Disclaimer: I do not own Katekyo Hitman Reborn no matter how much I would like to.

Summary: With Yamamoto possibly lost to them forever, the rest must decide who to take up the mantle of the fallen Rain Guardian.

A.N.: Happy 4th of July to those of us who celebrate it. Whether you're the neighbors who've been blowing shit up since 9 am this morning or people arranging barbeques on their lawns, enjoy the holidays!

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KusajishiFuktaicho – Gokudera seems to be the type to have OCD. He's so high-strung at times. High-strung but pretty. Very high-maintenance. If all six guardians were to share an apartment, I can see him picking up after the rest, doing dishes, etc.

I read your fic, I loved your characterization of Goku-! xD sadly I'm not much of a reviewer and 8059 was never my thing... sorry Gokudera, no Takeshis for you... hmm maybe 5980 :P

Tokio Magic – Considering my track record, once a month isn't too bad right...?

Requiem for a Lullaby

A little boy, a fruit of their poisonous union, something they had selfishly wrought to create a foundation for their relationship. Their young son, the man who would be known as Vongola's Rain Guardian in the future, something fate had given to them to attest to their selfishness. If Yamamoto Tsuyoshi had known of the tragedy in the makings, he would have never allowed himself to kiss her on the pier where they decided to abandon their former lives and run.

Beside him, a man puffed on his cigar lazily, dragging the embers from its burn end. The acrid smoke reddened his eyes and made them water, but he sat patiently as he waited for his informant to speak. Peals of laughter rose from the playground as a honey-eyed boy threw a ball into the air and caught it in his hands. Neighborhood children milled around him, clamoring for a chance to play catch. A little girl, her hair a short bob, made a face and claimed that she had been promised the first throw. She was going to be a firecracker when she grew up—he thought.

"They're looking for you." The man murmured quietly, exhaling smoke through his nostrils. His breathing was slightly off and he heaved every third or fourth breath. If Yamamoto noticed, he did not mention it and nodded as a hint to go on. Pausing briefly the informant parted the cigar reluctantly from his chapped lips. He looked at the shorter, stouter, but deadlier man beside him and pinned him with an irate glance. He shook his head, his shoulders shuddering in a muted amusement.

"You stole from the Vongola," the man hacked, slapping his thigh. "Did you expect any less?"

-x-

"What's happening?"

Giannini had set up headquarters in the security room of the Namimori General Hospital. He spun around in his floating chair, coming face to face with the Vongola's Cloud Guardian. Swallowing down the impressive ball of fear that had knotted his throat, the engineer pointed at the radar and the adjoining screen next to it and stammered out,

"Unknown signals, a-p-p-p-pproaching, fast."

The former prefect leaned down, where bright green dots signaled movement in the radar. The cameras that were sat up outside saw nothing but they wouldn't see anything for at least five minutes when whatever that was coming for them entered the two-mile zone around the hospital.

Hibari swiftly stood up and flipped open the panic button case.

"Notify me when you get visual."

The security guards surrounding them all saluted,

"Yes sir!"

-x-

"...And Matsuda said that his father has this big..."

Yamamoto Takeshi skipped a meter ahead, turning around every now and then to regale his father about the friends he had made on the playground that day. It was mundane things—Tsuyoshi knew—that every boy in Japan had the opportunity to experience. It was the things everyone he knew in his current incarnation dreamed of escaping, but he couldn't think of anything more precious than the stream of babbles that flowed from his son's mouth.

"...Kaori-chan kept hitting everyone even though it wasn't her turn and nee tousan, why are girls so strange?"

"Better not let your mother hear that Takeshi." Tsuyoshi replied automatically. "Women are often sensitive and proud creatures."

Takeshi nodded sagely at this response, walking backwards to see his father better against the sunset.

"Yeah, mom is so neat—but she likes to play in the dirt just as much as I do! Except she didn't like it when I asked her to in the playground."

"Gardening is hardly playing Takeshi."

"But she liked the worm I caught for her the other day. She said Mr. Worm could live in the tomato patch because he makes them grow more better."

"Worms eh,"

"Yup,"

"You'll have to introduce Mr. Worm to me sometime."

"Okay!"

-x-

"Not so fast..."

Mukuro raised his hands mockingly.

