Big big thanks to my dear beta NoPondInTheForest for always being there and thank you guys for all the follows and favourites! Now I can safely say there'll be three more chapters and an epilogue. Hope you won't hate this one too much...

Powell Estate, London, 1st January 2005

The TARDIS landed in the heart of the Powell Estate in the wee hours of the New Year's morning. When the door of the spaceship opened gently, the Eleventh Doctor and Clara stepped out. Rose followed shortly, although her footsteps sounded infinitely less decisive than theirs. Upon looking up she saw it was snowing much more heavily than it had been when she and her mum had said goodbye for the night at midnight, just merely seconds before she had met the Doctor for the very first time and thought that he was just some chap who had had too much to drink. For anyone else on the planet only a few hours would have passed by. To her however it all seemed to have happened so terribly long ago that, had someone been determined to make her believe she had never walked home with her mom and that it had all been just some kind of stupid dream, it wouldn't have taken them much time or effort to succeed.

Dragging his feet along rather than properly walking, the Tenth Doctor was the last of the party of time travellers to walk through the doors of the TARDIS. Drinking in the once so very familiar and now deeply missed sight of the Powell Estate, he remembered standing there not only the night when he thought he had said his last goodbye to Rose while he had been hiding in a dark corner so that she couldn't see his face. He also remembered the night when they had eventually said hello after his latest regeneration, their encounter with the Sycorax, and that shameful incident involving Harriet Jones. And yet, right here and now, those moments seemed to belong somewhere so horribly back in time that he, the mighty Time Lord, would have happily let himself be persuaded otherwise if Chinny had tried to convince him they had been lived by some other of their incarnations. Vivid as his memories were, not even the snow that was still falling heavily over their heads seemed to be solid enough to bind those two moments closer to the present of his sorry pinstriped self. Did it matter after all? 'Cause he really had the feeling that it just didn't. What really mattered to him was that he was about to lose a young woman that he adored once again, and he gaped at the realisation that this might as well be the last time he would ever set foot on the Powell Estate for good.

"Okay, so I've come 'ome then," Rose said softly, her eyes darting around as she tried to come to terms with the truth herself. "Couldn't be any more different from Whitehall, could it?"

"I never really felt comfortable in Whitehall Palace to be honest," said Clara, her eyes examining the buildings that surrounded her. "I wouldn't mind living here, though. It's a really nice place!"

"I'll give ya my number then," Rose joked, though sadly. "Call me in a few years, and if I'm still sticking around I'll let ya know if something's for rent."

"Damn right I will," Clara said smiling softly at her.

Knowing that this was goodbye, the two young women kept staring at each other in silence for a short while before they crashed into each other's arms.

"Ya'll look after him, won't ya?" Rose asked, making her voice as imperceptible as she possibly could.

"Of course I will," Clara assured her.

"Thanks," Rose mumbled, biting her lip hard in an attempt to hold back the tears welling in her eyes. "Ya take care of yourself too."

"I will," Clara muttered. "Everything's going to be fine, Rose. I know it will."

Rose gave Clara a small smile as she pulled back, her eyes darting towards John. She found him looking very tenderly at her, a really sweet smile drawn on his lips as his hand reached out to take hers.

"You have an awesome life, Rose Tyler," he said, then took her hand to his lips, leant forward, and gently planted a soft kiss on her knuckles.

"Ya too, John," she replied. "Thanks for everything you've done."

"No need to thank me. I'd gladly do it all again at the drop of a hat if I had to," he murmured.

The moment John said those words, Rose felt a pang in her stomach that made her extremely desolate, and the reason why she had felt such twinge was that she had just realised she didn't really know anything about John. Except for the fact that he was now travelling with the Doctor, that the Doctor liked to call him Chinny, and that it was pretty obvious that there was something going on between him and Clara, she knew nothing about him, nothing at all. And it hadn't even been him who had told her any of those things personally. She had once asked the Doctor to tell her more about him, but as he would do at times with a great many of her questions, the Doctor had artfully avoided giving any answers. Not that it mattered right now anyway. She was just sad that, during that precious time that she had shared with the Doctor which had completely changed the way she saw her life, she had never really had a chance to get to know John Smith, and now she knew she would never have one.

