Luckily, she caught herself on the chair and slid into it, giving a bright grin to Pedro who had already started to rise out his chair to help her.
"What exactly are my options?" she asked, slowly easing herself back into the chair.