A/N: I KNOW that there are a lot of people out there who just don't like TGIF – maybe they feel that The Doctor betrayed Rose by falling for Reinette but I'm NOT one of them! I LIKE this episode – so this is my take on what she might have seen in his mind.

The usual thanks to DR D for the Beta.

R&R please – but all those of you who hate Reinette can stay away!!

A Door Once Opened.

Jeanne–Antoinette Poisson, known to those closest to her as Reinette and to those who envied her as Madame de Pompadour, had always considered herself to be a level headed woman, a woman who knew what she wanted and how to get it, after all she was the mistress of the King of France, a position that many had coveted but only she had attained.

But Reinette had a secret, one she had been keeping since childhood and one she doubted anybody would believe even if she chose to tell them. She had a protector, a guardian angel, a man who watched over her life and kept the monsters at bay. The man never changed, he never aged, he came and went through her life like a ghost and there were times when she doubted his existence and her own sanity.

But now he was here again and she knew he was real, not an imagined friend, nor a dream. He stood before her and she could see him as clearly as she could see her own reflection in a mirror, she could hear him as clearly as the birds that sang in their gilded cages. He was real and he was here and that meant that so were the monsters, because he never came unless the monsters came too.

She should have been scared when the clockwork man appeared in her doorway but she wasn't because she knew that he would come, the man who lived behind the fireplace, or the mirror or the mantelpiece, he had always come and he came again. He always scared away her nightmare with words and actions that she couldn't always profess to understand. Maybe it was witchcraft or black magic, she didn't know, but she was glad of it and glad of the man who came when she needed him.

Now they were alone again, the nightmare banished once more and she longed for his touch, she longed for the feel of his lips on hers. A long time ago she had kissed him and it had felt so real and so right that she had longed to do it again but the time had never been right. She knew from the way that first kiss had made her feel that she was in love with him, and even though her life had moved on and changed and now she loved another, deep down inside her she knew that she loved him just a little bit more.

He told her that he needed to see inside her mind, just as he had done when she was a small child, to see what they wanted, why they wanted her and maybe to find a way to stop them forever. He needed her to trust him and she gave it to him gladly and without a second thought, for he fascinated her more with every visit.

He touched her face, he felt real, a little cold against her skin but she did wonder if she was maybe a little warm in his presence too. He closed his eyes and, not wanting to appear impolite after she had gazed at his gentle features and felt her heart soar, she closed her eyes too.

Then he was in her mind, in her memories the ones she had of him and the ones she had of other times and other places. Her memories were the pages of her life in an open book and he turned the pages and walked through them.

"You are in my memories, you walk amongst them" her voice was calm and matter of fact and he was impressed by that. But then he had always known she was a special woman, more so to him than to the rest of history.

"If there is anything you don't want me to see just imagine a door and close it. I won't look."

His words were meant to comfort her but she didn't need to be comforted nor did she want to close her memories to this man. She wanted him to see her life without him, so he could see and understand that, although she loved him, she couldn't wait her whole life for him. So she let him walk through parts of her life she had kept to herself, left all the doors to her secrets open and invited him to look.

"Oh, actually there is a door just there you might want to …..oh actually several" she smiled as he stumbled with his words and liked to think that maybe she had shocked her protector, just a little, with what she allowed him to see.

"To walk among the memories of another living soul, do you ever get used to this?" she asked intrigued as to how he must feel to be privy to the secrets of another's mind.

"I don't make a habit of it" he replied quickly, again maybe seeking to reassure her.

"How can you resist?" she wondered if she could see into the minds of others would she ever be able to stop…all those secrets and lies, promises made and broken to be explored. Would it make you loose your own mind to have it full of the minds of others for he didn't seem mad?

"What age are you?"

What a curious question she thought, but then he was the most singular and curious man she had ever met. She opened her eyes to look at him but he was still lost in concentration, wandering through her life, inside her head, inside her heart. "Such an impertinent question so early in the conversation. How promising". Now she knew she was flirting with him even if he still seemed unaware of her attentions.

"No. Not my question, theirs. You're 23 and for some reason that means you're not old enough." He tensed as he heard her small but pronounced intake of breath. That was why he hated doing this, hated invading other people's minds because no matter how careful he was they usually found it an unpleasant experience, one that he was sure left them feeling violated. "Sorry" he softened his voice and used a small push from his own mind to calm her "You might find old memories reawakening. Side effect".

Her intake of breath had NOT been due to him being in her mind but due to her being in his. She had taken what he said about her mind being full of doors and opened the one that held her love for him and stepped through it…….into his memories.

She saw a beautiful city, like nothing she had seen herself or read about in books and she knew that it wasn't of her time or even of a future time. It was of another world and she was captivated by its beauty and by the people who lived inside it, by their dress and their manner – it spoke of a race that was wise and compassionate. Why then was his memory of this place filled with sadness?