"We'll wait inside the TARDIS," John said to the Doctor as he let go of Rose's hand.

The Eleventh Doctor and Clara walked back inside the spaceship, leaving Rose and the Tenth Doctor alone outside. Crossing her arms over her chest, Rose was in silence for a while, during which time she seemed to be determined to keep her head down. The moment she had been dreading for months had finally come, so she decided she'd rather study the footprints her trainers were leaving on the snow than look up and let her eyes search for the Doctor's. She knew that, as soon as she did, her resolve would inevitably bend and break.

For as long as she kept looking down, the Doctor kept studying every single detail about her. He sauntered around her with the intention of taking it all in and committing it all to his all-powerful memory. He knew he would forget it all against his will soon enough, but then, when the moment came for his Doctorish breath to leave this body he was still living in, he would be able to close his eyes and picture her on his mind, just as he was seeing her now, and her image would relieve the pain of dying and make regeneration a little bit less excruciating. Thus, he started by examining the way her scarf fell nearly the length of her legs, then the shades of pink and blue her clothing was painting her shape in. After that, he revelled in her impossibly long blonde hair, in her smooth youthful skin, and in the lips he had been longing to kiss since the day they first met… Oh, she was beautiful! As beautiful as the night he had secretly been saying goodbye from that corner right behind her.

That was how he would always remember her, young, strong and beautiful, and once again he absolutely had no clue how he would ever survive without her.

His thoughts were soon interrupted by an apparently ceaseless series of ear-splitting bangs coming from inside his TARDIS, which the other Doctor and Clara had hidden inside the wardrobe so as not to startle Rose, but clearly to no avail. The deafening sounds reverberated not only inside Chinny's console room, but also in and beyond the Powell Estate. As a consequence, all around them stray dogs barked and stray cats meowed, birds chirped, alarms went off, and the Doctor in sandshoes realised things could not be put off any longer.

Tearing apart inside, the Tenth Doctor reached his hand out, shaking his fingers as an invitation for Rose to hold it in hers. He had done that once before, but it had had a completely different meaning back then. He watched as Rose's eyes travelled the distance from her footprints to his hand and as she resolved to take it after a moment's hesitation. Tearing apart outside now, his free hand also searched for hers and took it in silence before she raised her head and locked eyes with him.

"I'll see you in," he said softly, "just to make sure you're really safe."

"What if I didn't go in?" she asked in a half whisper. "What if just stayed?"

"Then we would never meet," answered the Doctor, crestfallen. "And if we never met then we'd never… You know. Meet again."

"So it's already been done, right?" she said, not letting go of the Doctor's hand as she raised hers to her cheek in order to wipe some new tears. "We wouldn't be together now if it hadn't, would we?"

"I'm sorry Rose," said the Doctor. "Believe me, if something could be done, nothing would stop me… I'd just do it!"

"I know," she mumbled, taking a deep breath in an attempt to scare her own tears away. "'S just that I thought I'd be ready when this moment came… Blimey, I was so wrong!"

"Everything'll be alright," he muttered, squeezing her hands. "Just make sure not to change jobs any time soon 'cause I'll be coming for you in a couple of months or so."

Rose made an effort beyond words and smiled. As she pressed her lips together to prevent herself from crying, she suddenly plucked up the courage to ask the Doctor one last question, the one question she really had been wanting to ask for the past few months. The only reason why she hadn't done so before was the conviction that, whatever the Doctor might answer, it would make her feel even more miserable than she already felt. Still, since there was no way for her to know whether her stupidly infatuated future self would care enough to ever ask after leaving him, she decided that, however much it might hurt, she just had to do it herself.

"Are you happy, Doctor?" she whispered. "I mean now in the future, when I'm not with you... Are you really happy?"

Upon hearing Rose's sweet voice asking such an eye-opening question, the Doctor felt the warmth of her words burning inside him. After their last goodbye on Bad Wolf Bay, he had convinced himself that she could never have been left at a better place. The universe that had stolen her away from him had also reunited her and her mum with the father she had never known except only briefly when she had already been travelling with him. As if that hadn't been wondrous enough, in no time at all she would find that she could share everything that universe had to offer with a human version of himself, one not only human enough as to be her lifetime lover, but also vulnerable enough as to always keep in mind that he should always watch over her.

