Reinette stood in the doorway to her childhood bedroom. It had been several days since the Time Lord vanished from his own quarters. She wasn’t terribly surprised to find him here. He was working frantically at the fireplace. His strange tools were scattered around him as he tried to fix what she had broken so long ago.
All to return to that British commoner of his. How strange for a man of his breeding to be so attached to a young girl with such ill graces. Reinette sighed to herself. Men were creatures who barely knew their minds at the best of times. That was why the Lord Christ had given them women. She fought down the jealousy that twisted at her core. She was the mistress of the King of France. She was the Uncrowned Queen. True, he was one of her courtiers, one of her lovers, but she had never managed to seduce him to her bed. She tried to remind herself that she did not want to waste her talents on one who could give her neither fame nor power should the King tire of her as she aged but the truth would always work its way through her. She couldn’t touch the Time Lord because he did not want her. It galled in her heart that she, the most desirable woman on Earth, the woman who had poets and writers such as Voltaire panting after her, could barely get this strange Doctor to do more than kiss her. And even then, he’d not kissed her in nearly a decade!
What witchcraft, what sorcery, what hold must this commoner of his have over him? Had she borne him a son? A child to carry on his proud lineage? Did she bring estates and influence to him? Had the world gone mad that this strange Rose Tyler could bewitch and captivate a man whom Madame du Pompadour could not entice?
“There we go!” the Doctor exulted. “Just a little more and…Reinette? What are you doing here?”
“This is my childhood room, Doctor,” Reinette said calmly, struggling not to cough. The air in Versailles had been so wet and heavy lately that it seemed to burrow its way into her chest, not wanting to leave. She found herself constantly short of breath and always tired. Two more babies she had borne, hoping to present Louis with a child worthy of him, but both had died so young. Before they could even be properly baptized. She crossed herself, reminding herself that her children were with the Lord and He would see to them. “Why shouldn’t I be here?”
“Because you ordered this room sealed off,” he said absently. “I’ve been trying to suss out why for years. Why you did this,” he muttered, gesturing to the fireplace. “Why you wanted to trap me here. I could have taken you to the stars, you know. Once upon a time.”
“Could you take me now?”
“No,” he said firmly. “Back when I thought you were…different, I would have. But then I saw you for what you really are. I don’t want you within ten miles of her. Within a light-year. Hell, she’s too good to have been born on the same planet as you.”
“Your British Rose?”
“I told you not to sully her name with your lips, Reinette,” he growled. “Why did you do it? And don’t give me that rubbish about for the glory of France. You know me. You know I’d never do anything to change the course of human history. And France will fade. The line of the Sun King will falter. Revolution will come. Republics will rise up. Already, you’ve heard whisperings of discontent and revolt from the Americas. The world will change. In two hundred years, Paris will be remembered fondly but will not call the shots on Earth. The power will shift over the Atlantic to Washington D.C. Loved Washington. A bit of a stuffed shirt but an honest man and an honorable one nonetheless,” the Doctor said absently.
“I trapped you here because I believed you wanted to be trapped, Doctor,” Reinette said, speaking honestly about this for the first time. “Your Rose…you did not want her…”
“Oh, I wanted her. Rassilon, how I want that woman,” he said, continuing to work on the fireplace. “I met her in a department store basement in 2005. Took her hand and told her to run. Shop window dummies,” he sighed. “Then I told her to forget me but she wouldn’t. She never gave up. She followed me. She sought me out. So I took her to see the Earth explode. We had chips, after. The first time she followed me, chasing me down the stairs of the Powell Estate…I knew that if I took her with me, eventually, I’d break. I’d make her mine in every way possible. Because she was Rose Tyler. A hand to hold. A light in the darkness. A way back. A sweet song after the harshest of discords. The peace found on the other side of war.”
“You truly love that British girl.”
“With both my hearts and all of my soul.”
“When you return to her, will you marry her? Even if she is well beneath your station?”
“Reinette, ‘Time Lord’ isn’t a station. It’s a job. I’m Gallifreyan. Yeah, I graduated from the Academy but I’m not a lord in your sense of the word. I’m a…commoner, I guess. Just like Rose. But even if I was the Lord President of the Council of Time Lords, yes, I’d still want her to be with me. I’d want to beg her forgiveness and ask if she would accept me as her bond-mate. Rassilon, I hope I can make things right with her. So many times, I’ve abandoned her. Sent her away. But this last time,” he sighed. “This last time has been the worst.”
