Hello friends! Again I'm taking a brief break from my Ten/Martha M.O. in order to explore an idea that's been scratching at my brain. (Though rest assured, I do have a Ten/Martha outline more or less finished and sitting on the runway, almost ready to fly! ;-) )

This is one of those things that I could sit and revise over and over until my typing fingers bleed - it may never be right. So I went ahead and took the plunge and posted! Like a lot of the things I've written, this is "experimental," and I have no idea how it will be received. Except, I'm pretty sure it will attract a different audience than my previous fics.

My intent was for the narrative to be beautiful, melancholy, to convey love, a sort of opulence, a bit of despair, and a slow but richly-coloured passage of time. All this while still retaining the Tenth Doctor's voice! As usual, I'm not sure if I achieved what I wanted. That's where you come in! Leave a review with your thoughts!

To me, the question of what the Doctor would have done if he really had got stuck on the slow path with Reinette has always been a tantalizing one, but I've avoided it because I usually do avoid writing fics from the Series 2 era. But as you may have noticed if you've read my other fics, I'm a bit of a Francophile (I've literally devoted my life to my Francophilia), and this fic was just begging to be written! It's been sort of staring me in the face for years, so I decided, at last, to give it a shot.

I did a lot of reading before diving into this, and most historical info is, as far as I can tell, correct. I took as little creative license as possible with the events of the 18th century. Obviously, just inserting the Doctor into the events at all makes it more a creative endeavor than a factual one, but the details of Madame de Pompadour's life (and death) are as accurate as I could make them! FYI: onscreen, the King asserts that Reinette died at 43. She was actually 42.

This will not be a long story - maybe 5-6 chapters. What you will find here is a lot of narrative, as though the Doctor is writing, maybe, in a journal. There's very little dialogue. But I hope, nevertheless, you can get invested in the Doctor and Reinette, and the Doctor and his dilemma. :-)

Appropriately, Allons-y! ;-)

1759-1763: LIFE WITH REINETTE

The Doctor's Narrative

"Qu'on ne soit présent à la Cour qu'avec un titre." It was an official rule, and in the corners of the Palace, for five years, I listened to it whispered.

"One must only be present at Court with a title."

Well, that was rubbish, wasn't it? Because, what the hell could I have been called? It was one thing for a person to be called King. It was another thing entirely for a person to be titled Chief Mistress to the King. But give me a title? That would have approached abuse of the very concept of protocol.

The Chief Mistress is at Court because the King wishes it. What do you call the man who is there because the Chief Mistress wishes it?

You see the dilemma? Mostly, I was just called Doctor, or, amusingly, Monsieur le Docteur. Ah, the French!

Don't get me wrong. I got called many things. Just because there was no official title for me, that did not stop the various courtiers from trying, colourfully, to invent one. The King's Foil. The Interloper. The Whore's Whore (that's the only one that ever really hurt).

My personal favourite was The April Fish. Trust me, it was clever, even if it was meant to be a bit cruel. In French, it was rendered Le Poisson d'Avril, which invoked Reinette's family name, Poisson, and the month of April, 1759, during which I became trapped at Versailles. It was, and is, the French way of calling me the "April Fool." The name indicated that, to them, I might as well have been "Mister Pompadour," and that they pretty much thought I was completely mad. I was okay with them thinking both. It made things more interesting.

Over the years, one by one, the King's official advisors had been either deposed or had died, and much like his predecessor, his great-grandfather, the Sun King, Louis XIV, he had chosen not to replace them. By the time I settled in at Versailles, the king was 49 years old, rather comfy in his authority, and had only one unofficial advisor to whom he ever listened: Jeanne-Antoinette Le Normant d'Etiolles, or the woman known to history as Madame de Pompadour. She was known to me, and to all who were close to her, as Reinette.

Reinette was not about to let me go without a fight, and couldn't have cared less whether I was titled or not. So, since there was no-one whispering into the King's ear that I should be either titled or ousted from the grounds, the farthest it ever got was the timid whisperings of, "Qu'on ne soit à la cour qu'avec titre," in the hallways, which they wanted me to hear. And, of course, the name-calling in the parlours at night, when they thought I didn't know. It sort of bugged Reinette, but most of the time, I found the whole thing actually very amusing.

