"But you said we die. For the future. For the human race!"

"Yes, because there are laws. There are laws of time. Once upon of time there were people in charge of those laws but they died. They all died. Do you know who that leaves? Me! It's taken me all these years to realize that the laws of time are mine and they will obey me!"

He wondered, briefly, if he had gone completely insane.

"Adelaide, I've done this sort of thing before. In small ways, saved some little people. But never someone as important as you. Ooh, I'm good!"

He remembered the look of disgust that had flickered across the Captain's face.

"Little people? What, like Mia and Yuri? Who decides they're so unimportant? You?"

"For a long time now, I thought I was just a survivor, but I'm not. I'm the winner. That's who I am. A Time Lord victorious."

No. He has been wrong. He wasn't the 'Time Lord victorious' at all. He was as broken as ever, but now he could add 'God complex' to his long list of personality traits that had emerged since the Time War and the events that had followed it.

He should have known better. He did know better . . . But for a moment - and a moment, it seems, was all that it had taken - he had ceased to care what was right and wrong.

"And there's no one to stop you?"

"No."

That much was true. There really was no one left to stop him anymore.

Martha was . . . In fact, he wasn't really that sure where Martha was at this present moment in time. Jack was otherwise occupied - he had heard about the trouble Jack and his team had faced, but had been to late to do anything to help. Donna didn't know that he existed - and that was heartbreaking, knowing that if he merely walked past her in the street it could cause her to remember . . . And then that would cause her mind to burn. The Doctor-Donna had been his fault, ultimately.

And then Rose. She had . . . Him, he supposed. The Other Doctor was there with her, in the parallel world - they even had their own TARDIS, thanks to his own quick thinking. But somehow, knowing that she was with a man who looked and spoke and behaved and was the same as him in every single way except for the fact that he only had one heart. The Other Doctor was Human.

That had been the only thing stopping him and Rose staying together for the rest of their lives.

If that hadn't killed him, he failed to see what else could.

The Doctor had no one. He was alone - the last of the Time Lords once again. But his time was running out.

Oh, I'm not finished yet. They're not getting rid of me that easily. He thought, only half convinced that this was the case. I went too far . . . But I can atone for that, surely? I just need more time!

He jumped up off the seat, landing in front of the control panel. He set a course with his mind working at double speed. He didn't have to follow Ood Sigma straight away, surely? He had time - he was a Time Lord, of course he had time!

He would do something good, something genuinely good. He would not let his final act be one of stupidity and selfishness.

He would make things right before his song ended.

He had to.