Chapter Thirty: The Girl In The Fireplace

"It's a spaceship!" Mickey exclaimed as they stepped out of the TARDIS into what looked like a control room. "Brilliant! I got a spaceship on my first go!"

"It looks kind of abandoned," Rose noted, wrinkling her nose. "Anyone on board?"

"Nah, nothing here," the Doctor assured her. Alex raised an eyebrow at him. "Well, nothing dangerous." A second eyebrow joined the first. "Well, not that dangerous." He hesitated, then shook his head. "You know what, I'll just have a quick scan, in case there's anything dangerous."

"So what's the date?" Alex asked, mainly to hide her smirk. "How far have we gone?"

He tilted his head. "About three hundred thousand years into your future, give or take." He flicked a switch on the console, and part of the ceiling moved to reveal a skylight. Outside, the stars twinkled in the darkness, showing no signs of life anywhere near them. "Fifty-first century. Diagmar Cluster, you're a long way from home, Mickey! Two and a half galaxies!"

Rose grinned. "Mickey Smith, meet the universe! See anything you like?"

Mickey gazed into space happily. "It's so realistic!"

"Christ, they've had some cowboys in here," Alex commented, trying to coax a computer into life. "Got a ton of repair work going on." The screen flickered into life, and she frowned. "Okay, that's weird. Look at that, all the warp engines are going. Full capacity."

The Doctor looked at the screen over her shoulder. "There's enough power running through this ship to punch a hole in the universe, but we're not moving. So where's all that power going?"

"Where'd all the crew go?" Rose asked.

"Good question." Alex brought up a diagram of the ship, showing only their life signs. "No life readings on board. Just us."

"Well, we're in deep space," Rose pointed out. "They didn't just nip out for a smoke."

"Speaking of..." Alex sniffed. "Can you smell that?"

The Doctor nodded. "Yeah, someone's cooking."

"Sunday Roast, definitely," Mickey agreed.

Alex moved a control experimentally, and the wall behind them opened up to reveal another room. They went through. It was empty, except for an ornate fireplace with a clock on the mantelpiece. The fire was blazing, even though there was no one on board to maintain it.

"Well," Alex said, raising her eyebrows. "That's different."

"Not something you expect to see in your average spaceship," the Doctor agreed. "Eighteenth century, French. Nice mantel. Not a hologram, it's not even a reproduction. This actually is an eighteenth century French fireplace."

Alex narrowed her eyes, dropping into a crouch to see better. "Look, there's another room through there. It's double sided."

"It can't be," Rose frowned, looking out of a porthole. "Look, that's the outer hull of the spaceship."

"Hello," Alex smiled, and they all looked round to see her smiling at a little blonde girl in a nightgown, kneeling on the other side of the fireplace.

"Hello," the girl returned.

"What's your name?" the Doctor asked, crouching too.

"Reinette."

"Oh, that's a lovely name, Reinette," Alex told her. She shared a quick glance with the Doctor. "Er, can you tell me where you are at the moment, Reinette?"

"In my bedroom," the child answered.

"And where's your bedroom?" the Doctor asked. "Where do you live, Reinette?"

Reinette shook her head in disbelief. "Paris, of course."

Alex raised her eyebrows. "Paris, right!"

"Monsieur, Mademoiselle, what are you doing in my fireplace?" Reinette asked, curious.

"Oh, it's just a routine fire check," the Doctor lied quickly. "Can you tell me what year it is?"

"Of course I can," she smiled. "Seventeen hundred and twenty-seven."

"Right, lovely." The Doctor nodded. "One of my favourites. August is a bit rubbish, though. Stay indoors."

"Okay, that's all for now," Alex told the girl, biting her lip. "Thanks for your help. Hope you enjoy the rest of your fire." She and the Doctor stood up, out of Reinette's sight.

"You said this was the fifty-first century," Mickey complained.

"I also said this ship was generating enough power to punch a hole in the universe," the Doctor reminded him. "I think we just found the hole. Must be a spatio-temporal hyperlink." Alex snorted.

Mickey blinked. "What's that?"

The Doctor shrugged. "No idea, just made it up. Didn't want to say magic door."

