I died again, and I am born.
I feel older already, old like my face would pretend I was when I was really young, and I saw creation for the very first time. I feel so old now, my last few lives have been hard and they weigh heavy on my hearts, but my face is the youngest it's ever been. I saw it reflected in a piece of broken glass on the TARDIS console, so stupidly young.
Maybe I should try and be young, maybe I should try to be born properly and start all over again.
Maybe that's why the me that died took time to say goodbye.
---
Goodbye to his doctor, and his idiot.
---
He saved us, sort of takes away from the independence that I had been so desperate to prove, that both of us had wanted to prove, me and Martha – my gorgeous wife.
We had been running, running from a Sontaran – stupid potato heads – and I'd got it wrong, again, and he'd saved us, again. Damn he's predictable isn't he?
But he didn't talk to us, he didn't even come close, just nodded and walked away. As though he didn't know us, as know he had nothing to say. That's what I thought anyway, Martha had just stared as his disappearing form and said that she'd seen something in his eyes, something like goodbye.
---
His Sarah-Jane.
---
It shouldn't be allowed, those eyes shouldn't be allowed to hold such sadness. That man, that wonderful, wonderful man, who changed my life and saved my life, oh so many times. Who I've seen wear so many faces, and with all of them he'd smile at me and make me feel safe.
But there he was, saving me again by saving my son, my Luke, and then he waved goodbye. And I could see such agony in his eyes, even with no words and all that space between us.
Because I know the Doctor, and I know that when he stood there next to the TARDIS on New Year's Day, he finally said goodbye to me - he's really gone.
---
His Captain.
---
I've died so many times, and so has he really, and I've died more but we both know that what happens to him is worse, so much worse.
The note he sends me makes me want to burst into laughter, I can see why he's here from the look in his eyes and that note is all he has to say to me, it's perfect really.
Because although there's so much that we should talk about before he goes, and I know he's really going this time, that he's dying, there is nothing for us to say to each other.
So he salutes me wordlessly and I salute him back, and he's gone. My Doctor, another one of the people I love leaving me, forever.
I glance at the paper he gave me again, ah well, the night is young.
---
His guilt, some of his guilt.
---
The bookshop is quiet as I sit at my little table, I've been here for about an hour and a half now, the little queue of people who had gathered initially had dispersed quite quickly, each generally leaving when I couldn't answer the science fiction type questions they badgered me with.
My book isn't a science fiction novel; it's not even a novel really. But anyone I tell this to just smiles and nods and tell me; yes, I do write a very real story. But I tell them anyway – it would be a lie not to.
There's still the odd person popping by, and I sign their names dutifully, one after the other.
'Name?'
'The Doctor.'
And then my world falls apart slightly.
He's there; he really is there, everything that my grandmother ever told me with her tear filled eyes, everything that is written in the book. And I'm staring at him – what else can I do? – And there are tears starting to form in my eyes as he asks me a question.
'Was she happy, in the end?' and he looks as though he may cry himself, every feature that I'd been imagining since I was a little girl is tainted with both guilt and sorrow and maybe pain.
So I tell him that she was, and then ask him the same question, but he walks away without giving me an answer.
---
His best friend, and the man he wishes was his father, the man who killed him.
---
She's got married; my little Donna has really got married this time, and with no aliens involved.
Except the Doctor, he came, and he's gone and given her the security that none of us could have dreamt of. His best friend he called her, and he really is, even though she can't remember him and he couldn't even wish her well.
My heart breaks when I see him leave.
---
His Rose. Though he can't see her really, and almost wouldn't want to, wouldn't want to see her with the man in the blue suit.
So he goes back to before she met him, although the Doctor she has yet to meet isn't him, just as I am not.
---
It's snowing, and it's got me grinning manically as I drag my mum across the estate courtyard, caught between not wanting to be late for my boyfriend, and wanting to slow down and stick my tongue out to catch snowflakes.
I'm waving my mum off with a friendly jibe about curfews, and suddenly I hear him. This man; leaning against the wall in the shadows behind me and groaning in pain. And suddenly I'm filled with conflicting instincts, to call for help for him, to walk away – strange men on my estate? Don't even go there – and to rush over and help him, I want to rush over to help him.
But as much as I want to, some other instinct, something deeper and stronger, tells me to stay where I am. Not to leave him, but not to go to him either – I shouldn't see his face.
I ask him if he's all right, and he assures me that he is, though considering he doesn't know what year it is, maybe he isn't. But that need I felt to stay has gone now; passed as quickly as it occurred, so if he says he's alright I'll leave him to it. He's says he thinks I'm going to have a good year, so I smile at him and say goodbye.
Maybe 2005 will be a good year.
---
I am me, but so was he.
He killed himself in that stupid glass box; to save the life of an old man who he felt deserved to live more. And I agree, but maybe me thinking that is unfair; I'm alive because he died, because I died.
His death came in that unfamiliar glass box full of death and radiation, and I was born back home, in our blue box. Which – for some reason my regeneration addled brain can't contemplate – is on fire.
I'm going to have to redecorate.
About time really.
This is my response to the regeneration. I really did love the last bit, so I felt the need to expand on it in my own little way, I also wanted to think about 11's initial thought process and such just because of exactly how desperate 10 was not to die.
Hope someone likes anyway.