A/N Obviously, the Doctor and Rose now have a LOT to talk through. So much so that it's far too much to try and dump into a single chapter, but they at least get a start here.

A HUGE thank you to everyone who has, and continues to review, letting me know you're reading and enjoying. I can't tell you how much encouragement each one of you has given me!

Chapter 25

The Doctor caught up with Rose, overtaking her as she reached the sidewalk outside the apartment building. He quickly moved around in front of her, taking her by the shoulders to bring her to a stop and prevent her further retreat from him.

He tried to keep the desperation out of his voice and remain as calm as possible as his eyes sought to catch hers. "Rose, please just listen to me. You need to calm down."

Rose was fighting against him too hard to even look into his face as she struggled out of his grasp. "Let me go!"

Twisting away, Rose ran to the edge of the street, frantically hailing a cab that was passing by. The Doctor thrust both hands through his hair, tugging hard as he calculated what to do. Obviously, chasing Rose down was only upsetting her further. Watching her jump into the cab, he decided to just let her go. He knew where she was headed, and he would take the TARDIS to the flat and approach her there, with the added assistance of having Jackie to hopefully help calm her.

Upon materializing outside the Powell Estate, the Doctor knew he had several minutes before Rose would arrive, so he went to the infirmary and prepared a sedative. He hoped it wouldn't come to that, but Rose needed to be calmed from the state she was in. This distress was the last thing she needed right now – physically and mentally.

Once Rose arrived, she took the stairs two at a time as she ran for the shelter of home. She was reeling. She knew now without a doubt that it must have been him she'd felt within her mind when she'd been startled by an intrusive sensation. Then he had hunted her down, burst in and made up that outrageous story (because at the moment her spiraling mind couldn't even comprehend the possibility of it being true) just to get her away from Paul and keep her in his clutches. She now wondered if he had been trying to use some sort of mind control over her all this time. Maybe he'd even somehow been deceiving her mum in all this, too. Just who was this man?

Rose practically collided head-long into Jackie as she ran into the flat, breathing hard.

"Rose, sweetheart, what's wrong?" Jackie questioned, trying to calm her distressed daughter as she smoothed a hand over her hair. She had been growing more worried by the second after the Doctor's abrupt statement that something was wrong. She had initially been against the idea of the Doctor tracking Rose down, but as time went by without further word, Jackie was thinking of doing the same. She was greatly relieved to have Rose back, but now alarmed over her clearly-distraught state.

"Mum! It's...it's the Doctor. He found me. He followed me to where I was and just burst in. And just before he showed up, I think he was in my mind...without even bein' right there. And...and then what he said! He said that...that..."

Jackie's mind raced. Just what had he done? "Shhh, calm down, love. It's alright. Everything's gonna be alright."

Rose shook her head vehemently. "But it's not! He–"

Before she could finish, the door opened and the Doctor stepped in. "Rose," he spoke calmly, "Please just give me a chance to explain this."

Rose backed away from him as he moved closer. She didn't stop until her back hit the wall behind her, able to go no further. "No...just...just don't!" Her breathing rate was rapid as her hands flew up to the sides of her head. This was too much, and the effects were overtaking her.

Rose squeezed her eyes shut, her face scrunched tightly. Something suddenly snapped, and past, distorted memories she'd once not been able to distinguish started to surface and break over her like a surging wave, pummeling her mind. "I...I can see it," she panted raggedly, "in my head...s-so many thoughts. It won't stop. It's so much and it won't stop...," she stammered as images barraged her mind in rapid-fire succession.

Rose sank to her knees, still gripping her head as the Doctor quickly reached her side, kneeling down. He couldn't just shut her thoughts down with a sedative while her damaged memories were trying to surface or they might be further lost, but this was not the safest way for those memories to finally come forth. It needed to be gradual.

"Rose, easy, easy," he soothed, his hands clasping her shoulders. "Just try to calm down and relax. It's alright." Fumbling with one hand, he pulled out the sonic screwdriver and scanned, showing that, thankfully, despite his fears her brain waves were stabilizing.

With a final gasp, Rose began to catch her breath and slowly lifted her head and opened her eyes. She focused first on the Doctor, then Jackie, her eyes flitting between the two. With effort, she pulled herself to her feet as Jackie came to her other side and helped steady her, the Doctor quickly standing to his feet, too. "I...I remember," she whispered. "Everything. I remember everything."

The Doctor and Jackie exchanged a brief glance, feeling at this moment more relief and hope than either had felt since this ordeal began.

Rose's hand clasped over her mouth as a sob bubbled up. She slowly lowered her trembling hand and whispered a single word. "Doctor."

"Oh, Rose." The Doctor's voice trembled with emotion as he moved to embrace her, but she backed away.

Her eyes flashed and her voice grew dark. "Where is he?"

