Huge thank yous to all who reviewed (and will review again)!

So looking at my story with a critical eye and thinking about the real world, the ability to retrieve instantaneously records and a complete medical history from the late 1990s is highly improbable; however, remember a few points. The Torchwood computers are very advanced, and most of the team have been working with them for years—so by now they are quite proficient. Another point is expressed best by Dianna Rigg in my favourite Muppet movie: "It's plot exposition. It has to go somewhere." Rather than dragging this out even further, I just want to move it forward and get more into the second series of Torchwood. The last point is that this is fan fiction: fiction based on fiction. You should be experiencing a level of suspended disbelief. So if you have an issue with this, just raise that disbelief a little higher so it's out of the way.

HXHXHXHXHXHXHXHXHXHXH

Owen was not happy. But then again, Owen was rarely happy. As Jack had suggested, the doctor hacked into UNIT for Buffy Summers' medical records. The same strange, alien readings were there, but UNIT had put them down to Buffy being a vampire slayer.

Vampire. Slayer.

At first he had thought someone in UNIT got a bit pissed at a Christmas party and put vampires and vampire slayers in the records as some sort of a joke. But that didn't seem likely. Owen spent the rest of the day poking around UNIT and Torchwood records to try and figure it all out. In the end he discovered that not only were there aliens coming to earth and making mischief, but there were alien-turned-indigenous demons mucking up the works as well. To top that there was a girl called by some mystic power (put down to some sort of science beyond human comprehension) to be some sort of superhuman fighter to kill the demons. For centuries there was only one at a time until recently when hundreds of girls gained slayer powers. They even had their own organisation to control them, and the world governments were doing everything they could to give that organisation as little power as possible. And witchcraft was real.

Not just on a whim, Owen pulled her high school and college medical records and checked the blood results, since some of the differences were in the blood work itself and not just the DNA. Totally human. And that was after she became a slayer. How is someone born totally human but changed into a half alien?

There was a gap between her UNIT service and a time she was presumed to have died. UNIT had some extra file on that time, but the Torchwood computers could not open it. Owen just knew that whatever happened to make Buffy not completely human happened in those missing years.

By the end of the next day, Jack still hadn't approached Buffy about being her father. It wasn't an easy subject to just bring up, and the blonde had been busy looking for a place to live, furnishing it, and furnishing an entirely new wardrobe.

Owen went into Jack's office and closed the door behind him. The captain put down the papers he was going over and folded his hands in front of him, waiting for the doctor to speak.

"She's not human, but I don't think it has anything to do with being a vampire slayer," Owen said.

"So you know now," Jack stated.

"How could we not have seen this? It's in the records, Jack. I just had to dig around for it. Why hasn't this come up before?"

"You didn't need to know. Demon activity is pretty rare here; they stay clear of the Rift if they are smart, and the occasional vampire or other demon we just put down as alien."

"We're out of our depth with this, Jack." Owen had glanced through UNIT's demon database, and not everything could be killed with just bullets. They were fighting a two-fronted attack… but more like one front and a completely unknown enemy sneaking up behind them. It was like Harold being too busy fighting Harald to notice that William's come and burnt all his boats, and history showed how that went. Eyes were going to be lost.

"That's why I brought her here. We need the muscle."

Owen shook his head. "If I hadn't spent so much time reading about slayers, I never would have believed that the tiny American is our 'muscle.'"

"I know the feeling," Jack said with a laugh and that look of remembering the past. "What makes you think her non-human DNA has nothing to do with being the slayer?"

"One, even when there was only one, any doctor in the last half century would have noticed, and now with all of them around? To hide, to blend in, it doesn't make sense that there would be such a big difference in the DNA coding that it shows up in the blood. I checked her medicals from high school and college, a time when she was a slayer, and they were totally human. There is a gap in her history, years when she was missing, and then she comes back not fully human. The answer is in that gap, Jack." Owen paused. "When are you going to tell her about all this?"

"Soon," Jack answered.

HXHXHXHXHXHXHXHXHXHXH

Buffy sat at the station that had been set up for her. Luckily after her UNIT experience, her natural tendency to disagree with technology was no longer a problem. But it still probably wasn't wise to have her get behind the wheel of a car… especially when everything was on the other side of the road now. Maybe she could get a Vespa.

There wasn't much going on. Owen was talking to Jack, Tosh had her spare projects running, Ianto did whatever he did wherever he did it, and Gwen was on the phone with her fiancé. Apparently the rift was having a bit of a lull due to recently being stitched together after some time fluctuations. So in order to combat the boredom, Buffy was staring at the base of the tower and the pterodactyl flying around it.

