Common

(cw for strong language)

This is all Kovu's fault.

If that spoiled brat hadn't run away, she would never have gone from her mother's side. She wouldn't have gotten swept up in the currents, and she wouldn't have gotten stuck on frigid, lifeless Tinuvel. She would never have met Fell - silent, wolf-eyed, absolutely infuriating and unfortunately handsome - and she wouldn't have gotten so distracted from her mission for so long. She wouldn't have gone back to the Crossing when she finally managed to snap herself out of it, because she never would have left in the first place, and she wouldn't have been alone last autumn, when -

No, she thinks, stubbornly pushing the memory of the golden stallion from the forefront of her mind. She wants to think even less of him than of Fell, doesn't want to give him even an inch of the mental space she'd reserved for her lost family. He didn't deserve it - not another second of her time, not another ounce of her attention, not a passing glance or a drop of venom from her razor-sharp tongue. She would give him nothing else of hers; he'd already taken more than she had ever offered, to him or to anyone, and left her more than enough reminder in the growing swell of her whitesplashed belly.

"Fucking Kovu," Vitani swears, pinning her ears against the stirring between her flanks. Whatever was in there didn't seem to like when her temper flared, rolling and crashing around the confines of her womb in protest. Unfortunate, then, that her anger only rose as the days passed, and her efforts to locate Sabor and Azaad proved fruitless. She spent many sleepless nights looking up at the stars, stewing, the boil of her blood setting the little parasite into a frenzy. She hated it, all of it, hated its ever-increasing presence, the way it rounded out her sleek frame and stole the breath from her lungs. She hated the limitations it imposed on her, how the evidence of it turned the eyes of strangers down and away from her when once they'd been drawn like moths to her radiance and beauty. She hated everything about it - but what she hated most of all was how she had to go through all of this alone, without her mother here to guide her.

Sabor would have known what to do. She would never have put her children in harm's way. If Kovu had stayed, if he had just done what he was supposed to do, if he'd listened, they'd all still be together. Technically homeless, yes, definitely missing their father, absolutely, but together, safe and loved and still so full of innocence. Instead, Vitani is alone, paying the price for a debt she didn't know she had... and, as she meanders aimlessly south, venturing unwittingly into the Commons, she's aracking up another set of charges, the likes of which she cannot hope to fathom.