When Althea looked into her eyes, River could see the strain this place had on the girl. Oh she had her work cut out for her. Seeing the way Althea was scratching and had everything mapped out was all River needed to know that this was just as bad as when Eleven had died. No doubt Althea was reacting badly to the fact that a younger version of Eleven was here because she well knew his time stream was gone, should be gone, and this was a time before he even knew of her existence. Which once again left River to do the damage control because out of everyone here, she was the one who had known Althea the longest and knew how best to handle her. Or she hoped, anyway. If she couldn't calm Althea down at least a little, then there would be no hope of getting her to stop thinking of being the sacrifice.
She listened to Althea's words and watched as she made adjustments to the timelines. River watched the changes, taking them in silently. As much as she just wanted to stop Althea altogether, she also knew letting her map out the timelines would perhaps be the only way for her to get a look into what was truly going through her mind. While River didn't fully understand the Matrix part of Althea, she understood the Time Lord part completely, and so she let that part of her, what part of it remained within her, guide her in this.
And then Althea was talking about the sacrifice. River's jaw clenched for a few moments. All right, so at least she'd said something about the sacrifice without realizing it. It was just another piece of the puzzle River took to add to the bigger picture she was putting together.
"There is more than one way to keep her from the pier." All timelines had multiple possible paths to take, which meant there were multiple answers to each and every question and problem along the way. All right, so perhaps River's approach would now get Althea to focus more on the sacrifice and talking about it. It would, at the very least, focus her on something a bit easier than just forcing her to focus on River's timestream. Though this was obviously going to be far easier said than done. And she was also aware that she'd have to change tactics on the fly, depending on how Althea responded.
"Come here," she said, taking note of the state of Althea's other arm. This was not going to be pretty, but River was determined to do something about it. One way or another.