I sat slumped on the lounge, staring moodily into my cup of tea. There were the sounds of footsteps in the hall, then they stopped suddenly, coming to a halt at the doorway into the room. I looked up to see who it was.

'Rose,' said Mickey, a little stiffly. There was a tension in the air between us, probably in consequence of our last conversation. 'Jackie told me to ask you if you were going to come shopping this afternoon.' Was everyone mad at me?

'Oh.' I examined the fingernails of my left hand.

'She wants to look for stuff for the baby.'

'Right.'

Mickey sighed. 'Rose.'

'Yes?' My tone was curt. Mickey sighed again and sat down in an armchair across from me.

'Rose,' he said again, 'are you ok?'

'I'm fine,' I replied shortly, refusing to look at him.

'No, you're not.'

'Well if that's how you're going to be, then why did you bother asking?' I snapped. Mickey ignored that.

'Look, Rose,' he said, 'you've got to do something.'

'What are you talking about?' I demanded, frowning.

'I mean that you've got to stop moping around and biting everyone's heads off! Can't you see that we're only trying to help?!'

I decided that glaring at the vase in the corner of the room was the best approach in responding to that. I heard Mickey sigh.

'Rose, I'm not having this conversation just to have a go at you. It's just that seeing you miserable all the time is making the rest of us miserable too, Rose. We just want to see you happy again!'

I continued to glare at the vase, if with a little less hostility. It was a tall vase, bottle-blue and made of glass, with a small arrangement of dried flowers protruding out of the top.

'The only way I'm going to be happy again is if I can see the Doctor again, and go back to how things were when we travelled,' I said bitterly through a clenched jaw. The vase was just a smudge of blue against the cream of the wall now. On the pretences that I was brushing a piece of hair out of my eyes, I wiped the brimming tears away before they had a chance to fall.

Mickey's slightly exasperated sigh came from somewhere to my right.

'I know that,' he said.

'Well then don't you understand?'

'Yes. I do,' he said. 'Rose, look at me.'

I turned to look at him. He'd moved so that he was now leaning forward on the seat, and looking at me intently.

'Rose, you have two options.'

'And what are they?' I gave him an uninterested look.

'One, you can get over the Doctor and make a new life for yourself here on parallel Earth—'

'Hah,' I scoffed, turning to glare at the vase again.

'Or two,' Mickey continued, unfazed by my rudeness, 'you can stop waiting for the Doctor to come and get you, and go find him yourself.'

My gaze snapped back to his face, studying it with a slight frown. I'm not sure what it was I was expecting to find there, but I didn't find it.

'What did you say?' I asked, surprise edging my otherwise flat tone.

'I said that if that's the only thing that's going to make you happy, then you have to try and get back to him, Rose!' Mickey had that kind of pained, yet urgent look on his face again. I bit my lip guiltily. He still had feelings for me, that much was obvious. But at the same time he was trying to get me back to the Doctor, so that I would be happy. Really, what had I done to him all those years ago?

I stared at him sadly.

'Mickey, I can't.'

'Why not?'

'Because…'

'What?'

'I don't know,' I admitted, looking down.

'Hah,' Mickey pointed a finger at me triumphantly. 'There we are then, if you can't find a reason, then we're going.'

'What?' My brow furrowed in confusion. 'Going where?'

'To find the Doctor.'