Understanding. Not. Understanding.
There was her symbol, and it was big and dark and dirty, but sometimes there were swans. So it couldn't be all that dirty.
Fast. It was fast. And there were rocks, and she crashed around them, foaming and roaring, and then she was whole again. She split around the rocks, and went back together again, and everything was in her.
Simon. Simon through a mirror, that was the man with the donuts. Simon, if he someone knocked him down and stacked the pieces back up, but in a different order this time around. Simon through a mirror.
They sent her here. Not just in her brain. River's brain was here, but so were her toes and organs. Blue hands touching buttons and sending sparks through the veins, and then she was here. She called it Earth That Was, and Simon-Through-A-Mirror said "Was. Was. Was?" And then he said a lot of other things, and she heard a woman who wasn't sleeping in his brain make irritated sounds.
She was sitting in a boat, the woman, and it was landing in the New World, not drifting out to sea. But he didn't know that, and River didn't say, because he needed to eat.
River organized his office while he was trying to talk to her. Cleaned things and straightened things. There was work to do. There were miles to go. She understood his questions, but he wouldn't understand her answers. It was easier for both of them to pretend it was the other way around, so she did, and put papers in the right order.
The poster, "I Want to Believe", it made her giggle. The whole idea of wanting to believe was ridiculous for her, of course. She didn't believe. She didn't want to believe. She didn't need to believe. She tried to explain, that it was like him believing in his desk, and she thought he might have understood, a little, but then he just had more questions. More wrong questions whose answers he wouldn't understand. He asked the wrong questions, that was the problem. But she didn't tell him that, because she didn't know what the right questions were. It wouldn't be fair then, it wouldn't be a hint. It would just be mean.
She put things in the right order, but he didn't understand her order. It was simple enough, and she gave him the formula, and told him to work it out. "But do it later," she added. "I'm hungry."
He looked up again. He'd had his head in his hands, and now he blinked at her. Fox pokes its head out before spring. Sleepy. Not understanding. Winter makes its world something else.
She pushed the formula across the desk, a little closer to him. "That's the formula I used," she explained again. "To fix your files. It's not hard. You can figure it out before you go back into hibernation. But food first."
River understood the car in a second. It was primitive and wasteful. But she was judging by the standards of her time, and imposing her own standards on a time when they were not the standards, when she and her standards were irrelevant, was something no good student of history should do, especially not when she got to observe it for herself first-hand.
The machines in the bakery, they were funny. Made her smile. They just worked. The curtain of frosting looked like a solid wall as it covered the donuts, and when she bit in, they were hot and soft and sweet.
He bought a dozen. She ate seven of them. Sometimes in fewer than three bites. He laughed, and she smiled around the mouthful of sweet soft warm, and she knew that he did not understand.
Even Simon couldn't have brought the boat to shore, she knew. He said he wanted to stop by a hospital, and he could find a place for her to stay first, but she said no. Didn't want to intrude, so she went for a walk, and ended up on a bridge, giant houses on one side and city on the other, and below her, rocks and trees and somehow, herself, because she was wrapped up in her symbol. Names have meanings, and this was hers, and she was trying to understand.
And then she was stepping up, feet on the railing, staring down at her symbol. Name from people who'd been gone for a long, long time, but the name hadn't died. Split around the rocks, and rushed and roared. It even danced, and little drops flew, and yet it wasn't cracked.
River did not understand.
He had arms around her then, and his voice cracked a little as he yanked her from the not understanding, pulled her down and put her on the sidewalk, and he asked her what the hell she was doing. The cars were loud. She saw it then, the girl who made him like Simon, and she saw why he was Simon's pieces in a different order, because he hadn't got her back.
"Why did you wander off?" he asked, and she saw the sleeping woman in his head. She'd wake up when she wanted to, even Simon couldn't have brought her back if she didn't want to come. But it was winter, and he should be sleeping, and sleepy Foxes couldn't understand.
She couldn't put it into words. She knew that. There were no words, there were only symbols. But she wanted to, because he was hurting as much as she was, and she tried, and lost the words, and took his hand in hers instead, and they walked back through the city to his primitive, wasteful car.
It was a long walk. He held her hand, and when they got to the car, she ate most of the rest of the donuts. He'd got another dozen before they left, but she didn't touch those.
They did not understand. They lay together, on the couch, warm, and breathing hard. Hands were in hands, and hands were on skin, and hands were in hair, and together, they did not understand.
She fell asleep, and woke up, and there were blue hands on her again, and shocks.
River thought she had eaten too long ago for things to come back up. But she was wrong, because in her room, she stuck her finger down her throat. She threw up until she couldn't see because of tears, and couldn't breathe through her nose because it was so stuffed up. It was sweet, and burned her throat. Bits that didn't belong here. Got rid of the sweet, because it grounded her, and it did not fit to be full and happy here.
She was pieces. Her symbol wasn't, even when it was cold, because then it would be solid. But she, the girl, was pieces. The name was wrong, but she couldn't change it.
River did not understand.