A/N: This is a monster of a chapter! 4k words, yikes. Anyway - some lion pride dynamics are ugly, but they do make for a good story, AU as it may be. Be warned that this particular chapter involves a Sophie's Choice scenario. I also play free and loose with semi-canonical concepts and characters here. I'm actually very uncertain about how this chapter turned out, and will probably rewrite it in future. I'll post this version for now so I can move on and tell the third – and final – part.

Part II:

QUEEN

It was too easy, too generous to say that Sarabi felt numb. She was numbness itself, in all its uncaring loneliness, a silent weight reposing upon the shoulders of the half-alive, a vulture waiting to swoop in and pick clean the bones of the lost and wandering. She wondered if such creatures would be circling over Mufasa's body right now. She wondered if they'd caught up to Simba, dead or nearly dead, somewhere beyond her call, farther than her legs could carry her.

She'd searched for hours when she'd heard what had happened. Her stride unbroken, her mind singular, she'd pursued the memory of her son beaming that morning as he scampered out for the day's adventures. She'd run through the gorge, investigating every crack and crevice for a scrap of golden fur. Every time she turned aside, her search fruitless, her wide, dry eyes drifted back to her husband's lifeless body over which the others stood vigil. They couldn't both be dead. This was some cruel joke of fate, designed to test her. She'd raced to the river, leaning out over the rapids, the spray splashing her, the eddies beckoning her, until the lionesses had called her away, and brought her back, and held her up until she'd finally lain down, not sleeping, alone on the pedestal in the main den. That was the first and only time she would do that. She resolved to rest with the other huntresses from now on.

Her legs, though stocky and strong from the daily pursuit of prey, trembled as she clambered down to one of the lower caves on Pride Rock. Whenever the pain came, it came as a wave, washing over the rock and shield of her numbness, wearing it away with every pulse and pull. It flooded over her now, sudden and uncompromising, tugging her to the ground and soaking her pelt, making every step a burden. In an instant, a dreadful and icy moment in the middle of a sunlit day, she'd had her life ripped from her, shredded beyond recognition, and cast to the wind, where it flew from her as a bird that for all her skill she could not catch.

Ahead, she could see Sarafina in the cave entrance, her brilliant blue eyes fixated out on the grasslands. She was younger than Sarabi by two years, and yet she'd grown faster than any other in her litter. She possessed a keener mind and greater vigour than the rest. They'd shared their first hunt, after all. And yet, strange as it was, Sarabi could never quite get used to the idea that Sarafina was a mother, also – a mother of two, no less – with children the same age as Simba.

Her heart twisted. She felt the tide coming in again, flooding around her paws. She stumbled over them as she trudged into the den, aching for sleep. She looked out under the low ceiling of rock, following her friend's line of sight.

Nala and Mheetu, sitting in the swaying stalks of dry grass with their other friends. They were all subdued today, seated closer to Pride Rock than usual, wary of the hyenas they knew were prowling around further out. Nala stayed close to her younger brother, standing protectively over his small, shivering frame. Now and then, one of the other cubs would bat at some flying thing, or knock someone over and scuffle in the dirt for a while. Playtime, however, was not as it had been. Simba was not there today to join in their games. He'd always been in the thick of it, leading his team when they played lions and hyenas, or clawing his way up a tree to investigate something the cubs had seen. Running, laughing, playing. In those moments, when she'd looked out at him, a star in the golden savannah, she'd felt as though she were pulled from time itself, as if she'd hit upon some great and ancient truth that lived in her son, beyond years and generations. Pure joy – joy in the world and all its wonders, joy in good company, joy in the sheer happiness of existing.

But he did not exist anymore. Not in this world. And all its wonders seemed dimmed, and false, and cruel, and the joy in being alive seemed unattractive and outlandish. Sarabi's heart twisted as she settled some way from Sarafina. She'd circled into as comfortable a position as she could find, body too heavy to hold up, heart too heavy to bear, when her friend's voice suddenly sounded, soft and fragile yet cutting the thick afternoon air like a knife.

"He's going to kill all the cubs tonight. Isn't he?"

