Title: Fleur de Temps
Author: TardisIsTheOnlyWaytoTravel
Pairings: Reinette/Ten, retrospective Rose/Nine, a bit of post- Rose/Ten.
Story Summary:
What if Reinette had come aboard the TARDIS after all? Smart, ambitious and beautiful, the Doctor is dazzled by her and neglects Rose and Mickey, with calamitous results. AU.
Setting: Series Two. After "The Girl in the Fireplace."
Author notes:
Okay. Just to clarify Reinette's attitudes in this chapter a little regarding class and birth:
In real life, Reinette had bourgeoisie roots. She was, however, raised as an educated woman with many accomplishments, so that whatever the facts of her status in society were, she nonetheless lived, in many ways, the sort of privileged life the aristocrats lived – and I doubt that she would have had much contact with shop girls and truly low-class people: the les paysans. So, I tried to make it fit with history as much as I could – but when you come down to it, it's entertaining fiction, not a historical documentary. So historical accuracy will be sacrificed when necessary for the sake of entertainment, I'm afraid.
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FLEUR DE TEMPS
CHAPTER TWO
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Rose and Mickey stepped out onto bitumen and walked forwards as behind them, the TARDIS doors slammed shut and she dematerialised. They were standing on the Powell Estate – and didn't it feel peculiar, knowing now how that had come about, and what the Powell Estate was – among the concrete and brick of the 21st century.
Rose put a hand over her mouth to hold back the sobs.
She could feel the TARDIS, when she thought about it, just as angry and hurt as she was.
"What do we do now?" Mickey asked. Rose just shook her head, tears brimming over. Mickey sighed and enfolded her in a hug.
-
They stayed like that for a while, Rose crying silently into his shoulder long after the sobbing had stopped. Finally, though, she moved back, wiping her eyes, smearing the mascara trails her tears had left across her face.
"I never thought it would come to this," she said, voice sad and quiet, and only wobbling a little. "I thought he'd… I don't know."
"You want to see your mum?" Mickey asked. He wasn't sure that Rose would want to hear Jackie railing against the Doctor, but on the other hand, if you were in trouble or had just had your heart stomped on Jackie was pretty good at looking after you and making you feel better.
Mickey was mildly surprised when Rose shook her head.
"No," she said, voice quiet but certain. "I'm gonna find Sarah Jane."
oo o0o oo
"I've lost her."
Reinette's face was unreadable for a moment. Then she squeezed his shoulder gently.
"Oh, my poor Doctor," she said softly. "Life is never fair to you, is it?"
The Doctor turned to the sympathetic voice.
"Alright, so I might not have been paying her so much attention lately," he began, angry and hurt and defensive, "but running off like that, after everything we've done? after everything I've done? That's not very fair, is it?" He whirled to address the console. "And you! Helping her gang up against me!"
All he got was a mental impression of coldness.
Reinette approached him and laid her hand on his arm.
"You cannot blame it, Doctor," she comforted him. "I am sure that the ship did so only out of pity for Rose."
"Her," he corrected absently. "Not it. But Rose - !"
"Well Doctor," she said tactfully, "I have frequently noticed that people of her class are often unreasonable and devoid of proper feeling. She is only a common shop-girl, after all. You cannot expect her to have the sensibilities and intellect of the higher classes. Besides, if she does not have a sense of your superior nature then it is for the best, surely? To be honest with you, had I been in your place I should have dismissed her before now for her pertness and insolence. I take it as an indication of your generous nature that you have not done so." She smiled at him.
The Doctor stared at her.
"People of her class?" His voice was carefully neutral, his eyes questioning, so that she didn't understand.
"Why yes, Doctor. Raised by a trollop in the back-streets of London, without acquiring any accomplishments or refinement, bolding pushing herself forward, not to mention such an unbecoming want of delicacy-! Why, you need only look at her familiarity with Mr Smith. Such improper behaviour with a man, and one of such colouring! Despite her deficiencies of nature, however, I admit to being impressed by the degree to which she has bettered herself. It is always a testament to man's ability to triumph when such a person succeeds in moving into better circles than that into which they were born, is it not?"
"Oh, Rassilon!" She broke off at his exclamation to find him looking at her in amazement and ...horror? "And you've been, telling her these things? Don't you understand…?" He trailed off and made a despairing, anguished noise at the blank incomprehension in her eyes.
"Of course not, you've lived as an aristocrat in the eighteenth century, that automatically gives you all kinds of prejudices and preconceptions against people of different times and walks of life!" He was bitter and angry with himself, and whirled to face her, taking her by the shoulders and looking into her eyes. "But they're not true, listen to me, this is very important. Birth is a construct, a fabrication designed to provide moral and social justification for the injustices and blatant social inequality of your time. Class, as you perceive it, doesn't exist. Intelligence, and 'sensibility' as you call it, is distributed without discrimination across the population, regardless of social status, or income, or race. Someone like Rose, or Mickey, has just as much right to their opinions, and just as much intelligence or empathy as any member of the nobility. Any belief otherwise is a false notion from your time. Do you understand?"
Reinette looked into the earnest, very serious brown eyes in surprise and dawning wonder.
"You truly believe this," she murmured.
"Yes. Absolutely," the Doctor confirmed. Reinette stared into his eyes for a moment longer, then turned, breaking free of his grasp, to take a turn around the room.
She turned to face him.
