The word Felspoon has just left Donna's mouth and that's only the second-strangest thing that's happened this millisecond, because the TARDIS doors swing open and slam shut and when the Doctor glances over, Rose and his other self and suddenly inside instead of out.
Blood drains from the Doctor's face, leaving him shocked with cold.
"No," he mutters, blinking in disbelief. He shakes his head like the motion will dislodge the stowaways from his vision, but his sight is a Polaroid photo and they just come into sharper relief. The Doctor pushes off his coral strut leaning-post, advancing toward Rose before he has a chance to think better of it.
"Doctor—"
"No," he says, sharply this time, the word harsh even to his own ears. He points to the doors behind her. "Get out."
Stunned, Rose falters. "What?"
"You heard me," says the Doctor, anger and adrenaline and fear racing through his veins, because she can't be here, not after he just sent her away, not after he just made one of the worst decisions in any of his cursedly long lives. "You've got to get out. You can't be here, Rose. I've already made up my mind."
"I'm sorry—you've made up your mind?"
"Yep! We both have, actually," interjects Donna. "Though I suppose we should have known better—he keeps sending you away, but you never seem to stay there, do you?"
The Doctor shoots her a dirty look and she just shrugs. "What? You can't honestly be surprised."
"We're not," says the other Doctor tiredly.
"Stop it," the Doctor snaps. "There's no we in this equation, understand?" Glaring at each of them in turn, he continues, "No we, no us, no I in team but there is a me and that's all that matters here, just me, and my ship, and my rules that I put in place for very specific reasons, very good reasons—"
"Cos you just get to make the decisions for everyone?" asks Rose.
"Yes!" the Doctor shouts, and everyone in the room jumps.
Rose crosses her arms, staring steely-eyed at him. "Yeah, that's a problem."
Huffing in frustration, the Doctor turns on his heel, back toward Donna and the console—he hasn't got the time for this, Donna hasn't got the time, and at any rate, he's got to hold onto this anger, got to stave off the crumbling of his resolve for as long as he possibly can, and the more he looks at Rose, the more difficult that gets.
"Well, it doesn't really matter at this point, does it?" he asks through gritted teeth. "Too late to turn back—the holes have sealed up properly, no returning now. So I suppose congratulations are in order—you've successfully stowed away, against my express wishes, never to see your mother or brother or father again, and you did it just in time to watch Donna die!"
The other Doctor's head snaps to attention, and Rose's mouth falls open in shock. An uncomfortable silence settles over the room, thick and heavy, rife with static, the air before a thunderstorm.
Laughing, Donna waves one hand dismissively. "Oh, don't listen to him," she says, fiddling with buttons on the console. "He's exaggerating for dramatic effect. I'm fine. There's just a little wrench in the works, is all. Just a hitch. A hiccup." She pulls a switch with a flourish, a cheerful smile plastered on her face. "A pickup. A pickaxe. An axel," she continues, shooting the new Doctor a wink. "A castle. A passel. A vassal. A vessel. A mortar and pestle. A Nessalemian Chamber floating off the Isle of Baroo. An igloo. A hullabaloo—"
A sharp intake of breath cuts her words in half and she stops, eyes blown wide. Donna looks up at Rose with the ghost of a pleading grin, but the Doctor notices that she won't meet his eyes—not for either of him in the room. Rose glances over his way, and he can see in his periphery that her gaze is full of concern. He ignores it.
"Donna?" Rose asks cautiously. "Are you all right?"
"'Course I am," Donna lies with a watery chuckle. "Never been better. Nice of you to worry about me, though."
Leaning in, she says, in a conspiratorial stage whisper, "He'd never say it, but he always liked it when you worried about him."
"And how do you know that?" the Doctor asks.
"Because it's in your head. And if it's in your head, it's in mine!"
He locks eyes with his other self. The other Doctor does not look away; it's unnerving, the sensation of watching your reflection blinc a second out of sync with you.
"And how does that feel?" the other Doctor asks, his voice soft.
