The Shadow

by Aquaman52

All I ever wanted was a chance. All I ever wanted was to be noticed, for a dream deferred to become one we both shared. And for nine months, three days, and a heartstopping ride through hell, that's exactly what I got. Companion fic to "The Pridelanders".

4. Part 4

Well, here it is. Part Four of Three. Good God, this took...six and a half months to finish? Well, hopefully, the wait was worth it for you guys. I've just started Chapter 4 of "Growing Down", and considering how short those chapters generally are, I'm hoping that means I'll soon be working on Part 2 of "The Pridelanders". Yep, you read that right: it's finally (almost) upon us. A moment of silence, please, for my first published work reaching adolescence...thank you. Enjoy the dramatic, sappy, and everything in between conclusion to "The Shadow".

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The Shadow – Part 4

Amani

It's funny how clear things become once you stop lying to yourself. Nine months of telling myself that I was small, I was confused, I was young and stupid and naïve and unimaginably desperate…no, I was all of those things and they were called love. I was sick with passion, desperate for a shuddering touch, a stuttering smile. Anything was still something, wasn't it? A night spent next to him, watching his chest rise and fall and contemplating this sudden desire to brush the cowlick back from his eyes; stroke the fur behind his ears; draw myself into that big, inviting, invigorating brown chest...that affection I craved was all in my head, but now it only rented the space there. Now it only waited there for its opportunity to become real.

That was what made me nothing worse than curious when Simba woke up. That was what put the name "Pridelanders" in my mouth when he had asked for names. Even after I said it, when it became one of those things that sounds brilliant right up until you hear it coming from your own mouth, Tama's smile was all it took to give me strength again. I wasn't all different; I still didn't have a clue what I was doing or what I was supposed to say when Simba started looking at me funny. But I wasn't afraid of them anymore. Or at least, I didn't feel afraid anymore.

That afternoon was one of the best of my life. I had never felt such freedom, and it wasn't even half because of how far away we were from anything resembling a hyena. For the first time in my life, I saw the other cubs as just that: cubs. They were different, but in the end they were the same kind of different as me. And that afternoon, when I jumped into the river and swam out towards the crowd, they shuffled and parted and let me in. Just like that. Like I was one of them.

I was one of them, wasn't I? I always had been. And I'd figured that out months ago, really, on that day in the nursery when I just said the words I wished I would hear from someone else, and for a few seconds felt like they were true. And nine months later, here I was doing the same old thing again. Only this time, I didn't plan on shutting up.

By the end of the day, we were all exhausted, and I was almost incoherent with anticipation. That night would be the first time in the whole day I'd be alone with Tama; what better time to tell him about what I'd figured out? But when he walked into the sleeping cave, he looked an almost alarming breed of frustrated, the kind that was no big deal unless someone was stupid enough to try and dig through it. I'd noticed him talking with Simba about something earlier, and he hadn't looked too happy then either….actually, Simba had had a pretty distinct air about him as well. Like the air around a dead anteater. But after the mysterious and still unexplained events of last night, who knew what was going through his head? And who cared? Tama could handle it. Tama and I could handle anything. We were made for each other, when you thought about it: he was the strong, confident, conscientious one, and I was the fierce, fiery, and feisty young huntress with a shoulder ready for him to lean on whenever he pleased. One couldn't exist without the other. Neither even wanted to exist without the other.

But despite that, I couldn't tell him now. This was going to be the most important moment in my life, and I wanted it to be perfect. I mean, I wasn't scared of what he'd say or anything like that. No, I knew what he'd say, what he had to say. But…it just had to be perfect. It wouldn't be perfect if Tama was mad about something else. So I'd just wait until tomorrow. Tomorrow would be perfect. Tomorrow would be the even better best day of my life.

Or, conversely, it could be the worst day of my entire life to the tenth degree. Guess which kind of day I was graced with.

I suppose it didn't start out all that bad, really. I woke up, did the whole stretch-and-yawn thing, noticed Tama still asleep beside me and resisted the urge to lie back down and cuddle up against his side, and eventually went outside. About half of the other cubs were already up, including Tojo, who looked like he was either starving or just about to puke up a few vital organs. I didn't stick around to find out. Nature wasn't just calling; it was screaming in my ear and beating me over the head with a hundred-pound tree branch. Listening to whatever Tojo had to say was even lower on my list of priorities than it normally was. Normally, I didn't really even have a list of priorities, except for the fact that talking to Tojo was usually near the bottom of it.

I made it to an empty patch of grass just in time to avoid leaving a trail, and took my time getting back. It was a beautiful day; why shouldn't I enjoy it? Also, I was just the slightest bit lost after having sprinted off in Aiheu knew which direction, but I tried to keep that away from the forefront of my mind. That is, until I finally happened across the river caves again, only to find them completely devoid of life.

Okay, then. No big deal. I mean, I was just all alone in the middle of somewhere that wasn't quite nowhere but had a pretty good view over the border. I allowed myself exactly one minute of unbridled panic, and then I composed myself and went to look for my missing pride. A half hour later, I was near incoherence again, and I finally collapsed underneath a threadbare pea-green shrub, utterly desolate and on the verge of tears. Which was exactly how the rest of the pride found me about ten seconds later, except I was officially over the brink of composure at that point. They had gone on a hunting trip and not noticed I was gone until they were already five minutes out. So much for being part of the group. Oh, and did I mention that they had only stopped just then to try to take down a heavy old kudu that would've made an absolutely perfect meal for everyone, and just when they were ready to strike it was scared away by the sound of rustling leaves accompanied by someone screaming at the top of their lungs?

Yeah. Apparently, that was me. I would've apologized, if I could've seen any of them well enough to make eye contact through the messy film of tears and snot covering my face. And I figured maybe if I couldn't see Tama's face, he wouldn't be able to see mine. To my benumbed mind, it seemed perfectly rational. To everyone else…well, I could see enough of their faces to have a good idea of what they thought of me right then.

I would say that the day more or less went downhill from there, except that I was kind of already at the bottom of the hill to begin with. So I guess the day went more or less underground from there, really. The only consolation I had over the next eight hours was that for every time I tripped over my own feet or kicked a rock in a full sprint and fell to the ground spitting every one of the embarrassingly small number of curse words I knew, Uruzi didn't fair any better. Faired a bit worse, actually, mostly because of how each mistake would just push her brow further down over her eyes and sharpen her tongue so much that I couldn't imagine how her mouth wasn't bleeding. And that made me feel great, until I realized around mid-afternoon that I was only happy because Uruzi was miserable. After that, I just felt worse than ever. As much as I would've gladly looked the other way if she, say, tripped into a boiling pit of tar filled with sea snakes and spiders the size of rhinos, I knew that deriving pleasure from her misery was making me just as bad as her. And more than anything, I didn't want to be like her, because Tama hated her. And if I was like her then he would hate me too. And after the day I'd had, that was a thought I couldn't even begin to bear.

By the time Kima finally made his first kill and kept us all from starving, my feelings about Tama were the last thing on my mind. Or rather, revealing them to him was. I was certainly thinking about him; there just wasn't a chance in the world that I'd let him notice now. Not after that morning. Not after spending the whole day teetering back and forth between smug satisfaction and what I could now call nothing else but despicable jealousy.

So that meal was just like any other. We were stood next to each other, ate from the same leg, and never looked at anything but our paws and the meal in front of them. The gazelle meat was sweet and juicy. Every so often, the meat under my chin would be salty.

I had hardly even finished digesting before we were on the run again. Fifteen minutes after we returned to the caves, the northern horizon had begun to glow, and fifteen minutes after that, we'd heard it. It wasn't a roar, not even a rumble; it was lower than that, more powerful than that. It was like a motionless earthquake; even though the earth was still, the sound alone nearly swept my legs out from under me. No one at the caves knew what it was, or what it wasn't. All we knew was that it was big, it was terrifying, and that it was coming straight for us.

So when Simba and Tama came crashing through the brush yelling about hyenas and they're coming and too many to fight off, no one thought twice about listening to them. And when Kima went up in the tree and Simba had a stroke of inspiration, no one was eager to belabor the point. And that was how, at the very end of the worst day of my life, I came to be fifteen feet up a tree with Afya and Uruzi off to my left and Tama on the branch right beside me. Alone with him, for the first time in the whole day. If I hadn't been equal parts mortified, terrified, and wincing from a massive stitch in my side, the whole thing would've been just ideal.

