The road less travelled...

Title: The Skies Turn Dark 6/7
Author: katherine_b
Rating: PG
Characters: The Doctor, Jack Harkness, Martha Jones, Donna Noble
Summary: The Doctor needs help.

Part VI

“Donna!”

The word doesn’t come from Martha, still sobbing as she bends over Donna’s lifeless body, or Jack, who is still too stunned by what just happened to react, but from the Doctor, whose eyes snap open as he leaps up off the bed, yanking himself free of the various wires attached to him as if he wasn’t close to death himself only minutes ago.

Almost before Jack realizes, he’s standing at the head of the cot holding Donna, his fingers pressed to her temples and his eyes closed, a look of intense concentration on his face.

“Donna,” he says softly. “Where are you? Come on, you’re in here somewhere. I’m not letting you go.”

Martha wipes her hands over her face to dry the traces of tears and looks up at him. “Doctor,” she tells him, almost as if she can’t bear to say the word, but Jack sees that her face has become almost infinitely sad, although her voice carries a clipped, almost professional, tone, “she’s gone.”

“No.” The Doctor frowns. “She’s not gone. She’s inside me. In my mind. I just have to find her, bring her out again.”

“How can she be, Doctor?” Jack demands. “She told us that you were taking it all back from her.”

The Doctor cracks open one eyelid to glare at him. “Do you think I’d let her go after she saved my life like that?” he snaps.

“But,” Martha struggles to her feet, swaying slightly, and Jack grips her arm to hold her up, “if she’s not – gone…? I mean, where is she? What happened?”

Sighing, the Doctor opens his eyes and turns to her, maintaining his hold on Donna’s temples.

“Short history,” he says gently. “During the metacrisis, Donna absorbed a massive jolt of Time Lord energy. It was basically burning her alive until I blocked it. When it was released by having her memories triggered, she couldn’t control it – humans never can! – and because of the state I was in, I wasn’t consciously able to stop it from being attracted to the closest source of identical energy, which was mine. I was draining her energy, but after this long, it had become linked to Donna’s own energy and dragged her into my mind. At least, that’s what I think happened.”

“You’re making it up as you go along,” Jack says flatly, turning his gaze to Donna’s face, which is taking on a grey tinge, and reaching up at the same moment to temporarily silence the alarm on the cardiac monitor.

“He always does,” Martha retorts, and he can hear a hint of hope in her tones. “Usually works.”

“Sometimes,” the Doctor warns. “Not every time. And this time – I just don’t know.”

“Why not?” Jack demands. “Why can’t you save her?”

“Jack, she gave so much of herself to help me.” The Doctor’s voice is soft, filled with guilt. “Those parts of her that were left – when I took conscious control, they dissipated. That’s why her heart stopped. She doesn't have the strength to maintain the connection to her body and keep her heart beating anymore. I’m trying to gather those parts of her in my mind back together, but my energy acts like a positive ion trying to attract other positive ions. It just doesn’t work.”

“But why?” Martha asks desperately. “I don’t understand.”

The Doctor sighs, hanging his head. “Donna used the Time Lord energy she received from me during the metacrisis to heal me. But I don’t have a reserve of human energy to heal her. And if I tried to use Time Lord energy, her body would attempt to regenerate. But she’s human. Humans don’t – can’t! – regenerate. She’d burn up in the regenerational fires if that happened.”

“And there’s nobody else that can help?” Jack demands, his fingers gripping the edge of the bed where Donna is lying so tightly that his knuckles ache. “Not even me?”

“Like I said,” the Doctor gazes at him evenly, “humans can’t control the energy inside them. It’s why you’ll never be able to stop returning to life after you’re killed, Jack. But I can – Time Lords can. That’s what regeneration is, conscious directional control over that energy.”

“So nobody can save Donna?” Martha’s voice is almost hopeless. “Nobody?”

“Not here.” The Doctor’s tones are tense and full of regret. “Not in this universe, in fact.”

He sighs, his eyes gazing at the floor.

“I made a mistake,” he admits with visible reluctance. “A massive mistake. The other Doctor, the one who exists because of the metacrisis, he’s the only one that could save her.” His hands slip off Donna’s temples and he rests his weight over the palms pressed flat against the cot. “He’s got the energy – Donna’s energy – that could draw the particles of her mind together.” He heaves a shaky sigh. “But he’s not here.”

