I Want to Go

The old, old man turned over the last page of F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby for what felt like the thousandth time. A long sigh escaped his aged throat as he closed the book and gently set it next to his chair atop the large stack of reread books. He gave the pile an empathic pat, feeling the weight of the history and time held within the collection.

As he thought the feeling over, a chuckled escaped his grin.

Nearly his entire life, ever since he first gazed through the Untempered Schism and into the pureness of time in the Vortex, he had been running. He felt as if that the more he did in the Universe, maybe he'd be a big part of that swirling chaos. Maybe then it wouldn't have been so scary. Maybe then he wouldn't feel how insignificant he was.

Yet all these books had to do was sit there. Just sit there and exist, their presence alone giving the weight of their importance in time.

At this point in his long, long life, the mad man with a box finally felt like he was the same as them. He no longer had to keep running, to keep fighting. Sure there were still fights to be had, but at this point he knew all he would have to do is whisper the fact that he was there and his enemies would run in awe. He could command presence by simply being. He finally felt like that was good enough.

The Doctor gave another deep breath and slowly rose from his chair, hobbling a bit as he almost fell forwards. Gathering his strength, he slowly began to shuffle his way over to the TARDIS's control panels. He went to run a hand through his hair, but his fingers didn't meet the strands until much farther back on his head than he remembered.

Slowly retrieving his black rimmed glasses from inside his brown jacket pocket, he carefully placed them upon his face and leaned over the controls, getting a decent reflection of himself in the time rotor. His once angular and slim features and now sagged and expanded. His eyes now drooped with the years battering them downwards.

For once, the Doctor realized, he looked as old as he felt. He also realized that this was the oldest his body had been in any of his regenerations, even older than he had let his first incarnation last. He had stopped bothering trying to keep track of the years what felt like eons ago. At this point however he guessed he must have easily doubled his age in this one body. Something he was quite happy about.

He thought back to the time when he thought he was going to change. Lose another bit of who he was. Ordinarily it was never that big of a deal. Regeneration is just another part of a Time Lord's life and something he had already done nine times before then. So what had made the idea of regenerating into his eleventh incarnation so difficult?

'Because for once,' the Doctor thought, 'I was actually happy with who I was.'

Even though he had all the years and an uncountable amount of memories in his head the Doctor was easily able to recollect that day. How could he ever forget those events? Everything he thought impossible was going on at once. The Master was back, an enemy and friend that he had already given a proper passing to. Gallifrey and his people were back before his very eyes. He himself had destroyed them all and made it impossible to come back, impossible for anyone who might try to tamper with time to help them come back from their destruction.

And on top of all that, he knew for a fact he was going to die. The Doctor had a feeling that this did not mean his permanent death, but rather the death of his current self; his tenth life.

But he wasn't having that. Oh, no. He was sick and tired of having the Universe tell him what was going to happen. Of course, he had always had that mentality. The Doctor never was one for authority. Even when he was the one in the position for it, he would deny it. But this time had been the last straw at that point.

He remembered feeling such fury then. The universe had given him a shining moment; he had won. Yet again his perseverance had paid off, and he managed to save his most precious Earth from utter decimation and had once more doomed his planet and people, along now with his childhood friend, to assured death in the Time-Lock.

Then it had happened. What he thought he had already experienced with the Master had happened.

The four knocks.

Wilfred, the dear old man and grandfather to his last companion (the woman who went from being the most unimportant being in the entire universe to saving all of creation), had knocked four times on the glass seal of the radiation chamber. A proud and terrible moment for the Doctor had now turned even worse.

This was it. This was his end. But no, he wouldn't have it. He let out his anger, something he rarely ever did. He didn't care about Wilf, he didn't care about Earth or Gallifrey or the Time Lords or anyone else. He only cared about himself. He had screamed how it wasn't fair, and it wasn't. The Doctor had given so much to the whole of time and creation, and he could give so much more, but it seemed as if Fate had always had it out for him; some unknown personal vendetta against the Doctor.

Once he had vented it all out though, the Doctor had accepted his fate. He had to go into that chamber and let his stronger body absorb the radiation. It was a bit more painful than he had expected, but the physical pain had been nowhere near the emotion that burned through him.

The moment it ceased, he knew. He could already feel it. The process of regeneration was beginning. Slowly, his body was releasing the special Gallifrean energy that was rebuilding his body in order to survive. The Doctor didn't want to die, but he didn't want to "go" either. He would still be around, but he wouldn't be himself anymore. Not this self.

