Gourry knew that Lina did not want to go to Sairaag, but he was surprised at the strength of her emotions. She tried to hide it from him, but he sensed that she was scared . . . maybe even terrified. He was not quite sure what she was scared of. But then again, he wasn't exactly sure why he needed to go to Sairaag either. He only knew that it was so. In the months since the defeat of Hellmaster, the urge to return to Sairaag had been growing, gnawing at him, almost like a sore on the inside of your mouth, the kind that you always bit before it could heal, making it hurt even worse and starting the cycle all over. Gourry stared into the flames of their campfire, listening to the sounds of the night, and occasionally glancing over at Lina's sleeping form. She was breathing easily at the moment, but he was alert for sounds that she was having another nightmare. The dreams were coming more often, and they seemed to be getting worse. He knew they bothered her, but during the day she tried to pretend that she was invincible, Lina Inverse, the Sorcery Genius and Enemy of All Who Live.
He wondered what kind of dreams could affect her like this. She would jerk out of sleep and her eyes would seek him out on the other side of the campfire, and she always seemed relieved to see him, but she said nothing, just rolled over and went back to sleep. In the morning, if he asked her about the nightmares, she would avoid his question, and talk about what they were going to have for breakfast, or what might happen during the upcoming day. Gourry snorted. Lina could talk for hours and hours about magic and history, listing the details of one type of spell and comparing it to another, or she would explain why the villagers in this area plant that type of crop. She always had more to say than he could hear. Of course, he thought, now that I want to listen, and I'll even pay attention, she has nothing to say.
Her nightmares probably had something to do with the last time they were in Sairaag. The fact that they were getting worse, along with Lina's unwillingness to make the trip, made that much obvious, even to him. Gourry wished he knew what about their last trip to Sairaag bothered Lina, but he couldn't recall anything from that time. He remembered a thick cloud surrounding him, dragging him away as Lina cried his name. The cloud was cold and surrounded his entire body and then forced its way inside, making him scream in terror and agony until he blacked out. The next thing he knew, Lina was throwing him from the top of a pillar into a hot spring, screaming that he return her stolen innocence. The blank part in his memory bothered him. Gourry knew that he didn't have the greatest memory, something Lina was continually reminding him, but he at least had vague impressions of his past, and if things seemed foggy, he could always count on Lina to remember the details for him. Gourry really didn't care if Shabadingo, or whatever his name was, had been cut into four or seven pieces and locked into a small orihalcon statue, or if the world looked like an egg on a fork (although he did wonder why it hadn't been eaten if it looked so tasty), or if that priest-guy with the funky upturned hair was Zel's uncle, or even if the monster afraid of the tree was somehow related to his family's history. He was a swordsman who knew the difference between friends and enemies, and what to do when enemies began to threaten his friends.
While having a vague and fuzzy memory for unimportant details was normal for Gourry, losing track of large chunks of time was not. What made it even worse, was this ever-present sense that he had lost something important while he had been in Sairaag. And in this case, Lina flatly refused to provide the missing details. Once they had sat at a table with Amelia, Zel and Sylphiel, talking about the events. Both he and Lina felt that something important had happened, but before they could talk about it more, Martina and Zangulus had shown up. The trip back to Zoana had been filled with the girls talking endlessly about a wedding, while Zangulus kept wanting to fight. (One time Zangulus woke him up in the middle of the night because he was bored during his watch to challenge him to a sparring match. Lina had stormed out of her tent and fireballed the both of them for being so noisy. Zangulus never did that again, at least not after dark.) The events of Sairaag just never came up again. Even after they had parted with Zelgadis, Amelia and Sylphiel, Lina refused to talk about that time, pretending that it never happened. She probably expected that Gourry would forget as well if she never mentioned it, but the fact that she would not talk about what happened in Sairaag only reinforced his awareness of the gap in his memory.
Which brought him to this point. If Lina would not, or could not, tell him what he was missing, the only choice was to go back to Sairaag and find out for himself.