Title: Never Too Late
By: angstytimelord
Pairing: gen
Fandom: Doctor Who
Rating: PG-13
Table: 6, 12_stories
Prompt: 4, Hopeless
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 sighed as he looked down at the viewscreen of the Tardis, looking at the planet there as it became smaller and smaller in the distance. He hadn't managed to achieve much on that world, though he'd wanted to do more.

There had been generations of slavery and intolerance on that planet, and he hadn't been able to make a dent in how those people lived. The problem was that even the ones who had been enslaved hadn't wanted things to change.

He couldn't help people who didn't want to be helped. And maybe this was the way their planet was meant to be, he told himself, closing his eyes. Maybe people there were supposed to be slaves for all of their lives, to never know the joy of freedom.

They seemed perfectly happy to live that way -- and who was he to insist that they shouldn't? He didn't have that right. One of the responsibilities of being a Time Lord was not to interfere in history; he had no place in making decisions for their world.

That didn't stop him from wanting to make those decisions -- at least when he thought that they were the right ones to make. But he had no right to do that, either. He couldn't impose his views on an entire planet.

There was a point where he had to take a step back -- or even a few steps back -- and stop trying to impose his beliefs on a world that wasn't his. And sometimes that was the hardest thing about being who and what he was.

Sometimes it felt so .... so hopeless, the Doctor told himself with a sigh. There were days when it felt as though nothing he did made a difference; as much as he wanted to help, he couldn't be everything to everyone.

He had thought that he'd given up trying to do that centuries ago -- but apparently not, he told himself with a wry smile. That was too much an intrinsic part of his personality; he wanted to help in any way that he could when he saw what he perceived as injustice.

He'd been accused of wanting to "play hero" before; even more times than he'd been called an actual hero by people who he had managed to help. Maybe he'd been trying to be a hero for so long that he'd confused the two.

All of the heroes in comic books on Earth had it so easy, he told himself, propping his chin in his hands and closing his eyes. They had villains to defeat who were, for the most part, clearly evil, viewed in stark black and white.

He, on the other hand, wasn't up against evil forces that were so easily pigeonholed. He couldn't say that one particular way of looking at an issue was right or wrong -- not when he was faced with all of the different planets and different races of the universe.

He'd asked himself more than once why he thought that he had a right to be a kind of policeman for the world, changing what he personally thought was wrong and trying to make it fit into his own black and white view of right and wrong. And he still didn't have an answer.

Maybe it was simply because that was the way his race had always looked at the rest of the world -- they had been content to merely watch, and not get involved. Time Lords had taken that attitude for centuries before he'd even been born.

But he couldn't do that. He couldn't merely sit back and watch while species destroyed each other, and galaxies tore themselves apart. He had to step in and try to help, to ally himself on the side of what he thought was good.

His idea of what was good for any given world might not be their idea of a good thing. He had to stop trying to impose his beliefs on other worlds; even though he tried his best not to, sometimes he couldn't help it.

He'd always thought of himself as a rebel, an outcast -- and the rest of his people had gone along with that image. He'd been viewed skeptically on Gallifrey; he'd been told that he should be more obedient of the "rules" that went along with being what he was.

The Doctor sighed again, running a hand through his hair. The problem was, he'd never been good at obeying rules of any kind. To him, rules had only been made to be broken -- or to be modified if they didn't quite seem to fit. It was part of the nature of being a rebel.

There had never been any problem with breaking rules in the early days of traveling the galaxy. It had all seemed so much simpler then -- and he'd seen and experienced so much less of the world. He was older -- though he wasn't sure if he was wiser.

He was wiser in some ways, obviously -- he'd seen much more of the galaxy, and he'd become more conversant with several different species. He'd experienced more than any one man really had a right to see, though that was more because of his long life than anything else.

Of course, that life wasn't spent as one person, really. Yes, he still retained the essence of who he was with every regeneration -- but that spark that had made every incarnation of himself different was gone, to be replaced by a new man.

The Doctor pushed those thoughts away, not wanting to let them intrude into his mind at the moment. That was another part of his existence that seemed hopeless at times -- the fact that he couldn't hold on to what he was comfortable with.

Not only his own body -- but the people in his life, too. He'd long ago learned to accept that the humans he invariably chose to be his companions would age and die, but that didn't make it any easier to lose those who he came to care about.

Sometimes everything about his life seemed so hopeless -- as though he was running in circles tying to accomplish something that he was never quite sure of. Just what did he want to do? That was a question he'd been asking himself for centuries.

The Doctor sighed again, straightening up and deliberately turning away from the viewscreen. The planet was becoming smaller and smaller, taking its place amongst all the other planets in this galaxy, almost unrecognizable from the others.

For just a moment, he had a wild urge to take the Tardis back to that planet, to insist that the slavery existing there was wrong, and to sacrifice himself to change things, if he had to. But he couldn't, of course. It was too late for him to do anything more there.

He hadn't managed to achieve anything on that planet. But there were other places in the galaxy where he could do what he thought was right -- and where those efforts would be appreciated. He'd certainly succeeded in that aim before.

Every situation wasn't hopeless. It was never too late; he'd lived long enough to know that. And there would be times when his interference was not only wanted, but needed. He might not be able to change history, but he could help it move along the paths that it was meant to tread.

His spirits lifted at the thought, a smile starting to form on his lips. Yes, there were other places in the galaxy where his efforts would be needed. They were out there, just waiting for him to discover them -- and do some good, even if only in a small way.

***