Fanfic / Past & Future

Past & Future is an Encanto "Bruno is Camilo's father" AU fanfic by BlueLake. It can be read on Archive of Our Own here.

It's Camilo's 16th birthday. Bruno is trying yet struggling to reconnect with his son after being gone for ten years, not helped by the fact that Camilo still believes that Bruno is his uncle. However, things start to go terribly wrong when Bruno sees a vision of an old shadow from his past: Victoria Madrigal.

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This fanfic provides examples of:

• Abusive Parents: Victoria, big time. After kidnapping Camilo to her own secluded village, she intimidates him into obeying her demands, often uses force, and keeps him locked in a room when not interacting with him.
• Adaptational Explanation: In the original movie, it's left ambiguous as to why Mirabel never received a gift. Here, it's because Victoria once came back to the Encanto in an attempt to meet with Bruno; she happened to come back the night before Mirabel's gift ceremony and stole the gift before Mirabel ever had a chance to obtain it herself.
• Agony of the Feet
  • One of the first things Camilo does after waking up on his birthday is stumble into a mirror, break it, and cut both of his feet on the shards.
  • He gets hit with this again when Victoria stomps on and breaks his right ankle.
• Because You Were Nice to Me: The reason why Bruno marries Victoria in the first place. She shows him love and devotion more than anyone else has. Oddly enough, this is also why she is attracted to him, since her previous partners were all some variety of Domestic Abusers.
• Becoming the Mask: Carolina was originally sent to the Encanto to spy on the family and tell Victoria about Camilo's interests as he grew up, but came to realize that the Madrigals are not the monsters Victoria said they were and enjoy her life in the community.
• A Birthday, Not a Break: Camilo goes through a string of unlucky events (including stepping on shattered glass, eating cake he didn't realize he was allergic to, and being led to believe that Bruno didn't get him a present) on his birthday, culminating in being kidnapped by Victoria.
• Broken Pedestal: Ultimately subverted. Camilo understandably feels shocked and betrayed when he realizes that, if Victoria is his mother, the family has been lying to him since he was little. It only gets worse when Victoria tells him that she received her scars from Pepa (framing it as intentional on her part). However, she messes up when she attempts to comfort him by saying she's going to kill Pepa. Whether Pepa's an attempted murderer or not, Camilo knows at this point that Victoria has definitely killed multiple people, and he won't stand for her threatening his family.
• Chekhov's Gunman: Carolina, the Encanto's town baker, is introduced in Chapter 9 merely giving Mirabel a basket of baked goods. Chapter 14 reveals that she was a mole from El Paraíso.
• Contrived Coincidence: Five years after being banished from the Encanto, Victoria tried to meet with Bruno in secret. She just so happened to be sneaking through Casita the night before Mirabel's ceremony, allowing her to approach Mirabel's door immediately after it just formed and take the gift for herself.
• Defiant Captive: Camilo tries to be one, but it's difficult when his captor is Victoria.
• Distressed Dude: Camilo is essentially helpless, trapped without his powers in a place Victoria rules.
• Domestic Abuse: Even back when she still lived with the Madrigals, Victoria was physically abusive towards her husband Bruno. She was immediately banished from the Encanto when the rest of the family found out.
• The Dragon: Sergio is Victoria's loyal right-hand man.
• Dramatic Drop: Camilo is alerted that Santiago saw him threatening Leonardo in the form of Luisa when he hears the latter drop some of the wood he was holding.
• Dropping the Bombshell: Santiago, who hears the voices of murder victims near their killers, drops one on Camilo.
  Santiago, about Victoria: I've never heard so many voices around one person before. Be careful around her.
• Evil Redhead: Victoria, who would love nothing more than destroying the Madrigal family and having Bruno and Camilo to herself, is described as having orange hair.
• Exact Eavesdropping: Dolores starts listening in on conversations in town just in time to hear that Carolina is The Mole. Mirabel, Luisa, and Isabela find Dolores as she's confronting Carolina over it.
