madbottoms | Spellbound 1/14 + Epilogue (Reply)

Title: Spellbound

Author: madbottoms
Prompt: Practical Magic

Pairing(s)/Characters: Jack/Ianto, Donna, John (Smith), Gwen/Adam, Owen, Tosh, OC’s.

Rating: PG

Length: 25k +

Warnings: Magic, dark themes, minor character death.

Spoilers: None really, it’s an AU just with familiar faces we know and love.

Beta: Tracy

Artist: debsgategirl

Disclaimer: Torchwood, Dr. Who, their associated characters, and events are property of the BBC and Russell T. Davies. Practical Magic is based on a novel by Alice Hoffman, directed by Alan Silvestri and starring Sandra Bullock, Nicole Kidman, Diane Wiest, Stockard Channing and Aiden Quinn.

A/N: Practical Magic is based around a family of witches, the Owens women. For the sake of this story, the family are Jones’ and come from a long line of witches and warlocks. Although, typically, covens are seen as being comprised of women, they can also be a mix of both men and women. Written for round 3 of reel_torchwood

Summary: For two siblings from a family of witches and warlocks, falling in love is the trickiest spell of all. Ianto and Gwen are brother and sister with a gift. Unfortunately, their gift also comes with a dark family curse: any person who dare fall in love with them meets a horrible end. But when Ianto Jones meets the mortal of his dreams, he has one final chance to lift the curse and set their love lives free.

A crowd stood on a cliffside at sunset, the beauty of the day only marred by the scene metres from the sheer drop. A small group of men and women in medieval dress came to stand witness to an execution. A pretty young woman in a noose, Rhiannon, stood on the gallows platform looking understandably desperate, searching the crowd for the one who might help her, but there was nothing for her anymore.

She closed her eyes and concentrated, blocking out the angry stares of the wives, as well as the wanton ones of the men. She took a tentative step forward, off the front of the gallows platform. As she fell, the surrounding crowd gasped… but the rope around Rhiannon’s neck snapped, and she landed safely on her feet like a cat, gracefully and softly. The crowd panicked and ran away as Rhiannon glared after them triumphantly.

Rhiannon had a gift, a gift of magic, and it was this very gift that saved her life on this day. But it was also this gift that was her curse. They feared her because of her gift, she was different and that scared the townsfolk. But Rhiannon was also a heartbreaker and it did not help that most of her lovers had wives on the hanging committee. Unable to kill her, she was banished to an island, her unborn child growing in her stomach. She waited for her lover to rescue her but he ever came. Rhiannon was alone, a child growing in her belly and in a moment of despair she cast a spell on herself that she would never again feel the agony of love. But as her bitterness grew, the spell turned into a curse. A curse on any person who dared love a Jones...

*~*

“Is that why daddy died? From the curse?” a young Ianto asked, sitting with his Aunt Donna and Uncle John and sister, Gwen. Their outdoor refreshments were generally more of a happy occasion but their revisiting of the past had put a sombre mood on the afternoon’s happenings.

“Yes, Ianto. Your mother knew,” Donna offered solemnly. “She heard the beetle ticking for your father’s death all day long. She knew that when she heard the sound of the deathwatch beetle… the one you love is doomed to die.”

“But that’s how you came to be with us,” John said chirpily. “We tucked you into our lives then. We’ve raised you the best way we know how.”

When Ianto and Gwen’s father died, they had moved in with their eccentric aunt and uncle who became a staple in their lives. Their mother was never the same after their father died and neither were they, but their aunt and uncle filled their lives with love and a sense of wonder. Ianto could still remember the first thing that was said to them when they arrived…

*~*

“In this house…” Donna said ominously, before continuing light heartedly, pulling both children in for a hug, “... we have chocolate for breakfast. And we never bother with silly things like bedtime or brushing teeth.”

But with the sweet came the sour. Young Ianto and Gwen would play for hours together, longing for the companionship of other children and would always try to make friends with the town children. However, the children could be cruel. Afraid of anything different, the other children would tease and taunt Ianto and Gwen, chanting and calling them names and throwing sticks and stones at them literally. The rocks and sticks actually striking Gwen on a few occasions.

One time, a rock had hit her so hard on the head, it knocked her to the ground. Ianto knelt beside her, stroking her hair while the chanting continued. He’d always thought they were bad shots, or maybe it was just that he was lucky that he was never hit. What he hadn’t realised though, at the beginning, was that his magic protected him. He soon learned to protect the physical attacks on them both, but the taunts never stopped. As his magic grew, he could also use it to heal, soothing the physical scars, but he knew the emotional scars would take more than a little spell.

He never understood why people could be so cruel. What was wrong with being different?

*~*

“Ianto, Gwen?” John said happily to lighten the mood. “You know the only curse in this family, she’s sitting right there at the end of the table. Your Aunt Donna.”

The children giggled.

“Oh come on, John,” Donna replied unamused. “Even you have to admit that anyone who gets involved with a Jones is bound to end up six feet under.”

“Spare me.”

“What about my poor Lance?”

