Title: Back Where You Started
By: angstytimelord
Pairing: gen
Fandom: Doctor Who
Rating: PG
Table: 1, 50ficlets
Prompt: 44, Leave
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.

***


They always left. Everyone he loved. They left him without a second glance.

The Doctor turned over in bed, closing his eyes and burying his face in the pillow. He knew that he shouldn't focus on these melancholy thoughts; the people who'd left him usually had good reasons for doing so, and he didn't blame them.

After all, they'd had lives before they'd become his companions. They'd had families, places and people they loved that were familiar to them. They'd had responsibilities in the worlds they'd come from. He couldn't expect them to leave all that for him.

But he had, in so many ways. He'd always hoped that this time, this particular person would be the one who'd stay with him.

And he was always disappointed. Because people would invariably choose to go back to their lives once they found out that he couldn't spend the rest of his life with them. They wnted a commitment that he would never be able to give.

It wasn't that he didn't care enough about them. But given his inordinately long life span, there was no way he could give them what they asked for. As much as he wanted to, it just wasn't possible -- and it broke his hearts to tell them so.

He should be used to being left and having his own hearts broken by now, shouldn't he? But somehow, it never seemed to get any easier.

Every time someone walked away from him, it always hurt just as much as the first time had. He supposed it always would, even with companions who hadn't been as dear to him as some others had. The ache would always be there.

And he would be left alone again. Back at the same place he'd started.

Well, not exactly the same. There would be one more crack in the surface of his hearts, one more place where hurt could seep in. He could never fully protect himself from that, no matter how much he tried. He'd always feel that pain.

His companions didn't mean to abandon him. He knew that they would always remember the time they'd had with him, always carry their experiences in their hearts. He'd never be forgotten, not as long as all of them had fond memories of the time they'd spent with him.

He was really being selfish to expect companions, especially humans, to stay with him, the Doctor scolded himself, not for the first time. They simply weren't made that way.

He'd accepted that long ago, the knowledge that humans had their own lives and their own way to make in the world. He'd even told himself, many times over, that he wasn't going to take on any mroe human companions. It was too hard when they left.

Or were made to leave, as the case may be. That was always a possibility, too.

Leaving was hard on them as well. He knew that. Many of them had been torn between leaving and staying -- it was a difficult choice. But they'd always made that choice in the end -- and he'd been the one to wave goodbye.

Would he do the same, if he was in their place? He couldn't really say. Maybe he would, but then, he didn't know what it was like to be human, to have that "normal" life to return to.

He'd always been what he was, even before he'd reached adulthood. He'd always been a Time Lord, and even when he was a child, he'd always known that it was what he wanted to be. And he wouldn't change himself, not for any reason.

Loneliness was one of the drawbacks of being what he was. He'd long ago accepted that he would have to live with it, and he'd made that choice. But that didn't make it any easier to say goodbye to people he cared for.

It never would. He'd lived long enough to know that by now.

He turned over onto his back, staring up at the ceiling with wide eyes. Sleeplessness had hold of him now; as long as he was thinking along these lines, he would never find the blessed slumber that he needed to take his mind off his troubles.

Ah, well, he thought as he threw back the covers and sat up, maybe he could find somewhere interesting to go if he wandered into the control room. He might be alone, but there were so many places in the universe that he could explore on his own.

And, he thought with a smile spreading over his features, maybe he'd find a companion there. Someone who wouldn't leave.

It was always worth a try, wasn't it? After all, he couldn't give up hope.

All right, so maybe he was being optimistic, he told himself as he stood up and reached for his dressing gown. Even if people leaving him was a part of his life, so was finding them -- and that was always an exciting adventure that he looked forward to.

***