"And on the other side of the magic door is France in 1727," Rose realised, nodding at him.

"Well, she was speaking French," he pointed out. "Right period French, too."

"She was speaking English," Mickey frowned. "I heard her."

"That's the TARDIS," Alex explained. "Translates for you, in your head."

"Even French?"

She grinned. "Uh huh."

"Gotcha!" the Doctor exclaimed. He pulled a lever on the fireplace and it started to turn with him on it too.

"Doctor!" Rose cried.

"Wait!" Alex sped over, joining him as he came out in Reinette's bedroom. The little girl woke with a start. "It's okay! Don't scream. It's us, it's the fireplace people, look." She touched the wick of a nearby candle; a silver spark lit up her fingertip and a flame blossomed into life. "We were talking just a moment ago, remember? We were in your fireplace."

Reinette blinked. "Mademoiselle, that was weeks ago. That was months."

The Doctor frowned. "Really?" He knocked on the wood, making a face. "Must be a loose connection. Need to get a man in."

"Who are you?" Reinette demanded. "And what are you doing here?"

"Er..." Alex hesitated, her eyes landing on the clock on the mantelpiece. It was broken. And she could hear ticking. "Okay, that's scary."

"You're scared of a broken clock?" Reinette looked incredulous.

"Just a bit scared, yeah," Alex admitted, scanning the room with wide eyes. "Just a bit. Because if this clock's broken, and it's the only clock in the room, then what's that ticking?"

Next to the bed, the Doctor's eyes widened. "That's not a clock," he realised. "You can tell by the resonance. Too big. Six feet, I'd say. The size of a man."

Reinette pulled her knees up to her chest. "What is it?"

"If you were a thing that ticked and you were hiding in someone's bedroom, the first thing you do is break the clock," Alex thought aloud. "No one notices the sound of one clock ticking, but two? You might start to wonder if you're really alone. Second thing..."

The Doctor's eyes landed on the bed, realising at the same time as Alex. "Stay on the bed," he ordered. "Right in the middle. Don't put your hands or feet over the edge." He crouched down to sonic under the bed. Something knocked it from his hand, and by the time he'd retrieved it, a figure was standing behind Reinette. Alex had one hand raised towards it, her palm swirling with silver energy. The shifting light illuminated its face, a smiling aristocratic mask framed with a curled wig.

"Reinette," she warned, keeping her eyes fixed on the clockwork figure. "Don't look around." Then she addressed the figure. "You, stay exactly where you are."

"Hold still, let me look." The Doctor touched his fingers to Reinette's temples, looking inside her mind. "You've been scanning her brain," he realised. "What, you've crossed two galaxies and thousands of years just to scan a child's brain? What could there be in a little girl's mind worth blowing a hole in the universe?"

"I don't understand. It wants me?" Reinette turned to the figure, hardly blinking an eye at the costume. "You want me?"

"Not yet," it said, its voice a robotic monotone. "You are incomplete."

"Incomplete?" Alex echoed. "What's that mean, incomplete?" The robot ignored her, and she narrowed her eyes. "Oi, you can answer her, you can answer me. What do you mean, incomplete?"

Suddenly the robot moved, rounding the bed and advancing on the time travellers, a blade unfolding from its hand. They both backed away. "Be careful!" Reinette cried.

"Just a nightmare, Reinette," Alex told her, sounding more confident than she felt. "Don't worry about it. Everyone has nightmares." The droid slashed and slashed at her, but she kept ducking out of the way. "Even monsters from under the bed have nightmares, don't you, monster?"

The droid struck again, but missed. Its blade sliced into the mantelpiece, getting stuck.

"What do monsters have nightmares about?" Reinette asked.

"Me!" The Doctor pulled the lever on the fireplace and the three of them returned to the ship. In less than a second, Alex had grabbed a fire extinguisher from the wall, blasting the droid.

"Excellent," Mickey grinned. "Ice gun."

"Fire extinguisher," she corrected, handing it to him.

"Where did that thing come from?" Rose asked, her eyes wide.

"Here." The Doctor put on his glasses, frowning at the droid.

"So why is it dressed like that?" Mickey asked, gesturing to the period dress.

