A/N: And now it's time for Part Two of Johan's Shitty Family Reunion and Why He Hates His Extended Family So Much

As a reminder, rough ages are as follows: Johan at 64, Daniel at 47, Clara at 45, Lena at 14, Astra and Tara at 12, Sterling at 8, Maglina and Oriana at 6, and Seren at 1

Chapter Fifteen: The Cadet Branch (II)

The Marquis held up a hand and brought his riding party to a halt. Gallifrey sat before them, only a few hours' ride, though something about the very atmosphere seemed off and he did not like the feel of it.

"Did one of you remember to bring a spyglass?" he asked.

"Yes, milord," a rider answered. He took the device from his saddlebag and extended it. "What do you want me to look for?"

"Just whatever appears out of place." The man examined the city walls and furrowed his brow.

"There are banners along the perimeter, milord," he replied hesitantly. "They don't look like the ones for your ball tomorrow night."

"What do they look like?" The Marquis's chest began to tighten as he waited for the answer. It was one word, simple yet terrible, and caused his stomach to leap into his throat.

"Wolves."

"Then we must hurry," the Marquis answered. They rode their horses as hard as they could push them, cutting their travel time by an hour. When they arrived in the city they found it threadbare, with only a few citizens milling about. Instead of disturbing them the Marquis rode directly to the castle to be greeted by a group of unfamiliar soldiers in the stables.

After being escorted through his own home, the Marquis came upon the sight he had been dreading his entire time as lord of his lands: a vaguely familiar man was sitting in his chair in the governance hall, old and decrepit and smug. His younger self sat off to the side, just as arrogant and pompous, and the hall seemed as if it had been only half-decorated before the anniversary ball had been called off.

"Pity we have to meet like this, Johan," the old man said. "From the way things were going, I had been hoping to meet at your funeral, but instead you decided to throw seven little wrenches into my plans."

"Now I can finally put a face to the name without looking at my grandpapa's portrait, Faolan," the Marquis spat. "What do you think you are doing?"

"Taking back what is rightfully mine—I was born first, after all."

"Even if you were, you were exiled from the marquisate for your crimes…"

"Petty squabbles of decades past," the old man scoffed. "I'm more interested in what you've been up to in my absence. Those brats of yours; I don't think I've met a more terrified and weepy bunch. No will to them without their stern-faced papa to back them up."

The Marquis snorted in response. "That's a lie. If you knew my children half as well as I do then you'd know that they're anywhere but in your custody. Even if they were, I did not raise cowards." He paused, glancing around the room. His advisors and servants were everywhere, unable to assist him without risking their lives, silently awaiting the outcome. "What is it that you want? Money? A position?"

"Your position," Faolan said. "I was thinking, to make things a bit easier for the people, we could engage my grandson Ulric here with your daughter, just so that it doesn't look like I'm completely forcing your bloodline out of the way. She did seem like a little bit of a firebrand when we met her, but a marriage will tame her spirit soon enough."

"She's fourteen."

"A long engagement never killed anyone, and it will give her time to adjust to her new role." Faolan chuckled and leaned back in the chair. "I thought someone warned you that it's bad luck to name a woman your heir."

"No such thing," the Marquis jeered.

"Then Papa's cousin Dorothea should have had a long and prosperous reign, admit it." A sly grin crept across Faolan's face. "Then again, you were about to hand over the marquisate to a girl from Blackpoole before you fell in love with her."

"You leave my wife out of this; many arranged marriages take a while to come around and you know it," the Marquis hissed. "At least my bride is a beauty that has never faded, both in her outward appearance and internal mannerisms. I am glad to have married her, humbled to have fallen in love with her, and proud to have fathered her children. She is my dearest friend and, despite not being of Kasterborous, is twice the Doctor you can ever dream of becoming."

Faolan rolled his eyes and snapped his fingers. Out of a side wing, a soldier shepherded the Marchioness into view. She was bound at the wrists and visibly shaken, though otherwise unharmed.

"Johan!" she shouted as soon as she saw her husband.

"Clara!" He tried to run to her, but the soldiers on either side of him lowered their pikes and blocked his way. The Marquis watched helplessly as his wife was seated on the floor of the dais next to Faolan's feet. "Clara, are you hurt?!"

