rokhal

Title: Mamushka!
Fandom: All-New Ghost Rider, The Addams Family (all media types)
Rating: PG-13
Length: 2400 words
Content notes: Serial killer
Author notes: An AU in which Robbie and Gabe are distantly-related to the Addams family, and have moved in with Gomez and Morticia.
Summary: A special guest arrives just in time for Robbie Reyes' coming-of-age ceremony.

 

Gabriela was late, to the first reunion of her Addams side she'd ever attended, and instead of a solemn coming-of-age ceremony like she'd assumed from the invitation, she'd apparently walked into a Goth rave. Except the formal wear was a bit more global than that, and some of these people looked like actual Victorian ghosts.

Bones were a common theme. So was lace, or cobwebs, or cobwebs worn as lace—with live spiders—

In her sterling and turquoise beaded choker and purple sateen pantsuit, Gabriela felt inappropriately dressed. It might be better if she'd invited Tim—but the divorce was just last year, and she didn't feel comfortable sharing parts of her life with Tim that she herself didn't understand. No, she should meet her family on her own terms. Her nephew.

“Cousin Gabriela!” An operatic siren from across the room. Gabriela's head snapped to the side, and she spotted Sylvestra Orozco-Addams, seven feet tall in heels, waving a black lace handkerchief. Sylvestra swept toward her, trailing her husband and four children in descending order of height. “You made it! I was so worried! You must squeeze in, Roberto has never seen you, you can't miss his Mamushka!” Sylvestra lifted her walking stick and wiggled it through the packed crowd, clearing herself a path, and her husband silently tucked Gabriela in between their eldest son and eldest daughter. In order of height.

The train of Orozco-Addamses released Gabriela at the edge of a clear space in the center of the ballroom, where a glossy black muscle car festooned with black crepe was parked under a chandelier, and six—no, seven women—two were conjoined twins—shivered tambourines in a rising and falling hiss, and a skinny teenager in some kind of—that was a wheelchair, but with eight mechanical, claw-tipped legs—and a sky-blue kimono, howling like a wolf. Gabriela didn't know where to look, until a sloe-eyed man in a red jacket and a Russian cap raised his arms for silence. This had to be Gomez Addams, whose house this was and who had taken in Juliana's sons. Gabriela spotted a younger man, dressed in black, facing him from across the car. He had short dark hair and brown skin, all she could make out from the back and from this distance, and he was built somewhat like her brother David had been. He could be Juliana's. He must be.

“Our Cossack cousins taught us the Mamushka—God knows when! Before the Plague, before the Sack of Rome, before the Tarantella! It is our heritage. Tonight, our cousins Roberto and Elias Reyes Addams will dance the Mamushka for you!”

The tambourines hissed, and then set up a quick beat, Shink! Shink! Shink! Shink! The crowd began to stomp, rattling the floor. A violin rose above the percussion, and the chant, “Mamushka! Mamushka! Mamushka! Mamushka!”

Gabriela joined in the stomping and chanting. This at least promised to be more fun than she expected. The two men circled the car, facing each-other, until at last they side-stepped around it, shook hands, bowed and began a very silly-looking Eastern European dance, slapping and stomping and chicken-walking. It surely required impressive core strength to crouch that low. The man in the red jacket looked like he could balance a wineglass on his head as he kicked his legs out from a steep squat, and the other one, her nephew—either Roberto or Elias, Gabriela wished he'd actually introduced them one by one instead of getting right into it—struck sparks from the floor with the chrome caps on his heels and toes.

Then Gomez tossed the younger man ten feet in the air to land in a blind hand-spring and they started juggling knives.

The kid in the kimono started howling again, and the violin climbed higher and faster. Gabriela lost count of the knives flying through the air—this was circus-level precision, she couldn't believe this was a traditional mandatory family dance—until the younger man missed a catch and a two-foot-long knife stabbed deep into the floor. The crowd gasped and cringed, and Gabriela cringed too—that had to be embarrassing, but at least he hadn't been impaled; she hadn't thought they were that sharp—but her nephew snagged two knives out of the air and tucked them under his arm, which bought him enough time to jerk the fallen knife out of the floorboards and toss it back.

The music crested to a peak as the knife-juggling got faster and higher, almost clipping the chain of a chandelier overhead, and then her nephew started catching knives and tucking them under his elbows, one, two, three, four! five? Six! And Gomez Addams accepted a seventh knife from a chubby boy in a prison-striped tee-shirt and flung it high into the air.