  Dolores: I heard her talking to her husband, he just left the town a little while ago. She was worried about being left alone, saying she was having a hard time keeping their identities a secret and was concerned about what would happen if we found out. She mentioned our family specifically! Where are they? Where's my hermanito?!
• Explain, Explain... Oh, Crap!: Julieta goes through one of these, which is how the family realizes that Victoria is a Power Parasite.
  Mirabel: Tío...did Victoria ever return to Casita after you guys kicked her out?
  Abuela: The only smart thing that woman ever did was never come back!
  Julieta: Actually, mamá... Victoria did come back, nearly 11 years ago. It was...
  Agustín, finishing her sentence with the same realization: It was the night before Mirabel's gift ceremony.
• False Utopia: El Paraíso appears to be a happy, thriving town, and Victoria has even constructed her house there to look almost exactly like Casita (mimicking the Encanto, which really is a nice place to live). However, the place has a history of drought and poor harvest, exacerbated by Victoria taking almost everything for herself to eat while leaving her citizens hungry. The townspeople themselves are aware on some level that their situation is terrible, but tolerate it because Victoria is marginally better than the previous water-gifted individual who terrorized them.
• Foreshadowing
  • During his first night in his new room, Camilo notices that the shelf is stocked with things like his favorite books and bibliographies from his favorite football players, even though Victoria was never around to know he liked them. Turns out, Carolina was in the Encanto telling her about Camilo's interests.
  • Santiago is noticeably less clingy or openly grateful towards Victoria than his brother Ricardo when they're introduced. The next chapter reveals that Santiago can only hear murdered spirits, and thus is more aware of Victoria's real nature.
• Good Scars, Evil Scars: Victoria has "red scars that almost [look] like branches" that cover her neck and chest. Once you realize that they're Lichtenburg scars, it's pretty clear that she got them from being struck by Pepa's lightning.
• Hair-Trigger Temper: It takes very little to make Victoria angry, from merely bringing up the Madrigal family to disagreeing with her.
• Hypocrite: Victoria hates the Madrigal family for ruling as tyrants and abusing each other, failing to realize that not only do they not do that, but that she does the exact same thing.
• Identical Twin ID Tag: Ricardo wears braids in his hair while Santiago doesn't.
• Idiosyncratic Episode Naming: Each chapter is named "[Character]'s [Noun]", with the character being whose perspective the chapter is written in.
• Internal Reveal: The Madrigal family only learns from Carolina that Victoria's gift is a Power Nullifier in Chapter 14.
  Mirabel cursed internally. Of course, that was her power.
• I See Dead People: Santiago's gift lets him talk to the dead. Unfortunately for him, the only spirits around to talk to are vengeful murder victims, as their rage prevents them from passing on. Even more unfortunately, these murder victims are tethered to their killer until justice is served, which means he's met an alarming amount of people who were secretly murderers.
• It's All About Me: Unsurprisingly, Victoria can only view the world in terms of what it means for her. Just to get an idea of how bad she has it: when she sees that her slap on Camilo's face left more of a mark than she intended, her first thought is of how she should be more careful with him...to protect her reputation. Or how about how she unknowingly stole Mirabel's gift, seeing a glowing door while trying to visit Bruno and immediately assuming that it was meant for her, nevermind that Félix and Agustín never got gifts, or that Casita obviously hated that she was even there.
• It's All My Fault: The triplets (and Félix) share a moment blaming themselves for contributing to Camilo's kidnapping: Bruno for bringing Victoria into the family in the first place, Pepa for accidentally striking her with lightning, Julieta for not healing the resulting scars, and Félix for not being there to protect him.
• Last-Second Word Swap: Victoria notices Camilo's apparent interest in the cacti at the library's gardens. Fortunately, he manages to pull this off before he can say that they remind him of Isabela.
• Love Makes You Dumb: Played for Drama. Despite seeing that Victoria was Obviously Evil, Bruno married her anyway since she was loving towards him to a degree no one else had been. He feels very guilty for it in the present.
