[Its not a nice story, and it's not one he's proud of, but maybe it will help a little. He might not know how she's feeling, but he can take a pretty good guess at what Reid is going through.] I worked at Torchwood London, originally, and I was dating a girl named Lisa. [Its still hard to talk about her.] The organization as invaded by Cybermen -they're humanity, upgraded, or at least they think they are. Metal bodies, all emotions removed, really dangerous.
They were halfway through her conversion process when they were defeated. [He doesn't want to talk about dragging her out of there, or what that process did to her so he skips it.] Torchwood exists to destroy alien threats so I knew what they'd do if they found her, but they were also the best resource I had for finding a way to fix her so I got us to Cardiff and talked Jack into giving me a job and hid her in our Hub until I could figure something out. I only started sleeping with Jack to keep him from getting suspicious and to have an excuse to be around at odd hours. I thought I had it undercontrol but then her programming took over and she started killing people and I tried to stop Jack and the rest of my friends when they attempted to destroy her. He killed her in the end, and she died in my arms, just like what happened to Reid.
[He glances out the window for a moment, quiet, then adds.] I loved her so much I risked the entire human race to try and save her, and I hated Jack for a long time after that, but he was there for me when I needed help coming back from that, and he let me take my time with our relationship, too. I didn't want anything to do with him for a long time and even then I didn't want anything serious, not at first. I know it's not the same with you and Reid, but I don't know, I suppose my point is love is complicated and a bit stupid at times and maybe we can love more than one person or do it in different ways without having to give up hope entirely.