AN: I'm so glad everyone seemed to enjoy the last chapter! Also, I think some people were confused with the last word of the chapter 4. "Mourning" was meant to be spelled incorrectly. It's a play on words for the actions that had just transpired, as well as the indication that Ianto's "Passing out" was because of the sun rising.

Anyways! Please feel free to ask more questions or leave more reviews! Enjoy this next chapter!

FAMILY HISTORY

April 22, 2111

Jack hadn't gone to sleep how could he? Knowing what he knew; Finding out what he hadn't known; Feeling responsible for the outcome of Ianto's current predicament. Spite, Ignorance, guilt, misery; the emotions flooded him, twisting into one another and weaving about his head as though they were creating a tapestry of anguish to wrap him up until he smothered.

Several empty bottles littered his office, ones that he had been hoarding in case of an emergency. Well, this was an emergency: he needed to dull the pain, to forget if he could. He would get drunk for as long as he could if it would keep the thoughts of what lay in the basement away from him, even for a couple of hours.

He stumbled across the cramped corners of his office until he found another unopened bottle of Jack Daniels residing behind a stack of alien how-to manuals. Breaking the cap's seal, he tossed the cap behind him and took a long swig straight from the bottle. For hours he had been fighting off the urge to come to terms with everything. Even worse, to make a decision on what to do now that he had all the information he'd wanted for over two years.

It would have been better not to know, he argued with himself. It would have been better if Ianto had never told him...no, if he had never brought Ianto down to the Torchwood cells...or if he had never stumbled across his homicidal path in Cardiff. Hell, he should never have come back to this god forsaken planet! Yes, that was where the error could lie, in his decision to remain here for no reason.

Fuck. No matter how he spun it, the whole mess still seemed to be his own fault. Even going back as far as 105 years to the day when he had saved Ianto from a weevil, sparking the endless tirade of requesting work at Torchwood Three. It was all Jack's fault that Ianto was where he was now: Locked up in the basement of Torchwood Four as a blood-sucking, dead body, reanimating every time the damn sun set.

Jack kicked at the stack of books in front of him, but he missed and toppled over instead. There was a crashing sound and a period of dark solace before he felt a bony hand shaking him awake again. Jack blinked blearily as Alec's face came into view, full of alarm.

"Jack?! Are you alright?" He gasped, hooking an arm underneath Jack's own and hoisting him up again. Jack groaned as he felt the concussion knitting itself back together behind his skull. For a few minutes he had actually managed to stop thinking. Maybe he would jump off a building later. Even if he would wake up in excruciating pain afterwards it would beat the alternative for an hour or so.

Alec's face twisted with distress as he cursed at the paper-strewn floor around them. "Bloody bookcase must have tipped right over," Jack stumbled as Alec continued, frowning, "We should get you to a hospital," He tried to lead his boss towards the door out of the office, but Jack untangled himself from the lanky teenager and straightened out his clothing in a befuddled way.

"Pffffft," he slurred, "I'm juss fine." Jack turned around on spot several times before he found what he was looking for.

The bottle of Jack Daniels had tipped over in the fall, but it was still a quarter of the way full. Jack grabbed it and went back to his desk, finding another bottle's cap to screw on top of the liquor container before groping around the desk for his shot glass.

Alec's frown deepened as he watched the scene before him. It would have been comical, had Jack not been in a complete disaster area. Jack fumbled around with the bottle cap again and poured himself a helpful portion of alcohol, splashing some onto the desktop as the glass over flowed. He raised it sloppily towards Alec before downing it again.

Alec sighed and walked up to the desk, "This is becoming a bad habit, Jack," He ventured, not quite sure how to broach the subject with a man who was twice his size and paid his salary.

Jack scoffed again, but Alec took a deep breath. "This wouldn't..." he started, losing his nerve a little, "Wouldn't have to do with the vampire in the basement, would it?"

Jack's inebriated smile fell from his face and he stared at Alec in horror, then confusion, and finally settling on burning anger, "How did you know there was a vampire down there?" He raised an eyebrow accusingly.

Alec took another deep breath, but didn't move any closer to the desk, "I went down there a few months ago. I was running a check on the CCTVs and noticed you nipping into a secured area during the night, so I hacked the door's code and..." he stopped to make sure Jack was still listening. For all he knew, the alcohol had finally poisoned him and his face was frozen in shock and outrage when he stopped breathing, but Jack remained unresponsive. "I went down there while you were out one afternoon on assignment with Til. There was nothing but a dead body in the cell so I scanned it. Even you aren't morbid enough to keep a corpse lying out in the open." He added with a small gesture to lighten the mood.

