Title: Ashes To Ashes
By: angstytimelord
Pairing: gen
Fandom: Doctor Who
Rating: PG-13
Table: 1, 50ficlets
Prompt: 39, Ashes
Disclaimer: This is entirely a product of my own imagination, and I make no profit from it. I do not own the Tenth Doctor. Please do not sue.

***

The Doctor closed his eyes, raising a hand to his aching head. He hated waking like this, in a cold sweat, memories that he'd rather not think about crowding into his mind. He got little enough rest lately as it was, without having to deal with this.

But those memories wouldn't leave him alone; they insisted on battering at his mind even when he was trying to find some comfort in the oblivion of sleep. No matter what he did, they wouldn't let him be, rending and tearing at him until he thought he'd go mad.

He should have been able to make peace with this by now, he told himself wearily, sitting up in bed and resting his chin on his knees. Goodness knows he'd tried.

Could he ever do that? Could he ever accept the fact that he'd been the architect of doom for his own people, his home planet? Could he ever come to terms with being the person who'd reduced his beloved Gallifrey to dust, to nothingness?

He'd thought that he could, thought that the destruction of his home planet and all of his race was inevitable when he'd made that choice. It was better to sacrifice his home, his people, than to let the entire universe cease to exist.

For some reason, he couldn't get those events out of his mind. They kept coming back to him, replaying themselves over and over in his brain with crystal-clear precision. And it was even worse when he was asleep, the memories seeming even brighter and larger than life.

The pain hadn't dimmed with time. He could still remember the agony of knowing that Gallifrey was gone, as though it had just happened moments before.

The Doctor closed his eyes, clamping his teeth down on a moan that he didn't want to utter. It was no use crying over what had already been done; it wasn't something that he could go back and change. Gallifrey was gone forever.

Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, as humans would say.

And he had been the cause of that. He had been the destroyer of his home, his people. Nothing could ever change that, either. He would bear the guilt for the rest of his life, however long it might last.

He'd had no choice. He knew that. He'd told himself that every day since the Time Wars; the choice he'd been given wasn't a choice at all. He knew that the other Time Lords would agree with him; they would have urged him to do exactly what he'd done.

But that didn't assuage the guilt he would always feel in his hearts, in his soul. Knowing that he'd done what he had to didn't make the knowledge of it rest any easier.

It didn't matter if his race felt that they were expendable. For him, no one was. It didn't matter if they were Gallifreyan, human, or some other race from a far-off planet that he'd never heard of before. Taking life wasn't something he enjoyed doing.

He'd given so many others a chance. Told them to make peace, to never invade again. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't. It was always a toss-up as to whether he'd made the species in question wary enough of him to obey him.

Usually, it worked. There had been very few times when he'd had reason to regret giving anyone a second chance.

Of course, he'd changed a great deal in the years that he'd been alive, in all of the different bodies he'd had. Now, he'd learned the folly of giving too many chances. It wasn't something that he was prepared to do as easily as he had in the past.

But still .... he was fundamentally against taking life. He wouldn't do it again, not if it was at all avoidable. He didn't need more guilt piled on what he already carried.

The Doctor blinked, staring wide-eyed up into the darkness. It was almost as though he could still see the fragments that were all that remained of Gallifrey, the dust that his home had become. Just as he could almost see the guilt that corroded his soul.

A guilt that would never go away. It would follow him until the end of his days.

He sighed again, laying back on his bed and staring up at the ceiling. It would be a long time before sleep came, he was sure of it. And on this night, as on so many others, he couldn't help but wonder if he would ever be able to sleep again.

***