Doctor?

He spun around, eyes lighting up. A few people glanced up at him but otherwise continued walking on by. It started to gently rain, and, like coloured punctuation marks in a black paragraph of humanity, umbrellas flickered up. He closed his eyes and let the water flow down over his burning face. He saw her everywhere. In other people, in the wrong places. But he was beginning to feel he had imagined her, as if he was the one who was wrong and everything else had never been different.

His eyes flashed open and he glared accusingly down at a passing umbrella, the owner of which hastily dived out of the way.

Somehow, he managed to work some power into his legs and soon he was stiffly walking again. He had no idea how long he had stood there now—hours, certainly, maybe days.

To be honest, it was the first time in a long time he had had real trouble knowing what to do with himself. So he had nothing to take his mind off her hands, slipping through his, and the ache in his arms. He had not slept. Not that he often found the need but a heavy weariness seemed to have seeped through his limbs and his head. As he walked, this became apparent to him once more. And surely, he convinced himself, surely if that was real then she was real too.

Time is unkind. It follows one course and nothing can change it, not for bribes, or prayers, or armies of Hell. It just flows over them like water. Drowns them. So it is as if the money, the wishes, the people never existed. It is oblivious, and that is what makes it so unkind. The Doctor knew this, but it was only now, only when it was him on the wrong side of it that he questioned— wait. No. He must be imagining it. It couldn't be!

"Mickey!" he cried, waving his arms like a madman.

The boy looked up, alarmed, muscles tensing, ready for a quick getaway. The Doctor waved aside an approaching taxi, which screeched its brakes furiously and dashed out across the road towards him.

"Mickey the Idiot," he was yelling, "Mickey, come on, it's me, it's..."

But Mickey had already fled. Limbs flying, he was away down the highstreet, glancing over his shoulder, revealing the terror in his face. The Doctor ran determinedly after him, able to reach just that bit further than Mickey and slowly but surely gaining on him. Mickey spun into the nearest exit from the road but in his blind panic found he had run into an alleyway. He was cornered. Relieved, the Doctor came to a halt in the entrance, watching in confusion as Mickey tried to mount the sheer wall opposite to escape.

"You idiot," he said baldly.

Mickey jumped a foot in the air. He began prising his watch off his wrist.

"Look, look," he said, voice going up an octave, "You know. Yeah? Just, just take my stuff. It's fine. I won't say anything to anyone, just seriously, yeah, don't shoot me or nothing because I'll fight back and then everyone'll come running."

He chucked the watch at the Doctor's feet then started fishing around in his pockets for any loose change. The Doctor was not stupid. But he sometimes wished he was.

"You don't have a clue who I am, do you?"

"Should I?" Mickey asked wildly, still flinging coins onto the pavement.

The Doctor staggered away from him, back out onto the street. He bumped into someone coming the other way, who blustered and fumed their way away. He stood there, in the rain, watching them go by without interest. He was hardly aware of Mickey slowly emerging from the alley, gaze fixed on him as he bent to retrieve his belongings. He cleared his throat. The Doctor blinked and looked at him tiredly.

"What?"

"Well, you know—"

"No! I don't know, Mickey!"

"Oh. Right." He swallowed. "Well, that's cool. Just...since you're not taking my stuff...how'd you know my name?"

"Doesn't matter. Look, I'm..." the Doctor patted him awkwardly on the shoulder. "You're alright. Didn't mean to scare you."

"It's OK." Mickey hesitated. He obviously thought he was dealing with a psychotic. "You know—" He stopped himself. "What would you have asked if I did know you?"

"It really doesn't matter."

"Looks like it does," Mickey persisted, looking down at his trainers and back up again. He shivered in the cold. The street was slowly emptying around them as people poured into shops or drove home to escape. No one paid them much attention as it was, so intent on bowing their heads against the weather.

"I was going to ask you if you remembered me actually," the Doctor replied eventually.

Mickey was suitably taken aback.

"What? Did I know you when I was a kid or something?"

"No. Yeah. Something like that. I knew you when you were an idiot."

"Well thanks very much," he said, bristling and the Doctor could not resist smirking at him.

"You're not the sort of bloke to believe in time travel, are you, Mickey?"

The boy gave him an uncertain grin.

"Well..."

"Good. Then, since I'm some mad stranger you've met on the street, nothing I say will matter to you, right? Because I want you to do me a favour. No," he held up a hand to stop the protests, "All you've got to do is listen to me for a bit. I just...I think I'm going to go really mad if I don't talk to someone."

So, a rather uncomfortable Mickey found himself sitting with his knees drawn up in front of him in a bus shelter, watching the Doctor pace up and down, getting angrier and angrier as he related his incomprehensible story.

"...and Rose wanted to go straight back to Earth to warn you and Jackie about the invasion. I thought it couldn't do any harm because, I mean, what difference is it going to make? And what does it matter? It's just two people who don't get enslaved. Besides, we could go forward in time to just get everyone out of it later, overthrow the Farangs- I mean, she knew we could do something about it afterwards."