From the moment I found myself stranded in 1759, there was no particular thought of immediately trying to get back to my TARDIS, which was parked in the fifty-first century. I knew that someday, I'd have to start manoeuvring my way in that direction, but the next five years I was to spend at Court with her. I did want to be there, don't get me wrong, but mostly, at least initially, I stayed because she wouldn't have me leave.

I did valiantly manage to pass that time, my first five years on the Slow Path, without losing my mind. In the two-faced world of Versailles, I may have been mocked behind the scenes, but superficially, I was rather a popular guy. I made an effort to be charming (not difficult for me) and unassuming (extremely difficult for me), to follow protocol as much as was possible and/or non-ridiculous. I taught the more amenable courtiers card games that I probably shouldn't have, told them stories that I definitely shouldn't have, and gave them enough gossip to chew on, that in spite of themselves, they wanted to keep me around. The Queen, the adorably Polish Marie Lyszczynska, seemed to like me, which did help my case a bit. She wasn't particularly clever, but she was, actually, genuinely, very, very nice.

The children of Versailles were numerous, and they were both tragic and fascinating. There were a lot of kids running about. I liked them, and actually interacted with them, in a time when it wasn't considered quite normal for a grown man to enjoy the company of children. The King and Queen had four small grandsons at that time, who were the children of their son, the Dauphin. The actual total number of grandchildren... I have no idea.

The eldest was named Louis-Joseph, whom everyone assumed would become the next Dauphin, and then King someday himself. Lots of pomp and circumstance surrounded this seven-year-old when I arrived. But sadly, I knew that this boy was not destined to be a Bourbon King. I knew that over the next couple of years, I would be an indirect witness to a slow decline of his health, a botched surgery by a well-meaning, but born-in-the-wrong-era doctor, his paralysis and subsequent death at the age of nine.

My interest was in the five-year-old Louis-Auguste, who would be the next King, Louis XVI. I talked with him, watched him play, and felt a kind of awe seeing the future husband of the storied Marie-Antoinette running about in the dirt. I also felt a very heavy heart, knowing that he would mark, more or less, the end of the French Monarchy as we knew it, and die by the guillotine in less than thirty-five years' time.

I knew it was rather on-the-outside, but I felt drawn to him, and attempted to take the child under my wing a bit. This was, of course, without influencing him too much. I knew I couldn't school him in politics or any sort of social graces - Louis XVI had been notoriously rather timid, of not inept, in the political arena, and also as a man. He had been a passable hunter, though, and probably a decent (or at least not a total failure as an) athlete. So I showed him and his favourite playmates how to play Cricket. He wasn't great at it, but he liked it, and it made him smile. That was all I really wanted to see.

You know, now we're talking about kids, let me just take a bit of a B-road and discuss something that I never got used to, not in all that time stationed at Versailles: I witnessed (again, indirectly), the deaths of countless children, at startlingly young ages, of startlingly simple and preventable diseases and catastrophes. For the sake of their parents, I wanted to help. For my own children that I had lost, for the two children Reinette had lost, I desperately wanted to intervene, and at any other place and time, I might have tried, at least once in a while. But alas, late eighteenth-century Versailles was not a place to go meddling with who lived and died. One cough out of place could change a whole generation of the Monarchy. And headed toward the Revolution in just about thirty years, and the line-of-succession inextricably connected with all births and deaths at Versailles, there could be no child Duke nor Countess nor Archuchess living a single day less or longer than expected. It could send the wrong man or woman to the guillotine when the time came, and no one was ready for that, least of all, me. It was a great exercise in restraint for me, white-knuckling it through death and decay, and just letting it happen. It was good practical experience for me, a Time Lord who had sworn never to interfere, but who had always been really useless at keeping that promise.

Reinette was, as you probably know, an enthralling woman, in just about every way. The weight of five years together could not diminish that. Being "trapped" with each other was something of a boon, in spite of the difficult position it put me in, because in all the times throughout her life that we had met, we had never had the chance to get to know one another properly. To her, I was the mysterious "Fireplace Man" who would turn up at unpredictable intervals, and then dash out just as unpredictably. To me, she was a project - a human who needed rescuing from a horrible death. There had not been time to develop anything much more than an infatuation.

Well, she was a lot more than a project, of course. She was an object of affection, intrigue and, yes... lust. I knew I was the same to her. And suddenly now, we had time.

