Title: Weight of the World
By: angstytimelord
Pairing: gen
Fandom: Doctor Who
Rating: PG-13
Table: 30_losses
Prompt: 19A, Harsh Revelation
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.

***

It always took him far too long to realize things, and to accept them.

The Doctor turned over in bed, burying his face against his pillow. It was childish of him to be huddled in bed on the Tardis, feeling as though he wanted to hide from the world because of something he should have known a long time ago.

He'd told himself when he was young that he would be willing to make any sacrifice to be a Time Lord. This was all he'd ever wanted to do, and he should be more than happy that he'd managed to achieve that goal.

So many others hadn't. The Master had wanted this too -- and all of Gallifrey, as well as several other galaxies, knew what he'd turned into.

He had survived the tests, come out of them relatively unscathed. His mind hadn't been unsettled; he'd become what he wanted to be almost as easily as breathing. And he'd been happy with it, at least for a while.

For a very long while, really. He hadn't found anything in his life that he'd desperately wanted to change through his first several regenerations. He might not have been perfectly happy, but he had been able to accept his life philosophically.

And he'd been happy with everything he'd had, everything he'd achieved. There was no reason not to be. He had everything he thought he'd wanted.

But now .... so much had changed in this body. So much that he wanted had seemed so far out of reach -- and for so long now, the sacrifices had started to seem that they weren't worth it. This was all too much to ask of him.

He gave up so much. So much that everyone else in the universe seemed to have.

No one could stay with him -- at least, no one who he truly cared about. He was doomed to be alone, for all eternity. Even when he had a companion, there was always the thought in the back of his mind that one day they, like all the others, would leave.

Of course, he knew that it was horribly selfish of him to think that way. He had no right to expect anyone to give up their lives for him. He was lucky that they wanted to travel with him for a while, that they were willing to give him what they did.

It all came down to the same thing in the end, didn't it? At least, with most of them. They began to want what he couldn't give, and it all fell apart.

He didn't blame them for leaving. Honestly, he didn't. His life wasn't something that a human would find it easy to adapt to; the ones who did were the ones who were the most reluctant to stay. And he had to give them that freedom of choice.

That didn't make it hurt any less when they turned their backs on him and walked away.

Oh, this was ridiculous, lying here feeling sorry for himself. With a sigh, the Doctor turned over onto his back, staring wide-eyed up at the ceiling in the darkness.

What had he expected? He'd known when he'd chosen this life that there would be sacrifices, and that he wouldn't always be happy. He'd known that he would spend a great deal of his time alone. He'd been warned of all that before he'd gone through the testing.

But even though he'd been duly warned of what this life would be like, he'd hardly have been able to expect it before he'd experienced it for himself. No one could. When a child was told something, it took a while for the reality to sink in.

It didn't matter that people had told him over and over again of the sacrifices, the responsibility, the duty. It hadn't seemed to matter.

And in some ways, it still didn't. If he was brutally honest with himself, he wouldn't give up what he was. He couldn't. This was in his blood; it was a part of him, and he could no longer give up being a Time Lord than he could stop being Gallifreyan.

The idea that he could ever be anything else was preposterous.

The idea that he would ever want to throw this away was ludicrous. Hadn't he worked for this since he was a child? In spite of the fact that he wasn't always happy, wasn't this worth all of the centuries of sacrifice that he'd given it?

He didn't want to answer that; he wasn't sure that he'd be able to give himself the answer that he needed to hear at the moment.

But it was still a harsh revelation to realize that by achieving his hearts' desire, he'd doomed himself to a lifetime -- no, several lifetimes, considering what he was -- of being alone.

Would he have chosen to walk away from his childhood dream if he'd known how utterly lonely he would be? Would he have given all of this up, and perished with the rest of Gallifrey? Or would that choice of his to not become what he was have ensured the safety of his planet?

Another question that he didn't want to know the answer to.

Or did he? the Doctor wondered. Would he willingly walk away from this if he knew that it would save his planet, and his people? Could he make that much of a sacrifice? That was a hard question to ask himself, but it was one that he couldn't hold back.

The problem was that he didn't have an answer for it. He couldn't ask himself whether he would make that choice if he had the chance; it was too hard a question for him to answer.

Yet another revelation for him about who he really was, he thought wryly, resisting the urge to pull the covers over his head, as though he could hide himself from the world. That he was too afraid to know the answers to the really hard questions.

There were too many things about himself that he didn't want to know. He'd rather be in the dark about those aspects of who he was; and he didn't want to know if his decisions in the past could have affected not only his future, but that of the entire world.

That was one hell of a weight to carry on his shoulders for the rest of his life.

The Doctor sighed and turned over onto his side, closing his eyes and resolutely pushing all of the troubling thoughts as far away as he could. He'd have to carry the weight of the world. It was just one more of the sacrifices he'd agreed to make to be what he was.

He just hoped that he'd never have the chance to go back and make a different choice. Because he wasn't at all sure of what the outcome might be if he did.

***