He burst into hysterical laughter. "She knew! And she still wanted to make sure neither you or Jackie or her family were in London when it happened. So you all survived for just a few more little decades without knowing anything important like fear or hate or— but she never listens.

So we got down onto Earth. But it's...different. Rose leaps out, not even noticing...or caring, I can't tell. And she starts to run for the stairs to her flat when she stops and turns round and mouths something to me that I can't make out. I run over to her and she says 'There's someone up there'. This sounds odd, because I don't know how she can tell or why she even minds but when I hear it I understand perfectly.

It's people shouting and boots, lots and lots of sets of feet, all marching in time. So I'm glad she never went up.

It's just they come down. And I know exactly who they are. It's the Farangs. Because the bloody TARDIS has dropped us in it a year late. That's why it's bloody different because the place is a ruin. The flats, now we look at them, are really old. Look ready to fall down.

I grab Rose's hand, while the Farangs are just staring at us, not knowing how on earth we got there. They're some kind of patrol squad, I don't know, but they obviously didn't expect us there. I pull Rose backwards

and she falls on top of me in the TARDIS doorway but has the presence of mind to kick the door shut. I can already hear them banging on the other side. So I push Rose off me— I have to! To get to the controls, you see. I mean, isn't that fair?"

Mickey was alarmed to see him staring at him. He nodded hastily. The Doctor spread his arms in a gesture that said 'exactly' and carried on;

"I leap up to get to the controls, to take us back a year, although who knows where we might end up? I don't know what the TARDIS was playing at. But next thing I know, I look round and the door's open. Open. How the hell did it open? And Rose is only just getting to her feet but I can't reach her because she's so close to the door."

The Doctor's arms were extended, his hands open, still reaching, his eyes fixed on something on the other side of the bus shelter.

"I couldn't reach."

He suddenly stopped and kicked viciously at the seat next to Mickey, who flinched.

"And I'm left hurtling through a billion and one dimensions with the door hanging open. So I can't even get to it to shut it. It's just hanging there, me pinned to the wall, practically blind with all those years flying past, racing by me.

The TARDIS finally stops. On Earth, so that's something, I think, but it's the wrong bloody time again! It's something like 1990. So I don't even trust myself to go back. I check every dial, every gauge and according to the TARDIS, everything's hunky-dory. Except for one thing. A wire's been cut. A blue one, which means it leads right to the TARDIS core. I follow it and find that it leads directly there. It's been deliberate. So I think back and it doesn't take old genius me to realise that if the door can open once, it can open twice. There's a pair of shears right under the core. It's more them causing the damage than the cut wire. It was some quick sabotage while we were on the Farang planet. No idea how they knew. But now I can fix it without any problems at least.

But when I go back...it's not right. The whole place has gone back to normal. The flats, the streets, everything. Not a Farang in sight. I check everywhere. I go up to her flat but there's no one in. And I wait for Jackie to come home to ask her, even if it earns me another slap. But when she does, she just stops and looks at me. Then out come the eyelashes and the smile and she asks me if I can help her at all."

"So she doesn't remember you?" Mickey could not help himself.

"Nope. I go back to the TARDIS, check everything again. But it's all as it was. And that's when I realise something very obvious. I go back to where I left the shears and, sure enough, when I check, they're not Farang shears."

"So?"

"So, the Farangs have never supposedly encountered any other civilisation aside from their own. They're sort of like humans only less fun and with more hair. And they certainly wouldn't have met a civilisation that's on a planet that hasn't even been created yet."

"They can time travel!" Mickey exclaimed.

The Doctor nodded. He dropped down on the seat next to the boy, making Mickey even more nervous, and put his head in his hands.

"Can't this Tartan thing—"

"TARDIS," the Doctor muttered behind his hands.

"Right. Yeah. Well, can't it track them or something? The Farang."

The Doctor looked up at him through dead eyes.

"But if Rose still exists in any time at all, why wouldn't her mother or her boyfriend remember her at all? Why am I the only person in the entire universe who remembers Rose Tyler?"

Mickey opened his mouth to reply but stopped, realising he had nothing to say. He looked down at his trainers again.

"What does that mean?" he asked quietly.

The Doctor got up from his seat, hands stuffed into the pockets of his leather jacket as he began to walk away from Mickey down the road, rain running down the back of his neck.

"It means it's time to move on," the old man said, without looking back, "It means I'm an idiot to think I could love something more than a blue box and a horizon. It means she's dead and even if I come back to her time and her world, all I can find is a bloke who doesn't even remember me and grey rain in an empty alleyway."

Mickey scrambled to his feet to follow him.

"Don't bother, Mickey," the Doctor said sharply and he paused out on the pavement.

But Mickey was frowning. He was just trying to remember something that seemed to be rather important.

"Wait a second," he said.

The Doctor stopped again, at the end of the road, and let out something that sounded like a long sigh. Slowly, he turned back around. He wiped a hand across his face and eyes.

"What?"

Mickey was saying something under his breath repeatedly, concentrating on the sound of it.

"Did you say Tyler?"