For some reason he couldn't quite understand, the thought had never crossed his mind that whatever might have become of this fully alien version of him after he and Donna left Bad Wolf Bay should ever have upset her. And yet, this version of Rose was begging to know what had become of him because she was mistakenly carrying the burden of abandonment on her shoulders. Not having become aware of that possibility until this very moment, he felt deeply sorry and terribly ashamed of himself.

"I guess I try to be," he answered. Looking beyond Rose, he caught a glimpse of an emotional Eleventh Doctor and his deeply moved friend Clara Oswald watching from inside the TARDIS. "But I know you are, Rose, that's what keeps me going. And I'd never want it to be any other way, you understand?"

Even under these hideous circumstances, the Tenth Doctor had once again been able to perform his alien magic upon Rose Tyler. On this occasion, by saying the words that would be least painful for her to hear, by squeezing her hands in his, and by giving her such a reassuring smile that, had she been Samson, she would happily have let Doctor Delilah cut off every single strand of her fortifying hair.

"So what happens now?" she asked now that her tears seemed to be giving her a rare break.

"I have to lock away the memories stored in your brain from the moment you met that Zygon," he explained. "Next time you wake up, you'll have forgotten all about the Tower or Queen Elizabeth, or the fact that you were ever there. Needless to say of course you'll have forgotten about us as well."

He had meant me instead of us, but he knew she already knew that.

"And will I ever remember any of it again?" she asked with her heart in her mouth.

"It's highly unlikely I'm afraid," muttered the Doctor.

Rose nodded softly as she bit her lip and squeezed her eyes shut. When she opened them again she saw a tear running down the Doctor's face, and that vision crushed her with sorrow. The Doctor didn't want to say goodbye any more than she did. Given that their inability to take it any longer was becoming more obvious by the minute, Rose decided to rush things over, not so much to end her own suffering as to ease the Doctor's pain.

"So how ya gonna do it then?" she asked.

"There are different ways it can be done," he answered, "and all of them are very simple. I could put my fingers on your temples and it'd be done in the blink of an eye. Or maybe this time I could just… Just this once, I mean, I guess maybe I could just…"

Rose waited for the Doctor to finish that line, but he never did.

"You could just what?" she asked nervously.

The Doctor kept staring at Rose in silence. His eyes widened when he saw her close the short distance separating her body from his, which she resolved to do because she knew that he knew she had guessed the words that had been left unsaid. Now that they were standing dangerously close to each other no words were spoken, but no words were needed either. The only thing that needed saying was written in the way they were looking at each other.

The Doctor and the Rose Tyler that had met in the England of Queen Elizabeth I would never have another chance to let themselves get carried away by what they felt so strongly for each other.

That was how, losing control over himself, the Doctor threw caution to the wind. In a split second he let go of Rose's hands, wrapped his arms around her waist and leant forward to let his mouth crash down upon hers.

Had the Eleventh Doctor and Clara been peering from inside the TARDIS, they might have thought the younger Time Lord's move to be not only unexpected but also completely unforeseen. Rose, however, would have disagreed completely. She and the Doctor had been carefully trying to avoid this very thing from happening for too long, but the heat of the events that had led them both longing for more first on that Venetian gondola and later at Victoria Falls were still running through their veins. Thus, in spite of its urgency, her mouth had been perfectly ready to welcome the Doctor's and dance with it to the end of their world when it eventually came searching for hers. Thereby, locking her arms around his neck, she abandoned herself to the caress of his silky lips and the honeyed strokes of his tongue.

When the need for air to breath made their mouths break apart ever so unwillingly, their heads went gently down and their foreheads touched. Their eyes remained unopened for a brief while as their nostrils sucked in not only the air they needed so badly but also the scent of each other's skin, whose warmth had been enough not only to make them forget it was still snowing massively around them, but also to put them under a spell none of them wanted to break free from, or at least not just yet.

"Please tell me it doesn't 'ave to be memory loss at first kiss," Rose muttered, gasping for air.

