John paced down the sidewalk, huddled against the chill wind. Brushing past the dilapidated old police box, he trotted up the stairs to the flat. He rubbed his hands together for quick warmth, and moved with purpose to his bed, where he reached beneath the worn mattress. He retrieved a blue leather-bound diary, scuffed and bulging with penned words. He glanced about to make sure he was alone. Of course he was. Bitterly so. His eyes lit for a long moment on the door across the hall, which had long since been closed. Taking a pen from the nightstand, he wrote:
Four knocks rang out, solemn as the grave. "Hey! A little help?" If only Wilf could see the crushing understanding in the Doctor's eyes. This genious, this alien, knew then with all his intellect the price he must pay for his friend—like all his friends, infinitely lesser than himself, but no less cherished…
John's eyes stung with buried pains resurfacing. His pen scrawled furiously across the page.
…The Doctor raged, "Well, exactly, look at you. Not remotely important. But me? I could do so much more! So much more! But this is what I get. My reward. And it's not fair!"
The tears came freely now, soaking in with the ink.
…and so, trapped at last by his one true equal and enemy—more like him, after all, than anyone else in the universe—the Doctor met his fate. There was one saving grace, in the end. The core of power that animated his cells, and tied them to the Eye of Harmony, slowed the radioactive destruction, so that as he stood before Wilf, he shined in an otherworldly glow. He stepped toward the TARDIS…
And when he'd finished writing this latest strange entry in his diary of impossible things—told of how the Doctor took one last tour in his fantastic vehicle, holding his form through sheer force of will in order to say his last goodbyes to his friends, though distant as always, and forever alien—John finally stopped. He closed the journal. "I don't want you to go."
That night, John's dreams were haunted by a thundering, rushing sound, and visions of a fiery golden light.