"Physically, no," she responded, keeping her composure as the toe of Faolan's boot traveled up her arm. "I am relieved to see you again. The children escaped days ago—my bet is they're out of Kasterborous by now."

"They are as resourceful as their mama, so I have no doubts." The Marquis then switched over to the ceremonial tongue, narrowing their potential audience drastically. "My fairest wife, she who enriches my days and excites my nights, I long for when we are reunited, so that you may have me in all your sultry ways."

"To make you quiver in pleasure is currently my greatest desire," the Marchioness replied. Her Old Gallifreyan was halting and thickly accented, though it was still enough to make her captor squirm in discomfort.

"You two are disgusting," he gagged, using the common tongue. He propped his feet up on the Marchioness's shoulder and groaned. "Now let's cut the sap and get down to business. I, Lord Faolan Yancy, Son of Lord Johan Claud, Tenth Marquis and Ninth Doctor of Kasterborous and Gallifrey, declare myself the rightful lord of the marquisate and you, Johan Lonan the Pretender, be thrown into the dungeon, where you and your… wife shall remain for the end of your days."

"On what grounds?" the Marquis snapped. "I do not please everyone, but I have tried to be a just and lawful man. I make mistakes, just as anyone, though I doubt any of them have been cause for my forceful resignation."

Faolan pulled a folded piece of parchment from his jacket pocket and opened it up, reading the contents aloud. "'In the event a marriage goes unconsummated the night of the vows, the union has a year to rectify this slight or else the bond is considered null and void. Special permission to extend this period is given in times of war and when one or both halves of the couple are younger than traditional marrying age…'" He cleared his throat and put the parchment back. "Well, considering neither of you were underage and there hasn't been a war to keep you apart, I would consider this to be grounds enough."

The Marquis's face fell in shock, eyes widening and his lips parting. "What are you implying?"

"The highest-ranked wedding guest may look for blood, but the maids are the ones that scrub the sheets. I have confessions that prove that your marriage is a farce and your whelps bastard-born. The very fact that you were ready to place illegitimately-begotten issue on this seat is reason enough to depose you."

A fire lit behind the Marquis's eyes and his whiskers bristled in anger. "You dare say such low things about my children?!" he bellowed, brow furrowing in anger. "They are no less legitimate than any other heir the marquisate has had! My eldest daughter's claim to that chair is stronger than yours has been in a hundred years!"

"Not by the way I see it—frankly, you should be honored I'm willing to marry a pretender's bastard to my heir. To give the babes at her breast all the things she and her siblings were promised through falsehoods? I'm the epitome of grace and goodwill."

"You're nothing but a vile piece of trash! Remove your boots from my wife, your arse from our chair, and your presence from our march! I will not stand for these accusations against my children, all of whom have done nothing wrong aside from childhood mishaps!" The Marquis bared his teeth in his rage, spit flying as he spoke. "Vows were said and the marriage legitimized within the night! There is nothing ill-begotten about any of my children! Lena will succeed me, and she will have a husband of her choosing, and you both will go back to whatever vapid den you slunk out of!"

"You no longer have any power here," Faolan smirked. "Be lucky I don't turn the armies away from the front and have them descend upon Blackpoole and Coal-on-the-Hill looking for your little bastards. That is where they would go, correct? Back to their frail Grandpapa or hide out in their upstart tutor's gift of a barony…"

"Both men being ones far more worthy of that chair than you," the Marquis hissed, lowering his voice. "Vacate this castle at once." The man in the chair grinned.

"I'd like to see you try," he said. "My grounding is solid—I have military might and the law behind me. What do you have?"

The Marquis stood there, growling as he narrowed his glare. A dour air settled over the governance hall. No one moved, not soldier nor serdar, and the tension grew with each passing moment. 'Faolan has no right,' he thought. 'My children are legitimate, no matter what he thinks. For all anyone knows, these confessions he touts are forged; I need to come up with something, and quickly.'

"I have the testimonies of my grandfather Johan Alvis and his trusted friend and servant Wilfred Motte, written in history and the court records of not only Kasterborous and Gallifrey, but in the Royal Court in the capital as well." He fluffed out his cape in an attempt to seem more intimidating. "Any of those accounts will prove your incompetence."

