Asleep on a couch (TM)

It is the most painful sort of fight, Reinette thinks.

It is not the sort that one can forget its origins, and laugh about when some of the sting has passed. Nor is it the kind she can actively engage it, and attack with her usual verve. Louis is already asleep after all, no longer a part of this dance. He has said his part, and moved to take his rest. She does not think his place on the sofa is meant to injure her more than he already has. He was weary, and so he sought rest with a single-mindedness only a king to be born to.

Indeed, he would suggest in the face of her distress, it is not as if he left her rooms. He did not return to his own, to the Master on Chambers that awaits his every need. He is not, after all, with his wife. He is still with her. And is that not enough?

He is still with her.

But no, she is not satisfied with this middling sort of compromise that truthfully tastes of ash and cowardice. It is not compromise at all, she is sure, but a failure instead to make a stronger statement. Be with her, or not. Be in her arms, or out of them. Be pleased with her, or --

Do not accuse her of being a cold fish, and then take refuge on a sofa mere feet away from her bed. And then, to salt the wounds so freshly made, make claim that it is merely the weather that drives you away. Too hot, he says, too cloying. It is not her at all.

No, no. Reinette is sure this is the worst sort of fight of all.

Because it is true.

Only six months into making Versailles home, she is secretly terrified. Too many bridges burned in taking her place here, too few to turn to if things were to fall apart. She knows well how many people like her because they are required to. Her true friends can be counted as precious few. An actress she may be, but she cannot even manage to pretend to sleep, so that they at least appear equally unaffected. Perhaps because all of her energies are directed at managing her fear. She knows how many people await her fall, because Reinette was once one of them. Twenty four years of age should not feel so desperately young.

She wants to throw something. She wishes that he would wake up and join her in her bed. Oh how he wishes that she could prove her king wrong.

But he has discovered her secret. She was never been as warm as she could be. Loving? Loving has never come easily to her. Too often her wit and fire have been mistook for passion of a different sort. And she has allowed it, for it served her interests well. It is, perhaps, the one thing Reinette has never been able to learn.

But now Louis knows. How soon before he casts her aside? And what, if anything, might she do about it?

She must do something.

Something. Anything?

But sleep.


OOC: This piece might seem out of place for those that only know Reinette from Doctor Who. This story is actually based on true events, chronicled by her main lady's maid in her memoirs. I do my best to blend both impressions of her.

From Tonks

	Your last lover says you were: "addictive"
What do your lovers say about you? at QuizUniverse.com

49 Tag Challenge with onlysayinghello

It was a most inconsiderate sort of rain.

It came without little warning. There was no conceivable way one might cast there eyes towards the sky and declare the weather unfavorable for a walk. Indeed, the blue of the sky and brisk breeze had teased across Reinette's skin suggesting nothing less than a pleasant hour of pastime. No, no. Taking into account her companion for the afternoon?

Perhaps even two hours.

But then came the rain.

Fat, oppressive drops they sheeted downwards, and there was no time at all between dry and soaking. The light muslin of her gown was never intended for such abuse. The distance between there location now -- in the furthest finished gardens of Versailles -- and the palace itself seemed impossibly far. They were both sure to be ill.

Pulling her arm free from where it was hooked in easy company with Jack's, Reinette when so far at to place her hand firmly within his own and to use her free hand to lift sodden skirts allowing for her to actually run. It was not as if there was anyone left on the lawns to comment on her ankles and truthfully? In the moment Reinette could not care.

Her only thought was on shelter.

And finally, thankfully? That was now mere steps away.