Encanto AU (Abandoned and Forgotten)

Chapter 2: The Search for Mirabel Madrigal

Around town, all members of the Madrigal family search for their lost family member. "Mirabel?" cried out Luisa, as she walks through the forests that stood behind her old family home. "Mirabel!" she cried as she kept looking. Three kids stand in front of what used to be known as Casita. "They still haven't found her yet?" asked a little girl with two braids and a bright yellow dress. The two other kids, a boy with curly hair and a bright yellow shirt and and a girl with one braid look down at the ground. Julieta and Agustín cry out her name as they walk through the fields. Félix, Mirabel's tío, and Dolores look for their family member, with Dolores trying to hear anything, being unable to hear her cousin. Abuela walked through a forest and discovered a loose pink string on a stick, which she picks up and follows along that trail.

Mirabel has her head in her arms and knees to chest, as she cries in front of a flowing river. She turns around and she hears a horse approach her way, to see her tío Bruno on top of it, before turning back around, putting her face back in her arms. Bruno hops off his horse and slowly walks up to his sobrina, sitting beside her, knees up to chest. He attempts to put his hand on her shoulder, but retracts it before he touches her, before looking towards the river. "Do you want to know the one thing I missed about being on the outside, Mirabel?" he asked her. She didn't respond to his question, but he answered anyway. "Running water. Seeing how the water flows through the stream, calming and wild at the same time." Bruno keeps looking at the water, until he hears from his side, "I'm sorry. I didn't want to hurt our family. I just wanted to be something I'm not." Mirabel started crying harder, falling into Bruno's shoulders, with him wrapping his arms around her to comfort her.

After she stops crying, Bruno grabs her shoulders and angles himself across from her. "Look at me," he said, which Mirabel did, tears still in her eyes. "The family was broken before you were even given the opportunity to fix it. Jamming the pieces back together doesn't fix anything broken. Sometimes broken things just stay broken." he said, solemnly. "But we don't have to be like them. We can make our own choices. We can head back to Encanto and try to fix what has been broken, or we can keep going forward, leaving our old life behind. Your choice, kid." Mirabel hugged Bruno tightly, with Bruno not expecting it, his arms being trapped by Mirabel's.

She thought about all of her family, overlooking her and not believing she was good enough. She thought about how Abuela and how much she hurt her and the family. She realized Bruno from her tight hold and looked ahead into the jungle. "I won't ask you to come, you can go back home. Try to make things better for them," Mirabel said to her tío. Bruno looked at her and said, "no family is worth going back to if they were gonna hurt my sobrina like that. I'm coming with." Mirabel smiled a bit when he said that and stood up, with Bruno standing up beside her. "Tío Bruno, I'm happy you're here with me, gift or no gift," Mirabel said before hopping on the horse Bruno rode in on. Bruno hopped on on the back of the horse and said to her, "you're the real gift, kid." Mirabel and Bruno run through the river and into the jungle, unbeknownst to Abuela.