I had always been unfortunate enough to find myself involved in a lot of accidents when I was young. An awful lot of accidents. Most of which left me unable to move around for any extended period of time. I don't know whether it was a natural clumsiness on my part, or simply an affinity for increasingly bad luck by way of some kind of birth given curse. If it was the former, I have no one to blame but myself. If it was the latter, I have yet to find the one that marked me for misery. If I ever do, they're going to get it. But that's neither here nor there.

Back to this bad luck of mine that had made me go through quite a lot of pain. Whatever it was, it has never bothered to leave me alone. Even in adulthood, it always winds up throwing me for a loop and making a fool out of me whenever I least expect it. The difference is that now I can handle it better. Back when I was a cub, though, there was no handling or avoiding it. There was merely a bitter acceptance.

As you can imagine, thanks to all my injuries, I spent a lot of time by myself. After all, no one wanted to play with the cub that was not going to move further than two inches. What fun would that be? Let me answer that for you. It was no fun at all. Because of that, many of my days were spent with no one for company but my own shadow, just thinking. It was such a lonely business, and I can't ever remember myself enjoying it. Not until Simba, the next lion king, gave me a few thoughtful companions.

That nest of birds he gave me was a bigger blessing than I could have ever imagined. I could talk to them, think with them, and when I finally got back on my feet, travel with them all over the Pridelands. They were great pals to have around, and they were always sure to stay with me when I was immobile. And thanks to Simba raising them up to a decent level, I did not have to go through the trouble of raising them from infancy. They were great.

Sometimes though, just sometimes mind you, talking to my birds did me more harm than good. Some of the other cubs used to tease me about them. They thought it was silly that I put so much attention and affection into animals who they thought were below me. I tried to get them to see things my way, but children rarely ever listen to good reason. No matter what I did, no matter what I said, nothing ever seemed to stop the comments, or the stinging that accompanied the laughs and smug looks.

I never said anything about it to my mother or to any of my usual friends. I'm sure they would have loved to help, but I never felt as though I could talk to them about it. Maybe it was a fear of disappointment, maybe it was anxiousness about what they would think of me after I told them. I still cannot figure out why I chose to lie to them whenever they asked me if I as alright. All I knew was that something inside me made it impossible for me to say what I really wanted to, and I could never defy the feeling that told me to stay quiet.

But I had to say something to somebody. Keeping everything bottled up inside was driving me up a wall. It had me nearly ready to bash my head against the rocks that made up my beloved homeland. Someone had to know what I was going through, or I was going to go insane. I just could not for the life of me figure out who it should be. After months of secret searching, it got to a point where I thought that I would never find that one soul who would willingly listen and actually seem to care. True to instinct, I never did find them.

They found me. The lion prince, Simba, found me brooding at the watering hole one day and sat down to talk. I told him so much that afternoon. Angers, frustrations, fears, and wishes that had never before left the corridors of my own mind. Things that I had never so much as whispered before were laid out on the dirt in front of him. And when it was time for bed, he promised me that we could sit down and talk again. Same time, same watering hole.

We would talk for hours, him and me, only moving when it was time to eat or sleep. Never once did he judge me or laugh at my circumstances. Never once did he try to make himself seem bigger than me by telling me what I should do. He just listened.

I'll be honest. I know he probably never understood much of what I was saying. As a prince, the teasing and whispering would have never been aimed at him directly. But that was not the point. At least he stayed there and seemed attentive. At least he tried to understand. That was the important thing.

No one else had ever tried before, because no one else had ever really wanted to know. To the other cubs I was just Tojo, a clumsy lion who sometimes ended up with a sour end of the deal presented to him. To Simba, well, I guess I was a bit more than that. To Simba, I was someone to talk to about everything and nothing at all until the sun went down.

And what was he to me? Simple. To me, Simba was a confidant. He was the lion I was able to confide in. About the other lions, about the future, about everything and anything. I never stuttered or stumbled over my words when I was with him, and he never let himself get distracted when he was listening to me. It was near perfect system.

Simba never told anyone about the things we discussed at the watering hole. It must have been hard. I know others asked him. They were never quiet in their curiosity. They wanted to know, and they wanted to hear it from his mouth. However, he did not so much as give them a proper hint about what was said between us.

"Nothing." He would say with a smile when someone asked what he had done with me, before quickly suggesting some type of game.