For a while, we didn't speak and hardly even moved, though I suppose it was more out of fear of being caught this time. But after a while, it became just like dinner. Between the distant baying of hyenas, the growling storm clouds up above, and the fact that Tama's forepaw was propped up on the rough wood of his branch and almost, but not quite, touching mine, I was about ready to either scream or just tackle him right off said branch. I was still calculating the odds of us both surviving the ensuing fall when he spoke up without any warning at all.

"You think Simba knows Nala's asleep?" he said in an undertone.

I blinked away my search for a good-sized bush to land in, and looked where Tama was gesturing. About thirty feet away, Usiku was saying something to Simba, who seemed to listening with rapt attention. Beside him, Nala's face was pressed into the rough wood of her branch, and her mouth was hanging open in what I hoped for her sake was a silent snore.

"Probably not," I whispered back. I think I tried to smile, but nothing really came of it. "Are you gonna tell him?"

"Not unless it looks like she's gonna fall out," he replied. "Long as she doesn't, it's kinda funny, isn't it?" He turned his cheesy grin towards me, but I still couldn't bring myself to smile back. His faded quickly, and he turned away with a bit of a sheepish look on his face.

Now I was really glad he didn't know my thoughts about him, because they were saying some very nasty things to my thoughts about how stupid I was to have blown the opportunity to start up a conversation. After a minute or two of bickering, the two groups got together and decided to do something about it.

"So…do you remember anything about your dad?" I said, spitting out the first personal question about him that came to mind. "Before he died, I mean?"

Tama turned his head again and gave me a strange look, and for far too long he didn't answer. My stomach twisted and my face got so hot I was almost dizzy from it, and the overwhelming feeling that I had just brought up a subject he really didn't want to discuss had free reign of my body for a second or two. But when his reply finally came as I started to figure out how I would apologize, it didn't sound offended at all.

"You know, I think you're the only lion who's ever asked me that," he said, sounding more surprised than upset. I went ahead and went through with my apology anyway.

"I'm sorry," I muttered. "I shouldn't have asked, it's none of my business…"

"No, it's…it's okay," he cut in before I could finish. "I don't mind. It's just…I didn't expect it. In a good way."

Of course, now that I felt the urge to smile, my first reaction was to bite my lip and push it back down again. Why couldn't I have functional emotions like all the other cubs?

"To be honest, I'm kinda glad you asked," he continued. "I guess everyone else just assumed I never met him. Of course, that's mostly my fault…I never really talked about him." He looked me in the eyes, and his sheepish look returned. "Or I told them he was dead."

"So he isn't dead?" I asked with a still stoic face.

"I don't even know," he admitted as he turned his gaze back towards Simba and Usiku. "I remember somebody standing over me when I was really little…he was talking to my mom about something, but I don't know what. And after that, the next thing I can remember is meeting Simba."

He paused and glanced over at me for a moment. When I didn't say anything, he looked away again. "That's all," he finished quietly.

He still wouldn't look me in the eye, which meant there were things still trapped inside his head that would fill in all the holes in his story. "Do you think he's dead?" I asked.

"I was told he was dead," he answered. "But lately I've started to wonder whether that was the truth."

"What made you change your mind?"

"Well, the fact that my mom would never say anything about how he died. Or where. Or why he was dead and we weren't. And she would get this empty look in his eyes whenever I asked. This…angry look. Eventually, I stopped asking, and just started wondering."

He paused once more, but I didn't know what more I could possibly say. By the time it occurred to me that this would've been the perfect time to put my paw on his shoulder, he was speaking again.

"And there's something else," he said. He was speaking a little bit faster now. "That I didn't tell you before. That one memory I have of my dad, it…it isn't a happy one. He was…they were arguing. He and my mom. I don't know what it was about, but they were fighting and then my mom yelled something right in his face and…"

"He left," I finished with a whisper before I could catch myself. I bit down hard on my lip and braced myself for Tama's glare, but all I got from him was a wry smile and a nod.

"I don't know when, I don't know why, but yeah, that's what I think happened," he murmured. This time, he looked up at the sky, right up at the shivering slice of moon that hadn't completely slipped behind the storm clouds. I could tell because it gleamed off his eyes and the fur behind his ears. "And someday, I'm gonna go find him, wherever he is," he went on matter-of-factly. "And I'm gonna find out why."

Comfort him, someone hissed in my ear. My paw toes curled around my branch, and stayed there. "Is that why you wanted to escape? So you could go look for your dad?"

"That was part of it," he replied. The moonlight was making his eyes shimmer like crystals. "I mean, in the moment, it was just about keeping us all alive, but…there's a part of me that's almost happy for the opportunity."

He was still looking at the moon; I ended up looking too, just so I wouldn't have to look at him and admit that I didn't have a clue of what on earth to say next. But when I finally forced myself to look down at Tama again, my gut twinged like one of the thorns we had gingerly avoided lying on had poked right through it. No wonder his eyes were shining. They were both filling with tears.

"I just want to know why," he whispered, his voice quivering and his toes clenched. "Why would he leave me when I was just a baby? Who would do that?"

Say something.

The voice was back. It wasn't whispering this time. "Well, you still had your mom…" I pointed out weakly.

Tama's face had been despondent before. Now, it was just bitter. "Yeah," he coughed. "But then every day I'd walk outside and see Simba with his dad, just happy as can be. He never had the faintest idea how good he had things, how bad I wanted my life to be like his. To just have someone to wake up early and take me places and be there for me when I screwed up and no one else cared."

In the unspoken contest of who could grip their branch tighter, I was beginning to pull ahead again. As my legs went numb and my heart began to shrink, Tama turned to face, his eyes still burning even as the veil of tears over them grew thicker. "And then, when his dad died, I helped him get away. I took him to the caves, and I brought him food, and I was there for him when he cried about losing him. I loved him like a brother." His words were jumbling together now, and every sentence began and ended with a raspy breath that I knew was really a barely contained sob. "But every time I saw him cry, every time he missed his dad…I was happy. I was so…freaking happy that he finally knew how I felt for my entire life. It was like I had this little demon inside of me that fed off his misery and my jealousy. And ever time I let that demon loose, it got bigger, and more of me went away with it. And I hated myself for it."

At that moment, he seemed to realize what my face looked like. And at that moment, a single tear trickled out of his right eye.

"I still do," he whispered. And then he turned away, rubbing his eyes with his right paw and holding on to his branch so hard with the other that his whole left side was shaking. By the time thirty seconds had passed, my pulse had slowed back down to a steady thump, and Tama was still as stone.

And the wave of compassion I felt for him when I saw the look of utter despair on his face was enough to erase every bad memory of the last week, let alone that day.

"I'm sorry you're stuck up here with me," he said suddenly, so softly I barely even caught it. "You must think I'm insane."

"I don't think you're insane," I said as warmly as I could. "You're just…sad."

Tama huffed out a derisive snort. "Is that what they're calling it these days? 'Sad'?"

"That's not what I meant," I argued back, but still gently. "You still helped Simba even though you were jealous. You could've just left him out there and never visited him at all. That doesn't seem very selfish."

Tama was shaking his head almost before I finished speaking. "I was still selfish," he muttered. "I was just good at hiding it."

Do it now, the voice commanded. And I obeyed. Before either of us knew it, I had Tama's paw grasped between both of mine. And in my entire life, I had never felt so light, so proud, so unequivocally happy than I was when Tama looked down at our paws and then at me, and the rage and pain and hurt in his eyes bled out and drained away.

"You want to know what I think?" I whispered. "I think it doesn't matter if you think bad things, as long as you do what's right in the end."

Tama's eyes never left mine. He didn't make any motion to change that. "So…you don't hate me?"

Finally, for the first time in almost twenty-four hours, I managed a smile. "Tama," I said. "I could never hate you. No one could. If you were so bad that I was supposed to hate you, you wouldn't care so much about hurting Simba." On a whim, I added one last thought. "You wouldn't care so much about hurting me."

Tama stared for a moment, and then he smiled too. And then his paw shifted and turned until the pads of his toes were pressed against the pads of mine. And he shifted them a bit more, and they pushed up through the cracks in between them…

And then, just barely, ever so delicately, he squeezed.

"Thanks for believing in me," he mouthed, though it wasn't hard at all to tell what he'd said.

