Title: Changes
By: angstytimelord
Pairing: gen
Fandom: Doctor Who
Rating: PG-13
Table: 1, 50ficlets
Prompt: 40, Past
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.

***

There was no need to think about the past. It was over and done with, and even though he was a Time Lord, he couldn't bring it back. Nor would he want to, really. He didn't want to relive what he'd already done, even the most pleasant of times.

The Doctor sighed, leaning back in his chair and putting his feet up on the console of the Tardis. He did have the power to go back, of course. But what good would that do? He didn't want to change things; he could, but that wouldn't work out well in the end.

He'd seen the folly of doing that, and he wasn't going to try it again. Even if he wasn't happy, there was always the possibility that arranging a different outcome would only make things worse.

No, he was better off to go on the way he was. Though he had no companion at the moment and his loneliness was starting to gnaw at him as it always did, going back wouldn't solve anything. It would only be a stopgap, a temporary measure.

Because, even though he would like to think that the future would be rosy if he could change the way it was looking now, that wasn't always the case. There were so many different possibilities, and he had no right to tamper with fate.

Still .... he closed his eyes, thinking back over the past months. It would be nice to have a new companion. He'd sworn that he wasn't going to travel with anyone again, but there were times when the ache of loneliness was overwhelming.

He didn't want to risk losing any more people that he was close to. It had happened all too often in the past, and that hurt even more than being lonely.

Of course, he hadn't been in love with any of them. That hadn't been his way; his companions had always been people that he cared for as friends, never lovers. There was always the chance that could happen in the future, but he'd made sure to stay well away from the chance to this point.

Besides, he didn't want a lover. Oh, it would be lovely to have someone to care for in that way -- but unless it was absolutely right and there was an attraction he couldn't deny, he wasn't going to go that route. Not again.

He'd done it once, and he'd regretted it ever since. There were no regrets for the emotions he'd had, or the time that the two of them had spent together -- only regrets that the one man he'd ever loved had walked away from him and wouldn't return.

At least they had a friendship, he reminded himself. Though that, too, had changed over time -- but that sort of change was inevitable, he supposed.

That was a part of the past that he didn't want to think about. Like everything else, it, too, had its day, and it was now over and done. It was a part of what had made him who he was, and he couldn't deny it, but thinking about it was painful.

It wasn't only his so-called "romantic" past that occupied his thoughts lately, but the past that he had with the Master. Hardly romantic, that. Not even friendly, not for centuries. Not since the Master had begun to sink deeper and deeper into madness -- and evil.

He couldn't help but recoil from that. How could he have been friends with someone who had such a capacity for evil in their soul? He'd asked himself that so many times over the long centuries, and he'd never had an answer for the question.

He probably never would. But that was the nature of his relationship with the Master -- parrying and feinting, always questioning and rarely receiving answers.

That would always be one of his greatest regrets, too -- not seeing in time that the Master had that capacity within him, and trying to control it. Maybe if he'd been able to keep the other man from undergoing the tests to become a Time Lord ....

No. He couldn't blame himself for the Master's descent into madness. He'd been a child at the time -- they had both been children -- and he couldn't have known how the tests would affect his friend. He could only be sorrowful that the friendship was long gone.

That had ended centuries ago, on Gallifrey, before they had both begun to wander in time and space. He'd tracked the Master down so many times since then, thinking that he was defeated and imprisoned and that was an end to it.

But the other man always seemed to escape, to thumb his nose at those who sought to turn him to the side of good and make more mischief in the universe. And he was always here to stop that -- in any way he could.

The Doctor swung his long legs down from the console, standing up and stretching his lean body. There was no use thinking about the past. It always changed into the present.

It was there, standing inexorable and sometimes forbidding in his life. He'd made mistakes, and he had regrets. Anyone who had lived as long as he had inevitably did. But he could live with them. He had to. He had no choice.

He couldn't keep looking back at those regrets, he told himself firmly as he bent over the console, a small smile starting to form on his lips. It was time to look towards the future -- a future that he was sure would be just as interesting and adventurous as his past had been.

***