She saw two young boys and knew that one of them was the man in front of her now; the boys seemed to be both friends and rivals, but they were alone. Just the two of them, outside of the city, outside of the life they should have had. What, she wondered, had they done to be such outcasts, for that was what she felt they were as she watched in his mind as they stood together and yet alone and watched the city from afar.

"Oh, such a lonely childhood" she spoke what she thought without realising what she had said.

"It'll pass, stay with me" his response indicated to her that although she was aware of him inside her mind that he had not felt her stirring the memories of his childhood and beyond. He still thought that her comment was caused by his actions.

Now she saw him alone, still standing and watching with heaviness in his heart that she could almost touch. He was crying for the loss of his friend, he wasn't dead but the boy he had known was gone. She wanted to take him in her arms, to love him, to tell him that he wasn't alone that she was there…..but she couldn't. It was his memory and she hadn't been there.

She saw him again, older now and with a different face and yet she still knew it was him, so many faces, so many ages and still she knew it was him. These were who he had been, bodies taken and used then discarded like a shell, but inside it was the same man, her lonely angel. She knew that it was not possible to change one's face and one's body but she also knew that he was not of her world and she could do nothing more than accept what she saw and marvel at him.

She saw the faces of men and women and knew that they travelled with him on his journeys to the stars and beyond but that none of them were with him now none of them stayed, he lived forever by changing and they could not do that. So he let them go and held onto his loneliness like a blanket to comfort him.

They called him The Doctor but never said why. It was just the Doctor.

"Oh Doctor. So lonely. So very, very alone."

She had seen the city, his beautiful city in ruins. Destroyed by something that she could not, nor did she want to, imagine. There was nothing left but rubble and smoke and desolation. His people were dead………all of them. He was the last of his race. The last of the Time Lords. Her heart almost broke.

"What do you mean alone? You've never been alone in your life" and he was right, she thought. I have never been alone, I have had my family, my friends, my husband and soon, I hope, my lover and even without any of those I have had you. You came every time I needed you and I was never alone.

The Doctor had been so involved in finding what it was the droids from the 51st century wanted and doing it without damaging this precious, amazing woman that he had left his own memories vulnerable. Never before had he met somebody who would have dared try to step inside his head. Now he realised that she had seen him, who he really was and he pulled back, shocked.

"When did you start calling me Doctor?" He wondered how much she had seen. Had she seen the darkness in his soul? Had she seen the way he felt about her too?

"Such a lonely little boy. Lonely then and lonelier now. How can you bear it?"

How do I bear it he thought? I bear it because I have to, because my loneliness now is of my own making. My loneliness is me, I have always been lonely and I always will be but I will survive because there are people, people like you who love me and give me hope. When I no longer have hope then I know my time is truly over.

"How did you do that?" he asked.

"A door once opened may be stepped through in either direction" she stated like he should have thought of that himself. All he could think was that Madame de Pompadour was indeed a far more remarkable, beautiful and clever woman than history would remember her as. She reached to him, stroked his face and felt she thought just the slightest tremble in her hand, although she wasn't sure who was trembling.

"Oh Doctor, my lonely Doctor. Dance with me."

"I can't" he stammered backing away, suddenly uncomfortable by her actions. He knew her history, her past and her future and he knew that he shouldn't get involved; he knew that he couldn't get involved and he knew that one hour, one night spent with her could change the course of events for the rest of time. And yet despite all that he knew, for just one brief moment in time and space he didn't want to be lonely any more.

"Dance with me" she insisted reaching for his hand.

"This is the night you dance with the King". He hated the knowledge he had of her future because that knowledge held him back. If I didn't know then I could………go with her and be happy he thought.

"Then first I shall make him jealous!" She had seen how he felt about her, she could feel him tremble when she touched him and yet she could not understand his reluctance to be with her. She had got every man that she had desired, her husband and her lover and she was not to be discouraged by this lonely angel whom she had known for all her life.

"I can't" still he fought with his reason and his knowledge and all the laws and rules that the Time Lords had lived by. His hearts and his mind battled over her and there would only ever be one winner.

"Doctor, Doctor Who?" she questioned him "It is more than just a secret isn't it?" It was only one of a million things that she wanted to ask him, but the one, she felt, that was the key to who he was.

"What did you see?" he asked now a little scared that he had frightened her with his memories, after all there were many in all of his lives that still scared him.

"That there comes a time… Time Lord… when every lonely little boy must learn how to dance".

She knew who he was, what he was and maybe even why and yet she still wanted him, she still wanted to dance with him. She was Madame de Pompadour, soon to be the mistress of the King of France, beloved by him, his wife and the whole of the French Court and he wanted to dance with her.

The Doctor went into his mind to the memory of the day he was told that Time Lords can't change events and shut the door on that memory. For one night he would not be the Doctor and he would not be lonely.

He took her hand and allowed her to teach him to dance.