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Not Written In The Stars
Tohias
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[CHAPTER 1]
Save the daughter. Infiltrate the pride. Kill the king.
The mission was simple. It had always been simple and after years of honing his skills just so he could be Simba's personal executioner, it would have gone as planned. It should have.
But Kovu miscalculated.
His mother miscalculated.
They all did.
In the end, Kovu couldn't recall where it all went wrong.
Maybe it began when he started liking the princess. Maybe it started when Kiara nuzzled close and taught him that the world didn't have to narrow down to hunting and killing, that it was alright to just spend his afternoons catching fireflies and watching the stars shift in the sky.
Maybe it began when Queen Nala licked the scratch on his ear, the action quick and absent-minded but the maternal tenderness in her ministrations seemed alarming and alien on him because Kovu honestly couldn't remember when his own mother did such a thing.
Maybe it all went wrong when Kovu started liking the King.
Yeah, it was probably that.
It wasn't intentional. It wasn't. Kovu's mother had painted Simba in such a revolting and self-righteous light that all the creatures that lived in Zira's domain loathed the King with abject envy and hate. Simba was a false-king, unworthy of the throne and his mother was robbed of her place in the haven plains of Pride Rock. They were all robbed. And Kovu would be the one to take it all back.
The Pridelanders would fall.
But as the days passed by, Kovu's opportunities to kill the King kept rising yet he did not pounce, not even when he knew the great King would fall under his claws, even when he knew no would ever see it or find Simba's body. He could scratch those eyes out, tear his flesh and rip his throat out.
Kovu could have done it all.
He just didn't.
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In the end it didn't matter.
He killed Nuka with his indecision, disgusted Vitani with his weakness and betrayed his mother with his love for the Pridelanders.
The shame he bore from the new scar on his face was near unbearable.
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In the end it came to begging.
He begged Simba for forgiveness, for judgement and he couldn't look at the distraught terror in Kiara's eyes, her plea for him to run, to stay, to stop being an Outsider and just live.
His deception would not be excused.
The coldness in Simba's final judgement was unlike anything Kovu had heard from the usually benevolent king, the displeasure was as clear as the cold stars in the sky.
The raw flesh on his scar throbbed mercilessly as he ran from his almost-home and some part Kovu knew this was what he deserved, what anyone with his scar should be treated as such. Traitor. Betrayer. Motherless. Fatherless. Homeless. King Killer.
Exile.
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He ran till his legs could carry him no further and he dropped on his lonely crop of dirt far, far away from both Pride Rock and the Outlands. He slept till the sky turned pink and the fireflies came out to play, till all that filled his mind was cold dreams about nothing.
When Kovu woke, the sun had turned a terrifying blood red.
He looked to the distant horizon where the Pridelands lay and something in his gut rolled with unease.
But it was when grey ash began to fall from the sky Kovu knew something had gone very, very wrong.
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When Kovu peered down at the Pridelands from his high perch, the young lion recoiled at the sight before him.
Pride Rock was on fire.
And everyone was dead.
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The flames licked his fur and singed his mane as he dashed through the inferno that used to be the Pride Lands. The landscape was transformed into a garden of burning trees, falling carcasses and suffocating ash-filled air.
He could hear the sounds of lionesses growling and Kovu knew this fiery battleground could not host any kind of war for much longer.
No matter which side they were on, Outsiders and Pridelanders alike were losing to Mother Nature.
"Kiara!"
Kovu ducked underneath a fallen log and dodged a stray hyena's snapping teeth as the young lion bolted towards the stony slabs of Pride Rock den. When Kovu finally entered the king's shelter, he found nothing.
The lion coughed as the bitterness in the air infected his lungs and burned his eyes.
"Kiara, where are you!?"
There was a wet, heaving sound to his left and Kovu dashed to the back of the den to investigate the sound. In the end, he found a lioness sprawled on her side at the deepest corner of the enclosure covered in blood and fallen debris.
