[ even though she offered concrete things for them to look for, after her initial scan of the room, river ends up spending more time with each body individually seeing something else. the information is still there, catalogued to offer her assessment later on when they begin sorting properly, but more things come to her than just the lumps of flesh and bone that lay before them.

like the first body, whose sunken skull used to hold brown eyes and long brown hair before it melted away beneath the acidic creatures that kept them trapped in the pit. on the second, she sees the belts and buckles and buttons that seem typical of fashion in the free cities over the blistering wounds with thorny protrusions that leave her scratching feverishly at her arms. and the third body, when eddie points out the necklace -

the thing about memories is that they can cling to places and objects as much as people.

when she idly reaches out to touch the half of the pendant, river immediately screams and flinches away as though burned by it. she stumbles into the tables holding more bodies behind them, making quite the ruckus as she cries and stares at the body in horror. ]

Get it out, get it out! Not supposed to be there, it's not - they're supposed to be together, not here, not -

[ she shouts again as a phantom pain blooms in her shoulder and back, seeing and feeling the vines and thorns that tore through them as they clung to each other helplessly. she unintentionally knocks into eddie, unsteady on her feet as she begins to look around the room wildly. ]

Where is she? You have to get it out, they can't - they can't take her, they're supposed to be together!