The Doctor stormed through the palace of Versailles. Something was making the hair on the back of his neck stand straight up. It felt almost like a time window opening but it was erratic and unsteady – as if the window were both opened and closed at the same time in a manner like Schrödinger’s cat being both alive and dead simultaneously. Whatever it was, he wanted to get to the bottom of it. If there were some way he could get back to that ship…back to Rose…
He sighed and stopped for a minute as the image of Rose Tyler flashed in front of his eyes. She was smiling one of her special smiles, her tongue peeking out between her teeth, her cheeks tinged with a faint, healthy blush. Her hair was falling in front of her eyes – her beautiful eyes that flashed green and gold and then brown. She was on the verge of making some cheeky remark. Her face was alight as if from a hidden sunbeam and the Doctor knew that he wouldn’t be able to hold out against her much longer. His rules regarding relationships with companions were quickly being erased whenever he let himself bask in the presence of a 21st century London woman. How many times had he forcibly restrained himself from kissing her? The Doctor honestly couldn’t add up the numbers. So many nights he’d stood in his room, the TARDIS turning the wall that separated him from Rose opaque. He’d watched her sleep, longing to barge into her room and watch her sleep – listen to her sleep – without the barrier of that wall. There had been a few times, before his regeneration, when he had held her through the night, soothing her nightmares with his presence. Especially after that terrible visit to see her father. There had even been a few times – both before and after his regeneration – when he’d woken to find himself being cradled and rocked gently in her arms, listening to her whisper words of comfort in his ear because she’d come upon him in the console room, asleep, reliving the Time War in his dreams.
“Rassilon,” he groaned. “Why did I ever go through that mirror? Will I ever get back to her? Will she ever know? Will I ever work up the courage to tell her the truth? Or will I run like I’ve been doing ever since I was eight years old?”
Continuing his search through the palace, the Doctor turned and flung open a pair of doors. He found himself standing in Reinette’s childhood bedroom. This was the first place he’d ever seen her. She’d been so young and innocent, then. He’d fought off the nightmares and monsters like some romantic hero from an Earth fairy tale. And then he’d returned again and again until now, he was trapped.
The fireplace caught his gaze. The room was identical but the fireplace…someone had torn it apart. He could feel the time window trying to reconnect itself but with the original configuration gone, that window was closed forever. The Doctor walked over to the fireplace, running his hands along it to see if there was some way he could repair it, some way he could return to Rose Tyler. Maybe, even now, she was standing just on the other side of the wall, trying to get to him, trying to find him. His hearts began to pound in his chest as he imagined her pushing and straining with all her might, calling out to him, crying out his true name – not the title he had taken – but the name his mother and father had given him.
“Rose!” he groaned as he pulled his sonic screwdriver out of his pocket and began working on the fireplace, “Rose, please just wait for me. Be patient. I’ll come back to you. Don’t give up on me! Please!”
“My lord,” a serving girl said, startling the Time Lord nearly out of his wits, “what are you doing here? My lady has given orders that this room never be entered, not even to be cleaned.”
“I’m trying to get back home,” the Doctor said absently. Home was where ever Rose Tyler and her bewitching smile and eyes were. Home was a 21st century blonde Londoner who held both her hearts and his soul in her hands. Home was a woman who had wept for him, extending her sympathy and her sorrow when he told her of his dead world and lost people.
Home was a woman he had abandoned, even if he had never stopped loving her.
“But my lord jests, certainly. The grand palace of Versailles is home enough.”
“No, it’s not. Who damaged this fireplace? Who broke the time window?” the Doctor demanded angrily. “His Majesty? Who?!”
“My lord, only my lady Madame du Pompadour has ever entered this chamber since it was brought here from her childhood home,” the serving girl said quickly, her voice squeaking with fear. The Doctor shuddered. Servants were treated worse than livestock in this era. “She has given orders that these rooms be sealed and forgotten! Please, my lord. If she finds that even you have trespassed here, she will…”
“She will what? Have me thrown out of the palace? Have me transported to the Americas? Sell me into slavery? Have me executed? What will she do?”