"It wasn't hard," I mouthed back. And now, I didn't even need the voice in my head to tell me what to do next. I'd been thinking about it all of yesterday and even more so all of today. If there ever was a perfect moment for what I had been dreaming about for nine months, it was now, with the wind at my back and the moon overhead and Tama's eyes boring into mine. Without my forepaws to help me balance, I was one ambitious gust away from falling right out of my tree, but those forepaws were occupied with more important things right now, like holding his own paw between them and never letting go for the rest of my life. And since I'd already picked out where we'd land earlier, there was nothing to stop me from simply drinking in the moment, slowly floating towards the point where I'd make it all mean something more.

Right now.

"Tama?" I said.

"Mm-hmm?" he hummed back.

"I…" He wasn't even blinking. Neither was I.

"Yeah?" he sighed. Was it just me, or did he sound just as excited as I was? Well, I'd find out in a moment. I squeezed his paw back one last time, took a deep breath…

And about twenty feet over to my left, someone else blew one back out.

"Gods, I'm so bored," Uruzi groaned, all four of her paws hanging over the edge of her branch and her head slumped down against the end of it. Tama glanced over, rolled his eyes, and then his paw was back at his side again.

"Hold that thought," he muttered through his teeth.

Forget that thought, I wanted to say. At this point, it's gonna take everything I had to hold in my dinner.

"Yeah, but you're also still breathing the good air, so zip it," he said, his voice only an octave or two above a growl.

"Well, I'm sorry if not all of us are used to hanging off tree branches like apples waiting to be eaten!" Uruzi hissed back. Above her, Afya took inspiration from Tama and let her eyes drift up towards the clouds. Tama himself, meanwhile, looked like he was ready to jump right over me and let his claws win this argument for him, but before he could get out another retort, a throaty cry rang out from a tree way off to the right. It sounded like a birdcall, albeit one that came from a bird on the verge of coughing up an air sac, but regardless of the tone we all knew well what it meant. That was the last thing Simba had said to us before we started climbing: if Kima gave the signal, sit tight and stay quiet. And everyone knew that the birdcall we'd just heard was the signal.

"What the hell was that?" Uruzi said, her head swiveling back and forth trying to get a fix on the source of the echoing caw. Apparently, "everyone" wasn't quite the right word. "Was that a bird, or a…" Mercifully, Afya had managed to climb down far enough to jump down on top of Uruzi and slap a paw over her mouth by then. After a very brief struggle to shake off the smaller cub straddling her back, Uruzi finally got the message.

Now the already subdued forest was completely silent, and for an impossibly long minute time seemed to grind to a halt. I didn't even dare move my eyes, so all I could see was a three-foot wide patch of grass that was only visible through a gap in the bushy tangle of leaves attached to the end of my branch. I held my breath and watched that grass, and listened as hard as I could for the second birdcall signifying that the threat had passed. I waited, quickly sucked in another breath so I wouldn't pass out, waited, and waited a bit more. Inevitably, my thoughts turned back to what had almost happened.

I would've really said it. I was about to, even. The whole stupid sentence was already on its way out of my mouth when Uruzi, that…idiot ruined everything. Again. I couldn't even imagine how her mind could possibly function; surely with her head being so big, whatever brain she had inside it must just bounce around like a pond frog in a hotspring. I also couldn't imagine how she didn't realize how much everyone hated her. How much everyone was completely exhausted and exasperated just by seeing her walk into view and smile and giggle and preen herself like she was surprised to see everyone standing so steadily, what with the whole planet revolving around her and such.

Or maybe it was just me. I really, really hoped it wasn't just me. Then again, it couldn't be. Tama hated her, too. Because why else would he have shoved her away like that the other night? And hadn't he just rolled his eyes at her, like he had wished for nothing more than to be close enough to give her a great big nudge and send her careening off into the brush? Yeah, he hated her too. He better freaking hate her too. Or I swear on the gods, I'll push him out first.

A sudden streak of gray cut into the patch of grass I was still lazily pointed towards, and it was nothing less than a miracle than I didn't start bad enough to set the whole tree quivering like a fat roll on an elephant. It was enough to make the leaves shift and rustle ever so slightly, though. As the branch began to move, I shut my eyes and waited to hear the sound of approaching pawsteps, but at that exact moment an earsplitting clap of thunder escaped from the clouds and ripped through the forest, all other sounds nullified by the sheer force of the blast. Call it luck, call it fate…I couldn't have cared less at the time. I could figure out which gods I needed to thank later, once it was safe to move again and my stomach grew back to its normal size.

It was a while before I realized I should probably be trying to figure out who it was that we were hiding from. Of course, that would've required me to open my eyes, so I met my better judgment halfway and just decided to listen in on their conversation. That wasn't as helpful as I'd hoped, though; I heard a loud voice that sounded like it belonged to a hyena, and then someone stomping off, and then about a minute later something kind of shuffling and groaning that I couldn't even begin to identify. Until I finally worked up the courage to open my eyes. Then I identified it pretty darn quick. I also identified the fact that Tama was watching it too.

Well, there went my stomach again. And not because I was scared this time.

Looking for something else—anything else—to occupy my mind with, I found myself turned towards Uruzi again. She'd wised up to the fact that our would-be hunters weren't being very diligent at the moment as well, and I watched with a mix of interest and a tingly sense of foreboding as she renewed her efforts to get Afya off of her. Only this time, Afya wasn't prepared for the sudden motion, and she was thrown backwards much more quickly than I think she or Uruzi expected. Afya was perceptive enough to grab hold of another branch and scramble on, but Uruzi's momentum was a bit too much for her to handle. She flailed around wildly for a moment, and then her quickly slipping forelegs were all that was keeping her from crashing to the ground below.

It occurred to me that I should probably warn Tama about what was happening before Uruzi gave away our position. It also occurred to me that I would very much enjoy seeing Uruzi fall out of a tree. In the second it took me to ponder my decision, the branch had already shaken off its unexpected guest and Uruzi had already hit the ground hard.

Now that the hyenas were looking at Uruzi and, by association, me, hating Uruzi seemed like such a stupid thing to waste my time over, especially when it was surely going to result in my own death. I should've told Tama, and I knew that. And I was about to ask him what we were going to do next when I realized that the branch on my right side was empty too. And that on the ground below me, there was a sturdy-looking, brown-furred lion cub standing protectively in front of a helpless-looking Uruzi.

That would be Tama. Going down to rescue Uruzi. Leaving me up in our tree. After Simba and Usiku had already knocked out the hyenas and eliminated all of the present danger. After I had held his paw and looked into his eyes and was a small smattering of social graces away from making those hyenas look like little cubs nuzzling in the nursery. But that was no reason to be upset.

Okay. Fine. I didn't need a reason not to ever speak to him again, did I? No, probably not. He wasn't going to get one, in any case. Not later, and especially not now, when I had just climbed down from our tree myself and was stalking towards him with my teeth clenched and my claws gripping the grass like each individual blade was his chivalrous little neck. He was going to get something, though. That was for damn sure.

By the time my paws had touched grass again, Uruzi was coherent enough to get back to her feet without any help from Tama, who in the meantime was just kind of standing there not really doing anything. And, were it not for the very ill-timed arrival of another pair of much larger, much fiercer, and about a hundred times scarier hyenas, I would've used that lull in the action much to my advantage. As it happened, the next few moments weren't as much filled with glaring at Tama as they were with me seeing Tojo jump down right into view of the hyenas, hearing one of them gleefully figure out where we were hiding, and then running at a full sprint through the trees as the wind picked up and the baying of the hyenas grew louder behind me.

At some point, the baying stopped, and I heard a scream. If anything, I ran faster after that. Simba and Tama would've gone back to try to help whoever that was, but I wasn't Simba and my desire to follow in Tama's pawsteps wasn't really all that pressing at the moment. So I kept running deeper into the forest, and resigned myself to whatever survivor's guilt was in store for me later.

Eventually, I remembered where I was supposed to be running to: the fork in the river. The one at the edge of the forest. The one I had been planning on following someone else too, as my sense of direction was about as useful to me as a pair of wings to a fish. Determined not to dissolve into a sobbing mass of panic twice in one day, I forced myself to stop and get my bearings.

Right. Bearings. All the trees looked the same, and I couldn't hear water. That meant I was in the middle of the forest, which was pretty much exactly where I'd been a few minutes ago. So that didn't really help a whole lot. But I would not panic. I couldn't refuse to speak to Tama if I couldn't find him again. So I just had to find Tama. And then not speak to him.

