The Doctor looked around the TARDIS with heavy hearts. He had always hated endings, always. He doubted whether that would ever change. His last moments were golden, clearly his nostalgic side coming out with his old age. It wasn't his fault. He just had to see them one last time with the same eyes he had met them with.
He was beginning to realise that he had had a wonderful time in his current body. The sadness and anger that usually filled him had lifted for a surprising moment of clarity, and suddenly he was not eager to die. He could feel the tug of re-generation around his mid-drift. He only had minutes left. All of his thoughts went to the people this face had known. A strong love in one body was but a passing fondness in another. Their faces flashed through his head; Donna, Martha, Jack, Mickey, Jackie, Wilfred…and her. Rose Tyler. The one woman who made his two hearts beat faster. The one he never told the one thing that mattered, that he loved her.
The gold of his regeneration was pulsing around him, the process about to properly begin. He realised then, he was not ready. He was fond of his tenth face, but more so he was fond of its memories, memories which seemed vivid and meaningful in his current head but would not in the next. He knew this was the end one way or another. For all it was meant to cheat death, It always felt like dying.
Standing in the empty TARDIS, surrounded only by her comforting hum, everything felt like it had for the eons since he had left Gallifrey for the last time. The TARDIS and her Doctor alone, together at every end. With no one but her to hear him, he croaked out his tenth last words. The gold engulfing his hearts.
"I don't want to go."
What the Doctor always forgot was that in order for something to begin there has to be an ending.