In truth, Sarabi had not the heart to do any more than nod. Her pain would soon be no longer hers alone, she knew. The Pridelands would echo with the wailing of lionesses as the curtain of night, pocked with holes for the Great Kings to look through, full with the moon and the Great Spirit that looked out from it, drew itself silently over the sky above. Perhaps it was thought of this endless pit of despair, of legacies presided over by silent predecessors, a spirit and ancestors with the liberty to decide who lived and who died, observers that cared little for mercy and only for tradition. The bitterness surprised her, felt ugly in her blood, and yet perhaps it was indeed her anger at the Great Spirit that caused her to hear it. In the imagined wailing of the bereaved she heard an echo, and in the receding wave of pain she felt something arising within. Her people still looked to her for strength. Their king was dead, their young prince also - and the future loomed uncertain. The shreds of her life may have been cast into the wind, but the lives of the others in the pride were still bound to the land, flightless birds waiting to be pounced upon and ended. Such things could not be allowed. As mutinous as the thought felt, the Circle of Life was more real than the Great Spirit, more immediate than the Kings, and it was up to her to keep it in check. She was still the queen, and this was still her calling and her duty.

So she drew herself up with what strength remained in her bones, sat down in front of Sarafina, and dipped her head. "It will happen at sundown."

The younger lioness curled her paws underneath her, frowning at her own shadow. "Mufasa would never have done it."

"He would have," she said, even though the words tasted like poison in her mouth. "It the law of our ancestors. And though Ahadi's sickness came upon him quickly, he had still known he was going to die, just as we'd all quietly planned not to have cubs. Still, some of us barely escaped it. This...what happened this time...was too sudden."

"I wish such kindness could be given us now." Sarafina shook her head, her eyes glistening in the light of the afternoon. "We shall anger the Great Spirit and the ancestors if we act otherwise…won't we?"

"You don't have anything to worry about," said Sarabi, but the look on her friend's face stopped whatever words she'd planned to say next. Abject fear. It had clawed its way over Sarafina's features in the seconds it had taken for Sarabi to try and allay it. A bolt of puzzlement shot through her, and she leaned down until their eyes met. "Do you have anything to worry about?"

Sarafina's breaths were coming heavy now, and Sarabi, alarmed, wound round her and pressed against her side. Sarafina's voice shook as she spoke. "One of them isn't his. One of them isn't his and he has never forgotten."

It was as if the floor of the cave had dropped away, sending both lionesses flailing down into darkness and doubt. It took her several long moments to find her voice, and when she did, she shocked herself with how weak it sounded. "Nala."

At last, Sarafina let out a choking sob, and shut her eyes. "Nala." She drew in a heaving breath. "You all knew, of course you did. Anybody can see how little she looks like him. Every inch of her is different. You all never stopped whispering about it and that's why he loathes her."

"Fina," Sarabi whispered, shock and hurt and guilt rippling through her in a rushing tide. "He doesn't loathe her."

"He doesn't care about her either!" Her head was turned away, but the cave floor was damp with shed tears. "You thought I couldn't hear what they said about me. About her. It didn't matter that only you knew the truth Sarabi. For all their gossip I may as well have told the whole pride! Sarafina, the idiot who couldn't stay true to her betrothed!"

Sarabi was rendered speechless. Sarafina's words stung like barbs and brambles and flooded over Sarabi in a tirade, a despairing litany of one who had kept quiet for too long.

"You've no idea how lonely it was," she mumbled, looking to the ground. "He'd changed, and we were bickering all the time, and I shouldn't have started what I did with that rogue. But I did, and I regretted it. I've never regretted Nala though, not for one instant. He hated me for it, I was certain of that. No matter how much I tried to keep up the lie, I could tell that he knew the truth. He knew, the pride knew, but everyone played along like it was some game or some story. He never forgave me and I can't blame him for it. I thought Mheetu would bring us back together, but he was so weak and small... the other lionesses whispered about me. I was too young, I was too dumb, my cubs were either bastards or cripples –"

"Fina!"

