It hurt.
It hurt the Doctor so much, so much to love, knowing that everything he dared to care for would die and cease to exist, while he would just be, watching, unable to stop anything from dying.
But he loved anyways, it was always his greatest flaw, but he just kept on loving and loving despite how much it pained him.
He envied humans, admired them so much because they could die—maybe that was why he always found himself loving them, he thought—and at the same time, he hated them for it. They could die, their lives fleeting and so immensely beautiful because of how short they were, and he was stuck living.
Why they clung to life so much was beyond him as death seemed so liberating that he couldn't truly comprehend just why humans wanted to be so confined, chained to living.
Dying wasn't an option for the Doctor, if he died so many others would die as well, and those loveable, enviable lives that could end, would forever disappear and the beauty-that-is would become the beauty-that-once-was.
Which, upon further contemplation, seemed liked a good thing. Just let the things that hurt him, yet loved him so much at times, die and be done with it. End the torture he put himself through every day of his existence, it would be just that easy.
The Doctor knew he couldn't do that, and not just because he was cursed as a Time Lord to just keep coming back over and over, he couldn't bring himself to let them die. They felt things like him, suffered and loved just like him, and to end those terrifyingly beautiful emotions would just be wrong.
So he went on and lived, saving people, wishing he didn't have to be a hero so he could just, just... not be a hero.
When he felt that eerily familiar tremble—shock, pulse, zap, rumble, feeling-wash through his body, he knew.
Knew that he was going to cease, knew he was going to become someone else's Doctor, and when he found himself not wanting to go after all this time wishing to leave, he felt pure and unadulterated sorrow and fear rush through him.
It was confusing, but he finally understood why humans so desperately wanted to stay alive as much as it may pain them.
Death was scary and lonely, and so he cried as he burst into blinding light.
With that he was gone, the Tenth Doctor no longer existing, a past regeneration.
But he was still there, technically all the regenerations were still there, but at the same time he wasn't. It was one of those Time Lord things, too confusing for the human mind to comprehend.
It was ineffable, things often were, he had found.
Everything that he was transferred to the Eleventh, and somehow in some way he found himself frowning-yet not because he technically wasn't-as he found that hair that was his, but really not his, wasn't ginger.
Why couldn't he ever be a ginger?
Mm, yeah, I made a reference with the whole "someone else's Doctor", and if you get it, then I must say that you are amazing. Anyways, uhm, I know this isn't the best one-shot fic out there, not even close, but I like it. The Tenth was always my favorite Doctor, and he was just so lovable, so I couldn't resist to write him a fic.
Disclaimer: I do not own Doctor Who, it belongs to it's rightful owners.