"You..." he laughed, the number six in his right eye enlarging to turn everything pitch black. Yamamoto Tsuyoshi, who stood behind the illusionist, did not notice the change in color but felt the terrible power quiver in the air. "Did this to him?" He tilted his head back as the blade dug in further, causing a violet welt on his neck. It burst and the blood overflowed past the surface of the blade down his neck. "I wonder..." the Vongola's Mist Guardian sighed, his hands dropping down to his side. "What happens when the illusion breaks..."

-x-

Azzurra had wanted him to pick up eggs for some western concoction called crepe. He did not like his son indulging in such sweets but decided to humor his life. Despite being called out for her different appearances everywhere, she had risen up to the challenge of motherhood quite marvelously and Tsuyoshi wanted to express his appreciation through small favors if not words.

Takeshi was quite a ways ahead of him now and despite the danger of the mafia looming over his family, the older Yamamoto let it be. He knew that the old women sunning themselves around the houses next door would keep a hawk-like watch on the neighborhood children, half-gaijin(1) or not. And he knew that even with information, picking out Takeshi among dozens of other children would be harder than it appeared to a stranger.

He thanked the shop owner and went on his way. He caught up to the boy but soon parted when they passed the gates to their home. He saw Yamamoto sprint up the stairs of their house and run in, slamming the door in the process. He winced but saw that the door had not broken off its hinges from the five-year-old's abuse. He would have to speak to his son about the virtues of silence—and he hurried up the stairs.

What he heard, smelled, saw, felt in the next few seconds would stay with him for the rest of his life.

-x-

Fortunately, the police records were all digital thanks to the tireless efforts made by a certain prefect during his time at Namimori. Unfortunately, this would be the last of their luck in a long time. Search for Yamamoto Takeshi came to a dead end within minutes, Yamamoto Tsuyoshi in mere seconds. With a sudden sense of déjà vu, Smoking-Boom Hayato combed the database for Tsuyoshi's wife and came up with one name, Yamamoto "Azzurra". Despite his heritage and his childhood living in the land of the rising sun, Gokudera wasn't completely experienced with its naming traditions. However, he knew that if the name was written in katakana, the chances were that the name was foreign in origin.

Yamamoto Azzurra was another blank page, but hadn't there been a talk of the Yamamotos' involvement with the Vongola?

"Oy dumb-cow, I need you to look for someone with the name 'A-zu-ra', use any spelling variation. I want the woman found."

-x-

"Don't come in here Takeshi!!"

He was at the door shaking his flip-flops off of his foot when he heard gunshots. He dropped the eggs on the floor. All of them cracked, some bouncing out of the bag to trail yellow yolk all across the hardwood floor. But he paid all this no heed as he burst into the kitchen where he knew his wife and son were. He saw the brunette stranger at first, starring daggers at him with amber eyes. Then he saw red, the kind of red no amount of soap or detergent could get rid of in his lifetime. There was the redness splattered across the wall beside him, red seeping into the calluses on his bare foot, red spreading across his wife's torso as she breathed her last, red covering his son's skin as he lay against the floor caught beneath his mother.

A normal person would have seen to their family first. A normal person would have seen to it that he got his wife what was needed, whatever the price their attacker demanded. A normal person would have seen to it that their son be somewhere safe, away from the carnage, the bullets, the blood, and madness. But in the light of what had just transpired before him, he couldn't afford to be a man first.

"Yarazu no ame!" There was a dagger he carried around always, a momento from the time when he was younger, stupider, prouder—stronger. He ripped it out from his belt and tossed it into the air, the familiar movements of Shigure Souen embedded deeply in his psyche. When he had quit the life of an underground informant, he had gone back to the small fishing village in the middle of nowhere. His teacher, in the midst of teaching the few that had remained the art of the blade had nodded to him as though he had expected him and told him to be proud and claim his legacy.

His legacy, heirloom, heritage, the Shigure Kintoki, still inside his bedroom closet and too far away to be of any help. His legacy, his beautiful son, his love, his family, were here, now and in desperate need of his skills. He kicked the knife before it dropped to the ground. The blade flew true and embedded itself down to the hilt in the other man's chest. The stranger—not so strange, after all, he knew where he had come from—stumbled backwards, stifling cry as his hand flew up to where the knife stuck out from between his ribs. His head hit the cabinets, cracking the glass pane and shattering the dishes and cups lining the shelves. He fell to his knees, barely rolling sideways in time to prevent falling down on the knife. The man curled up in pain, grinding the side of his gun against the palm of his hand.

