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Torchwood Fic: Bred in the Bone (14/?)
Title: Bred in the Bone (14/?)
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: Merihim, the bringer of pestilence, appears in some demon lists. Did you know there were demon lists? The things you can find on the web!
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; Part Thirteen is here
Tosh’s words hit me like a hammer. Because of the tywyl’s attacks had been focused on little Gwen I hadn’t even considered the possibility of the other children being in danger, but if we assumed the tywyl were merely Manger’s stalking horses, we were still in the dark about his real plans.
Ianto was on his feet. “Jack, the girls…”
“Are safe, cariad. We brought everyone to
I looked at Hart. “How come?”
He shrugged. “Call it professional expertise. When you remove all the… extraneous matter… what you have is someone targeting Jack. If he is any good, he would have researched his target thoroughly, looking for weaknesses and blind spots. Jack has only one. Family, loved ones. I simply suggested we… fortify the weak spot.”
“I don’t know if I like me and mine being classified as extraneous matter,” I grumbled, “but you’re right. Now the question is why.”
He grinned at me. “There was a time Jack had enemies like
“Professional expertise?”
“Personal experience.”
“It would be.” I bit into a strawberry. “But if revenge is the motive, why did Manger wait so long? It’s been more than ten years. There must have been better opportunities, times when Torchwood and Jack were more vulnerable. Why wait until now?”
“Bilis Manger?” Jack had turned icy. “He’s behind this?”
“Yes. He Summoned whatever is on the Road. Speaking of which, did mainframe come up with anything?”
“Yes.” Jack put the empty goblet back on the tray. “The temperature inside the Rift is rising and the regular little spikes and ripples are becoming more intense. Mainframe says it’s acting like a human body trying to fight an infection.”
Grandmother and aunt Achren traded a quick look. To everyone else it probably meant nothing, but I had spent my childhood learning to read my grandmother’s reactions, down to the smallest gesture. Cold settled in the pit of my stomach.
“Are you getting microbursts yet?” Grandmother asked.
“According to the Rift scan logs, they started last night,” Tosh called from her workstation. “Only a few microns across, and just a few at a time, but mainframe predicts they will grow in size and frequency very quickly.”
“Microbursts?” Martha had been nibbling grapes and taking in information in the way she usually did. “Like fever blisters or something?”
“Very good, my dear,” Grandmother beamed. “As the energy gets hotter it becomes more and more unstable. It forms small bubbles. When the pressure inside the bubble gets high enough it pops. Think of soap bubbles.”
“If you make a soap bubble big enough,” Rhys said very softly, “you can get soaked when it bursts.”
“Yes.”
“It sounds as if you ladies have encountered this before,” Jack said. “Care to enlighten us?”
“A moment, Captain,” Achren answered. “What did you find in the Road, Captain Hart?”
I gawped at Hart. “You went into the Rift? Willing?”
“Somebody had to scout, Elf-Lord, and I have this handy little gadget,” he said, tapping his wrist band. He turned to my aunt. “How did you know?”
“I can smell it on you.”
“Umm,” he sniffed at his sleeve. “I see what you mean. Well. The thing heading toward us is…” he seemed to search for the right word, “corrupt. I couldn’t distinguish physical characteristics, but that might have been a function of the Rift’s distortion fields. All I could see was a greenish cloud that stank like the corpses left unburied after a thousand battles. Does that make sense to you?”
“Oh yes.” Achren rubbed her eyes. “Merihim. Bringer of pestilence. We encountered him once.”
“How did you beat him?” Ianto asked.
“We didn’t. You have to understand. It’s not a matter of fighting. Merihim isn’t a warrior. He’s a living poison. All he needs to do is touch a planet’s atmosphere and everything starts to die. Every disease becomes a pandemic and every minor rot becomes massive putrefaction.” She sighed. “The worst is he doesn’t even know he’s doing it. Merihim has the mental capacity of a three-year-old.”
“Duw,” Rhys whispered.
“All right, change the question.” Ianto persisted. “How did you survive him?”
“Think about it. Disease cannot enter a healthy body and if it does, the body’s own defenses fight it off. We prided ourselves in maintaining our planet.”
Hart groaned. “We are well and truly… ah… in trouble.”
“What do you mean?”
“No offense, Martha, but this is the most unbalanced planet I’ve ever seen, and I’ve been to Freemen’s Swamp. Earth is riding on the edge of ecological disaster. Its people seem bound and determined to tear themselves apart over stupid differences. You’ve survived multiple almost-Armageddons only because a powerful time traveler has taken a fancy to you. Even then the only reason this place is not a slag heap is due to people like you and Jack who keep on fighting. You buy time for humanity.” He waved in our direction. “With a little invisible help, I guess.”
“So you’re saying there’s no way to stop this… Merihim thing?” Rhys asked.
“I think, maybe,” Euan spoke up for the very first time, “we can’t really tell what we can or cannot do until we talk to this Manger chap.”
“Out of the mouths of babes,” Grandmother said. “We must need locate the gentleman. Do we know where he is?”
“No. He disappeared after Abbadon was destroyed,” Ianto answered. “We tried to find him after Jack left. Gwen thought he might have had something to do with Jack’s disappearance. Owen and I visited the shop. It looked as if no one had been there for years. Dust and spider webs everywhere.”
“If what we know of him still holds,” Jack said, “he can hide anywhere in time.”
“There’s nowhere he can hide we cannot find him,” the senior Small One said. “Do not trouble yourselves, Your Majesty, my Lord Consort. We will bring this person to you.”
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That is a good thing putting everybody Jack's loves in one place hopefully they stay safe.
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Lovely update, Hart was smart this time.
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I can spend hours just researching off stuff... Trivial Pursuit on an olympic level!
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Oh yeah, that could be fun... we get the gold for useless fact keeping?
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Please Merucha, reveal the secret?
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However, the story is very popular with writers. Currently, the most famous user of the story is Jim Butcher, in his Dresden Files. Also, Bernard Cornwell wrote an Arthurian novel called The Winter King.
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