The Vongola are reputed as the most powerful mafia family in the world, the rulers of the shadowy underworld. There is one family that even they tread cautiously around though, and the greatest hitman in the world, Reborn, carefully suppressed the feeling of dread that was welling up inside him as he surveyed 0001 Cemetery Lane.

The gate opened for him, and Reborn didn't linger near it long enough for his tailored suit to get caught when it closed behind him. He side-stepped the poison ivy, circled the pond with the alligator, and carefully stepped over the almost-impossible-to-see trip-wire stretched across the bottom step up to the door. The one that was attached to a home-made bomb (and a bomb made in the Addams home was always at least 15% more destructive and humiliating than any other kind).

He winced, took a moment to pre-emptively fight back the migraine before it set in, and rang the doorbell.

The door opened, and revealed the family butler. Seven-foot tall, grey-ish skin, but dressed as impeccably as any butler in an Italian mansion might be.

"Hello Lurch," Reborn greeted.

"Master... Reborn," Lurch answered, and stepped aside to let him in. Only the slight hesitation between words giving away the generally unflappable butler's surprise. Or maybe Lurch had to take a moment to recall what he'd changed his name to.

"Is my mother around?" Reborn asked as he passed over his topcoat and suitcase, and let his had be taken.

"Mistress Wednesday is in the armoury," Lurch supplied at once.

"Thank you Lurch," Reborn said. "I'll see myself up."

Lurch nodded, and took Reborn's property up to his old bedroom. There was no question of him not staying the night. He would, whether he wanted to or not.

~oOo~

Reborn didn't flinch when the stiletto dagger appeared in the door-frame mere inches from his eyeball. He barely blinked. He just silently reached up with his left hand to pull the dagger out of the wood, settled it in his palm, and grabbed a rapier out of the umbrella stand to his right.

"Still angry at me, Mama?" Reborn asked carefully as he kicked the door closed behind him.

Wednesday Addams, Reborn's mother, smiled a warm-but-deadly red-painted smile. She'd grown up to look a lot like her own mother. Long black hair that fell in perfect cascades of wavy shadow, pale skin. Tall, elegant, and strong like the willow rather than the oak.

"No," she said as she raised her own rapier in readiness. "But that doesn't mean I'm not going to punish you."

Reborn had abandoned the family name in preference to his father's name when he left home at sixteen, and upon literally 'making a name for himself', he'd dropped his father's name as well and picked up a whole different moniker. His mother had been put out that he'd distanced himself from the family, but outright angry when she'd found out he was claiming no family allegiances at all. It seemed that ten years had been enough time for her to cool down though.

At least a little.

Half an hour of sword-fighting later, as well as dodging thrown daggers when there was any distance between them, and Wednesday Addams finally ended the fight.

"You've gotten rusty," she scolded.

"I've been using guns more than swords lately, Mama," Reborn defended himself.

"Hardly an excuse," she dismissed. "Now, what has you coming back after so long avoiding my anger? You've even been making only perfunctory and brief appearances at the family reunions, and altogether avoided the ones I've hosted."

Reborn ran a hand through his hair – a move meant to calm his nerves over what he was about to ask as much as to get the mop back in order after hat-hair and the duel against his mother combined to make it an atrocity against style.

"I slipped," he admitted.

"Slipped?" Wednesday repeated, and eyed her son dangerously. "How?"

Anybody who didn't know Wednesday Addams and saw her then would think she was about to kill her son for whatever mistake he'd made, simply because he made a mistake. Actually, she was plotting how to kill whoever he'd gotten himself into trouble with. Addamses were like that.

"Not a hit," Reborn assured his mother quickly. "But rather... I'm sorry Mama, but you're a grandmama."

Wednesday blinked. "You have a child," she said. Statement, question, and clarification all in one.

"I was on holiday, the waitress was pretty and a virgin and her coffee was perfect. I seduced her, and her father threw her out. They're Catholic, you see. Anyway, I had enjoyed her, so I kept her for the rest of my holiday, only... then it turned out I'd gotten her pregnant. She was showing when I was contracted for another hit. I went back to her, checked up on her, between jobs. She died in childbirth last week," Reborn explained.

"Where is this new Addams?" Wednesday asked, her dark eyes sharp. "It is an Addams, isn't it?"

Reborn nodded. "Yes Mama, she is. I left her with Grandmama and Grandpapa in the nursing home down the road before I came here," he explained.

"Mother and Father aren't exactly aware of the world right now," Wednesday pointed out.

"No," Reborn agreed. "But the nurses who look after them won't mind having a week-old baby to care for as well. It's basically all the same jobs, but with a smaller body."

Wednesday smirked in agreement. "So, what is my grandchild's name?" she asked.

"Anastasia Addams."

"Retrieve her. I'll have Lurch fetch out the Addams cradle while you're gone."

