The Doctor's Descent
Prologue
As his ship drifted through the endless vacuum of space, the man in the brown pinstripe suit sat on the floor of the console room. He had not been able to save him. After all that he had done for him and all the pain that he had endured for him. Wilfred was gone. He couldn't help but replay those last few minutes of Wilf's life again and again in his head.
"Wilfred, I can't let you do this. Not for me, not for anyone."
"It's ok Doctor," replied the old man in the opposite chamber. "I've had a good run and anyway, I can't let you die; the universe needs you too much." he chuckled.
The Doctor looked over at the brave man opposite him with sadness in his eyes. "But you don't understand. This is a fixed point in time, you can't change it. I have to die right here on this exact day."
"Oh really? And who says that then?" Wilf said with a grin.
"Wilfred, the paradox will be enormous. Everything has lead me here, to this precise place. Every little thing that has happened to me has been building up to this and it can't be stopped. I have to press this button and accept it."
"You'll do no such thing." replied Wilf.
"Aargh, why do you have to be so…human?!" he exclaimed, pacing around the chamber and running his hands through his hair.
"We were both lead here Doctor. We were both supposed to be here. I'm sure the universe won't mind if I fill in for you. Goodbye Doctor, and don't forget about her…even if she can't remember you."
Just then the box began to glow and within seconds Wilf was dead.
The Doctor had been right; the paradox had been a big one, meaning there was no going back to that place now. The Doctor couldn't return there even if he wanted to. His mere presence in that place would cause the paradox to spiral out of control just for the fact that he would be alive in the place where he was supposed to die.
What hurt the most though wasn't the fact that Wilf had died for him or the fact that he hadn't tried harder to save him. What really hurt was that he couldn't tell Donna that her grandfather had sacrificed himself for him. He remembered what Wilf had told him: "Sometimes I see this look on her face. Like she's so sad but can't remember why." The Doctordonna he thought to himself. The truth was there wasn't a day that went by where he didn't wish that that had never happened.
Picking himself up off the floor he did all he could to forget about what had happened just hours earlier. He decided that the time had come for traveling alone; which meant that no one else could get hurt. No more regrets, no more pain, no more names added to the list of people that he could never see again but desperately longed for. Donna, Martha, Rose…no more.
After heading to the wardrobe and mending his suit and tie thanks to a handy bit of Timelord machinery which he started to explain the mechanics of out loud before realising he was talking to no one, he punched in a few random coordinates on the TARDIS' control panel and listened to the familiar sound of his faithful ship setting off. Allons-y.