The beach, Friday afternoon

[blondecanary]

Trying to meditate in her room was getting Dinah nowhere; the feeling of being cooped up and trapped just didn't allow it to work. So after a run through town and down the beach, she found a spot on the sand and sat down, closing her eyes, and taking a deep, deep breath.

This is me. This is not-me. The beginning of the exercises Ghanima had

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[ancientbschamp]

For a while now, ever since the break between summer workshop sessions, Gabrielle had had a nagging feeling that she was missing something. It was never a particularly strong sensation, and there were no gaps in her memory that she could tell, but there was always the vaguest, most maddeningly nebulous sense of something just out of reach that she was just . . . missing.

She didn't think about it most of the time; it didn't seem to be anything particularly important. Like whether the third fencepost from the left of the gate in front of her parents' house was a fingerspan higher or lower than the others -- not that, but something on that scale. Inconsequential but niggling

[ancientbschamp]

Gabrielle shook her head. "Xena put a dryad bone through Bacchus's heart before any of us could drink his blood, and make the change permanent. She got me to turn her into a Bacchae to do it, though; it was the only way she could get close enough to him. Once she did that, we were all ourselves again."

There had not been an introduction to that part of the story. Gabrielle might have paid a little too much attention to Homer's rhapsodizing about starting stories in medias res while she'd been at the Academy for the Performing Bards.

[blondecanary]

"...Um?" Dinah's eyes got huge. "Bacchus the god? And you were a -- what's a bacchae?" She vaguely remembered her Greek myths, and what she remembered had her blinking a lot. "You didn't rip anyone apart, did you?"

[ancientbschamp]

"That's the one," Gabrielle acknowledged with a wry smile. "And no, I didn't. I just bit Xena. That was . . ."

Really nice.

"Interesting."

[blondecanary]

Dinah turned stoplight red. "I bet."

Cough. "I mean. Good?"

Oh, God. "Good to know!"

[ancientbschamp]

"Who knew biting someone's neck could get them to make noises like that?" Gabrielle continued obliviously. "Anyway, the point is everything turned out all right. We stopped Bacchus, Orpheus got his body back, and everything was fine."

[blondecanary]

"That's... good," Dinah said weakly, caught in a small unwilling flashback to biting Sam. She fanned herself. Ahem. "Whew. Yay bodies back. And Bacchus being dead, I guess."

[ancientbschamp]

"I remember everything about that," Gabrielle said, frowning. "And everything about David, and Goliath, and Jonathan and the Philistines. And the time we spent with the Centaurs, when I found out Xena has a son. I just feel like . . ."

It had been on her mind all day. "Like I'm missing something in the middle, somehow, but I'm sure I didn't get knocked out because that's Tahiri's thing and Xena would have told me if I had."

[blondecanary]

Dinah frowned, distracted from whoa hot back to reality.

"Xena has a son?" So not the point. "Wait, is this one of those, it-was-so-boring-I-zoned out, or 'hi, how did we get here' things?"

[ancientbschamp]

"No, not like that at all. Do you ever get the feeling that maybe there's some tiny little thing you missed, somehow?" Gabrielle asked, dropping to sit in the sand, unmindful of the impracticality of short skirts, sand, and the impending discomfort in her non-leather unmentionables. "Nothing important. Nothing that's even there if you look for it. But if you're not looking, there's a tiny, empty gap somewhere that you almost think you can feel."

[blondecanary]

Dinah thought back to if she'd ever felt anything similar, and frowned. And not in worry about Gabrielle's unmentionables, either. "Hunh."

[ancientbschamp]

"Xena would probably tell me I'm focusing too much on what's in my head again," Gabrielle mused, poking at the sand. "I could just be imagining things."

[blondecanary]

"Maybe." Dinah's voice stayed dubious though. "It kind of sounds like someone could have whammied you, though. Maybe just a little."

[ancientbschamp]

"I can't think of when that would be." Gabrielle started to doodle in the sand, the strange lettering that didn't look like any Greek or Roman alphabet in any textbook but was all over the scrolls that were starting to take over every flat surface on her side of her dorm room. "If it was anything important, I'm sure I would have noticed by now. I probably just imagined it."

[blondecanary]

Watching Gabrielle doodle in the sand, Dinah rested her chin on her hand, thinking.

On the one hand, if she was wrong, no big deal. Something was bugging Gabrielle, and had been for a while, but it didn't seem to be anything really painful or important.

On the other hand, if she was right, well. Someone might have mucked with Gabrielle's brain, and that was just... so wrong. Larry Ketterly, Harley Quinn; they'd hurt people, playing head games like that.

But what could she do? Either way?... Okay. She knew that.

Slowly, Dinah said, "We could check. If you'd trust me to go looking."

[ancientbschamp]

Gabrielle was torn, for a moment, but her natural and irrepressible sense of curiosity won out. "It wouldn't upset you too much, would it?"

She was mostly worried about the memories of being a Bacchae.