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

Comments

[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

[blondecanary]

Dinah turned pink again, then really thought about it. "You know? I need to learn to deal. If it's too much, I'll just back away. Carefully. I don't think it will be, though." She blew out a breath, her eyebrows going up. "Are you okay with me seeing what might be there?"

[ancientbschamp]

"I'm fine with it," Gabrielle said earnestly. It wasn't like she had anything to hide, after all. "I'm just worried about you being okay with it."

[blondecanary]

"I'll be okay." For one thing, it was Gabrielle. And vampire or not, she'd gotten through it all fine, and was a good person. For another, whatever was in Gabrielle's head wouldn't be directed at her. Dinah straightened, than turned herself to face Gabrielle. "This part, I've done before. And usually people didn't even know I was in there, afterward. But if it hurts you, we stop."

She took a breath and held out both hands. "When you're ready."

[ancientbschamp]

Gabrielle had thought it would take more preparation than that, somehow, but she nodded.

"Okay. Okay," she said, and took a breath, reaching for Dinah's hands. "What do you need me to do?"

[blondecanary]

"Go back to the part you're sure about," Dinah said. "Before anything might be missing. Then keep going from there."

She closed her eyes, and then put her hands in Gabrielle's. And focused....

Her breathing/ Gabrielle's breathing / her hands / Gabrielle's / her / Gabrielle

THERE.

[ancientbschamp]

Gabrielle nodded and closed her eyes, thinking back. Before the incident with Bacchus, before Xena had been forced to help David kill her friend Goliath.

She and Xena were walking down a road, just an ordinary old dirt road like hundreds of others, toward the Temple of the Fates

[blondecanary]

Inside Gabrielle's head, the memory played out, without a stutter, without a pause; so far, so real. Nothing that looked out of place, spliced in, or painted over. Dinah concentrated on her breathing, on Gabrielle's, and the sound of the surf, the ocean breathing with them. Me. Gabrielle. Outside. Inside.

The woman she saw in Gabrielle's mind reminded her incredibly strongly of Helena; the two of them would be best friends or kill each other in seconds if they ever met. She didn't say as much aloud or inside her head, not wanting to distract Gabrielle. But it was if she were right behind her, looking over her shoulder as the memory progressed.

[ancientbschamp]

That was where it hitched up: that moment between Xena getting ready to run the boy through and just knocking him down instead, and Gabrielle was stuck back on that moment for the space of a few breaths.

"Get outta here," Xena growled at the boy, who scampered off, leaving a pendant on a leather cord behind.

"It's a Virillus token," Gabrielle noted as she picked it up, only to look at Xena in surprise when she suddenly got hugged. "Huh? What's this for?"

"Just for being you." Xena pulled back, but kept one arm around Gabrielle's shoulders.

"Uh huh." Gabrielle peered at her. "Are you okay?"

"Mmm-hmm," Xena assured her.

"You don't seem yourself," Gabrielle insisted, and Xena grinned.

"No, you're wrong. I'm more myself than ever."

"Hmm." Gabrielle glanced toward the temple doors. "Aren't you going to go back inside?"

Xena's answer was to start walking away, further down the road, and Gabrielle, of course, followed her.

Gabrielle opened her eyes, frowning. "After that was when I caught my portal back here."

[blondecanary]

Dinah opened her eyes too, thinking, and ran it back in her head--

--and no, that moment, that right there, that was off. Cut off, stalled, like someone put sticky tape right there. "I think I have it. I'm pretty sure." She squeezed Gabrielle's hands again, and said, "Look."

Xena got ready to run the boy through.

Xena got ready to run the boy through.

Xena--

And Dinah stalled it, the way she had with Larry Ketterly, trying to mess with Helena, and froze it: subjective time stretching out, and out, and out....

[ancientbschamp]

"What?" Gabrielle asked, looking nervous all of a sudden. Consciously, she couldn't have pointed that instant out if you had a knife to her throat (maybe because she'd had that happen so many times she was almost jaded about it).

[blondecanary]

"It's too long," Dinah said definitely. "For what's going on, it's like-- it doesn't match what happened right before it," she said, her brow furrowing. "Watch."

She took them back inside the memory, this time from her perspective as a watcher, letting Gabrielle see it:

Xena got ready to run the boy through... and the moment went on and on, not as quickly as it had to have happened. Right before she let the boy go, a feeling of something too dense, too distant, off-- and the right after that moment, everything right again.

"Do you see it now?"

[ancientbschamp]

"But . . ." Gabrielle frowned. "That's not right. She never tried to kill him. I'm sure of that. I must have been thinking of writing it down in my scrolls that way, just to make it more dramatic."

Because she totally would.

[blondecanary]

"No," Dinah said, shaking her head slowly. "Imagination-- here. Imagine something that never happened. Something ridiculous."

Yeah, like that would be a stretch.

[ancientbschamp]

Gabrielle looked at her oddly; that wasn't a hard request at all.

And the ensuing mental image of Xena, gremlin-bitten and fighting mutant goldfish-spitting alligators in a pink tutu and toe shoes, was patently ridiculous and could have fit in just fine in season 5.

[blondecanary]

Dinah snickered oh, season 5, then froze it a moment, concentrating. "The visual details, those are good-- but listen to it. Try to pick out your physical sensations when this was supposedly happening."

It was like a two-dimensional image animated, versus a living, breathing, three-dimensional, sense-surround memory. A really good one, but... still not real.

"Now look at your memory."

... Gabrielle saw an arm wielding a sword flash up over Xena's shoulder she yelled out a warning; without so much as a glance behind her, Xena brought her own sword up to run him through . . .

And everything blurred...

"Depth, weight, gravity, density, I don't know what else to call it." Dinah sighed in frustration. "This is real. That tutu isn't. And somewhere in between, you have that blur, where something got... smushed."