This drabble I wrote at the same time as the last one. To be honest, I thought the last monologue would come out as melancholic, and this one as a little lighter. Instead the opposite happened. I should have known better, though. The Girl in the Fireplace was possibly the first Doctor Who episode that brought me to tears.

The King of France (Louis XV)

The Girl in the Fireplace, S02E04

It was over before he knew it. Though, to be honest, it was never there in the first place. She had told him there were only two men she loved in the world, and he came second. The only time he had ever come second in any woman's life, and it had to be the one woman who could get away with it!

He would have liked to think it was his fault –that other man's, that interloper's, the man who came before even him. But of course, that was hardly true. It had been physical sickness that took her, and to think that that man's absence had hastened her end was ridiculous –she had clung on to life, pitifully, yet vigourously, insisting in her imperious manner that she must see the red star in the west and so it was not over, not really. But it was.

He brushed a tear away impatiently, it would not do to appear so in front of anyone, especially the gossip-mongering servants. Oh, how he would miss her! Bourgeoise she may be, but he had not met another as intelligent, as sympathetic and as kind as her. She had stopped being his lover for years –she cited age as the reason, but he knew better, she was still waiting for him –and yet they had remained fast friends until the very last. He could discuss anything with her, from the wars to the elaborate place she had gotten constructed for him, anything, and she would aid and contribute with her usual wit and wisdom.

He remembered her bravery and her resolute strength as she had faced those unknown creatures, those clockwork monsters that had threatened the lives of all at the Palace that night. Ah, how proudly she had stood her ground, with what magnificent disdain had she sneered at the monsters! She was incomparable. An incomparable jewel.

And in the midst of it all, he had come, just as he had promised to her. A Lord, he'd called himself, the Lord of Time, and he couldn't help but feel a little shudder pass through his spine. It was somehow easy to believe it of this strange man –the man with the strange clothes and the strange hair, the man who travelled through mirrors that led nowhere, the man who stopped an entire clockwork battalion without loosing a single bullet. And according to her, as he had just seen to be true, the man who never aged. What else could he be, if not the great and powerful ruler of some vast dominion, and what else could that dominion be but time itself, in all its infinite majesty?

He should have known, that very day, that he had no chance at all. But he definitely knew now, as he watched the rain pour down on the beautiful gardens she had so lovingly patronised.

"She will not have fine weather for her journey."

Quite right.

A/N: Louis XV was really very fond of Madame de Pompadour in real life. They apparently remained best friends even after they stopped having sexual relations(the reason given was age, and the fact that she'd had miscarriages, but I decided to put in a little Doctor Who twist to it), and until her death she retained her rooms in the Palace of Versailles as his Royal Mistress even after he had taken other younger women as his mistresses after her.

She was reportedly clever, and influenced the King's political decisions and Foreign Affairs, which brought a fair share of enemies against her, who, along with everything else, hated the fact that she came from the bourgeoisie, i.e., she was a commoner(but a rich one). The place I have mentioned is the Place de la Concorde which she commissioned in the King's name.

The single spoken line here is purportedly a legitimate sentence uttered by the King as he watched the hearse bearing her coffin leave in the rain, although there is no concrete proof that he actually did say it.

As always, I must ask you to PLEASE REVIEW. Merci beaucoup and bonne journée!