Sarah was tired. Sarah’s head hurt. Sarah’s stomach hurt. And Sarah’s heart hurt.
It had been a long and bizarre day, and she just wanted somewhere to lie down. “In and among all this technical mumbo-jumbo you’re spewing, can you answer the simple question of do you have someplace I can lie down?”
“Oh indeed,” the Doctor replied. “The TARDIS is full of many, many rooms… unless… you’d rather just go home.”
Sarah looked up and nodded slightly. “I think that would likely be best,” she said.
“Of course,” the Doctor intoned quietly. “Let’s be on our way, then.”
His change in tone made Sarah examine him closely. There was something very wrong with this man. Sarah had never seen mood swings as wild as the ones he had had in the last fifteen minutes. He had gone from jovial to depressed to jovial again to enraged to just happy to depressed again.
The Doctor was silent as he crossed behind the console. He hit a few switches, then pressed a button, and the green cylinder began to pump again.
Without any warning, a brilliant starburst of light shone forth from the center of the cylinder, and a horrific grinding noise emitted from it. The Doctor’s eyes went wide, and he dove across the console, straining to reach a different switch.
As he hit the switch, the TARDIS lurched unexpectedly, throwing the Doctor across the room and against a railing. Sarah just barely grabbed onto a railing in time to avoid a similar fate.
The TARDIS came to a halt, and the lights went dim. The bell Sarah had heard earlier began to toll again. “Doctor…”
“There’s something wrong with the time rotor,” he gasped, pain evident in his voice. “It’s malfunctioning, and I’m not quite sure why. The computers won’t even tell me where we are.”
With a hand to his back, he staggered to the door. Opening it, he stepped outside, Sarah following in his footsteps. She watched a confused look wash over his face, as though he recognized where he was, and then, almost immediately, a look of sheer horror.
“Oh, shit,” he uttered.
“Well, that can’t be good,” Sarah said. “What’s going on?”
“We’re someplace I can’t be,” the Doctor replied. “This is the Palace at Versailles, in 1758, I’m guessing about five months after the last time I was here.”
Sarah’s curiosity began to get the best of her. “What do you mean you can’t be here?” she asked. “I mean, if you’ve been here before, what does it matter?”
The Doctor looked at her, a look of dead seriousness written on his face. “I came back here, six years later,” he said. “There was a person I came back for, but she had died by the time I returned. I didn’t come back at any point in the interim, so if I encounter her, it will cause a time paradox.”
“Encounter who?”
The sound of a door opening reached Sarah’s ears, and the Doctor’s face went white. With a trembling hand, he pointed. “Her.”
Sarah turned and looked to the door. A woman in her late thirties stood there, dressed regally. Her face was even whiter than the Doctor’s. “Doctor…” she whispered.
And then, before he could say another word, the woman had gathered her skirts and started running across the room toward him. “NO NO NO NO NO NO NO!!!” he shouted. “Reinette, NO!”
She skidded to a stop just a few feet from him. “What… what do you mean, no?” she asked in confusion. “You said you’d return for me, Doctor!”
“It’s… complicated,” he gasped, pain writing itself on his face, his hand returning to his back.
“My Doctor, you’re in pain!” the woman he had called Reinette said, reaching for him. The Doctor lurched backwards, away from her grasp, falling over as he did so. His face twisted in agony.
“Reinette…” he whispered. “Reinette… you can’t touch me.”
“Why not?”
“Like I said, it’s –“
“Complicated,” she replied. “Well, Doctor, I am the Marquise de Pompadour, this is the Palace of Versailles, and the last time I checked, I had far more authority here than you.”
Sarah noted that her voice had taken on a hard edge as she spoke. “I would recommend you begin uncomplicating things!” the woman finished.
The Doctor, struggling back to his feet, held up his free hand in defeat. “Alright, alright,” he conceded. “First, though, Sarah Walker, this is –“
“Jeanne-Antoinette Poisson,” Sarah finished. “I know who Madame de Pompadour was, Doctor. I’m Sarah Walker.” She held out her hand to Reinette.
