AN regarding the title: according to Wikipedia (dubious I know) that was almost what the episode was called. Since titles are difficult to come by for me I decided to borrow it for this alternate ending ^^
In a thousand universes it happened the same way. History was returned, more or less, to its original course and the mistress of the King of France shared a toast with the only other man she had ever loved.
Speaking of her earlier he'd called her 'one of the most accomplished women who ever lived'f and so, perhaps, he shouldn't have been so surprised when she cryptically stated "it's a pity, I think I would have enjoyed the slow path" then led him to her bedroom to point out the fireplace.
"It's not a copy, it's the original. I hafd it moved here and was exact in every detail," she explained, though she could see he had not yet caught up with what she was thinking.
"The fireplace from your bedroom," he stated simply and walked across the room to examine it. "When did you do this?"
"Many years ago. In the hope that a door once opened may someday open again. One never quite knows when one needs one's Doctor."
Seeing that he still did not understand her reason for bringing him into the room she continued to speak.
"It appears undamaged. Do you think it will still work?"
"You broke the bond with the ship when you moved it," he explained in a serious, but almost neutral, tone. "Which means it was offline when the mirror broke, that's what saved it."
Reinette's bitter disappointment that the one thing she could think of to send him back to his own time and place had not worked was overtaken by a flash of hope as a thoughtful look came over his face.
"But…" he went closer and started examining the fireplace minutely. "The link is basically physical and it's still physically here, which might just mean – if I am lucky – if I am very, very, very, very lucky…aha!"
"What?" she said quietly, almost but not quite tearfully. She'd lost him so many times she would not cry now when he had the chance to go home after thinking himself stranded.
"Loose connection!" he declared, using his strange mechanical device on the fireplace then smacking it with his hand as he said: "Need to get a man in!"
In a thousand other universes he went through the window in time, calling through the fire to her as he had the first time, telling her to pick a star and assuring her he would be back in two minutes. In those universes she would never see him again and she would be a bittersweet memory for the rest of his life.
In one universe something changed…
Six year old Jeanne-Antoinette Poisson nearly skipped with excitement as her nursemaid, following her mother, led her through the side streets of Paris. Mother had heard from various friends of a fortune-teller with a reputation for uncanny accuracy.
The woman was impressively swathed in black veils, to the point where all of her features were completely obscured.
"I see a great future for you, my child, you will one day reign over the heart of a King."
Well satisfied by this prophecy Mother paid the woman and started to lead Jeanne-Antoinette away only to be halted by the woman asking for a few more words with the child. Mother consented, after seeing that the room had only one door and she would be allowed to wait outside.
"There will be another man who captures your heart, though you will see him only when the monsters come."
"Monsters?"
"Don't fear them, he will always be there when you need him. Now listen because this is very important. Turn your back on the stars and follow the man you love through a hole in the universe."
"I don't understand what you mean, Madame," protested the child whose mother would soon nickname her 'Little Queen'.
"You will," promised the woman.
"Wish me luck!"
"No," she spoke involuntarily as the fireplace turned, taking him with it.
"Madame de Pompadour!" he called out and she knelt to peer into the fireplace, as she had some thirty years ago when she first heard his voice. "Still want to see those stars?"
"More than anything."
"Give me two minutes. Pack a bag."
"Am I going somewhere?"
"Go to the window. Pick a star. Any star."
"Wait!" she called out as he started to stand up, the fortune teller's words echoing in her mind. "Open the door now, I beg you…what if it doesn't work later?"
"Yeah we can do that," he said, only needing a moment's thought. "Stand up and hold on!"
The experience of travelling to another world, his world, was made all the more unreal by the fact that it didn't feel different. One moment she was standing in her room in Versailles the next she stood in front of a fireplace identical to her own but within the vessel she had set foot on five years earlier.
The Doctor paused long enough to make sure she'd made it through then ran into the room where the TARDIS had materialised, where he hoped to find Rose and Mickey hadn't left yet.
"You're back!" shrieked Rose, running over to hug him, time enough later to ask how this miracle had occurred.
"How long were you waiting?"
"Five and a half hours!" exclaimed Rose as they pulled apart.
"Good, always wait five and a half hours!"
"You planning on making a habit of getting trapped in eighteenth century France then?" quipped Mickey, giving the Doctor a sort of 'you know what I mean?' nudge. "Can't say I blame you, considering what they say about French women."
"Mickey!" scolded Rose. "You behave yourself."
"What, pray tell, do 'they' say about French women?" enquired the cultured voice of Madame de Pompadour from the doorway.
