for ambitious_woman

[rude_not_ginger]

Follows this.

The Doctor was, for all intents and purposes, on holiday. He had some time before his song was up, and he was determined to enjoy himself. He would not go off and save people, he would not care about planets falling, he would do whatever he wanted with his time left.

Not that it was really ending, a voice in his mind reminded him. It was just changing. Regeneration was never really the end.

But the Doctor liked being himself. He didn't want to change. He didn't want to give it up. So, doing what he did best, he fought it. Tooth and nail. Avoided it. Ran away from it. Better than coming face to face with it.

It was during this time, seated at the TARDIS console after a day at the beach and still enjoying what was left of his ice lolly when he heard it. The sound of a distress signal.

Not just any signal. A very specific voice. A very familiar, very long-gone voice. Reinette. She sounded so alone.

"No," he said to the voice. "No, I'm not saving you, I'm not doing this. I. Am. Retired!"

He hissed, and turned the signal up. Could he send a message back?

"Hello?" he tried into the TARDIS microphone. "Hello?"

Comments

[ambitious_woman]

It was silent.

And dark.

The cacophony of color and sound she so often associated with Versailles was simply — not. An absence. A void. The sort of nothingness that should have been simple to both describe and resolve, but was beyond her all the same. No matter how she tried, no matter how devoted her effort?

Only the silence.

She longed for color and sound and texture, even the painful steadiness of the slower path. Things were slow still now, yes. But frighteningly fast as well. The never ending shot of her mind and thoughts, the exclamation of dismay she struggled to give voice to. To take control of.

It was all of it gone. The flash of a mirrored hallway. The feel of a banister beneath her fingertips or a new bolt of silk. The sight of the first snowdrop as as welcomed spring. All of it, beyond her.

As they all were.

As he was.

Only the dark. Only alone.

“Why?”

[rude_not_ginger]

Why?

The Doctor stared at the speaker grill, where Reinette's voice came clearly out. A ghost, speaking to him from the past.

But, then again, they were all ghosts, weren't they? Even Rose, even Donna. All of them, speaking from their little place in the past that he chose to visit. He could never hold onto them, not even----

No, no. He would not allow himself down this path. He was enjoying life. He was going to ignore this voice, calling from the past. He reached out a hand to turn the speaker off. He would do this. He would turn it off. He would eat the rest of his ice lolly and go ice-skating somewhere far from here.

But she asked him 'Why?' There were so many things he had to answer for to her. He couldn't bring his hand to turn the speaker off.

"I suppose I got lost along the way."

[ambitious_woman]

“We all are lost.”

Frank and honest and far more than Reinette was inclined to usually reveal. She reached to adjust her long-time companion. Her usual armor. Only to find her no longer there. It was never there. Limbs she no longer had control over tingled with awareness, anger and despair.

It was the despair that frightened her the most. They were never meant to be companions. Reinette refused to entertain the idea.

“I am lost.”

Why had she said that aloud?

Somewhere in the back of her mind cane that now-familiar mechanical click. The cold hum of machinery rather than the music she longed for. The truth that she refused to acknowledge. And yet the only answer she ever heard.

Until now.

Why was now different?

[rude_not_ginger]

She was lost.

This wasn't just some call through the window of a ship stalking her, was it? No, this was something else. Somehow, some way, Reinette was there. Her consciousness was speaking out, now.

Not that it matters, he hears a voice in his mind reminding him. She's gone. He can't fix this, he can't change the past. He can't---

But what if he could?

"What do you see where you are, Reinette? What's around you?"

[ambitious_woman]

“The stars.”

Pick a star, any star.

“I see the stars.”

Only no, I was not merely that. Only that. There was so much more, and still so much less. It should make her ache, and yet as always there was nothing.

Nothing, and everything. She was weary of the never-ending complexities.

“I see the stars. Or perhaps I only remember them. I see Versailles, only silent in a way I have never know her to be. I see my past, only one that I no longer belong to.”

Her past.

Her name. Was that her name? Did he say her name? Or was it only another memory?

“Doctor?”

[rude_not_ginger]

Don't say anything. Don't say anything. Turn off the speaker and go get dinner with the Mata Hari. Do not do this, Doctor, it's not what you're supposed to be doing.

He leaned towards the speaker. "Yes, Reinette, it's me. I'm here."

But where is she? Stars and Versailles, silent. That's oddly specific and very strange. Where could she be?

"Tell me about the stars you see. Anything stand out? Anything specific?" He could pinpoint a region, he could figure out where she was calling from, maybe then he could---

But Reinette was dead. He still had her note, tucked away in one of his boxes where he'd only look at it if he really wanted to feel sad. And right now he wasn't supposed to be thinking sad thoughts. He had the end of his regeneration to think about, after all. All the same, he found himself pulling up the grate in the console room, and going to the box labeled 'R'. Her letter sat on top, the last thing he'd placed in that box.

[ambitious_woman]

There was the faint whirring of something humming to life in the near distance. Close enough to touch, but as ever not quite.

Through the haze Reinette the not-quite of her voice soaking of star charts and solar systems, words she had no business being acquainted with. She spoke a half-dozen languages but she was entirely certain this was not one of them. Instead she felt like a small child at work with her lessons, parroting words and ideas she had no real mastery over yet.

When had she become so small?

As always, the answer was there if she chose to acknowledge it.

But she did not.

She dared not to even say it aloud.

“Where am I, Doctor? Can you tell me where I am?”

You know, Reinette. You know

[rude_not_ginger]

Where was she?

The Doctor knew. He was almost certain of it.

He picked up the letter and held it delicately with his fingertips, like it was something that could explode all over him if he let it.

It contained her DNA, his mind told him. With the right technology, and her consciousness----but no, he couldn't. He was on borrowed time, he couldn't do this.

"You know where you are, Reinette."