Author's Note: As I have decided to start adding some of my Doctor Who fanfiction onto this account, I thought I would pick personal favourites. This is my current project. I was struck by the idea a short while after watching The End of Time. I simply could not accept the ending we were given, so I decided another story needed to be told.

Prologue: Starts With Goodbye

Love is neither patient nor kind, he thought bitterly as he collapsed in the snow. In all the short expanse of this life, there had been very little time love was ever kind to him. Love had stolen his life, his heart, his soul, and left him a hollow shell of the man he thought he had once been, the man that had died on the beach in Norway when he sent his soul away with the woman he would have given his life for.

How many times can you say goodbye to the woman you love before your heart is numbed to the pain?

"Go home," she'd said to him this time.

Only she had no idea how far away that was, or even, for that matter, how close.

Home was no longer a long lost planet with a burnt orange sky. Just as home would never be the silly blue box that was bigger on the inside. Home was a blonde from a council estate. Home was the one person who never lost faith in him though she had every right to. Home was the one person he had wronged beyond all chance of redemption.

And his home was lost forever.

He climbed to his feet, wishing he had one more year, one more month, one more day, or even just one more minute, to make things right.

There were so many things he hadn't tried yet, so many ways he could find her, get back to her, tell her how terribly sorry he was and beg for her forgiveness. Most broke all laws of time and space, and more than one would end the entire universe the moment he succeeded, and yet a tiny portion of him said it would be worth it, if only he could see her one last time.

Staggering in the TARDIS, he wanted to curse himself and his own folly. He'd made perhaps one of the biggest mistakes he could have made, and it had only gotten worse.

He didn't just need someone there to stop him.

He needed her there to hold his hand. She made him better, made him see the good, the bad, and the wonderful.
Why had he never realized how much he still truly needed her, wanted her, loved her, until it was too late?

He should have let her in farther, let he know who he really was and see what he was capable of, all the times he had terrified even himself.

He should have accepted her return and not sent her away the moment the opportunity presented itself. Even though the arrangements seemed so perfect, it was inevitably flawed, because he couldn't play god with other people, no matter how hard he tried.

He should have found another way to get back to her, and fix his mistakes.

He should have done so many, many things that he would never get a chance to do, for someone else was going to take his place.

But he wasn't ready to go yet.

There should have been a better way.

He stood straighter waiting for the burning touch of death and wishing, just once, he would die having lived life to the fullest and proud of the legacy he was leaving behind. There was nothing worse than dying with regret in your heart and knowing you could have done better.

He could have done so much better.