thread: donna (5), donna (6), and the doctor (12) WHO: Donna Noble (5), Donna Noble (6), and the Doctor (12) WHEN: November 13, very early morning before most people are awake. WHERE: Near the library? Sure. WHAT: Violent Donna Five tries to kill panicky Donna Six, because Six's stress is causing her to split, which deteriorates all of the Donnas further. Twelve is stuck in the middle. WARNINGS: Panic attacks. Probable violence. Threatening with a pistol. Character-clone death likely. Several broken Donna-copies dissolve into piles of hair. (People can.. feel free to find these in the hall around the library in the morning, IDK when/how they'll all get cleaned up.)
_________________
They were all going to die.
Every single one of them, they were all going to die.
They were copies, weren't they? Everyone said they were copies. Donna didn't feel like a copy. She knew who she was, she could list all of her primary school teachers and the names of all her pets, she knew what names Eddie called her in the dark. But her heart couldn't stop pounding. She couldn't take a deep breath. She remembered times when she could, but those times were calm, those times weren't like this. Copies upon copies, each new one pulled from the rest of them, pulled from stuff that Donna couldn't explain — like the way the Doctor's tissue had been taken to create Jenny, but it came from something in her soul, not something in her DNA.
The more there were of them, the less there was of her. She'd had to leave the one they called Four because she'd split into twelve more pieces, and those pieces split again ... and then those pieces crumbled into piles of dust and red hair.
She'd already split, herself. It felt like a tug at her heart, a twist in her gut, something vital being pulled out of her. On her way down the hall, she found she wasn't running alone. There was a set of footsteps behind her, then another, then another, and she turned to find she was looking at herself, ten of them, running in the same direction but each lagging a few steps behind of the one in front.
She tried to run, but her breath came in shallow gasps and her heart felt like it was going to burst out of her chest. Leaning against the wall, she watched them stumble, watched herself scream, watched one of them split into two and immediately dissolve into puffs of dust and hair. It triggered a chain reaction — each Donna saw it and stumbled back, splitting again, and again, until suddenly there was nothing left.
The wisps of red hair drifted in the air before slowly settling to the floor.
As it cleared, she saw herself step out from around the corner. She didn't know which one this was, didn't know if she'd just split into existence or if she'd always been Donna. They all were, weren't they?
This one looked just as worn out as she felt, her steps dragging. "What the hell are you doing?!"
Donna (who'd been called Six, though she didn't feel like a Six) crouched down to pick up a handful of hair. Hair that had once been her. "Oh, my God, look at this, this is what happens to us, this is what—"
"That's what happens when we panic," said the other Donna, stalking forward and kicking clumps of hair out of her path. "Every time you split, you're killing us."