"You alright?" Rose asked as the Doctor set the TARDIS controls to close the time windows on the other ship.

"I'm always alright." He replied with an half smile and an air of nonchalance that fooled nobody… Probably not even himself.

Mickey could see that The Doctor was hurting… God, he could practically feel the hurt radiate from him if he stood too close. Part of Mickey wanted to point and laugh and say "Now you know how it feels, pal!" But because Mickey knew exactly how it felt, he said nothing. Just left the Doctor to his radiating hurt. "Come on Rose, time to show me round the rest of this place." Mickey took her hand and led her out of the room.

It was an odd thing to see this Doctor so quiet, so introverted, so still. Normally he was like a 5 year old on a Sunny Delight trip. The last guy, now he could brood for England, but this one? It didn't sit right with him and no matter how many "Fines" Rose got from him after asking how he was, it was glaringly obvious that he wasn't. The Doctor wouldn't talk to Rose about it. Maybe he needed to talk "man to man".

Mickey checked his watch. It was 2 in the morning "Earth time" Telling time in a time machine. How pointless was that? The Doctor was tinkering around underneath the console in the main room, deftly avoiding conversation for the last couple of days… but not for much longer.

Mickey squatted down beside the Doctor. "She got inside your head."

The Doctor shot up with a panicked "What?" narrowly avoiding concussing himself on the overhead panel How did Mickey know that? How did he find out?

"Madame du Pompadour, Reinette. She got inside your head and now you can't stop thinking about her."

"Oh, you mean figuratively, not literally." The Doctor pursed his lips and then returned to his prone position under the console, determined to ignore Mickey.

Mickey was equally determined not to be ignored and sat on the floor beside the Doctor. "Look, you can't keep this all bottled up. You've hardly said a word since you came back. The last time you were this quiet for this long, you were unconscious in Jackie's flat!"

"So, what do you want to do?" The Doctor had that tone he'd used on Mickey before when the rats fell on him. "Crack open a bottle of white wine and let me cry on your shoulder?"

Condescending git! Mickey thought. "If it'll get you out of this flippin' mood, Bridget Jones! And I didn't pack any white wine with me. I do have a six pack of beer, though"

"I am not in a mood." The Doctor finally sat up, but moved no further.

"Course you're not." It was Mickey's turn to jeer. "You're not talking cos you're saving that pretty singing voice of yours to audition for Mamma Mia when we get back to London."

Silence.

"Are you like this after every trip?" Mickey asked, handing the Doctor a can of some nasty looking shop brand lager. "Do you, like, fall for every woman who shows a bit of interest in you and ask her to come along? Cos if you're going start moonin' over every blonde who turns you down, then you can leave me back home."

"I don't fall for every blonde" the Doctor muttered, knowing well it was a dig at him about Rose. Good old Thicky, Ricky, Mickey Smith. You think I stole your girl and now your having a good old gloat.

"You fell for Reinette, though."

More silence.

"So now you know what it's like." Mickey said quietly. "To see the woman you love walk away from you."

"She didn't walk away."

"You went back and told her to pack a bag and pick a star and come join our merry little band of travellers. A few minutes later, you were back here alone." Mickey poked the Doctor in the leg as if to emphasise the point. "Let me guess, she didn't fancy the idea of giving up her fancy dresses and jewellery, or her royal boyfriend for you? Oh man, did you get knocked back."

The Doctor stood up. "Oh shut up, Mickey! As usual, you don't have a clue!"

"So come on Doctor, put me firmly in my stupid, little place and tell me what happened!" Mickey retorted, rising to his feet.

"She's dead, okay?" The Doctor yelled, his voice reverberating around the chamber. "By the time I went back through the fireplace, 5 years had passed and she had died." The Doctor's shoulders dropped and he went quiet. "She waited for me and I let her down."

Mickey had never seen a sorrier sight in his life. The Doctor looked so horribly lost. 900 years lived, surely he had experienced love and loss before. Or maybe there was some sort of reset button when he regenerated and while he remembered things happening, maybe he didn't remember how it felt… Kind of like a selective amnesia, or something.

For the first time in the conversation, the Doctor looked at Mickey. There was no gloating, no "told you so" smugness in the young man's eyes. And in that moment the Doctor saw Mickey in a whole new light. Mickey the Idiot, Mickey the 10 year old girl with pigtails and a frilly skirt was now Mickey the Bigger Man. All due respect to him, the Doctor didn't know if he would have been as understanding or as adult about it if the tables were turned.

"It's like you said." The Doctor had that sad smile on his face like before. "She got in my head... She literally got in there and had a good old rummage around." He took a long swig from his beer - It was nowhere near as bad as the Doctor thought it would be - and slumped back down to the floor. "In the space of a few seconds, she found out more about me than some people knew in a lifetime. I opened a door in her mind to try and find out why the clockwork droids wanted her and she quietly slipped into mine."

"What? Was she an alien, or something?" Mickey joined him on the floor, plonking the remaining 4 pack between them.

"No. Just a very intelligent, very curious woman."

"Do you know what would be really cool, yeah? If you had, like, a time machine, or something and you could go back and… Oh wait!" It was now Mickey's turn to yell. "You do! You can! I though I was supposed to be the stupid one."

"It's not that simple…" The Doctor started to explain.

"Yes it is!" Mickey wouldn't let the Doctor talk himself out of this one. "You dump me and Rose outside Tescos to stock up on supplies." He raised his beer can. "You go back to Versailles and do whatever it is you want or need to do… Hey presto, you're back like nothing happened."

"Mickey, I just can't…"

"No. Stop with the excuses, Doctor!" Mickey cut him off again. "You're in love with Reinette. My God, it's so obvious. You do nothing and it will eat you up – Trust me, I've been there, done that… But I had the talk and got the hell over it. You need to see her again… put things right.

"You don't understand." The Doctor sighed, exasperated at having to explain temporal physics yet again. "She's dead."

"Yesterday, I was in the year 5000. That meant everyone I ever knew was dead. Today, I'm back in the present and they're alive." Mickey said. "A quick flick of a switch and you could be back in 1750whenever when she'll be alive."

"I can't go messing around in the timeline like that. It just makes things worse."

"You've already been messing around, you ninny!" Mickey got a small sense of satisfaction being able to insult the Doctor. "Talking to a girl in her fireplace, jumping a horse through a mirror into a ballroom full of French aristocrats, banana daiquiris … How much of a difference will one more visit make?"

And there it was. The light back in the Doctor's eye. "So… can I get you anything from Tesco's?"