Disclaimer: I do not own Doctor Who or any of its preexisting characters. I'm just playing with them.^^

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Never Alone, Chapter 01: Athena Amalthea Tyler

"Can't you come through properly?" Rose asked, her voice trembling as she desperately tried not to beg.

"The whole thing would fracture," the Doctor explained sadly. "Two universes would collapse."

"So?" the young blonde responded, only half joking. She was afraid – she couldn't do this without him.

But the Doctor just smiled, trying to be encouraging, even as she could see the sorrow in his eyes. They watched each other for a few moments, before he finally took a moment to look around at their surroundings.

"Where are we?" he asked. "Where did the gap come out?"

"We're in Norway," Rose replied.

"Norway. Right."

"About fifty miles out of Bergen," she continued, even though he obviously didn't expect her to. "It's called Darlig Ulv Stranden."

The Doctor looked surprised, and for a moment she thought he understood – but it turned out he had merely misheard her. "Dalek?"

"Darlig," Rose corrected. "It's Norwegian for 'bad'."

He was still just staring at her, brow furrowed – not understanding.

"This translates as 'Bad Wolf Bay'," she finally explained, and they shared a brief laugh over the irony before quickly sobering. Her voice cracked over her next question. "How long have we got?"

"About two minutes..."

Silence reigned for a moment, and Rose almost laughed at the absurdity of the situation. "I can't think of what to say!" she admitted.

The Doctor laughed too now, before glancing over to where Jackie, Pete, and Mickey were waiting by the jeep. "You've still got Mr. Mickey, then?"

"There's five of us now. Mum, dad, Mickey... and the baby."

"You're not...?" he asked, taken-aback – and she saw the sudden panic in his eyes. It wasn't supposed to be possible, but they had been lovers during their last few months together.

"No," Rose laughed. "It's mum."

A slightly older Rose woke to the now-familiar sound of a baby crying, her dream interrupted – though said interruption did nothing to ease the pain that memory still brought, or to stifle her own silent tears. Athena always woke her from that dream, though not always in the same place; she sometimes wondered if her daughter wasn't sharing her pain. The Doctor had said he was telepathic, after all, and their daughter never actually seemed to need anything after those particular wake-up calls. But whether her little Athena physically needed anything or not, Rose quickly donned her dressing gown and slippers and hurried next door; the least she could do was provide comfort.

Had she done the right thing? Rose couldn't help but wonder, as she cradled her daughter in her arms and did her best to sooth her. The Doctor had a right to know he was a father, after all, and she knew that he would be upset with her for keeping it from him if he ever found out. But she still couldn't forget what she had seen in his eyes, that horrible day on the beach, when she had come so close to telling him. She had seen the moment when he realized that he might be willing to risk two universes for the chance at having a family again, and as much as she had wanted him to come for her, she couldn't let him do that.

As per usual, her little Athena proved to need nothing more than her mother's comforting presence, and Rose was more than happy to oblige, taking a seat with her in the nearby rocking chair (apparently, even half-Gallifreyan babies enjoyed that simple rocking motion). The clever little girl knew exactly what she wanted too, and her cries did not truly cease until her mother began to sing for her – softly, so as not to wake the rest of the household (if they were not awake already). That was how Jackie found them a few minutes later, when she came to check in on them, and even she could not resist stopping to listen to the familiar song that was sadly absent in this world.

The Doctor had always loved some of the strangest movies (for an alien, anyway), but the one he and Rose had watched together the most often was The Lion King. Here in Pete's World, Disney movies were not meant for young children, often featuring gruesome and depressing themes; their version of The Lion King didn't even exist, and it saddened Rose that she could not share it with their daughter – but she could share what songs she remembered from it, at least. The irony of which proved to be Athena's favorite did not escape her, either, and that was what she sang now – He Lives in You. But the truth of it was part of what helped get Rose through each day; the Doctor might not be here with them, but she did have a small piece of him in their daughter.

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Athena Amalthea Tyler did not grow and develop at the same rate as a human child; something Rose had feared, but come to expect after a twelve month pregnancy. Her growth rate proved to be slower than a human's (not surprising, given her likely extended life-span), and yet she had been born with a full head of rich brown hair and chocolate brown eyes, both clearly coming from her father. She never crawled at all, and her first steps were taken with confidence – but not until she was already a year old. When she finally began to speak just before her second birthday, it was in full, grammatically correct sentences, yet she had been telepathically communicating her needs to her mother since she was eight months old.

When she was two years old, she felt the turn of the earth beneath her feet for the first time. Rose never felt more out of her depth than when she was trying to comfort her frightened child about something she herself could never experience.

By the time Athena had turned three years old, she was already reading without assistance, and beginning to play with numbers in her head. A few months after her third birthday, she got into her mother's physics textbooks (Rose was in her last year of university) and began correcting the poor woman's homework assignments. As soon as she turned four, her Grandpa Pete arranged for her to begin homeschooling with a private tutor, who quickly declared her a genius; at the same time, her Grandmum Jackie signed her up for ballet and tap lessons, where she quickly advanced to a class with girls twice her age.

Yet through it all, the little girl continued to love her mother's singing. She couldn't fall asleep without her mum reading to her or telling her a story (usually about her father) first, and she loved to help her grandmum bake cookies while her mum was at work. More than just about anything else in the world, she loved swings and playing dress-up, and she never left the house without her plastic unicorn named Amalthea, and her china doll named Marie.

Athena also took great interest in her mother's work at Torchwood, and was often able to convince Uncle Mickey (through the clever combination of adorable innocence and pouting, and threats to disassemble his new car in order to figure out how it worked) to let her into the R&D Department where Rose's main project was located – the dimension cannon.

Of course, when you're a four year old genius, it isn't a difficult thing to figure out.