Did You Just Say Bad Wolf?
His words hang in the air for a moment and he doesn't even really register his other selves or Clara (brilliant girl, he can see he'll have fun running with her) as his mind flashes through a thousand memories that are more than he can bear and less than enough.
And his heart breaks because he realizes that the Consciousness, however it works, took Bad Wolf- took Rose- as the way to help him- guide him- in this, the source of some of his most horrible nightmares.
And briefly the thought floated through his head if his next self ("The Man Who Forgets") is having the same memories and thoughts flash through his mind as he is in his or if he's managed to forget her too. And oh- that hurts. Because the thought of ever forgetting her is just- painful. He'd rather have his hearts forever feeling this pain than forget her for even a moment because it's Rose. And she deserves to be remembered always and every moment with her was a treasure that he keeps pressed closed to him, hidden away where no one else will find them and take them (and maybe that's what his future self is doing- guarding his thoughts and feelings of Rose so closely that he won't even share them with his past self: the one person guaranteed to know his pain).
But even as he wonders over his future, much of him is lost in the past with a blond (pink and yellow) girl with stars in her eyes (and a smile that could light a thousand of them) who ran (and held his hand) across time and space with him (even if her running was really more like dancing- "So, what- you sayin' you do dance?").
"I want you safe." She saved him, every day he was with her, all the time, and he supposes he shouldn't be at all surprised ("It's impossible.") that even in the darkest of all his dark hours: she is finding a way from across unmeasured time and immeasurable space to save him yet again.
Because isn't that what Rose always did?