"– but oh, at least this one's father is a prince! That was the season Mufasa was crowned. And if it wasn't enough to watch his brother take the throne, he had to see his only true child barely able to live and watch my other cub grow stronger every day – the one that wasn't his. No wonder he left me in the end. We could only keep up the ruse for so long…"

"Fina," Sarabi soothed, licking her friend's ears. They were warm from her anger and exertion; almost feverish. Sarabi kept grooming her friend, concerned and upset. How had she not stepped in? She was supposed to look out for all subjects, especially the lionesses. She was a hunter, a mother, and most importantly a queen and a friend to them. How had she not seen this, and stopped it? Was it Sarafina's demure nature, never speaking a word of her discomfort to anyone? Was it Nala's jovial integration into the pride, to the point that nobody ever spared a thought as to who her parents were? How had her mother's pain gone unnoticed?

"Nala never had the protection of royalty," Sarafina muttered suddenly. "I know you tried to save that, by betrothing her to your son. It didn't work. The lionesses whispered that night too. She's all alone."

"Give me the names of the lionesses who whispered," Sarabi said firmly. "I haven't heard them, so it's surely those not in my hunting party. Tell me, and I'll change their minds."

"Sarabi…"

"We all love Nala," she went on, slowly now, softly, as though she were speaking to a cub. Simba's face flashed in her mind, and she felt sorrow pooling around her paws once more. She shuddered, as if feeling the water, and Sarafina looked up at her. The queen went on, pushing aside her grief. "I know the things they say about you hurt – but take comfort in the fact that we all love Nala. Really. Most of the lionesses don't care that her father is a rogue; they've even let go of their disapproval at you abandoning your mate."

"I should have moved on," Sarafina whispered. "I had to come back for their sake. They needed the pride. Now, though...now all they need is life, and by bringing them here I've robbed them of it."

"You need to speak to him," Sarabi began. "Convince Scar to spare her –"

"Don't call him that."

A bolt of anger shot through her. "I'll call him what he calls himself. Taka is dead, Sarafina. If you cling to him, you will never survive what he has become."

"He is not what he has become."

"If only he could understand that. But he does not." Sharper words rested on the tip of Sarabi's tongue. Your delusion will get both your children killed, Sarafina. Your blind faith in an old love will not weather the fact that it has changed.

Sarabi knew what she had to do. For Sarafina's sake and for the sake of the pride. Strength - she felt it in her paws again. Not the boldness of a noontide sun nor the greenness of the grass after healthy rains - the hardness of granite, the tough raging of the river. What she needed to do would be barbaric. She felt it in her gut, in her heart, clawing at her brain. She knew, though, that it was the only way anything good would come of tonight's slaughter. If she was to help her friend make an impossible choice, she would.

She rose, and the waters of pain slid off her back like her fur was proofed against them. She was still a ruler of the Pridelands. She yet harboured the skills bestowed upon her by her years of leading the pride, of navigating the good and the bad beside Mufasa. She didn't have him now. So be it. She would rely on her queen's mind, on her wiles. Duty – it thrummed in her paws as she padded to the den entrance.

"Where are you going?" Sarafina squeaked.

"To speak to my brother-in-law."

"Sarabi, please!" Sarafina called, but the Queen did not look back.

"Scar," she called, standing silhouetted in the entrance of the cave.

"Ah, sister." He slunk from the shadows, materialising from them as though from some dark vapour. His eyes, that had years ago gleamed warm as the sun-drenched grasses of the savannah, were hard and cold. "To what do I owe the pleasure?"

"The ceremony is tonight."

"I have the hornbill to manage my agenda, you needn't fret."

A wave of disgust washed over her. "Have you no shame? Do you have any idea what you are tasked with doing tonight?"

"You think I don't?" he hissed suddenly, narrowing his eyes. "Tell me how you brilliantly you function when drenched in grief, Sarabi. I'm truly fascinated."