"Rose, w-what do you mean?" he asked cautiously.

"The Doctor. Where's the Doctor? What have you done with him!" Her voice was loud and accusatory as the Doctor was hit with a sickening sense of déjà vu.

Just when the Doctor and Jackie had begun to feel hope rising up that Rose had recovered her lost memories, it was now becoming apparent that a significant portion of her past was still missing, meaning that what Rose now remembered was only complicating this already difficult situation further. Jackie placed her hand on Rose's cheek, seeking her eyes and trying to give her daughter reassurance. "Rose, this is the Doctor."

Rose shook her head adamantly. "No! I remember the Doctor. I don't know what this man has done, but I could feel him earlier, in my head. I know that was him doin' something to me. He's messed with my head, and he must have done the same to you, Mum, because I know he is NOT the Doctor!"

The Doctor fought down the gripping pain in his chest as both hearts constricted at her words. He was trying desperately to think of the best way to respond in order to calm her, if even possible. Meanwhile Rose's mind was making frantic calculations as to what to do next. Could she just run out and leave her mum with this man, still under his spell? Yet she had to find the Doctor. It was their only chance. Rose edged towards the front door as she continued with her frightened accusations against him. "This is why you were so interested in my dreams, my memories of him. Because if I was remembering, you'd wipe that out again so I wouldn't know what you had done. But I'll find him. I'll find him wherever he is and he will deal with you!"

A moment of sudden realization could be seen on her face along with a faint, hopeful smile as she lifted the TARDIS key from around her neck. "The TARDIS," she murmured. "It's been there all along – I just didn't realize. I've been passing it by and didn't even..." She looked back up at him, her hands clenching the key as she breathed hard. "You better leave while you still can, because when I find the Doctor – and I will find him – you're gonna regret whatever it is you've done here." She then swiftly turned and ran out the door.

"Rose, stop!" Jackie called as she made for the door to follow, but the Doctor stilled her with a hand on her shoulder, never taking his eyes off the direction Rose had gone.

"No, let me go to her. I just need time to talk to her and explain. I'll sort this, Jackie. I promise."

Jackie looked towards the door, then back at him. Hesitantly, she nodded. The Doctor hurried out of the flat, following after Rose.

Once outside, Rose glanced to and fro frantically, finally setting her eyes on the TARDIS standing in the distance as a gasp of joy escaped her throat. She hurried towards it and unlocked the door, stepping through and slamming it behind her.

"Doctor!" she called, her voice ringing out into the empty console room, followed only by silence. Where was the Doctor, her hero in leather to save her from this madman?

How could she have been so deceived, even developing feelings for this man? Sure, she had been attracted to him, but maybe that was all part of the plan. For all she knew he might really be some hideous slime creature. Maybe he was a shape-shifter who'd just taken on the form of Mr. Dead Sexy to lure her to him as part of the plot. Though just what that plot might be she hadn't quite worked out yet.

"Doctor!" she yelled again, desperate. She started to head down the corridor just as the door opened and the man she'd fled away from stepped inside.

"How did you get in here?" she demanded, moving to position herself behind the jump seat for whatever small bit of protection the barrier afforded.

"The same way I always do: with this." The Doctor's voice was calm and measured as he lifted his key to show her.

"You took that from him!" she accused.

The Doctor took two cautious steps up the ramp. "No, Rose. I've always had it, because it's always been mine. I am the Doctor."

"Stop sayin' that," she warned.

"It's true, Rose. I just need a chance to explain. Will you let me do that?" He walked the rest of the way up the ramp and stepped aside from it, leaving a clear path to the door. "Look, I've left the door open and you can leave any time you wish. I won't try to keep you here and I won't try to stop you if you want to leave, but please just hear me out. Will you give me that chance?"

Rose cut her eyes to the door, then back to him. What choice did she have? She needed answers. This had absolutely nothing to do with his infinitely-gentle tone, which matched the look within his eyes. Nothing at all, she told herself. Rose swallowed hard. "I'm listening."

The Doctor had given forethought to how he would explain these things when the time came, had even practiced a few rational and detailed explanations of regeneration in his head. So much for planning. He hadn't exactly planned on a scenario quite like this. Rose's turmoil-filled expression made all of those rehearsed words go straight out the airlock.

The Doctor knew he now had his work cut out for him. Rose had once struggled to believe who he really was right after he had regenerated, and at that time she had stood there and seen it happen. Now, all she had was the word of a man she clearly didn't trust. Yet he knew she would trust him as he explained, even if she didn't remember the basis for that trust. This was the strength of their love. In this moment of uncertainty for everyone, that was his anchor.