"If what you say is true, and it is evident that you believe it to be so, then I have gravely misjudged the ways things are aboard your ship. But if that is indeed the case, then I fear that they are beyond my understanding. Tell me, what is Rose to you?"
The Doctor gaped slightly for a moment.
"Well… she's Rose," he said, scratching the back of his neck uncomfortably, and the way that he said it suggested that it ought to be an explanation in itself. "How d'you explain something like that? In your day relationships are all mapped out into little boxes and compartments with labels in them, all to the slightest degree. Rose, Rose is, Rose. She's brilliant, and wonderful, and saves the world."
Reinette suppressed a sigh in the face of his evident sincerity.
"That may be, Doctor, but it does not tell me what she is to you," she pointed out.
The Doctor walked around, running his hand through his hair, becoming more and more agitated, for reasons that Reinette could not discern. Finally he stopped, and turned to look at her, hand dropping to his side.
"Well," he said quietly, "I suppose, in your terms, and this isn't an exact translation mind you, it's a lot more complicated than that, Rose is… well, I suppose you'd say she's my consort."
Reinette stared at him. He fidgeted awkwardly. He was fairly sure that he could hear a Northern voice in the back of his head snorting Domestic! He tried to ignore the way it sounded strangely smug.
The next thing he knew Reinette's palm connected with the side of his face in a sharp, stinging slap.
"Ow!" He put his hand to the side of his face that burned. "What was that for?" he asked indignantly, and feeling a little nervous at the absolutely furious expression on her face.
"You brought me here under false pretences!" Reinette hadn't raised her voice at all, but had somehow infused it with the vibrating power and anger of a shout. "You have behaved in a manner that suggested romantic intentions, Doctor, without ever mentioning your degree of relationship to Rose. You have a consort, and yet you feel free to pursue my affections without thought for my feelings, or for hers? I have misunderstood her status and role in your household, Doctor, and because of this I have treated her in a fashion that is shameful both for her and for myself. Now she has left you, with only her faithful steward – for now I am better acquainted with the situation I must suppose him to be something of the kind, must I not? – for protection. Would it not have been better to disclose the truth to me when you first invited me aboard, and spared us all what has occurred?"
"I – I –" The Doctor was bereft at words. It isn't like that! he wanted to shout, but when he actually thought about it, it was close enough.
"I'm sorry," he sighed, and closed his eyes, wondering what to do about this mess.
-
He was surprised to feel a small hand being laid on his arm. He opened his eyes to find Reinette looking at him with compassion and understanding in her eyes.
"Many a man has made such mistakes, Doctor," she said, "and if the love between you and your consort is true, then you need only offer proof of it to her to repair this breach between you."
"But the TARDIS isn't co-operating!" he protested. She raised an eyebrow.
"Then perhaps you should consider why, my dear Doctor."
oo o0o oo
They'd gone back to Mickey's flat, and it had taken only ten minutes on the internet for him to find what he wanted: Sarah Jane Smith's address. Meanwhile Rose washed her face and combed her hair back, and went fishing through Mickey's bathroom cabinet for the mascara and lipstick she knew would still be in there somewhere. Once she'd reapplied her makeup she felt absurdly better; readier to face things. She went back out to find Mickey waiting for her.
"I've got her address," he told her. "She lives in Ealing. You want to go?"
Rose nodded.
"Yeah."
-
Rose rang the doorbell and waited, feeling nervous. A few moments later the door opened, to reveal Sarah Jane.
She took in the fragile, trying-to-be-brave look on Rose's face and understood immediately.
"Oh dear," she said with pained sympathy, "do you want a cup of tea?"
"That'd be nice, thanks," Rose agreed sadly.
"Do come in, both of you." Sarah Jane moved away form the door, and Rose and Mickey walked through it.
Sarah Jane was moving through the house, so Rose and Mickey followed her to find her in the kitchen, preparing tea things.
"Now, are you a sugar and milk person, or do you think that makes it too bland and sweet?" Sarah Jane asked.
"Milk, two sugars," Rose replied.
"And you, Mickey?"
"I'm fine thanks," Mickey said. "No tea for me."
"Anything else?"
"Nah, I'm alright."
Sarah Jane came back to the table a few minutes later with two cups of tea. She placed one in front of Rose, and settled into an empty chair with the other.
"Now," she said to Rose, "why don't you tell me what all this is about?"
So Rose began to explain.
By the end of it Sarah Jane was looking saddened and quite disappointed in the Doctor.
"He's always the same, isn't he?" she sighed. She patted Rose's arm. "I'm sorry, Rose."
"I'm sorry to come, barging in on you," Rose began, "I just needed someone to talk to..."
"I quite understand," Sarah Jane assured her. "And most people wouldn't, and that's it, isn't it?" Rose nodded. "Don't worry. I meant it when I said, look me up. The Doctor… he can be hard to get over. The more support you have, the better, I think."
"Any idea 'bout what you want to do next?" Mickey asked Rose.
"I dunno, really. I didn't think that far." She frowned at Sarah Jane in sudden thought. "You're a journalist, aren't you? Is that all you do?"
Sarah Jane gave a smile of embarrassed pride.
"Well, a little more than that, really. I suppose you want to see what I get up to?"
"Yeah thanks," Rose replied.
"Come on then. I'll show you the attic. I think you'll like it up there."
Smiling at them both, Sarah Jane led the way to the attic.