"Field trip to France," the Doctor replied. "Some kind of basic camouflage protocol. Nice needlework, shame about the face." He removed the mask and wig to reveal the robot underneath, its clockwork interior revealed.

Alex's eyes lit up. "Oh, that is beautiful. Space age clockwork? Love it! Listen, I mean this from the heart, both of them, it would be a crime, an act of vandalism to disassemble you. But I'm gonna love every second of it."

The droid hit a device on its wrist and beamed away.

"Short range teleport," the Doctor realised. "Can't have gone far. Could still be on board."

"What is it?" Rose asked.

"Don't go looking for it," he warned, heading over to the fireplace.

"And where're you going?" Alex asked, raising her eyebrows.

"Back in a sec." He activated the fireplace and disappeared into Reinette's world.

Mickey's eyes widened as he saw Rose grab the second fire extinguisher, holding it like a gun. Next to her, Alex's palms ignited. "He said not to look for it."

"Yeah, he did," Rose agreed. Mickey rolled his eyes, going out into the corridor.

Alex followed, grinning. "Now you're getting it."

***

"Are you looking at me?" Mickey joked later, peering up at a camera with an eye in it. It zoomed closer to him and he yelped, backing away. "Hey, guys, look at this," he called, beckoning the girls over. "That's an eye in there. That's a real eye."

Alex frowned. "Can you hear that?" There was a rhythmic bu-bumping, coming from somewhere inside the walls. She opened a small hatch, looking in, then blanched, slamming it shut.

"What was that?" Rose asked. "In the middle there, looked like it was wired in."

"It was a heart," Alex replied, wrinkling her nose. "It was a human heart."

"Maybe it wasn't a real heart," Mickey suggested.

She shook her head. "It was real." After a moment, she nodded and stepped away, she and Rose continuing on down the corridor.

Mickey blinked. "Is this like normal for you? Is this an average day?"

"Living with the Doctor, Mickey," Rose smiled, shaking her head. "There hasn't been an average day since Hendricks went up." They stopped by a large window, through which they could see an ornately decorated room.

"It's France again," Alex realised. "We can see France."

"I think we're looking through a mirror," Rose said.

An important-looking man walked into the room, flanked by two guards. Mickey snorted. "Blimey, look at this guy! Who does he think he is?"

"The King of France," a familiar voice replied.

"Oh, here's trouble," Alex said, grinning. "What've you been up to then?"

"Oh, this and that." He tilted his head. "Became the imaginary friend of a future French aristocrat, picked a fight with a clockwork man." A horse neighed behind them. "Oh, and I met a horse."

"What's a horse doing on a spaceship?" Mickey frowned.

"Mickey, what's pre-Revolutionary France doing on a spaceship?" the Doctor pointed out. "Get a little perspective." He turned his attention to the window. "See these? They're all over the place. On every deck. Gateways to history, but not just any old history." A beautiful young woman entered the room, and he smiled. "Hers. 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?" Rose asked.

"Jeanne-Antoinette Poisson, known to her friends as Reinette," he answered, his eyes fixed on her. "One of the most accomplished women who ever lived."

"So had she got plans of being the Queen, then?" Alex guessed.

"No, he's already got a Queen," the Doctor explained. "She's got plans of being his mistress, his official mistress. She loves him."

"Oh, I get it. Camilla," she joked.

He didn't laugh. "In fact, I think this is the night they met. The night of the Yew Tree Ball. In no time at all, she'll get herself established as his official mistress, with her own rooms at the palace. Even her own title. Madame de Pompadour."

They watched as the King and his guards left. Reinette turned to the mirror, looking right at them, and checked her hair. "The Queen must have loved her," Rose mused.

"Oh, she did," the Doctor assured her. "They got on very well."

Mickey scoffed. "The King's wife and the King's girlfriend?"

The Doctor smiled. "France, Mickey. It's a different planet."

Suddenly, Reinette turned to a shadowy corner, her eyes wide. Alex rotated the mirror and they all went through. "Hello, Reinette," she greeted. "Hasn't time flown?"

"Fireplace people!" Reinette exclaimed.

The Doctor grabbed one of the fire extinguishers and blasted the droid with it. After a moment, the gears began to turn again in its head.