Jack had mentioned the invisible lift was invisible because of a perception filter. Now, Buffy remembered that the Doctor had once said that the Tardis had a perception filter. Maybe the two were connected. More and more, events in her life proved that there were no such things as coincidences.

Ianto, the newly dubbed God of Coffee, put a fresh cup on her desk.

"Have we named the pterodactyl?" Buffy asked him.

"Myfanwy," he answered curtly. Buffy didn't think he liked her very much. Though the coffee was the best in the universe (she loved that using that expression wasn't a hyperbole—she had been around the universe after all, and none of the coffee could compare), she still checked the coffee for any obvious signs of poisoning. It smelled and looked normal, so she took the barest taste with her tongue, then the smallest sip. Since it didn't cause any immediate twinges in her stomach or a slight foaming at the mouth, she decided that Ianto hadn't poisoned this cup. She started to drink it down in normal sips.

She looked up and saw the Welshman staring at her.

"What?" she asked.

"Do you always drink your coffee like that?"

"Just checking for poison," Buffy said with her best cheerleading-bimbo smile.

"Ianto, are you trying to poison the new recruit?" Jack asked jokingly as he appeared out of nowhere.

Ianto looked incredibly flustered. "Of course not, sir." With that said, he left and threw a glance back at them just before disappearing into the Records.

"Why are you checking your coffee for poison?" Jack asked her.

"He doesn't seem to like me very much," Buffy said. Plus, if she did die from poisoning, she wasn't ready to reveal her neat little coming-back-from-the-dead trick. The Doctor had said that Jack could do the same thing, but she didn't know if his team knew about that. They probably did given the inability in the family to maintain a secret cover, but she didn't want to risk it.

"Just give him some time to get to know you. But in the meantime, he is not trying to poison you!"

"That's what you say!"

He just gave a slight laugh. "How's the moving coming?"

"Fine, I've still got everything in boxes, have no idea how to assemble a home entertainment system, have no idea when I'll even be able to get everything out of boxes and organised…"

"All right," Jack interrupted. "I was going to talk to you, but it can wait. Go home. Get stuff done. Nothing seems to be happening here. Why don't you take Ianto with you? He's brilliant with organising."

"Um… How should I put this? I'm afraid when he finds the box of my weapons he's going to go all Norman Bates on me. It's his job to know where all the swamps are, and I think I want my body found."

"He's not going to…" Jack threw up his hands. "He's not going to kill you."

"Jack, I know when someone doesn't like me."

"Well, can I help?" Owen interrupted. "I'd do anything to get out of here."

Buffy didn't object. Jack sighed. "Fine, both of you get out of here."

"Yes!" Owen said while Buffy grabbed her purse and followed him out.

HXHXHXHXHXHXHXHXHXHXH

"So the tea boy is out to kill ya?" Owen asked as he looked around at Buffy's flat. Well, he looked at the mountain of boxes in the flat that prevented him from seeing any of the flat itself. He actually wished he had let Jack force Ianto to help Buffy.

"Let's just say, I'm not going to stop checking my coffee for poison anytime soon."

"I don't know. Poison doesn't really seem his style."

"He's always in the kitchen, he's quiet, he deals with the cover up… it all adds up to the classic poisoner."

"Fair point. Where should we start?"

They stood side by side looking at the boxes.

"I have no idea."

Owen rubbed his hands together. "Right, I'll take the kitchen, you handle the bedroom and bathroom since you probably don't want me going through all those feminine unmentionables… even though, I have seen them all before."

"Right," Buffy gave a slight laugh frighteningly similar to Jack's. "You're a gentleman. Kitchen stuff should be over there."

Owen went to the bags that she pointed to while she grabbed bags of clothes and took them up the small set of stairs to the bedroom.

"This it?" he yelled to her.

"I'm pretty much a disaster in the kitchen," she yelled back. "I didn't really think I needed anything."

"This will never do," he muttered as he looked at the can opener, set of silverware, couple of spoons, cups, plates, bowls, and one medium sized mixing bowl. He put it all away and made a list of things she would still need.

Buffy came back and looked over at him. "What are you doing?"

"Making a list, checking it twice," he said sarcastically. "You don't even have any kitchen knives."

"Don't need them." She pulled a set of fighting knives out of one of the boxes.

"You can't cook with those!"

"I can't cook at all."

"Then I'll teach you."

"You can cook? Dr. Harper, you never cease to amaze me… which is probably because I don't actually know you all that much yet. But I don't see why I have to learn. I know how to get take-out."

"We eat enough take-out at Torchwood. You need real food when you come home, doctor's orders. First rule, don't buy anything that won't keep more than a week if you aren't going to eat it within three hours. You never know when Torchwood will call or how long it will keep you."

HXHXHXHXHXHXHXHXHXHXH

Some time after Owen and Buffy left, Jack went in search of Ianto. He found him alone in the Records.

