Title: Bred in the Bone (13/?)

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

Author’s Note: Sorry this has taken so long. I have been battling some sort of virus (not the bad, horrible, no-good one! :D ) and it has left me kind of unable to concentrate. On the good side, I have seven pages of story ideas….

Part One is here; Part Two is here; Part Three is here; Part Four is here; Part Five is here; Part Six is here; Interlude is here; Part Seven is here; Part Eight is here; Part Nine is here; Part Ten is here; Part Eleven is here; Part Twelve is here

            We limped into the Hub after dark, tired, bruised, and reeking of tywyl blood. If anyone was foolish enough to entertain any doubts about Jack’s priorities, his reaction would have put paid to all of them; ignoring the presence of a squad of Small Ones in full battle gear, plus an assorted mob of Tylwyth and humans, all looking the worse for wear, he marched up to his husband and swept him into a tight embrace. Ianto wrapped his arms around Jack’s waist and sagged against him, finally giving in to exhaustion. Jack whispered something against Ianto’s neck that caused Ianto to chuckle and tighten his hold.

 

            I looked around. Rhys, Martha, and Euan still remained on alert at their assigned stations: Martha at the entrance to the medical bay, Euan on the stairs leading to the greenhouse, and Rhys next to the override switch that would seal off Archives and flood the lower tunnels with gas. I noticed that although their guns were pointing down, they hadn’t put the safeties back on. I waved them over.

 

            “Oi, you lot, come and meet the family.”

 

            “Perhaps you should also invite the one hidden up by the flying lizard’s nest,” Grandmother said mildly.  “He must be very uncomfortable by now.”

 

            I looked up to see John Hart step out on to the high catwalk. Even at that distance I could see his faint smirk. Captain Hart was a bit of a sore point with me; in spite of the help he had given us with the Archangel mess, every time I looked at him I saw Gwen bleeding out on the medical bay steps and half of Cardiff in ruins.

 

            “All right, everyone, stand down.” Jack turned back to the group but kept his fingers laced with Ianto’s. “John, you too.”

 

            I heard a gasp as Hart vaulted the catwalk railing and plummeted down to land in a graceful crouch on the open bridge between the greenhouse and the conference room. The second vault landed him at Angie’s feet. The sarcastic comment I was going to make went unsaid as I noticed her huge, shocked eyes as she looked down at him and his sudden stillness as he looked up at her. Behind me, I heard Achren’s soft, pleased sigh.

 

            “No, no, no, no, no,” I muttered, feeling once again like events were dragging me along without a by-your-leave. “This is absolutely not happening!”

 

            John stood up and moved to Euan’s side, but he never took his eyes off Angie or she off him. The whole thing was so obvious they might as well be sending up signal flares. I quirked an eyebrow at Ianto, who returned a grimace and a helpless shrug.

 

            I jumped into the awkward silence and made introductions all around. Martha bonded instantly with the ladies, and was fussed over by the Small Ones, who knew her as one of their beloved Will’s muses. Rhys and Euan, good Welshmen that they were, knew a bit about what they were getting into, and so were a bit more circumspect. They bowed to Grandmother and aunt Achren and accepted their blessings with proper respect… and proper distance. Hart copied them gesture for gesture, the cheeky bastard, and got pleased smiles in return.

 

            After the proprieties had been observed, Grandmother dismissed her bodyguard. Most of the Small Ones left with them, except for three of the ones dressed in brown and silver; after two millennia without their King they seemed a little reluctant to let him out of their sight. They hovered around Ianto and Jack, always within touching distance.

 

            I hadn’t been surprised when Grandmother’s retinue had included a contingent of Winter folk. Gossip being the best currency among the Small Ones, there was no way that aunt Achren’s messenger would have kept the news of the finding of the Winter King to himself. The people of Winter would have wanted to judge for themselves if the human being offered up as their sovereign passed muster. 

 

            After the Healing, they had taken over his care, as the Summer folk moved in to take care of Tosh and me.  Being as attuned to Energy as they were, they had grasped the range and depth of Ianto’s abilities immediately. Nobody could have missed the insufferably smug way they went about the business of caring for their King.