“We were talking to him,” Jack offers, pointing at the black communicator on the bench. “But then we lost contact and we couldn’t get him back. We tried,” he picks up the sonic screwdriver and holds it out to the Doctor, unable to conceal the accusation in his tone, “but we couldn’t because this didn’t work.”

The Doctor’s face twitches, but he says nothing, merely snatching the screwdriver away and making a tiny adjustment before almost throwing it to Martha.

“Activate it and keep it pointed at the – thing,” he finishes with a slight pause. “Don’t know what it’s called exactly.”

“Doctor,” Jack warns, familiar with the other man’s tone and afraid he’s about to begin babbling, “we don’t have time for you to make something up. The longer we leave Donna like that…”

“Jack,” the Doctor’s voice carries a certain amount of hurt, “that’s exactly what I have to do right now – make something up. You might have the habit of resurrection now,” he says with a degree of sarcasm that Jack can’t helping thinking sounds rather like Donna, “and,” he goes on snidely, “maybe I’m wrong and it was a party game on the Boeshane Peninsula to redirect energies into different forms, but it’s not something we did a lot on Gallifrey. So yes. I’m guessing. Martha,” he abruptly turns on her, “do it. Now!”

Martha starts, her eyes wide as she stares at the two men arguing on the other side of the room, but as the Doctor makes an impatient gesture, she points the sonic screwdriver at the communicator and presses the button.

A spark shoots out of the black box when the sonic beam hits it, but then the image of the other Doctor appears, a little wavy at first before he solidifies.

“Doctor!”

Rose’s voice, relief obvious in her tones, carries through from the other Universe, but that world’s Doctor doesn’t turn around.

“Not now,” he tells her quietly, his eyes taking in the room, fixing longest on the cardiac monitor with its terrible straight line, which continues although the alarm has been silenced. Then his gaze fixes on the other Doctor. “Where is she?”

“Somewhere,” comes the soft reply as the Doctor taps the side of his head. “I can’t find her. Bring her back.”

“And you want my help.”

It’s not a question, but Jack can’t help interrupting. “How can he help?” he demands impatiently. “No offence,” he adds, glancing at the other Doctor before looking back at the Time Lord, “but if you can’t fix it, and he’s basically you, then what can he do just by talking?”

“Jack, that isn’t just a – an inter-universal telecommunications agent,” the Doctor replies.

“Nice,” the other Doctor puts in. “We were still trying to come up with a name for it.”

“Thanks.” The Doctor gives a slight nod before continuing. “I don’t know how Torchwood found it, but, if you unlock the correct wavelengths, which Martha just did with the sonic screwdriver, it allows physical contact. Used to be handy when people were trapped in one universe or another for whatever reason. Very popular in prisons.”

“But why?” Jack demands impatiently.

“Like he told you, it allows for limited physical contact,” the Doctor in the other Universe replies. “And if you can provide contact, you can also provide – and manipulate – energy.”

“We have to start.” The Doctor interrupts the reply Jack is beginning, picking up Donna’s limp hand and entwining his fingers with hers. “She's getting weaker.”

The image on the newly-christened inter-universal telecommunications agent changes as the Doctor in the parallel world reaches out and his hand seems to protrude into the room. The Doctor in the brown suit holds out his hand and the long fingers touch. The light from the machine sparkles and flashes as the area of contact increases.

“Doctor, it's fading,” Martha warns, and Jack watches as the image of the other Doctor's hand seems to vanish, reappearing just as Jack thinks it's gone for good.

“Keep going,” comes the reply from between gritted teeth, and Jack looks up to see that the Doctor has his eyes closed, his face tensed in what Jack imagines might be pain.

He can't help remembering the last time he saw a similar expression on those features – after the Doctor was shot by one of the Daleks. Jack has to wonder if this process might not be too much even for a Time Lord to survive.

Casting a glance around the room, he finds himself even more tense than he'd thought possible as he realises that Martha is trapped between the man in the doorway and the cot on which the Doctor had been lying. If the Doctor regenerates, Jack can't help fearing that Martha would be in danger of being injured.

And yet, if she moves away, she risks losing her hold on the sonic screwdriver and the link to the other Doctor dropping out, which will mean they lose Donna forever.

Glancing in the direction of the other man, Jack swallows an exclamation of horror as he sees an identical expression of pain on those twin features.

“Rose,” he exclaims urgently, with a horrible feeling of déjà vu, “get back! Get away from him!”

