Disclaimer: I do not own anything except my original character, everything else belong to the BBC. The purpose of this writing is for fun :

A/N: Yeah, after this we all know what happened. There's a lot of change of course in this chapter because if not, some of the dialogue in the episode just doesn't fit the personality or the person. Besides, the original one happens with Rose and Mickey while this one happen only with Sam and the Doctor. Also, this is pretty hard to do well I guess for me it's pretty hard to do because you need to think what will happened if the situation was different than the original one.

Anyway!

Onward to the story!

Chapter 25

Pompous King of French

The door leads him out onto a green grass of a sprawling immaculate garden. There was a magnificent palace in the distance; Versailles, if he remembered correctly. A tinkling of laughter caught his attention, as he spotted a familiar figure walking. He quickly ducked down over to a low wall and a pillar of stone, leaning against it, obscuring himself from the view as Reinette strolled past, arm in arm with a friend, possibly another lady from the court as he peeking out to watch them.

"Oh, Catherine you're too wicked," Reinette said with a laugh, only to suddenly turn around, catching a sight of something out of the corner of her eye. The Doctor ducked down, behind the pillar and out of view.

"Oh, speaking of wicked," Catherine drew Reinette's attention back and the two began strolling again, "I hear Madame de Chateauroux is ill, and close to death."

"Yes," Reinette agreed, feigned her concern. "I am devastated."

"Oh, indeed," Catherine agreed with a laugh of her own, "I myself am frequently inconsolable. The King will therefore be requiring a new Mistress. You love the King, of course?"

Reinette nodded, "He is the King, and I love him with all my heart. And I look forward to meeting him," she replied, behind them a bird chirped and Reinette looked back again, barely missing the Doctor as he swiftly pulling himself out of sight behind the pillar once more.

Catherine glanced at her with concern, "Is something wrong, my dear?"

"Nothing wrong, no," Reinette responded and linked her arm with Catherine's again as they continued strolling.

"Every woman in Paris knows your ambitions," Catherine commented eyeing her friend.

"Every woman in Paris shares them."

"You know of course, that the King is to attend the Yew Tree ball?"

Reinette grinned, "As am I."

The Doctor watched Reinette as she disappeared into the distance. He wondered how many more windows and doors on the spaceship would open up to scenes from Madame de Pompadour's life

0o0

Sam scratch the back of his ear and lead Arthur further inside the ship. Maybe he should have stayed put where he was, the ship felt like a maze and he hoped he hadn't gotten lost. He should've known he would get lost, his sense of time and direction were awful, people would get irritated at him for either being late or lost. Holding the strapped of the horse, he looked around the corridor for a clue where he was.

He stopped his walk and stared to pass a massive mirror. It peered into an elaborately decorated golden room, with fancy furniture that can be fun in castles or a huge house. A posh dressed man marched into the room flanked by two wig adorned butlers, looking posh and a bit flamboyant. Their clothes were familiar with the clockwork droid, guessing the huge mirror was leading to French again. There's something about this ship and being connected with French, and who's the flamboyant man anyway, he looks a bit familiar. Someone who would jump from his history book.

"That's the King of France," the Doctor said over his shoulder.

Sam jumped into the air and clutched his chest. "Blimey! Stop sneaking up to me like that. How did it go, whatever you did?"

"Fine. See these?" the Doctor answered, pointing at the window. "They're all over the place. I saw them on every deck. Gateways to history, but not just any old history." Reinette entered the room and curtseyed the King. "Hers." He specified. "Time windows, deliberately arranged along the life of one particular woman. A spaceship from the fifty-first century, stalking a woman from the eighteenth. Why?"

"Who is she?" Sam asked, a small crease to his brow.

"Jeanne-Antoinette Poisson," the Doctor replied, "Known to you as Reinette. One of the most accomplished woman who ever lived."

"Wait a minute," Sam said. He turned back to him. "Poisson? As in later turned into Madame de Pompadour, Poisson? Reinette is Madame de Pompadour, we just met Madame de Pompadour?"

"Yes," the Doctor told him. "We did. It surprises me you know about her. Most people don't know who she is, or people just know her as the King Mistress, yet she is much more than that, accomplished a lot more." He gushed at her.

"My history teacher has this weird obsession with French History," Sam said. He squinted his eyebrows, remembering a memory. "She was a bit weird, but she did give us an assignment on writing about Madame de Pompadour and her whole history, and she taught about her with sock puppets, which was more fun."

"Great teacher that is!"

"I guess she is, a bit weird but she is."

