Title: The Tigers Come At Night
Characters: 99% Anise|Freya.
Category: Gen.
Rating: K.
Notes: This is the second of my Tok'ra ficlets. I've still got 5 total planned, but it might be a while before the next one goes up.
When she was a day late, no one thought much of it. A second day passed and some of them joked about how she tended to lose track of time. A third day passed and someone was sent to check.
She wasn't there.
No one knew where she'd gone, nor why. No one had anywhere to start looking. Days turned into weeks, then months, then years. She was lost.
When she was carried her back through the chaapa'ai, shivering, silent and far from sane, none of them gave up on her. Through the weeks before she spoke a single word, there was always someone by her side. When she woke from nightmares they all understood far too well, there was always someone to hold her through the hours before she slept again.
Thoran had found her imprisoned beneath one of Ra's temples, tortured, killed and revived over and over until both host and symbiote's minds shattered into a thousand shards. But punishing her for daring to be tok Ra had eventually bored even the Supreme System Lord until he had forgotten her for long enough that Thoran had dared to go near her.
It was years before she spoke more than the barest, mundane words. But, as it had ever been, the puzzles in their laboratories drew her haltingly from her shell. She knew their work, and in piecing together devices that were broken, she slowly pieced together enough of herself to resume her work. It took another year complete before her host re-emerged and several more before her unnatural timidity receded.
If Anise's manner never ceased to be difficult, her colleagues understood. If Freya continued to ground herself in her birth world's style of clothing, no Tok'ra judged her ill for it.
They would all watch over her in the night.