The Girl In The Fireplace
This is my version of what I wanted to happen at the end of 'The Girl In The Fireplace' because Reinette is such a good character and I wanted her to go traveling with the Doctor who I think she really loves and I think it's reciprocated. Rose has no animosity towards Reinette because she has accepted the Doctor doesn't love her like that. Only a few words!
"Reinette, pack a bag and anything you need. Pick a star." The Doctor called from the other side of the fireplace. Rose stood by the fireplace, talking to her as the Doctor and Mickey prepared the TARDIS. Reinette walked briskly to the fireplace, expecting Louis to emerge at any moment.
The fireplace swung off its hinges and the Doctor grabbed Reinette's hand. Louis entered the room and gasped as the two of them swung back into the 51st century spaceship. Reinette gasped. The metal and flashing lights and bright, intense colours shocked her and for a moment, Reinette wished to be back in safe France with its cool pastel colours and the grass and the horses. Then the Doctor smiled at her and she realised that her destiny lay here.
Rose led Reinette to the TARDIS where the younger girl dramatically opened the doors of the blue 1950s police box and directed her attentions from the warm earth browns and vine like supports to the middle where the French aristocrat marvelled at the bronze mushroom in the center with its turquoise glowing light. She went up to it and pressed her hand against the tube with the oval shaped waves pulsing up and down. The Doctor popped his head around the side of the console and gazed silently at her amazement.
"You think that's impressive, you should see the rest of her." Rose grinned. Reinette smiled and Mickey picked up her case as the two humans showed Reinette her 'quarters'. Reinette realised that the inside was impossibly bigger than the outside. There were countless rooms and Reinette's mind swirled as she tried to take it all in. First clockwork robots that had terrorised her since she was seven and now she was going to leave her beloved France and live in an ungodly contraption.
Rose picked a door near her own and showed Reinette a room with a large four poster bed, desk, chair, mechanical slot for energy bars and a set of double doors which revealed to be a wardrobe which automatically put them in with the TARDIS wardrobe. Rose pressed Reinette's finger to a gel-like pad which scanned blue and then a flap opened.
"Say your name." Rose whispered, almost inaudibly. Reinette did so and it closed. "A voice and fingerprint thing for your clothes." Rose explained.
She unpacked her bag which contained mostly clothes, a necklace and two rings. The most peculiar object was a sword in its scabbard.
"You never know when you'll need a sword." Reinette justified after raised eyebrows from Mickey and Rose. She slung it in a corner near the desk and proceeded to remove her outer garments. Rose pushed Mickey out the door and firmly told him to help the Doctor.
A few minutes later, Reinette emerged from her room, looking uncertainly at her new clothes. The Doctor had agreed with Rose that if she wore her Renaissance clothes all the time, she would cause a riot - Rose remembering the Charles Dickens in Victorian Cardiff incident and then the Queen Victoria in Scotland one involving the werewolf. Rose had found a bunch of clothes that would fit her in the style of the twenty first century.
Reinette now wore a white sleeveless tee shirt with an aqua cloud motif. There had been a veritable amount of skirts and she had eventually decided on a tiered, dusky sunset coloured one which stopped a couple of inches above her feet. Rose recommended a belt to tie around with. The only one which was remotely feminine was a broad leather one studded with turquoise and rhinestones. Reinette padded over to the door in her bare feet and opened it.
"Nice." Rose approved and Reinette only felt slightly better, permanently pulling down the hem of the tee because it kept revealing her skin and stomach at a disgraceful amount.
"So do you want to look around the place or get something to eat or...?"
"I'll have a look around." The two women set off and started chatting. Rose led her through the wardrobes which now held Reinette's old clothes which she gazed at, sighing. They found the cinema with every film in the galaxy on demand, the kitchen with unlimited food and the swimming pool. Apparently the Doctor had refurbished and created a new laboratory with deadly chemicals. The library contained first editions from Chaucer, Shakespeare and Aristotle with paintings from Da Vinci and statues from Bernini. Rose snatched her copy of the latest Stephen King from where she left it near the oak table. The table in particular was in front of a roaring fire and for a second, Reinette saw herself as a child within the flames. Then the momentary vision was gone and she blinked.
The two made their way up to the console using the DNA like staircase where the Doctor was lying flat on his back, his sonic screwdriver in his mouth. He nearly choked on it, seeing Reinette in 21st century gear.
"Rose, what have you done to poor Reinette?"
"Like you could have picked out better." Rose poked at him with her sandaled foot. He dodged out of the way, standing up and narrowly avoiding hitting his head on a sharp corner of the monitor as Mickey twisted a bright red cog. The familiar whirring of the TARDIS began and outside, the blue box dematerialised.
"So mes copines, seeing as Reinette is our latest companion," the Doctor said, wrapping an arm around Reinette's shoulders, "I think she should have first picks because Mickey has already brought us here in the first place."
Reinette smiled and then moved towards a star map which Mickey had brought up from the archives on a wall. She gazed upon it and found the star she had gazed upon in France. She pointed at it and the Doctor nodded before going over to the mushroom console and pressing a group of buttons and flicking switches and twisting knobs.
Reinette looked thoughtfully at the inside of the TARDIS. She was Madame de Pompadour back in Paris, full of honour and force and royalty. Here she was a woman from a time wearing strange clothes with two people from a future she knew that she would never had known.
Then the Doctor looked over and grinned at her, manic and warm… and hers.
Reinette was where she should be. With her Doctor.
Fin.