Wanda's breath caught in her throat, the intensity of River's experience washing over her. She'd said the words that triggered River's memory, she'd had her own fears, but she hadn't imagined anything like that. She, at least, had made her own choices, however bad they had turned out to be. And if she'd been powerless, and if she'd given up some of her freedom -- freedom to rage, freedom to starve, what value that? -- but her freedom for power, allowing them to use her in their experiments, for their purposes, for her purposes entwined, and it had still been a choice, so many bad choices...
And if she'd used others, and she had used others, she knew that too... And now it was her turn to try to swallow against a painful guilty shame. "I didn't mean-- I'm sorry."
So inadequate.
She shielded her mind, as best she could, trying to think about what River said, not what she didn't say. Trying not to think about monsters, especially monsters inside. That was not something she wanted to share.
"If nothing is lost, then secrets are better if the right person knows them," she tried. "Perhaps the box...was not so bad. A good cause? Worse monsters..." She hadn't entirely understood what River was saying at first, but there were worse ways to be used than to pass on a diary and a weapon and a secret to someone who had a right to them. Though she wondered a little about the weapon.
But is that the only choice? she thought, angry. At herself, at the world, at what seemed like an endless series of traps. How to be used? Caught up by secrets, or powers, or wars? She didn't like that question at all, and she curbed the impulse to say it out loud, thinking that it probably wasn't something that River would have a useful answer to, but she wasn't sure if River might sense the thought anyway.
"No matter where you go, there you are," she repeated, her voice flat with the effort of keeping her thoughts to herself as much as she could. She shrugged. She wasn't sure what that meant either, besides the obvious. But she was beginning to think there were layers to everything River said.