Notes: Finally posting this next story in the increasingly long series... unfortunately, my beta thedoctormulder, is currently without internet access. So, this has not been read or edited by anyone but me. I apologize for any horrible typos. If anyone is actually still reading this series, and would like to help me out with it, you can contact me to discuss it.

Rose, River, and Clara materialized on the bank of the River, right next to the TARDIS. She looked a little banged up and it worried Rose considerably. They noticed Jenny, Vastra, and Strax running over, confirming that it was Victorian London, but didn't explain the dinosaur.

Clara wasted no time and ran over to the door of the TARDIS and knocked. The Doctor opened it for a moment and shushed her before shutting it firmly again.

"Doctor? Come out of there," Rose scolded.

"I was being chased by a giant dinosaur, but I think I managed to give it the slip," he whispered to them when he opened the door again and was abruptly pushed outside by Jamie.

"Sleepy?" the Doctor questioned, looking at Strax.

"Sir?"

"Bashful? Sneezy? Dopey?" he continued and finally grinned when he settled on, "Grumpy."

Rose giggled, maybe she would like his new personality. She was a bit worried by the continued confusion she felt from him and wondered if the tea that they'd given him earlier wasn't enough. She watched as he examined the faces of the new people around him.

"Oh, you two. The green one and the not-green one," he said to Jenny and Vastra. "Or it could be the other way round, I mustn't prejudge."

"The orangy one, though he wasn't orangy before. I wanted to be orangy. He goes with the curly one and the, er, asking questions one," he rambled as he seemed to be trying to introduce Jamie, River, and Clara.

"Oh! And this is my pink and yellow girl! Where did you go? I was looking for you and then I got chased by a dinosaur," he said, moving back to Rose's side and grasping her hand again. He looked confusedly at his own hand as he compared the two.

"I'm Clara, granddad. And that's Rose, your wife?" she told him.

"Well, it might be Clara. Might not be. It's a lottery. Rose is a pretty name. I think I like that," he answered.

Everyone jumped when the dinosaur roared behind them.

"Oi, big man, shut it. Oh, you've got a dinosaur too. Big woman, sorry," the Doctor shouted.

"Jamie, what happened?" Rose asked.

"By the time I got to the console room, he was already outside. When he ran back in, he was shouting about a dinosaur. So, I piloted us away from there, but I guess she picked up the TARDIS in her mouth before I could dematerialize and ended up bringing her with us," Jamie explained.

"Well, we need to get her back home. She certainly can't stay here," Rose insisted.

"I'm not flirting, by the way," the Doctor shouted to the dinosaur. "I only do that with the pink and yellow one. She turns more pink when I do that."

"My name is Rose, love. Do you remember? Would you like some more tea to get your head cleared up?" she suggested.

"Tea? No, that's the stripy one. The sort of brown one, you said. Am I still brown? He got to be orange. I've never been orange."

"No, sweetheart. Bit grey this time, I'm afraid," Rose told him.

The Tyrannosaurus roared again and the Doctor nodded at her before turning back to the others and telling them, "Reduce the frequency."

"I'm sorry?" Clara asked.

"That's what the dinosaur is asking," Jamie clarified. "The shield you set up, Jenny. She doesn't like it. I'm afraid it'll have to stay though, dad, until we can get her out of here."

"You're giving her a headache. My lady friend. Just an expression, don't get any ideas," he added to the dinosaur.

"How do you know?" Strax wondered.

"Come on, Clara. You know that I speak dinosaur," he answered.

"He's not Clara. I'm Clara," she complained, clearly distraught by how confused he was.

"Well, you're very similar heights. Maybe you should wear labels?" he suggested.

"Doctor, how about you and I go take a break for a little bit, yeah? We'll let Jamie and River take your lady friend back home, where she won't have a headache anymore," Rose said, taking his arm to lead him toward the road.

"That's the Doctor?" Jenny asked.

"Yeah, he just regenerated. What should I do, gran?" Clara questioned.

"Stay with me, love. You two know how to take care of her?" Rose asked over her shoulder.

"No problem, mum. We'll be back in no time," Jamie answered.

Back at Vastra and Jenny's house, Rose had managed to change the Doctor into a long night shirt, rather than the suit he had been wearing in his last incarnation. She knew that he would want to take some time choosing his new clothes later, but Jamie and River had taken the TARDIS for now. There would be plenty of time for that after he was thinking more clearly.

"It's simply misunderstandable to me," he argued. "I don't know what it is. Who invented this room? It doesn't make sense. Look, it's only got a bed in it. Why is there only a bed in it?"

"Because it's a bed room. It's for sleeping in," Clara told him as she entered the room to try and help her grandmother get him to lie down again.

"Okay, what do you do when you're awake?" he asked.

Rose gave him a teasing grin as she began, "Well…"

"You leave the room," Jenny interrupted.

"So you've got a whole room for not being awake in. But what's the point? You're just missing the room. And don't look in that mirror. It's absolutely furious."

Rose shook her head and chuckled at him. It was taking forever for this confusion to pass and she wondered if it might have been better for them to have stayed on Trenzalore, near the Eye of Harmony and the other Time Lords that they had rescued from Gallifrey.

"Granddad, please. You have to lie down. You keep passing out," Clara insisted.

"Well, of course I keep passing out. There's all these beds. Why do you keep talking like that? What's gone wrong with your accent?" he questioned.

"Nothing's wrong with her accent," Jenny told him.

"You sound the same. It's spreading. You all sound all English. Now you've all developed a fault."

"How are we supposed to sound, love?" Rose wondered and he looked at her confusedly.

"You're perfect. You're supposed to sound that way," he said apparently deciding that his current train of thought didn't apply to her.

