Kion: Fall from Grace (A Dark Kion Story)

Chapter 24: How Far We Go

"I don't believe you!" Nala yelled furiously. "You told all of the herds to kill our son? What in the Pride Lands were you thinking?!"

"What choice did I have? He killed Dhahabu's entire herd, he's set fire to the Pride Lands, and said he'd stop at nothing to kill me," Simba replied as he tried to defend himself.

"What choice did you have? You had the choice to not sentence our son to death!" the queen growled in response.

By this time the entire pride could hear the bickering of the royals and did their best to not eavesdrop on their king and queen, but Nala's yelling made that very difficult.

"I'm the king, Nala. I will do what I think is best for the kingdom," he replied calmly.

"Best for the kingdom? Best for the kingdom?! You mean what's best for you!"

"No, Nala, he is a danger to the kingdom, you can't deny that," he pointed out.

"What happened to you? I remember when we first had Kion, you loved him more than you loved yourself. What changed?"

"I don't know, maybe I realized the lion he was always meant to be."

"I wish I had realized the lion you were going to be, If I had known you were going to treat our son like this, maybe I would've chosen someone else."

There was dead silence as the queen finished her sentence. Everyone had heard the queen whether they wanted to or not. Simba stared in disbelief as he watched Nala exit the den and leave Pride Rock as if nothing had happened.

She walked alone through the quiet and vast jungles of Hakuna Matata Falls before she came upon a small pond, a pond that meant a lot to her. It was where she realized she had fallen in love with her king, and where they had conceived both Kiara and Kion.

It now felt empty, void of any emotion it used to hold, but she still found herself coming back time and time again. She could still hear the song they sang together, "Can you feel the love tonight." The lyrics felt meaningless to her now, like they were just sweet little nothings whispered in each other's ears, but back then she meant every word. Now, she wasn't so sure.

Nala's ears twitched as she heard the familiar musical hum of a certain mandrill. She looked over to see Rafiki searching for fruit in the tall trees of the jungle. When she was younger she always found the mandrill to be strange and somewhat annoying. But as she grew older, she realized that he had a strange ability to almost always know what was going to happen next, and appear in the right place at the right time. Now she almost always listened to Rafiki's rambles and riddles, knowing there was a lot of truth to be deciphered from them.

She walked over to the tree he was hanging from and watched as he grabbed a fruit and studied it closely before decided to either keep it or toss it aside. She listened as he hummed a familiar tune.

"Asante sana squash banana, wewe nugu, mimi hapana," the mandrill continued to say to himself as he picked up another fruit and inspected it.

"Is that a baboon up there," Nala laughed as she called out to him.

"I am not a baboon, I.." he yelled before paused as realized who it was that called him. A smile instantly made it's way onto his face as he jumped to down meet his heckler.

"Though I may act like a baboon, I think we can all be baboons sometimes, eh?" He laughed as he gave a goofy bow.

"You might be right there, some more than others," she chuckled to herself, but ended up with a frown.

"I assume you are talking about Simba," he asked as began double-checking the fruit he had chosen.

"It's just...he's completely given up hope on Kion, if had any to begin with. But what if Simba is right and our son is truly lost?"