Title: Nowhere Left To Hide
By: angstytimelord
Pairing: gen
Fandom: Doctor Who
Rating: PG-13
Table: VRD challenge - Orange, 5_prompts
Prompt: Saffron-colored robes
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.

***

Running. He'd spent so much of his life running.

But he couldn't run from everything, could he? the Doctor asked himself, pulling his knees up to his chest and resting his chin on them as he looked out over the village that was spread out below him from his vantage point high atop a hill.

No matter how far he ran, how far he thought he'd gone, the past would always come back to haunt him. He could escape the places he was running from; he never had to go back to them. But he couldn't escape the memories that any of them would evoke.

Even the places that no longer existed -- like his beloved Gallifrey -- he could no longer go back to. He'd spent so much time running away from his home, swearing that he never wanted to go back, that he didn't belong there -- but in the end, he missed it terribly.

How many times had he told himself that he didn't belong on Gallifrey, that he wasn't like the rest of the people there, that his half-human ancestry would always mark him as being an outcast, a pariah? And how many times had he told himself that it didn't matter?

In the end, it had mattered. From the time that he was old enough to understand that he would always be different, he'd felt that ostracism keenly -- even when people had tried to hide it and make it appear as though he was accepted.

In some ways, he had been. But that hadn't lasted for long. He'd been too precocious, too intelligent, and far too concerned with other people. Instead of hanging back and glacially observing, he'd always wanted to jump into other people's problems and try to solve them.

That wasn't the way of a Gallifreyan, and certainly not the way of a Time Lord, he'd been told sternly. That wasn't what would be expected of him if he ever did graduate from the Academy and achieve his dream of becoming a Time Lord.

He wasn't conforming. He wasn't fitting in. And that hadn't seemed right to him. What those people in the orange robes had spent so much time trying to tell him didn't fit into the way he saw the world, or the way he viewed all of the other people around him.

They shouldn't try to hold themselves back from others, he'd argued, his beliefs so passionate that they'd shown clearly in his face and his voice when he'd presented his arguments. They should try to help others, not merely watch them spiral down into their own destruction.

But the council had merely shaken their heads, frowning at him, their orange robes glowing as they'd sat in a circle around the large round table -- sat in judgment of him. They'd already decided that he was wrong long before he'd opened his mouth to speak.

So he'd run away from them, declaring that he didn't need them or their ideals.

He'd run as far away as he could -- to the other end of the galaxy, in fact, and to as many different times as he could think of to hide in. But he hadn't been able to hide away completely; no matter what he'd done, the council had always found him.

Those saffron robes of theirs had haunted his dreams; he hadn't been able to get away from the feeling of being circled, battered down, weighted down by their opinions and their beliefs crushing his own. That was why he'd had to run, to stay so far away from his home.

And then, when he'd had to destroy that home during the Time Wars, he'd had to come face-to-face with the question that he didn't want to answer: Had he somehow wanted to destroy Gallifrey, because of the way they'd never let him fit in?

The Doctor shook his head, squeezing his eyes tightly closed. No, he hadn't. He didn't want to stay on Gallifrey; he didn't want to conform to all of their tiresome rules and their way of thinking. He'd wanted to be himself, not to fall in with beliefs that he didn't embrace as his own.

He had wanted the council and the rest of Gallifrey to see that they couldn't continue living with outmoded ideals and ways of thought, that they had to move forward and embrace new beliefs and new ways of being a part of the galaxy. But they had stubbornly refused to see that.

Still, his decision to destroy the one place that he would always call home hadn't been made in a fit of pique, designed as some kind of retaliation and revenge on a place that had never really accepted who he was or what he believed. He would never have done that.

The Time Wars had torn him apart, left him an empty shell of a man who'd had to piece himself back together from the ground up. And he'd done so, becoming the person he was now -- even if he was still a bit shell-shocked from the vagaries of life.

Oh, that was rich, the Doctor thought with an inward snort of contempt. Shell-shocked? That was the least of it. If he was honest with himself, he'd be able to admit that he had completely changed from that young man who had so many ideals that he'd wanted to carry out into the stars with him.

Only one thing hadn't changed. The fact that he was, in effect, still running from Gallifrey, running away from the sight of those orange robes closing in around him, running from all of the ideals that had been pounded into his head from a very young age.

He would never get them out of his mind. Gallifrey -- and the council -- would always be with him, their beliefs lodged in his brain for all of his life, even if he still didn't want to conform to them. They would always be a part of him, locked away in the back of his thoughts.

He could run, but he had nowhere left to hide.

***