Mickey stared. "What's it doing?"

"Er..." Alex backed away from it. "Well, it's switching back on. Melting the ice."

"And then what?" Rose asked.

"And then it kills everyone in the room," Alex replied bluntly, igniting her fists. "Focuses the mind, doesn't it?"

"Who are you?" the Doctor demanded, fixing the droid with a glare. "Identify yourself." He sighed, turning to Reinette. "Order it to answer me."

She blinked. "Why should it listen to me?"

He shrugged. "I don't know, but it did when you were a child. Let's see if you've still got it."

After a moment's hesitation, she turned back to the droid. "Answer his question. Answer any and all questions put to you."

The droid paused. "I am repair droid seven."

"What happened to your ship?" Alex asked. "There was a lot of damage."

"Ion storm," it reported. "Eighty-two percent systems failure."

"That ship hasn't moved in over a year," she pointed out, brow furrowed. "What's taken you so long?"

"We did not have the parts."

Mickey smirked. "Always comes down to that, doesn't it? The parts."

"What happened to the crew?" the Doctor asked. "Where are they?"

"We did not have the parts."

Alex paled, her eyes wide. At her side, the silver energy surrounding her hands flickered out. On the other side of the room, the Doctor was oblivious. "There should have been fifty people on your ship. Where did they go?"

"We did not have the parts."

"Fifty people don't just disappear!"

"They didn't have the parts," Alex explained, feeling sick. "So they used the crew."

"The crew?" Mickey echoed.

"We found a camera with an eyeball in it, and there was a human heart wired into the machinery," Rose remembered.

"It was just doing what it was programmed to," the Doctor realised. "Repairing the ship any way it can, with whatever it could find. No one told it the crew weren't on the menu." He glanced across at Mickey. "What did you say the flight deck smelt of?"

Mickey made a face. "Sunday Roast."

The Doctor nodded. "Flesh plus heat. Barbecue." He turned back to the android. "But what are you doing here? 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 more part is required."

"Then why haven't you taken it?" Alex demanded.

"She is incomplete."

"What, so that's the plan, then?" The Doctor scoffed, incredulous. "Just keep opening up more and more time windows, scanning her brain, checking to see if she's done yet?"

"Why her?" Rose asked. "You've got all of history to choose from. Why specifically her?"

"We are the same."

Reinette's eyes widened. "We are not the same. We are in no sense the same."

"We are the same."

"Get out of here!" she ordered. "Get out of here this instant!" Obediently, the droid teleported away.

"It's back on the ship," Alex realised.

The Doctor nodded. "Take Rose, Mickey and Arthur, get after it. Follow it, but don't approach it. Just watch what it does."

She blinked. "Arthur?"

He shrugged. "Good name for a horse."

"Oh, Christ, you're not keeping the horse!"

"I let you keep Mickey!" he protested. "Now, go, go, go!"

They ran through the time window, readying their fire extinguishers and energies in case the droid was nearby. "So," Mickey smirked. "That Doctor, eh?"

"Shut up," Alex muttered, leading the way.

"What are you talking about?" Rose asked, frowning.

"Well, Madame de Pompadour, Sarah Jane Smith, Cleopatra." He shrugged suggestively.

Alex shot him a look. "Cleopatra? He mentioned her once."

"Yeah, but he called her Cleo," he pointed out.

She rolled her eyes. "I'm not listening to this." She turned back, right into the path of a droid.

***

Though Alex hadn't lived for all that many years, she had experienced more than the average human. Some of those things were wonderful, like all those times the Doctor had taken her and Rose to see the movies of the future. Some, on the other hand, were decidedly less so. Think Jimmy Stone.

So it wasn't exactly her favourite thing in the world that she had woken up lying on a table, thick metal bars pinning her down. She could hardly move, and she was finding it rather hard to concentrate on using her energies with memories of the past flicking through her mind.

Something shuffled and groaned to her left. "What's going on?" Rose demanded. "Doctor?"

"Rose?" That was Mickey, on Alex's right, which meant that unless the Doctor put in an appearance, there was no one to get them out of this. "They're going to chop us up, just like the crew. They're going to chop us up and stick us all over their stupid spaceship. And where's the Doctor? Where's the precious Doctor now? He's been gone for flipping hours, that where he is!"