John looked reassuringly at Ianto and Gwen and said, “It was an accident.”

“It was fate,” Donna countered.

John huffed, a little exasperated, obviously having heard this many times before. “It was an accident.”

“No, no, no. It was fate,” Donna retorted stubbornly.

“Accident!”

Ianto had been watching this exchange with a smile on his face but it faded as he turned solemn again. “Mummy died of a broken heart, didn’t she?

“Yes, my darling boy, she did,” Donna replied sadly.

John’s heart tore a little at this exchange and reached out and cupped Ianto’s face. “Hey, my little warlock. Let’s go inside and do some spells.”

“What about my homework?” Ianto asked, smiling despite himself.

Getting up from the table, John waved his arm dramatically. “Ph, pish! Posh! You’re both going to learn things in this house that you will never learn in school. Let’s go.”

As the others rose, Ianto ran ahead, eager to begin his lessons. “Come on, Gwen,” he yelled to his sister lagging behind.

“Coming, Ianto.”

*~*

As the sun set and night crept around the Manor, they crowded around the dining table and practiced their spells. With Aunt and Uncle’s Book of Shadows on the table before him, Ianto concentrated, blowing on an unlit candle, and a flame instantly flared on the wick. Ianto grinned, pleased with himself.

“Very good, Ianto. You know you’ve been blessed with a gift,” John stated proudly.

Crouching barefoot on the table beside John, wearing fairy wings, Gwen asked mildly, “What about me?”

Donna looked dubious. “Oh, we won’t worry about you Gwen. Your talents will emerge in time.”

A knock sounded at the back door and John and Donna looked first startled, then worried. They both stood and made for the door.

“Ianto, you just stay right there and work on your spells. Just keep going,” John ordered kindly.

At the door, an anxious-looking woman was pressed up against the glass, scratching urgently with her fingernails, John and Donna looked at one another as if they had been expecting this. Their talents went beyond mere spells and they tended to have a sixth sense for the goings on in the town.

“Get the bird,” John said.

“Get the book,” Donna replied.

A short time later, they were in the kitchen, the anxious woman seated at the island, speaking erratically while Donna removed a mourning dove from its cage and John flipped through the Book of Shadows.

Ianto and Gwen crept to the landing at the top of the stairs, eavesdropping. They both sat, watching and listening intently.

“I want him so, so much – I can’t think about anything else. I don’t sleep, I…” she moaned sadly, then changed tack, “He has to leave his wife. He has to leave her now.”

John sorted the ingredients out on a wooden chopping board and spoke, even though she knew it was pointless, “Perhaps you might find one better suited.”

“No, I don’t want anyone else. He’s all I think about. I can’t…” the lovelorn woman looked up at them in sudden anger. “Why the hell else would I come here?”

“Take the money, John,” Donna said, as the woman angrily threw a roll of cash onto the table.

Holding a long thin needle while Donna grasped the fidgeting dove, the woman narrowed her eyes. “I want him to want me so much he can’t stand it.” She stabbed the dove in the heart with the needle.

“Be careful what you wish for,” John offered solemnly.

Ianto flinched at the action of the woman, burying his face in Gwen’s shoulder. Gwen blandly continued to watch the scene below as her Aunt looked up, meeting her eyes for a moment. Ianto straightened up and wiped an errant tear from his cheek.

The woman looked bemused but satisfied with her effort and glanced down at the photo she held in her hand. She raised the photograph of a man and kissed it before rising and leaving.

Ianto’s face was filled with anguish and he spoke quickly, almost chanting, “I hope I never fall in love. I hope I never fall in love. I hope I never fall in love,” and leaned his head in Gwen’s lap still muttering.

Gwen’s eyes glittered with excitement. “I can’t wait to fall in love.”

*~*

Sometime later, Ianto gathered ingredients from the conservatory, a room containing many apothecary jars, cartons, herbs and plants. As he cast, he consulted a handwritten spell in his open journal. A dried flower had been pressed between the pages.

“You will hear my call a mile away. You will sing my favourite song. You will fly higher than a bird…”

“What are you doing?” Gwen asked curiously from the doorway.

“Summoning a true love spell, called Amas Veritas,” Ianto answered, plucking a petal form a vase of pink roses. “You can flip pancakes in the air. You will be marvellously kind. Your favourite shape will be a star. You will have a crescent shape scar.” Ianto picked more petals from a star shaped flower and leaves from another plant along the shelf as Gwen followed him, peering at the plants.

“Thought you never wanted to fall in love.”

Ianto waited, looking at Gwen pensively. “That’s the point silly. This person I dreamed of doesn’t exist. And if they don’t exist, I’ll never die of a broken heart.”

The siblings stood on the balcony, Ianto holding the bowl containing his spell out in front of him. He stared at the petals in the bowl, and as he concentrated, they all rose out of the bowl into the air. They formed a beautiful helix of petals, and with increasing speed, fluttered up towards the full moon.

Ianto watched them float away, as his thoughts repeated on the wind, “And if they don’t exist … I’ll never die of a broken heart.”