In the end, siding with the Pridelanders against her mother was easier than living with them for Vitani. She couldn’t deny that Kiara’s words carried weight, she saw the truth that they had all been blind to; they were too consumed with hatred and vengeance to see. Siding with her brother against their mother had been easy, it broke her heart to do it but she knew then that if the bloodshed didn’t end there, it never would. 

But when it came to living with the Pridelanders, after the excitement had cooled and they had stopped to think…that was a different matter.

Her pridesisters seemed suspicious of Simba, some who were old enough to remember their old lives distrusted him whilst the younger ones feared him as the tyrant who had kept them from their true home. Zira’s words left lasting impressions and it was hard to separate the cruel tyrant from the grieving king who’d lost his son and mother to Zira’s claws. Vitani didn’t know where she stood, she didn’t know whether to embrace the change or whether to regard the fragile peace between them with scepticism. Zira had always told her to never trust Pridelanders and it seemed that old lessons were harder to shake than she had imagined that night at the ravine.

The Outlanders slept separately from the Pridelanders, they sheltered themselves on the rocky outcrop that Scar had once claimed as his own. Vitani wondered if that just made the Pridelanders more distrustful of them but most of the time she couldn’t bring herself to care what they thought.

They may live in the Pridelands, but they were still divided in Vitani’s mind. The Pridelanders still looked sideways at them as if they expected betrayal at any moment. Simba left them be, content to ignore them as he had always done. The only Pridelander who seemed to care a wit about them was the princess, Kiara, but even she was skittish around them and for that Vitani couldn’t quite blame her. They were the nightmares of her cubhood but at least she tried to make them feel welcomed.

Kovu, on the other hand….Vitani didn’t understand the change that had come over him. Suddenly he was more Pridelander than Outlander. Too desperate to please Simba, to fit in with the Pridelanders and their ways that he seemed not to care about the pride he truly belonged to. Kovu didn’t seem to care that their mother nor Nuka were gone. She was our mother! Vitani wanted to scream at him sometimes, she raised us, fed us, ensured we survived despite everything! How dare you act as if she never existed! And Nuka too! Was our brother nothing to you?

Kovu may as well have been a stranger to her. He tried, he did, to include her and their former pride and bridge the gap between them once and for all. 

”You’ll see, ‘Tani,” he had said, smiling at her and so full of promise ”It’ll be like we were never apart. We’ll make things right again.”

She had scoffed “If that is what you think, brother, then you are as big a fool as Nuka ever was.”

It had hurt her, seeing the hope in his eyes dim but she couldn’t lie to him like their mother had. 

She couldn’t live this life, no matter how hard her brother tried to sway her to it. She was not a Pridelander. She was too much her mother’s daughter to ever truly have a place here. It was a sad truth but it was a truth she couldn’t ignore.

Perhaps that’s why leaving didn’t hurt as much as it should have. Vitani didn’t know whether to feel guilty over that or not and she loped over the open savannah towards the long abandoned Elephant Graveyard. She didn’t know where she would go or what she would do but she knew that staying would eventually twist her into something she didn’t want to be because she couldn’t be herself whilst also being the voice of the former Outlanders and the loyal subject of a king who she’d spent nearly all her life hating. It would tear her apart.

Vitani visited the ravine one last time, she felt like she had to. Leaving without saying goodbye to those she had lost felt wrong to her. She approached the edge of the great gorge carefully and peered down at the gently flowing river below. All traces of familiar landscape had been cleared away and her familys’ bodies along with it. Nuka had been a fool who wanted their mother’s love too much and their mother had been a vicious beast right up until her last breath but they were still family. For all that Zira had done, for all she had put them through, Vitani couldn’t hate her. Not truly. She hoped wherever they were, they had found a peace they had never known in life. Perhaps they were among the stars. Vitani didn’t know if she still believed in that or not, but she liked to think that they were somewhere, happy at last.

With a last look, the gold lioness turned and took off to the east once more. By the time the sun had risen she would be far away and she supposed Kovu would hate her for leaving without a word but she knew that he would only bed her to stay. If he tried to make her stay then she would lose whatever will she had to go. 

She hoped that one day she would be able to find a place that made her happy, where she wouldn’t have to check herself to appease someone else. She liked the idea of that. Perhaps one day