“What?” Rose's voice contains horror and anxiety. “What do you mean?”

“Look at him,” Jack orders. “Remember what happened the last time – or nearly happened. Just get away! Just in case he somehow regenerates!”

And knowing he can't save Martha in the same way, he steps in between her and the Doctor, hoping to use his body to protect her if it becomes necessary.

“Donna.” The word comes from between the Doctor's gritted teeth. “Come on. Please!”

The room falls suddenly silent, the noise broken only by the soft humming from the telecommunications agent, which crackles and pops quietly as the energy between the two Doctors waxes and wanes.

A sudden beep makes Jack start and he stares around, trying to find the cause of the noise, when he notices movement – the line on the cardiac monitor rising and falling sharply as Donna's heart finally beats.

Jack fixes his eye on the line, feeling an almost desperate sense of hope rise in him. He forgets his fears for the Doctor and for Martha as he clenches his hands in front of him, willing the narrow line to continue moving. However the gaps between the beats are so long that it takes him several seconds to realise that her heart has completely stopped again until the machine screams a warning.

“Jack,” Martha speaks suddenly, frantic urgency in her voice, “do something!”

Jack's eyes dart to the Doctor, half-expecting to see him close to death, but the Time Lord's appearance hasn't changed.

No, Jack realises an instant later as he dives for the bed on which Donna is lying, Martha needs him to try and save the woman who has given so much for the Doctor.

Pounding on Donna's chest and breathing air into lungs that have been still for so long, Jack can see the results of his efforts on the cardiac monitor, and he's encouraged to see that the worst of the greyness seems to be fading from her face. However her skin is cold, almost frozen, beneath his hands, and he can only hope that the ice, still packed around her body, will have preserved it enough to let her live again.

“Come on, Donna,” he mutters breathlessly as he continues his attempts at resuscitation. “Come on!”

Staring at Donna as his hands pound her chest, his eyes trace the limp curls of her ginger hair. He can't help remembering when he first saw her, that face peering over the Doctor's shoulder. Although he’d been desperate to explain the threat they were facing from the Daleks, that hadn't stopped him admiring her features.

That feeling had lasted, even through all of the urgency and everyone talking at once, trying to tell the Doctor what was happening.

Only the Doctor's voice had killed his flowering admiration.

Captain Jack. Don’t. Just… don’t.

The words were so familiar, that same scolding that he always received from this incarnation of the Doctor whenever he spoke to someone. That immediate repression.

But somehow, with Donna, it was different.

More personal.

A definite warning.

And, for once, he decided to pay attention.

He can't help being grateful, as he breathes air into Donna's lungs, that, if they can't save her now, he might have unexpectedly saved himself the devastating heartbreak that followed the discovery of Rose's name on the list of the dead from the battle of Canary Wharf.

“Stop.”

The Doctor's voice makes Jack start and he looks up to find that the man's eyes have opened and are looking at Donna. However as Jack lifts his hands off Donna's chest, the Doctor meets his gaze and gives a slight nod.

Jack glances at Martha, who is still aiming the sonic screwdriver at the telecommunications device. She's supporting her arm with her other hand, the strain showing on her face. Her eyes, however, are fixed on the cardiac monitor.

He turns to look at the screen, holding his breath when the line remains level – and can't help gasping aloud as it finally twitches and Donna's heart gives another feeble beat.

“Warm her up,” the Doctor orders sharply, his hand still pressed against that of the other Doctor. “Martha, we can't lose that link.”

Jack immediately begins hauling the bags of ice off Donna's body, flinging them onto the floor and stripping away the icy, damp towels.

“There's blankets in the cupboard,” Martha tells him, her voice strained.

Throwing away the soggy rolled towel from behind Donna's neck, Jack then dives for the cupboard, snatching several blankets off one of the shelves and tucking them around the limp, cold body. However he keeps one eye on the cardiac monitor, watching as Donna's heart continues to give the occasional beat.

One of the shelves holds several individual warming devices that Torchwood no doubt rescued from alien spacecraft because Jack remembers seeing similar devices on his home planet.

As he tucks them in around Donna's motionless form, he remember when it was Donna's voice telling him how to care for her, and he wishes desperately that he could hear that voice again.

However the next noise in the room isn’t anyone's voice.

It's the cardiac monitor alarm as Donna's heart stops again.

* * *
Teaser for last part:

Martha's voice is a stifled sob.