Author's Note: As you can see, today's prompt was 'hanging out with friends'. As you can also see, I've got a sick sense of humour for using it like this.

Okay. Big Reveal Chapter part one; River explanation soon to follow. I hope I did this one well because it's one in the morning and I have to study so much in the actual morning that I've got to post it now, half asleep, so I'd be really glad to know what you think of it.

Day Nine: Hanging Out with Friends

Jack was already dosing off – and was immensely grateful for it – when the doors of his room burst open.

Only half-awake, he reached blindly for his gun, only to realise that it wasn't there. The starship he was currently inhabiting had a strict rule about weapons and demanded said weapons to be left behind once you came on board. He blinked several times, confused, as the man who had entered stared at him almost accusingly.

The man was tall, in his mid-twenties, with light brown hair that fell over his eyes. He kept looking at Jack and, after a few seconds, narrowed his eyes and asked suspiciously, "Where is he?"

Jack blinked again. "Where's who?"

"The other one. River told me he's with you." And with that, the man pulled something that looked like a golden stick out of his coat pocket and started beeping around with it as it started letting out a humming noise and a bright green light.

Jack frowned, sleep slowly leaving both his mind and body. He'd seen something similar before. It had been smaller and silver and its light had been blue, but it had the same feel to it.

"Is that a– hey, where did you get that? Who are you?" It hadn't occurred to him to ask that before and that wasn't as unusual as one might think – making a constant home out of a starship meant that you could go through all sorts of... interesting happenings every once in a while.

It had been three months since the House of the Dead and, after getting his Vortex Manipulator from Gwen, he'd left the planet with the first ship that would pass by. He had to escape, no matter how wrong it had felt – he'd felt the need to run away more than he ever had and perhaps, he had thought in several moments of desperate optimism, maybe if everything around him was completely new, he wouldn't have to remember. So far, that plan had failed miserably.

The man disappeared under the bed and, after a minute or so, his head – his hair was dishevelled and dusty, but compensated by a huge grin on his face – showed up on the other side of the bed and he pulled himself up to a sitting position. "The trace is still around!"

"Wait a second here," Jack interfered warily, gripping the man by his shoulders to stop his from moving when he made to stand up, but any questions died on his lips as the man winced, as if in pain. The expression on his face was familiar – and not in a good way, considering the words that had accompanied it – and there was something in his eyes... "Doctor?" He asked incredulously, trying to grasp the idea that this rather inadequate man was the one jack had admired and loved and looked up to.

"The one and only! Sorry for the face change." The Doctor stood up and faced Jack expectantly. "Now. Where is he?"

"Who are you looking for?" Jack asked, still feeling a bit disoriented; the whole situation seemed surreal enough for him to doubt that it was actually happening. He was surprisingly calm about it all but then again, why shouldn't he? He had seen the Doctor change before. The shock wasn't as painful as last time, even if this regeneration was completely different from the ones he'd known.

"The other Time Lord. River told me he's with you and the TARDIS could trace you by DNA, so I thought–" The sentence came to an unsure pause. "You do know him, don't you?"

Jack felt tempted to ask who River was – she had been mentioned twice until now – but tried to focus on the task at hand instead. He didn't want to be the one to break it to the Time Lord, but it wasn't like he had a choice. He shook his head. "Sorry, no. Maybe at some point in the future, though."

The Doctor shook his head, clearly troubled, and ran a hand through his messy hair. "No, you were supposed to know him already. I think – you were supposed to have met in Torchwood; she told me the name he passed around with, something really–" He flailed his arms, as if trying to draw the name with them. "Really Welsh. He wasn't supposed to be Welsh, but you know what, Time Lords usually pick up the accent they hear first of a language and–"

"Ianto," Jack cut off the Doctor's enthusiasm. "His name was Ianto Jones." His voice was even but on the inside, everything was burning. It was that calm-before-the-storm state when everything in his mind quieted down just before the explosion. There was a cold, passive realisation in him: so that was it, then – but he did nothing to acknowledge it on the outside. "You're late. He's dead."

"He can't be," the Doctor shot back immediately. "He's – that's ridiculous, he was young. He can't have wasted all regenerations."

