Calm and focus. It was almost like the home she shared with Luke and Mara, only different. It was familiar from when she had first shown up, when Jacen and Tenel Ka had taken her in because she'd had no one from home. No Simon. No Captain. No Zoe or Kaylee or Wash. Preacher man was gone and so was Inara. Not even Jayne. Jayne who looked better in red. Jason who looked better in red. No. She couldn't think that. Couldn't think back to the park, the sparse images of memory that poked through the haze of that day at times. But he had anger and aggression and had been so much like a Reaver in that regard. And she had to stop them. Stop the secret from getting out.
The secret that wasn't her and continued to burn in her mind. She had stopped trying to claw it out after a time.
When Jacen said who it was, the teen peaked through her hair, watching. He wasn't a threat. No. Jacen cared in his own way. Wouldn't hurt her. And he was Jacen again, she could tell. Just as she had known when his inhibitions had been lowered and he'd felt wrong.
"Up to you..."
Given she wasn't hiding in herself now, well, mostly, her gaze flickered to her unfinished chess game. The message. What message? She'd been trying to get it out, to explain why when she herself didn't know exactly why she had snapped. Why she had attacked. She remembered the chaos, the uncertainty. The poking of her subconscious. The shadows with the taunts. She remembered the questions on her mission. A mission that didn't matter here. Why didn't it matter? It tugged at her, bugging her. She hated it. She still at least hadn't tried to cut anything out of her as she had earlier when John had left, when the first change in her stay here had happened.
Tugging on her hair, River went back to staring at the wall for a while before she finally shifted and faced Jacen, tilting her head to the side.
"Everyone's flustered and frustrated...."
Even in the isolated room, with the block, she could feel it. It was radiating off of everyone in the medbay and tied to it. The stress was getting to them. It was her and Mara only, and yet... everything had gone crazy. The little blonds, they liked to dance. The smallest one at least. She had watched their nightly routine of saying goodnight to their father. The family unit, cohesive and stable and there. Nothing was stable anymore in River's life. She didn't like it. She couldn't handle it.