"Oh…umm…well…"
"Mickey here is British," said the Doctor, as though that would explain everything.
It did.
"I see," said Reinette.
"Right," declared the Doctor breaking the awkward silence that followed her words. "So that's Mickey, you've met Rose, of course."
"It has been some time, for me, but not an experience I am likely to forget."
"Reinette's going to be coming with us," explained the Doctor, turning to the Frenchwoman he added: "Want to have a look around before we leave?"
Reinette hesitated, torn between fascination at the literal other world she now found herself in and the terror caused by its former inhabitants.
"If such places are common in your world," she decided. "I think I would prefer to see one other than this."
"Righto and off we go then," said the Doctor, walking towards the TARDIS.
"Doctor," interrupted Rose hesitantly. "Won't it alter history, her coming with us I mean?"
"You talked about something like this before," observed Reinette, though she turned to look at the Doctor in case the girl was correct and he was going to decide to send her back. "Something about how these things were never 'supposed' to happen to me. What did that mean?"
Rose guessed from the expression on the Doctor's face that he was about to launch into one of his convoluted explanations but he was forestalled by an ominous creaking in the metal deck below their feet.
"Right. Short version. Universe won't blow up. Everyone into the TARDIS and I'll explain the rest later!"
"TARDIS?" repeated Reinette uncertainly. "What is that?"
"Sorry, big blue box just across the way there, my ship."
He intercepted her sceptical glance at said blue box and succinctly added: "Bigger on the inside."
The Doctor shooed Rose and Mickey inside, while Reinette tried to conceal how awestruck she was by the glimpses she got of the inside of the TARDIS, then stepped into the doorway and offered her his hand. Smiling she accepted his assistance, stepping just far enough inside for him to close the door behind her – blocking out all but a dull echo of the rumbling of the ship outside , then stopping to stare around her in wonder at the utterly alien interior of the Doctor's vessel.
"Not bad eh?" remarked the Doctor as he started pulling levers and pressing buttons on the control panel. "Everybody hold on, this may be a little…"
The loud groan of metal under stress prompted him to quickly press a button on the console.
"…bumpy," he concluded, as the TARDIS added its own noise to the cacophony of the ship outside beginning to break apart.
Rose, well practiced at this kind of departure by now, made it to the console and managed to stay upright. Mickey stumbled across the room and grabbed hold without falling over, though the swaying sensation of the TARDIS entering whatever the place it travelled through was made his feel queasy. Reinette, hampered by her formal costume and lack of anything close to experience with any kind of technology past what she knew in the eighteenth century, chose to brace herself by leaning against the doors – trusting that they were not as flimsy as they looked.
Now they were free of the spaceship and silence descended (again) until Mickey, deliberately ignoring the awkwardness, spoke up.
"Any idea why the ship just started falling apart like that? It was fine the rest of the time we were on it!"
"Don't get hysterical, Mickey," sighed the Doctor, tearing his attention away from the console.
"Yeah," Rose joined in. "It's not as if we were on the ship when it fell apart, if it even did."
"Probably a bad wiring job combined with a power surge when we came through the time window in the fireplace, causing the shields to fail and the ship's structure to disintegrate, that's all."
"That's all?" repeated Mickey, shaking his head at the Doctor's cavalier attitude. "Course it is, obvious now you tell me."
With a degree of sensitivity that would have surprised Rose, had she realised what he was doing, the young Englishman turned to Rose.
"Come on, Rose, about time you showed me the rest of this place," he insisted and almost dragged the young blonde out of the room.
"Well, here we are," said the Doctor almost flippantly, turning to look at Reinette who was still pressing her back against the door with an unreadable expression on her face. "You going to be all right there, Reinette? Bit of a shock, coming into a place like this from your own, I know."
"I have hardly noticed the location after the first impression," she admitted. "I feel positively dizzy with the idea that we shall no longer live in two separate worlds, after resigning myself to letting you go. I am so certain that had I stayed behind we would never have seen one another again that I can scarcely breathe when I think of it."
"I've been feeling a bit of that myself," he admitted, walking over to lean causally against the wall next to her. "Bit of a close call that one, if you hadn't insisted on coming through then who knows what would have happened. Tell me, Reinette, why did you insist on it the way you did? Not that I'm not thrilled you did, of course I am, just seems like there's more to it than what you said at the time."
"When I was a girl my mother took me to see a fortune-teller," she began to explain, the memory as vivid as if t had only happened yesterday.
"Right, the one who said you would one day reign over the heart of a King yes?"
"How did you know? I know you did not look at that when you saw my memories."
