Warnings: Introspection, Missing Scene, Character Speculation, Angst, Dark!Fic
A/N: Written for who_contest's Prompt:Air and is comprised of the usual overly thinky (dark, angsty) ramblings, too much speculation and a lack of proper tea. I was aiming in a completely different direction, but it seems Eleventy had other plans. He does not wanna stop banging this gong, bless him. But at least this time there was Dream Lord? (Yeah, totally begging forgiveness here!) Further addendum - titles are not my strong suit.(Obviously.) Apologies again *eep*! As always, mostly unbeta'd and written in one go, so please forgive any mistakes and/or blatant vagueness. I apologize for any repetition, misspellings, sentence fails, grammatical oh-noes and general horridness. Unbeta'd fic is overly-thinky/blithery and unbeta'd.
Disclaimer(s): I do not own the scrumptious Doctor or his lovely companions. That honor goes to the BBC and (for now) the fantastic S. Moffat. The only thing that belongs to me is this fiction - and I am making no profit. Only playing about!

It was all too thin, too hollow – a ringing emptiness that pervaded the inside of his machine (himself), gave him too much space, even as it sucked away all the feeling of stability, of security. It was like being denied oxygen, the very air thready and diluted without someone to share it with.

He was lost within his own corridors. He didn't know where anything was anymore. Where he was anymore –

Much less who he was supposed to be.

Loss throbbed over his hearts, wove itself between each beat of them – the song of his TARDIS indistinguishable from the ache of his pulse, the grief they felt echoing in the wake they left: drifting through time and space with no discernable destination.

It was terrible.

It was selfish.

But how could they not mourn when it was all slipping away so rapidly?

"Are you surprised?" The Dark One Within chuckled. "Really? How can you be? This is how it ends, how it always ends – you even warned them, didn't you, old man. And yet…here we are. Just you. And me. But that leaves – really – just you, doesn't it? The one and only savior of the universe – all alone to face your inevitable ending with no one to stand beside you. The Doctor's lonely triumph. Kind of pathetically poetic, don't you think?"

He couldn't even muster enough energy to tell him to shut it. The air strained and lifeless without his loves to fill him up and dull the chatter of his internal darkness.

But were they ever truly there? In the end, it was always the madman left with his madness. The ceaseless chase to find the wonders with someone who could keep him from being small and afraid against a universe too vast and ever changing. They kept him safe, his friends. They kept him young.

They made the very air fresh, new and rich with possibility.

Maybe if he tried again –

"The Valeyard hath truly cometh," the 'Dream Lord' sniffed mockingly. "It was prophesied. Remember? The 'Trial'… You knew then, didn't you?"

"But I'm not…him," the Doctor muttered to himself, the air too heavy, too muffled, too close with the vastness of the space around him.

"But aren't you?" A hint of pity, almost of fondness.

The weight of the Universe…

"He never said he was the one and only. He never said how. You were always your own villain, Theta, dear. All he did was give you a glimpse of what might be. And with your sheer denial…well."

A gesture, a wave to the emptiness around him. The atmosphere filled with the echoes of all that came before – but nothing else to fill it.

Even River was –

Admitting defeat was difficult enough. The destination was ahead, even as he could not see where he was going. The past was always his undoing.

The bite of irony was like blood in his mouth.

He was almost glad he didn't have enough time left to get used to the taste.