Smoke. Fire. Pain. Everything is black and hot and crushing. Decades of war and it all comes down to a madman and his box.
He's done it. They've done it. Everything must come to dust. Everything dies.
The planet, his planet, wails in his mind as he clutches the console, black smoke pouring from what used to be the proud Time Rotor. The universe around him balks and roils, worlds and people he's never met, will never meet, suns and stars and moons, thundering out of existence by his hand.
Romana's careful plan, a desperate last ditch maneuver and the push of a button with his hand and they are all destroyed, taking the Daleks with them. The implications of his actions today careen through the universe, the shockwaves touching places and times far beyond his ken.
He feels a lung collapse and coughs into his coat sleeve, the torn and tattered fabric, once a proud emerald green now blackened with soot and dampened with blood. One heart has failed already and even his respiratory bypass is becoming deluged with smoke. There is blood everywhere. His blood. But it is nothing compared to blood on his hands, the blood of his people and countless others. How many deaths has he caused today? And in the War? In his lifetimes together? Those killed by him and for him. Too many.
He has stopped counting his injuries but he knows that they are too much, too many. He will die.
For good, he hopes.
What is there left to live for? What kind of a life would he lead? He can't imagine the monster that would emerge from a regeneration like this. He is alone, more alone than he's ever been and he has been so very lonely sometimes. A lonely old man in his blue box.
His beautiful TARDIS screams in his mind with him, feeling as he does the dying gasp of the planet and of their respective species and the horrendous silence that follows. Books scatter, glass shatters, and everything burns. He staggers away from the console as the screams die away leaving only the oppressing, terrifying silence.
He stumbles and falls. His leg is caught beneath something heavy, too heavy for him to move and, really, he's too tired anyway and the blood pouring from his head is obscuring his vision. A beam from the ceiling crashes down toward him and he raises exhausted, defeated eyes to watch it crush him. Here he dies.
The beam shatters into pieces and instead small shards fall on him and an angry golden light shines from the console. The TARDIS, saving him again. She is protecting him as best she can even as she herself is dying.
He can see the Zero room just out of the main room. She has pulled it close for him, knowing it is the only way there is any hope. Get there and he might survive. He can't get there. He doesn't want to get there. He's too tired, too wounded, too ready to die. It's too much for her and for him. He'd die without her anyway and her without him. Together they perish, the executioners of the universe, the assassins of Time.
He snorts to himself, causing a new, painful flood of blood into places it shouldn't go, choking him. Listen to him, attempting to wax poetic as he dies. This body always did fancy itself a poet, an artist, a dreamer. That has abandoned him as well.
His mind is already deserting him, weak with fatigue and anguish. He is ready to die. The TARDIS howls at him, willing him not to give up. He must live. He must carry on. She needs him. The universe needs him. Time itself needs him.
He shuts her out. He doesn't want to listen. He wants to sleep. A blissful numbness is sweeping through his body. He can feel the regeneration energy hovering around the edge of his consciousness, like buzzards over a fresh kill. He pushes it away. Today he dies. For good.
Just like every other Time Lord in the universe.
Her desperate cries begin to fade into the darkness, the inky blackness of his mind descending and it is so quiet. Too quiet. He hates the silence. And he is cold. So cold. Was dying always this cold?
He turns his head slightly to the side to look up the once grand, sweeping staircase of his beloved console room. The TARDIS makes one last frenzied push and suddenly his mind explodes with golden light.
And then she is there.
The girl from his dreams, the one who has come to him in his brief moments of sleep and his desperate daydreams of a different life. She is always warm and loving, offering him comfort and happiness like he's never known. He revels in her warmth now.
She is a figment of his imagination but she seems so real.
He can see her, descending the staircase, radiant smile beaming for him, a beautiful, flowing dress flouncing with her and the fantasy is so real, so tangible he would almost swear it had happened.
What a vivid imagination, he has. Must be his mind going, after all. In the distance he can hear the despondent cries of the TARDIS and the grinding sound of arriving somewhere. Where has she taken them? No one can help them. They're too far gone for help
And there is no one left to help, anyway.
His mind flickers through images of the girl, so vivid and lucid. His senses are alight with her, as though he remembers her scent, her touch, her taste, her very soul.
He hears his voice, light and playful in a way he hasn't heard it in years and hears hers responding, lilting and musical.
We simply haven't met...yet. Rose. Rose Tyler. You're something special, I can tell that even now and, to tell you the truth, it scares me to death. Do I love you? All of time and space. Same man, new face. Raxacoricofallapatorius. Something big is happening, isn't it? Forever. I'll keep looking for you, no matter what, even if I don't know why. I'll find you. Promise? I promise.
His promise echoes through his mind even as the darkness envelops him. It is that promise, those two words that finally make him give in, a flicker of bright blue in the gloom. Suddenly it matters if he lives or dies.
Because she is real. And she is coming.
He promised. And so did she.
He lets go of the barriers as his body finally gives way. The pain and the cold rush back. The regeneration energy takes him by storm, with an angry force because it has been held off so long. He's probably done some permanent damage by delaying the regeneration like that. And in this environment...it will be unstable even if he manages it successfully.
His mind is chaotic, charred and blackened like the hull of the TARDIS around him. His body blazes and pain is everything. And then it's over.
He's done it. He's a new man. But, oh Rassilon, it still hurts. Everything hurts. He's still bleeding, still dying. He should have expected it. And she isn't here. She was supposed to be here. Maybe he imagined her after all.
The darkness falls around him and he doesn't fight it. If she is not real then he has no purpose to be. His one feeble reason to live had been a promise to a chimera. His fantasies fade away as he shoves them back into the box where they came from. He always was an idiot.
His consciousness dims and darkens and his last thought is that perhaps he has heard a door open and a gasp.