• Luke, I Am Your Father: Camilo gets hit across the face with the knowledge that Bruno and Victoria are his parents, rather than Félix and Pepa.
• Mama Bear: After finding out about Victoria's abuse of Bruno, Abuela wasted no time in throwing her out of the house and exiling her from the Encanto.
• Meaningful Name: The town Victoria leads is named El Paraíso (literally "The Paradise" in Spanish), referencing both its beautiful appearance and how Victoria sees herself as a savior who rescued its inhabitants from magic-using "tyrants".
• Meet the New Boss: If the history book about the town is to be believed, El Paraíso was originally controlled by a person with the ability to manipulate water, and he did so with great cruelty. Victoria one day showed up and easily freed the town from his rule, but she's clearly not much better.
• Mythology Gag: When Mirabel tries to ask about Victoria, Bruno initially responds with "We don't talk about Victoria," a direct reference to the recurring phrase in the original film.
  Mirabel: Oh, well that line of thought has worked out so well before.
• Nominal Importance: Averted, everyone from the main characters to background townspeople can have names. The aversion is how Carolina's importance as The Mole is initially hidden.
• Obviously Evil: Julieta and Pepa never liked Victoria since they could tell she was dangerous and volatile from the beginning.
• Offstage Villainy: Victoria is all but outright stated to have used her gift in the past to depower other magic individuals besides the Madrigals and kill them while they were vulnerable.
• Original Character
  • The main antagonist is Victoria, Bruno's abusive Psycho Ex-Girlfriend and Camilo's mother, who starts the plot by kidnapping her son.
  • Ricardo and Santiago Alvarez are twins who willingly went to Victoria and begged her to remove their powers after they were driven out of their village. Ricardo can detect someone's upcoming death by smell, while Santiago can talk to ghosts.
• Palette Swap: A strange non-video game example with Victoria's house. Its structure is eerily similar to the Madrigals' house, with the main difference being that it's mostly colored red and green instead of the pinks and blues of Casita.
• Parental Substitute: Félix and Pepa acted as Camilo's parents for most of his life, as Victoria was banished shortly after his birth and Bruno disappeared into the walls after Mirabel's ceremony as in canon. As far as Camilo knew, they were his parents.
• Percussive Pickpocket: Inverted when Diego, a henchman of Victoria's, bumps into Bruno to put her letter in his pocket.
• Power Nullifier: Victoria's gift allows her to shut off other people's gifts, though it wears off after roughly 24 hours.
• Power Parasite: Victoria stole the gift that Mirabel was supposed to receive on the night of her ceremony. Interestingly, given that the gifts are Personality Powers, this doesn't necessarily mean that Mirabel would have gotten a Power Nullifier like Victoria currently has.
• Psycho Ex-Girlfriend: Victoria is Bruno's. She starts the plot by kidnapping Camilo, and she likely has much more planned, all because the Madrigals banished her from the Encanto.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: Victoria's eyes glow red when she uses her gift.
• Red Right Hand: Victoria has a cloudy blind eye and scars on her neck and chest.
• Related Differently in the Adaptation: Here, Camilo is Bruno's son with Victoria, while he was Pepa and Félix's son (making him Bruno's nephew) in the movie.
• Secret-Keeper: Casita absorbed Victoria's door back into the walls to prevent her from entering her new room after she had stolen the gift meant for Mirabel; it continued to hide her door from the Madrigals for the next 11 years, only revealing it to let them know who had kidnapped Camilo.
• Self-Fulfilling Prophecy: In his attempt to prevent his vision of Camilo's kidnapping from happening, Bruno ends up pushing him away, which leads to Camilo fleeing the house and running into Victoria.
• Shapeshifter Mode Lock: One of the many misfortunes Camilo experiences on his birthday. He temporarily gets stuck in the form of a kid who's supposed to be grounded, which causes the boy's mother to mistake him for her son and try to drag him by the ear to her house.