"It could," answered the Doctor in between shallow breaths, "but I wouldn't dream of it."

"Good, that's good," she whispered, her impatient lips instantly landing on his exquisite and slightly swollen ones.

They drank and drank from each other, unashamedly and unreservedly, each like a lonely nomad whose path had just crossed with a cool and sparkling oasis in the middle of the desert after many long days of dryness. And yet, the more they drank, the less their thirst seemed to quench.

When in need to pull apart again, Rose buried her head in the Doctor's chest. She let her hands rest on his shoulders as he drew her even closer to him. It felt so nice to be together like this, their bodies pressed against each other, so warm and so comforting. Rose didn't dare move, worried that if she did the magic would suddenly end. Still, she knew that it would have to soon, so before the Doctor decided it was time to put her mind at ease and her recent memories to rest, she said something she simply could not leave unsaid.

"I'm sorry I left ya Doctor," she muttered.

"Oh Rose," he mumbled guiltily, planting a soft kiss on the top of her head, "you really needn't be sorry about that."

"Oh I do, Doctor, I do!" she promptly replied as she looked up to take in his dear face. "If only I could, I'd split myself in two and give stupid future me a smack! I can't understand why I left ya behind, Doctor, and in all this time we've spent together I 'avent been able to forgive myself for doing that, but still… Doctor I need ya to know… 'Ere and now, this me, she would never 'ave done that 'cause… She loves you." Pulling slightly away, Rose looked up and searched for the Doctor's eyes, hoping and praying that he would realise the truthfulness of her words in them. "Doctor, I love you!"

The Doctor didn't say a word at first. He stayed put and silent while he drank her in once again, then he slowly leant his head forward. His lips brushing hers, Rose could feel his warm breath caressing her soul as he eventually spoke.

"Not as much as I love you, Rose Tyler," he whispered into her mouth.

His mouth crashed into hers again, and this time their kiss felt infinitely greedier and hungrier, their lips and tongues and teeth desperately trying to make the thrill of that moment last. With the Doctor's words still echoing in her ears, Rose soon realised that her senses were leaving her. At first she thought that the passion consuming them in this new kiss was to blame and that she was just losing herself over him, but it didn't take her long to understand what was really and finally happening. And yet, all the while, she didn't fight it or offer any kind of resistance. She knew it would be in vain. All she did was stay there in Doctor's arms, kissing and being kissed back until her muscles went limp, her limbs floppy, and her consciousness slowly faded away.

Still, before her memories were forever padlocked and everything around her started to go dark, she made a promised, not only to herself but also to the man that she was leaving behind.

I will remember you, Doctor.

Bad Wolf Bay, in some parallel universe, about five years later

"Not as much as I love you, Rose Tyler."

The blue-suited stranger who otherwise looked exactly like the Doctor pulled back after he whispered those words into Rose's ear. His eyes were fixed on her though, as he was obviously waiting to see how she would react to his confession. They stared at each other in silence but just for a brief moment, which was as much time as Rose needed to replay those words in her head and to decide – why not? – that she would certainly believe them with all her heart. Then, out of the blue, she grabbed the lapels of his blue suit jacket and pulled him down as her mouth crashed against his, hungrier and thirstier than it had ever been back on the days when she used to live in a different universe and had from time to time found herself in the kind of situation of which kissing some bloke had been the natural outcome. This wasn't some bloke though. This was the Doctor. Well, this had to be the Doctor.

Or did he?

Then, all of a sudden, it happened. First she felt electric shocks going through her brain, and out of the blue a strange set of images projected themselves inside her head like flashes taking over her brain. To begin with she saw some kind of alien thing, all red and covered in suckers, menacingly close to her, then she saw a dark room which was practically empty except for a really old-fashioned four-poster bed. Then there was this woman, a young woman just like her, then some guys dressed up as medieval or Renaissance guards and even one dressed as a priest. Who were those guys anyway? After that there was a crowd and a scaffold, on top of which there was someone who very much looked like an executioner and whose terrifying sword strangely seemed to be waiting for her... Then everything went black and then… Then there was... The Doctor! Oh yeah! Of course the Doctor would save her from the scaffold! Then there was this young man in a bow tie, then that young girl again, and there was also Captain Jack Harkness! Also next to him was this guy in Renaissance costume, but why were there so many people in fancy dress? Unless they weren't in fancy dress at all, unless… Oh, hang on a minute! Could that be Queen Elizabeth I? 'Cause she certainly looked like her!

