Title: Bred in the Bone (2/?)

Author: Emma

Characters: Jack Harkness, Ianto Jones, Andy Davidson, Toshiko Sato, others

Rating: Starts PG, but hey, it’s got Jack and Ianto in it!

Disclaimer: Oh, please. If I owned them, would I let some of those idiots write the scripts? And if I were making any money off them, would I be where they could find me?

Summary: Andy Davidson must embrace his inheritance in order to protect Jack and Ianto’s daughter Gwen

Author’s Note: So, we know Ianto is special. Hey, I made him into a TARDIS/Time Lord hybrid! But there are other special Welshmen out there… This story takes place three years after Evolution.
Author's Note: This is an AU where Gwen and Owen were killed by Gray. So if you want to know why Martha is married to Rhys and Jack and Ianto have a CP and two adopted daughters, you may want to read Evolution first.

Author’s Note: The title is shamelessly stolen from Robertson Davies’s magnificent novel. It’s also an old saying: what’s bred in the bone will out in the flesh.

 

            After a few minutes, Benjamin strolled over, extending a hand to Gwen. “Come on, Owlet. Let’s go in. Maybe Moira will give us tea if we offer to help with the dishes. Your tads and uncle have business to discuss.”

            She wrinkled her nose at him but stood up cheerfully enough. Without a word she handed me the box then took Benjamin’s hand and left without a backwards look. When the door had closed behind them, I turned to Jack and Ianto.

            “Nothing is going to happen to Gwen!”

            “How can you promise that?” Ianto’s voice shook. “We fought them once and lost. The girl Jasmine… we had to let her go, or they would have destroyed the world.”

            “But Jasmine wanted to go, right? Unhappy or neglected or maybe even abused?”

            “Mostly neglect, I think. Her mother’s boyfriend wasn’t very fatherly. And there was another baby on the way.”

            “That’s the difference. Gwen doesn’t want to go anywhere except travelling with the Doctor when she grows up. She loves her tads and her baby sister and all her assorted uncles and aunts and cousins. The little bastards can’t touch the happy ones.”

            My clan had made sure of that.

            Jack had been sitting on the ground, staring at his hands as he plaited several dandelion stalks together. Now he unfolded upwards with his usual grace, but when he spoke it wasn’t the man who had become my friend that I heard, but the Torchwood leader whose job was to protect everyone, and be suspicious of everyone.

            “How do you know so much about them, Andy?”

            I wasn’t ready for a grand confession yet, so I would have to thread the needle carefully. “My grandmother told me about them. According to her, the fairies cannot touch a happy child, or one who has given her word not to follow them.”

            “Is that why you asked Gwen for a promise?”

            “Yes.” I stroked the box with my thumbs. “I’ll need to go check at the school. Kids don’t just appear at St. Teilo’s. Someone had to register Jasmine, fill out paperwork, all that stuff.”

            “Couldn’t they,” Jack pointed upwards, “have just made it all appear?”

            “I don’t think so. Grandmother says their power is limited because they have a limited understanding of humans.”

            “Limited?” Ianto looked at me as if I were insane. “They could destroy the world!”

            “That’s a matter of manipulating nature, Ianto.” I grabbed my jacket from the fence where I had thrown it earlier. "Both of you stay in the house with Gwen for now. There’s one more thing I can do to keep them at a distance, but I’ll need you to be inside.”

            Jack gave me one of his patented this isn’t over looks. “All right. Come back here to report.”

            “Will do. And Jack? Ianto? I will tell you everything as soon as I can. My word on it.”

            I waited until they were inside, then stood in the middle of the lawn, eyes closed, Seeing the house as it was in Reality: a roaring flame fed by undying love. I had never understood how Jack made as much difference as I knew he did, but now I could see it plainly. Jack would love as long as he lived and even if he forgot your name a million years down the road his love would still be there. That kind of power makes ripples in time, changing things as it goes.

            But it was the soft green glow that spilled out from the windows that made me damn near yelp in surprise like an untrained fledgling. There was protection in the house, old and powerful, placed there by one of my clan. And it was the kind that attached itself to people, not places.

            I opened my senses and Searched.  It didn’t take long. Ianto’s essence glowed emerald, and thick ropes of it extended outwards to embrace everyone around him. It was magick of the highest order, and he was doing it without conscious knowledge.

 Looking deeper I found the reason for it. Ianto’s family was Bound to one of my ancestors. It was a millennia-old geas, and it had claws in it like I had never seen before. Compulsion was built into every strand; whoever had done it had simply to extend his or her hand and Ianto would come to heel. And yet there was a sort of love in it as well, and the promise of reciprocity. The One who had Bound Ianto’s family had also Bound himself or herself to them. And, by Tradition, that meant everyone Ianto designated as family.

            However it had come into being – the Caster and the Casting were both unknown to me – it meant I could work with the existing magick instead of casting my own, which I hadn’t been sure I could. My lessons were a long time past, and I had not used the knowledge after leaving my grandmother’s house.

            When I grasped the geas’s energy, the wind started to howl. Dead leaves and rose petals appeared out of nowhere, whirling in the gusts. Voices howled and hissed, reciting bits of poetry and coarse doggerel. I stood still in its midst, letting it wash over me. As the storm picked up, invisible hands rattled the windows and doors of the house, trying to force them open. I used the energy to keep them shut, keeping my hands at my side, making a show of my strength. Bluffing is sometimes the biggest part of power, grandmother had said, and I was bluffing for all I was worth. I didn’t know if I could beat them. I only knew I had given my word that I would.

            The wind became a gale. Bodies brushed past me and long bony fingers prodded at me. There were rocks in the gusts now and a couple smashed into my back. My hair was pulled, my clothes torn. I still stood, but the energy was beginning to slip out of my hands. I would lose this battle if I didn’t retaliate soon.

            I forced my arms out from my body, hands palms up and fingers outspread. I called on the element they couldn’t touch, the one that was my family’s natural ally. Slowly, droplets began to condense and fall, and where they fell, they burned. The poetry was mixed with shrieks now. As the rain fell harder, the winds died down, and the air was filled with screams of rage and wails of pain that faded away until the afternoon was again sunny and warm.

            As I tried to catch my breath, I heard applause behind me. I whirled around, but it wasn’t an enemy. Maybe.

She had not bothered with a glamour, so she stood in her full power. I called her grandmother, although our real relationship was obscured by time. She had been grandmother to all my family for as long as we could remember. The Lady Modron, Eldest of the Tylwyth Teg, whom the Irish called the Morrigan and the Arthurian bards had called Morgan La Fay.