He didn't want to go. But he supposed that was that, really: that all things had to die eventually, and he'd lived longer than most.
Still, there was more, so much more to be done, and he? He was leaving, dying and dying and expelling his existence in a flash of eternity that would never be here, or there again.
The Doctor supposed he wasn't really dying, per se, examined the last flowing bits of himself as they flowed past his person and into the bursting, burning, dying air of the TARDIS. No, he wasn't dying- there would always be another Doctor (until there wasn't, and the Doctor had never paused to consider that)- but he was dying, and that gave him cause to regret his end.
Was it selfish? Yes. Why was that surprising? Should it be?
Of course it was. He had known it was coming, but perhaps the cruel irony of it all was that he had thought that he'd escaped his own fate. But the drums always beat, and in the end, he'd faced his death with the stinging tears and the broken heart of a warrior whose battle is fought and whose war is won, but must fall by his own hand in the end. The Doctor had brought himself down upon his own kindness, torn apart by his nature. He'd always supposed that would be the way, that he would atone for his sins eventually through his own death. Perhaps that was why he allowed himself to die, every time.
Two billion, four hundred-seventy million.
And they weren't all. He tried, so many times, to save them, when he was younger. But he couldn't. And so, the cost of their lives was paid for by his own. The Doctor experienced pain, unimaginable pain, threw back his head and screamed as each atom of his being was twisted in two, a thousand nuclear explosions occurring inside his body, and then reformed.
It was surprising because he'd fully expected it to be this way. He'd fully anticipated, from the moment he had first seen Rose Tyler with his own eyes, it to be this way. Wanted it to be this way. That was why he'd given her himself. A better version, one who was not guilty of the crimes he'd committed-
but that was a lie, too, and a self-made one; he'd watched Him kill the Daleks
-and so he was flawed by virtue of existence.
So why was it surprising?
He was surprised because he was human. He'd modeled himself after a human, in the beginning. And then he'd as good as became one, he supposed, and had forgotten why his Time Lord self had never been so human before. Pride had killed him. His own faults. But he wanted, wanted so badly to redeem himself.
And now- his hands were no longer his own, he could feel his ribs snapping in two and reforming around his new bursting-now sutured together- hearts- he would never be afforded that chance. And in all his time, as he remembered Rose and felt the cold Void clutch at his being, as he felt so inescapably alone and desolate, he wished that he did not have to go.
One more time, then. To see her. To tell her he love he-
The Tenth reincarnation of the man known to the universe as The Doctor died in agony, and the universe keened in mourning.