River shuffled her feet a little, letting her toes scrunch and spread against the cool metal floor. She almost regretted having said anything about her abilities, since it always lead to questions she never felt confident about answering. On Serenity it had been different; Simon had to tell the crew the truth, for fear of being abandoned on some backwater moon or - worse - handed back to the Alliance for the bounty. But here, her survival seemed to depend on her silence, rather than her truth. She'd read about the Jedi purges, followed what was happening on the Holonet. Others like her, from whatever point of origin, were either targets or myths, or both. She wasn't sure she liked the idea of that.
"I didn't ask for it," she started slowly, still looking at her feet. "I thought I was going to a special school, but they lied. The glass was mirrored on one side, but they could always see through it, see inside and know what to take apart."
She gave a little shrug and a sniffle, finally raising her eyes to look at Sara again. "Simon saved me. I was a million shards of glass when he rescued me, but he swept me up and tried his best to put me back together. Some of the pieces are lost, some aren't quite in the right spot. Sometimes I think the glue is going to dissolve, but he was always there to show me it was okay. 'It's okay, mei mei, I'm right here. I'll fix you again.'"
Her arm came up to wipe at the tears that had formed little rivers down her cheeks, the orange cloth of her pilot's jumpsuit looking almost garish against her pale skin. "I'm worried that if I fall apart again, there won't be anyone who knows how to pick up the pieces. That they'll get cut." She let out a little sigh. "It's good that you're a fighter. You won't bleed as much."
She gave another shrug and considered what Sara had said. Coming back from the dead might explain why things felt out of order with her, or perhaps it was simply the way things were where she came from. Her exposure to others who had come through the rift was fairly limited, and she had decided that she needed more data before coming to an informed conclusion.
"They brought you back," she murmured, her head canting to one side, hair spilling over her shoulder. "But not your sister. Does that seem fair to you?"