He waited for the pain to come, and it came. He felt the radiation passing through his skin, destroying every cell in his body, bursting him apart like fireworks on the Fourth of July, and he knew he was dying. He slid down the glass wall, the glass wall that just happened to be bulletproof, radiation-proof, Doctor-proof; and he curled up into a ball, no longer anything but a child, and he knew he was dead. The only thing holding him together now was the regeneration energy, like scaffolding. The scaffolding would disappear. He would be rebuilt. He would be gone. He stepped out of the glass box, and he touched his face, and felt his scrapes vanish, not heal, just vanish, and he knew it was starting. He knew it was ending.
He tried to say goodbye to everyone who had touched him over his years as this man, as if by wrapping everything up properly, somehow he would be able to go. Martha and Mickey. Good old Sarah Jane. Captain Jack. The woman his other self had loved. "Was she happy in the end?" he managed to ask.
"Yes," the girl said, and he saw suddenly that other woman, so long ago, in her eyes. "Yes, yes she was. Were you?"
He didn't answer. He was so close to giving up, to letting the fire take him. But there was someone else he needed to see.
It was winter, and snow drifted out of the black sky. He heard her voice, so light, so young, and he thought he would go, then and there. But he couldn't. He had to say goodbye. He felt a spear penetrate his heart; he didn't know if it was the radiation or just the sight of her walking by, not even seeing him, not even knowing him. Not loving him. So light, so young. So happy. She spoke to him, and he wanted to take her in his arms, but he couldn't. Instead he watched her pass.
Rose. Rose.
She was gone again, and he was undone. He staggered forward. He fell. The TARDIS was there, so close . . .
Then he saw the Ood standing there, and he might have smiled if he hadn't been broken. He was not alone.
He felt every atom in the universe wake up, and he heard them singing, their infinite voices flooding through every particle of matter and awareness. He hadn't known the world to be alive until that very moment, and that was one more thing to be wept for.
He stood up, and he entered the TARDIS. And even there, within the place that not even a hundred alien armies could penetrate, he could still hear the worlds singing to him. He looked at his hand, glimmering with light. And then again, he was nothing more than a child on Gallifrey, begging, as if mere words could counter fate. He couldn't run. He couldn't hide.
"I don't want to go," was all he could say. It was stupid. Stupid, stupid, stupid. He was killed because of a stupid little nifty cubicle. And yet, he thought, it really was fate, if he could manage to believe in fate. It had to happen. It didn't matter how.
He had lived too long. He had been damaged too badly. Everyone that had left him had broken his hearts. Rose had broken both his hearts. And everyone else had almost healed him, and when they left him, he was undone. Unmade.
Broken hearts don't heal. He had been driven mad by grief, and now it was killing him. He felt the light flood through him, and he spread his arms. He didn't want to go. All he had now was his grief for Rose, and he couldn't give that up.
It was all he had left.
And then he felt it. He felt her ghosting lips brush his, he heard her voice, and her laugh, and he remembered that somewhere in the multiverse, that other himself was still loving her, and would love her forever.
And he gave himself up to the flame.