Chapter Text
Reborn didn't understand the word "family" until he was five years old.
He wasn’t born in the loving arms of a parent. He was born in the thick smoke of the remains of bombings, wrapped in a dirty sheet. He owed his survival only to a good woman who had found him in a seedy corner of an alley by crying over the shooting. The good woman just took him in, without pain or joy: he would be only the fifteenth child she would bring back to her makeshift orphanage. Dozens of children without parents had been piling up in the cities since the end of the Italian Civil War and piling up in different buildings intended for them. Reborn was one of them.
He was raised in the coldness of reality, the hardness of the stones that cut him off from all daydreaming, and by the rocking of gang wars down his street. His environment was hate-free, really, but he hadn't been brought up in love either. The few adults couldn’t waste time on this - even more so for each child - and were then satisfied with only the bare necessities for their survival. Reborn had only stood out among all these children because of his intelligence and curiosity. He discovered the world lurking in the shadows. Observation served him as a lesson; the salesman who counted his money, the lady who readed to a group of children on her bench, newspapers thrown in the trash.
Then one day he observed a child walking hand in hand with two adults at his side, calling them "daddy" and "mommy." Of course he had already seen and heard these words before many times. But at that moment, the little one burst out laughing, the delighted faces of the parents; he understood what "family" meant. For a few moments, he imagined the warmth of the hand, the tenderness of the words or the devotion of his adults. But he immediately forgot everything. After all, he had lived all this time without this heat, what would be the point of him being angry now? So he simply turned his back and went away.
And years later, the little boy stood on his own two feet and became the number one hitman in the mafia.
This is a fascinating world. When you knew the strings that pulled this world, you could become anyone and lose everything the next second if you missed a step. Because once they were well installed at the top, the vultures were on the lookout to see the crown fall. But it was a game that Reborn had been practicing for ages: he had become an unstoppable machine.
And this family story, you might ask? Quickly gone, forgotten in the warmth of women's arms or in the blood of targets. You didn’t need a family when you were in the mafia, let alone when you were the strongest hitman. It was just a waste of time, money, and attention. But above all, it became an easy target for all the crazy people who wanted to take it out on you. So as long as he kept control of his life, he just let himself be carried away by the flow of life.
That is, until he met seven lunatics who turned his life upside down.
It all started with the recommendation of a mysterious man in his apartment - he should have shot him in the head. A strange sponsor who had brought together seven strangers together to accomplish various missions.
They had been working with these guys for barely a month; and that evening he found himself with a fractured arm, firmly held in a sling. Fortunately, with his flame of the sun, this circus will only last for the duration of the evening. The stars had risen a long time ago, and Reborn went out on the balcony to watch them with Luce. The woman was still waiting for him on her wooden chair and delicately caressed her slightly bulging belly filled with life. Patience was the watchword of her life; patient with the world, patient with her baby, patient with him. We could talk to her in a few words, and for that, the hitman appreciated it. Except when she started to go away in her delusions of premonition.
"You seem to be better, Reborn." Despite his discretion, she noticed his presence without surprise. He positioned himself next to her, his back propped up against the façade.
"Of course I'm fine, I'm the best in the world. But that won't stop me from giving the other lackey a beating."
"You're being hard with Skull. You know very well that he didn't do it on purpose."
"Fortunately he didn't, he wouldn't be in this world anymore otherwise."
Luce dared to giggle at him. All this mess because of their last mission. Just this afternoon, the mysterious man had sent them to the private gallery of a wealthy mafia boss to retrieve an old stolen artifact. However, following an inadvertent mistake by the famous Skull - a real magnet for trouble, he couldn't help but think - security was activated and the agents pounced on it. Result of the races; Verde, the equivalent of a Jekyll doctor who had already sunk, now had to use his crutches to move around for a long time, and Colonnello, a labrador enlisted in the army, had been so battered that he couldn't get out of bed for a week. And Reborn took a bullet in the arm when he took Skull's bumbling man who had tripped up. They could consider themselves that they didn't have worse and that they had recovered the object without any more damage, but for the best hitman, this mission had turned into a failure.
"Come on, how is this mission a failure?" Ah, Luce and her bad habit of reading minds. Only he had the right to do that. "We all made it, isn't that the most important thing?"
"We got away with it because I got my hands dirty because you're just a bunch of incompetents." And once again, instead of being offended, Luce laughed. "What did I say that was funny?"
"That you play the tough guy once again when you have a very tender heart."
Reborn frowned. That she told him that bothered him, but the worst thing was that she was genuinely thinking about it. There was no place in the mafia world to have a heart, he had abandoned it in the old orphanage. Being a hitman did not go hand in hand with empathy: he had gone from crime to crime without once remorse coming to gnaw at him. And supposedly, he had a heart? He openly mocked.
"Luce, you are blinded by your maternal impulses. I don't care what happens to you, but lugging around a useless corpse isn’t part of the mission."
"How cute you are when you're looking for excuses." Luce complimented him and he grunted as a hand mechanically caressed one of his sideburns. "Since you're so obsessed with this idea of 'missions', it's not written anywhere that we all had to come back alive, right? As a bonus, that Skull is known to have an immortal body and that this bullet would not have killed him... no, I think you acted instinctively. Almost like a dad. Have you ever thought about having a child?"
"Oh no, not that. It's true that the stupid lackey looks more like a hyperactive child than an adult, but listen to me. Never in my life would I be a father. Never."
"It's a terrible shame because you’ll be."
Reborn almost choked. "And how do you know that?"
"I know. That's all."
That's it, she was doing it again. In those moments, you just had to nod your head. Contradicting her always led to endless discussions that ended in nothing, especially when these visions turned out to be accurate - and Reborn hated that. But that night, he didn't have the heart to let such nonsense slip under his nose and preferred to play sarcastic.
"Very good. And can I know when I'm going to become a father?"
"When you least expect it."
"Yes, of course. I'll have to think about protecting myself properly for my next sex, right?"
"He will not be wanted."
"Poor kid. But this child, will it be a girl or a boy, doctor?"
"I have to leave you a little surprised, right?"
Luce winked at him amusedly as he rolled his eyes. Nothing tangible, then. Just a waste of time, as usual. She slowly rose to her feet and raised her shawl. The moonlight made his blue eyes shine with mischief.
"It's getting late, let's go home before the baby catches a cold."
"And that you don't say any more stupid things about the evening." He teased her.
At the doorstep, she suddenly stopped and turned back to him. Her face was peaceful, illuminated by a warm smile.
"You know," she addressed him one last time. "It will be complicated at the beginning. You will even be confused and you will only understand your situation after a while. But... you will be a good father, Reborn. I promise."
The hitman didn't have the patience to answer her and hurried her in to close the discussion. Inside, the curious Viper wanted to know what they were talking about for so long, while Fon seemed to have already figured it all out at a glance.
It was the only time Luce spoke to him about this subject, perhaps because she already knew that he would remember it for the rest of his life.
(When the baby was retrieved from Luce's battered body, Reborn knew he wouldn't be able to take care of it. He could never become her father in this world, nor anyone else's.)