Title: Dirt and Diamonds
Summary: Before everything, Scar was Taka and his mother told him stories in her madness.
Author's Note: I wondered how Mufasa could end up so unbelievably noble while Scar turned corrupt, and an idea blossomed. I researched and found that Uru seemed to favor Scar while Ahadi seemed to favor Mufasa, and the idea expanded into one explaining how the two brothers polarized so cleanly.
The names and genealogy of Mufasa and Scar are taken from the semi-canonical storybooks published after The Lion King. The plots and stories are not.
Taka is the birthname of Scar. It means (in Swahili variations) "dirt, rubbish, worthless things" and also, "want, wish, desire."
Uru is the mother of Mufasa and Scar. Her name means "diamonds" in the context of card games. Mind games, card games - it's really all the same to me.
Ahadi is the father of Mufasa and Scar, and his name holds no value in this story.
Uru wasn't always mad. She frequently had spells of sanity, when she'd notice the needs of her pride and she would nobly see that those needs were met, and in fact when Ahadi first met her she hadn't seemed mad at all.
But things changed, and she accused Ahadi of playing favorites with their sons, of doting on Mufasa's every whim and ignoring the pleas from Taka. She sank into a paranoia for her youngest cub, her littlest and weakest but oh, her smartest - Taka had the sharpest mind of any his age, and Uru just couldn't understand why Ahadi couldn't see that. She could understand that Mufasa was eldest, and therefore guaranteed to be the heir, but it seemed to her that Taka wasn't even considered, that his amazing mind wasn't taken into account as an asset to the Pridelands.
One morning, the morning Uru knew that Ahadi was showing Mufasa his inherited kingdom, the Queen woke to find her youngest son staring dejectedly at his paws. She stood, motioned him to follow, and walked out of the sleeping den and into the growing light. Taka followed her.
Taka would always follow her, in more ways than he knew.
They passed the brownish shapes of Ahadi and young Mufasa, silhouetted by the rising sun and resting at the brink of Pride Rock. Everything was cast in a golden, lovely light and Taka wanted so earnestly to be a part of that light, to be sitting there with his father looking out at his future land.
Uru noticed the look of longing in Taka's face, the hint of growing jealousy that she feared would tear her family apart, and she quickly positioned him away, down the side of the rock face, around and away. They walked and walked and neither said a word.
Finally they stopped in the shade of a tree, and Taka knew to settle down in front of his mother even without her saying so. She looked at him, and he knew by the glint, the flash of insanity in her bright green eyes, that this wasn't going to be one of her most lucid moments. She was right about him being intelligent, after all - that, at least, was not all in her head.
But she surprised him, because her voice was clear and level and rational, even if her eyes weren't.
"I'm going to tell you a story about King Taka," she said. "He isn't in power yet, but he will be - Oh, he will be. He will be a great king, a king who rules in intelligence, in wit and cunning, who knows the best path to go down, who knows the best routes to take.
"His pride will be in awe of him, they will look at him in wonder and respect, and it wouldn't be brutish strength, wouldn't be muscle and power of muscle that wins them over and puts King Taka down in history, but pure power of the mind." She looked him straight in the eye, carefully pronouncing her words, "You will be king, my son. You will be a great king."
"Alright," Taka said, moved by her confidence in him, "I'd like to hear the story."
"I thought you would," and she smiled at him, looking almost normal for a fleeting moment.
They sat there under the shade of the tree, as the sun rose high in the sky and shadows shrank at noon, then as the sun fell and the sky was filled with orange-red fire and caused all the shadows to grow long and lean at dusk. Uru told her son of so many adventures, so many imagined victories for him, that he knew she must have been thinking about them for a very long time. Her stories were linear and so very real that Taka almost felt like he could be the hero she told him he was, like she was there, a guide from the future telling him of all his good deeds to come, reassuring him that he would, one day, be great.
Even as night fell, her voice didn't seem to tire. She didn't seem to be able to run out of fodder for her tales of King Taka, just spun and twisted the ending of one story into the beginning of another to make one long, endless narrative of action and glory for her littlest cub.
She soon noticed that, though her stories didn't seem to end, the energy of her son did. It was nearly midnight when she finally stopped talking and picked the dozing Taka up by the scruff of the neck, carried him into the den and set him amongst his family.
"You'll be king, I say," she whispered in his ear, "You'll be a king one day."
And though the half-sleeping cub knew, in his heart of hearts, that this was merely another sign of his mother's lunacy, he did like the lilting, sing-song tone of her voice.
Its melody carried him to sleep, like a lullaby, and its words wove themselves around his mind and heart, like a vow, like a mantra, like a promise.
And a lifetime later, when Taka was Scar and Uru was long dead, the Queen's littlest prince watched his brother and nephew perched at the edge of Pride Rock as the sun rose and cast everything in a golden light.
Like that day, like traveling from the light of the rising sun that day into the shade of the crooked old tree to listen to his mother's stories, Scar took shelter in the shadows. He watched and thought, the inherited madness glittering in green eyes so much like his mother's: bright, and critical, and paranoid, but so intelligent and regal, like she'd been before the madness had truly settled in and left cobwebs where there was once wisdom, distrust where there was once devotion.
Scar could only hope that the madness wouldn't settle in so surely in his mind as it had in his mothers, that it would leave a little room for the sharp intelligence that Uru had seen in him since the very beginning.
He watched and thought, and somewhere in the back of his mind he could hear his mother telling stories of how great a king he'd be.
Like a lullaby, like a vow, like a mantra, like a promise, he heard:
"You'll be king, I say ... You'll be a king one day..."
And, if only to keep from disappointing his dear mother, Scar would be king.