Title: Long Time Coming
By: angstytimelord
Pairing: gen
Fandom: Doctor Who
Rating: PG-13
Table: 1, 50ficlets
Prompt: 2, Pain
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.

***

How many different kinds of pain could there be? the Doctor mused, closing his eyes and curling up under the covers of his bed. It seemed that he was intimately acquainted with all on them, on a much more frequent basis than he wanted to be.

He shifted uncomfortably under the covers, sighing and pulling them up to his chin. The last encounter with the Master had been singularly unpleasant, and he was still recovering from it, though his resilient body was healing quickly.

Thank goodness for that, he told himself dryly, experimentally stretching out his lean body under the covers and regretting it immediately. A twinge of pain shot through his abdomen, making him wish that he'd kept still.

He settled down beneath the cool sheets, consciously trying to make himself relax. He should try his best to go to sleep; that was always a healing factor when he was in pain.

But sleep eluded him. The memory of what he'd been through so recently kept swirling around in his mind; the Master had been more than usually cruel, the words he'd used to taunt the Time Lord seeming more menacing than ever.

He wasn't afraid of the Master. No, facing the other man held no fears for him, other than the usual trepidation about what might be done to him. But that was something he could live with; he'd lived through it many times before, and he had no doubt he'd live through it again in the future.

The two of them had faced off too many times for him to feel any kind of numbing fear about it. No, what got to him was the pain that he knew he would suffer -- not only the physical pain that the Master loved to mete out to him, but the emotional pain as well.

That was the Master's greatest stock-in-trade, the upper hand that he always held over the Doctor. That villain knew how to get to him through words, more than in any other way.

How was it that the Master could always think of the right thing to say that would make him want to break down? The other man couldn't know him that well. They'd grown so far apart from the friendship they'd shared as children that they were practically strangers.

They'd become completely different people in the intervening centuries since they had been friends, laughing and playing together. The tests to become a Time Lord had changed all that -- making the Doctor what he'd always wanted to be, and robbing his closest friend of his sanity.

That had been a terrible pain to suffer in itself, seeing someone he cared for go down such a long and lonely path. It still made him ache to know that he couldn't reverse what had happened, that he couldn't bring back the friend he'd known when he was young.

But that was the way of life, wasn't it? he asked himself with a sigh. Even a Time Lord couldn't change what was destined to be, no matter how much he might want to.

What he would give to change things between them -- especially since they were now the last of their kind in the galaxy. Not only the last Time Lords, but the last of their race. The only Gallifreyans left in the world.

There was no one else left who could remember what Gallifrey had been like, no one else who could remember their home planet with fondness. The Master was the only person who could share that -- but the idea of the two of them sharing anything was ludicrous.

If only they could go back to the days when they'd been children; if only they could recapture that friendship that had existed between them then. If only things had been different, then how much pain he would have been spared.

It was useless to hope for that. Life was as it was; he couldn't change it. The past was over and done, and he was living in the here and now.

There was no use wishing that he could have been spared further pain; this was something that had been destined to be, long before he was born. His rivalry with the Master was part of the great fabric of the universe, and wishing it nonexistent was useless.

He'd learned to endure the pain that the Master inflicted on him, both physical and otherwise; he'd keep doing that. He had no other choice. This was what he'd chosen to be, and he had to take the downsides that came with it, as well as the perks.

The Doctor pulled the covers up over his shoulders, resolutely closing his eyes and burrowing into the pillows. If he was lucky, sleep would come sooner or later, and he'd be able to forget the aches and pains of his body -- as well as those that made a home in his hearts.

Maybe one day he'd learn to close the door on that pain, to hold it at a distance and not let it get to him. But, he reflected as he drifted off to sleep, that day would probably be a long time in coming.

***