And he really liked this self; more than any of his previous selves. In the small part of his brain that was still fixed on making light of a situation, he told himself that whatever he had said to his brief run-in with his fifth self was just momentary exaltation.

In the aftermath, he had gone back to everyone he held dear. He wanted to see them all with those eyes and that mind at least one last time. He did not want any loose ends left floating. Finally, after saying his good-byes, he had gone back to the only home he truly had throughout his life of running: his TARDIS. He absent-mindedly flipped a couple controls to take off, and let his body's process take over. The last thing he remembered wanting to say in his voice, even though the only one there to hear them was the TARDIS herself, was,

"I don't want to go."

Simple, but they were the only words he could think of that truly held the essence of all of his emotion. But inevitably, he let go. He let the bursts of regeneration energy shoot forth from his exposed skin breaking apart the control room around him. A bit of his precious TARDIS was dying with him. Not truly gone, but no longer there.

There was an empty moment he had felt. It was nothing new to him however, he felt this with every regeneration, conscious or not. The moment when his mind reassembles itself and a new personality takes over to pilot the body. But it was at this pivotal moment that his tenth mind gave one more pull back to himself.

'No,' he had thought. 'I do not, and will not, want to go!'

Similar to his near-change during the Meta-Crisis, the Doctor forced his regeneration to stop, letting the energy pour out to wherever it wanted to go. His body had already healed itself and he felt whole once more. Yet again there was no reason for him to change.

Within a few moments he had stabilized and was back to "normal" once more. The amount of relief and complete joy that he felt at that moment broke through and he gave a loud and hearty laugh. Then the TARDIS gave a violent shake, and the Doctor realized that his powerful regeneration had caused the control to begin breaking down and that now he was crashing.

And so the rest of his tenth life had begun to play itself out. The Doctor had once more defied the Universe.

Snapping back to the present, some seven hundred years after that moment, the Doctor once more looked at the old face in the glass of the still green time rotor. He gave another sigh and stood back up straight (or as straight as he could get himself in his ancient body).Slowly he began to walk around the console's six panels, gently stroking bits here and there. The old girl had served him so faithfully well over the time.

He was going to miss it. He was going to miss everything.

But, the Doctor finally thought, maybe it was his time to go. This time would be different, however. This time it would finally be completely on his own terms. No accidents, no radiation or physical exhaustion, no explosions or force from a higher power. The Doctor was going to change by his own decision.

The old, old man turned from the controls and glanced around his TARDIS, his one true love in life. A smile crept over his lips and he slowly removed his useless glasses. He pulled in a deep breath and slowly let it out. It was time.

He knew the TARDIS was paying attention to him now. Just as before, their minds' and hearts' were in synch. She could feel it, too. The Doctor began to think of what could be the perfect thing to say. After all of these years and all of these experiences in this body, what could sum it all up at this moment?

And then it hit him. He knew just what he was going to say. Exactly what he felt.

"I want to go."

With that, the Doctor raised his hands to watch them as they began to glow with the regeneration energy. He felt his old body begin to shift and change, renewing and repairing itself to fit its needs. His thoughts started to wander. Who was he going to be now? Was he going to be angry, like his previous self was in the aftermath of war? Or would he be as happy as he was back in his fourth incarnation? Or maybe he'd become a stern man once again, feeling entitled to his position because of who he was; like he had been in the very beginning. The possibilities were endless.

Maybe, he thought, his eleventh life was going to be completely different than what he would have been. Was each regeneration set in time as to what he was going to be? Or would the fact that he had now lived so long and done so much in his tenth life change how his eleventh will be? The Doctor decided to let it go.

As the bright orange energy slowly wisped from the Doctor's body he leaned his head back, exhausted from his long life. An enormous smile framed his thin face. Somewhere in the distance, perhaps only in his mind, the Tenth Doctor thought he heard the soft sounds of the Universe singing to him once again. Maybe it wasn't out to get him after all. Maybe it was just doing what the chaos of nature intended it to. Even with all his power and knowledge as a Time Lord, how could he ever know? He probably wouldn't.

And maybe, just maybe, in his final moments of this form, the Universe was trying to give its apologies for the unfairness of this life.

The Doctor let his consciousness slip away, and there it was again: the moment of change. There was an emptiness where he felt like he was being gently pulled away from the world by the flow of time and space. Then he was gone. A part of him was still there, but a much bigger presence had taken over, and finally he was ok with that.

He was so tired. He wanted to go.

And so he did.