"Doctor, I need your help with something," Vastra interrupted, putting on a Scottish accent to match his.

"Finally, someone who can talk properly," he sighed.

"I'm having difficulty sleeping," Vastra told him.

"Oh? Oh, well, I wouldn't bother with that, I never bother with sleep, and I just do standy-up catnaps," he laughed.

"Oh really, how interesting. And when do you do those?" Vastra continued, glad to be getting through to him somewhat.

"Well, generally whenever anyone else starts talking. I like to skip ahead to my bits. It saves time," he replied cockily.

"Save me time, Doctor. Project an image of perfect sleep into the centre of my mind," Vastra requested.

"What, do you want a psychic link with me? She might not like that," he argued.

"It's ok, love, I trust her," Rose assured him, catching on to what Vastra had in mind.

"The size of my brain, it would be like dropping a piano on you."

"Be gentle, then," Vastra said, continuing her Scottish accent for his sake.

"I'll try. Brace yourself. Piano." He placed his fingers on her temples and she matched his position. As Vastra blocked his telepathic message and reflected it back at him, he fell back onto the bed, sound asleep.

"I love monkeys. They're so funny," Vastra chuckled as Rose tucked her husband under the covers.

"Oh, I see. So people are monkeys now, are they?" Jenny grumbled.

"No, dear. People are apes. Men are monkeys."

"There are times that I almost agree with you about that," Rose sighed. "Let's leave him to sleep off his regeneration sickness for a bit, yeah?"

They all went down to the sitting room to wait for Jamie and River's return while the Doctor slept.

"So what do we do? How do we fix him?" Clara asked worriedly.

"He'll be fine, sweetheart. Do you remember anything from when you regenerated?" Rose answered.

"Not really. Mum said something about making soufflées," she mumbled.

"I've never known him to be so confused, but the first time I saw him regenerate, he was asleep for almost two days. The last one wasn't too bad for him. Worse for the TARDIS really. We just have to keep him safe and wait for everything to settle in," Rose assured her.

"But dad seemed alright almost right away," she argued.

"Your dad did seem alright. The Doctor told me just before the first time I saw it, that regeneration is a bit dodgy. He said you never know what you're going to end up with. Even admitted later on that it's possible to change sex! Not sure what I'd do if he ended up as a woman, but I suppose we'd figure it out." Rose winked at Jenny, making the girl blush a bit.

"Just not used to granddad looking old like that," Clara sighed.

"It didn't seem to bother you when we met the other Doctors. The one right after the war looked older too. Not quite as much as this face," Rose reasoned.

"Yes, but I guess it was different when the one I was used to was still around," she admitted.

"Clara, it was hard for us too when you regenerated. I've dealt with it more than any of you, I guess, since this is the fourth version I've known. Well, fifth, if you count the one we met for a little while. It'll be hard to get used to the changes in your dad too, but we'll get through it. The people that we know and love are still in there. Just the packaging has changed, sweetheart." Rose gave her a hug as they sat together on the loveseat.

They had barely started their tea when Rose gasped and glanced around as if looking for something.

"What is it?" Jenny asked worriedly.

"The Doctor. He's awake again and just ran off somewhere," Rose told them, rushing to grab a coat from the hooks by the door before going after him.

He woke with a start. She wasn't here again, the pink and, no Rose. She said her name was Rose. That seemed right. But she wasn't here, just like the last time. If he didn't find her, she would end up in another universe. The one with the big floaty things in the sky. He started searching the room carefully. She had been here, but she wasn't now. He found a piece of chalk beneath the radiator and started using it to draw out the calculations that he had worked on centuries ago. Algorithms that would break through the barrier between them to bring her back. If she was gone, he might need them now. No, she was still here somewhere. He could smell her. But where?

Jumping to his feet, he moved across the room to look for her and stopped. "Door. Boring. Not me," he decided and moved to the window instead. Throwing it open, he smiled and took in a deep breath of the crisp air. "Me."

He began his search by jumping across the snowy rooftops, but he couldn't seem to catch Rose's scent again. There was something. A tingle in the back of his head that seemed to be her, but he couldn't find her. The Doctor's next jump landed him in a tree, hanging precariously upside down.

"Argh. Argh. Oh," he cried and came face to face with a horse. "Halt. Sorry, I'm going to have to relieve you of your pet."

"You're what?" the man in the carriage behind the horse questioned incredulously.

"Shut up, I was talking to the horse."

He jumped down onto its back and used the sonic that he had found on the nightstand before leaving the room with the bed in it to release the horse from the carriage. He instructed the creature, "Forwards."

He thought he could feel something now. She was close, though he didn't know where or how he knew that. The Doctor also thought he could tell that she was afraid? He didn't want her to be afraid. No. He had to do something to make her not afraid anymore. Anything. What if she was about to be taken away again? Was that why she was afraid?

"Stop!" he suddenly heard in his mind.

It was loud and jarring, and it was HER! He pulled the horse to a stop and looked around frantically. Behind him, another carriage approached and Rose stepped out, the fear he had felt from her turning to relief.

"There you are! I couldn't find you. I couldn't let you be gone again," he told her frantically as he fell ungracefully from the back of the horse and ran into her arms.

"You had me so worried, Doctor," she scolded. "Please don't run off like that again. If you can't find me, you can call to me in my mind. Do you remember how to do that?"

He looked at her confusedly, as if concentrating on grasping the thoughts she needed him to remember. His new eyebrows really were something, all furrowed like that.

"Just stay close to me, ok?" she suggested and he nodded in response, clinging to her hand.

They all climbed back into the carriage and returned to Vastra's house to discuss the current mystery that they had been trying to solve. Perhaps dealing with some sort of catastrophe would help the Doctor get back to normal.