I was a bit surprised by how quickly I was able to calm myself down just by thinking about him. Even if I was thinking about how pissed off I was at him. I couldn't be pissed and scared at the same time, I guess. And now that I could think a bit more clearly, I could hear a faint rustling coming from somewhere off to the left. That was good. Crashing would've meant hyenas; rustling probably meant another Pridelander. Maybe even Tama. I thought about calling out to him, but then I realized that that would probably count as speaking to him. On the other hand, I would never make it out of this forest alive if he passed me by. Die alone in the woods, or forgive Tama. Once again, I hedged my bets and decided to just follow the rustling and find the river that way.

It was tricky to figure out where exactly the noise was coming in what little daylight remained, but I could at least tell its general direction: coming towards me from the left and a bit ahead of me. I started walking forward until the noise was as close to being directly to my left as I could manage, and then I sat down and waited for whoever it was to run into me. If it was a lion cub, I could follow them, and if it was a hyena…well, if it was a hyena, they probably would've found me anyway and sitting her was just cutting my life a few seconds shorter. I think I was scared again by now.

But it wasn't a hyena. Or a lion cub. Because when the rustling finally sounded like it was right on top on me, not a single shrub or blade of grass moved. And then the noise was fading away again. How had I possibly missed them? Where were they?

And then a leaf floated down from above me and brushed past my nose, and I had my answer: Kima. The leaf even smelled like him a little bit. This was even better than it being Tama, actually; if anyone actually knew where they were going out here, it was probably Kima. And now that I knew what direction he was heading in, I knew where the river fork was. I could just follow him from below and keep track of him through the leaves he dislodged. Perfect.

For once, one of my plans actually worked out. I could already see the river off in the distance when Kima finally dropped back down to the ground and saw me. "Hey, Amani," he said. "Were you following me?"

Geez, were all of the younger cubs smarter than me? "Yeah," I answered truthfully. "Hope you don't mind."

"Nah, it's okay," he reassured me. "I just thought I heard someone behind me, is all."

I shrugged and grinned for a moment, and then continued to follow him all the way out of the edge of the river, which was swollen up considerably higher than its normal depth. The storm must've been much worse upstream.

"So what do we do now?" I shouted to Kima, who was staring at the raging rapids with a mixture of concern and his trademark curiosity.

"Wait, I guess," he shouted back. "Look at how rough it is!"

"Yeah…" I mumbled back. I was remembering the second part of our plan now: swimming across the river and crossing the imaginary border in the middle of it to get us outside the Pridelands where we could regroup. I wasn't a bad swimmer and I actually kind of liked rain showers, but mixing the two together like this didn't look like a whole lot of fun. Actually, it looked terrifying. And I haven't exactly had the greatest history of handling myself well under pressure. Which meant I spent the next few minutes imagining all the various ways this river could be the end of me. I guess I was just in a morbid mood today.

Somewhere between a tree collapsing onto me as I was halfway across and some sort of violent death by giant mutated piranha, Nala and Tojo burst out of the woods, both of them gasping and heaving for breath. By the time the piranhas had been replaced by crocodiles, Afya and Uruzi had arrived as well. And as a hyena bayed somewhere far off in the distance and I finally came back around to the reason we were jumping into the river in the first place, Tani and Tama emerged onto the riverbank about a dozen yards upstream and quickly joined the pack of Pridelanders gathered at the rendezvous point.

Well, at least I wasn't thinking about hyenas anymore. The spot in my mind they had taken up just a moment before was now occupied with trying to remember why I was angry at Tama. It came back to me pretty quickly once Uruzi asked him where Simba was.

"I thought he was with you!" Tama said a bit loudly to Nala, the volume of his voice betraying the distant vestiges of panic plucking at the ends of his vocal cords.

"He went back to get Usiku after Jua…" Nala said before trailing off. Suddenly, I remembered the horrible scream I had heard earlier. Well, hello there, survivor's guilt. Thanks for stopping by.

"Did anyone else see them?" Tama asked the crowd, all of whom replied in the negative. He didn't take that well, and it was no wonder that he didn't; a quarter of our pride was missing, including its de facto leader. Who was also his best friend. As Tama turned away from the river and stared back into the darkness-soaked woods, I remembered something else, from our conversation in the tree earlier. He said he had been so jealous of Simba, and so happy when his father died…was that what he was thinking about now? Was he still jealous of Simba? Was the thought even entering his head, as it was mine, that he might turn back around and leave him behind, that his little demon would break free for just long enough to ruin everything?

Like I had so many times before, I looked down at Tama's paws. Come to think of it, they were probably the part of him I was most familiar with; not surprising, considering all the times I hadn't been able to bring myself to look him in the eyes. I got to know a lot about him from his paws, like which one he leaned on he was standing (the forepaw on the right) and which one had a tiny little scar on it from where I'd accidently stepped on it one night when I was sneaking out one night to use the grass (the back left one, and boy, was he not happy about that). And after a while, I could even read his emotions a bit just from what his paws looked like. Whenever he was angry, his paws would clench up and the very tips of his claws would come out. Whenever he was excited, he would lean forward and balance on the pads underneath his toes. And whenever he was nervous, he would plant all four paws firmly on the ground and splay his toes out until the pads on the bottom were white. That was how he'd looked when Scar had walked into the den two nights ago. That was how he'd looked after he tackled me in the grasslands before that.

And that was how he looked now, staring off into the woods with steadily rising but still silent dread in his eyes.

I had thought I felt low earlier in the day; now I knew what the real thing really felt like. He couldn't have possibly had any deeper secrets than the ones he'd given to me tonight, and what had I just done with them? Judged him for them. Feared him for them. Just like he thought everyone else would have. Just like he must've thought I wouldn't.

Was he jealous of Simba…hadn't I just told him it didn't matter? Hadn't I already seen him place the lives and livelihoods of every cub in attendance here before his own a thousand times over? Hadn't he already told me, sobbed to me, that he was horrified at himself for lapsing into selfishness even once? Hadn't he just risked his life to defend Uruzi, someone he didn't even come close to liking, because it was his natural instinct to put aside his own personal feelings and do what he knew was right?

Yes. He had. And I had hated him for it.

There was no getting around it. For one reason or another, I hadn't been able to tell him what he meant to me, what I hoped I meant to him. And now I knew I never would, for so many reasons. Cowardice. Jealousy. Mindless obsession that might be nothing more than a hormonal balance, might be nothing more than temporary. Yes, all of those things. But they were not the true reason, the one that I just realized now.

There was only one true reason, and it was that we were simply not made for each other. He was strong where I was weak. He was brave when I wanted to run and hide. He kept his mind of others when I could only think of myself.

But most of all, he just didn't deserve someone like me. And I could never, no matter how many lives I lived or days I saved or apologies I made for everything I've done, deserve someone like him.

"Okay, everyone stay put here," Tama said. "I'm gonna go look for them."

Even though I couldn't bring myself to speak, the other cubs were more than willing to give voice to what I was thinking. "You're not going anywhere, Tama," Afya shouted over the concurring arguments of the rest of the pride. "We need you here more than we need you lost out there too. I'll go."

"We need you here too!" Tama began to argue back. As we all knew he would.

"Hey, I could go look for them!" Kima interjected, tearing his gaze away from the river and bounding back over to the group. "I can go through the trees like I did before. They'll never see me up there!"

"You're not going anywhere either, Kima," Tama answered quickly, and I was a bit surprised to see Afya shaking her head as well. "I'm going, and that's final."

Tama stood tall and turned around, just in time to see the tuft of Kima's tail vanish into the forest canopy. "Son of a…" I heard Tama mutter.

"Leave him," Afya said resignedly. "You'll never catch up to him now."

After a moment of deliberation, Tama nodded in reluctant agreement, and then walked back over to us. Over to me.

"You okay?" he said quietly. I just nodded and looked away. And of course, he noticed.

"Hey…" he murmured. "Amani, what's wrong?"

"I'm fine," I murmured back. Thank the gods it was fully dark by now; I had only one shred of self-worth left to hold onto now, and that was that Tama would not see me cry over him. Never would.

I raised my head a little and looked off in the distance at nothing in particular. Behind me, Tama didn't move. Go away!, I wanted to scream at him. Go help everyone else! Go be the hero we all need! Don't waste your time on me!

