Disclaimer: Yeppers, still not mine.
AN: I'm really not sure where this came from.
The first time he sees them it is on Platform One and the Earth is about to die. Rose looks young and shy and he remembers vaguely that this is her first trip out. The Doctor is the same as ever, and the little tiny part of him that can still feel those kinds of feelings, sighs at the loss.
It isn't time. Not yet.
The next time he's been stuck in a hospital on New Earth for more years than he'd like to count (which is saying something, considering how long he's been around) waiting for the Doctor to arrive. He knew, message aside, that there was no way in the universe the Doctor would land at the right time. He'd expected that. But ten years? Honestly.
He wonders if this will be it, and his first glimpse of the Doctor as he opens his eyes from sleep and his breath catches (figuratively) for just a second. The right Doctor yes, but the right time?
Later, when Rose arrives, he allows himself a moment of longing for days long since gone. It is not time yet, but soon. All too soon. He knows what his end will mean for the Doctor and Rose.
He's so old and so tired and he just wants to…let go. Going out saving New Earth sounds about the right way to do it. The Doctor has mentioned Martha and so he knows it's time. Time to end it. Time to, at long last, welcome that one gift of humanity he has been denied.
He can see the second of hope in the Doctor's eyes behind the mask even this new Doctor likes to wear. And he's so immensely sorry that it had to end like this. That it will end like this. Not such great last words, after all. He's had so many last words.
Death is soft and gentle and oh so welcome. Peace, and five billion years ago the world is ending. He's almost sorry to be missing it this time.