River just nodded. She hadn't really explained to anyone the true depths of what had been done to her, other than a few off-handed and opaque remarks that no one had been able to decode. It was much easier to let them fill in the blanks than to show them the truth of what had been done to her.
"I'm sorry," she murmured, fidgeting one bare foot in place. "I usually... I let people say what they're going to, even though I know it already." She looked back up finally, her eyes wide with apologetic compassion. "You're sad, but I didn't think you would say why, and it's not good to keep things like that to yourself. It's not healthy."
She couldn't help but give a soft chuckle, the corners of her eyes crinkling into a smile for a moment. It was funny, that she would be the one to give advice on healthy emotional states.
"That's what my brother would say," she explained. "Simon. He's a doctor." Her smile faded away into a hollow look, her gaze focused somewhere past Sara, past the Banshee, past anything in this galaxy. "I can't imagine losing him."
It was a lie; she'd dreamed of a life without Simon many times, especially since Miranda, and especially since coming here. But it was something she'd heard people say as a way of somehow comforting another who'd suffered a great loss. It seemed the proper thing to say at the moment.