Disclaimer: I don't own Torchwood or Doctor Who.
NOTE: We are going to pretend that Donna did create Doctor Duplicate, but did not become Doctor-Donna. Therefore, she is still with the Doctor in the TARDIS.
There was nothing. No light, no reality, no time. Just the decision he had made and the heartbreak he felt. And when all of that left him, in a split second, there was not one thing in the world. Only burning.
"Doctor! What the hell is going on?" Donna struggled to stay upright as the TARDIS shook more violently than any time she could remember.
"I don't know!" The Doctor frantically messed with the controls on the TARDIS, trying to get it into some kind of order. But once she started something, it was difficult to cease her actions. They were going somewhere important.
"Well, you had better figure it out of I'm going to be sick all over your precious alien metal!" She toppled over. She attempted to crawl towards the central control, but the process was proving difficult with the amount of shaking the floor was doing.
All of the sudden, a loud scream echoed through the TARDIS, seeming to be amplified through its walls. Donna shook her head.
"Now what the hell is that?" She struggled to her feet, only to be knocked into the central control by another lurch.
"Sounds like a man screaming." The Doctor grabbed her hand and tried to help her inch her way around to where he was standing. The two gripped onto the control panel for dear life when an image flickered onto the screen.
"Look!" Donna pointed to it. There was a man below them, burning in the heart of a dark star. "What do we do?" She turned to the Doctor, whose face spread into a grin.
"We save him of course! Allons-y!" He pushed forward a lever and the TARDIS barrelled towards the heart of the flames.
The pain was immeasurable. A normal human would have burned within seconds in this amount of heat. But he figured that space fires worked differently, burning and hurting forever without truly killing him. He just wished he would die, to lose the pain. Or at least he would have, if he could form a thought in his scorching brain.
"Hello down there!" A voice called down to him somewhere out of the smoke, but his own deafening screams and the crackle of the blaze made it almost impossible to hear. It called again. "Quick! Grab hold before we fall in too! No time to lose here!"He struggled to open his eyes, and the burning air quickly filled them. Still, he thought he could see a splash of blue within the smoke. He reached out the remnants of a hand. It was surely a dream. But he had nothing to lose.
"Careful! He's still a bit singed." The Doctor laboriously dropped the body on the floor, leaving Donna by its side. He quickly closed the TARDIS door and hurried back towards the central control.
"A bit? The man's barely a body! He's charred like a toast!" She leaned in closer, trying to analyze what was left of his face.
"Details!" He set a new course, aiming to find an area of open space where they could tend to the man without leaving the TARDIS. He then hurried back around and knelt beside the body.
"What have we got here?" He put on his glasses and took out his sonic screwdriver. The body lay face-down, writhing a bit and moaning. He saw his back expand a bit as he took shallow breaths. The screwdriver hummed as he perused the body, checking for any signs of identification.
"It may help if you flip it over." Donna rubbed a temple. The Doctor raised his eyebrows.
"Right..." He flipped over the body with a bit too much effort and looked and stared into the man's face, if it could even be called that anymore. A look of confusion and dread crossed his features as he pulled out his sonic again, mumbling to himself. "That's impossible... It can't be..." Donna rolled her eyes.
"If I had a pound for every time you said-" He shot her a look and she shut it, seeing he was completely serious. "What is it? Who is this?"
The Doctor rose, running a hand through his messy hair and staring in almost frightened disbelief. "Donna Noble... This is Ianto Jones."
"Ianto Jones?" She searched her memory as to why the name sounded so familiar. "Oh! Isn't he from the Torchwood team? Well, I'm sure it'd be very useful if we could find a way to save him, right?" She rose, but noticed that the Doctor was still disconcerted. "What is it?" He looked to her and then back at the body, its writhing becoming a bit more subdued. He spoke in a near whisper.
"Ianto Jones died six months ago in Earth time." He didn't understand. It was wrong. It was impossible. "There is a dead man laying on my floor, very much alive."
R&R. Next chapter soon to come!