A few seconds passed. He was still there. Finally, another few seconds after that, I heard him sigh.

"All right," he said softly. And he was gone.

Now I could cry. But I wouldn't. Not now, when our living through the night was anything but a guarantee and composure was the only thing close to sanity I could claim as my own. So I stared at the water and waited, until Kima pushed his way back out of the forest with Simba and Usiku and Jua in line behind him. Until Tama helped make a bridge across the river and waited until I was on it before he followed, right behind me. Until the hyenas and the other lion came, and Tama was the second one to help Simba push the boulder over on top of them, and I was the third. Until we walked for days and hours, and finally stopped for the night after only a few minutes had passed.

Until I woke up cold and alone in a crowded watering hole, surrounded by desert and trapped in a prison of my own creation. And him: the warden, the bars, and the shaft of light creeping in from above. My own prison. My own nightmare.

There was no denying it. Any of it. It was all my fault, it was all exactly what I wanted, it was all so perfect that I couldn't go a single minute without wondering what I would do without it. I wouldn't have thought it was possible to love someone and hate being in love with them. Now I knew it was very simple. It happens when you take it too far, and you love someone so much that, for all the happy times and blissful moments, you can't bear to see it happen because you know someday it'll all go wrong. Someday, you'll hurt them, and you'll never be able to forgive yourself for it. I knew this, because I had finally realized that this was what I had become, what I had brought myself to. I was inconceivably, irrevocably, unequivocally in love with him, and it was for that reason that I couldn't allow it to happen. One way or another, he deserved better than me.

It was one of those decisions that was easy to make and even easier to regret. The next morning, I would leave. Before he was awake. Just get up and start walking, and stop once I couldn't walk anymore. Of course, I knew in the back of my mind that I would never go through with it. But imagining that I would do it was so comforting, so…familiar. So normal. It was what I was best at, wasn't it? Imagining things. And never doing them.

And the funny thing was, after nine months of imagining a whole lifetime's worth of things never done and things never even attempted, the one I finally settled on this night was the first one I could remember. Nine months ago, I had imagined I was big, and that's what I imagined now. Only it wasn't just size this time; it was a concept, a creed, a way of life. I wasn't strong, but I could fake it well enough to convince myself I was. I wasn't brave, but I lived like I was. I wasn't a natural hero, but I wanted to be one enough that I could manage if I tried. I wasn't big, but I refused to let my fears be bigger.

Powerful thing, the imagination. Big thing. Scary thing.

Sometimes it scares me how much your imagination can change you.

• • •

I've never been an early riser. I enjoy my sleep, and nine months ago I would've told you that it was because I enjoyed being alone too, that the world just between here and there was mine and only mine, and I didn't want to share it with anyone. Now, the first thing I noticed when my eyes opened was how empty the space beside me in the little cavern I'd spent the night in was. And the second thing I noticed was the argument going on outside it.

I couldn't tell who was being shouted at, but I could certainly tell who was doing the shouting: Tama. Only he didn't sound…angry. Well, he sounded angry, I suppose, but it wasn't anger that was driving his voice. Anger has a certain sharpness to it; no matter how loud or soft it was, there's always a little part of it that remains controlled, that remains intentional. There was nothing like that in Tama's voice now, no edge to his words. He didn't sound like someone who was angry as much as he sounded like someone who was losing control of something he desperately wanted to keep intact. I could only guess at what it might be, though. Only a few words were distinct enough to pick out.

I got to my paws somewhat gingerly, both because of all the strain I'd put them through the day before and because of the inescapable feeling that I wasn't supposed to be hearing what was going on out there. Well, to be honest, I wasn't hearing much even after I moved out from under the outcropping. And I wasn't seeing anything at all. A dense fog had moved in at some point during the night, so thick and so impassable that I didn't want to move much farther out for fear that it was just as solid as it looked and I would run smack into it.

So I stayed right at the very rim of the outcropping, and I listened as best I could to the argument I wasn't supposed to be hearing. I suppose I was either doing a very good job of listening or a very poor one, because I didn't even notice the sound of approaching pawsteps until they stopped somewhere off to my left.

I turned slowly, with a sensation a lot like the one that came with being caught sneaking out of the den after sundown itching in my stomach. The fog must've been thinning a little bit, because I could just barely tell who it was I was staring at. And who was staring back at me.

For the longest time, Afya didn't say anything, and I didn't say anything either. We just stared at each other and analyzed each other, and listened to the commotion off in the distance add a couple more voices to its repertoire. When she did speak, it was without warning and with a tone of abject seriousness that, on a better day, I might have interpreted as concern.

"Help him," she said in something close to a whisper. Even without her ensuing motion towards the distant argument, I knew exactly who she was talking about. But why was she saying it? What was I supposed to do? What could I do?

"How?" I asked.

Afya blinked once, then again. "Bring him back," she answered simply. And then she turned around and pushed back into the mist, and all I could hear a moment later was the receding tick of her claws against the ground.

Bring him back. I had a feeling I wasn't supposed to take that literally. So how was I supposed to take it? Afya had to realize I wasn't as smart as her, wasn't as quick as Nala or as strong as Tani or as good of a friend as Simba. What could I do to Tama that none of them could manage?

I braved a bit more of the veiled earth before me and walked forward a little farther. At first, nothing came across my ears but the gentle rippling of the waterhole, and for a moment I held onto the faint hope that the argument had finally ended. But when I listened closer, I picked up two voices still speaking. Still arguing. Almost shouting now.

"…you don't know how he would handle it!"

Literally shouting now. Or at least, Tama was. I would've wondered who the "he" was, but I was just starting to get used to not having half a clue what anyone was talking about. No reason to stop the process now.

No reason to think that when Afya told me to "bring him back", she meant for me to go strutting out there and smack Tama a good one for getting upset. Over whatever it was that had upset him enough to scream. I wasn't very enthusiastic about that plan, quite honestly. For more than one reason.

Was it cowardly? Yes. But then again, I was a coward. I was a shadow. Always behind the great ones, the ones who could actually be smart and be personable and think quickly and do things. Always present when things were bright, and never around when the darkness swept in. So what could I do? What could I be, other than scared and shy and alone?

I could be Tama's shadow.

Well, wasn't I already? I followed him everywhere he went. But I wasn't with him now, so that couldn't be true. What did that make me, then? It made me exactly what I'd thought I was before; a shadow, fading into the background the instant it was needed most, the instant when its owner most needed it to anchor them to reality. And that was true, wasn't it? He needed me. Not Afya, not Simba. Me. His shadow. His anchor. His friend.

His friend. His more-than-friend. His secret.

Maybe we didn't deserve each other. That didn't mean we didn't need each other all the same.

Finally, I put my head down and walked right through the fog, towards where I'd last heard Tama's voice cut it in two. Where I was going, what I was getting myself into, what I would say to him once I got there…I let each thought occupy my mind for only a moment, and then nudged it along into oblivion again. I'd only had a few times in my life thus far where I'd been sick enough of being a coward to push past the instincts that made me one, and right now was one of them. And it was due to Tama again. Actually, they'd pretty much all been due to him. Now I was sure that it was need I felt burning in my stomach and the back of my throat. I wasn't composed enough to completely reject the notion of him deserving a future better than one shared with me, but now I was at least comfortable with making him suffer through it all the same. I suppose, if you looked at it sideways, that was an improvement.

The air was getting clearer with every inch I advanced, but I could still only see about ten feet in front of me when I heard echoing pawsteps again, heavier ones this time. Faster, too. Someone was running towards me, almost sprinting by the sound of it, the echoes of their pads not even a gallop so much as an unwavering drumbeat. And, naturally, whoever it was invisible behind the feathery columns of fog that were still halfway through clearing out for good. Just once, I thought, just once, I'd like to actually see what's running at me like I'm the last zebra in a thousand miles of desert. It'd be such a nice change of pace to be able to rationalize being afraid of it.

Here, though, I knew that there wasn't anyone around besides the rest of the Pridelanders, so for even lesser of a once I was able to rationalize not being afraid. Instead, I just backed off a little bit, sat down, and waited for whoever this was to say whatever cryptic thing they felt the need to say. Send me running off to do whatever it was they needed me to do. Tell me that I was the only one who could do it.

