Numb.
That's what she was, how she felt.
Numb.
"I'm sorry, miss. We tried as hard as we could."
"My baby. Let me see my baby."
"She's gone, miss. We couldn't save her."
"Let me see my baby!"
She held her infant in her fatigued, post-labor arms. What would have been her bundle of joy, her lone connection to her old life, lay there- silent, cold, pale. She was supposed to be rendered breathless by a mix of childbirth and the child she birthed, but instead the child chose was the breathless one. Her tiny chest never rose, never fell, her hands never explored, and her eyes never opened.
Her child had never seen this world; never saw her mother; never met her father.
Her child had never met her father.
A burning sensation shot up from her stomach as pain seared her where she had moments earlier felt nothing. Her eyes blurred as anger erupted from her in a serious of primal yells and loud curses. Right there, in the back of her mind, she could almost feel him, her Doctor, staring silently, judgingly, sadly at her; she could almost feel is disappointment in her, and it tore her own wounded soul in half.
Something small and weak was thumping against her chest. It felt like a tiny heartbeat- she was feeling the ghost of her child.
What use was this inability to die if she was equally unable to live? She had no reason to live, no reason to continue this lonesome existence in this cruel, confusing, comparably dissimilar universe. Every connection to her old life was gone. Images from Mickey's death from overexposure to the Void, Jake's betrayal of Rose's ironically deathly situation, Pete's altered personality from the father she had once known, and Jackie's disdain of Rose's now-dead infant swirled in her head as she rocked back and forth on that filthy bed, an unbreathing infant in her arms.
Cool, ghostly breath chilled her chest- it seemed like it was coming from the child itself as it lay, limp and frozen against her bosom. She laughed bitterly. Had she really fooled herself into thinking she could have a semi-happy life here, in a world where she was always running from the Torchwood goons and her "family"?
"Have a fantastic life."
If only her Doctor could see her now, see her as she rocked maniacally, shivering and giggling as she grasped a deceased newborn in her cold arms. Gray-tinged skin from a mix of fatigue and malnutrition encircled her body and it was only a matter of time before she would collapse from exhaustion- only to wake up the next day to live a life after death.
Something whimpered, and she unconsciously loosened her grip on the child's form. She lowered her tear-soaked face to the child and watched its silent struggles to breathe. Through the thin gown, two tiny heartbeats complimented her unsteady one.
She held in her arms an alien infant. A living alien infant. Her alien infant.
Panic and sheer joy intermingled in her chest as she stared a moment before throwing her legs over the side of the bed, grabbing her jeans and jacket which lay in a heap on the chair next to the grubby bed, and climbing hastily out the window of her ground-level room. There it was: her reason to keep going, her connection to her old world. A single word found its way into her muddled brain.
Run.