"Rose, the reason you don't think that I'm the Doctor is because you still haven't regained all of your memories. You think you have, but some are still missing – specifically your memories of this me. I am the Doctor, just not as you remember." Rose remained silent, watching him like a hawk. "It's a difficult thing to simply explain and it's going to sound very hard to imagine, but Time Lords have a way of cheating death, so to speak. When dying, I can change every single cell in my body in order to live again – it's called regenerating – but afterwards, even if the outside has changed, it's still me. And that's what happened to the version of me you remember. I was once dying, so my body changed in order to heal itself and survive, and that's when I took on this form. You were even there when it happened, Rose, you just don't remember it."

Rose was trying desperately to process this, to rationalize it, to weigh the truth. "H-how can I believe that?" she finally asked, her voice having quieted, yet she was left sounding lost, unsure of where to turn when all she'd known was being tested and shaken.

The Doctor took a few slow steps closer, reaching the halfway point between them. "Because in spite of all the confusion you're feeling right now, in your heart, you trust me. Even if you don't remember knowing these things, deep inside you still know me. And you know I would never do anything to harm you, Rose. Never."

Rose believed that the Doctor was a man who could do absolutely anything; maybe even change his entire body if he told her he could. But he wasn't the one telling her this. Not the man she knew. She had not heard it from the man she trusted with her life.

And yet, the more this man standing in front of her talked, the longer his soulful eyes penetrated hers, the more the fear she had been feeling began to loosen its grip on her. This didn't feel like he was controlling her mind. It felt like he was speaking the truth. Yet if this man who claimed to have taken the Doctor's place actually was telling the truth, then the implications of what that would mean hit her like a forceful blow. It would mean her Doctor was gone. Rose tried to pull air into her lungs as hot tears stung her eyes. "If what you're saying is really true, then you're telling me he's dead?"

The Doctor's face shifted from caution to one of certainty. His hand lifted and came to rest over the right side of his chest, then moved to the left. "Still beating. He's not dead, Rose. And you trust me. I know you do." He spoke without a trace of doubt.

What began frightening Rose now was that his words rang true. Her head told her she should not trust this man claiming to now be the Doctor, yet her heart told her she should. She should be running from him, yet she had an alarmingly strong urge to run to him and cling to him. That was the feeling that had grown steadily within her every time she'd been around him this past week and a half. But surely that was wrong, wasn't it? Could trusting him really be that simple? It would mean letting go of the Doctor she had known.

Or maybe it would mean finding him again.

"How..." Rose briefly closed her eyes, trying to steady her voice along with her emotions. "How can I give up on him by just accepting this?" Her question came out as a whisper as she looked back into the brown eyes that should be blue, yet were hauntingly familiar.

The Doctor answered gently. "Accepting this doesn't mean giving up on him, because I am him. He's still a part of me, Rose." He moved a little closer, speaking his next words with such depth that her breath caught in her throat. "And I love you."

The tears that had been threatening to fall welled in her eyes until her vision was blurred. So many times she had dreamed of one day hearing those words from her Doctor, thinking they would never go beyond the realm of her fantasies. Now, here they were, given freely, but spoken from a man who was not him; or was he? Yet somehow, despite the dichotomy of her thoughts, all that he was saying to her didn't feel wrong. It felt right. So right. She wanted to believe it, but could she really?

She wiped at a tear that had escaped her brimming eyes as she whispered in reply. "That's something he never said."

The Doctor's eyes reflected a touch of remorse, thinking of time spent when those words remained unspoken in the past, yet they also reflected hopefulness for the present. "But it's something I always felt, even if I didn't say. It took me a long time to finally say it, and those words didn't come easily. But they always have been and always will be true."

Rose drew an unsteady breath as her hands continued to grip the back of the jump seat tightly. At this point her white-knuckled grip was less about fear and more out of sheer necessity to keep her upright and on her feet. Overwhelming didn't even begin to serve as an accurate title for all of this. If he really was the Doctor, if all that he had said was really true, then...

Rose swallowed down hard. One hand loosened its grip and moved, shakily, to cover her abdomen as her eyes lowered. "What I heard you say to Paul – that I was your..." Her words were spoken haltingly, unable to complete them. "And that I'm...I'm..."

The Doctor was now close enough to touch her, to reach out and settle his hand over hers where it rested on the back of the jump seat. Her eyes shot up to his, but she didn't pull away. "I said that you're my wife, and you're carrying my child."

Rose's first reaction should be utter denial at the very possibility. And yet, somehow deep within, she began to feel it was true. Now that she was consciously aware of it, she could feel it – feel the life inside of her. That didn't make it any easier to comprehend, though. Even in her wildest fantasies, she'd never once imagined she and the Doctor could reach such a point and have this much together. Then again, who else would she have ever had this with but him alone?