Those faces and a few others kept flashing through her mind at breakneck speed, and as the kiss she was engaged in deepened and she wrapped her arms around this new Doctor's neck they soon started to be accompanied by voices. The first she heard was her own screaming the words let me go while beating the locked door inside that scary dark empty room.

The rest came in rapid succession.

I'll get you out of here and then I'll take you home to your mom. I'm giving you my word!

I'd eat that if I were ya, young lass, 'cause tomorrow's the day ya meet Monsieur L'Épéiste!

Someone tell me what's goin' on 'ere, okay?!

Sandshoes! Stop that execution, for god's sake!

I've got you! Oh, how I've missed you! Look, Rose! It's me!

Aliens exist, Rose. The Doctor himself... He's an alien.

Consider yourself to be one of our most dearly loved friends at the English court.

We're not good friends. We're so much more than that, Rose Tyler.

I happened to introduce you. Nice chap, by the way, and really very good-looking! Seemed a bit wild to me at first to be honest, but I'm sure you've managed to tame him.

Not as much as I love you, Rose Tyler.

I will remember you, Doctor.

The voices in her head rose up like birds in the sky, each flapping their wings and flying high to eventually alight on the nest where it belonged. The faces having been given voices, a thunderstorm broke loose inside Rose when, with each of her quickened heartbeats, the names of long-gone people and places started to present themselves.

Thump thump - the Tower of London.

Thump thump - John and Clara.

Thump thump - Queen Elizabeth I.

Thump thump - Edward de Vere.

Thump thump - Whitehall Palace.

Thump thump - Anne Boleyn!

And it was still far from over. The Doctor's face would stay in her mind as the names of many other places she had completely forgotten about started to reveal themselves. The Hanging Gardens of Babylon, the lost city of Atlantis, the land of Alfheimr, the Library of Alexandria, the Amazonian Rainforest, Mount Olympus, the Porcelain Tower of Nanjing, the Great Pyramid of Giza, the Ancient City of Petra, The Colossus of Rhodes, the Northern Lights, Machu Picchu, Venice, and many, may others.

One last name, Victoria Falls, sent shivers to her spine, and the moment it came to her a tidal wave of lost memories flooded over her. How an alien creature that the Doctor had called a Zygon had kidnapped her and taken her to sixteenth-century London under the orders of Queen Elizabeth I; how she had been a prisoner in the infamous Tower of London and how a friend of the Doctor's, a young girl called Clara Oswald, had been her fellow prisoner there; how the Doctor himself had rescued her from the scaffold and traded her life for Anne Boleyn's; how she had been an honoured guest at the Elizabethan court and stayed in Whitehall Palace for days on end; how the Doctor had stayed with her and taken her to other places scattered across time on Planet Earth; how she had been madly in love with him and he had been madly in love with her; how they had eventually had to say goodbye while the guilt of knowing that she would eventually leave him bit at her heart and soul.

And then it hit her. It literally hit her! She had not left him and ran away with someone else. Actually, it had been the Doctor who was leaving her with that someone, with some partly human replacement of himself! Their blissful days and nights in and out of Whitehall Palace had gone by and she had refrained herself from acting on her feelings because she truly believed she had caused him a great deal of pain, but now she knew she hadn't! Now she remembered and she just had to tell him! Or maybe… Maybe that was still in the future for him? It had to be or he wouldn't have mentioned she had left him for another man… Oh but anyway, who cared? Her heart was leaping inside her like dolphins leapt in the sea… She had remembered him! She had promised herself she would and she had, and she just had to tell him!