"Ianto, do you have a problem with the new recruit?" he asked, keeping his tone light and flirting.

"No sir," Ianto answered with only a quick glance at Jack.

"Can we cut the 'sir' right now? If there is a problem, I want to know about it."

"Jack, you left and then just came swanning back. And then you start asking about women at a hotel, and then you're bringing her on the team. Who is she, Jack? And why have you brought her here?"

"We need her," Jack said, completely serious now.

"Because Captain John said you needed a blonde?" Ianto muttered, but Jack heard it.

"Because she has three years UNIT experience and even more than that as a freelancer."

"She's only in her twenties!" Ianto protested in his head. But Jack had that look of knowing what Ianto was thinking.

"Ianto, I trust her enough for her to be on the team. I know it's difficult, but trust me if you can't trust her." He started to leave but said one last thing over his shoulder. "And tell her that you aren't going to poison her coffee!"

"I wouldn't be so sure," Ianto muttered to himself, even though he knew he wouldn't go that far. Jack said to trust him if Ianto couldn't trust this Buffy person. Well, that was the problem. He was only slowly beginning to trust Jack again, and something like this didn't help.

HXHXHXHXHXHXHXHXHXHXH

From the way Owen was shifting around while shifting boxes, watching her closely, and hesitating before he said anything, Buffy knew he knew something and was getting the guts to ask her about it. Either that or he wanted to ask her on a date, but he seemed the kind of guy that wouldn't be this shy about that.

It was probably about her UNIT file. If the good doctor had noticed anything strange from those blood tests, he most likely looked up her UNIT file for explanations. She knew that he would find out about slayers. What he wouldn't find would be the reason behind the missing years. When Buffy first joined UNIT and heard about Torchwood, she learned about their Victorian mission to protect the world against the threat of the Doctor. Idiots. Luckily UNIT was large enough to protect the Doctor from Torchwood. But it seemed that with the fall of Torchwood One at Canary Wharf the mission had been cast aside. So UNIT considered the small numbers of Torchwood more of an annoyance than a threat, but they still made sure that no matter the person's clearance, no member of Torchwood could access anything they had on the Doctor.

That meant a mysterious blank in her record that Owen probably wanted explained.

He didn't get the chance, because just then both of their cell phones went off. They each had a message telling them to meet the team at an address.

"You drive," Buffy said as they left.

"Suits me."

When they were in the car, Buffy decided they might as well talk.

"So you looked up my UNIT records, didn't you?" she asked. "Find anything interesting?"

"A couple things. Vampires?"

"Yup."

"And you have super strength?"

"Yup."

"I'll believe that when I see it."

"Fair enough. Anything else?"

"No, I think that's it."

"Liar." She took a guess at what he might have found. "So is it me, or is it my dad you're wondering about?"

"You know?"

"That Jack is my biological father? Why do you think I'm here?"

"But you haven't told him?"

"Have you?"

"Yeah," he said a bit sheepishly… as sheepishly as Owen Harper could get. "It came out with the fact that you're not completely human. What are you and how did that bloody well happen half way through your life?"

"Long story that you aren't getting any time soon. And let's just say I'm half human and leave it at that."

They had arrived and got out of the car. The rest of Torchwood—minus the Coffee God—had also just arrived and Owen ran to check on the man still alive.

"Bloody hell," Owen swore as he looked at the guy.

Jack ordered Owen and Gwen to go to the hospital while Tosh and Buffy followed him to the scene of the crime. Buffy looked around the small flat while Jack dealt with the chatty policeman. The cop insisted on giving his opinion (usually useless in Buffy's experience) as Jack manoeuvred him out the door. Buffy couldn't help smiling at Jack's comment about hockey at his house.

"Making friends?" Tosh said, and Buffy could hear the wink-wink-nudge-nudge in her voice. Buffy was still amazed at how much of a flirt her father was, and she figured she still didn't know the half of it.

"Not really. What do we got?"

Buffy let them go over the facts of the window, the lack of a weapon on the scene, and who they thought did it. She reached out with her slayer senses to get a feel.

"Jack," Buffy said.

"Yeah," he answered while still bent looking at the cricket bat.

"Whatever it was, I don't think it was human. And it wasn't here long."

"How can you know that?" Tosh asked, but no one answered her.

Jack nodded and Buffy knew he'd take that in to be put with all the other pieces of the puzzle. They left, and Jack contacted Owen and told him to stay with the burglar. It was a short ride to the Hub where they all just waited. Ianto brought out a round of coffee. Buffy took hers and followed Jack into his office. It wasn't the best time, but after talking to Owen, she needed to have a chat with her father.

Anyone spot the esoterically referenced history? Let me know what you think.