"History is written by the victors, and for the past hundred years the wrong history has ruled from this seat," Faolan scoffed. He scratched the appalled Marchioness's cheek with his boot toe, smugly staring his great-nephew down. "The only incompetent one here is you."

"…me?" the Marquis asked. "I'm not the one who was caught attempting a coup… twice at this point!"

"It's not a coup when it involves putting the right man on the governance chair," Ulric replied.

"Kidnapping sounds a lot like part of a coup to me," the Marquis said. He spun on his heel and addressed the crowd around him. "Is that the sort of person you want at the helm of the marquisate? A kidnapper? Do you really want a man who kidnapped his brother and took his place not only on the wedding platform, but before the King holding the marquis's coronet as well?!"

"Only because I was righting a wrong!" Faolan took his feet off of the Marchioness's shoulder and white-knuckled the arms of the chair. "I was taking my rightful place!"

"Via fratricide! He lusted after the title so intensely that he was willing to kill his own brother! Had it not been for a lucky servant stumbling on my grandfather, I would not be here! Faolan was spared the axe and noose despite the fact he was willing to burn the very man that sent him into exile from the inside-out!" The Marquis swept around the room, his cloak billowing out behind him as he walked. "Is that really the man you want to follow?! If he was willing to murder his way to the top, what's keeping him from lying his way there with false confessions? What will prevent him from lying to you about his stand on policies? Mismanaging the march? Holding the taxes hostage in his coffer? I've been your Doctor for over forty years! Am I really so terrible that I should be replaced with this rabid wolf?!"

The governance hall fell deathly silent as the Marquis ended his speech. He turned back to Faolan, glare still at full-strength. "Who out there will pledge their metal, brains, and blood to mine? Well?!"

"Ha! As if that is going to happen!" Faolan laughed. He stood and marched down to face his nephew nearly nose-to-nose. "Guards! Arrest this man and bring him and his whore to the dungeons!" No one moved, not even the soldiers. "You heard me! Arrest them!"

The clatter of wood and metal on the marble floor rang out throughout the governance hall. Faolan quickly scanned the room, finding that his soldiers had all dropped their spears and swords. He looked back at his grandson in a panic.

"I think you know what to do," the Marquis said calmly, his voice low and resolute. The two soldiers flanking him, the very ones who had prevented him from rushing to his wife's side, each took one of Faolan's arms and escorted him out of the room. Two more soldiers led out Ulrich, who was muttering sourly as he walked along. Once the two usurpers were out of the hall the Marquis rushed to the Marchioness and helped her to her feet, drawing her close, hands on her cheeks, to kiss her passionately despite the crowd of people still in the room.

"Johan, I have never been so terrified in all my life," the Marchioness admitted as they parted. Silent tears were streaming down both their faces as they took in the sight of one another. "I feared for you, the children, the march… that man was going to take everything from us."

"As long as you and the children are safe, I don't care if I'm a marquis or a street peddler," he murmured. He lightly touched her face and tamed her stray hair, his fingers deft and gentle. They kissed again, holding each other as they only dared before in the privacy of the Marchioness's bedchambers. Once their relief was satiated, they turned towards the rest of the hall, holding hands and smiling thankfully towards their slightly stunned subjects.

"The line of Faolan Yancy and Rosalie Tyra is no more!" she announced. "We shall petition the king for their branch's full exile, so that the family down to Ulric and his issue may never set foot inside the kingdom again. You have made the right choice, and for that you have the gratitude of both your Doctors."

That night there was cause for celebration as the rule of the march had been solidified. The Marquis and Marchioness were reunited with their children as well; their daughters' braids had all been shorn at the nape and their tutor had kept all six of his charges and his own daughter carefully hidden until the messenger was sent for them. Unknown to all others, the ruling family slept in the same bed that night—eight in a mess of limbs and hugs and a lack of caring about propriety. Nothing was going to tear them apart like that again, not if any of them could help it.

Never again did the Marquis's cousins set foot inside Kasterborous, and soon they were banished from the kingdom as well, forced to live overseas to find their fortunes elsewhere. The legacy of Faolan Yancy, twin of Johan Alvis, Tenth Doctor of Kasterborous and Gallifrey, remained as it always had been: unneeded and unnecessary to the survival of the marquisate.