"Kovu?"
It was Queen Nala.
Kovu pushed the stones out of the way and forced his way into the small space. He pressed up close and watched with helplessness as the fair lioness lay still and broken with her legs snapped awkwardly and her stomach mauled to shreds.
"You came back young cub." She gave a breathless laugh that still sounded sweet despite the pain in her voice.
Wide-eyed and shaking, Kovu approached the fallen queen.
"Just…just stay still, I'll get you out of here." He babbled uselessly.
"Kovu stop." The queen huffed, her voice coarse and weak. "…don't try to carry me, you'll never get down the steps."
Kovu gave a low growl. "I'm not leaving you."
He tore away at the remaining stones crushing the lioness's front paws.
"Kovu, stop." She pleaded.
So he did. Her begging was too much to bear, especially when Kovu was covered in her blood.
"Look at me."
He did.
"You must leave here at once..." Blood dribbled out of Nala's mouth as she coughed in violent waves. "Zira and her pack are still here and the hyenas…" more coughing.
"I'm not leaving you!" He snapped.
"Yes you will. You know it already." She whispered calmly despite her rapid breathing. "Find Simba and you'll find Kiara. They'll need you now."
Kovu closed his eyes.
"I can't do that…what will I tell them? How can I tell them that I left you here?"
Nala gave him a watery smile.
"Tell them the truth. Tell them I died. Nothing more."
He backed away from Nala and bowed his head in shame and grief.
"I'm sorry."
And by the spirits above, Kovu really meant it.
"I'm so, so, sorry"
The words tasted dry and bitter in his mouth.
Nala looked at him one last time and Kovu was stuck with a childlike yearning to tuck his face into her neck. She was not his mother…but it was not the first time that Kovu –
He turned away when Nala gave him that odd gentle smile that he just couldn't stand.
He ran after that, leaping over flames and bounding across the dying plain as if running from something he knew he couldn't escape, running from the image of the fair queen's blood soaked fur and gentle blue eyes shutting close for the last time.
Kovu ran.
Find Simba.
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And he did.
He found him. Bleeding and half dead on his feet, but he found the king.
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There were thirty hyenas and only one Simba.
They were vicious and cruel as they bit and ripped into the cornered king. It was all Kovu could do to keep them at bay as he leaped into Simba's defence. The king didn't look at his saviour; he didn't acknowledge the exiled lion fighting by his side as they rammed their way through the wall of cackling, drooling legion of hyenas.
They eventually ran to a deep ravine of rushing water and they both leaped across, knowing that the hyenas would not follow.
Even after jumping into safer territory, Simba and Kovu didn't stop running, they didn't stop running till the smoke in the horizon became a grey smudge and the ash no longer fell into their fur and the sound of howling scavengers were nothing more than a distant echo in the sky.
They ran till Simba buckled and fell, weak from blood loss and exhaustion.
And Kovu continued to run with the king on his back and demons at his heels till he found a small cave and dumped the king and himself in a heap of bloodied fur and tired limbs, shutting down his mind and letting sleep take him into oblivion.
O
Kovu may have woken at some point in the night. He wasn't sure.
All he remembered was briefly staring up at the looming figure of Simba staring down at him, his snout covered in dry blood and patchworks of fur ripped away showing bare spots of skin. But what really stuck in Kovu's mind was the strange light in Simba's eyes, something cold and calculating and wholly unforgiving.
For the briefest moment, Kovu wondered if Simba would kill him.
But then he slipped back into exhaustion and remembered nothing.
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NOTE: I haven't watched anything Lion King related in nearly seven years, so I'm not entirely sure where the urge to write this story came from.
However I set up a challenge for myself to write a story where Simba and Kovu develop a relationship that neither of them expected. Something borne out of grief and survival but eventually turns into something softer and sweeter.
Because why not right?
Reviews are my bread and butter so please let me know what you think.
TOHIAS