Antonio's Gift Ceremony was a celebration and Mirabel is happy for her little primo, but it was also very hard on her. Not seeing the cracks in Castia, she decides that maybe she needs to spend a little time for herself and decides to go on a one-person camping trip to clear her head.
Distance Wakes The Heart Up is an Encanto fanfic by whitebeltwriter
where Mirabel spends some "me" time on a camping trip and her family comes to find out that they relied on her more than they realized.
This fanfic can be read on Archive of Our Own here.
This fanfic provides examples of:
- Beware the Nice Ones: Agustín ends up being the one who put his mother-in-law into her place, calling her out about her callous attitude towards Mirabel and Bruno that lead them to leave the household.
- Distressed Woodchopping: Agustín's chopping of firewood turns into this when he ends up in a conversation with Alma about exactly why Mirabel (and Bruno) decided to leave. And he barely stops even when a chunk of wood he's chopping slips and hits him in the face.
- Dramatic Drop: Dolores drops her coffee - as well as her jaw - when she hears Agustín tell off Alma to the point of tears.
- Gilligan Cut: After talking about Mirabel helping Antonio during his gift ceremony, Félix declares he'll figure something out to thank her for it. How does the next scene start?Félix: How have I not figured something out!
- Giver of Lame Names: Oswaldo has this problem when naming his candies. Even aside from his "Not-Special Special", his wife Teresa reminds him of some of his other attempts, like "hairballs", "capy-bars", and "donkey-d-"Oswaldo:-Okay okay, I get it! And we agreed to not talk about that one!
- Guilt Complex: While Isabela initially continues to dismiss Mirabel as "ungrateful" like in canon after her sister leaves, she soon suffers from repressed guilt for the way she treats her. With Mirabel gone, Isabela starts having nightmares from the underlying thought that she was responsible for her sister leaving, and being happy about it. When she sees Luisa have her breakdown, Isabela realizes that she had also been neglectful to Luisa.
- Guilt-Induced Nightmare: Chapter 5 starts with Isabela having a nightmare based on her lingering guilt for being a bad sister to Mirabel.
- Hidden Depths: As much as Agustín is The Klutz, he's also an accomplished outdoorsman, able to easily take care of himself in the wild. It was those skills that brought him to the Encanto in the first place, and he's taken his daughters on many a camping trip when they were young.
- How We Got Here: The first line of the story is Mirabel dismayed at what has engulfed the Casita during her week-long vacation. Then it immediately jumps back a week to Antonio's gift ceremony, and the story begins proper.
- Heel Realization: After the incident with Agustín, Alma apparently had one overnight about how much pressure she was putting on her family to constantly use their gifts to better the community. It's only cemented the next morning when she sees Antonio using his gift to receive a toucan-delivered message from Mirabel and starts thinking about how it could be useful to the Encanto, before halting that train of thought when she realizes how much joy she'd be taking away from her youngest grandchild.
- Humble Pie: Alma begins the story under the belief that since Mirabel is giftless, the village doesn't need her whatsoever and doesn't understand why the family is so upset about it. After realizing just how much Mirabel actually does, from getting Luisa before she overworks herself and managing to do things that her magical family can't, to the point where the villagers actually harass her over it when they notice her absence, Alma is forced to realize that her giftless grandchild is far more useful than she gave her credit for.
- Immigrant Parents: While Julieta had lived in the Encanto since she was a baby, Agustín had found it by accident, having taught survival skills to his daughters in family camping trips.
- Instant Messenger Pigeon: Félix and Antonio use his toucan friend Pico to deliver a letter to Mirabel, which gets to her in less than a day. Probably justified given Antonio's gift, which could let him tell his friend exactly where she went and what she looks like.
- Internal Reveal: Bruno finds out that Dolores knew where he was the whole time when he tries using his gift to find Mirabel.
- Lighter and Softer: This fic is one to the
Fandom-Specific Plot of Mirabel getting fed up with her family and running away - diluting it into a week-long vacation for some much-needed "me time". As the story's blurb puts it:A way chilled down version of the "Mirabel runs away" trope but with less angst and lower stakes. - Logical Weakness: Antonio cannot understand or speak with fish, since they cannot breathe air.
- Manipulative Bitch: Downplayed example; when Isabela tells Mariano about Mirabel's camping trip, she plays up how much she wanted all her family to be present for her engagement. This prompts Mariano to postpone the engagement party until after Mirabel comes back, thus giving Isabela a few more days of freedom (for her to learn how to love him) without her carefree little sister being around to ruin her mood.
- Men Are Childish: When Alma decides to have a family day off at the river, the male half of the Madrigal clan get excited and start finishing their breakfast at a rapid pace, while the women are just stunned and pondering the implications.
- Never My Fault: When Alma gets angry that Mirabel left without telling her first, Julieta says that she did try to tell her and Alma didn't listen. Alma just scoffs that she should have tried harder.
- Noodle Incident: Chapter 10 has some childhood stories being shared of the Madrigal triplets, including Bruno's rats eating all the church's communion wafers, Pepa being caught in the confession box with an ex-boyfriend by the priest, and Julieta being dared to climb a tree and going through with it out of sheer stubbornness.
