Warnings: Angst, Dark!fic, canon!character!death, Spoilers up through 'Impossible Astronaut'
A/N: This was 'The Fiction That Got Eaten' - over hauled and repieced together as best as I could get it. I did love the original version of this - and though it is not what I once had, I hope you still see it for the feeling that it was suppose to be. I recaptured that feel as best as I could - I hope it still translates what I had originally intended when I first sat down to write it. Tis dark and overly thinky (as always). Sorry about that (again) - totally Eleven's fault, as you well know! For all its faults, I do hope you enjoy. Big thanks to stjra for all of her cheerleading.

Disclaimer(s): I do not own the scrumptious Doctor or his lovely companions. That honor goes to the BBC and (for now) the fantastic S. Moffat. The only thing that belongs to me is this fiction - and I am making no profit. Only playing about!

All he can think is 'Oh'.

The first blast rips through him and leaves him breathless with pain; every nerve ending on fire in a way even Dalek weapons couldn't imitate, his lungs screaming for air as his hearts stuttered around the pain to find a way to beat again.

The second blast was worse.

It sent ripples of white through his mind, hearts seizing in shock as the beam of energy sought to stop them for good - his thoughts nothing but distorted fragments of noise that stuck inside his mind like needles, pointless and painful all on their own. He could feel everything he was (is-mightbe-shouldhavebeen-neverwas) light him up from deep inside, a cascade of memories and half-truths threatening to burst through his skin as he relived everything-EVERYTHING for a split moment that lasted whole lifetimes.

He had lived lifetimes.

He can hear her screaming - Amelia Jessica Pond (Amy Williams) with the fairytale name, the heart of a warrior, the spine of steel and warmth to match her fiery hair. She screams and through her he can hear the echo of others - so many others - his name cried and laughed and shouted and pleaded...pounding against his ears, threading within the tired beat of his failing hearts. He wants to answer but it is too late now. He wants to call them all and hold them close and let their human love soak through him - a selfish need that never ends, never stops him from running, never stops -

He could feel them now, rushing up through his veins - a kaleidoscope of tired energy that was set to restore him even as the past sought to swallow him. He half-longed for the peace he had found in the Void Between (when he wasn't) as all the people, places, times, hates, loves, sorrows and fears that he carried, walked with, slept with, lived in each and every day (never forgotten, never) rose up within the restoration, a reminder, a chide as it had always been.

He wasn't coming back from this one.

He could feel panic claw at the edges of his mind, the bits of him that could still think and breathe through the torment of fire and ice that ended (was ending) this lifetime screamed for a reprieve. Because it would all be lost - everything, everyone he had met; all those moments and memories of a millenia that he stored within himself, mementos and scraps from bygone eras. When he stopped, when it all stopped - who would carry them, hold them close, nurture them with love and sorrow?

He kept them all, loved them all, breathed through it all - 900 years (after the Time War - thousands before that) worth of pain and joy and LIFE; and he could feel it scattering to pieces upon the glowing grains of sand beneath his feet. He kept them, he kept them safe all these years, but this time...this time -

'I'm sorry,' is all he can manage, even as he sees the ripple it causes amongst his closest (in this lifetime) friends and he knows why -

'He'll never apologize'

'HE doesn't have to -'

though he doesn't even know what he's apologizing for, what he isn't apologizing for - or even who-what-when it is for; just that it needed to be said. It's uttered unthinkingly, blindly even as his eyes land on Amelia (always Amelia in his heart) and skate beyond her to River and Rory - and through them to the past and every black day and foul mistake he had ever made. He thinks it to the endless worlds and peoples and times he touched, sometimes with intent, but more often without thought - and hopes they can feel his genuine remorse for the damage he left behind (at times by his mere presence).

Sorry for hoarding them all (peoples, places, things, times, ideas, the lost, the found), for keeping them, or loving them in his own scattered way - and thusly condemning them all to dreams unfulfilled, lifetimes of joy and endless wells of sorrow and regret.

But even as those thought rise and fall within his mind (shredding now, like so much musty paper) he isn't quite sure what he's thinking or why. His eyes catch on the soft glow surrounding his hands before instinct kicks in, rigor overtaking his limbs as they try to treat/renew/mend/heal themselves with the tired golden energy that pours from beneath his skin. He still hurts (dimly) but even awareness of that is ripped away in a new (yet utterly familiar) pain, his mind fluttering around the regretful want of this life he has had, the unwillingness to let it go -

'I don't want to go -'

Gasping, grasping, clinging selfishly to what is no longer his. He knows why, he knows - but he can't say.

That's what he is sorry for.

That his dear friends, the people he loves, that they feel this pain; that they were dragged down, into, about this with him. That they dared to get close to him and this...this is the price they pay; they will run straight back to this point and he can never stop them. They will live this again and again and again - and he can never tell them how much he loved them, how much he cared for them all.

And now there is no one to hold them, to keep them safe - from him, from themselves.

I'm sorry...

Liquid lava collapses all thought as golden fire rushes under his skin, through his veins - reshaping, renewing, rebuilding. He turns his face to the sky, bracing himself against the inner pain and the inevitable, final ending that faces him now.

Who will keep them when I'm gone?

So many lifetimes, so many loves and sorrows and hates and joys and lives - who will keep them safe? Who will remember? The Matrix had died with his people, their memory wiped from the time-lines -

Who will remember?

The final blast rips through him, stilling his regenerative process and clearing his mind for a mere millisecond before pain roars through every limb, mere seconds of life trickling away to the golden sand below.

He can almost see them now - all those that he loved and lost. All that walked away, ran away or met the fire at the end of the Universe; all those that went where he couldn't go (not at that time, not yet, not yet). He could see them (Jo, Jamie, Sarah, Susan, so, so many) and he could feel himself reaching for them now, their memories scattering into the still desert air as he fell. He reached for them, trying to hold them close this one last time - their visages trickling through his mind, his fingers like golden sand. He closed his hands on nothing - watching lifetimes dash to pieces below his clutching fingers as his vision dimmed, mind closing down around all the things he held dear.

He fell to that golden sand, his lifetimes ended just as surely as his memories of them; the last of his kind dying in a foreign land. His last breath was for those worlds he had saved, the worlds he had lost - the ones he would never save; his death more of a quiet gasp than a blaze of glory.

The entity known as the Doctor was dying (as surely as his people and all those things he held dear); his last thoughts a sorrow on those he had lost and all that he had yet to lose even when he breathed no more.

Finally, finally after a millienia of waiting, the world held its breath as his hearts stilled in his chest - the Doctor of the TARDIS gone beyond the veil. There should have been songs, there should have been poems and wakes and tears without number...

The Doctor of the TARDIS - The Doctor of Gallifrey, the very last of the Time-Lords - died underneath the fading sun of a planet billions of years (billions of universes) from the echoed remnants of the planet he had once called home; all that he loved and lost and fought for and stood against dying with him -

And the universe moved on.

END