Title: Save Yourself
By: angstytimelord
Pairing: gen
Fandom: Doctor Who
Rating: R
Table: 1, 50ficlets
Prompt: 49, Save Me
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 held up a shaking hand in front of his face, studying it closely. Was it his imagination, or was it starting to look more like a claw than a hand? Something prehensile, cramped, something that belonged more rightly on an animal than a man.

He shuddered, letting the hand drop to his side. It had to be his imagination. Maybe he was just seeing things because he was so terrified of turning into something that was a parody of himself, something that he never wanted to become.

Evil. Like the Master.

He wasn't imagining the effect the other Time Lord had on him. Every time they squared off, even though he was determined to take precedence over the other man, something of the Master seeped into him, no matter how hard he tried to keep it out.

Was he going to become like that, the longer that he lived? Every time he was around the other man, was he going to absorb more of that corrosive personality?

To be fair, the Master wasn't inherently evil. He could have gone in an entirely different way, if the tests to become a Time Lord hadn't driven him over the edge and turned him into the megalomaniac that he'd become. It wasn't completely his fault.

The Doctor shook his head, closing his eyes and pushing those thoughts away from him. It didn't matter what the circumstances were that had caused the Master to become what it was. What mattered was the way things were.

They couldn't be changed. He couldn't turn back time to when they were young and make the other man any different from what he was. He couldn't tamper with time. Not like that.

No matter how much he might want to.

If the other Time Lord kept taunting him with all his failings, kept baiting him to cross a line that he'd long ago told himself he wouldn't violate, was it possible that he'd break down and do it? Did he have the inner strength not to step across the line?

The Doctor wasn't sure of that. Not at all. He could feel himself weakening each time they met, each time he looked into the eyes of the only other person in the galaxy who could remember his world, the only other person who truly knew who and what he was.

The worst part of it was that he had no companion, no one to watch his back, no one to pull him back from that darkness that kept beckoning to him.

There was no one to save him. No one to keep him from giving in to the dark side of himself.

He'd nearly done so more than once, but one companion or another had always been there for him to lean on for support. This time, there was no one -- and he knew, deep within himself, that he didn't have the reserves to draw from to keep himself from taking that irrevocable step.

He was slipping, losing his grip on what it meant to be what he was. He was starting to slide down that steep, slippery slope into the dark oblivion that had taken over the Master -- and there was no one to pull him back from it.

No one would be by his side to save him. No one would be able to stop the slow, inexorable slide downwards into a darkness that he didn't want to face.

Who was there to help him? The Doctor cast his mind back over all the people he'd known through the years, the centuries of his life. Most of them were gone. And the ones that remained -- no. He couldn't ask them to risk themselves for him.

He'd already asked too much of too many people. He had no right to force any kind of decision on them again. Too many of them would be far too willing to do too much for him, and he couldn't let them take the chance of entering that darkness with him.

The only one who could save him was .... himself. And he had no idea where to start. Or even if he could pull himself back from the edge of that abyss that was threatening to swallow him.

Or maybe he had already fallen, and just didn't realize it yet.

***