“Please, my lord…”
“Where is she?” the Doctor demanded, seething. He had all the answers he needed now. Reinette had done this. She had broken the fireplace, ripping apart his only way home. She had done this to keep him trapped here, trapped with her. He was just another feather in her cap. She had a husband and a lover. She was the uncrowned queen of France. History said she would live until she was forty-two, dying of tuberculosis. Reinette had already borne two children – both dead – and would bear two more. None would live. Even if he had become her lover himself – and though he’d been tempted a time or two, he had not – she would bear no children to survive her. And, since that chance meeting with her husband, Charles Guillaume Le Normant d’Étoilles, the Doctor hadn’t even been the least bit tempted to share Reinette’s bed. “Where is she?”
“My lord,” the servant shuddered, kneeling and bowing her head to the tile floor, “my lady is entertaining the King.”
“She won’t be for long,” he growled angrily. “She’s going to answer to the Lord of Time. Now get up. Don’t prostrate yourself like that for anyone. Not even an angry Time Lord like me,” he ordered. The serving girl stood up and quickly ran the opposite direction as the Oncoming Storm began striding back down the corridors of the royal palace of Versailles, seeking the woman who had trapped him here and praying that she had a very, very good reason for what she had done.
~*~*~*~
“Jeanne Antoine Poisson!” the Doctor roared as he stormed into the Royal apartments, the doors crashing against the walls behind him with resounding ‘bangs.’ “Don’t think you or his Majesty can hide from me!”
“Mon ange,” Reinette said in her sweetest voice, knowing that he was angry and would need gentle handling. He was always short of temper lately. “Please, I am within the drawing room. Would you join us? His Majesty has a most perplexing issue which you might shed light upon, mon ange.”
“Don’t you mon ange me,” he snarled. “The fireplace in your childhood bedroom. What happened to it?”
Reinette opened her eyes as wide as they would go, doing her best to affect an air of perfect innocence. “Mon prince du temps, that fireplace, it was damaged when I had it moved here. Why are you asking about it? Has something happened to that serving girl of yours? That Rose?”
“Don’t you dare,” he warned, his voice shaking with anger. “Don’t you dare sully her name with your lips. That fireplace was fine the last time I came through to you. Even now I can sense it trying to reform the window. What happened to it? What did you do to it?”
“Mon ange,” she sighed softly, sadly, “I could not just leave it open. I could not risk those…nightmares chasing after us again. After all, I do have his Majesty’s well-being to consider. And your own. Have you received a message from that British serving girl of yours? Certainly she could find herself a situation until you can return to her on that strange vessel she spoke of.”
“A better situation? On an abandoned space freighter?” he snorted. “Why did you do it? King of France wasn’t enough for you?”
“His Majesty is not to be endangered so lightly,” Reinette said coldly, “or ignored,” she added, gesturing to the man sitting on the other end of the settee from her. “Now, mon ange, calm yourself and be seated. For a man who has traveled among the stars, you certainly are impatient to leave your home again.”
The Doctor frowned and sat down as bidden. Reinette could have him imprisoned quite easily, he knew. And she would. She was a cold-blooded, devious, manipulative climber who feared nothing in her quest for greater power. She’d had a good husband in Charles but she’d cast him aside quickly when she had the chance to become the mistress of Louis XV. She would have cast Louis himself aside for a chance to become the Lady of Time if the Doctor hadn’t explained that he wasn’t a lord, he held no estates (not any longer, at least) and that he was actually just a wanderer. Once Reinette discovered that she could not gain wealth or power through him, she’d been quite disinterested in the Time Lord. However, she was not one to let another have something she considered hers even if she wasn’t particularly interested in it anymore.
“Why did you do it, Reinette?” he asked sadly. “Why did you trap me here instead of letting me go back?”
“Because, mon prince du temps,” she smiled with false sweetness, “having you here ensures that France will shine for all of time. Now, I believe his Majesty has a few questions for you. I will leave you two men to discuss these matters while I take care of some business of my own.”
“Leave the serving girls alone, Reinette,” the Doctor said warningly. “It’s not their fault. This time, the fault is completely my own.”
Why had he ever gone through that damned mirror? Reinette was nothing to him. Especially not when he compared her to a girl who grew up fatherless on a council estate. A girl who, unlike the poised woman walking out of the room, had a warm heart. If he could get back to Rose…if there were some way he could open the time window again…he would make certain that Rose knew the truth about him. Even if he had to wait centuries for the chance.