She couldn't stop long enough to ponder this ground-shaking revelation just yet, though. Too many thoughts were still swirling through her mind. With this sliver of acceptance came dismay. How could she have been kept from the knowledge of something like this? That was the next question rising up and needing some sort of an answer. "And yet you kept something like this from me. How could you do that? You and my mum?" She didn't understand why, and she now felt deceived.

She didn't see deception lurking in his eyes, though; only open honesty being conveyed as he answered her. "I didn't want to, Rose. Believe me, I didn't; but I had to do what I thought was best, what I thought was safest for you, and your mum agreed. I would have told you in time, of course, and was already thinking of ways to go about doing that. I just never planned on it being this way. I was afraid that finding out about everything at once would have been too much, too dangerous. As it was, the shock triggered this flood of memories to surface, but it could have been far worse. After what you had already come through, I couldn't risk further neurological damage being done. You are amazing me with how well you're processing this right now, but that was not a gamble I was going to take. Not with you."

Rose still needed time to come to grips with just that single element in all this, but the conviction of his words and the apparent depth of his care that drove his decision lessened her feelings of deception over having this withheld from her. It did lead to the next question on her mind, though. She was still unclear on how her memory loss had been caused in the first place. "How did this really happen then – my memory loss?"

His gaze momentarily slipped down to her other hand, the one that still rested over her abdomen, then back up to her eyes. "It was a complication of the pregnancy. As you might imagine, a human/Time Lord pregnancy is not a usual one. For one thing, since the baby is part Gallifreyan it began developing a telepathic link to you, and in doing so, it merged with and magnified the link you and I shared."

"We...we had some sort of...link?" Rose was trying her level best to take all this in and keep her head above water, but it was all so overwhelming.

The Doctor swallowed, his Adam's apple bobbing visibly. "Yes. A bond. A Marriage Bond. And before I bonded myself to you, Rose, I told you that it would be for life – for as long as both of us were living. It can never be completely broken once formed, but I had to sever it partially, reduce it as much as was possible when your neural pathways began to be overloaded. I've never been able to open my mind fully to yours because you couldn't handle the magnitude of that – you would burn. But when the baby tapped into and heightened our link, that's what began to happen, causing the brain damage and memory loss."

One of the pieces began to fall into place as Rose made a connection. "So is that how you were able to go into my thoughts like you did? Because of the link – or partial link?"

"It made it easier, yes. But since I have telepathic abilities, it's something I'm able to do with others as well." His face was equal parts remorse and sheepishness as he continued. "But the small thread of our remaining bond gave me the ability to project to your mind and sense your current state earlier. I'm sorry, Rose. I didn't mean to frighten you in doing that. I didn't even know you would be aware of it. I was just concerned for you and needed to know if you were alright."

She just nodded. Rose concentrated on simply breathing in and out as she sought to assimilate all of this.

As more began to sink in, Rose suddenly felt as if she were standing completely bare before him. He knew everything about her – more than she even knew herself – even her inner thoughts. He told her he was her husband and fathered the child now within her. By contrast, Rose knew that her knowledge of him didn't even scratch the surface compared to his intimate knowledge of her. Obviously, he had opened himself up to her during the time that was still missing from her memories, but one of the things she remembered of her Doctor was how closed off he could sometimes be regarding his deepest inner feelings. She was far removed from knowing him on the level he knew her.

To say she felt uncomfortable learning they had this deep intimacy that she knew nothing about, yet he had full knowledge of, didn't even come close to covering how she felt right at this moment. He knew her completely, on every level imaginable. He had seen every part of her mind and soul. She might as well be standing naked before him. Rose blushed furiously as she realized he'd no doubt seen that, too. With his hand still upon hers, she was pretty sure he could feel her temperature spike several degrees.

Her eyes dipped and focused somewhere in the region of his necktie as she spoke. "How much–" Her voice cracked so she cleared her throat and tried again. "How much am I still missing? How long have we been...together since you became...this you?"

"A little over two years since I regenerated, and just over a year since we became bonded. But I can tell you about those times, Rose. I can share with you every detail of the time that you're missing." Pain tinged his voice as he spoke. Even if he were to recount to her each moment of their time together, how could words describe what far exceeded the scope of language? He hoped with every fiber of his being that those memories would return to her as well, and they had not been permanently damaged in the midst of the sudden deluge of thoughts that had rushed into her still-fragile mind.

Timidly, she brought her eyes back to his in reply to his offer. "Not...not yet. It's just...so much so soon and I don't think I'm ready for more – not right now." Rose needed time to absorb the flood of information she already had before she took on anything more.

He nodded. "Of course. I understand. But whenever you're ready, I promise I'll share everything with you, Rose. No holding back."

No holding back. His last statement repeated in Rose's mind like a reverberating echo. The weight encompassing those words simultaneously thrilled her and scared her to death.