Title: Not Only Numb
By: angstytimelord
Pairing: gen
Fandom: Doctor Who
Rating: PG-13
Table: Beta 1, challenge_the
Prompt: 25, Numb
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 softly, holding up a hand in front of his face. It barely trembled; even after what he'd seen on the planet he'd only recently left, his nerves were holding up. He almost felt as though he was growing used to seeing such devastation.

That wasn't good. He sighed again, making his way to his chair by the console and slumping down into it. He shouldn't feel that seeing an entire planet so utterly devoid of life could be a commonplace occurrence; he shouldn't let himself be this numb to it.

He hadn't always been like this, the Time Lord reflected, leaning back in his chair and looking up at the ceiling of the Tardis. There had been a time when he would have let what he'd seen affect him until he literally felt sick, though that wasn't good either.

There had to be a happy medium between being horribly upset and devastated by seeing such things, and distancing himself enough from the sight to keep his equilibrium. Why did that line seem to be harder and harder for him to straddle?

When he had first become a Time Lord, it hadn't been easy for him to control his emotions when he had to deal with scenes like what had just been presented to him. But he'd learned, over the years, to back away from those emotions, to clamp a tight lid down over them.

Still, it hadn't been easy. He'd been told over and over again that his emotionalism was a large part of what made so many of his race skeptical about his abilities; he hadn't had the cool, dispassionate attitude that most Gallifreyans were able to assume.

How could it be so easy to numb oneself to sights like that? The Doctor shook his head, leaning back and closing his eyes. He'd never understood how so many of his people could turn away from what they saw and say that they were unaffected by it.

He'd never been able to do that -- but it seemed that the longer he existed, the more he left himself become inundated to that sort of devastation. It didn't affect him the way that it used to, and in some ways, he supposed that was a good thing.

But it also meant that he was becoming colder -- and he didn't want to go that route. Being numb to a sight that should make him feel like crying worried him; it meant that his hearts were hardening to the cruelty that existed throughout the universe.

He didn't want to be one of those people who could shrug and turn away from something so completely heart-wrenching. There were plenty of others who could do that -- and he didn't want to join their number. It would make him less than what he was, less than who he wanted to be.

Through all of the long centuries of his life, he'd always prided himself on being able to see all sides of a conflict. Was he getting to the point where he could no longer do that, where he was letting himself be numbed and insensitive?

That could mean only one thing, at least in his own estimation. He was becoming less of a Time Lord. He had always firmly believed that to be what he was, he had to think both with his head and with his hearts -- something that most Time Lords hadn't seemed to manage.

He had always been criticized for doing so -- and he'd always fought vociferously to defend his position. How many times had he argued that no one should ever be unaffected by the sufferings of others -- and that they should try to alleviate that pain?

Too many to count, the Doctor thought with another heavy sigh. But his words had largely fallen on deaf ears. His people had a certain way of doing things, a way of thinking that they weren't comfortable in deviating from, even if they knew that they should.

As much as he admired his people, there were some things about the majority of them that the Doctor had to admit he'd found annoying in the extreme. Their refusal to move from some of their long-cherished opinions was only one of them.

But that was neither here nor there in the present time. Gallifrey was gone; those opinions and ways of life that his race had tried to hold on to for so long were gone with them. He and the Master were the only ones left -- and neither of them had even been conformists.

The Master. Did he have anything to do with this? The Doctor's mouth hardened into a thin, grim line; the numbness was gone, replaced by a flood of white-hot anger that swept over him like lava erupting from a volcano that might have been thought to be extinct.

This hadn't borne any of the Master's subtle signatures -- but the devastation had been so complete, so utterly boundless, that the Doctor couldn't help but think that his ancient enemy had been involved in some way, if not the mastermind behind the whole dirty business.

It wouldn't surprise him if this had been the Master's way of drawing him out, of pinpointing his exact location in the galaxy, so that the two of them would have an eventual confrontation. It was just like the Master to lead him on a chase like this.

He was used to his enemy playing games -- but this "game" had been lethal for so many. Not only part of the population of a planet -- but the entire planet itself. Any sign of life had been obliterated; even the vegetation and wildlife had been nonexistent.

Would the Master do something like that, just to send the Doctor a message? Yes, of course he would, the Time Lord told himself, his inner voice just as grim as the look on his face. He would do it without a second thought, and shrug his shoulders as though it meant nothing to him.

It didn't mean anything to him. And it meant everything to the Doctor. That would be why the Master might have chosen this as his way of forcing a confrontation between them -- knowing that this would draw the Doctor to him as nothing else would.

He'd allowed himself to become numbed to the cruelty in the world for too long; not only numb, but also unheeding in far too many ways. This had been a wake-up call, telling him that he couldn't turn his back on who and what he was, and on a world that needed him.

Well, he wasn't numb any longer. And he knew what he had to do. Getting to his feet, the grim look still on his features, the Doctor moved to the console and looked down at it, his mind racing as he tried to think of the most likely place that the Master could be waiting for him.

***