guts and garters,
just for starters –
author; Kavaul.
--
Many knew Scar, true – in the way that you offer a 'hello' to someone you can only hazily recall. Most knew of his ambitions, and carefully laid plans that he'd constructed, like a house of cards, in the deep of night, his eyes only for the messy, ragged gauges in the pliable dirt and clay, borne from a lifelong habit of unsheathing his claws and digging little valleys in the dirt without quite noticing. That plan had fallen like a house of cards, too, you know. None could muster up the mental armor for the look that Mufasa would give them, if they suggested his dear brother was planning to take over, though.
A handful, he confided his plans to in turn, though. Scar was not a stupid lion – he planned long and well, and had even set up a backup plan in the case that he might die. Plan after plan after plan – if one toppled over, it set off another one – an imaginary line of dominoes, if you will. This chronicles the times after Kovu and Kiara. Because, you see, Kovu and Kiara were young, not reached the jaded insecurity of full maturity yet – but still, in love.
Nobody saw, but everybody knew – in the looks that Kiara would give Kovu, sunning herself on the Pride Rock, or how Kovu soon seemed to claim a circle in the den that nobody ever slept in except for the pair themselves, despite there being no marker to discern it from anywhere else, just being there. Kovu was stumbling and unsure when it came to expressing the love itself, but the little glances and brushing shoulders conveyed everything more accurately than kitten kisses and pet names could ever achieve.
Simba didn't quite mind – not at all, and a few months after Kovu and Kiara began to sleep in their dubbed 'circle', he left with Nala to the jungle paradise to live there until the end of his days. And here, is where the true story starts just as the last of Scar's plans is set into motion, numbering the days of the inhabitants of Pride Rock with unnerving and calculating speed. The Outsider's loyalty was not fake – far from that, actually. But there were other things, other people to carry out Scar's plans in the wide savannah.
Far off in the distance, on the fringes of Crocodile River, blue eyes gleam and the clock on lives is set ticking – they are lion, and they are predator, strengthened from years of cultivating a miniature army, driving off invaders and destroying crocodiles that wander too close to shore, (even though very few even dare to attack, because the corpses of long-gone crocodiles litter the river bottom, and scales clink and intermingle with mud and riverbank.)
sympathy is only to the weak,
as mercy is to the innocent,
and blood is for the strong