Title: In Joy and Sorrow
By: angstytimelord
Pairing: gen
Fandom: Doctor Who
Rating: PG-13
Table: 50ficlets
Prompt: 6, Mourn
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 stood at the door of the Tardis, looking up at the night sky with the myriad of stars winking in the velvety darkness. It was a beautiful sight, even if he could no longer see his home planet out there amongst the stars.

He was so familiar with the array of pinpricks in that velvet indigo night. He knew all of those stars; he'd spent time on most of them. They were all beautiful in their own way, even the places that he hadn't been able to spend much time on.

The undeveloped planets that were wild and rustic even had their own kind of beauty, amidst all the dangers that they inherently carried. Every place had its own special pull for him.

But Gallifrey .... ah, there would never be another place like that. It was his home, the place where he'd spent his formative years and most of his life. A part of him had thought that it would always be there, patiently waiting for him to return.

The Time Wars had changed all that. Of course, they'd been going on for centuries, but it had never occurred to him that Gallifrey would be one of the many casualties. He'd never thought for a moment that the Wars would cause him to lose his home for good.

He had to blink back tears at the thought; it was such a waste. A planet full of cultured, educated people, some of whom had been very close to him. People who hadn't deserved to die in the way that they had, people who should still be here.

And they'd perished by his own hand. He had been the one to destroy his home. He'd had no choice, but that didn't make the fact any easier to deal with.

It had happened a while ago; he hadn't even been in this body when the final Time War had taken place and Gallifrey had vanished from existence. He wasn't the same man he'd been then; he'd had years of experiences since that period of his life had ended.

But his mind was still the same. He still retained every experience from his past -- and all of the joys and sorrows that went along with those experiences. They all stayed with him -- but none cut into him the way that the destruction of Gallifrey did.

How long would he mourn for Gallifrey? He'd been told innumerable times that time could heal all wounds, but that wasn't a statement he believed. From what he'd seen, time only made the ache grow deeper, and made memories all the more poignant.

At first, the pain had threatened to destroy him. For so long, he'd been merely a shell of himself, only existing rather than living.

Fortunately, he'd come to the conclusion that he couldn't go on in that manner. It interfered with his effectiveness as a Time Lord; he couldn't be the protector of the galaxy if he wasn't operating at the most efficient level.

That attitude was demeaning himself to the level of a machine, in some ways. He'd acknowledged that even as the thoughts had been going through his mind. But he'd had to have that detached feeling for a while, to deal with what had taken place.

And it had worked. He'd been able to put the Time Wars in the past, to become something of himself again. Now that he was in this body, he'd been able to put that terrible time behind him, to live in the present rather than drown himself in the sorrows of the past.

But that time would always remain with him. He would never completely eradicate it from his thoughts -- and he would never cease to mourn for what he had lost.

The Doctor sighed, his eyes searching the stars. That was what life was all about, wasn't it? There was no way for him to know the ultimate joys of life unless he also experienced the piercing sorrows that would inevitably come along with it.

In joy and sorrow, his life flowed along a path that he wasn't sure was predetermined or not. But even if it was, he was content to follow that path and see where it would take him. He had no need to look at the future to find out what it would bring him.

The Time Wars had altered the course of his life in some ways, but they couldn't destroy him. Even though he would always carry that guilt with him, he didn't have to let it cripple him. He could still be who and what he was, and carry out whatever he had to do.

He would probably never be at complete peace with himself, but at least he could be fairly sure that this was that path that his life had been meant to take.

Sighing, the Doctor turned to go back into the Tardis, then looked up at the velvet blanket of the sky one last time. He found his eyes searching for a planet that was no longer there, the familiar sense of mourning settling onto his hearts as he quietly closed the door of his ship.

***