Alex rolled her eyes. "Oh, yeah, that's helping."

A droid turned to her. "You are compatible."

"Well, you might wanna think about that," Rose warned shakily. "You really, really might, because me and Alex and Mickey, we didn't come here alone. Oh, no. And trust me, you wouldn't want to mess with our designated driver."

The droid extended its blade, coming dangerously close to Alex's throat. "Er... Rose?"

"Ever heard of the Daleks?" Rose said, starting to panic. "Remember them? She killed them all. And our friend? They had a name for him. They had myths about him, and a name. They called him the—"

A door crashed open and the Doctor swayed in, wearing his tie around his head. "I could've danced all night," he was singing, and he wasn't even singing it well.

Rose stared. "They called him the, the..."

"And still have begged for more," he continued. "I could've spread my wings and done a thou—" He broke off, noticing them all. "Have you met the French? My God! They know how to party."

"Oh, look what the cat dragged in," Alex rolled her eyes. "Are you drunk?!"

He made a face at her. "Oh, you sound just like your mother."

"What've you been doing?" she demanded. "Where've you been?"

The Doctor blinked. "Well... among other things..." His face split into a wide grin. "I think I just invented the banana daiquiri a few centuries early. Do you know, they've never even seen a banana before. Always take a banana to a party, Kez. Bananas are good." He walked up to the droid next to her, the one with its blade to her throat, and laughed. "Oh, it's you! You're my favourite, you are. You are the best! Do you know why? Because you're so thick! You're Mr Thick Thick Thickity Thickface from Thicktown, Thickania. And so's your dad.

"Do you know what they were scanning Reinette's brain for? Her milometer. They want to know how old she is. Know why? Because this ship is thirty-seven years old, and they think that when Reinette is thirty-seven, then her brain will be compatible." He turned back to the droids. "So that's what you're missing, isn't it, hmm? Command circuit. Your computer. Your ship needs a brain. And for some reason, God knows what, only the brain of Madame de Pompadour will do."

"The brain is compatible," the droid stated.

"Compatible?" The Doctor snorted. "If you believe that, you probably believe this is a glass of wine." He removed the mask and wig and poured the contents of his goblet into the droid's head. It seized up. "Multigrain anti-oil. If it moves, it doesn't." He flipped a switch on the console, powering all the androids down, then soniced their restraints away. "Right, you lot, that's enough lying about. Time we got the rest of the ship turned off."

"Are those things safe?" Mickey asked, edging around a droid nervously.

"Yeah, safe. Safe and thick, way I like them," the Doctor confirmed. "Okay, all the time windows are controlled from here. I need to close them all down." He patted his pockets. "Zeus plugs. Where are my Zeus plugs? I had them a minute ago; I was using them as castanets."

"Why didn't they just open a time window to when she was thirty-seven?" Rose asked, frowning.

Alex shook her head, booting up the computer screen. "The amount of damage to these circuits, they did well to hit the right century. Trial and error after that."

"The windows aren't closing," the Doctor complained. "Why aren't they closing?"

A bell dinged. Rose looked around. "What's that?"

The Doctor shrugged. "I don't know. Incoming message?"

"From who?" Mickey asked.

"Report from the field," Alex replied, biting her lip. "One of them must still be out there with Reinette. That's why we can't close the windows. There's an override."

The lead android reactivated, expelling the anti-oil through its finger onto the floor. The Doctor blinked, moving his shoes out of the way. "Well, that was a bit clever." All of the droids straightened up. "Right. Many things about this are not good. Message from one of your little friends? Anything interesting?"

"She is complete. It begins." All of the androids teleported away.

Rose's eyes widened. "What's happening?"

"One of them must have found the right time window," Alex realised, paling. "Now it's time to send in the troops. And this time, they're bringing back her head."

***

"Madame de Pompadour?"

Reinette turned to see the young ginger girl she had met so many years ago. She smiled, remembering how the girl had featured in the Doctor's mind. "Alex," she greeted, then hesitated. "Or is it McKenzie?"

Alex blinked. "Oh. Er, either. Sorry, how do you know that?"

