A/N: I'm not sure that I'm really posing this in any way as a legitimate theory, or as what I honestly concretely think is the way it works, but it is more of something I thought of that works as a canon possibility. Just something that popped into my head. I'll explain my reasoning as to why it makes sense in my mind at the end. The Doctor, his daughter, and his greatest secret.

Disclaimer: American girl. British Broadcasting Company. Need I say more?

Name

Jenny laughed and fell to the floor beside her father as the Tardis gave one great lurch before its rattling ceased. The Doctor chuckled as he jumped to his feet and helped her up. Jenny grinned. She loved this part; the mystery, the excitement, the wonder of what awaited her beyond those doors; it was a sensation that never got old, even after all the years she'd travelled with her father.

"So," she asked, bobbing up and down on the balls of her feet in anticipation, "Where are we?" She glanced at the doors. "What's out there?"

There was something she'd never seen before in her father's eyes. Something serious in his smile; he wasn't the cheeky adventurer in that moment. He was the Time Lord who'd lived for nearly a millennium; who'd saved millions; who embodied the mystery of the universe.

"Take a look."

Jenny's smile faded, not so much because the excitement was gone, but because she could tell there was something immensely important about what she was about to see. She walked slowly towards the doors, her trainers clapping against the grating underneath. She pulled the door open. "We're in space."

Indeed, beyond the blue doors she could see massive swirls of reds and greens and yellows and purples, mists and clouds and so many stars. "That," The Doctor said, coming up behind her and resting a hand on the Tardis doorframe, "Is the Medusa Cascade."

Jenny felt the smile returning to her face. "It's beautiful."

She heard her father give a funny half-chuckle behind her. "It's more than that. It's very, very important…"Jenny knew what he meant. He'd saved all of reality in this place. The stage for his greatest triumph, and also one of his greatest losses. "Some of the most important events of my life took place here…" He mumbled quietly.

Jenny turned to look at him. He was being all mysterious again. But he wasn't as mysterious with her as he used to be. Fewer questions were met with stony gazes and unfinished sentences and half-answers and changed-subjects. Every passing day as he looked at her Jenny saw more and more equality in his gaze. He didn't see her as an echo any longer. His gaze shifted suddenly from the view beyond the doors to rest on her eyes. Jenny's eyebrows cinched as she tried to decipher the look he was giving her. Something almost hesitant, as if he wanted to do something or say something but needed some form of final confirmation he could do it.

"What?" She asked. Trying to dig beneath his façade. The corner of the Doctor's mouth quirked upwards, and the look in his eyes changed. It was as if merely by asking she had dispelled the almost-doubt that had plagued his vision.

"Look outside, look at those stars, those points of light, and tell me what you see."

Further confusion invaded Jenny's face but she turned to survey the stars anyway, looking for whatever her father had no trouble seeing.

The stars, he'd said. Well, she could see the stars, through the cascade, swirls of the dust intertwining around the points of light and connecting them…

"It's Gallifreyan!" She exclaimed, and she could almost hear her father's smile behind her. "Gallifreyan letters etched into the stars…Those circular swoops, they aren't just gas and dust and starlight…those are words…or, a word, maybe…" She looked back at her father, and that mystery she knew so well was back in his eyes and in his smile. "How is that possible?"

The Doctor sighed and chuckled, "Oh, please don't make me explain right this moment, it'll take hours, even with the proper words…" He was speaking in Gallifreyan, she realized. As even was she; the conversation had dropped into their native tongue without Jenny noticing. Well, it wasn't technically her native tongue, New Galactic Imperial English being Jenny's first language; but it was the language of Time Lords, and as far as Jenny was concerned that was what she was, and that made it her true native tongue.

Jenny turned back to the stars and let her eyes roam over the letters in the sky again and again. She knitted her eyebrows together and cocked her head to the side as she tried again and again to see the word or words the stars were screaming. "I can't read it. It's weird…Is it some bit of Gallifreyan I haven't learned yet?" She shook her head. "But I thought you said I was fluent; did you lie to me?"

"Oh you are fluent." It was matter-of-fact. There wasn't the least bit of confusion in the Doctor's tone; he knew the answer to her question.

She concentrated harder on the stars. "It's really strange…it's like, something's blocking from seeing it, really seeing it. Like I can read it…but I can't see what it says…" The circular structures translating into letters in her mind but not translating into words, and then the letters and sounds themselves disappearing. It didn't make sense.

She shook her head in disappointment and turned to face the Doctor. He was smiling again. "Would you like to?"

She could feel, physically feel the great importance of something unknown to her weighing in her father's question. Like he wasn't just asking her the question, he was asking her to say yes.

She looked deep into those centuries-old eyes. "Yes."

"Then look again."

She slowly turned back to face the stars and felt her father place his finger tips on her temples from behind, his head lowering as he kissed the back of hers. Jenny's eyes closed involuntarily and she watched as the black behind her eyes exploded with a strange gold light.

"What does it say?" she asked, opening her eyes; her previously dark orbs glowing with a pulsating gold light.

And she could see it; really see it, for the first time. The circles and stars standing out from the space and time around them in infinite splendor, chanting almost tangibly their message as the word they displayed sang in her mind.

"My name."

And it was beautiful.

the (beginning) end

A/N: SO, why this made sense: 1. In pompeii, Evelina said: "Even the word Doctor is false. Your true name is hidden, it burns in the Cascade of Medusa herself." And while I suppose that could simply be foreshadowing the season finale, I think it could be used to justify this take on the Doctor revealing his name. Also, in The Stolen Earth, he mentions he went to the Medusa Cascade when he was "just a kid", 90 years old, and while he mentioned the rift, I suppose in this take that was when he chose his name and sealed his original name away in the stars. I'm not saying this is how it is, I'm just saying, the idea spawned a story. Please view this as a take on the situation, not a theory to be ridiculed or proven or disproven.