She almost hit him then – and she might have, if she'd been any another lioness. She knew him, though. She had grown up beside him. She had played with him as cubs, had learned him as the closest of friends did, had mourned alongside his brother when he had chosen to revel in his bitterness and loathing and abandon who he had once been. She could read his eyes even if they were shuttered and bleak. She could read the sadness, and the anger. Lashing out to hurt her so he would feel better about his own pain. She'd seen this before, in her friends, in her subjects, and countless times in he himself. Callousness, his rock and shield. A kind of sympathy stirred in her. He was hardly indifferent about killing those cubs.

She chose, therefore, to knead the ground with her claws. He was as adept as she was in such subtleties, more than Mufasa ever was; he'd understand. Indeed, though his eyes barely shifted to see her action, he leaned back, the only admission she would get from him that he'd overstepped a bound.

"This will be difficult for you," she said.

"The Great Spirit and the Kings need their pound of flesh," he said, voice low, but not negating her.

"I know that."

"Then why did you come?"

"Because Sarafina is worried for her children, and I want to know what you intend to do."

There it was again – pain. She saw it in the minute bristling of his fur, and the way his claws skittered quietly over the stone as he shifted to raise his chin, look away, project indifference and strength. She braced herself for the scathing words, and they came, ripping out of his throat like sharp claws.

"Ah. Our beloved 'Fina'."

"Scar, please."

"Oh, but did you not hear how vehemently she assured me the first cub was mine? Surely she needn't worry." The bitter sarcasm in his voice was liked acid.

"That 'first cub' has a name.

"I care not."

"I think you do. Otherwise, you'd have killed her by now. Scar…" She stepped forward before he could speak, imploring him. "I'm not here to reassure you on Sarafina's lie. I'm not interested in your separation, or that Nala bears no relation to you at all. That doesn't matter. What matters is that you have to kill one of Sarafina's children tonight."

"Pleading the life of a cub will achieve nothing."

"I have not come to plead." She sat and settled herself, not breaking her gaze. "I have come to negotiate."

"I'm listening," he said, narrowing his eyes.

She swallowed, pushing aside the image of her son flaring to life in her mind, questioning the atrocious thing she was about to do. The fear and bafflement in his eyes. The probing, incisive questions only a child could ask. She could not think of Simba. She thought of the Pridelands instead. She thought of what she knew her brother-in-law valued, what might win him over, what might make this transgression worth anything.

"The dry season is coming, Scar," she said. "You will need strong hunters, fit enough to weather the hard days and catch enough prey for all of us to eat well. You will need an heir that will survive that and prosper."

"Your point being?"

"You'll ensure success and strength for all of us. There are six cubs now. Five must die. You're the King now, and have a right to speak to the heavens." She steeled herself. She was granite and sandstone, enduring and unchangeable. She had just lost her husband and child to death and misfortune. She was the Queen, as strong as Pride Rock itself. She was a queen in mourning, who should be loathe to give up any more cubs to the afterlife.

And yet.

"Do you remember the game we used to play as children?" she asked, before she lost her nerve.

"Hm." The sudden change of topic seemed to throw him for a moment; but his recovery was swift, and he turned aside, padding to the edge of his cave where it overlooked the savannah. "I tend not to linger on frivolities and failures."

"Yes." Bitter amusement bloomed inside her. "When it wasn't a mind game, you lost often enough. Do you remember how you won?"

She heard his barely suppressed growl. "Sarabi, it's the middle of the afternoon. I'm tired. Get on with it."

"The game stayed the same, but you changed the rules." Her tail whipped over the floor, annoyance unbridling itself inside her. "You outwit us beyond anything we'd anticipated. We were angry, but you'd still won. This – this ritual, this tradition, the throne and the kingship – this is just another game you have to play. You'll anger the lionesses, you might anger the Kings and the Great Spirit, but you will win."

He turned to look at her, finally interested. She held his gaze. She chose her words, her son's shadow peeking in on her thoughts as she said them. She was helping this atrocity happen. She was saving the pride and keeping hope alive.

"Ask it of the ancestors to trade the places of Nala and Mheetu in their ranks," she said.

There was silence in the cave for a moment. Only the wind whistled through the drying grasses. At last, Scar spoke.

"You have a pleasant ruthlessness in you, sister, did you know that?"

"One of needed to have it," she said, almost too softly. "Mercy alone cannot run a kingdom."

