A/N: Because. Well. Why not?
Severed Limbs with Morning Tea
X
She wakes up in a yellow room. There's a silence that winds its way around her fingers as she looks down and sees herself in a hospital bed. Except that this can't be a hospital, because she can't see any equipment or hear the drilling beep beep of her heart hooked up for all to monitor.
She trails one finger against the sheet that's draped around her. It doesn't chafe against her skin; it's soft, like how she'd imagine silk to feel like.
Something isn't quite right. Her knuckles aren't worn; there are no blisters that groove a handle into her palm. Her fingers flex and feel the tight elasticity of youth.
Her fingertips dance around the edges of her face. They smooth along the ridges and dip into her contours. She feels a face she hasn't felt in a day of forty years.
She lets her hands drop back to the sheet where they curl and twist the fabric. She feels a little numb and she doesn't know what to think.
It takes a while, but then she isn't alone. A man walks in with one of those masks on to risk against infection. He stares into her with blue eyes that look on her with fascination.
His name is Siger. He tells her about how some group called 'Torchwood' found her by accident. He tells her about the powercuts and the explosions and the chaos that fell in her wake as she dropped into their world. He tells her about how nothing will register her existence.
He takes her pulse and a sample of her blood, and writes something down on his clipboard.
"Is there something wrong with me?" She asks, voice hoarse.
He shrugs. "I'm not a doctor," he says, and gives her a stack of magazines and a pen. "But I know that you'll be in here for a while."
She smiles as he opens up the paper on top and shows her how to do Sudoku. She can't remember the last time she smiled. She only knows that for the first time in forty years, she doesn't feel lonely anymore.
She falls in love with Siger, and she knows it was inevitable. For a long time he's the only person to actually talk to her, not the enigma of her existence. He makes her feel young again, even as she remembers the cold piercing of aging alone that persists her memory in the dark of the night.
"I'm not good with people," She says, after he asks if he may court her – actually court her (and she's not in some gentlemanly-Darcy-era, she checked). "I'm – I've been alone. For a long time."
He's a charming man, all aristocratic good looks and tall and blazing with intelligence. And those cheekbones, dear lord.
She doesn't know what he does for a career, but whatever it is it has a monumental amount of sway, because he whisks her out of the facility she'd been kept in and takes her to her home. She tries not to be impressed, because she's seen a lot of impressive things, but everything about him is magnificent.
He kisses her under the starlight and for the rest of the night, she forgets about Doctors and men with stupid faces and how they didn't save her.
She holds Siger tight and leans in as he cords his fingers through her bright red hair. Rory didn't choose her. So she's going to choose Siger and try to forget about a sky full of impossible things.
She holds her baby boy in her arms. He's small and pink and wrinkled and perfect.
There's another name that begins with 'M' on the tip of her tongue and it fills her briefly with grief but she hides it away because that isn't her life anymore and she needs to focus on the new and the present.
She nudges at his soft head and breathes in his smell. His fingers reach for hers and she cradles him and can't imagine wanting anything else.
The edges of an old story she once read winds its way around her thoughts. "Mycroft," she names her new baby boy, and smiles into his skin now that she can finally be Mummy.