Both Gabriela's nephew's hands were full. He threw his head back, slid on his knees under the path of the knife, and swallowed it.

The Addamses went nuts, stomping and clapping, tambourines rattling, the violin shrieking as the man in the red jacket danced around her nephew, who knelt patiently, holding six knives in his arms with the handle of the seventh sticking up between his teeth. At last the older man drew the knife from his esophagus with a flourish and wiped it with a cloth, and Juliana's son stood up and bowed.

Gabriela clapped along with the other Addamses, and then, because the figured it would fit the mood, let out a grita.

“Robbie!” yelled the kid in the kimono, his nightmarish steampunk spider-chair scuttling onto the dance floor, and the man in the black suit hurried to deposit his knives in Gomez's arms so he could bend down and accept the kid's hug. “Robbie! Robbie, you looked so cool, I'm so proud of you! You did a really good job!”

From this distance, Gabriela couldn't hear Robbie's reply. He had his head tucked into the kid's shoulder.

Sylvestra poked Gabriela in the back with her walking-stick. “Go! Go talk to them, I'll introduce you! You came all this way!”

Gabriela flinched and spun around to face Sylvestra, even though her poking was on the gentle side. “Isn't his brother going to dance?”

“Next year, Morticia says. Go on!”

“But...Gomez? Announced—”

“Oh, Elias. You saw him! Probably. Roberto is possessed,” Sylvestra explained matter-of-factly. Her husband and children all nodded. “Come!” The stick came back up, as a band started playing some kind of ballroom/Indian dance fusion, and dancing couples swirled across their path. Gabriela found herself arranged between Sylvestra's children again, a winding train that powered across the dance floor and deposited her beside Roberto and the boy.

Roberto straightened, stepped in front of the boy, and looked Gabriela up and down. He smiled widely, showing one chrome canine tooth. A stark white streak in his sweat-damp hair swept backward from his hairline, and in narrow strips on his scalp and forehead, more chrome rose up through his skin. His earlobes were gauged about an inch wide, black plugs with skulls on them, and his eyes were pale brown, almost orange. He reeked of gasoline. “Hey, sweetheart. You look confused.”

“Cousin Elias, this is your sister-in-law. Gabriela.”

Elias stiffened like he'd been shocked. One of his eyes flicked green. “Oh god. Ma'am. Who?” He reached backward, anchored his hand on the boy's shoulder. “I mean. I'm Roberto Reyes. This is my brother Gabriél.”

“Oh,” Gabriela said, clutching her chest involuntarily. From behind Elias/Roberto, her namesake guided his chair out so he could see her.

“Hello,” he said, reaching out for a handshake. His arm wobbled a bit, but his grip was firm. He looked even more like Juliana, and a bit like their brother David.

“Hi, Gabriél,” she said. “I'm so happy to meet you. I'm your aunt. Your mother Juliana was my sister.”

She heard the young man gasp. The boy's eyes narrowed. “Are you nice or are you a liar?”

“Gabriela is very nice,” Cousin Sylvestra butted in. “Very kind, always a shelter to those in need.”

“I wouldn't go that far,” Gabriela murmured, but Sylvestra shushed her.

“She is a kind woman. You boys can trust her. Elias, behave.” And with that, Sylvestra and her family wound their way between the other Addamses and out of sight.

Roberto/Elias curled his lip at her back, before shaking himself and facing Gabriela again. Somehow she was his sister-in-law? “You have your mother's...eye,” she said awkwardly.

A tentative smile from the young man. “Really?”

“You didn't notice?”

“I was five,” he said. “Gabe was a baby. We, um. We didn't think we had anybody left.”

This confirmed what Gabriela had suspected for years. After she'd moved herself and their brother out, after their father had died, after David had died, and the silence from Juliana stretched on and on and on...

“Until you met me,” her nephew added. Then, “You don't count.”

“Robbie,” said Gabriél, tugging on his brother's fitted jacket.

“We were on our own until Gomez and Morticia took us in,” Roberto explained, giving her a searching look.

“Juliana ran away when she was seventeen,” Gabriela said. “She sent Mama a postcard when she got married but there was no return address.”

“Oh.” He squeezed his eyes shut, and took a long shuddering breath, then seemed to calm himself. “Daddy kissed with his fists. I knew it! Goddamnit Eli—are you jealous of our aunt? Excuse us,” he said, and stalked a few paces away, cupping his hands over his mouth and muttering to himself.