"The Doctor thinks about you constantly," Reinette shrugged.

"Right." Alex blushed. "Er, sorry, we don't have a lot of time. I've come to warn you that they'll be here in five years."

"Five years?" Reinette echoed.

"Some time after your thirty-seventh birthday," Alex nodded. "I, er... I can't give you an exact date. It's a bit random. But they're coming. It's going to happen. In a way, for us, it's already happening. I'm sorry, it's hard to explain. The Doctor does this better."

Reinette shook her head. "Then be exact, and I will be attentive."

"There isn't time," Alex told her, biting her lip.

"There are five years!"

Alex sighed. "For you. I haven't got five minutes."

"Then also be concise."

"There's... a vessel. A ship, a sort of sky ship," Alex explained. "And it's full of you. Different bits of your life in different rooms, all jumbled up."

Reinette stared. "There is a vessel in your world where the days of my life are pressed together like the chapters of a book, so that he may step from one to the other without increase of age while I, weary traveller, must always take the slower path."

Alex smiled. "He was right about you."

"So in five years, these creatures will return," Reinette said, hiding her own smile. "What can be done?"

"Keep them talking," Alex advised. "They're kind of programmed to respond to you. You won't be able to stop them, but you might be able to delay them a bit."

"Until?"

"Until the Doctor can get there."

Reinette raised an eyebrow. "He's coming, then?"

Alex nodded. "He promises."

"But he cannot make his promises in person?"

"He'll be there when you need him," Alex assured her. "That's the way it's got to be."

"It's the way it's always been," Reinette admitted. "The monsters and the Doctor. It seems you cannot have one without the other."

"Tell me about it," Alex snorted.

"One may tolerate a world of demons for the sake of an angel," Reinette agreed.

"Alex!" They both looked up as they heard Rose's voice. Alex went out into the corridor, Reinette following. "The time window where she's thirty-seven. We found it, right under our noses."

Reinette ducked through the tapestry, into the spaceship. "So this is his world." Her older self screamed from afar, and she flinched. "What was that?"

Rose winced. "The time window. The Doctor fixed an audio link."

"Those screams." Reinette shook her head. "Is that my future?"

"Yeah. I'm sorry," Alex apologised.

Reinette nodded. "Then I must take the slower path."

They heard her older self calling out. "Are you there? Can you hear me? I need you now. You promised! The clock on the mantel is broken. It is time!"

"That's my voice," she realised.

"Alex, come on," Rose intervened. "We've got to go. There's a problem."

Alex swallowed, seeing the fear on Reinette's face. "Just give me a minute. I'll be right there." Rose disappeared, and Alex turned back to Reinette. "Are you okay?"

"No, I'm very afraid," she confessed. "But you and I both know, don't we, Alex? The Doctor is worth the monsters." They shared one last smile, and she ran back through the tapestry to her own world.

***

"You found it, then?" Alex said as she returned to the others. The Versailles ballroom was visible on a large screen on the opposite wall, the screams of the gentry transmitting loud and clear.

"They knew I was coming," the Doctor told her, his eyes wide and frantic. "They blocked it off."

"I don't get it," Rose admitted. "How come they got in there?"

"They teleported," the Doctor explained. "We saw them. As long as the ship and the ballroom are linked, their short-range teleports will do the trick."

"Well, we'll go in the TARDIS," she suggested.

He shook his head. "We can't use the TARDIS. We're part of events now."

"Well, can't we just smash through?" Mickey asked.

"Hyperplex this side, plate glass the other," the Doctor said. "We'd need a truck."

Alex sighed. "We don't have a truck."

"I know we don't have a truck!"

"Well, we've got to try something," she shot back, remembering the kind smile the woman had given her. "We can't just let her die!"

"No, smash the glass, smash the time window." His eyes were fixed on the familiar figure of Reinette onscreen. "There'd be no way back!"

She growled. "So save her!"

And he did. The screen shattered, and the deck was silent.

"What happened?" Mickey asked. "Where did the time window go? How's he going to get back? We can't fly the TARDIS without him. How's he going to get back?"

A tear ran down Alex's cheek.

***

In the Palace of Versailles, the Doctor stood at a window, looking up at the night sky. It was hard to believe that all those stars he had once run among were now firmly out of his reach.

