ONLY TO ONE

I originally made this ficcie for a guild contest of "TLK World" on Neopets, but perhaps I'll begin posting it other places. Another TMOKS fic, starring mainly a cut part of the song that remains on the soundtrack to this day.

If only it were other places as well, for it set the example the audience looked for throughout the song. I guess they just couldn't get another Zazu to tattle, "Calm yourself," or another Scar to scream, "I tell myself I'm fine!"

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I've known it for years; perhaps half my life, and yet the fun only really began with Zazu. I'd been King for quite some time, in fact it was nearing the end of the time I ruled. At such a rather awkward time, I gloated in an attempted spotlight as my hyena henchmen sang in fake adoration.

"Oh, how I miss Mufasa!" Such a long complaint came from my hornbill majordomo; Zazu.

I reacted immediately in sheer fury. "Mufasa? Mufasa! How dare you - I told you never to mention that name..."

It was the truth. I loathed my brother, I had for every second of my life. From the day I struggled in our den for breath and life, unable to calculate the presence of another, to the day I spoke his name with such fury.

"Note taken!" Zazu's response was timid, but perhaps charming. "I shall never mention M-m-m again!"

M-m-m... if only that were the extent of my big brother's title. If only he could be no stronger than three syllables, said in a struggle not to part the jaws.

"Even in death his shadow looms over me - there he is!" I strutted about the cave.

As I said these words, anger and fear... along with the classic of pain on my part... began to flood my mind and soul. It seemed my whole life had been like that.

"No, there he is!" Where? Everywhere. Everything breathed Mufasa, Mufasa, Mufasa. "And there!"

Zazu's response was a tattle, as it always will be from an irritating bird such as himself. "Calm yourself, Sire, or you'll get another one of your splitting headaches!"

Ah yes, a classic he chose. Perhaps he was right, for I sure did split in that moment. But whether such was painful, I did not know at the time.

"I am perfectly fine!" I insisted, though maybe it wasn't true, and maybe it will never be. Maybe I'll just never know.

"I'm better than Mufasa was!" Every inch of my being attempted to believe that thought; though unfortunately enough, none did.

"I'm revered - I am reviled! I'm idolized - I am despised! I'm keeping calm - I'm going wild!"

I'd heard the phrases, "split personality," and "dual megalomania," before... but only now did I take such seriously. Always before, I'd thought of the way anyone else did, sort of as a joke, an expression. Now, such phrases became alive... it was then I realized that there was definitely something wrong with me.

I wasn't just a sad, drunk, disliked, horrific, pain-prone guy... there was something wrong with me. In fact, there were several things wrong with me. I was mental, perhaps diseased, and so psychopathic... a madman. And with megalomania, and an inability to think for myself, an inability to be one. For I was two.

Then I knew, splitting was painful. Though the pain in my head was not physical, or was of sorrow and a burst of emotions. Leave the other stuff for another shot of my madness, as they so often occur...

"I tell myself I'm fine: yes I am, no you're not, yes I am, no you're not. I tell myself I'm fine! No you're not! Yes I am! No you're not! Yes! No, yes, no - who am I talking to!"

I knew it then; asking wasn't necessary. Perhaps I was only humoring myself, attempting to bring myself to reality. But a couple thousand pairs of eyes lay on me, not filled with hatred or anger... oh no, something much worse.

Filled with humor. Amusement, hilarity, a thought that my actions were funny. What was I, a struggling man or a musical comedy star?

To myself, the former... but to them, the latter. They were like the pride - maybe they were the pride. Simba was the hero, and I the villain. The humorous, amusing, hilarious and funny villain. An entertainer every adult laughs at the jokes of yet hates beyond her life, and every child stays silent at the effect at.

But what are they laughing for? I was pained, horror-struck and dying... and there they were. Eyes staring all at me, filled with glee at my horrid predicament.

But peering into a pair of orbs seated not far from myself, I saw something else. No hatred, no humor. Perhaps a look of understanding, and sorrow. She was silent... and she gave me what could have been a shred of hope. So I accepted Zazu's next tattle.

"Oh, pull yourself together Sire!" How perfect he was... and now they gave snickers toward him.

It seemed that although their eyes glistened with humor, they refused to laugh, perhaps all in humiliation. And what was that? They all laughed at Zazu's lines...

"Oh, very well. Zazu?" I offered, attempting what perhaps could be my last chance. "Zazu, Zazu, Zazu...?"

"Yes, Sire?" A displeased response came from him. And that had already answered the yet to be asked question.

Yet I continued. "Nobody loved me! There's the rub - not even as a cub! What did my brother have that I don't have?"

"Do you want the short list or the long?"

There went my spark of hope. Emotions flew past me, one by one making their way through me. That's the way my mind works. It has a cycle. I'll travel from one thought to the next, but so slowly...

"Never, Scar, never!" A rejection; from her, and from life.

"You belong to me!"

If only...

"You all belong to me - ahh!"

And I dumped the thought aside, perhaps to come in with a new and better one. During this time, everything darkened and the audience returned to serious faces. They only laugh for my troubles.