 

            Still, I had been wondering what the Winter folk would make of Jack. Robin had approved of him, but he belonged to himself and tended to see things in odd ways. There was some precedent for same-sex Consorts, but it was not common, since both the Tylwyth and the Small Ones considered royal lineages – kings born from kings – essential to proper management of the primordial Energy. There were accounts of terrible battles over disputed Kingships in our earliest history and nobody wanted to entertain the notion now that we were at best a remnant population. Mind you, technically Rosie was descended from both Jack and Ianto, but I still worried about how the Winter folk would handle the information that their King was not likely to provide them with a direct heir.

 

            The answer seemed to be very well indeed.  One of them, a young female with beautiful violet eyes, seemed to assign herself to the role of Jack’s personal bodyguard. She was discreet about it, but several times I caught her sniffing at him the same way Robin had, and each time she ended up with a wide smile on her face.

 

            “Jack, we need to talk,” Ianto said. “We don’t have much time.”

 

            “What happened, Ianto?” Jack motioned us towards the sitting area. “We lost contact with you around midday. I was getting ready to head out when one of the… Small Ones… popped in here to tell us you were all fine and to sit tight and wait for you to get here. Somehow it wasn’t a very reassuring message.”

 

            “I’ll go and get us some drinks, shall I?” said Euan a bit nervously.

 

            “Don’t trouble yourself, Youngling,” the older of the Small Ones answered. “We will attend.”

 

            He whispered a few words and three beldames appeared carrying trays with full goblets and plates of fruit. I recognized two of them, very prominent ladies among the Winter folk, and if they had carried anything heavier than a rose in full bloom in the past five centuries I would eat my old police hat. The beldames wanted their own eye-witness testimony. The two younger bodyguards moved to relieve them of the trays immediately. Placing them on the coffee table, they started to distribute the goodies.

 

            Jack’s self-appointed bodyguard offered him a goblet, which he accepted with his usual flirtatious smile. “Thank you… I’m sorry, we have not been introduced. I’m Captain Jack Harkness, and you are?”

 

            “I am called Pansy, milord.” She blushed. “For human tongues anyway. My real name is…” she thrilled a long phrase that sounded to me like a combination of Italian, y-taffodh, and bird song.

 

            Jack grinned at her and thrilled back an even longer phrase. Every Small One in the room turned to look at him, shock on their faces. It didn’t sound exactly like what I was used to; for one, Jack’s voice was too deep to handle the upper registers of the bird song parts. But they certainly understood what he had said.

 

            “You speak the Small One’s language, Captain Harkness?” Grandmother asked. “It’s a very unusual skill. Even our best scholars can only manage a few phrases.”

 

            “When Pansy told me her name, I thought it sounded like the language of a people called the Ainai,” Jack answered easily. “Their home star went nova hundreds of thousands of years before humankind arose, but we’ve found extensive archives in the ruins of their colonies. There was a small one near my home town. Every Boeshane kid takes a crack at learning Ainai at some point. I won’t ever be fluent in it, it’s the kind of language that requires learning from childhood, but I can get by in it. Did you understand me, Pansy?”

 

            She curtsied. “Yes, milord. It has odd grammar and intonation, but it’s much like ours.”

 

            Jack took a sip of his drink, looked into the goblet with pure appreciation, and took a big swallow. “I’ve been drinking the wrong thing on this planet all along. Can we stock this, Ianto?”

 

            His husband gave him one of his patented eye-rolls. “I think that from now on, all you will need to do is ask, Jack.”

 

            Jack took yet another healthy mouthful and then set the goblet down. “All right… to business…”

 

            The Rift alarms blared. Tosh ran to her workstation and started doing whatever it is she does when she’s communing with Mainframe. “Big Rift opening, Jack.”

 

            “Where?”

 

            She punched a few more buttons. “It’s not in Cardiff… I’ve never seen anything like this before…Oh, God.” She looked up at us, eyes wide. “It’s over the farm, Jack. Over Woodstall.”