I asked him once why he never felt the need to say anything. He showed me that cocky little grin of his and said,

"It's a secret between the two of us. Why should they have to know?"

Then he bounded off to answer one of Nala's many calls. And I smiled.

A secret between the two of us, he had said. Something that no one else needed to know, he had implied. Something almost sacred shared between two good friends that need not be seen by overly judgmental eyes, or overheard by too-quick-to-assume ears. A secret that just…was. I know it's hard to understand, but that's the only way I can explain it. It just was, and that was something very wonderful indeed.

Then one day, Simba left on a short outing with his uncle Scar, and he didn't come back. And all of a sudden, what just was…well, it wasn't there anymore.

We were told it was an accidental death. A stampede had crushed both Simba and his father, who had been trying to save the young cub from an almost certain death. When Scar arrived, he claimed it had been too late to save them. It was nobody's fault, he explained. It was just an accident.

Yet, I did not see an accident in those dark eyes. As the hyena's made themselves known, I realized just what was hidden deep within those wicked depths. It wasn't a twist of fate, or an unfortunate occurrence. It wasn't mourning or sadness over a loved one's death. It was murder. Calculating, cold blooded, murder. As soon as I understood that, I wanted him to pay for what he had done.

But who could I have told? The one lion who had always listened to me, the one who had always tried to understand, was gone. Without him, who would hear of my suspicions? Who would defend me if those suspicions got me into serious trouble? No one. No one but my birds, and they could not do much in a lion's world. There was nothing that could be done.

Simba was dead.

For a couple of weeks I could not accept that. I could not bring myself to believe that Simba was never going to talk to me again. That he was never going to pop up and play with me before it was time to head off to dinner. So day after day I went down to the watering hole and waited. I waited for the prince to show himself so I could tell him all about what was troubling me.

"I miss you and the king." I wanted to tell him. "I don't trust Scar at all." I wanted to let him know.

I saw his face sometimes, in the sunset skies and in the clear blue waters, but never in the flesh. It was only my imagination toying with me in the cruelest way it could. After a few painful mind games, I had to face the harsh reality of it all.

Simba was gone, and so was the one lion that I trusted more than anything else in this world. Just the thought of it made my blood run cold, and there were numerous times when I wanted to break down and cry. I was terrified. Without the prince to defend me and lift me up, I would have to turn my strengths into weaknesses practically overnight. Otherwise I was not going to survive. It was a hard task for a young cub, but I somehow managed to do what I had to.

Time changed, and I changed right along with it, just as everything else in it's in its path did. Surprisingly enough, some tings still managed to remain the same. I was still slightly clumsy, still fairly timid, and for the most part I still only talked to the birds that flew over my head. Though, thankfully, I had managed to find a few new friends, some trustworthy allies, in that very dark and horrid time.

Malka, Chumvi, and I tended to stick together in the darkening kingdom. Together we chose to remain docile little creatures that always did what we were told. It was instinctual. It was survival. Cubs far more powerful and open mouthed were disappearing left and right, with no sign of what had happened to them but bloodied hyena lips. If we were not careful, we would undoubtedly be next.

As much as it still pains me to admit, we could not have won any fight we started. Could we have taken on Scar? Sure. Could we have beaten him and taken over? Absolutely. Could we have handled his constantly starving army? Not a chance.

So we had no choice but to set limits to ourselves. We had rules and promises in play that would keep us from getting ourselves killed. One was that we had to leave our pride behind us. Acting high and mighty would do us no good. No matter what we thought we deserved, we were not going to give any indication that we were thinking of taking it. Thinking like that meant rebellion, and rebellion meant death. We also could not allow ourselves to become attached to the new barren Pridelands. If we got attached, and what we were attached to was endangered, someone was bound to be hurt. It most likely would have been us.

I had followed those rules as though they were the direct words of the great kings from the past. Never did I raise my head to the new king, never did I show sign of displeasure with his rule, and never did I allow myself to become bonded to the Pridelands in some way. Chumvi and Malka, unfortunately, did.

One day, in the desolate wasteland of what had once been a glorious kingdom, two very large attachments came along without warning. They arrived in the form of two cubs that looked nearly identical to my two friends. They were adorable, I had to admit. They were energetic, smart, and chalk full of large hopes and big dreams. They were two shimmering lights in the lives of two lions that had been doused in darkness for far too long.