"It's in the history books."
"Me in a history book that has lasted to a time when ships of metal fly through the sky," she murmured in amazement then continued her story. "As my mother was about to take me away the woman asked for a few words alone with me. She predicted you, saying 'there will be another man who captures your heart, though you will see him only when the monsters come'. She then bade me to turn my back on the stars and follow the man I love through a hole in the universe."
"Curiouser and curiouser," quoted the Doctor softly. Surely only someone who knew what had happened could have 'predicted' the events. "I don't suppose it was anyone you'd know if you saw them again?"
"I could only tell that it was a woman and that her French was a little odd."
"Pity, I'd like to have kept an eye out and thanked her for the good turn."
"Then asked her why she felt the need to do such a good turn for us?" guessed Reinette with a smile.
"You know me, I love a good mystery but…"
"Only if it's one you can find the answer to?"
"You plan to keep reading my mind like that?"
"I apologise, I cannot seem to help anticipating you. If you would prefer it I can keep my thoughts to myself."
"Not all the time, just maybe let me finish some sentences, that'd be fine."
"Consider it an agreement. Speaking of my mind, I have felt the most peculiar sensation in it since I came aboard this…vessel of yours, not precisely a discomfort or unwelcome but most odd."
"That'll be the TARDIS, she gets in your head a bit and translates for you; you won't notice it after a little while."
"I see the tradition of referring to one's ship in the feminine still applies to ships that travel through the stars."
"A TARDIS tends to develop a fairly distinct personality though that word implies that it is alive, which it isn't. This one is definitely feminine."
"Not the kind to be jealous, I hope?" she asked, shyly slipping her hand into his, she was finding it much more difficult to be bold now that she was on his native ground (so to speak).
"Not at all, more of a friend who feels like family. Only family I've had for…well it's difficult to say how long, too long for certain. Still you know what they say about friends being the family you can choose – do they say that yet? Before we met it'd been ages since I was in France."
"I can not say I have ever heard that precise phrase but I understand the sentiment well enough. Do you have many friends?"
"I have had," he replied unhesitatingly. "Loads of friends over the years. Time Lords, Humans, Aliens. The Time Lords are all gone now, long story might tell it to you sometime, and everyone else leaves in one way or another, sooner or later."
"The same can be said of any person as they grow older," she replied gently. "You, I think, have had longer to feel the effects of friends lost. I can not even begin to imagine what it is like to lose one's entire race but I will try to understand because I know it is such a large part of you as is this uncanny world you inhabit. Can you tell me where we are now, in relation to France?"
He knew that she'd guessed he wouldn't be able to resist the opportunity for explaining things but decided not to make an issue of it.
"Couldn't tell you where we are at this precise moment without looking at the control panel but the place where those Droids came from was parked in a place called the Dagmar Cluster. That's a group of stars so far from where you come from that you can't actually see them from there."
"There are more stars in the universe than can be see in the night sky?" she repeated incredulously. "Even in my wildest imaginings I never guessed such a thing was possible! But, please, do go on."
"As for when it was, around the year 5000 AD as you measure time on Earth."
"So that is why the girl, Rose, spoke of my life as if it had already happened because for her it had but differently – changing history as those from this timeline know it?"
"You're brilliant, you are," the Doctor congratulated her. "Not many people catch onto these things so quickly, no matter what century they are from."
"I have had an unfair advantage," she demurred. "Having seen glimpses of the universe through your eyes as I did. Have your actions then altered history?"
"Yes and no. That is to say from the perspective of Rose and Mickey, for example, it has because the little they know about the history of the era certainly does not involve space age clockwork men invading Versailles in the eighteenth century but for everyone who wasn't onboard the TARDIS at the point when the time windows were opened what happened has always been history. What people living through it, or after it, don't realise is that history isn't fixed – it just seems that way."
"It's all very interesting, such a little time in your world and already so many things I could not have imagined!"
"I have to tell you, you may never get used to that, I'm still finding things that surprise me and I've been doing this for a while now."
"Though I surprise myself by saying it, I believe I have heard all of the unimaginable things I can stand for one day – you do still measure time in hours and days I presume?"
"Different numbers of hours in some places but yes, same system, and I suppose you've been awake for quite a few of them – was I being rude, not offering you somewhere to sit down? Sorry, manners also not something I'm good at but I'm slowly getting the hang of it."
"I think I can well tolerate your rudeness," she assured him. "And it is to be expected that you will not remember that some of us need to sleep frequently."
"Yeah, I'm always forgetting about sleep – not something I do very often."
