Chapter 5: A Family Reunion

"Ianto you'd better get over here"

"But I'm..."

"Now!"

Ianto got up from the box he had been sat on while interviewing the boys held here by the aliens they had disposed of this afternoon and went to where Gwen had told him to go through her radio. "Gwen if you've called me away from witnesses to kill a bloody spider again then I'm not going to be...Oh" He stopped dead when he saw what Gwen had seen.

"Exactly," the ex-policewoman holstered her gun "why don't I go and deal with the boys while you sort this out"

"Mm hmm" Ianto nodded and she left. Through the door that Gwen had shot open Ianto was faced with one of the things he had prayed he would never had to deal with when he started this job, his nephew David, lying on the floor of a warehouse after being caught up in an alien plot. He had hoped that by keeping his family in the dark about what he did for a living would be enough to protect them but it wasn't enough. Under normal circumstances he would just RETCON the boy and take him home, telling Rhiannon a story about teenage drinking or something to explain the memory loss but that wasn't an option at the moment. In his current condition he needed to detach himself from the protectiveness he was feeling towards the sleeping teen before he woke up then figure out how to deal with this without giving himself away. He checked David's pulse and breathing and other than a cut on the side of his head there didn't appear to be anything wrong with him.

Owen Harper was elbow deep in the chest of the second warehouse alien when Tosh came walking down the stairs into the med bay.

"Gwen and Ianto are on their way back in"

"Kay" He was a little busy with the creature on the slab – it looked human on the outside but its innards were something to behold, it had a huge heart, three lungs and its blood was blue. At the edge of his thoughts he was vaguely aware that Tosh was still speaking but was engrossed in the heart he had just weighed and was now holding up to look at when a Biro came flying through the air and hit him on the side of the head.

"Ow, do you want me to throw this thing at you?"

"God no" she shuddered "I can smell it from here and it's disgusting" - she was right, the alien blood did smell like cabbage and kept reminding him of his old aunt Minnie.

"Then why are you trying to kill me with a pen"

"You wouldn't listen" She answered, as if throwing stationery was a perfectly normal response to his ignoring her.

"Fine" he put the heart back into its metal dish, removed his gloves and stood in front of his colleague "I'm listening what is the matter"

"David Jones"

"Love that kid, he still owes me a rematch on the … what about him?"

"Gwen found him in the warehouse"

"Is he?"

"They're bringing him in, he's been unconscious since they found him and Ianto is demanding that you take a look at him"

"Right" Back in doctor mode Owen set about putting the alien into a fridge unit to free up the examination table "give me a shout when they're in and I'll meet them in the garage"

David woke up in a tiled room with high ceilings that for some reason smelled like soup. He heard voices from somewhere overhead and decided to feign sleep for as long as possible to get a better idea of what was going on before he totally freaked out.

"Well I can't very well go down there can I, what if he recognises me. I have a rule that no matter how crazy this job gets Rhi and the kids stay out of it, he can't know that I'm involved with Torchwood"

David knew that name, Torchwood was Cardiff's worst kept secret and there were literally thousands of different conspiracy theories about the mysterious group who sped around the city and closed down whole areas at a moment's notice without so much as a sorry to the people they inconvenienced. What had gone on in the warehouse probably qualified as one of the weird happenings which seemed to attract team Torchwood as well so he really shouldn't be surprised that he had ended up...wherever they had brought him.

"Fine, I'll go . But if he knows me and ends up in counselling for the rest of his life then I'm sending you the bill." There was a mumbled reply followed by the sound of booted feet coming down concrete stairs. He felt a hesitant hand on his shoulder and he did his best impression of a person waking up; stretching and opening his eyes slowly

"You weren't asleep"

"Busted. So this is Torchwood," he looked around at the sunken alcove he was in and took in the old tiles and concrete floor "kind of a let down if I'm honest"

"How did you?"

"Oh, I heard you talking...also it says it in giant letters on the wall over there" From the conference room they heard Owen burst out laughing and Ianto gathered that the team had the CCTV up on the screen. Once had got over the shock of how composed his nephew was despite the situation he had just then in he checked the wound on his head which Owen had cleaned and stitched

"Ow" David complained about it but as Ianto started asking him questions about how he had ended up in the warehouse he kept poking the stitches in his head. That added to David's confession to drinking and skipping school that week to follow around a mysterious blue haired Goth was enough to make Ianto lose the control he was clinging to like a life raft.

