Title: Everybody Wins
By: angstytimelord
Pairing: gen
Fandom: Doctor Who
Rating: PG-13
Table: 5_prompts, Written in the Stars challenge
Prompt: E1, You would prefer a win-win situation
Disclaimer: This is entirely a product of my own imagination, and I make no profit from it. I do not own the lovely Tenth Doctor, unfortunately. Please do not sue.

***

The Doctor sighed as he closed the photo album he'd been looking at; he really didn't need to see those pictures of past times to have the memories come back, crystal-clear, as though the events they portrayed had happened only yesterday.

It was one of the curses of being a Time Lord, as well as a blessing, he thought wryly. He had such a long life -- and a long memory to go along with it. He could remember everything that had happened in his life, and the memories never faded, never grew old.

Humans had a different kind of memory, he reflected as he leaned back, resting his head against the soft couch cushion and gazing up at the ceiling of the Tardis' library. Their memories were more suited to their short life spans; they faded quickly.

But his memory encompassed every situation he'd ever been in, every place he'd ever been, every person he had had ever known. It was always there to remind him of every success he'd ever had -- and of every single mistake he had ever made.

It was those mistakes that weighed on him the most; they were what he always seemed to focus on, more than the successes. He wished that he could look at those mistakes in a more positive light, as they had taught him some valuable lessons -- but he couldn't.

The mistakes were what stayed with him the longest; the regrets that he couldn't have saved more people, found some kind of win-win situation where no one died, where everyone survived and lived on into the future that they were meant to have.

Every situation couldn't be a win-win one, of course. He knew that. Ideally, that was what he wanted, but he was realistic enough to know that not everything ended up that way. In fact, more than likely, there would be a winning side -- and a losing one.

He had been on both sides, and he had to admit that he by far preferred to be on the winning one. But that didn't make him think any less longingly of a situation where both sides won, where no one had to be hurt and there was no loss of life -- or loss of anything else.

If only every situation that he found himself in could work out like that, then he would be a much happier person -- and the world would be a better place, the Doctor thought with a sigh. But unfortunately, most of his enemies didn't think in the same way.

He preferred to negotiate, to leave things in a better place than he'd found them in. But negotiation with a species like the Daleks, or the Cybermen, was impossible. And the Vashta Nerada? He almost snorted at the thought. Their method was to kill first -- and not think.

None of his most ancient enemies had any compulsion about taking life wherever they found it. If only there was some way to get through to them, to make them understand that life, all life, was more precious than any other commodity in the universe .....

But that wasn't ever going to happen. The Daleks and Cybermen both thought that their particular form of life was the only one worth harboring; there were many other species in the universe that thought the same, but at least they weren't indiscriminate killers.

Most of the time, negotiating with other species was possible; he'd done it before, and he'd seen others do it successfully, as well. But there couldn't always be a win-win situation, as much as he would prefer that. He had seen negotiations turn sour all too soon.

Why was it that most species found it so impossible to solve conflicts with negotiation, and instead felt that they had to resort to violence? It was one of the things that he deplored about humans, even though he knew that he carried that tendency in his own bloodlines.

He was half-human through his mother; the need to resort to violence instead of peaceful negotiation, which was a human characteristic, was part of him. Of course, it wasn't only humans who fell victim to that need; many other species had it, as well, and in far more vast proportions.

It was sad that humans seemed to be one of the species that most fell prey to that kind of attitude, the Doctor thought sadly. How many people could have been saved over the centuries if humans hadn't felt that they had to resort to war, rather than try to resolve situations peacefully?

That was water under the bridge; he couldn't change the past, though there were times when he was more tempted than he should have been to take a trip back to a former time and change things for the better. But interfering in history wasn't something he wanted to do.

The times when he'd mistakenly tried to do that, in order to turn a bad situation into what he would have considered a win-win one all around, he'd discovered that altering history could have more far-reaching consequences that he would ever have imagined.

It wasn't something he would ever try to do again. Even if it meant the destruction of far too many people for his liking, he knew that he had to leave the past well enough alone -- even if he could affect a few outcomes in some small way.

There was no way that every situation he found himself in could have a good outcome. Those times when it seemed that everyone could be on the winning side were few and far between; he'd found that out through bitter experience, and a lot of heartache.

If only everybody could win all of the time, then the world would be a much better place -- certainly, it would be a much happier one. But the Doctor knew well enough that such things didn't happen; there was rarely a win-win situation in the world he inhabited.

He would simply have to keep on as best he could, hoping that any given situation that he went into would be a win-win one -- but if it wasn't, then he couldn't blame himself. He had to remember that not everything could always work out well for all parties concerned.

What a perfect world it would be if every situation always worked out best for all concerned, the Doctor thought wryly. No, not a perfect world -- nothing in this world would ever be completely perfect. Something would always manage to throw a spanner in the works.

It was far better for him not to look back at the past and think about all of the mistakes he'd made in any given situation, the Doctor told himself, getting up to replace the photo album back on the shelf. Better to look towards the future -- and hope that he didn't make the same mistakes again.

***