"So I have you to credit for some of the better decisions over the years."

"Don't," she bit out. "Don't, Scar. Let me regain some normalcy before you begin insulting him again."

"Funny thing," he murmured, and his eyes seemed to look elsewhere. "Insults were the norm between my brother and I. It seems like an insult to his memory to stop after his death – which is utterly paradoxical."

Sarabi sighed heavily. "So? What will you do?"

"You know I am not one to put posterity above practicality."

"A certain ruthlessness."

"Yes. However, he is my only male heir."

"He is going to die, and soon."

And unbidden, her mind's eye showed her Simba. He, who had been Mufasa's only male heir, who'd perished, trodden into the earth by wildebeest hooves. Her paws felt weak. She imagined herself in her husband's place – this was not the first time in the past day that she had – and she wondered what he would think. His only son, his legacy, wiped from the earth. This child he loved more than life itself.

She swallowed the sob rising in her throat, pushed it down like floodwaters drowning a continent. Smother your pain by bending it back on itself; wrap it tight in callousness and coolness. Learn from him, he who still survived, even if it was an ugly lesson, one she wished she was above.

Weakness was a thing he loathed, and what did creatures loathe in others that they did not detest in themselves? Such thought applied to Sarafina's cubs. That which came from him he saw suffer in illness and frailty and malcontent; that which came from beyond – strong, brave Nala – prevailed. That outshone him. He should love to dominate it, to end it, to tread it into the dirt and never have to hear of it again. However, Sarabi was sure it was not what his decision would hinge on. She anticipated it. He would be beyond that.

Scar was not his brother. She was as certain of it as she was the Circle of Life. He did not value his children simply by blood, even if Mufasa may have. Value came from assets, from what they gave – emotionally, physically, in loyalty, in toughness, in skill – and what he returned was his to determine, and came only after the payment. It was a part of him – of this new lion, this lion that was not Taka, that was changed. Worst of all though, Mheetu represented a crutch. A veil over betrayal. A hush up, a scam, a ruse. That was even more beyond him.

It was an ugly truth. It was a truth that would save Nala.

"I will concede, Sarabi, that for once in your life you are right," Scar said, drawing her out of her thoughts as a light draws the drowning from deep waters. "He is going to die. Tonight."

Her voice stuck in her throat, and the air felt sharp in her lungs as she inhaled. "And Nala?"

He narrowed his eyes to bright green slights, all judgement, though veiled in intent. "She is not my daughter. She never has been, and never will be. Perhaps she will be my protégé. Perhaps she will simply exist, unremarkably. Sarafina will suffer the anger and jealousy of her pridesisters for Nala being spared. They know she is a cub like any other, no more special to their king than a stone. Still, in time, they'll accept it. They always do. And when they do, do as you have done today, and negotiate. Let it be known why I spared her. Let it be known that I am merciful."

He turned away from her, pacing back to his cave as he cast one last look out over the Pridelands, to the distance, beyond the rocky outcropping, where the cubs had at last dared to venture and jump around. "She will be a bond on the pride. A promise. If we are to risk the wrath of the heavens to save Sarafina's little girl, she had better prove useful to me in the future."

A/N: This was harder to write than the previous chapter. I'd always wanted to explore more interactions between Sarabi and Scar, so that is my favoured segment. Still, I worry of having some explaining to do. I hope I made Scar's rationale for killing Mheetu and sparing Nala clear. He was content enough to kill his brother – I don't think he'd be above killing his own son if that son was an obstruction to power or success. He's ruthless like that. I realise I didn't clarify why this cub-killing ritual is done (it'd likely have a more theological reason than mere assertion of power, as it is in the natural world), so that may be something for the rewrite!

And if the backstory wasn't clear enough, it's essentially that Sarafina was betrothed to Taka, but during a troubled time in their courtship had an illicit relationship with a rogue, producing Nala. She tried to mend the damage by birthing Mheetu, but he came at an inopportune time, and his weakness, compared to Nala's strength, and coupled with Sarafina's betrayal, led Scar to cut all ties with her.