He will knock four times.
It seems fitting, almost poetic; the identity of the dreaded four knocks. Not the creatures of Mars, nor the Cyber men or the Daleks, not Rassilon and not even the Master, but a man of pure heart and purer spirit.
Maybe in some twisted light this is my punishment, for what I did to Donna, for taking away her escape, her happiness, her future with me. Or perhaps something else that I had been furiously running away from has simply caught up with me again.
It is at this time I find myself the most reflective, most people only face death in their life once, another curse of the Time Lords I guess, this recurring pain coming as frequently to us as the common cold does to a human. I've felt worse physical pain than this I'm sure, but I learnt long ago that the real torture of regeneration isn't physical.
Each time I feel as if I lose more of myself, that I drift further and further away from who I am and was. Every regeneration, every face, one step more from the person I was born as, another life lost. I've enjoyed this life, this version of me, but as a memory currently flashing before my eyes reminds me, everything has its time, and everything ends.
Maybe the next me will be able to forgive myself, for the Time War, for Donna, for losing Rose and all the other guilt I've carried all these years, or maybe I'll just make more guilt for myself.
I often feel this before; fear, dread, reminiscence, deathbed emotions of a life I must leave behind, a lifetime I must pack up and leave and start again anew. Is this what I'm doing now, as I visit them all, Martha, Mickey, Sarah-Jane, Luke, Captain Jack, Donna, Wilfred, Rose, knowing I'll never see them again as the same man, grieving in advance for what I'm about to lose?
And now I'm alone, I've done this alone before but it feels different this time, is that my age? Or a reflection of the pain and loss I feel right now? As every cell in my body ignites all I can think of is of one certainty, one I had shared in a lapse of control just hours before, I could do so much more. But I can't, and the clock must strike eleven.