Fly High, Butterfly

Chapter Twenty Four

Bruno could make connections. It was a difficult task, but he could. Interacting with family, learning about interests and hobbies, he found a way to weave himself into what once felt like a completed tapestry.

He could also make art. Small paintings for the rats, and stories up inside his head. Mixed in with the self-deprivation and confusion were hundreds of ideas and stories all itching to be put into the world. With every stroke of the paintbrush, it was as if he had brought another piece of something beyond understanding into their plane. More and more he could create so much art.

Hernando could make decisions that made the others' heads spin. Harboring not a single trace of fear, he could leap over presumably bottomless pits without a second thought. Not once did he ever waver once he had decided to attempt something, never concerned with the 'how', instead focusing on the 'when'. Confidence in his voice and determination in his veins, he could simply do anything.

Though, Hernando could also make mistakes. Everyone could, but Hernando was better for them. He accepted when he was wrong, and made efforts to correct things in the future. Such an inherently human quality for arguably the most human of any of them.

Jorge could make spackle.

But that was about it.

It didn't bother him all that much. Everyone had a purpose, Jorge's was just a little more straightforward. He wasn't the family-oriented one, he wasn't the brave one. He was the one that made the spackle. Nothing more, nothing less.

Frankly, he wasn't even sure when he had shown up. Hernando had much more defined origins, seeds having been sown through Bruno's childhood stories of the 'fearless Hernando', eventually becoming what he was now when it became clear just how much Bruno needed to be brave sometimes. Over time, a personality was built beyond just being afraid of nothing, and Hernando seemed more like a person. More than even Bruno, sometimes.

Jorge was seemingly the opposite of this. Made not from a need to survive, but the need to produce a product. He wasn't a comfort to anyone, but rather a means to an end. Jorge couldn't provide Bruno with the relief that Hernando could, taking over a situation that would be more suited for that particular alter. His time to shine came when they needed to make spackle.

That was fine, of course. Jorge didn't mind it at all.

Except in rare moments like this one. Bucket tilted up so he could stare at his body's hands. Calloused and scarred from use in the repetitive workings. Unable to even use his own product himself, having to hand it off to Hernando. It was almost funny, in that tragic sort of way.

It was all Jorge had ever known, living the way he did. Looking at Hernando and Bruno, he didn't feel jealousy, but rather a deep-seated longing to be more than he knew he was. Without knowing what that would even look like for him, however, it remained only a constant restlessness in his head. Like the zoo-bred flamingo that knows it was created to fly free.

Still. He had all the time in the world to think about things like that. He wasn't particularly useful outside of the brief moments he was allowed to take hold of the body. Picking up the salt, he put it into the spare bucket rather than tossing it over his shoulder. He knew how to mix the spackle without even measuring a single thing. If you do something enough, it becomes muscle memory.

Stirring up the mixture, Jorge reflected on his usefulness. After they reentered the family and relinquished their place within Casita's walls, he had been less and less useful. It was honestly a miracle he was ever in control in the first place. The only reason he was came from a damaged wall in the village, and Mirabel referring the woman to Bruno, knowing 'he' could make the spackle.

Jorge hadn't even been close to the front to begin with, but his smile had almost broke through and caused him to take brief control. After what had been nearly a year since the reconstruction of the familia house, he would be useful again! He could be free again!

He could be used again.

Because that was all Jorge was useful for. All he ever had or ever would be useful for. Barren of the recognition that he was just as sentient and needing as Hernando and Bruno, he was ignored until they needed the one thing he had ever been taught to do. All Jorge was ever allowed to do.

All Jorge was ever allowed to be.

If he told the other two, would they allow him time? Let him front more and experience the world not as a spectator, but as the one taking action. It was one thing to watch Bruno or Hernando do something, but he was certain it would be another thing entirely to do something himself. Something that didn't involve the god-forsaken spackle.

Could he look up with his own eyes, and see the skies above him? The stars? By the time he came around, there wasn't any real need or opportunity to see the night sky, but they were free now. Ever chance came and went, yet he never got the chance for himself.

Jorge would have made ten thousand buckets of spackle if it meant a single day with the body under his control. Would have worked until his hands burned and joints ached if it meant just one spectacular moment being everything Jorge was sure he could be but couldn't bring himself to try. Hell, he would let himself fade back into the background and never front again. Never make spackle again. Never do anything ever again, if it meant that he could have just a fleeting glimpse of what it was like to feel.

But looking down at the bucket, he saw that the ingredients had been thoroughly combined. His job was simply finished.

"Ah, Jorge, good job," Bruno spoke within their head, "Want me to take over to bring this to Senora Ramirez?"

He didn't. He wanted nothing less. Surely he could take a bucket to a house in the Encanto. Jorge knew he could be so much more than anything he was designed to do if he could just take flight for a single moment.

But he was fully aware of what he was made to do, and all that entailed.

"Sure, Bruno." He spoke aloud, and felt the familiar yet foreign feeling of being pulled from his spot piloting the body and back into the sidelines. He could have laughed at it, really. No matter how good or bad of a job he did, he would never be free from it and its limitations.

Jorge made the spackle.

And that was it.