"That sounds most convenient, given the amount of time wasted on that tedious necessity."
"Allow me to escort you to your room, Madame de Pompadour?" he said, mocking her title gently.
"You may," she replied haughtily. "Though I much prefer it when you call me 'Reinette', despite the fact no one has used that nickname for me in quite some time."
"Oh really, and what does the King call you? If that's not too rude to ask."
"In public he referred to me by my title, naturally."
"Oh yes, naturally."
"In private he called me Jeanne-Antoinette, sometimes only Jeanne."
They had now entered a hallway, easily recognisable as such despite the foreign material it was constructed from.
"Somewhere around here there's a room that I think you'll quite like," explained the Doctor as they walked. "There it is, green door! Knew it was around here somewhere."
He pushed open the door to reveal a sitting room near equal to the one she had in her apartments at Versailles.
"Why it looks just like home," exclaimed Reinette in surprise.
"TARDIS is clever that way, dozens of different cultures and time periods all in different rooms. Umm, I can give you somewhere more space age-y if you like but I thought you'd be most comfortable in here for now."
"It is most suitable, thank you. I like it very well indeed."
"Right then, I'll leave you to get some sleep. I'll be back in the control room if you need me."
"You won't stay?"
"Uh…well…aren't you tired?"
"Not that tired," she assured him with a bold smile then took pity, seeing how uncomfortable he looked, and apologised. "I forget how little we really know each other, especially from your view of things."
"Yeah, bit complicated really, not the sort of thing we want to go into tonight."
"But you do really want me here, with you, don't you?"
"More than just about anything in the universe, I promise," he replied immediately. "You know what, I don't need to go back to the control room straight away, why don't we sit down for a bit?"
"I should like that very much, I'm just going to change first, do not leave while I'm out of the room – if you please."
"Bedroom's on the left," he replied, obediently sitting down on a sofa – there were several scattered around the room. "There's a wardrobe in there too, there should be some clothes from your time."
Reinette nodded, not bothering to correct his assumption that she wished to put another dress on, and went into the room he indicated. Though she was curious to inspect the contents of the wardrobe she didn't entirely trust him not to sneak out if she took too long so, for the moment, she chose to strip down to her chemise and unpin her elaborately styled hair. Naturally she took a moment to look in a conveniently placed mirror and decide that, even without her fashionable clothes, she looked very good for a woman of seven and thirty years.
When she re-entered the sitting room she thought, at first, that he'd had enough time to get away then realised the lights were dimmer and he had stretched out with his feet up on the sofa.
"I hope you took your shoes on before mistreating the furniture in such a fashion," she teased as she approached.
"I certainly did, see there's a hole in my sock," he replied, lifting his right foot to display the offending garment.
He moved slightly, clearly intending to sit up, but Reinette assured him she need not move on her account and promptly settled herself in a similar prone position next to him.
"What would you like to talk about?" he asked her quietly, stroking her hair with one hand.
"Anything at all, nothing at all, I find I do not care just now."
"No questions at all, first night on board the TARDIS, that is a new one. Don't you want to know where we're going or how we're getting there?"
"The former does not matter as long as you are with me and the latter is undoubtedly beyond my comprehension."
"Well that's good since I don't actually know where we're going. I used an emergency exit protocol designed to take us to the nearest safe spot in space-time."
"I do not understand what you mean by space-time."
"Oh right, the TARDIS isn't just a vessel for going from place to place it can also travel though time. Sorry thought you picked that up earlier."
"I believe I had begun to grasp the concept, now it is much clearer. Surely you cannot travel to any time and keep changing history, I know nothing of such things but it seems an impossibility."
"There are certainly rules and limits, those are different things, to where I can go and what I can do. Sometimes trying to change history, it actually causes history to happen."
"I do not understand."
"Well there are two ways it can happen. The first is you do something that you think will prevent what you know could happen and that ends up causing the event. Example, example, let me think. Suppose you knew someone was going to be murdered because he walked down a certain street so you try to warn him not to walk home that way only he thinks you're an insane person and hurries away right down that street where he's then murdered. Second way these things happen is because they're fixed in time and no matter what you do to try and prevent it something happens to bring it about with the same effect."
"So if you had not been there on the night of the Yew Tree Ball I would still be the King's mistress?" offered Reinette. "Though I flatter myself to assume such a thing was inevitable, I use it merely to illustrate the point I believe you are making."
"That's it exactly. Now I know you must have somewhere, or somewhen rather, in mind now that I've told you this - everyone does."
