Ancient Greece, When is Still Irrelevant (But Later), Sunday Fandom Time
All right, so the entire incident with the town where dancing was forbidden had been an amusing enough diversion, but in retrospect, the weekend when Pinkie Pie had been a cult leader and Gabrielle had bought into her message? That should have been a clue.
Instead, what it turned out to be was an early indicator of what would end up a bit of a trend for Gabrielle’s winter break, after she decided she wanted to spend it pursuing some sort of spiritual quest.
First there had been Najara, the charismatic crusading warrior who took orders from her mysterious “Djinn” guides -- just listening to the voices in her head, Xena had muttered afterward -- and tried to convert her conquests into accepting “the light.” Gabrielle had been interested in finding out more about this Light of Najara’s; it was just appealing enough to her (if an intriguing semantic contrast to Karla's Darkness) with the soul-searching she’d been doing of late, and especially given the troubling implications of the Nothing. Najara’s plans to found a hospice had held some appeal as well, and Gabrielle had even been tempted to stay behind and help with that.
Finding out that Najara actually killed anyone who refused to convert to the Light, and even anyone she suspected hadn’t been sincere in their conversion, made the idea lose, oh, all of its appeal. When Gabrielle and Xena rode away from that stop on their trip, they left Najara in the custody of the local authorities.
Things got a little worse a few days later, when Xena -- who’d been acting like something was eating at her ever since the last conversation with Najara -- finally admitted that the vision she’d gotten from Alti involved not just Xena’s death by crucifixion, but Gabrielle’s as well. When they spotted a hostile army moving in on the city of Actus it was, of course, a foregone conclusion that Xena would want to stop them, but she’d tried to keep Gabrielle from going along. Gabrielle had gotten her way in the end, there, but factor in how the battle turned out to be some kind of bizarre recreation of one Xena had fought years ago and it wasn’t long before Xena’s constant paranoid fear got on Gabrielle’s last nerve.
“Xena, I don’t believe in your vision!” Gabrielle had finally exploded, when Xena suggested creating a diversion to get her safely out before the fighting started. “I can’t afford to! Now, either I prove you wrong and we go on from here, or I prove you right and we die, but either way, I will not continue like this!”
She’d stormed away to go up to the battlements and check on the soldiers there, but the frustration hadn’t abated.
Then there had been her well-meaning attempt to reunite a family whose daughter had been kidnapped by the Horde six years ago. That had ended well, she supposed, with a peace forged between the Horde -- no, Pomira, as they called themselves -- and the girl’s parents’ town, but it was hard for Gabrielle to reconcile Vanessa’s choice to remain with Cirvik and the Pomira with her own simplistic conviction that the girl belonged with her family. She didn’t believe her motivations were wrong -- it was just hard to accept that the right solution wasn’t necessarily the one she’d expected it to be.
That had only led to more internal questions.
So it wasn’t much of a surprise that when she somehow managed to fall down a hole in a cave and wake up in the garden of some lush dwelling decorated with blue statues of human figures in strange poses, she was all too ready to take the place’s inhabitant, Aidan, up on his offer to teach her his techniques for finding inner peace.
She’d heard of yoga from her time in Fandom, but she’d never thought of it as this literal of a method of exorcising one’s inner demons, or realized that the process of learning to clear her mind would bring up so many vivid memories of the painful moments of her life. Being manipulated into killing Meridian. Lying to Xena about killing Hope. Finding Solan dead. The horrors of the battle of Agio. The Quarter Quell, and Katniss’s stand against the Capitol. Not saving Phlanagus when she had the chance, and thereby forcing Temecula to make his first kill. Still, she kept on with the yoga lessons, but the longer they stayed, the more restless and violent Xena got (despite the incredibly decadent hot tub in their room), which only reinforced Gabrielle’s determination.
Naturally, it stood to reason that it was Xena’s violent tendencies that saved Gabrielle from being turned into one of those blue statues. Because of course Aidan wasn’t a harmless guru. Of course he was actually prolonging his own lifespan indefinitely by leeching the goodness out of his students.
So it really did stand to reason that Xena threatening to kill the caretaker -- which snapped Gabrielle out of her imminently-fatal Dhanura-asana pose to persuade her to stop -- saved her life.
She couldn’t even be that upset about it when Xena kicked her sword straight into Aidan’s gut, and everything melted away to reveal the cave where they’d been waiting out a storm in the first place.
It just meant that one of the things she felt was really wrong with the world had saved her life. She didn’t know what to do with that . . . which just meant that this spiritual quest of hers wasn’t over.
The yoga was useful, though. She kept doing that.