The two of them watched as Reinette and King Louis, whispered into each other ear and circled around in a seductive looked.

"I think this is the night they met," the Doctor mused. "The night of the Yew Tree ball. In no time flat, she'll get herself established as his official mistress, with her own rooms at the palace. Even her own title. Madame de Pompadour."

"I'm still don't know why she's the uncrown Queen?" Sam asked him. "I mean, the Queen likes her, right? Why can't they co-Queen together, French could be more awesome, right?"

"France," the Doctor shrugged. "It's a different planet."

"France is a country," Sam frowned.

The Doctor sighed, "It's a figure of speech Sam, and you're also right. But then again, the people might still think the concept of ruler being consist of Queen a bit unusual and not common."

"Bummer," Sam sighed.

King Louis left with his two servants, leaving Reinette alone as she walked closer to the huge mirror to inspect her appearance in the mirror. The sound of a ticking reached them and the Doctor glanced around, his smile slipping away as his eyes landed on a clock on the mantel. A clock that was broken, and yet the sound of a ticking clock persisted.

Reinette paused in her primping as she became aware of the ticking in the room that had been absent the noise just a moment ago. She spun sharply, searching for the source of the ticking landed on a figure of a woman in the corner of the room, her back to her.

"How long have you been standing there!?" she demanded of the figure that was standing in the shadow. "Show yourself!"

The figure slowly spun to reveal a masked face, a familiar face of the clockwork droid. Reinette's eyes further in fear as the figure slowly began to advance. The Doctor grabbed the fire extinguisher from the nearby corridor and swiftly swung the mirror around and hastened into the room towards the advancing droid, Sam following after him.

"Hello Reinette. Hasn't time flown?" the Doctor called her as she turned to look at the newcomers.

"Fireplace man!" she exclaimed as he moved past her, her gaze going to those behind him, "Sam!"

"Hello again," Sam greeted her as the Doctor aimed the extinguisher at the clockwork droid and sprayed it, freezing it in place, he tossed the extinguisher back to him who caught it as he stepped closer to the droid that began to click and whirr loudly.

Sam eyed the droid cautiously, "What's it doing?"

"Switching back on, melting the ice."

"And then what?"

"Then it kills everyone in the room," the Doctor said bluntly, the next moment he was jumping back away from the droid and the arm that it had shot out towards his throat. "Focused the mind, doesn't it?" He called over his shoulder as he backed up a bit, never taking his eyes off the droid, "Who are you?"

It remained silent.

"Identify yourself," he demanded of the droid, only for it to remain silent, merely cocking its head slightly. He glanced over at Reinette, "Order it to answer me."

"Why should it listen to me?" Reinette asked with a furrowed brow.

"I don't know," the Doctor said with a shrug, glancing back at her. "It did when you were a child. Let's see if you've still got it."

"Answer his question," Reinette said with authority, looking at the droid. "Answer any and all questions put to you."

'I am repair droid seven,'

The Doctor frowned at it, "What happened to the ship then? There was a lot of damage."

'Ion storm. Eighty-two percent systems failure,'

"The ship hasn't moved in over a year. What's taken you so long?" the Doctor asked as he eyed the droid incredulously.

'We did not have the parts.'

"What happen to the crew, where are they?" Sam asked.

'We did not have the parts.'

"There should have been over fifty people on your ship," the Doctor insisted. "Where did they go?"

'We did not have the parts,'

"Fifty people don't just disappear. Where-oh," the Doctor paused as horrifying realization dawned on him. "You didn't have the parts, so you used the crew."

"The crew?" Sam asked before he too, figured it out. "The heart, and the eyes." A feeling of dread made him sick to his stomach.

"It was just doing what it was programmed to," the Doctor murmured grimly. He felt bile threatening to rise, "Repairing the ship any way it can, with whatever it could find. No one told the crew weren't on the menu. The cooking smell on the deck."

"Someone's cooking."

"Flesh plus heat. Barbeque." the Doctor grimaced. "But what are you doing here?" He asked the droid. "You've opened up time windows. That takes colossal energy. Why come here? You could have gone to your repair yard. Instead, you come to Eighteenth Century France. Why?"

'One part is required.'

"Then why haven't you taken it?"

'She is incomplete.'

"Wait," the Doctor shook his head, eyeing the droid incredulously once again, "So that's the plan then. Just keep opening up more and more time windows, scanning her brain, checking to see if she's done yet?"

"Why her?" Sam blurted out. "You've got all of history to choose from, yeah. Why specifically her?"

'We are the same.'