Had Mufasa still been king, those two would have grown up with all the blessings that the savanna had to offer. However, in Scar's rule, they were two very dangerous creatures that would only ever see the cruelty of Pride Rock.

Scar took those two innocent lights as threats. Threats that needed to be eliminated, and eliminated they were.

My friends mourned greatly. Honestly, I was reminded of the day that Simba was murdered. It was no surprise, seeing as who the culprit was. I knew who it had been so many years ago, and I knew who it was now. Two bodies did not satisfy him. Neither did three, four, or even five. No, I knew that no amount of blood would satisfy him. Not even if all the animals in the savanna were drop dead at his call. He would still crave more.

I realized then that I had no choice but to leave the Pridelands. Things would never remain as 'peaceful' as I had originally hoped. If Scar could murder innocent children, he could take care of me without any problems whatsoever. It was only a matter of time before the usurper realized he could not trust me completely, and in reality he never would. Once that happened I was as good as I dead. I needed to leave, fast.

Before I left, I made the mistake of telling Chumvi and Malka who had killed their cubs. I thought I was doing them a favor, being loyal by telling them what I knew, but I had foolishly made one of the biggest mistakes of my life. They were upset, of course, and they were angry, of course. I knew they were going to be. So what had made me think that telling them who murdered their children would be the best plan I could think of? Especially when we had all hated him to begin with?

Anybody have a clue? I sure don't. To this day I had no idea what I was doing. Of all the days to be honest, when I had been lying and feigning contentment for so long, why had I chosen that day to suddenly tell the truth? I wish I could go back and stop myself from opening my mouth. But then, it's pointless to wish for a change in the past, isn't it?

Needless to say, their reactions were not pleasant. Their first instinct was to throw reason to the wind and attempt to overthrow the current king. Two against one were pretty good odds, and even Scar had to admit that he wasn't as young as he used to be. However, while he had neither age nor impressive strength, Scar did have one thing that Malka and Chumvi did not. He had an entire army at his beck and call, waiting for their next meal, and willing to do anything to get it. My two friends were merely fresh meat on the menu.

I tried to warn them. However, my friends would not listen to reason until it was too late, and they fought me whenever I tried to change their minds. Common sense told me it would have been better to flee right then and there without looking back. Yet I did nothing of the sort. I could not possibly bring myself to leave them to die. Not after I had lost Simba. Not after I had been stripped of everything else. Besides, it was my fault. I had been the one to get them into this mess, and I was going to be the one to get them out while they were still breathing.

It was far from easy. In the end, my birds had ended up as distractions, teasing the hyenas with flying appetizers, while I dragged my friends away by their tails. Literally. They had not wanted to budge. No matter what I said, they remained adamant about taking Scar on at full strength. It was only minutes before my birds had given up the charade of being clueless prey that they finally got the hint and moved on their own.

Still, they had been angry at me as we made our way out of the Pridelands. Maybe I had been selfish to save them. Looking back on it now, maybe I should have let them fight. If they had won, they would have saved our kingdom. If they had died, at least they would have been with their families.

To them, their lives were meaningless. I seemed to be the only one who cared enough about them to want them alive. And that made me angry, so I refused to speak to them, and they in turn didn't try to talk to me. Things remained that way for three painfully awkward days.

It was the loneliness and guilt that eventually brought us back to speaking terms, and together we began looking for a new place to stay. We were able to find a new pride, one that didn't seem to have a king or a queen, which welcomed us with open arms. The listened to our story, tried to comfort us, and offered to help us start over again.

It was nice, but it was far from home. The lions were all decent creatures that were warm and friendly, but they were not Simba.

That would have made everything just so much more bearable. If Simba had been there, if he had somehow managed to live through the stampede, I know everything would have been so much better than what it all turned out to be. Because by him surviving the attack on his life, it would have meant there was still hope in a lost cause. It would have meant there was a shred of light at the end of a dark abyss of a tunnel. Him just listening to every fear, doubt, and insecurity I had would have been enough to make me believe that things were not going to stay bad forever. But Simba wasn't there.

My confidant was dead, and so as the delusion that I was no longer alone with my thoughts.


MistressOfTime1218: Second chapter up and running. With any luck the third chapter will be up in a few days. Fingers crossed. Hope you guys like it, and let me know if you have any questions. R&R please and thank you!