"I would not want to impose but if you could tell me if there is any possibility that I might see my daughter, just once to say goodbye."
She assumed correctly that the Doctor already knew that Alexandrine-Jeanne d'Étiolles had died several months before her tenth birthday and that her mother had been unable to go to Paris when the child took ill.
"I'm not sure," he answered honestly. "Technically the TARDIS and everyone on it were already part of history at that point and so we can't re-enter that timeline but I don't know how those time windows interfered with that so there's a slight possibility it would work."
"I suppose if it had worked it worked well because I have no recollection of anyone accusing me of being in two places at once at the time."
"First thing in the morning I'll take a look and see if we can get there," promised the Doctor. "And if we can we'll take a picture of her for you."
"'Take a picture'? Surely we won't have time for that."
"Remind me to tell you about cameras, marvellous invention, I think you'll like them or maybe not - some artists don't."
"Do you always talk so much?"
"Yeah, pretty much, that going to be a problem?"
"Not at all, I just wasn't sure if it was something you only did around me."
"Hardly ever shut up, me, brain's working too fast for the mouth to keep up most of the time see?"
"Good," she decided. "I loathe brooding, silent, men – one never quite knows what they are thinking. Of course I hardly know what you are going to say next but at least you will speak and give me the opportunity to find out!"
After this declaration she yawned, covering her mouth delicately, and uttered a sleepy sigh.
"Ready to sleep?" he said, after revising his first remark in which he had been about to say 'for bed'.
"Nearly," she agreed reluctantly. "I'm almost scared to in case I wake up and find this was only a dream. Will you tell me a story before I go? Something without monsters preferably."
"Lots of monsters in my life, I have to say," he murmured. "But I know a few places without them. Ooh I think you'll like this one. You know the Orion constellation? One of those stars is a sun, well technically most stars are a sun, but around this one orbits a planet called Crystiania. An entire planet made of diamonds, archaeologists and geologists from several races are still trying to figure out how it came to be, and when the sun comes up – once every six months on the human calendar because of an interesting juxtaposition of moons – the entire planet is covered in rainbows that can be seen from thousands of miles above it."
"Mmm I can see it in my mind, I think I will dream about it tonight," she confided, standing up gracefully then leaning over to kiss him softly. "Goodnight, Doctor."
"Sleep well, Reinette," he answered, waiting until he heard her settle in bed before leaving the room.
Reinette wasn't sure how long she'd been asleep for but she was woken by a jolting bump that made it feel like the entire room had moved. Clambering out of the unfamiliar bed, it took her a moment to remember the events of the previous day, she hesitated and wondered if she should go and find the Doctor. The movement seemed to have subsided after that one instance so she decided to get dressed first; it wouldn't do for the young people to see her in her undergarment if there was no cause for concern.
The dresses in the wardrobe were all of a kind suitable for the upper classes but not as court dress and she decided that they would do for the unknown but presumably less formal environment she now found herself in.
Just as she finished garbing herself in a dark blue gown the ship shuddered again and she made her way to the 'control room' as the Doctor called the entry hall of his ship.
"Good morning Reinette!" he said, busily examining the controls. "Grab something and hold on tight. No doubt Rose and Mickey will be along shortly."
"What is happening?" she asked as she did as instructed and took hold of a section of railing.
"Good question that, I'm just figuring it out now."
A few minutes, and several more bone jarring bumps, later the instruments suddenly stopped making urgently loud noises and settled into a beep that continued until he pressed one of them.
"Now that can't be right!" declared the Doctor, giving the console a kick just to be sure.
"What is it?"
"According to these readings we hit some sort of intergalactic space-time crossroad and took a wrong turn. We've landed somewhere but the coordinates don't match any known location in the TARDIS's database, which is impossible because it's not possible for the TARDIS to be lost. It's programmed with all of the planets, galaxies, everything that the Time Lords have mapped over the millennia and the sensors automatically detect those even if they are galaxies away. Before you ask I already checked and the sensors are working fine, they're reading everything within that range."
"And what does all of that mean?" demanded Reinette, his strange language unnerved her somewhat. "In plain French, if you please."
"Technically I'm not speaking French but leaving that aside for the moment we're off the map and the TARDIS can't leave because we have no local point of reference to tell us where we are."
"So we are, in a sense, shipwrecked?" she asked, trying to clarify the situation into something she could understand.
"Shipwrecked," agreed the Doctor almost pessimistically. He perked up to a mood closer to his normal self and added: "Still since we're here might as well pop out and have a look around."
To be continued…
AN: for those who are interested the sequel will be in the crossover section.