Jack's face didn't so much as twitch and Alec sighed again. "When the scan came back that it was a vampire I figured it was the reason you've been binge drinking so much these last few years," He motioned towards the bottle Jack was now gripping in one hand, so tightly his knuckles were white and Alec could swear he heard the molecules in the glass beginning to crack under pressure.

Jack blinked as his buzz began to burn clean and sobriety kicked in, "You could have been killed walking into that tank without the sunlight to protect you!" He suddenly screamed, infuriated at both Alec's callous actions and the swift gain of mental clarity.

"But, it was noon..."

"You have no idea what vampires are even capable of!" Jack continued his tyrant.

Alec made another plea for argument but Jack slammed his fist against the wooden desk, cutting off the teenager's reply, "You've gone too far this time! I've warned you about hacking, I even had to apologize to the Uchuu clan for that ridiculous stunt you pulled last week. Do you have any idea what those creatures require as an apology?!" His face was turning red as he yelled at the boy in front of him. "No more. I'm putting you on probation."

Alec didn't even flinch, Jack stood up and leaned over the desk until both men's eyes were level with one another, "What's down there is my business, hence the high security code that keeps it locked!"

At first Alec didn't move, but when he did it was with a sigh as he removed his glasses and set them down on the table, rubbing the bridge of his nose impishly before sitting down in the office's guest chair across from Jack. Jack simply turned his attention back to the alcohol in front of him and unscrewed the cap once again from his bottle of Jack Daniels. He sat down noisily, pouring himself another shot of the amber liquid and bringing it to his lips, ignoring Alec's remaining presence.

"My great-gran was a vampire."

Jack spluttered on the shot of whiskey before it entered his mouth. "What?" He asked blinking, but Alec didn't seem to hear him. Instead he was facing the wall lined with metal filing cabinets; his eyes were glossed over and far away from the Torchwood facility, "I was told, or at least I heard, that she was a diplomatic official in her time. She wasn't very pretty, but she was smart. She worked in some kind of Parliament building in downtown London. There was some kind of terrorist strike, viral warfare, and that everyone in the building died, including her."

Jack's mouth opened and closed several times as he tried to form words, but no sound came out. Alec's Great-Grandmother had been one of those hundred or so people in Thames House that afternoon. She had been working there when the 456 released the virus. She had been in there when Jack had threatened the aliens, when he had become the catalyst that provoked them to fight back; When Ianto had died in his arms.

"I don't know what happened," Alec spoke again, oblivious to Jack's thoughts and warring emotions as responsibility for his actions once again painfully flooded his head. "I guess she had been bitten before that day, or maybe she was having an affair with another vampire," Alec's lips twisted as though tasting something bitter. He was just as unaware of the virus which created vampires as Jack had been not 24 hours ago. "Whatever the reason, she woke up a few nights later and tried to return to her home. The whole house was in bereavement, her family...They all panicked at the sight of her standing in the doorway. She was scared, I think, and that's what caused her to do it."

"Do what?" Jack whispered hoarsely, his throat so dry he could have sworn it was hours since he'd had anything to drink at all.

"She killed them. Slaughtered them, really, the whole household. Except," Alec swallowed, his face becoming paler with each word, "except for my gran."

Silence rang through the office as Alec made an attempt to reign in his emotions. It wasn't easy for him to talk about these things, to bring up such memories, but he felt he owed Jack an explanation for encroaching on whatever reasons the captain had for keeping such a thing down in the sub basement of the facility. "It was the blood," Alec rubbed his neck nervously, as though he were trying to protect something personal from prying eyes, "My gran was my great-gran's child, she murdered the entire house; her husband, his family, cousins; but she couldn't bring herself to kill her own flesh and blood, her own line.

"My gran was barely a year old at the time, and great-gran took her away, into the darkness. She raised her on the night sky and fed her raw meat and random groceries from the late night shoppers she killed for herself," There was another pause while Alec's eyes narrowed at the cupboards again and pursed his lips in disgust. "She was twisted, my gran. Growing up under the rule of a vampire, she was a complete nutter, and eventually she ran off during the twilight hours when she was sixteen. Great-gran was devastated, but what could she do? She was bound to the stars, so to speak, and gran was still human.

"When great-gran finally found her again, she was living in an abandoned shelter, weak with hunger and unable to sustain herself in the real world, but that's not all. She had given birth to her own baby girl. The child was still half of Great-gran's blood, so she took it without feeding and left it at an orphanage. That was how my mother grew up."

Jack was glued to his seat as he listened to Alec speak about his family's history. When he had found Alec, the boy had been all of seventeen and alone on the streets himself, but he had never once mentioned anything about his past. "What happened to your gran?" He asked dumbly, still shocked from the tale.