So that was it indeed. Jack had spent months trying to figure out what Ianto was and suddenly, nearly a year after his death, in storms the Doctor and starts ordering Jack around, adding even more pain to a wound that hadn't even began to heal. "He has, apparently, because he's dead."

Jack wasn't sure why he kept repeating it. Maybe because it had the power of the solid, single truth that could kill any flicker of hope so he wouldn't be even more hurt later when it would prove to be a false one.

"He can't be," the Doctor insisted "No, he– He has to be out there somewhere."

The Time Lord looked so lost and so heart-broken that Jack felt sick.

"It's really important now, isn't it?" He asked quietly. "He remembers being like you and suddenly he's the most significant being in all of Cosmos. But you didn't even try to save him. You didn't watch him suffer and die in a matter of minutes while you were absolutely helpless; while you were hoping, praying that a kiss would be enough to bring him back. You weren't there when he sealed himself into the Rift, so don't you dare come and tell me how much it hurts just because–"

"The Rift?" The Doctor interrupted and a strange sort of powerlessness took over Jack.

"Are you even listening to me? What I was trying to say was–"

"He sealed himself into the Rift? What happened?"

"I wanted to speak to him," Jack found himself saying, despite everything. "Just to say goodbye, just to try and... see if I could make it right. Everyone went to the House of the Dead to see their loved ones, but they were echoes, nothing more, and Ianto– he was real. I'm not sure how, but he had been taken out of time, just a few days before his death, and placed here."

"Extracted at the end of his timeline," the Doctor said under his breath. "It's been done before, but what for?" The Doctor didn't wait for an answer – and Jack wasn't sure he could provide one anyway – but started pacing around, mostly in a circle as he went on. "Never mind that. If he fell into the Rift, that means that I– that we can still find him!"

Jack's tirade froze before it had had the chance to unravel itself. "What?" He could barely hear his own voice. "No, he– he practically fell into the Time Vortex. He couldn't possibly have survived. No one could have."

The Doctor shook his head, excitement burning in those new, unfamiliar eyes. "No human, no. But you keep forgetting something. He's not."

o.O.o

Jack was still taking in the new interior of the TARDIS as the Doctor ran round the console, already giving explanations and answers to the Captain's numerous questions.

He still felt as if he were in a rather realistic dream and was, embarrassingly, afraid that it would turn out he hadn't woken up at all. It wouldn't be the first time he'd dreamt of something like that – of a way out of a situation that he couldn't fix; of a world where Ianto hadn't tricked him on coming out of the House of the Dead while being fully aware that he'd never leave it himself, because really, it was Ianto. Ianto wouldn't let the world burn just so he could live and Jack should have had known better but really, he'd been so stupidly relieved and hopeful at the time that he'd completely glossed over that.

So perhaps that was why he couldn't shake off the feeling that he was dreaming. In the morning the Doctor had came after the last thing he'd done with Alonso – probably aiming for compensation and an apology that he didn't realise would mean nothing – and he'd told him that he could not only find Ianto but that he could bring him back to Jack. It felt like a second chance – the first one he'd properly got one of those, really – and Jack didn't think of the Doctor's motives any longer, because it didn't matter. As long as he could find Ianto, it didn't matter.

"Have you got anything of his?" The Doctor asked as reappeared by Jack's side. "Anything that might have any trace left of him so I can find him with it?"

"Yes," Jack said, finally coming out of his trance as his brain started working on full force. "Yes. I've got his watch, will that do it?" When the Time Lord nodded, Jack pulled Ianto's pocket watch and handed it to him. "He took it everywhere with him, so there has to be something left. If it doesn't work, I think I have a shirt of his that I nicked before the 456 attack."

"No, that should do it. We're looking for a distress signal I suppose?"

Jack shook his head. "No, I'm afraid. We're looking for Ianto. I'm not really sure he knows what other people use distress signals for."

The Doctor had already placed the watch in something that looked like a scanner on the console. All the screens suddenly fired up and the whole room started shaking – both him and the Doctor gripping the nearest surface for dear life – only to stop abruptly seconds later.

"Doctor?" Jack prompted while the Time Lord stared at the coordinates with the expression of someone who had just been sent to a certain death but also found the idea of said death extremely boring. "What's going on?"

"I've got him," the Doctor said quietly, that childish excitement from minutes ago returning. "He's in our Universe and I found him but..."

"But?"