"and what if you'd been killed? what am I supposed to tell your mother when you don't come home? She's been calling like mad and it's not like I can answer the...shit" Ianto face palmed when he realised what he'd said.

Another round of laughter came from upstairs and David stood, intending to see who it was, he seemed to be underground which made sense as while Torchwood was famous in the Cardiff area nobody could really tell you where they were housed. Their reputation for involvement with the weird and unexplained was mirrored by their operations centre, computers with five or more screens and strange lights on the consoles were placed around the concrete, tiled and metal constructed base. He looked up at the glass room on the next floor and saw his uncle's colleagues stood around a large dark table. The team had been introduced at Ianto's party as friends working in the same office. If that was a lie and they really worked for Torchwood then where the hell was Ianto, his uncle hadn't been to the house in weeks and while he texted every day he wouldn't answer the phone when they called, something was going on and if being kidnapped by a bunch of goths with ray guns then David was sure that he could push through the residual panic and fear from his two days in the warehouse to get some answers.

"Owen!" he yelled in the direction of the boardroom "Where the hell is my uncle"

David Jones was magnificent, he stood in front of the Torchwood team, shouting Owen down and staying in complete control of the situation despite Toshiko's attempts to pacify him with excuses of Ianto being away from the office tonight. Ianto had seen him captaining his school rugby team and it seemed that the power and confidence he gained in that position was being used as a way of getting the information he wanted today, The team wee forced to tell him about the rift and the real reason behind the strange going on across Cardiff, Owen showed him photographs of the autopsy of the female alien David had followed to the warehouse and his eyes were opened to the mysteries of space and time as Myfanwy swooped through the HUB waiting to be let out after dark. He took it better than most and once he had taken a moment to adsorb the information he had received he looked at the strange woman in the dark jeans and fitted shirt who was petting the Pterodactyl from a platform near the top of the cavernous building.

"Who are you then?" He asked as he reached the top of the spiralling metal stairs "I've met all of Ianto's work friends before and you weren't there" She hadn't heard him approach and jumped, losing her footing on the small steel walkway and falling over the edge, left clinging to the railing and trying to remain calm.

"Ianto!" Toshiko had been watching the couple and saw her friend fall "Oops"

"What?" David thought he must be hearing wrong as he pulled the woman back over the edge of the platform but as they say on the steel grating that made up the floor things started to fit together: All of the weird and unexplained things in Cardiff were much bigger than the news made them out to be, Torchwood dealt with those things, Ianto worked for Torchwood and for the past few weeks his uncle had been completely impossible to get hold of in person. Now there was a woman sat next to him who was popping her neck in the same way he had seen his uncle do it a million times and had the same look in her eyes in the medical bay earlier that his uncle Ianto had when he broke his arm last year – like he still saw him as the eight year old he left behind when he ran of to university who still needed protecting from the pains of real life.

"oh, my, god. Uncle Ianto?" Now that he looked properly the person sat next to him did look very familiar, the blue eyes staring at him right now were identical to his own, and to his mother and sister and he was pretty certain that if he gave this woman a cup of instant coffee that she would fix him with a glare that could kill a man stone dead at fifty paces. He opened his mouth to speak again but was cut off when he found himself wrapped in a hug by his sobbing mess of an uncle relieved to finally have his family back. Ianto had done a lot of work since he moved back to Cardiff to mend the bridges he burned when he left and didn't so much as write for five years, to lose his family completely because they couldn't know about his condition had been more painful that Rhiannon's hurtful voice mails could ever be.

"Any particular reason for the waterworks?"

"Shut up" Ianto hated that he was being such a girl but now he had started he just couldn't seem to stop crying, he stood and David followed him back to the main level of the HUB so they could talk more.

AN/ Whuttt? Did I just tell a member of Ianto's family that he's a she? I've definitely not had enough sleep lately, wrote most of this during the seemingly endless night before my A level results were published so had to completely re-edit it today :( I went to college this morning and I'm happy to say that I'll be starting my degree next month :). There are about 2 more chapters until Jack is back so you know I'll be changing Ianto back soon as well, I've had almost all of my fun with this little plot bunny (but not all, wait for Monday) and it's getting a little tired so it's time I put it to bed.

Also, my new fic "The gallifreyan patient" which is a romance for 10th Doctor/The Master lovers is now online and now complete, I hope you'll all check it out. Subs are love and I'll see you all next week x