Unfortunately for her, the moment when she made that decision was also the moment when she heard the TARDIS whooshing. She looked around right away and her blood ran cold inside her veins as she gasped. Oh, this just couldn't be happening! She couldn't let the Doctor go without sharing with him everything she had just seen and the truth she had just come to understand! She quickly pulled away from the other Doctor and rushed forward, but she had to come to a halt almost instantly. There would be no chance to break into the TARDIS after all. As it happened, it had just proven to be too late. The spaceship she had loved and still loved so dearly was already engaged in the process of dematerialisation, leaving her dispirited and broken-hearted, and making her feel like she wanted to die right away.

For a moment Rose did nothing but stand and stare. Her head was spinning fast, not because the kiss that she and the other Doctor had got enthralled in hadn't been intoxicating, but mostly because of all those locked memories that had finally been unleashed and were running wild inside her head. Also, because she just couldn't believe that, once again, the Doctor had left her behind. Then, out of nowhere, with the TARDIS whooshing sound still ringing in her ears, she felt an unexpected hand take and squeeze hers. Turning her head, her eyes met those of the other Doctor, who was staring at her knowingly and reassuringly, and the thought suddenly crossed her mind that maybe the Doctor - the real Doctor – had had a very good reason to do what he had just done, to leave her trapped again in this universe that she hated so much with his doppelganger. It suddenly occurred to her that, even if this was still in his future, maybe something had happened during the time they had been apart and now he just had known what would happen next. Maybe the other Doctor had also seen what she had seen! After all, it had actually been him who had opened that locked door and given her back all those forgotten memories when they kissed, maybe… Maybe this had been meant to be after all!

"I think I'd like to get a really long coat, just like that one," said the Doctor unexpectedly, in an attempt to take some heat out if the situation. "Wanna help me with that?"

Rose however didn't seem to be listening in the slightest. Her eyes were fixed on the empty space that the Doctor in the TARDIS had left on that ghastly beach once again, and as this new Doctor looked ahead, he found it quite obvious that her mind was somewhere else.

After a few seconds, Rose took a deep breath, turned to him, and looking at him intently, asked a very simple yet for her absolutely crucial question.

"What do you know about Anne Boleyn and Queen Elizabeth I?"

"I'm sorry?" asked the Doctor, visibly surprised.

"How much do you know about Queen Elizabeth and her mother Anne Boleyn?" she insisted, although she felt terrified just by seeing the puzzled look on his face.

"Well, I met Queen Elizabeth I once, and I may be wrong but I certainly got the impression she didn't really fancy me... As for Anne Boleyn, I met her once too, a long time ago, but I don't know anything of special significance about her. What I know is what everybody else knows. Should I know any more than that?"

"Okay, forget about them!" Rose added impatiently, determined to ask another question to give him a second chance. "What about Shakespeare then? How much do you know about him?"

"What?" he asked as his eyes narrowed.

"You heard me, Doctor. What do you know about William Shakespeare?"

"Rose, what kind of question is that?" asked a very confused Doctor with a frown.

"Rose, love, ya feeling alright?" asked her mother, who had just been standing there next to them all the while.

"Just answer me, Doctor!" she implored, tears starting to well behind her eyes.

The Doctor was really astonished and perplexed. He knew Rose well of course, which meant that he was sure there had to be an extremely good reason for her to be asking such strange questions. Still, he couldn't guess what it was, nor could he possibly know how much was actually at stake.

"Well, I met him once, soon after I lost you," he explained, shoving his hands in his jacket pockets as he looked down. "I was a bit disappointed at first and so was Martha, but he grew on us both later. Y'see, he was being haunted by these witches - carrionites, actually, 'cause surprise surprise, they turned out to be aliens. I can give you all the details if you want me to, Rose, but I just can't see how that is relevant right now."

"That's exactly the problem," Rose answered, her hopes plummeting to the cold wet sand.

"I don't know why you're doing this right not, Rose, I really don't," he said with as much calm and concentration as he could muster for the time being, "but I'd love to find out! In fact, it might actually help a lot if you just explained what..."

"Forget it," she cut off, "just… Just forget it!"

"But Rose…," he insisted, taking a step towards her.

"I said forget it, Doctor!" she snapped.

"Rose, what's got into ya? He's only trying to help," added Jackie, who was as confused as the Doctor.

But Rose wasn't aware of her mother or the other Doctor being there with her, not anymore. And just like that, she turned around and ran away from them both.