One for sorrow
Two for joy
Three for a girl
Four for a boy
Five for silver
Six for gold
Seven for a secret never to be told
Eight for a wish

Nine for Hell
{Alternate verse}

Silence. Where always before there had been the sense of his people, inside his head, now there was silence. For all that the other Time Lord's opinions of him had ranged from disparagement to disapproval to flat out dislike, still, they were his people, and their presence had always been there, a sort of background hum in his mind.

And now it was gone.

The Doctor slowly pushed himself into a sitting position, wondering absently how he'd come to be on the floor, and why it was so infernally dark. The stench of smoke and singed cloth and circuitry hung thick in the air. He wondered for a moment if he was finally in that hell that the humans were so fond of nattering on about. He suspected that he might just deserve it, this time.

He wondered at first if he were inside a cave somewhere. The walls that curved up around him to the ceiling were strangely organic in appearance, not the classic white and chrome of his TARDIS control room, where he'd retreated after…after he… He clearly recalled stealing the Moment from the vaults, but after that, it was all a blur. Still, he had to know, one way or another.

He dragged himself upright, leaning on something his brain sluggishly identified as indeed, a TARDIS console, and then his genius mind put two and two together. The silence in the depths of his mind meant that his people, his world, were well and truly gone. He was cut off and alone, and so was his TARDIS. It was as much of a shock to her as it was to him. Apparently, she'd been forced to reconfigure herself with only her own internal resources, hence the grungy, unfinished appearance.

And that's when he noticed the hands that he'd been leaning on weren't quite as he remembered. He held them up in front of his face, studying them. Still strong and calloused, still lined with hard labor, but not with age. So, he'd regenerated. Just as well. The idea that he - who'd sworn to never be cruel or cowardly - could have been both, and on such a colossal scale, sickened him beyond measure. He needed to run, farther and faster than he ever had before.

What he really needed, was to run from himself. But that was a fair bit of impossible, even for him. So he'd settle for the next best thing. First, he needed to strip off the last remnants of his past life and consign them to the incinerator. He wasn't at all sure of the location of the wardrobe room, given the TARDIS's precarious condition, but as usual, his old girl was looking out for him. There was a stack of neatly folded, serviceable dark clothing, and a pair of sturdy boots on the battered jump seat next to the console. He changed quickly, discarding the final vestiges of his last life onto the harsh metal grating of the TARDIS floor.

Then he leaned over the faintly lit console, trying to coax some information from the systems. There. Anomalous readings from Earth. He could lose himself on Earth, the civilization too primitive to have heard of or been involved in the Time War. Perhaps he could sort whatever this anomaly was, and in some infinitesimal way begin to atone for what he'd done. Or perhaps whatever it was would prove too strong for one newly-regenerated and newly-alone Time Lord in a weakened TARDIS. It really didn't matter to him, one way or another.

Nine for a kiss
Ten for a time of joyous bliss