"We are not the same!" Reinette protested with confusion and indigence, "We are in no sense the same!"

'We are the same.'

Reinette took an angry step forward, pointing an outraged finger at the droid, "Get out of here! Get out of here this instant!"

"Reinette, no!" the Doctor attempted to stop her, but it was a beat too late as the droid compiled activating it teleport to disappear from sight. "It's back on the ship. Sam, take Arthur. Get after it." He instructed quickly. "Follow it. Don't approach it, just watch what it does."

Sam went to do as he was told, but stopped to say something, "Will the TARDIS even let you bring Arthur on board?"

"Well, she let me keep you," the Doctor teased as he followed him towards the door, "Now go! Go! Go!" He urged them out the door closing the pane behind him, before turning back to the room, marching back towards Reinette.

"Reinette, you're going to have to trust me," the Doctor urged as he stepped in closer to the her, "I need to find out what they're looking for, there's only one way I can do that," he reached up placing his fingers against her temples, his eyes meeting hers earnestly. "It won't hurt a bit." She nodded, and the Doctor took a deep breath before raising his hands and pressing his fingers lightly against her temples.

"Fireplace man," Reinette breathed in wonder. "You are inside my mind."

"Oh dear," he mumbled. "The cowboys have been in here, too."

"You are in my memories. You walk among them."

"If there's anything you don't want me to see, just imagine a door and close it," the Doctor instructed softly at her. "I won't look. Ooh… actually, there's a door just there," he said, noticing a memory that she really shouldn't want him to see. More seemed to crop up. There was no reason for this, unless… oh dear. "Reinette," he said sternly as he sidestepped these.

"To walk among the memories of another living soul. Do you ever get used to this?" Reinette asked quietly.

"I don't make a habit if it."

"How can you resist?" she asked and the Doctor's face confronted in confusion.

"What age are you?"

"So impertinent a question so early in the conversation," Reinette mused, her eyes opening to regard her fireplace man once again, "How promising."

"No, not my question," the Doctor corrected, "Theirs. You're twenty-three and for some reason that means you're not old enough," he muttered, his brow furrowing a bit further in thought and Reinette shut her eyes again focusing, hardly a moment later she flinched, "Sorry," the Doctor apologized, having felt it under the tips of his fingers. "You might find old memories reawakening. Side effect."

"Oh, such a lonely childhood," Reinette gasped out in a whisper, the depth of the feeling threatening to overwhelm her.

"It'll pass," the Doctor assured as he continued to concentrate. "Stay with me."

"Oh Doctor," she murmured with a frown. "So lonely. So very, very alone."

"What do you mean alone?" the Doctor questioned mildly confused by her comments, "You've never been alone in your life-" he trailed his eyes snapping open to stare at her, "When did you start calling me Doctor?"

"Such a lonely little boy," Reinette continued. "A lonelier, broken man," she trailed her brow furrowing further as she found something else, a brighter spot in the incredible mind she was wondering, "And then," her eyes opened meeting his, "A Rose."

The Doctor lowered his hands, stepping away from her and breaking the link he'd created, "That's enough," he murmured quietly but no less firmly, before following Reinette's gaze towards him. "How'd you do that?"

"A door once opened, can be stepped through in either direction," Reinette told him. She turned her attention back to him. "Oh Doctor, dear Doctor," she murmured softly, her teary eyes meeting his. "Dance your pain away with me."

The Doctor swallowed and took a small step back, "I can't."

"Dance with me," Reinette insisted.

"This is the night you dance with the King."

"Then first, I shall make him jealous," Reinette gave him a hint of amusement entering her tone as she refused to be dissuaded.

"I can't." the Doctor protested again. Honestly he couldn't, there were the droids and as lovely as the future Madame de Pompadour was, there's another emergency he needs to solve that involved a boy and a horse. Besides, there was another he'd much prefer to dance with, and she was standing a few feet away from him.

Reinette's lips curved up slightly, mostly charming slime even as her eyes saddened as she regarded him, her eyes meeting his, "Doctor. Doctor Who?" she murmured and the Doctor's eyes darkened in wariness once again as they regarded one another, a moment of silence passing, "It's more than just a secret, isn't it?'

"What do you see?"

"That there comes a time, Time Lord," Reinette replied very seriously as she smiles once more, "When even the saddest man, must learn how to dance." She took his hand, ignoring his frozen face, and began to lead him out.

Hello!

You are at the end of the story.

The reasons I always put an end note on every story is just because I want to, and I want to thank you for whoever reading this story.

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