Title: How To Take A Fall
By: angstytimelord
Pairing: gen
Fandom: Doctor Who
Rating: PG-13
Table: Beta 1, challenge_the
Prompt: 10, Failure
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.

***

He hated that he always felt like such a failure lately. No matter how many achievements he'd had in his life, there were always other memories that overrode that, memories that brought back how many times he'd failed and let others down.

How many people had died because of him, or for him? That was a number too astronomical to count. He'd never let himself dwell on it before; if he did, then the guilt would overwhelm him.

They were gone, and he was still here. In a different body, of course, but still here nonetheless. And that was, in itself, a failure. He should have been able to save so many of those people -- or have stopped the situation that had killed them before it brought death.

But he hadn't been able to do that, for so many who had counted on him. Some of them had probably gone to their graves cursing him, though he would never know if that was true. He could only assume how they had felt, and hope that they didn't hate him.

Being unable to protect everyone around him was one of the ways he felt that he'd failed in the past. There were so many other things that he'd done -- or hadn't done, as the case might be -- that he would always feel guilty about.

The Doctor sighed, propping his chin on his hand and staring at the console of the Tardis, not really seeing what was there in front of him, but seeing the faces of people from his past, people who he hadn't been able to save.

Did they hate him for letting them down? He couldn't help but wonder about that, though it was one question among many that he'd never have an answer for.

The people who he hadn't been able to save were only one failure. There were so many others, things that he'd prefer not to think about. But at times like this, his mind clicked through every failure, every shortcoming, as though he was watching a film that wouldn't stop unwinding.

Most of the time, he managed to avert disasters. At least, he could usually make the inevitable have much less of an impact than it would if he hadn't been there. But there were also times when he could do nothing, only watch as it all fell apart around him.

Those were the times he hated the most, regretted the most. When, despite his best efforts, all he could do in the end was stand there helplessly and watch as everything he'd been trying to stop flashed by him, as though fate was laughing in his face.

Fortunately, that didn't happen often. He could console himself by pointing out that his successes had been much more frequent than his failures. No one could deny that; he'd saved the universe more times than he could begin to count.

Then why was it the failures that seemed to stick with him? Why did the times when his best hadn't been enough haunt him, popping into his mind when he least expected them to be there?

The Doctor allowed himself a wry smile at that thought. He didn't know why those memories came back to haunt him, and he doubted that he ever would. It was just one of the unfortunate effects of having too long a memory -- from an abnormally long life.

There was really nothing that he could do to push them away once they'd decided to take up even a temporary residence in his thoughts. He supposed that was his conscience forcing him to face all of those times past, to go over his failures and make him look closely at them.

Maybe he could avoid similar things happening in the future, if he looked to the mistakes he'd made in the past and tried to avoid them. They would stand him in good stead -- and they also salved his guilt and made him feel that so many hadn't perished in vain.

Of course, there was the greatest failure of all, the guilt that would always be with him until the day he died. The guilt that was never far from his mind, the failure that he would never be able to escape from no matter how far he ran from it.

The destruction of Gallifrey, the decimation of his race and his home planet. The destruction that he'd brought about, the decision that he'd had to make in order to preserve the rest of the universe. The hardest decision he'd ever had to make.

Would he have done the same thing if he was faced with making that choice again? He couldn't make himself face that question, couldn't give an honest answer.

There were times when he felt that he would have done the same thing over again, made the same decision, sacrificed his world and his people for the good of the universe. He hadn't had a choice then, and he wouldn't have one if he had to do it over again.

But if it were possible to go back and redo all of that, couldn't he change things so that the outcome could be different? Couldn't he manage to change things further in the past, things that had led up to the inevitability of the Time Wars and Gallifrey's destruction?

Yet another question that he would never have the answer to, the Doctor told himself, wishing that he could turn off his mind and stop thinking about the time of his life. It had nearly destroyed him -- and for a while, it had destroyed his faith in the world.

Not just his faith in other living beings, but his faith in the world in general -- and most of all, his faith in himself. He hadn't been able to like himself for a very long time; every time he'd looked in the mirror, he hadn't been able to see himself.

No, all he'd seen was the man who had destroyed his own planet, his own people. It didn't matter that he'd had no choice, that he'd been told the Time Wars were inevitable and that he would have to live with his own part in them.

All that had mattered then was that he had destroyed Gallifrey, that it had been his decision. That would always be his greatest failure, and the guilt he felt would always resonate within him. There was no way he could ever get away from it.

He could run to the end of the world, and it wouldn't be far enough. In fact, he had done that -- and he'd found out to his chagrin that he could never escape.

Oh, he'd learned to live with that guilt. He'd learned to accept the fact that it would always be with him, and he'd learned to push it to the back of his mind and pretend that it wasn't there. But it never went away. It never completely left him alone.

It was always there, waiting to jump out at him with teeth and claws extended, ready to rend him to pieces with its talons. And he always gave himself up to it, letting it slap him this way and that, not resisting, giving in to the guilt and the inevitable pain it caused him.

That was the only way to atone for what he'd done. And he knew that he'd spend the rest of his life in atonement, though it wouldn't really do any good. The only one who could truly forgive him was himself -- and he'd never be able to do that.

Of all the failures he had to face up to in his long life, the death of his race and of his planet was by far the worst one. Forgiving himself for that would be utterly impossible -- he was sure of that. Living with the guilt was the worst punishment that he could suffer.

He would have to continue to live with it, until he either broke under the weight of his own guilt, or he found a way to assuage his conscience and wash that guilt away.

He'd certainly learned how to take a fall, to roll away from the punches of his conscience. It looked as though he'd continue to do that, with no reprieve in sight.

Sighing, the Doctor pushed himself away from the console, rubbing a hand over his face. He had to decide where he would go next; it didn't matter where. Just a place that would push these thoughts out of his mind, if only for a little while.

***