Title: The World I Know
By: angstytimelord
Pairing: past Jack/Doctor
Fandom: Doctor Who
Rating: R
Table: Buffet 2, fc_smorgasbord
Prompt: 82, Affected
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 trudged along the sidewalk in London, not looking up as someone bumped into his shoulder, passing by him with a muttered oath. He didn't want to start any trouble with a human he didn't know, and he had other things on his mind at the moment.

He'd been thinking about some things that most of his former companions had said to him at one time or another, wondering if they still held true. He'd been told that he held his feelings in too much, and perhaps that was why the question had arisen so many times.

Why was it that people had the tendency to think he wasn't affected by some of the things he'd seen in his life? Even if he didn't have some sort of emotional breakdown, or even much of a reaction at the time, that didn't mean he didn't care or wasn't deeply affected.

He'd learned a very long time ago that it was best to hide his emotions; if his enemies saw that he had deep feelings about the loss of life, or anything else that had an effect on him, they could easily use that weakness against him.

Were his emotions a weakness? He didn't think so; if he didn't have emotions, then he would be a step closer to being like a Cyberman, and he couldn't help but shudder in repugnance at that thought. His emotions were part of what made him who he was.

Of course, they were much more pronounced in this body than they'd ever been in any other, even in his last one. He still hadn't learned how to completely hide them; his earlier incarnations had been much better at that then he was.

Was he becoming more emotional as he got older? The Doctor turned that thought over in his mind, musing as he walked along. It was certainly possible; but then, as time went on, he saw so many more things that practically demanded an emotional reaction.

Would his earlier selves have been capable of feeling as deeply as he did? He couldn't be sure of that; he'd like to be able to answer that question with an unequivocal yes, but he couldn't do that. He wasn't sure that he remembered much of what he was like in his earliest bodies.

It wasn't that he'd forgotten what he was like back then; it was simply that he'd done and said some things that he was ashamed of now, things that might have seemed cold or callous in some ways. But he couldn't change that; he could only move forward.

He had been affected by some of the things he'd seen when he first became a Time Lord; it had just been much harder for him to show his emotions then. He'd tried to adhere to at least that much of his Gallifreyan ancestry, distancing himself when he could.

Maybe he'd become all too good at doing that at some point in his life. He hated to admit that; he hated to feel that he had turned his back on his emotions, trying to subdue them simply because the rest of his race insisted that it was the right thing to do.

After all, hadn't he always been a renegade, a rebel? He'd never buckled under and given in to the "rules" that others had tried to impose upon him -- well, other than certain rules that he had no choice but to follow, for the safety of the universe as well as his own.

How could anyone think that he was never affected by some of the needless destruction he'd seen in the universe? Even if he'd managed to look at that devastation of planets, the decimation of races, with seeming equanimity, inside he had been crying for them.

Humans in particular seemed to have a hard time understanding why he had kept a stoic expression in the face of death and destruction. They apparently thought that he should have an emotional breakdown each time that he wasn't able to bring about some miracle.

A Time Lord wasn't omnipotent. He'd tried to explain that to so many people -- and some of them simply hadn't been able to fathom that. They had somehow believed, even after living with him on the Tardis and knowing him as a friend, that he could do anything, save anyone.

He couldn't. The Doctor sighed, watching his feet move along the sidewalk, one in front of the other. He had never been able to do as much as he wanted to. So he'd learned to accept his failings -- and to hide the inner bleeding of his hearts when his best wasn't enough.

He was terribly affected by all the deaths in his life. Not every one of them, of course -- some of those being hadn't been people he knew well enough to be personally affected by their passing, though they didn't leave him completely unaffected.

But he felt a profound sadness over each and every death -- especially the ones that he felt could have been avoided if only he'd done things differently. He had been told many times that he couldn't think that way, that he always did his best in any given situation.

His best wasn't always good enough. Yes, there were many times when he'd managed to avert disaster of some kind -- but there were also times when he hadn't been able to save everyone. There were days when people died, and those were the days he remembered.

He'd told Donna once that it was a good day when no one died, and he'd meant that. The good days stayed with him; they gave him a feeling of accomplishment, helped him to believe that he did some good in the world and that he was on the right path.

Those days when people did die, though .... those days stayed with him even longer. They cut into his hearts and soul with the sharpness of a well-honed knife; they let him know that there were times when he couldn't do all that he wanted, when he couldn't save everyone.

That was what affected him more than anything else. The knowledge that he wasn't the all-powerful, omnipotent being that so many people wanted him to be. The knowledge that he couldn't always save everyone, no matter how hard he tried.

If only he could save everyone who needed to be saved; if only he could live up to what some of his companions -- and some of the people who had looked to him for their salvation -- expected him to be. If only he could be what they wanted and needed.

But he couldn't. He was a Time Lord, yes; but in the end, he was only a man. A man with a very long life, in different bodies, a man who saw injustices in the universe and tried to make them right if he could. A man who both succeeded and failed.

He had to learn to accept that. And he had to learn to let those emotions out; if he kept them inside, they would eventually eat away at him until there was nothing left. And if they did that for long enough, he might get to the point where he wasn't affected any more.

That was the last thing he wanted. The Doctor shuddered at the thought; he didn't want to become a person who could look on death and destruction and not feel horror. He didn't wanted to lose that spark of humanity that burned within him.

If he lost that, then he would take several steps closer to being the unfeeling automaton. That would never be who he was; he would willingly end his existence before he would let himself become so cold that he wasn't affected by the world he knew.

He wouldn't lose that part of himself, the Doctor vowed, turning to retrace his steps back to the Tardis. He hadn't yet, not in over 900 years. And if he was still affected by the rest of the world after all the time, it was a fair bet that he always would be.

***