Title: A Long Way Down
By: angstytimelord
Pairing: gen
Fandom: Doctor Who
Rating: R
Table: G3, 5_prompts
Prompt: 5, A long way down
Disclaimer: This is entirely a product of my own imagination, and I make no profit from it. I do not own the lovely Tenth Doctor, unfortunately. Please do not sue.

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The Doctor scowled at the console of the Tardis, wishing that he could push it away and never have to look at it again. For once in his life, he was tired of being a Time Lord, tired of being who he was, tired of holding himself up to impossibly high expectations.

Why did he try to hold himself to such high standards? None of his contemporaries had when the other Time Lords had existed. They'd had a high opinion of themselves, true, but none of them had tried to be more than they were.

They had always stuck to a set of rigid rules, never letting themselves step outside of those boundaries. All of them had adhered strictly to what they had always been told they should do; they'd never wanted anything more than to be what they were told to be.

He'd always been different, the outsider, the rebel. He'd been an outcast, even at the Academy. He'd been the one who wouldn't stay within the boundaries, the Time Lord who always had to color outside the lines that had been drawn for him.

It wasn't that he'd thought he was too good for those restrictions, as several others had believed. He didn't have that kind of an oversized ego. It was true that he had a great deal of confidence in himself, but that was a necessary component of being a Time Lord.

No, it was that those restrictions had seemed wrong to him. He wasn't the kind of person who could sit back and watch worlds being decimated, or an entire species being victimized. He couldn't just watch and do nothing to help those victims.

But most of the other Time Lords hadn't agreed with him. They'd all thought that he put himself above them, that he thought he was better than them all in some way. It wasn't true, but they hadn't listened to him when he'd tried to exonerate himself.

They'd thought that he was putting himself up on some kind of pedestal. And they'd shunned him, taken it upon themselves to tear down that pedestal they thought he considered himself to reside on, bit by small bit.

Over the years, over the centuries, they'd made him turn away from them. Of course, they'd turned away from him first; the fact that he'd pushed them away was only a defense mechanism, one that he hadn't wanted to use. But he'd had no choice in the matter.

Maybe in some ways, they were right. He'd thought that he was on top of the world when he'd become a Time Lord, that he'd achieved the pinnacle of all his dreams. But he'd found out that it was a long way down when a person thought they were at the top.

If he was honest with himself, he had put himself above some of the other people he'd known at the Academy. But then again, he'd felt that he had a right to do so -- considering that, in his eyes, they hadn't been exemplary examples of Time Lords.

Had the Master been one of those people? The Doctor scowled, leaning over the console and trying to erase the image of the other man that had leaped into his mind -- not an image of the Master recently, but one from long ago, when they had both been much younger.

The Master had been his friend then -- or so he'd thought. They had both felt as though they were on a higher plane than the rest of the students at the Academy -- though of course, the Master's belief in that had turned into megalomania.

He himself was probably lucky that he hadn't gone that route. If he'd spent much more of his time with the Master, he could have, the Doctor told himself with an inward sigh, suppressing a shudder of revulsion at the mere thought of what he could have been like.

There was no telling what he could have become if he'd gone along with the Master; but fortunately, he hadn't chosen to give in to the dark side of his soul and go that route. He'd stopped himself in time. If he hadn't, he would have spiraled down into the same darkness that had claimed his one-time friend.

He'd let himself fall back from trying to access those heights that the Master had wanted to push him to -- and he was grateful that he had. It had been a long way down then -- and it would have been an even longer and more painful fall at a later date.

At first, he'd almost regretted that he had backed down -- until he'd realized that following the darker path wasn't who he was. He tried to convince himself that he was on that higher plane -- and if he'd done that for much longer, the fall would have been even harder.

Thank goodness he'd managed to turn away from that side of himself, the Doctor thought, with a grimace of distaste. Come to think of it, he hadn't liked the person he'd been on the way to becoming; it was a good thing that he'd summoned up that presence of mind.

What could have happened to him if he'd allowed himself to follow the Master's lead? He certainly wouldn't be here, living his life when all of the other Time Lords were gone. He'd probably have gone with them -- or he would have been ....

The Doctor's thoughts trailed off as a realization hit him, one that almost made him cry out. The thought had crossed his mind that he could have been the one to destroy Gallifrey and the Time Lords -- which was what the Master had always wanted to do.

He had been the one to bring about that destruction. He'd felt that he had no choice, but he couldn't deny that he'd taken it upon himself to be their executioner in the Time Wars. He'd given in to that dark side, seated himself upon that high pedestal.

And in doing so, he'd played right into the Master's hands.

During the Time Wars, he'd become just what the Master had always wanted him to be. He'd put himself above others -- and he hadn't realized that he would spend the rest of his life falling from the heights he'd raised himself to.

Closing his eyes tightly, the Doctor gripped the side of the console as though it was the only thing that kept him on his feet. He had been so adamant that he would never be like the Master; he would never be that arrogant, that self-serving, that .... unconscionable.

All right, so maybe he hadn't had a choice. Maybe if he hadn't been the one to destroy the rest of his race, someone else would have done it. And maybe if he hadn't done it, only chaos and destruction would have come from that decision.

But the fact remained that he had done it. He had climbed to that high place, and he'd been the one making that decision. He'd done what he'd felt needed to be done, but there would always be a part of him that searched for another way.

He would always feel the repercussions of the guilt from that part of his life. He would never be able to get away from that, no matter how far and how fast he might run. That guilt would follow him for as long as he had a memory -- as long as his soul existed.

He'd let himself rise to great heights, and there had been a part of him that had been comfortable there, that had felt he belonged there. But he would spend the rest of his life discovering just how hard it was to fall from those heights back to the ground.

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