Mickey is never sure which is worse, those who realise just how many people he's killed or those who don't.
It's not until after Paris that he even thinks about it. That all those cybermen. People who were sorta alive and now are completely dead. In London it had all been about the rush, and with the adrenaline pumping, he hadn't really connected what he'd done with the people dying. Not just dying - committing suicide after being made aware that their twisted existence, something no person could live with.
After Paris, they drive to Moscow and its a bloody long drive, which gives Mickey a long time to think, too long. He's never been one for deep thinking, but he can't get the sound of the dying screams out of his head.
Pete Tyler gets in touch after Moscow and arranges a chartered jet for them to Tokyo. Pete's obviously speaking to people with more pull than the preachers these days, because the Russians arrange a bloody limo to the airport when they pick them up. It's the driver who is the first one to ask the question that now follows Mickey around like a bad smell.
"My sister, she was converted. Now she rests in peace, and I thanks you." the driver stumbles over the words and speaks with a thick accent. "I ask, did she suffer, in the end?"
"No." The word no is out of Mickeys mouth without thinking about it, it's just what people on TV shows say in these situations. The limo driver stares at him greedily, desperate to understand what went on in his sisters last moments.
"The cybermen feel no physical pain" Mickey justifies trying not to recall the screams.
"Thank you, thank you so much" the driver is wiping a tear out of his eye. The lie burns in Mickey's gut, but he realises he couldn't have told the truth. He never will.
The jet takes them to New York, followed by Bunos Aires, Bangkok and Sydney. Within 72 hours they have liberated all of Lumics factories. Mickey as pushed the button at 5 out of 7 facilities, assuming a minimum of 5,000 cybermen at each facility that's 25,000 people dead by his hand. He could look up the numbers. Torchwood assisted in the clean up across the globe and there'd be full records .
But just the thought of looking at lists of names had him shaking. To know the names of the people who might be asking "Did my son/daughter/wife/husband/mother/father/friend die in peace? Did she suffer? Did he know what was going on?" would be too much.
To Jake it's not an issue: "They were dead Mickey, we're just like doctors pulling the plug on comma patients". But the cybermen don't seem dead to Mickey, some of them recognise people they knew when human or remember locations they'd only been to as a human. But mostly it's the screams - they die like a human, and the majority of them died by Mickey's hand. He can't bring it up with Pete, ask how much pain he thinks his wife died in.
The lie he told the limo driver quickly becomes the party line. Mickey goes on TV and does press conference where he says things like "Cybermen feel no physical pain" and "we transmitted a computer code which causes the cybermen to shut down". True, but not.
He thinks at he would probably prefer to be dead rather than a cyberman if it was him. But then, the cybermen don't know that there is anything wrong. Mickey thinks about a time when his greatest dream was to convince Rose to move into his council flat, there's something to be said for being oblivious.
At heart Mickey is a realist, the cybermen needed to be stopped and that's what he'd done. He can live with his choices and would do it all over again if needed.
But he still has to live with it, and it's not as easy as he'd assumed.