Gabriela watched him, feeling vaguely queasy. If it weren't for the eyes—eye—she'd think he was mentally ill, or acting. Possession couldn't be mentally healthy. She turned back to her other nephew. “I love your kimono,” she said. “Where did you get it?”

“Cousin Ichiro got it for me,” he said. “He lives in Japan. He taught me a lot of things, about cooking, and painting, and how to take care of swords. He says I can't have my own sword until I can take good care of it, so I pay attention really hard when he teaches me. I get to visit next month. Robbie can't go because he's hiding from the law, but sometimes Cousin Ichiro comes here. Robbie likes him because he scares Uncle Eli.”

“I'm not scared,” said Gabriela's other nephew from behind her. She jumped. “I'm cautious. It's called respect. Yeah, sure, you respect him so much you don't want the body 'till he leaves.” He—they—swallowed. “Gabe—I think Mom named you after her. After you. Ma'am.”

Gabriela nodded. Dabbed at a tear with her knuckle, wished the butler hadn't taken her purse. Roberto reached into his jacket and pulled out a perfectly normal packet of Kleenex. “Thanks,” she said hoarsely. “I never thought she—I did a bad job protecting her. No wonder she ran away, she was always smart. I never thought she still cared about me like that. I just wish—”

“Me, too,” Roberto said. Yes, Roberto—one green eye like her sister's. “She was a good mom.” He stopped, clenched his jaw and shook his head, recovered. “I miss her.” Then, “Woman had good taste, at least, Beto woulda given her the skin off his back, she had him so whipped, f-fff-mmmm-kk. Ugh.” He coughed and opened and closed his mouth silently.

“Go away, Uncle Eli,” Gabe growled, stepping on his brother's foot with his spider-chair.

“He's jealous,” Roberto explained. “I'm sorry. We can just go—I mean, I'll stick close in case Gabe needs anything, since Gomez and Morticia are busy, but. We'll go.”

“No!” Gabe exclaimed. He face-palmed, the sleeves of his kimono flapping. “I meant. Not! Grr!”

“Why?” The obvious and uncontrollable personality switching made this a rather silly question, but Gabriela continued, “You don't need to feel embarrassed.”

“I let myself get out of practice,” Roberto said. “It's my fault. Gabe, I'll just be over there. Aunt Gabriela shouldn't have to deal with Eli.”

“Roberto, you're my sister's son,” Gabriela said, reaching out for him. He stared at her hand as she touched his sleeve gently. “I thought I'd never see any trace of her again. But here you two are. And you seem to be going through something very difficult—”

Roberto shut his eyes hard and let out a sharp breath like he'd been punched.

“I want to get to know you,” she continued. “If you'll let me.”

“Eli's the ghost of my dad's brother, the serial killer,” Robbie said quickly. “I don't think you want to know him.”

Gabriela stared at him—a full-fledged Addams by his streaked hair and his chrome implants and his weird black-and-white suit and the pyrotechnics in the soles of his shoes and his unsettling smell like he'd rolled in a car wreck, all except for his downcast eyes. Shame, like no one else in this room seemed to feel. “That's terrible,” she said.

“Yeah,” he said, looking up. “It is. I—I can't talk about it with Gomez or Morticia or Fester or anybody, he can't badmouth me to these people, they love me, they don't get it. They're innocent, in a way. I wouldn't want them to.”

Gabriela glanced from side to side—keeping Roberto and Elias in the corner of her eye—and watched the joyful, gloomy Addamses swirl in pairs around the ballroom. “I think I understand some of it,” she said.

“Eli doesn't know what happened to Juliana,” Roberto added.

Gabriela choked. She hadn't thought of that.

“He tried, at least once, but he didn't—we don't know how they died.”

“That, um.” How did you make light of something like that? “That would have been very awkward.” She felt the words sharp in her mouth, her lips pulling back from her teeth as she stared at Roberto, at the other person behind his eyes, and Roberto made a similar, strained smile. This was a disaster. She was going to have nightmares about her own nephew. This was horrible. There had to be a way to separate them, but—surely Roberto had tried already. She didn't know how he could stand it. “Come here,” she said at last, opening her arms, and Roberto stepped forward, hesitant. He let her grip his wiry chest and press her head into his ropy shoulder, guided her backward and sideways so Gabriél could grasp her free hand.

“I'm so happy I found you,” she said, her voice firm with determination, and she felt Roberto nodding jerkily against her ear.

“Me too.”