"Yes."

"...Right."

"...Yes?"

"Tyler?"

"Mickey, is this leading anywhere?"

"Yeah. Do you want to come with me a minute?"

The Doctor broke into motion as if he had never stopped walking. His body just suddenly started forward and followed Mickey, already jogging down the road towards his own flat.

The grey buildings, slick and black with rain, hove into view. They ran up the stairs together, two shimmering shapes in the misty air, hands dancing up the railings, feet splashing on the cement and the sound of their breathing ringing behind them. They clattered along the corridor. Mickey thrust his key into the lock and pushed open the door. The Doctor followed close behind him, forgetting to shut the door, still in his sodden clothes, down the hall to the phone where Mickey stabbed a button on the set and a red light buzzed on.

"You have one message," the machine grated and then was the sound like that of complicated indigestion within the machine before a long high tone. Then a voice came on that made the Doctor choke and drop both hands on the table either side of the phone. It sounded as if it was a million miles away, so crackly and indistinct, it was almost inaudible.

But only to those who were not listening for her.

"Hello...? ...lo? Mick...are you there? Look just... ind... octor, yeah? Fin...m, he'll kno...at to do...et out of London. There's an inva...on. An invas...! I...n't get hold of Mum, bu... ke... r... Mickey!...Mickey!"

Then there was a sudden lull in the mess of clicks and whirrs behind the voice and she screamed down the line so loudly that the Doctor jumped back.

"...Tyler! It's me! Are you there? Are you there?"

Then it cut out. As the answering machine spouted out the date and time of the call, the Doctor rounded on Mickey, all sign of grief gone from his eyes.

"Don't move."

Then he was gone again. Mickey could hear his footsteps echoing away down the stairs. The splash as he broke through a puddle then clattered away down to the next level. Mickey took the instruction literally and did not even move to close the door, but froze there, listening to the rain outside, staring down at the phone. It had arrived for him some time that morning and figured it was one of his mates that had broken down somewhere and needed picking up, but when he phoned back, the mobile was switched off. So he went off to the shops for a bit. For a peaceful day. Right.

There was suddenly a strange noise very close to him. He frowned down at the phone, but it sat innocently silent. Panic rising, he tried to twist his head without moving his body to see what it was. He stared. Then stared harder. Then screamed and collapsed, trying to force himself under the table. Back to the wall, he peered out at the giant blue police box that had suddenly appeared not two feet from where he was standing. Just then, the door in the side opened up and the Doctor stepped out. He had a long blue wire with him. He looked absently down at Mickey with a raised eyebrow.

"What you doing?"

"What's that?" Mickey dithered, refusing to move.

"Don't worry. You don't believe in it. Therefore it doesn't believe in you, so it won't hurt you."

He had flipped over the phone and prised off the back. Now, he fed the thin blue wire into a small opening and flicked the switch on the answering machine again.

"You have one message..."

"What are you trying to do?"

"Trace the call."

"So that's...that is her? I don't believe it! That...that's Rose, your Rose?"

"My Rose," said the Doctor.

"Then it's all true? All of it? All that stuff 'bout Farrawhatsits? And about me and that Jackie person? And I was part of it? I...I had a girlfriend!" His face broke into a brilliant smile. "Excellent."

"Fantastic!" the Doctor agreed as Rose's fevered message played out once more.

They stood there, waiting for the voice to peter out again and once done, the Doctor tugged out the cable and retreated back inside his box. He hesitated. Then he turned and asked, with a slight smile,

"If I'm right, you won't remember any of this. You're a different Mickey to the one I'm going back to. You don't want to come and see the girlfriend you could have had? See the future where Rose exists?"

"You've got the signal?"

"I've got the signal."

"You're going to get Rose?"

"My Rose."

Mickey was quiet, then scratched his nose, and got to his feet. He looked awkward for a moment then grinned.

"N'ah. I don't believe in it, right?"

The Doctor looked blank. Then he flashed Mickey a brilliant smile, so big it seemed to stretch out to the corners.

"Right."

Time is difficult to predict. Even harder to change. It washes over wars...over worlds...over billions of lives every day. But Time is not unkind. Sometimes it twists about, perhaps going to the right when it should have gone to the left type of thing. And as the Doctor leapt out of the TARDIS to sweep the sobbing Rose up in his arms, he realised that he was only just beginning to understand this. The door had opened. The door had opened and let in a thousand dimensions. He had simply fallen into the wrong one; one where Rose Tyler did not exist. Time is not unkind. Just unpredictable. And after all, the Doctor thought to himself as he dismantled the Time devices in the Farang headquarters, Rose seated beside him, talking about some distant sun: the TARDIS is only riding Time, it's not controlling it.

"I like Mickey," he said to Rose as they watched the Farang's scientific headquarters explode and throw flaming rubble in all directions, while all around them, the Farang dashed hither thither, looking for someone to blame.

Rose glanced up at him.

"Yeah? That's a nice change."

And somewhere in some distant dimension, the other Mickey sat out by the Thames and for some reason he could not explain, felt very lonely.