"Someone's found him before us."

"Where is he?" Jack pushed the Doctor away and took his place in front of the screen, but nothing in the coordinates really rang a bell. "Doctor, what is happening to him?"

"Nothing, probably nothing," the Doctor hurried to assure him although he didn't look all that certain himself. "It's just... they've got technology that can work in both of time and space. They can see the Vortex if they want to and they've probably picked him up. His presence alone was messing everything up–"

"Who are they? How did he get out?" Jack felt like the slowest kid in the class but, considering that he was also the only kid, it probably wasn't all that bad. He was desperate for something, anything, and the Doctor was apparently talking mostly to himself.

The Time Lord looked around, as if struggling to find the right words for explanation, then nodded to himself. "You know when you eat something and it's too hard to chew on?"

"What?"

"Just imagine that. You can't chew on it because it just insists on not being chewed on. What do you do?" Before Jack could even criticise the poor choice of a metaphor, the Doctor answered his own question. "You spit it out. And that's what happened because a human would have been scattered into atoms in there – the Vortex would be too much for them to bear – but a Time Lord? He's looked into the Vortex when he was a child and it can't break him now, but he's still there. He's still falling. So what does the Vortex do? It tries to get rid of him."

"Okay. So the Rift spat him out. Where?"

"He could fall anywhere. Any time, any planet, any Universe there is, but someone detected him and brought him out forcibly." The Doctor closed his eyes and leaned against the console, rubbing his forehead as if the action could chase the situation away. "The Shadow Proclamation."

"No." It was denial but sounded more like begging and Jack realised it fully. "No. They have nothing to do with this."

"Time Lords are the stuff of legend, as they call it," the Doctor explained as he stepped away from the console and neared the door. "We're not supposed to exist and, since they found one, they'll either start examining him or... who knows." Jack made to follow, but the Doctor shook his head. "You stay there. Immortal humans are more than these narrow-minded creatures can–" His voice died when he opened the door and even though Jack couldn't see outside, he could see the Doctor's suddenly humble expression accompanied by a small smile and a 'hello there' before the door closed behind him.

Jack wanted to scream and shout and throw things at the Doctor for leaving him there like he was a minor annoyance in a trip that was solely about the Time Lord himself, but he did none of it, mostly because a rather large part of his insides had currently turned into a ball of nerves and expectation.

Ianto. He could see Ianto again, alive and breathing and not a ghost Jack had resorted to just so he could see him one more time. He would be properly real and the thought made Jack's heart flutter even as he heard someone shouting at the Doctor outside to 'explain what is happening right now or suffer the consequences'.

It felt like hours – and he really couldn't tell if it had been in the timelessness of the TARDIS – before the wooden doors sprang open and the Doctor came in, practically carrying another man along.

"Ianto!" Jack's voice was choked as he stood up from the floor and approached them, taking him in his arms, deaf to the Doctor's protests as he searched Ianto's face only to find it deathly pale with his eyes closed and his whole body convulsing. "Ianto? Doctor, what's wrong with him?"

"His body is designed to resist the Time Vortex, but his mind isn't," the Doctor said as he helped Ianto up the stairs and then sat him in a chair. "All the possibilities going through his head all at once, it's a terrible paradox, I'm surprised he hasn't regenerated– Hey, hey, take it easy." He took Ianto's hand as the man tried to stand up and Jack was torn between the happiness that blossomed inside him and the horror of losing him again if something went wrong. "The TARDIS is helping, that's why I brought him in. They've held him like that for two weeks; God knows what's happening in his head. Don't go near him, you'll only make it worse!" he snapped as Jack reached for Ianto's hand.

"No," Ianto rasped and, to Jack's great surprise, he was looking at the Doctor. "Let him. Jack..." He turned around blindly and Jack shifted into his immediate field of vision, a small smile curling his lips despite everything. "Ianto?"

Ianto returned the smile, even though his lips were trembling and his eyes were still wildly turning from one thing to another; things invisible to anyone but him. "Hello," he said softly, the accent the Captain could recognise everywhere rolling over the words hesitantly, and that was when Jack knew he'd brought him back. He pulled Ianto into a tight embrace, feeling for the first time the ice cold skin and the racing hearts and everything seemed so completely right for the first time in so long that he wanted to cry.

"Hello."