Come skidding to a halt no more than a half dozen yards away from me with brown eyes wide as a stampeding elephant's and teeth gritted in incomprehensible agony.

I blinked hard and stood up just in time to not trip over myself as I took another step back. Was that really Tama over there, with his claws stretched out at nothing and his eyelids squeezed shut to keep it from getting in? Was that really him, with his breaths coming in quick and ragged like a tree branch being tossed around in a thunderstorm? Was that really him, muttering to himself with dripping eyes without giving even the slightest indication that he knew I was there?

"Don't…" he whispered. I could almost hear his resolve breaking apart, the branch shedding leaves in the fury of the wind. "Don't say it, you…don't mean it. Please don't let me mean it…"

It was only now that I remembered what I had come out here for. I took a step forward. Tama didn't turn around, only flexed his paws for a moment and then continued stumbling forward.

"He's your…he's my friend, my respons…just…"

My paw twitched, and something skittered across the bare ground. A leaf, dried and brown and long since dead.

"Just don't be him, please, oh gods, don't make me be him…it's not me, just his father…"

He stopped.

"Just his father…"

His right forepaw shot over to his left leg, and his claws bit down straight through fur and into flesh.

"Just his father…NO!"

His scream was as sudden as the bright red streak I saw open on his ankle. "Get out!" he sobbed. "GET OUT OF MY HEAD!"

Then he disappeared behind the fog for a moment, and in that moment I couldn't take it anymore.

"Tama?" I said quietly, announcing my arrival as gently as I could. Tama whipped around with flattened ears, and eyed me with the frenzy of a cornered gazelle. And backed away.

"Tama, what happened?" I continued, swallowing my way past the swollen lump of fear and panic that had taken over my throat. "What's wrong with you?"

He spent a lot of the next few seconds blinking, and then his pupils receded just slightly it was as if he'd finally recognized the presence of another living thing. Another animal like him.

"It came back," he answered, looking in my direction but not at me. Through me, at something off in the distance that had him terrified almost to incoherence. "I thought it was gone, and it came back, and I couldn't…" He paused to shudder. "…stop it."

It took two heaving gulps to get my voice in working order this time. "What came back?" I breathed out.

"Back there, it wasn't even me talking," he gushed. I don't think he had heard me speak. "It wasn't my voice, it was his, but it was my voice and…"

"Tama, stop it!" I commanded, more out of desperation than frustration.

He blinked again, and a little more color drained back into his eyes. "Amani…" he said, finally calling me by name for the first time since he'd arrived. "Amani, I'm…I shouldn't be here."

"Tama, what are you talking about? You're not making any…"

"Sense, I'm not making any sense? No, I'm not making any sense, am I? I never do, because I-I'm crazy, aren't I? I'm the one with the little voice in his head, the little demon that wants him to spit in the face of everyone who ever tried to help him, ever tried to care about him."

Now the storm that had dislodged Tama was upon me. Now it was all coming back: the forest, the thunderstorm, the frantic chase through the forest…and what he had said just before it.

It was like I had this little demon inside of me that fed off his misery and my jealousy. And ever time I let that demon loose, it got bigger, and more of me went away with it. And I hated myself for it.

Gods above. I didn't have any better way to comfort today either.

"You're not crazy, Tama," I said weakly, trying to fall back on my previous reassurance for lack of any better idea. "You're just…"

Tama roughly shook his head, his brow and muzzle crashing together to block off his eyes. The cut on his ankle was seeping blood all the way down to his paw now. "Crazy, not crazy, what does it even matter?" he growled back, rising to a shout halfway through. "It's still the same thing. Other people get lucky, and I hurt them for it. You might as well start calling me S-Scar…"

I would've thought he truly believed that had his voice not despondently cracked on the final word. In the heat of the moment, that was all I needed to hold on to. "You are nothing like Scar," I told him. I was a bit surprised when I had to stop for a moment to wipe the moisture away from my own eyes. "The Tama I know is nothing like Scar!"

Now his irises were dilated black again. "Yeah, well, maybe the Tama you thought you knew never existed," he hissed. He sounded furious, but not at me. Please, gods, not at me. "Maybe it was just his worthless little attempt to hide what he was really like, just so he could get closer to his prey. Maybe he's nothing more than a maggot leeching off of anything better than him. Maybe he shouldn't have even…"

"Shut up, Tama!" I screamed. Later, I would feel bad about yelling at him, but now would not be later for a good while yet. "What are you hurting yourself like this?"

"Because I deserve it!"

Now, after all his rage and all his ravings, he fell silent, with only the heaving of his chest disturbing the glaring sunlight starting to stream through the mist. Now, after all this time, he looked me in the eyes. Now that I couldn't even see them anymore.

"Why are you hurting me like this?" I tried to ask him back, but my throat finally closed off for good in the middle of it and so all I could really manage was a squeak. But that was enough. His demeanor shifted, not completely off the track he'd been careening down but a few steps back from the edge of it. His madness was gone; now there was only grief. Only guilt. Only a thin line of crimson snaking down across the stone.

"I hurt everyone I'm around," he whispered back. "No matter how hard I try not to."

"Tama, that's not true and you know it!" Now that he was starting to cool down, I found myself starting to heat up. "The only way you've ever hurt me or anybody else is by doing this to yourself!"

He looked down at the gash on his leg. I tried not to. "You can beat this!" I half-encouraged, half-begged him. "Please, just listen to yourself!"

From the moment I said it, I knew he was going to take it the opposite of how I'd intended. "All right," he mouthed mechanically before raising his voice enough so I could hear it. "Tell Simba he's better off without me."

And that was that. That was his tail disappearing off in the general direction of absolutely nowhere and my tail still laid out flat behind me. Not moving. Just watching him leave. Letting him leave.

I would've expected half a dozen different emotions to fly through my chest at the sight of Tama running away from me, never to return. But the one I settled on after a few moments was situated a bit low, in my stomach and my paws. And it burned, like the touch of a white-hot flame against an open wound. My stomach burned like fire. Like lightning.

Like anger. At myself, at Afya, at the entire gods-damned planet for letting me be their stooge and their plaything and their shadow. But especially and almost exclusively at Tama. For so many things now, some of which probably weren't even his fault. But this was. This notion that I would just let him walk off to do something far worse to himself than a cut on the leg. This notion that he could just walk off on me. Leave me. No, that was simply not going to happen. We might just be friends or we might be destined to be together forever, but no matter what our futures held, there was one thing it sure as hell wasn't going to include, and that was him leaving me.

It wasn't hard to catch up to him. He wasn't going anywhere fast with his leg in the condition that it was, and just as I had discovered last night that I could run faster than I even knew I was capable of when I was running away from something, I found out today I could push myself beyond my normal limits in order to chase something down. What a change of pace.

Almost as if he knew I was coming, Tama slowed down as I began my approach. But my interpretation of his mental state was a bit too forgiving; when I finally caught up to him, he jumped almost as violently as he had when I'd first spoken to him before. Or maybe it was more because of me tackling him at full speed and knocking him into a chaotic roll that ended with him flat on his back and me standing over him with my chest heaving and my nose hardly six inches from his. Six of one, half-dozen of the other.

"Amani…" he began to say, in that wonderful little reasonable voice of his that meant everything was going to be okay, everything was gonna be fine, and don't bother trying to help me because I'm too busy shouldering it all myself to ask for it, thanks. That, and he looked like he was about to start crying again. Neither option was one I was going to let him take this time.

"No," I said firmly, cutting him away before he could go off on another tirade. "You're just gonna give me some more crap about how you don't deserve my help, and I don't want to hear it. What can't you just let me into that thick, stupid skull of yours?"

"I don't know…" he moaned. He still wasn't looking me in the eyes, and I had to swallow back the habitual sympathy I felt bubbling up from my stomach when I saw how empty his gaze was. I couldn't afford to let him off the hook now, not with the state he was in. Not with another much more familiar feeling still broiling just a few inches below that sympathy.

"I don't want to yell at you, Tama, but I don't know how else I'm supposed to get through to you!" I admitted, trying to provoke a more rational response from him. Instead, I got silence and a stare focused somewhere around my neck. "Listen to me," I continued after it became clear I wasn't going to get anything by beating around the bush. "You…are not a bad lion."

The unfocused brown irises beneath me disappeared again, and the tiny flame behind my own flared into a bonfire. "Yes, I am…" he argued back in a shaky whisper.