~oOo~

Wednesday Addams was more cruel than her mother Morticia. As a girl, she had killed her first romance in the Addams cemetery. Then again, Wednesday had been raised in a different manner than either of her parents had been. Morticia and Gomez had both been raised in a time where it was perfectly acceptable for rich families to hire private masters to tutor their progeny. Wednesday and her brothers Pugsley and Pubert had all been sent to school.

They were more aware of the majority-led 'norm' than their parents. Not that they cared for it, and not that they were any less aware of the minority-driven sub-culture that they had been raised in.

But it did make Wednesday (at the very least) a more... diversely dangerous woman.

Reborn's uncles Pugsley and Pubert were both currently in two different maximum security prisons, and regularly sent letters back to their sister complaining about how pathetic all of their fellow prison-mates were. Neither objected to being in prison, as such. It was recognition of their prowess in their chosen fields. Wednesday was more subtle though, and much much better at hiding the bodies.

Reborn never had to wonder where he got it from. His father had been a passionate Englishman (not two words people generally linked), and had managed to keep pace with Wednesday Addams for ten years. Three of which had been courtship, and only four of which Reborn himself had been alive for. The man had only gone to join the others in the Addams family cemetery when Pugsley and Pubert had both dropped by to visit on the same day. However well as Reborn's father had been able to keep up with Wednesday, he couldn't keep up with her and both of her brothers – especially not when Reborn himself had decided the 'torment Daddy game' looked like fun, and had joined in as well.

But Reborn was an Addams, through and through, regardless of if he changed his name or abandoned it altogether, and he took after his mother.

In the nursing home, Reborn collected Anastasia with the loving tenderness only an Addams could give to their child – and make no mistake, as cruel and cold as Wednesday could be, she had shown him more love and understanding than any other parent Reborn had witnessed to this day. He also, in that careless, Addams way, quietly disconnected the power supply from the life-support.

An Addams welcomed death. An Addams gloried in it. They didn't try to put it off like this, with machines and tubes and chemicals. Gomez and Morticia wouldn't be in this place except that every aid was legally required to be given if they had even the slightest ability (and funds, especially funds) to prolong life.

"Come along, little Anastasia. Time for you to meet your Grandmama," Reborn cooed to his child as the hitman left the building of the dying behind to get on with it.

~oOo~

"Father!" a cheerful little black-haired girl called out in enthusiastic greeting as she slid down the banisters, a cleaver in one hand.

Reborn, having already passed off his hat and bag to Lurch, caught his little girl with a laugh, not at all minding the sharp blade she was waving around.

"And how have you been since I saw you last, my little tsarina?" he asked her as he settled the five-year-old on his hip.

"Miserable," Anastasia replied instantly. "Grandmere has taught me a lot though, and I started school last month."

"School! And I was stuck in Germany, so I missed your first day. Well, have you been making the other children cry?" Reborn enquired with a small smile.

Anastasia nodded, a bright smile on her face. "Yup! But what about you, Father? Have you been behaving yourself without me?" the little girl asked.

Reborn snorted in contempt. "Me? Behave? Sacrilege," he declared firmly, a smirk in place on his lips. "Now, was I a gentleman? Always, but displaying proper manners and behaving are two quite different things."

"Speaking of proper manners," a familiar voice interjected softly.

"Hello Mama," Reborn greeted, and stepped up to kiss her cheek. "Dressed to kill, I see. Whatever is the occasion?"

"Miss Ferkins," Wednesday answered.

Reborn frowned as he considered that. "Teacher," he recalled. The woman had taught Wednesday back when she was in primary school, and Reborn as well. That had been the year she finally retired. "What about her?"

"She recently expired. I'm going to her funeral. Hopefully, I can enslave the minister while I'm there," Wednesday explained with a sinister little smirk. "Also, Reborn, try and get shorter jobs for a while? Anastasia really does miss you."

Reborn nodded. "Go to the funeral Mama," he urged. "I'll play who's the better killer with my little tsarina until you get back."

"Yay!"

~oOo~

His head hung low, fedora shadowing his face, as he side-stepped through the gate. Reborn sighed deeply as he took in the path leading up to the great house, and the door that seemed so far away. He was tired, miserable, but he was an Addams. He would not be subdued, and he would kill those who tried.

He just had to catch the damn smiling bastard first.

"Er, Sempai? A-are you sure a-about this?" a voice asked nervously from his left.

"Lackey, you're the world's greatest stuntman, I'll allow, but you haven't got the first clue how to operate in the world you've just been thrust into," Reborn stated plainly. "I don't think much of you, but I'm not going to leave you to make an embarrassment of yourself. You'd be an embarrassment to me by association, and I would not like that."

That said, Reborn led the way up the path, and when they reached the door, he was most unhappy that he had to jump a little to reach the doorbell.

Lurch stared down at them a moment later.

"It's not funny," the new Sun Arcobaleno grunted in response to the family butler's expression, and pushed past, passing up his hat as he stepped across the threshold. "Oh, and don't take Lackey's helmet Lurch. He's got a thing about being 'exposed'."

~The End~