I was really surprised after watching Girl in the Fireplace on Iplayer that no-one has done a 10th Doctor/Reinette Fanfic. So I decided to write one. I know that Rose/10th Doctor is much more popular so I thought I'd throw this in and see how it's accepted.
Disclaimer: I don't own Dr Who.
He promised he would come and show her the stars. He said that he would always be there. He was her lonely angel, her never ageing hero, her Doctor.
She waited. She waited a long, long time. She was still waiting as illness gripped her and death began to close in. She was still waiting as she let it finally take her. She had defied death once; she knew that she would be lucky to slip away again.
Often she cursed herself for having the fireplace moved. Foolish she thought because he had never use the same way twice. He was the wanderer who could move between her years as if turning to a different chapter in a book. She would cry as she remembered their parting words.
'Wish me luck.'
'No.'
No… she did not want to give him her luck. She wanted him to stay. She would give up the king for him. What were riches and gold compared to his knowledge and him… what was anything compared to him? She had waited all her life to be with him. She had taken the slow path so that she could spend every possible moment dwelling on being with him after the nightmares had moved on.
She had been given a glimpse of what life with him could have been like. Her regular dream had come tantalisingly close to being in her grasp. Why had she given it up? She often wondered.
Was it what the Rose girl had said? 'None of this was supposed to have happened.' Was that why she let him go back? She had known from the start that if she showed him the fireplace that he would return.
But had he not given her the promise?
'Still want to see those stars?'
'More than anything.'
'Pack a bag!'
'Am I going somewhere?'
'Go to the window. Pick a star: any star!'
It was a promise. A promised she wished he would keep. But she waited. He did not come.
Rose was gone. She was never coming back. The Doctor in his Tardis and no-one to share it with. There was no comfort from the loneliness that now engulfed him. Another friend, another love. Another one was lost forever to him.
Wandering the Tardis alone the Doctor tries to find a little comfort in the fact that Rose would be happy. She had her mum and her dad and Mickey. What more could she ask for?
Somehow, the Doctor thought he knew what she would ask for. As Sarah Jane had told him, ordinary life is dull compared to the wonders you experience once you've travelled alongside him. He knew that Rose would give up everything to be with him. In a way, he would give up anything to make her stay.
Such a lonely man…
She was nearing thirty-nine and still she was waiting. Waiting for her knight on horseback to return. She had kept that horse. She had had it cared for and treated well. She cared for it as though in doing so it reflected upon her love for him.
So lonely… still waiting…
'Madam de Pompadour.'
She turned. There was a man standing in her doorway. A messenger judging by his dress. She answered him without interest, 'I am here.'
'There is a man to see you.'
She could not stop her heart from beating a little quicker in the hope it might be him. She squished these feeble flames quickly though. It would not be him. It never is him. Yet she agreed to come and greet the stranger. She could not stop wishing though that this stranger would be the strangest stranger she had once met.
She talked about him often, mostly to Louis. He never minded. He was just as grateful to the Doctor that he saved her as she was. The Doctor was the guardian of her nightmares and will always be there to protect her, she told Louis. 'He will not always be there,' Louis often replied.
She stopped in her doorway and looked back at her fireplace. She whispered to the room, hoping he could hear her. 'You said you would always be there. Come back.' Then she turned her back on the flickering grate and went to meet the man.
The man was standing in the hallway. He stood with his back to her as she descended the stairs. His clothing was unrecognisable from behind, but when he turned…
She stopped. She stared. 'Doctor…'
The Doctor smiled. 'I said I'd be back.'
The flames leapt up and she was running to him now. She did not care that others were gathering to stare and whisper. She did not care that what she was about to do was very unladylike. All she cared about was the fact that he had come. So she ran down the stairs and threw her arms around his neck in the tightest hug she could give him.
'Are you here to stay?' she asked as she pulled away from him.
'No,' he admitted. 'I can't. When I returned using the old way, I arrived too late. You left me a letter. That must not change. I'm stretching things as it is.' He paused to smile at her, a small sad smile that she did not recognise. Then he looked around. 'It's a bit public here. Shall we go up to your room and chat?'
'To my room? Where the fireplace is?' she was wary that he might leave her once more. Had he found another one-way window? Is that why he was here? But why did he refer to the "old way" (which she guessed meant the fireplace)? Something had happened. Something had changed him.
'You're right,' the Doctor agreed, 'why run the risk of me seeing myself? A guestroom maybe then?'
She led him to the guestroom along the corridor from her room. They sat in silence, content in each other's company. She would stroke his cheek or hold his hand and he would sit and stare at her, stare into the fire, just staring sadly.
'You have aged,' Reinette remarked after a long time, 'not physically. But you are sadder and lonelier, more losses rather than years… What happened to her?'
They both knew who she was talking about. The Doctor turned away and would not look at her. 'Does it matter?' he said, 'she has gone to a place where I can't get her.'
'I am sorry,' she said. And she was, deep down. She knew what it was like to lose someone you love. 'That is why you have come. To ease your burden.'
He did not look at her for a long time. She was content however to sit beside him and let him recuperate. Finally he said, 'I made a promise.'
She smiled. 'You did.'
The Doctor glanced at her, a smile forming. 'Which star did you pick?'
'Can we do that?' she asked, her pulse quickening, 'will they not miss me?'
'I can get you back here seconds after you left,' the Doctor smiled. 'If you are still willing to come.'
'I have waited long enough,' she whispered.
Needless to say, they did not go far. They drifted in space around the sun until they were caught in orbit around the small green planet that Reinette called home. Whilst she gasped and grinned at the amazing sights before her, the Doctor's laugh did not reach his eyes and the pain in his chest did not cease.
When they returned, he pressed a finger to her lips. She listened and gaped as she listened to the dying footsteps and bubbling chatter of herself walk away with the man of her dreams. She gazed up at that man and smiled.
'You are full of such wonderful surprises,' she said and then she did something that she had not done in a long time. She reached up, took hold of him and kissed him. He let her kiss, but did not kiss back.
When they broke apart, there was a faraway look in his eye. She did not like that look. She knew though that it would not go. He needed an expert in the matters of the heart and she was not trained too well in that area. That is why she had let herself wait for so many years. That is why, she knew, she would continue to wait until she departed from the world.
'Will you come back and visit again?' she asked. 'There are many stars I still need to see.'
'Of course,' he said. They both knew that he did not mean that. 'Goodbye Reinette.'
'Goodbye… Doctor…'
Slowly, he moved backwards and shut the door. There was a gust of wind, a whirring noise and her angel left her once again.
Madam de Pompadour held back her emotion and her head high as she walked back to her room. She knew that she had just experienced something literally out of her world. But at what cost? She shut the doors, closed her eyes and let a single tear trickle down her check.
But she was French. She would remain strong. She was determined not to let these feeling overcome her.
He said he would return he had fulfilled the promise once. He will not fail her again.
Madam de Pompadour strode over to the window, sat down and waited. She was still waiting many years later. She was waiting, deep down, as she put her pen to parchment and wrote him the letter he mentioned. As she thought he would want, she did not mention her short expedition with him.
She was still waiting, still loving her lost, lonely angel as the fingers of death closed around her and stopped the heart that had beat for him. She would wait for him no longer.
I know that it's a little sad at the ending but that is how most of the Doctor's relationships end.
Please tell me what you think!