"No, you're not!" I shouted, not regretting raising my voice one bit this time. If I had to literally smack that into his stubborn little head, I was more willing to do so now. "You're the only one who thinks that, Tama!"

Silence again, and this time he even tried to squirm out from under me and escape again. Before he could even make it a full inch, I planted my forepaw right in the center of his chest and stopped that nonsense in a hurry.

And somehow, that single motion cut through both of us more than anything else had even come close to managing. He stopped dead in an instant and, for the first time that day, opened his eyes all the way. And as for me, the old feeling was pushing up from my stomach again, not burning but freezing everything in its path. I kept my focus on my glare and gradually, slowly, the pressure lessened and it drained away again. But not all the way down, just to a staging area, to a clearing right on the edge of the forest. I couldn't take much more of this.

Tama's eyes still weren't on mine. "Look at me," I ordered him.

He didn't move. He was still staring at my paw on his chest, and my toes where they had unconsciously dug up underneath the outer layer of his fur. Eyes still wide open. Eyes still in a world far beyond the one I was stuck in.

"Look at me!" I yelled.

And finally, he did. Finally, he looked me in the eyes, and the war was lost. The icy storm swept forward, and didn't move into my legs and back and tail so much as simply appeared there without a moment's delay. I was overpowered before I even had a chance to realize that I had nothing left, that all I'd been running on was adrenaline and a wild, maddening promise to not give in to myself, to not be the one to break first. And here I was, with Tama right where he needed me to have him, flinching and even shying away for a moment. From nothing more than a look from his glassy, shattered eyes, deep and rich as his coat in a way that no other natural color could compare to, in a way that every lion in our pride recognized as being the essence of safety, of comfort, of home. Whatever they needed, whatever they desired, it could be found there, in those endless brown twilight skies clouded over with enough goodwill to shield them from the brightest rays of the world around them, but clear enough to let through enough to keep them happy.

I'd seen this in him before he'd even known it himself, and now I was seeing it when he had no hope of ever allowing himself to use it again. And somehow, I knew I always would, no matter what. Because of what was cutting a crackling course through my legs and back and tail. Because of what I'd known would be the end of me sooner or later.

Because I was Amani. Because I was shy and compassionate and unspeakably desperate. Because, even now, I was afraid.

"Please…" I whispered, now finding that it was me who had to force herself to look Tama in the eyes. "Please just listen to me. It doesn't just hurt you when you're like this. It hurts everybody to see you like this. Its hurts Simba and Nala and Afya and Tojo…and most of all, it hurts me."

Something else was flashing through his eyes now. The same thing I hadn't been able to identify back at Pride Rock. "How…" he began to ask.

"Because I care about you!" I shouted, though this time it was only because I'd completely lost control of what was coming out of my mouth. "Because we all care about you! Because we love you!"

And there it was. I'd spent so much time thinking about how, when, where, why, and now all I needed was a deserted watering hole and enough desperation to not care about the consequences. And a single moment.

"Because I love you!"

I had thought his eyes were wide before; now, even his tiny black eyelashes disappeared under the reddened skin bordering his eyes. And as for me…I felt nothing. No shuddering earth behind my feet, no clap of thunder overhead, just an overwhelming sense of complacency. It wasn't that what I'd said wasn't true; it was just that, after how much time I'd spent agonizing over it, it had really been just that easy. Just a few words cobbled together that meant something larger than themselves.

And what did that all add up to? It added up to me asking Tama the question I'd kept silent for half my life and, for the first time, not being afraid of what the answer would be. Regardless of whether he loved me back or not, what mattered was that I'd been honest with him. There was nothing I could do now but keep standing over him and wait for him to answer, so that was what I decided to do. Meanwhile, Tama was still halfway paralyzed, his right forepaw hovering in midair and his eyes twitching madly but never breaking away from my face.

"Is…is that true?" he finally whispered, his searching gaze more powerful than I'd ever seen it be before.

"Yes," I answered almost as quietly. "It's always been true."

Now his eyes dropped to the paw I still had centered in his chest. At some point, I'd tightened my grip, and now his skin beneath my paw was white. With an unconscious gasp, I released him and backed off a little, giving him room to get to his feet. His eyes still never left mine, not until he was fully on his feet and he started to turn. Until he started to walk away.

I had just a moment for my old fears to come flying back with twice the force they'd ever had before, but only that. Tama had only moved a few feet when he stopped again, his tail lifted just enough to keep the tuft from dragging the ground and his head tilted toward the ground. I could hear him breathing even from that distance.

It took him thirty-seven seconds to speak. I know, because I counted every single one of them. It was my attempt to stay at the same even emotional level I'd promised myself I would keep. A mostly failed attempt, but at least I'd always know that number.

"The first time I ever saw you, you were off under a rock in the nursery back when we could hardly even walk," Tama said. "I guess I noticed you because all the other cubs were in this big pile near the watering hole, and there you were off by yourself. I guess I thought you were a rogue like me, that you would be just like me. I don't know why I didn't go over to you right then…Simba must've dragged me away or something. But I've always remembered that, because it was the first time I had ever seen someone so different from everyone else. And it was the first time I ever saw your eyes. The first time I ever thought of how…how beautiful they were."

I could see something twitching at the very corner of his mouth, even when he fell silent. Now I dared to hope. "When I first talked to you, it was in the nursery again. I don't know if you remember it, but it was that day Simba had to go babysit the little cubs and I ended up going along too. I didn't even know you'd be there. I hadn't hardly seen you since that day by the watering hole. But when I did see you, the first thing I saw was your eyes again. And I remember that the first thing I thought when I saw your eyes was, 'Why is she here with the little cubs with eyes like that? Why haven't the birds stopped singing and the trees stopped swaying and all the lions in all the world stopped breathing, when someone next to them has eyes like that?' I couldn't figure it out. I guess I thought maybe you were stuck-up or selfish, or maybe," he began to chuckle, "you were just annoying."

He stopped for a moment, and I could've sworn he was going to turn around then. "You proved me wrong," he murmured.

His paws scuffed against the ground, all the tension fully gone from the hardened tendons. Now I dared to dream.

"I tried to talk to you every chance I got after that," he continued. "I wanted you to notice me so badly. I wanted you to look at me again and I wanted to see your eyes glow like they did when I talked to you in the nursery. I didn't even know why I wanted you to…I didn't understand anything about what you were to me. I just knew that I'd known you for hardly a day, and that had been enough to make you more important to me than anyone else in the whole pride. In my whole life. Because you were the one lion who made me feel normal. Because you were the only lion who saw just me instead of Simba and I together."

Even from the strange angle, I could still see the wry grin that streaked across his face. "Stupid thing to be worried about, I know, but…there was always some part of me that wasn't at all like Simba. It's probably why I'm friends with him. And you were the only one who noticed."

Well, that was a perspective on that whole situation I hadn't expected. All I could remember from that day right now was five hours of tripping over everything in my path so I didn't have to look away from him and trying not to get sick all over his paws in the process. "And then, the last three days…" he said, his tone dropping into a deep, but not melancholy, groan. "Gods, what can I even say except that you were…what kept me going. That I was trying so hard to hold myself together just so I wouldn't disappoint you. Because I knew that you wanted me to be brave, because that's what everyone expected, but…but you were the only one of them who made it important to me. Who made me want to be brave and strong and noble, if only so I could be as brave and strong and noble as you wanted me to be. As you kept showing me I could be."

Now he turned around. Now his eyes were still shining and wet, but his lips were pulled back with unfathomable happiness. Now the bands around mine fell away and my face lifted to match his. Now, finally, I dared to believe.

"I love you too, Amani," he said without the slightest hint of hesitation, all the while closing the gap between us one lengthy step at a time. "I always have, and I never even knew it until yesterday, when you saw me for who I was and you didn't run away. When you were there for me when no one else was. And I can't ever even begin to repay you for that, so all I can promise you is that for as long as I'm alive, I'll do whatever it takes to be there for you too. I want to be there for you today and tomorrow and all the days after that, and I want to stand by you in the day and hold on to you at night, so I never lose you. So I can always protect you. So I can wake up in the morning and look into your eyes and…and know that everything's gonna be okay. That we're gonna be okay."