"Brilliant. Fantastic. Molto bene!" cries Donna. "Great big universe, packed into my brain. You know, you could fix that chameleon circuit if you just tried hotbinding the fragment links and superseding the binary—binary—binary binary binary—"
The Doctor closes his eyes. Gods, he wishes he could close his ears, too, that he couldn't hear Donna's life force draining away with every passing attosecond, her voice rising in pitch as life drips out of her like water plinking from a leaky faucet. She's a broken record, now, the needle jumping furiously over the same vinyl groove in perfect metronome, regardless of the friction (fiction, fixing, mixing, Rickston, Brixton—)
Donna sucks in a ragged lungful of air. She sounds like she might be sick. "Oh, my god," she whimpers, slumping over the console.
The Doctor frowns as Rose dashes to Donna's side, steadying her with a hand to the bicep. "All right," Rose says firmly. "We're getting you to the medbay—can you walk?"
"That isn't going to help, Rose," says the other Doctor.
"Well, it's better than just standing here, doing nothing," Rose retorts. "Come on, get over here and help me—both of you!"
Neither Doctor moves. Looping Donna's arm around her shoulders, Rose glances between the two Doctors, growing more incredulous with each passing second. "Now!" she shouts.
"Do you know what's happening?" the other Doctor asks Donna.
She nods miserably. "Yeah."
"There's never been a human-Time Lord metacrisis before," says the Doctor. "And you know why."
"Because there can't be," Donna whispers.
"That's not true," Rose hisses. "Or—I don't know, maybe it is. But whatever's going on, we can fix it. We just have to try." She inches toward the medbay, her free hand clasping Donna by the waist as she shuffles along. "Or don't you remember what trying is?" she shoots over her shoulder.
"What's the point when it won't make a difference?" snaps the Doctor. "You're only delaying the inevitable—either her memories go, or she does."
"Bollocks!"
The Doctor's eyebrow shoots up in surprise. "Beg your pardon?"
"You just said it yourself, there's never been a human-Time Lord meta-thingy before," Rose grits out, heaving with effort as she half-helps, half-drags Donna down the hall. "So how do you know what's gonna happen?"
The Doctor looks to his other self for help, hands spread open in a silent plea, but the traitorous half-human just responds with a shrug. "She's got a point," he admits, darting over to support Donna from the other side.
"No," says the Doctor angrily, hands balling into fists as panic rises in his throat. "No, no, no! You're wasting all the time she's got left!" he shouts at their retreating forms. "If we don't extract the foreign elements now, she's dead—we haven't got time for anything else!"
"We're Time Lords," his other self replies. "We'll make the time."
Approximately 3.17 seconds pass as the Doctor, frozen in place, watches the three humans stumble down the corridor, getting further away from him with every labored step. On a better day, Rose and his other self may have fared better supporting Donna between them, but Rose clearly hasn't slept for days, the other Doctor exhausted from the trauma of regeneration, and progress is slow, stumbling.
They're not going to get Donna to the medbay in time.
Silently, the Doctor curses them both—they don't understand, but then, how could they? They aren't cursed with his gift; they can't pluck stray timelines out of the air and skip to the end, read how the fairy tale ends; they'll just follow the breadcrumbs and end up at the gingerbread house regardless, warnings and common-sense be damned.
(Even his other self doesn't get it—are his senses really so dulled? Could he really be so human?)
From far away, he hears Donna slip and fall, pulling Rose down with her. A scuffle, a curse, a shout, and Rose is yelling for Donna to wake up.
Right on schedule, the Doctor thinks miserably, swallowing the lump of anxiety lodged in his gullet.
"Doctor!" cries Rose. "Help!"
Her voice cuts through him, sets him trembling with indecision. Probably she's talking to the other one, the one closer to her, the one who so foolishly stepped forward to help like it would actually do anything—the one who trusted her, the Doctor tries not to think—but the thought that she might need him still tugs at something deep in his gut, still sends his body screaming for her.
The Doctor bites his lip so hard he could draw blood.
Damn it. Damn it all.
"You, help me," he says roughly to the other Doctor as he surges forward, bending down to scoop Donna's limp body off the floor. "And you," he says to Rose, voice sharp, "Stay out of the way."
He only glimpses Rose's face long enough to see it darken with hurt. "Like hell I will."
"Yeah," mutters the Doctor, and his other self rushes to his aid, supporting the unconscious Donna between them, "I know."