• Slashed Throat: Victoria kills Ricardo this way after he smells her death approaching and she misinterprets it as a Curse.
• Smells of Death: Ricardo's gift lets him smell when someone is going to die within the next few days, no matter how they actually die. Too bad that the smell is a horrible rotting stench.
• Stress Vomit: Camilo throws up on Victoria during their first dinner together. He had been feeling somewhat nauseous already (not surprising, considering that he'd been kidnapped and squeezed to the point of bruising several times), but being slapped and shaken like a rag doll after eating what little food he could stomach was what tipped him over.
• Take Me Instead: Bruno promises Victoria that he'll stay with her if she lets Camilo go back to the Encanto. She doesn't even consider it.
• Thwarted Escape: With the unexpected return of his gift and Santiago's help, Camilo comes very close to escaping El Paraíso. However, his poor appetite and sleep means he's too tired to properly shapeshift, which leads to Victoria and Sergio catching him. Camilo gets his ankle broken for his trouble.
• Trap Is the Only Option: Victoria's letter to Bruno tells him to let her henchman take him to El Paraíso without telling the family about where he's going. Despite (or perhaps due to) knowing how horrible she is, Bruno chooses to follow her instructions anyway to protect his family from her.
• Troubled Abuser: Victoria is eventually revealed as one of these, having grown up as an orphan who survived on her looks, strength, and string of Domestic Abusers for boyfriends. Her abuse of Bruno (and now, Camilo) is implied to be a learned behavior, as "she learned from personal experience sometimes you just need the sense knocked into you." It's not played for sympathy, but as an explanation of how she came to be the way she is.
• Unreliable Narrator: Downplayed. Chapters written in Victoria's point of view depict her sympathetically, painting her as a victim or hero, but her horrific actions are not hidden because she feels justified in everything she does.
• Unwanted Spouse: Played with in that while they haven't been in contact for years, Bruno never divorced Victoria before she was exiled. Unfortunately, this means that the magic still recognizes her as a Madrigal.
• Villain Has a Point: Victoria was correct in despising the Madrigals' harmful mask of perfection and criticizing Abuela for valuing her children and grandchildren more for their gifts and usefulness than as people. However, this trope is ultimately downplayed, as she started seeing everyone else in the family as evil and beat Bruno when he tried to defend them.
• Villain with Good Publicity: Victoria is the leader of her own village, El Paraíso, and the townspeople adore her and genuinely believe that she "saved" Camilo from the Madrigals.
• Waking Up Elsewhere: This is Camilo's introduction to El Paraíso. After being kept sedated the whole way there, he wakes up on a horse while entering the town.
• Wham Shot
  • In Chapter 5, the Madrigals discover that Victoria suddenly has her own door in Casita, where she didn't before.
  • Chapter 7 reveals that Victoria's room is the same room that Bruno lived in while within the walls.
• What the Hell, Hero?: Unaware that Bruno is trying to prevent his vision, Pepa is absolutely furious when he acts coldly towards Camilo and says that he didn't get him a present in front of everyone.
  Pepa: What were you thinking? I don't care who you are to him hermano, humiliating Camilo like that is inexcusable!
  Bruno: Pepa...I know you don't understand but I had to.
  Pepa: Just what am I not understanding Bruno?! What possible reason could you have for ignoring him like you have and not even getting him a gift for his birthday?!
• Wicked Cultured: Downplayed. Despite being an abuser with a penchant for murder, Victoria has very good table manners, and her handwriting is in flawless cursive.
• Yandere: Victoria will stop at nothing to have Bruno and Camilo all to herself.
• You Remind Me of X
  • The local librarian, Marta, reminds Camilo of Mirabel, which he has to explain to her when he accidentally refers to her as such.
  • When Camilo asks why he's helping him escape, Santiago says that he reminds him of himself and his twin, being gifted and abused by family.
• You're Not My Father: Camilo says this to Victoria multiple times, refusing to accept her as his mother. She is not having it.

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