Reinette looked at Sarah, and then to the Doctor. “Can I touch her?” she asked, her voice heavy with sarcasm.
“Yes…” Simply speaking made the Doctor wince.
“Pleasure to meet you,” Reinette said, shaking Sarah’s hand gently and in a perfunctory fashion. “Now, Doctor? Uncomplicate.”
“Alright,” the Doctor said. “I said I’d return for you. I didn’t.”
The look on Reinette’s face changed to one of shock. “But you promised me you would return!” she protested.
“I did,” the Doctor admitted. “But you remember how the fireplace had a loose connection?”
“Yes, vaguely,” she replied.
“When I came back through, it was 1764,” he said.
“But that’s six years from now!”
“Yes, it is,” the Doctor agreed. “And I returned…”
He stopped. His heart had grown heavy, and when he spoke again, every one of his 900 plus years became apparent in his voice. “I returned in time to stand next to the King as we watched a carriage roll out of the palace, carrying your coffin, headed back to Paris.”
Reinette’s eyes had widened in shock. “I will die… before I am forty-three years of age?”
The Doctor simply nodded.
“And you cannot touch me, because you’ve already returned to this time, you’ve seen me dead, and should we touch each other, it would create… a time paradox?”
He smiled painfully. “My, but you learned a great deal when you looked into my mind, didn’t you?”
“Oh, Doctor,” she sighed. Then she looked at Sarah again. “And you travel with somebody new. What of Rose?”
The Doctor’s smile faded. “She was taken from me,” he said quietly, barely louder than a whisper. “She’s still alive… but I will never be able to see her again.”
His voice was stretched to the point of breaking. “And I was never able to tell her… tell her that I… that I…”
His voice went dead, and his eyes closed, the physical and emotional pain combining to overwhelm him. And Reinette, forgetting what she herself had said just a moment earlier, dropped to her knees, and embraced the Doctor.
He didn’t resist at first, as though he were lost. But then realization came to him, and his eyes sprang open. “Reinette, no, you ca-“
And then he stopped. He looked around the room. “Wait… what?”
Sarah and Reinette both looked at him. “Is there something that you were expecting, Doctor?” Sarah asked.
“Reinette caused a time paradox by touching me!” the Doctor insisted. “There are these creatures, nature’s bacteria, as it were, that should have appeared, to cleanse the paradox. But… there’s nothing.”
There was a reason. A reason the Doctor would not encounter for several months yet to come. Unbeknownst to him, at the time he had left Los Angeles with Sarah Walker, a future version of his own TARDIS had been converted into what was known as a Paradox Machine.
This Paradox Machine floated miles above the Atlantic Ocean, and the paradox it created extended clear from one end of time to the other. Because it was the Doctor’s own TARDIS, any paradoxes that he could encounter would thus be negated. Though he would not know this for some time yet, the paradox he had created would have no effect – for now.
“Reinette, I must go,” the Doctor said.
“May I go with you?”
The Doctor shook his head, sadness written on his face. “I’m afraid not,” he replied. “If I were to do that, it would not only exacerbate the paradox, but it would change history itself.”
Reinette nodded. “I understand,” she said sadly. She stood, extending her hand to help the Doctor to his feet.
He stood, and she embraced him, holding him. Seeing no harm, since the Paradox was clearly not occurring, the Doctor returned the embrace, not noticing the spark of light that seemed to pass between his fingers and Reinette’s back.
Finally, he released her. Without a word, she backed away, and left the room. The Doctor silently turned and re-entered the TARDIS, Sarah following him.
He pointed to a button and a switch. “Press this button, and hold the switch down. It’s a manual override. You’ll need to keep them engaged until we stop.”
Sarah nodded. She pressed the button he indicated, and held the switch down. Wordlessly, the Doctor crossed to the other side of the console, pressed a few buttons, and pulled down a lever. The time rotor engaged, and they left the eighteenth century far behind.
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