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: 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

Part One is here; Part Two is here; Part Three is here; Part Four is here 

             Tosh took the Path in stride. Part of it was what Ianto likes to call the Doctor effect.  Jack, Martha, Mickey and Tosh all have it: a matter of fact acceptance of even the most implausible events. Most of it, though, was Tosh’s own nature. If curiosity killed the cat, Tosh was on her fifth or sixth life.

            By the time we got to the Hub everyone was there. Nothing like appearing out of nowhere in the middle of a supposedly secure underground base to make everyone jumpy and just slightly trigger happy. I kept still, arms away from my body, palms out. Tosh had no sense of self-preservation. She stomped across the floor to Jack, who was standing at the foot of the stairs leading to his office.

            “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” She bellowed at him. “That’s Andy. He can help us fight those damn things!”

             “I’m glad you’re safe.” He kissed the top of her head. “Euan, could you get us some coffee? Andy, here or in the conference room?”

            “Here. We might need to talk to… others… later.”

            He cocked an eyebrow at me but didn’t say anything. I wasn’t fooled for a second. Jack was willing to listen but he would happily put a bullet through my head if he thought I was dangerous. Fair enough; I would have done exactly the same to protect my family.

            Euan returned almost immediately with a loaded tray. “I started it earlier,” he confided as he handed me my mug. “I don’t know what this is about, but it sounds like a long meeting.”

            Jack waved Euan to the only empty chair. “All right Andy. You have the floor.”

            “I’ve been trying for years to figure out how best to say this, but I don’t think there is a way to make it easier.” I looked at each face in turn. “My family arrived on Earth several millennia ago. It wasn’t a choice. I suppose you could say we are Earth’s earliest refugees.”

            “War?” Jack asked.

            I shook my head. “A gas supergiant star in our neighborhood was hit by a runaway black hole the size of the moon.” Jack winced. “Yeah. The explosion destabilized every sun in that arm of our galaxy. Planets exploded like popcorn. More than a thousand races were wiped out. We were lucky. We had the Road. Even then we lost ninety percent of our people.”

            “The Road?”

            “That’s what we call the Rift, Jack.”

            Tosh sat up like she’d been pinched. “You can travel in the Rift?”

            “Not anymore. We knew that when the energy of the explosion collided with the Road it would set off a chain reaction that would threaten all the Universes. Once we were safely inside we used our power to seal it behind us. We burned out, Tosh. What we did destroyed our ability to See the Road. If it hadn’t been for the Small Ones we would have died inside it. They brought us here.”

            Jack poured himself more coffee. “Small Ones?”

            “Our… companions.”

            “Hold it a sec.” Rhys raised a hand. “Look, Andy. I’ve known you a long time and you’ve always been an honest bloke. You want me to believe you’re an alien refugee, fine. God knows after weevils, Daleks, Time Agents, and baby Archangels, that’s small potatoes. But a large bunch of aliens living among us for thousands of years and nobody noticing?”

            I couldn’t stop the smirk. “But you have always known about us, Rhys. Would it help if I told you that our word for planet is tylwyth and our word for people is teg?”

            Ianto spat out a mouthful of coffee. “The Tylwyth Teg? You’re a…”

            “Watch it, mate. Close your mouth, Rhys.”  I sat back, rubbing my eyes. “We were lucky. Earth has a habitable shadow dimension. We settled in. Got to know the neighbours. They were culturally primitive, but with so much promise!”

            “What about the fairies?” Euan had the grace to look a little embarrassed. “I mean the baby taking ones? Did they come with you?”

            “No. They were here when we arrived. We called them tywyl.”

            “That’s Welsh for something dismal and awful,” Rhys objected.

            “No. That’s taffodh for thief. You borrowed it much later. In those days they used to actually steal children. They attacked a family living near one of our settlements, people we had developed a fondness for. We fought them and won. We couldn’t banish or destroy them because their Power is woven into the fabric of this Universe, but we forced them to agree to our terms. They could only take children who were willing in the depths of their souls and those with nothing to bind them to the human world. We placed very strong claws on the geas.” I saw Jack’s questioning look. “Punishments.”

            Martha had been silent until that moment, watching and weighing in her usual fashion. “So why are they going after Gwen? She’s a perfectly happy child.”

            “I don’t know. Well, I know some of it, but not enough to give you a good answer.”

            “What do you know?” Ianto asked.

            I wondered how he would take what I was going to say. “About twenty-five years go, the tywyl desired a child. His mother had died the year before and his father had just remarried. He was unhappy about it.  Maybe one night he made a wish, or maybe he said something in the heat of an argument with his tad, I don’t know, but the tywyl could make a case that he was a candidate. Except… his family had been Bound to one of ours for more than a millennium in a reciprocal Bond, which is quite unusual for an old magick. We refused him, and punished the tywyl for their presumption. Now they want the child’s child.”

            “Me?” Jack grabbed the mug that slid from Ianto’s fingers before it could hit the ground. “Gwen is in danger because of me?”

            “No! Ianto, you and your family should have been completely off limits. Not only are you Bound to us but they were punished once before for trying to take you! No. The tywyl are acting as if they expect something very big to happen soon. Something that will release them from their geas.” I tossed back the last of my coffee and poured another mug. “The one I talked to at Tosh’s said that darkness was coming and all the Bindings would cease to matter. And my grandmother said that the Small Ones are afraid of a darkness moving on the Road.”

            “Need more information.” Jack said. “Tosh…”

            “Wait a moment, Jack. There’s someone who can help us, but I need your permission to invite him, and you need to mean it.” I looked at all the equipment. “It’s going to be bad enough with all this cold iron around.”

            “All right. Is there any formal promise I need to make?”

            “No, but he will know, and he… doesn’t suffer insults.” I took a deep breath, and spoke the words of invitation a brilliant human boy had once devised for him. “By cowslip, and violet, and wild thyme, by sweet musk-rose and eglantine, sweet cousin Robin, would thou attend?”

            And he was there, all four feet of him, looking like a slim, delicate child, and carrying enough Power to push the Sun from its orbit if it pleased him.