"You know all their names, don't you?" He turned to see Reinette with two glasses of wine. She handed him one. "I saw that in your mind. The name of every star."

"What's in a name?" he sighed. "Names are just titles. Titles don't tell you anything."

"Like the Doctor," Reinette teased.

"Like Madame de Pompadour," he returned.

She smiled, turning to look up at the sky. "I have often wished to see those stars a little closer. Just as you have, I think."

He tilted his head. "From time to time."

"In saving me, you trapped yourself," she said, glancing up at him. "Did you know that would happen?"

"Mmm." He nodded. "Pretty much."

"Yet you still came."

"Yeah, I did, didn't I?" He shook his head. "Catch me doing that again."

"There were many doors between my world and yours," Reinette pointed out. "Can you not use one of the others?"

"When the mirror broke, the shock would have severed all the links with the ship," he explained. "There'll be a few more broken mirrors and torn tapestries around here, I'm afraid, wherever there was a time window." He hesitated. "I'll... I'll pay for any damage. Er, that's a thought, I'm going to need money. I was always a bit vague about money. Where do you get money?"

Reinette smiled fondly. "So here you are, my lonely angel, stuck on the slow path with me."

"Yep, the slow path," he agreed. "Here's to the slow path." They drank a toast.

"It's a pity," Reinette sighed. "I think I would've enjoyed the slow path."

He raised an eyebrow at her. "Well, I'm not going anywhere."

"Oh, aren't you? Take my hand." He did, and she led him through the palace to her bedroom, where her old fireplace now stood. "It's not a copy, it's the original. I had it moved here and I was exact in every detail."

"The fireplace," the Doctor realised. "The fireplace from your bedroom. When did you do this?"

Reinette shrugged nonchalantly. "Many years ago, in the hope that a door once opened may someday open again. One never quite knows when one needs one's Doctor. Though now, I think someone else needs you more than I. It appears undamaged. Do you think it will still work?"

He hesitated, hardly daring to hope. "You broke the bond with the ship when you moved it, which means it was offline when the mirror broke. That's what saved it. But the link is basically physical, and it's still physically here. Which might just mean, if I'm lucky, if I'm very, very, very, very, very lucky..." He tapped on the mantelpiece, finding a hollow spot. "Aha!"

"What?"

"Loose connection." He grinned, buzzing the spot with the sonic screwdriver. "Need to get a man in." The fireplace began to turn. "Wish me luck!"

"Oh, good luck!" she beamed.

He crouched down by the fire, grinning through at her. "Madame de Pompadour! Still want to see those stars?"

She laughed in delight. "More than anything. But that is not my journey to take. Goodbye, Doctor. And don't you dare forget me." She stood up and walked away.

His eyes widened. "Reinette!" He went back through the fireplace, but now the room was in darkness, and she was gone. "Reinette?" He poked his head into the next room, only to find the King standing at the window. "Oh, hello."

King Louis XV looked around, then nodded at the Doctor. "You just missed her. She'll be in Paris by six."

The Doctor nodded. "Ah."

"Good Lord, she was right," the King noticed as he handed over two sealed letters. "She said you never looked a day older. So many years since I saw you last, but not a day of it on your face. She spoke of you many times. Often wished you'd visit again." A hearse drove down the driveway in the rain, and King Louis sighed. "There she goes."

"I'm sorry," the Doctor said, his heart sinking as he realised he was too late.

King Louis nodded. "Leaving Versailles for the last time. Only forty-three when she died. Too young, too young. Illness took her in the end—she always did work too hard." He glanced at the letters. "What does she say?" The Doctor put the unopened letters in his pocket, and the King nodded. "Of course. Quite right."

***

Later, once he had reunited with the others and the TARDIS had dematerialised, the Doctor took out his letter, breaking the seal.

My dear Doctor,

The path has never seemed more slow, and yet I fear I am nearing its end. Reason tells me that you and I are unlikely to meet again, but I think I shall not listen to reason. I have seen the world inside your head and know that all things are possible.

Hurry though, my love. My days grow shorter now, and I am so very weak. Godspeed, my lonely angel.

Your Reinette.

~~~