River doesn't quite flinch. But the sudden tension in her shoulders and back is a little like it.

She takes a few more steps into the kitchen, enough to wrap her hands around the back of a chair and stare down at its seat. Slowly she spreads her fingers against the wood, either in genuine preoccupation or in a kind of self-distraction.

"I don't want," she says, low, and stops there, unfinished.

Higher, unhappier: "It hurts. Every way."