To live...

Title: To live...
Author: paranoidangel
Rating: PG
Character: OFC
Spoilers: Big ones for the Rise of the Cybermen/Age of Steel two-parter, although not for any other episodes.
Disclaimer: not mine, guv.

Notes: This comes from a discussion I was having with selenay936 about the fine line the Doctor walks in Age of Steel. This is the short and not-quite what I meant to write version of what could be a long AU. Or possibly not-AU depending on how you look at it.


It was almost like waking from a dream. And, dream-like, what she remembered was incomplete and senseless. There was pain, she knew that much, but she did not feel it now. She did not even know when now was. The last she remembered she was at home but if that was so, why was she still in the strange dream-place and not in her own bed?

She heard a sort of strangled shout from behind her. When she turned she saw a metal person writhing on the floor, before it stopped moving altogether. The metal people had been in her dream; many of them. Slowly she focused on the world around her and she knew the dream was real. But if that was so...

She looked down at herself and tried to scream. Her voice sounded wrong in her ears. Except that it could not do because she had no voice to speak nor ears to hear. She felt heat, though. She looked round and saw there was a fire to her left. She had to get out of here before she burnt but her legs would not move; they were too heavy.

Maybe she had not woken up at all and, dream-like, her legs did not do as she asked of them. She tried again, harder this time and lifted one leg. She put it down and lifted the other. And repeated. She was moving away from the flames but oh, so slowly.

Other...people...just lay where they had fallen, waiting to be taken by the fire. She wanted to help them up, tell them they had to move if they wanted to live but walking was taking all of her energy. She wondered why they did it; if she should do the same. "No!" she cried, even though there was no one to listen. "I want to live!" But was this life, this metal body?

She remembered doing this before but not by fire. She had taken the pills, laid down and waited. Then regretted it. She must have got up again because she had been convinced she was on the way to the hospital. They were going to help her, make her live again. But this was no hospital and clearly never had been.

She had promised herself if she lived she would take full advantage of it. She would not just live, she would LIVE. And so, she continued to lift her legs in turn and place them down as far in front of her as she could manage. She thought her muscles should hurt with the effort by now but she never felt anything. Though her back was hot and her head hurt, the rest of her felt free.

She laughed, even as her metal body was burnt away.