[OOC: NFI/NFB/OOC-okay, yadda yadda. Mashed together from X:WP episodes "A Tale of Two Muses," "Crusader," "Past Imperfect," "Daughter of Pomira," and "Paradise Found." This season is special. But wow, is it pretty.]
Instead, what it turned out to be was an early indicator of what would end up a bit of a trend for Gabrielle’s winter break, after she decided she wanted to spend it pursuing some sort of spiritual quest.
First there had been Najara, the charismatic crusading warrior who took orders from her mysterious “Djinn” guides -- just listening to the voices in her head, Xena had muttered afterward -- and tried to convert her conquests into accepting “the light.” Gabrielle had been interested in finding out more about this Light of Najara’s; it was just appealing enough to her (if an intriguing semantic contrast to Karla's Darkness) with the soul-searching she’d been doing of late, and especially given the troubling implications of the Nothing. Najara’s plans to found a hospice had held some appeal as well, and Gabrielle had even been tempted to stay behind and help with that.
Finding out that Najara actually killed anyone who refused to convert to the Light, and even anyone she suspected hadn’t been sincere in their conversion, made the idea lose, oh, all of its appeal. When Gabrielle and Xena rode away from that stop on their trip, they left Najara in the custody of the local authorities.
Things got a little worse a few days later, when Xena -- who’d been acting like something was eating at her ever since the last conversation with Najara -- finally admitted that the vision she’d gotten from Alti involved not just Xena’s death by crucifixion, but Gabrielle’s as well. When they spotted a hostile army moving in on the city of Actus it was, of course, a foregone conclusion that Xena would want to stop them, but she’d tried to keep Gabrielle from going along. Gabrielle had gotten her way in the end, there, but factor in how the battle turned out to be some kind of bizarre recreation of one Xena had fought years ago and it wasn’t long before Xena’s constant paranoid fear got on Gabrielle’s last nerve.
“Xena, I don’t believe in your vision!” Gabrielle had finally exploded, when Xena suggested creating a diversion to get her safely out before the fighting started. “I can’t afford to! Now, either I prove you wrong and we go on from here, or I prove you right and we die, but either way, I will not continue like this!”
She’d stormed away to go up to the battlements and check on the soldiers there, but the frustration hadn’t abated.
Then there had been her well-meaning attempt to reunite a family whose daughter had been kidnapped by the Horde six years ago. That had ended well, she supposed, with a peace forged between the Horde -- no, Pomira, as they called themselves -- and the girl’s parents’ town, but it was hard for Gabrielle to reconcile Vanessa’s choice to remain with Cirvik and the Pomira with her own simplistic conviction that the girl belonged with her family. She didn’t believe her motivations were wrong -- it was just hard to accept that the right solution wasn’t necessarily the one she’d expected it to be.
That had only led to more internal questions.
So it wasn’t much of a surprise that when she somehow managed to fall down a hole in a cave and wake up in the garden of some lush dwelling decorated with blue statues of human figures in strange poses, she was all too ready to take the place’s inhabitant, Aidan, up on his offer to teach her his techniques for finding inner peace.
She’d heard of yoga from her time in Fandom, but she’d never thought of it as this literal of a method of exorcising one’s inner demons, or realized that the process of learning to clear her mind would bring up so many vivid memories of the painful moments of her life. Being manipulated into killing Meridian. Lying to Xena about killing Hope. Finding Solan dead. The horrors of the battle of Agio. The Quarter Quell, and Katniss’s stand against the Capitol. Not saving Phlanagus when she had the chance, and thereby forcing Temecula to make his first kill. Still, she kept on with the yoga lessons, but the longer they stayed, the more restless and violent Xena got (despite the incredibly decadent hot tub in their room), which only reinforced Gabrielle’s determination.
Naturally, it stood to reason that it was Xena’s violent tendencies that saved Gabrielle from being turned into one of those blue statues. Because of course Aidan wasn’t a harmless guru. Of course he was actually prolonging his own lifespan indefinitely by leeching the goodness out of his students.
So it really did stand to reason that Xena threatening to kill the caretaker -- which snapped Gabrielle out of her imminently-fatal Dhanura-asana pose to persuade her to stop -- saved her life.
She couldn’t even be that upset about it when Xena kicked her sword straight into Aidan’s gut, and everything melted away to reveal the cave where they’d been waiting out a storm in the first place.
It just meant that one of the things she felt was really wrong with the world had saved her life. She didn’t know what to do with that . . . which just meant that this spiritual quest of hers wasn’t over.
The yoga was useful, though. She kept doing that.
[OOC: NFI/NFB/OOC-okay, yadda yadda. Mashed together from X:WP episodes "A Tale of Two Muses," "Crusader," "Past Imperfect," "Daughter of Pomira," and "Paradise Found." This season is special. But wow, is it pretty.]