Alec glared at the wall as though it had committed a disservice to him in some way. "She died. The night my great-gran took her child, she just left her there to rot." Without looking away from his spot on the side wall Alec reached across the desk, grabbing the forgotten shot of whiskey and abruptly brought it back in front of him, tossing the amber liquid down his throat.

Jack was still so horror struck that the movement barely registered. "Is that why you were left on the street? You're mother ran away to find her family?" he was guessing blindly on the rest of Alec's story, eager for him to continue, but the teenager's face slackened.

"No," he whispered, "Mum and I had a fine life together. Dad left us when I was just a babe myself, but she was strong and she made sure I had her around to take care of me. At least, until I was eight." He trailed off and Jack noted tears beginning to gather in the young boy's eyes.

"It was midnight. I was sleeping when I heard a knock at the door. I could hear mum downstairs; she always stayed up late to finish her work so we could spend time together when I got home from school." A small smile ghosted over his lips, "I crept across the landing until I could hear her greeting the intruder. The woman knew her name, she sounded young, but I could hear a sort of aging exhaustion in her voice.

"I kept just within earshot of them. Mum offered her tea but she declined. This guest, she started to ramble about how much mum looked like her, and I remember mum was fascinated with that, like her family had finally come to claim her after dumping her in the orphanage. She had always thought there had been a mistake, but there's no telling, really," He cleared his throat and inhaled deeply, preparing himself for the next bit of his story.

"I heard everything from her. How she had been a PA in a diplomat's office, how she had awoken in an uncovered grave as a vampire and hid her own daughter from the sun, and how she had been passing through the city when she caught a scent of her own blood; That was how she found our home. Mum was horrified, but great-gran told her that there was still enough of her own blood flowing through her veins that she wouldn't harm her. I was so captivated, so excited by what I'd heard, that I ran down the stairs without a second thought." He smiled innocently again for a slight moment. "I thought if my great-gran was so happy to learn she'd found her granddaughter, that she would want to meet me, too." His smile fell, "But I was wrong."

Tears began to slowly fall down Alec's cheeks, but Jack remained frozen solid. He couldn't guess what would happen next, but he knew it was nothing good. Alec reached for the left sleeve of his shirt and began rolling up the cuff, and for the first time Jack realized he had never seen Alec wear anything other than long sleeve shirts. He stared at the boy's arm as the fabric cleared a path to show pale skin ruined with pearly white scars all around it.

"My blood was already too watered down, see. Mum was half of great-gran, but between her and my dad, I didn't have enough of the family line in me. Great-gran went mad with hunger the moment I entered the room and came straight at me. I didn't even have time to register it before she pinned me to the floor. Mum ran after her and shoved her off of me, pulling me upright and throwing me behind the sofa," a quiet sob broke through Alec's lips and his voice cracked as he pushed himself to keep talking, still stuck in the same staring contest he had begun with the wall at the start of the tale, "She blocked the only way Great-Gran could get to me, but she was so far gone...she killed mum before I could even blink." Alec sniffled before his head fell forward and he buried his face in his hands. Jack poured him another glass of whiskey.

Alec's shoulders convulsed as he cried, taking great gulps of air in an attempt to calm himself down. When he finally resurfaced he wiped his eyes with the back of his hand, further ignoring Jack, "When great-gran had had her fill and was able to register what she had done, she went mad again. The look on her face...it was filled with more agony and regret than I could have ever imagined one person could have," He sighed, "She left without a word. I never saw her again; I hope I never will."

Jack's mouth remained agape as he waited for Alec to snap back to present day. When the boy finally blinked and turned toward Jack, he looked years older than nineteen, and an aggressive frown that was usually foreign to the teenager's disposition marred his face, "Don't let them fool you; they're demons in a human body. One minute they can be completely sane, acting on their own as though they're just like everybody else in the world. The next minute," Alec snapped his fingers abruptly, "they'll turn on you and become the kind of monster you hear in horror stories on Halloween." His eyes were hard as he stared down Jack, who was too wrapped up in his own thoughts to fully assert himself back in Alec's eyes.

A tense silence drew out between them before Alec stood again, grabbing his glasses and moving wordlessly to the office door. When he got there he swung around to face his boss one more time. "I won't touch your vampire, Jack. Whatever it is you're holding him for, it's personal. But, if it were me, I would stake him the moment you're done. If I ever find the woman who killed my mother, I'll do it in a heartbeat, even if it were my last." With that, the nineteen year old computer genius blew from the room, leaving a breathless and ruined man still motionless at the desk of Captain Jack Harkness.

AN: As Always , thank you to my Betas Jen and JonesIantoJones!