- Not Helping Your Case: When Antonio asks where Mirabel learned her survival skills, Agustín says that she learned everything from him. Knowing how accident-prone his tío is, Antonio immediately yells, "Please don't die" to her, much to Agustín's chagrin.
- Not Now, Kiddo: Julieta wanted Mirabel to tell the whole family at breakfast about her camping trip, but Alma refused to let her get a word in. In the end, the only people she tells are her parents, Dolores and Antonio before she has to leave to reach the campsite before sundown.
- Not What It Looks Like: When Bruno first sees Mirabel's empty chair, he panics that she left just like he did and immediately resolves to get a vision to find out more. This lasts until he runs into Dolores and she tells him where Mirabel went.
- Oblivious to Hints: Oswaldo's wife Teresa has to spell it out to him in detail why his "Not-Special Special" gift wouldn't have been as appreciated by Mirabel as he thought it would.
- O.O.C. Is Serious Business:
- Rather than let Alma continue to bad-mouth Mirabel for leaving the day her sister gets engaged, Julieta stands up to her, going on about how she doesn't want a repeat of Bruno disappearing and she'll give Mirabel all the space she needs to prevent that from happening. Dolores and Antonio merely gawk, having never seen anyone stand up to their Abuela before.
- The normally-meek Agustín "helps" Alma figure out what Mirabel and Bruno have in common that made them leave, leaving his mother-in-law in a state of distress. When Dolores tells Bruno of it, this is his reaction:
- Subsequently, the family is unnerved when Alma misses both lunch and dinner in favour of being alone with her thoughts about Mirabel being similar to Bruno. And while Alma does come down for breakfast the next day, the rest of the family is flabbergasted when she suggests taking a family day off. Pepa even wonders if she's having a stroke.
- Pair the Spares: Félix's doesn't recognize the name of Pepa's ex-boyfriend Nico at first, until she tells him that he's the one that eventually married his ex Sofia.
- Point of Divergence: In the movie, Mirabel decides to take it upon herself to find out why cracks are forming in Casita after seeing them during Antonio's Gift Ceremony, unwittingly uncovering her family's crumbling facade. Here, she decides to leave the Encanto for a short trip without ever seeing the cracks, her absence being the catalyst for her family's collective epiphany.
- Punctuated Pounding: Alma finds Agustín in the middle of chopping wood, and as such, his "The Reason You Suck" Speech to her as to exactly why Bruno and Mirabel both decided to leave — namely, dealing with her — is punctuated by him chopping a new log into kindling.
- That Came Out Wrong: When people are told about Mirabel leaving, they often get the wrong idea and start overreacting before they are informed of the "week long camping trip" qualifier.
- "The Reason You Suck" Speech: When Alma makes mention of wondering what Mirabel and Bruno have in common that would make them leave, Agustín helps spell out the common denominator — dealing with Alma.
- Saying Too Much: Isabella, frustrated with Camilo asking why she doesn't want to talk about her fiancé Mariano, blurts out the fact that she doesn't want to marry him.
- Secret Secret-Keeper: Bruno initially thought that Casita was deliberately hiding his presence from even Dolores's hearing, as she would've told someone if she could hear him. It isn't until he runs into her that she reveals that she's known where he was and kept that secret the entire time.
- Sneeze Cut: As Isabela is thinking about how much Mirabel's temporary departure is uncomfortably similar to when her Tío Bruno left, Bruno sneezes from dust.
- Trauma Button: Bruno going missing is a big one for his sisters, and it's left them BOTH with anxiety over members of their family leaving. When Mirabel expresses a desire to leave to Julieta, her mother panics and begs her not to. And later when Antonio tells Pepa, she instantly summons a thundercloud and begins storming.
- Two Lines, No Waiting: The story's scenes jump back and forth between Mirabel on her hiking vacation and the rest of the Madrigals back at the Encanto.
- Vetinari Job Security: As the week goes on, the family slowly realizes how much Mirabel contributes to their everyday lives.
- Dolores tries to keep Antonio's spirits up and struggles with it, Mirabel having always been the Cool Big Sis for him. She also finds the absence of the casual noises Mirabel makes rather distracting, especially since most of the noises are positive in nature (humming, dancing, the occasional quip, etc.).
- Mirabel would usually be the one to get Luisa before she overworks herself. With Mirabel gone, Luisa ends up missing lunch and is already on the verge of a nervous breakdown, convinced that she was somehow to blame for Mirabel leaving.
- Similarly, Mirabel is usually the one to get the family up with her wake-up call. After she leaves, the entire family's rhythm has been thrown off so much that their first breakfast without Mirabel ends up becoming a mess.
- Alma is practically harassed by various villagers who want to know where Mirabel is, as Mirabel is often the one who helps them with many of their minor issues and entertains the kids in ways Camilo can't.
- What Could Possibly Go Wrong?: Chapter 1 ends with Agustín settling down in bed, reassured that he taught Mirabel everything she needed to know about outdoorsmanship and thinking, "What could go wrong?" Said chapter started with a How We Got Here line about Mirabel coming back from her week-long trip to absolute chaos.