Reassured that the enemy had been subdued for the moment, he turned his attention back to his family.

"Takeshi...! Azzurra? Azzurra!!" He grabbed her shoulders and pulled her off of their son. He hugged her close, hand attempting to cup the base of her skull where it met the fragile pillar of her neck. Her eyes rolled listlessly vainly attempting to lock on the image of their only son. Spittle flew out of her mouth as her tongue began to writhe between her teeth. Bright specks of foam framed her lips. Her jaws clamped down and Tsuyoshi saw the tip of her tongue fall off as she began to seize, her back arching as her limbs suddenly grew stiff.

So focused on the throes of his dying wife he did not notice the stranger getting up from the ruins of their kitchen.

-x-

"How close are they?" Sawada Tsunayoshi asked without a preamble as the family's Cloud Guardian stalked in with his tonfa drawn.

"Five miles, closing fast. Giannini will alert us when he gains visual."

Ryohei punched the wall in frustration.

"Evacuating everyone right now would be too extreme."

"It matters little," Hibari said flatly at the Sun Guardian. "Fighting was inevitable."

"They know we're not at full strength."

Hibari's lips twisted in a semblance of a smile.

"Perhaps you should have listened to the baby when you had the chance." Tsuna presents him with a disgusted look. The 10th head of the Vongola never got over his initial fear of the former prefect but at the very least, Hibari can say with confidence that he has seen the man develop over the years and thankfully with a somewhat solid spine. "Once the two idiots return from their investigation, we will be able to set up a formation to better protect the hospital."

Ryohei is on the brink of shouting 'extreme' before he stops, fist hanging in midair.

"Say," he frowns, tanned face creasing. "Where's Mukuro?"

-x-

Takeshi observed all this from the floor, red covering his face and body. There might have been screaming—he could have been the one screaming—but he couldn't hear it because the screams were never real. There might have been an afterthought to do so—after all, police came if you were loud enough and your neighbor nosy enough—but nothing manifested beyond a dying whimper. Takeshi's head rolled on the linoleum floor, like a jack-in-the-box with the coiled spring all but spent. He stared from one red hand to another, eyes drooping before widening, pinprick like pupils like faint points that drank the light of the dying sun. He flinched—though he was dimly aware of it—when the stranger shot his father twice in the back as he had done his mother.

"Momma?" He choked down a wet sob, finally turning his head sideways to see the prone figure of his father splayed across his mother's body in a protective embrace. "Dad?"

"Sorry kid," the stranger finally said, taking off his hat and pushing it down on Takeshi's face so that it would cover his eyes. "The mafia does not take kindly to bastards and traitors."

Takeshi sat up, the hat trapped firmly in his hands like some paper bird that he refused to let go. He got to his knees, wobbly like a newborn fawn's, colt's, one or another four-legged beast's that was not his own. He took a step, odd tingling climbing up his ankles like a parasitic ivy. He dragged the other foot behind him in the scarlet paint that had once been his mother's blood. He shrieked,

"You... you leave them alone!"

"Can it kid," the man kicked Tsuyoshi off and rolled him on his back. The Japanese man groaned in pain, blood dripping out from his nose. Blearily he opened his bloodshot eyes and pointed an accusatory finger at the man's trousers. The man shrugged carelessly and took two fingers to Azzurra's pale neck. He turned her head left and right and satisfied that he couldn't find a pulse, closed her eyes with a small farewell.

"You..." the swordsman spat, he flailed his arm unable to get up. "You..."

"This is a goodbye Yamamoto Tsuyoshi."

"...Reborn...!!!"

Reborn froze, an inward shudder rippling through him.

"You little..." he clenched his teeth trying to draw out the dagger from his hips but unable to. How had the kid managed to sneak up on him nevertheless bury a four-inch blade deep into the sockets that cradled his internal organs? Why did his limbs feel so heavy, so slow, so drugged?

He concentrated a small burst of sun energy to the affected area and let it pulse until the odd blue energy cleared. It was like hanging out with Colonello sometimes, as trigger-happy as the blonde was; the rain attribute had a calming aura about him. It was one of few reasons the rather misanthropic hitman had kept up acquaintances with the COMBUSEN member. He took a deep breath and stared down at the frightened little boy before him. Azzurra's son, Azzurra's bastard

"Run Takeshi!"

(1) Gaijin – a foreigner, an outsider

(2) Kouchi – a city in Shikoku.