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The Doctor stood in the doorway of the TARDIS, as still as stone, staring out at the beginning of creation; colours and dust and light swirling in an intricate dance of infinite proportions. He leant forward slightly, feeling gentle resistance of the barrier that prevented him from being sucked out into the scene before him. He leant more, and felt the pressure increase.
He knew exactly how it would happen.
He would be pulled from the TARDIS and expelled into the universe. He would drift. His hearts would beat furiously, a thunderous tattoo in the deathly hush of space. The air would be forced from his body by the colossal pressure. The oxygen in his blood would empty into his lungs in a futile attempt to equalize the partial pressure gradient. His body would cool. The deoxygenated blood would make its way to his brain, and then, finally, death would come.
He knew how long it would take, why it would happen, the exact effect it would have on every aspect of his physiology. But he didn’t know how it would feel. He’d had deadly wounds before. He’d felt radiation decay his body from the inside out. But asphyxiation…that would be new. He wouldn’t regenerate, not if he didn’t want to. And he doubted he could, out there, in the cold of space. He’d just drift. He’d be truly alone, for the first time, at last.
On a whim, he stretched out with his mind through time and space, searching for…something. The drums, perhaps, or that presence that he’d come to feel so acutely during his time on the Valiant; that he’d come to depend on, to need, tainted with cruelty though it was. But there was nothing. He stepped backwards, away from the precipice, away from temptation. He was already alone.