And the fact was, by 1759 when I settled in, she had not been in a sexual relationship with the King in almost a decade. Not to say that he never displayed any jealousy, but he seemed to feel that by this stage, he had no particular claim on her. She was his best mate, and he genuinely just wanted her to be happy. He made an effort to be nice to me, and for the most part, he was perfectly pleasant toward me. He was, considering that he was a European Monarch and I was sleeping with his Chief Mistress, a gracious man. Reinette never really let go of him, nevertheless, and vice versa; though, unfortunately, after having suffered two miscarriages with him, she felt their union was cursed, and she lost any carnal enthusiasm she had for him.

But now she had me.

We didn't spend twenty-four hours a day together; she had official duties and historically important hobbies that took up a great deal of her time. Some of those were the days when I tittered in the parlours with the idle courtiers and played with Louis-Auguste and his mates (even though everyone thought it was weird). Sometimes, I slipped off by myself in the Palace grounds and meditated, or just sulked a bit. I even had my own little lab in the bowels of the Palace (a consolation gift from Reinette for Christmas, 1759)... more on that later.

But there were plenty of days when Reinette and I could just be the life-long friends that we had been, at least from her point of view.

Back in their heyday, the King had taken Reinette with him frequently on the hunt, and she'd got good at it. She insisted on gathering parties from time to time, and teaching me the practise. I found it rather relaxing, actually, though of course, I never killed anything myself, and did not relish watching anyone do so. It was simply fascinating for me to observe the packs of dogs and the horses that followed, the circling of the hunters around the target. I considered it a scientific pursuit, observing privileged humans as they intellectualised the hell out of a basically primitive act.

And we talked. A lot. In parlours, with one another and with friends. On horseback on the grounds, off the grounds, walking about in the gardens. When we were alone, I would tell her stories of time and space, as she was fully aware of who and what I was. We read some of the same books, and discussed them. We talked about gardening and cuisine, fine porcelain, Franco-Austrian relations, and sometimes the King. I learned about her childhood, her short-lived marriage, her beloved, late daughter Fanfan, and her close relationship with her father. She learned about some of my recent life with Rose and Mickey, and some of my earlier memories of the TARDIS and companions. Living at Court, we both felt the need, for different reasons, to watch our step, which was incredibly stressful. It was nice to have each other as a sounding-board. I was, perhaps, the only person in the Palace who never judged her, and vice versa.

And when the sun went down... well, what can I tell you? There was a kindred ardour between us and nothing but candlelight surrounding us. Of course we spent many of our nights sleepless, wrapped around each other, tangling the sheets. Wouldn't it have been a waste not to? She was spectacular, and I mean that in the least-vulgar way possible. She was a loving and fervent person by nature, and well-experienced in the ways of the flesh. She had a deeply-seated melancholy that I discovered, weirdly, could render lovemaking even more satisfying. I like to think that I share those qualities. Together, we could be explosive and poignant.

Or not. Five years brought with it many variations.

Reinette had known from the beginning that I was a time-traveller, and that I had come from far in the future. She began asking me early-on about what the coming years would bring for France, for the Monarchy, for the world. I told her that the next thirty years would be crucial and bring great changes to the Monarchy, but was very careful not to use the word revolution. And of course, she wanted to know what I already knew of her life. What had I already known when I first met her, when she was seven years old? Eventually, she learned not to ask direct questions, and it even became a joke, or a game, between us. Because mostly, I was cryptic about it, and avoided discussing it as much as possible. Rather than become frustrated, she teased me. This was a relief. It allowed me to joke and tease back, and pull all sorts of absurdities out of my sleeve to make her laugh. Better that way; in these matters, truth could be destructive.

Destructive and cruel. And extremely painful, actually. Because, in spite of the Slow Path, my burden all along had been nothing particularly new to me: I was going to outlive her by a hell of a lot, plus I knew precisely how and when she was going to die. I knew, down to the day. This was a horrible bit of knowledge to have. For the entire year before her death, I was constantly thinking, "This is our last summer together, our last autumn, our last Christmas..." And when she had her forty-second birthday, I could barely hold it together long enough to have dinner and a dance with her. I had tears in my eyes a lot of the time, which she graciously ignored, and I spoke very little. As a gift, along with other, slightly more personal things, I gave her the pamphlet, A Modest Proposal, in English. I did this knowing that it would entertain her as it would no one else in the Palace, and also that she just may not have enough time left to finish an entire book.