Title: A Grief That Can't Be Spoken
Characters: 99% Delek.
Category: Gen.
Rating: K.
Notes: This is the first of a series of ficlets exploring the thoughts of some of the Tok'ra characters. I have a total of 5 outlined at the moment. They're not directly connected to each other, aside from all being from a Tok'ra's point of view. They're not intended to contradict canon (TV episodes and the movies only) but I might miss a point somewhere.
He'd been expecting the news for months. In some ways, he been expecting it for years… for centuries.
Jolinar was dead.
A thousand memories whispered through his mind. Their first meeting between his then-host and hers; the way the sunlight flashed off her beautiful chestnut curls. The laughter that always danced in her honey-brown eyes. Passionate arguments that continued to passionate loving; the way she'd bring him to his knees and tease him until he said she was right just so she'd not stop. The serious disagreements, and the way they would calmly, logically, rip each other's points to shreds until they found a common ground… somewhere.
Escaping an exploding ha'tak together. Parting for separate assignments. The way she'd fuss over her things when they moved to a new base – despite the room being identical in size and shape to their old one, Jolinar just had to make each one just a little different. Their last years together, their hosts too old for active assignments: they ran the base together. Their very last night, when she sat there brushing out her now-white curls and looked up at him with the same beautiful smile he'd fallen in love with nearly four centuries before.
Her next host had been a child; he had to let her go. When she had grown up and he too had a new host, the attraction wasn't there between them anymore. The love never died. It was just tucked away in their memories, the flames banked into the warmth of a friendship far stronger than that word implies. For a thousand years, they shared kalac'pri, the soul-love of a symbiote unaccompanied by physical love shared with the host.
And now his Jolinar was gone. Beautiful, passionate, clever… and reckless. He knew, of course, that she had been mated again, with Lantash and his present host. He had been happy for her, happy she had found such a love again in the ever shifting dance of possibilities. But he had to ask; he had to know how she was lost.
Garshaw didn't want to tell him how Jolinar had died. He had insisted and almost wished he hadn't. He found it hard to imagine a worse ending for her than to be trapped and caged. His Jolinar had always hated cages, hated to be confined, constrained. And the Tau'ri… to strip her of her ability to defend herself and then fail to protect her… he couldn't recall when he had last been so angry, so disgusted. Such people could not be trusted. All the words in the galaxy could not change what their actions revealed.
He knew he was over reacting. He tried to be fair, to call it prejudice and get past it. Sometimes he succeeded, sometimes he failed, but Delek tried.