“Bond-mate?” Reinette asked, fixing on the only words she understood.
“Husband. Fine. Do you have to reduce everything to human terms?”
“Forgive me but you sometimes seem so human.”
“You look a little Time Lord yourself,” he quipped. “We were the oldest race, you know. The first to wake up after the Big Bang. We were born beneath the Great Schism. Our gaze encompassed the younger galaxies. Sworn only to observe, never to interfere,” he sighed. “Even once the Curse of Pythia was lifted, we…stagnated. So set in our ways. Fire and passion bred out of us. The laws, the rules so engrained in our bones. Even me, the rebel, the rogue Time Lord…even I find it difficult to cast them off.”
“Is that why you’ve never…”
“With you? No. I’ve never taken it past kissing with you because I don’t love you. I fancied you, for a bit. Thought you were different. But that was just a trick, Reinette. A courtesan’s gimmick. And it only worked because I was so lonely. So frightened. So terrified that Rose would see me for who and what I am and would leave. She’s so young, Reinette. So pure. But she brought me back. I thought it was all over after the War. Then I met Rose. Rassilon, all the chances I had with her…all of the times wasted…all of the times I could have spent with her in my arms…Gods long forgotten…” he sighed heavily. “I have to get back to her. I have to throw myself on her mercy. And, if she can’t forgive me…”
“If she can’t forgive you?”
“Then I’ll end it. Two regenerations left but damned if they’ll mean anything without her. I’ll end it and let my soul go to its final judgment,” he muttered. “I’ll burn for the rest of eternity if that’s what it takes to earn her forgiveness.”
“You love her,” Reinette sighed. “I was wrong to keep you apart.”
“You were.”
“Will you ever forgive me my transgressions, my lonely angel?”
“I already have,” he grimaced. “I’m still angry. Don’t get me wrong. But this,” he gestured behind him, indicating his imprisonment, “is as much my fault as it is yours. If I hadn’t been so busy running from Rose, trying to put distance between us, then I’d have shoved you to the floor the first time you tried to snog me. If I’d finally realized the truth – that she wasn’t joking when she said ‘my Doctor’ on the Game Station – then none of this would have happened. She’d be here with me. She’d have ridden that horse with me. And we would be together,” he growled angrily, hating himself for all of the missed chances with the Londoner. “We were always supposed to be together. Rassilon! Why didn’t I see that after she tore open the Heart of the TARDIS and damned near killed herself to save me from the Daleks and end the Time War?”
Reinette stood quietly for a long moment before she walked into the room. She had no desire to try to seduce the Doctor. Not any longer. Not now that she understood how truly alien he was and how much he longed for his God-ordained wife. Instead, she felt only affection for the memories of her youth he stirred within her and guilt for the way she had trapped him so far from the woman God had made for him. She understood little of what her lonely angel said. Time War? Daleks? These were words without meaning to her. But she did understand one thing. Her lonely angel was a man with a broken heart. A heart she had helped to break. For several years now, she had had him chased out of her childhood room. She had set guards and servants to keep him from it. But now, as she neared the end of her race, as she felt herself drawing closer to the Lord Christ and His fearful Seat of Judgment before which all would stand come the Last Day, Jeanne Antoinette Poisson repented of her most grievous sin of separating the Doctor from his Rose.
“Lord God Almighty, Creator of Heaven and Earth,” she prayed silently as she settled on one of the sofas, too tired to keep standing, “let Thine servant, my lonely angel, return to his love. Let them be joined together in the exalted state of matrimony for this time and for all time. By Thy holy mother, the Ever-Virgin Mary, and all the saints, I repent of my sins of lust and envy and beg Thy forgiveness. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, I pray. Amen,” she ended in silence before gesturing one of her serving girls over. Giving the woman orders to see that the Doctor was supplied with ample food and drink while he worked and that a comfortable pallet was made for him for when he must rest, Madame du Pompadour rested before she pulled herself up to return to her own chambers. The King’s physicians insisted on examining her and treating her for the consumption that, deep down, she knew, would kill her before many more years had come to pass.
She just hoped to see the Doctor reunited with the woman ordained for him before Time had been born – the woman she, in her lust, envy, and jealousy, had kept him from – before she went to stand before the fearful judgment seat of Christ.