There was one last tick before its arms stood still and the watch in his hand stopped working for good. The Doctor cursed inwardly at that stupid girl for giving him a broken watch, then sighed. He was going to have to guess the blasted co-ordinates now, if he wanted to get out in time.
He placed his hand on the console, slightly, before raising it up again. Wait --- and images flashed through his mind, hundreds of them per second: a manic man; acting erratically, acting cowardly, almost choking the poor girl to death; it was him. Was this what regeneration had done to him? Years of living a soft yet noble life in his fifth incarnation, only to now live in the body of a mad man?
Such behavior, he assumed, could be put off due to regeneration --- but would he risk staying this way forever? In what appeared to be a startling moment of clarity, the Doctor knew. A second passed, in which he stood, looking downward into the face of Peri's broken watch. It would be okay, would it not? She had that gun-ready officer Hugo to look after her and ---
The idea of leaving her in his hands repulsed him, to the point that he began calculating the co-ordinates in his head at a frenzied pace, but none of the figures added up, the numbers and equations seemed jumbled and out of order, but he tried them anyway, entering them into the control console ---
This is silly, he thought, admonishing himself in his confusion. The Doctor looked over at where Peri had stood only seconds ago, only to see begin to glow as if ready to blow up in his face. He looked around, a touch of pity on his face, as he realized it was too late. Already the controls were beginning to overload, too hot to touch.
Sullen, he sat down in a nearby chair and waited for mors immatura to take a hold of him.
"Not today, old friend." An unseen hand grabbed the Time Lord by the scruff and threw him into the modulator. He has only a half-second to see a blurry figure of a man waving good-bye before the machine threw his every particle into space.
He came to, all in one piece, rather unceremoniously on the console floor of the TARDIS. Seconds later, Peri was beside him, asking what had happened, saying how worried she had been about his safety, how he could had died in there. Hugo looked on from the corner, as if he could not believe his eyes.
Seconds later, Peri realized what had happened after she left when the Doctor bowed his head and spoke Azmael's name gravely, said he is no longer with us, then looked at her with an expression that seemed indescribable.
(She later realized, as they walked together through the long corridors to face Mestor, that it had been a mixture of sorrow and fear. But whether it was fear for her or himself, she could not say.)
Alone, in the burning rubble of the dome, a man refused the order to be recalled to life.