All of a sudden, we were nose to nose, and this was the closest I'd ever been to him. And from here, I could see everything. I could see how deep the truth he was telling me went, and how his cocoa-tinted eyes actually had little flecks of green swimming around in them that I'd never noticed before. I could see that he'd holed up his desires and his passions and his agony just as long as I had mine, and that released into the open for the first time they were enough to make the sun just another star made irrelevant by the brightness of its moon, by the radiance of his words.

"And I want to kiss you, Amani," he whispered. "I want to kiss you more than I want anything else on this planet. I want to put your head on my chest and watch your eyes slide closed and kiss you and kiss you and never ever let you go. But I always waited, I always held myself back because I couldn't do it if you didn't kiss me back. Because I never knew if you wanted me to…"

Now he paused for a moment. I was still staring at his eyes, so I couldn't see at all what he was doing with his lips or with his tongue. But I did see something flash behind them for a moment, as if a decision had been made, and then I saw them flutter shut. And then the next thing I knew, I couldn't see anything, because my own eyes were closed and my back legs had slipped out from under me and there was just the slightest touch of moisture where my lips had once been dry.

He had kissed me. He had really kissed me, and now my eyes were opening and his mouth was open and my entire body felt like it was splitting at the seams. What had he said? He didn't want to kiss me unless I kissed him back? Well, all right, then. I could do that. Except not right now, because right now he was leaning forward again and his head was dipping down and under my chin and then pushing back up and my paws were around his neck and then suddenly we were both flat on the ground, irreparably tangled in each other's forelegs and nearly heaving for breath even though we'd only moved a couple feet. I couldn't get close enough to his mouth to return his favor, so I settled for pushing my muzzle into his rumbling neck and breathing him in and letting his scent envelop and take over my brain, to be first in line in an entire galaxy of experiences I was having for the first time today. And while I was doing that, Tama was more than content to keep a shaky grip on the backs of my shoulders and press his own lips into the little patch of downy fur behind my ear, alternating between peppering the side of my neck with hundreds of smaller but infinitely more powerful kisses and whispering the same three words over and over again so only I could hear them: I love you. I love you. I love you.

We ended up on our sides, and stayed that way for gods knew how long. Time was a distant memory, something easily forgotten in the heat of the moment. Hours melted into instantaneous seconds, and so we spent the rest of the day in blissful ignorance, knowing nothing of anything outside of us, outside of the little patch of dirt and stone we'd collapsed on top of. Eventually, our passion—or at least, that was the closest name for it that I could think of—subsided to simple affection, and then that dissolved into nothing more than a sleepy feeling in my legs and a warm heartbeat skipping along right beside mine. It was around then that Tama suggested that we move off into the grasslands. So we'd be more comfortable, he said. There was a large part of me that consisted only of the ecstatic little shiver that squirmed its way through my chest when he whispered his proposal into my ear, but there was a larger part of me that felt the same feeling in a different way, by knowing that it was so the rest of the pride wouldn't see us. So the moment could last longer.

We walked quickly and settled down even more so. This time, our descent towards the ground was much more composed; Tama lied down first, and I followed suit a moment later, hardly even getting into a crouch before his neck was craning towards me and my head was diving under it. Whatever awkwardness remained from our first encounter fell away once I was next to him again, once my ears filled with the sound of his purrs and my nose tingled with a sharp, almost cinnamon-like scent that I'd never been near enough to truly experience before. Once his paw curled around mine and our toes weaved together of their own accord, there was nothing else left to be done. Now we could rest easy, and I could slowly begin to realize that this wasn't a dream, that I really loved Tama and he really loved me back, and that I was really lying here now with the sun overhead and our sides pressed together and his tongue every so often washing over my ears.

But with that realization came a gradual sinking back down into reality again. Not far enough to make the moment any less enjoyable, but enough that I could start thinking about what this would mean for the future. The most pressing matter was the scratch on Tama's leg, and what its existence meant for the pride. Right now, all he needed to have it cleaned up since I'd managed to snap him out of his madness today, but now that he had pledged himself over to me and I had for all intents and purposes done the same, at some point soon I'd have to figure out how to keep it away for good. And sooner or later, the rest of the pride would find out, and then…

Then what? Nothing. Nothing would happen. Nothing could happen, because this was what had been meant to be all along. This was why I'd overslept, and why the fog had kept me from going too far out, and why Afya had told me to help him in the first place. This moment right here, with both of us and only us, was much more than chance, much more than fate. I'd never been one to believe in destiny before, but I couldn't think of any other word for what we had now, what we would always have. And if Uruzi was jealous, then let her be jealous. Let her head blow up like a bullfrog and explode in a fireball of raging green flame. She couldn't hurt me anymore. Nothing could hurt me, because I loved Tama and he loved me back, and in the grand scheme of things that was all I would ever need.

In the meantime, though, Tama was still bleeding. He still needed some help with that.

With a gentle, distracting rub against his neck, I leaned down and lifted his paw up to my lips, trying to lick around the edges of the wound more than inside it. Nala could deal with the hardy stuff later; right now, my only interest was making him more comfortable, and judging by the satisfied groan that slipped out from deep in his throat I wasn't doing too bad of a job at it. But as much as he seemed to enjoy my particular brand of treatment, there was still a quickly growing frown on his face. I wasn't surprised; he knew where the gash had come from just as well as I did.

"It's okay, Tama," I said softly, raising my head back up to rub under his chin again. "You're gonna be okay."

The slight movement of his jaw told me he was smiling, but his voice didn't give off the same sentiment. "I want to believe you," he said back a bit morosely, drawing his injured paw away from ever so slightly. I reached out and grabbed it again before it could reach his chest.

"You can," I told him. "Because I'm gonna help you."

He moved his head back and looked me in the eyes. Now I could see his smile. "Thank you," he said. "For everything. That, and everything else. I'm sorry I…"

I slipped my paw toe up over his lips, and he fell silent. If there was anything I was surprised about, it was how easy this all was. "You don't need to apologize," I said. "Just promise me you won't hurt yourself again."

Tama's eyes clouded over, then became more resolute than I'd ever seen them be before. "I promise," he replied. "And…and I promise that I'll help you too. With whatever you need, whatever you want. Always."

It was my turn to smile now. I moved my head in close and pressed my muzzle against his ear, like he'd done with me before. "I'd like that," I whispered.

As I moved back a bit, his head dropped and his ears tickled my throat as he pulled me into a strong nuzzle. "I'd like it too," he murmured back just before giving me a long, slow lick right on the corner of my jaw. For a minute or two, the sound of heightened purring was enough to drown out even the birdcalls heralding the arrival of the new day.

"So it's a deal, then?" he finally said, moving his head back up over mine. Once it was there, he kissed me again, right on the little crevice where my head ended and my neck began. "We'll stick together no matter what?"

It seemed like such a simple question, and one I thought I had known the answer to for months. But despite that, I still gave myself a moment's pause before answering. Maybe just to try to think of what exactly to say, maybe to make sure I really meant it. Maybe even just for dramatic effect. But as I pulled back and gazed into his eyes one last time, every anxiety I might've had faded more quickly than any mist ever could. There was no need to say anything new, no need to think about my answer. I was right; I had known it for months, the way only a lover could. The way only a pair of creatures who were so intimate that words were just something used for the benefit of hearing the other's voice while thoughts and wishes more than sufficed as far as communication was concerned could. The way only a friend, only a sibling, only someone so close they could be your shadow could.

And so I looked up at him once more, first at his eyes and then at his lips. And then I closed my eyes and leaned in close, and I kissed him back.

"Deal," I mumbled through my thoroughly occupied mouth. And as Tama's paw slid up to my back and his tongue stretched out to meet mine, I realized one last truth to add to the day's total.

Turns out, sometimes it pays to be a shadow.

---

I can't really decide whether I like this chapter or not. The ending is admittedly sappy, but I wasn't aiming for anything before that, so I have somewhat mixed feelings about its quality. Suffice to say, I'll honestly be glad to get back to writing in somewhat simpler prose. Not that I didn't enjoy writing for Amani (if I'm being perfectly frank, I love the character to the point of unhealthy obsession), but I also like it when I get to switch things around a bit. 'S why it's more fun than I might have originally expected to have more than one active story going at the same time. Anyway, as I said before, keep an eye out for a new "Growing Down" chapter fairly soon, and then (ohJesusChristI'mreallyfinallythere) Part 2 of "The Pridelanders".

...someday, I'll get over the fact that I've written over two hundred thousand words on a Disney animated film, and people like what I've written. Someday. Not today.