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Shifting Royalty

Part 1

For TheBodySwapeur

By Draconicon

Simba adapted to his life away from Pride Rock sooner than he expected. The friendship of Timon and Pumbaa made it a lot easier than it otherwise would have been, and he was able to adapt to a lifestyle of eating bugs and being more carefree than the kingdom had ever allowed. He was able to put most of his guilt behind him most of the time, and he found himself just...comfortable. Not always happy, admittedly, but comfortable.

Of course, the lion still thought of Pride Rock and the Pride Lands as he aged, as he crept from childhood to adulthood. As his body changed, he remembered the lionesses that had been under his father, and he had his time to think about them and what that might have been like. There were days when he even had...

Well, that was hardly something to think about most of the time, but urges were what they were, and there was no way that he could indulge them with his friends. Not properly, at the very least. Muddy knots in trees sufficed, and he learned how to satisfy himself that way. Enough to keep from being a pain, at least.

Still, there was only so much that he could tune out, and in the nights, below the stars, Simba would sometimes look at the sky and wonder what was happening with the Pride after all that had happened. He would wonder what Scar was doing, what had happened with the hyenas, whether the lionesses were alright.

He would wonder what had happened to his mom, and more than that, whether she was still okay. He wondered if she missed him.

Simba learned to embrace the day, to push himself as hard as possible to enjoy it for what it was, so that he could sleep as fast as he could when he reached the night. The day was full of distractions, but the night was anything but. Too often, he would lay on his back, staring up at the night sky as he waited for exhaustion to take him, and his thoughts would wander. He'd be back in the canyon, seeing his father die. He would be at home, with Nala and the others. He would think of infinite possibilities of what might have happened if things hadn't gone wrong. If he hadn't been responsible for his father's death.

Those were the bad nights, and unfortunately, this was one of them. The lion rolled onto his side, covering his muzzle with one forepaw as he tried to shut out the remembered echoes of the rampaging wildebeests. They had been all over the place, their hooves breaking the very ground before them. The sheer insanity of it all had been horrifying, and it still gave him nightmares to this day.

"Hey, bud, you okay?"

Timon. The meerkat shuffled over to him, poking him in the neck, one narrow finger making its way through his mane. Simba groaned, looking up.

"I'm fine."

"You sure? You're shaking like a leaf. A really shaky leaf, too."

"I'm fine."

He tried to make it sound more firm, but all he managed was to sound kind of angry. Before he could apologize, Timon held his hands up and backed off.

"Hey, if you say so, kid."

Kid. Heh. He smiled slightly at that, shaking his head as he rolled fully onto his belly. That was what they'd called him the first time they'd met, and even now that he was full-grown, Timon still used that word. It should have been embarrassing, now that he had his full mane, but instead, it was comforting.

Weird, really, but then again, so was the idea of a meerkat helping to raise a lion. Not something that anyone would have expected.

He sighed as he lowered his head down against his forepaws. From the hilltop, he could see the whole of their home. The great green lands stretched out below them, sprawling forward against rivers and other hills. It was divided by lakes and streams, the whole place a wonderland of different comforting hiding places. Not much in the way of prey, admittedly, but there were bugs aplenty for all the food that he needed.

Most of the time, at least. They didn't know it, but he'd sometimes sneak away and find something just outside of this place. An antelope, sometimes, but oftentimes something more stringy. A fox had served for dinner just a few nights ago, and he doubted that he'd get the chance for something more suitable for a while.

His stomach gurgled, but he ignored it. He needed to try and get back to sleep before the dreams started taking hold again.

Sleep, he told himself, closing his eyes tightly. Sleep. You're going to need it. You're going to be busy tomorrow, hunting and chasing off the other predators. Sleep.

Despite how many times he told himself to just close his eyes and drift off, sleep didn't come. His mind was sliding back to Pride Rock again, and he wondered again just what was happening to his mother. He sighed under his breath, grinding his cheek against the edge of his forepaw.

"I wish I knew if she was alright."

As the words left his lips, he could feel something. Something that tingled at the edge of his head. It almost felt like the fuzziness of sleep, and he embraced it. There was a strange sense of something shifting, almost like he was becoming weightless, and then the world slipped away into the darkness of sleep.

Or, so he thought.

#

Dreams of the Rock came. Dreams of hyenas. Dreams of darkness and harsh words, of the wrong roars that filled the caverns with foul echoes. Not the proud roars of lions and lionesses, but the barking roars of hyenas, the laughing cackles of the scavengers. Simba hunched up against that, feeling as if he was floated long on the raucous laughter, like each sound bumped him further through the dark.

Why? Why were there hyenas in the Rock? Why were they so loud? Where were the lionesses to fight them off?

There was no answer. He floated further, his mind drifting, the feeling of warmth starting to come back. Still no weight, but the feeling of a warm body rather than this disembodied feeling was starting to take place. He reached for it, strained for it, but it was further from him than the fuzziness from before was.

It was a dream, he was sure. He was still back on the hill, still well away from Pride Rock. This was a nightmare, a nightmare that the hyenas had come, but that wouldn't happen. Scar was scary, but he wouldn't have done that.

Simba let himself drift, trying to take solace in the sight of his old home, even though his nightmare was defiling it, showing him the Rock at its worst. There were old bones that littered the caves, no longer the clean stones that he remembered. The scavengers left their meals hither and yon, waiting to come back to them, while the lionesses were nowhere to be seen.

The only sound besides the laughter and barks and whimpers of the hyenas wandering through the stone passages were the occasional growl and roar from the deep caverns, followed by the huffing, grunting sound of something thrusting away. It almost sounded like lions mating, but even in his foggy memories of childhood, he remembered the differences there. His father with the lionesses had always sounded so eager, so proud. This sounded like conquest and submission.

He floated further, drifting through the tunnels almost like a ghost in his own home, and he found something warm again. Something soft and good. He almost felt like himself again, no longer empty and cold, but fulsome and living. His limbs felt like they had weight again, though differently. He settled into it regardless, letting whatever the dream wanted to happen, happen, and he felt the warmth spreading through him as his ghostly self was laid upon the ground.

There was something different about that, something just a little off, but as it was a dream, Simba didn't care as much as he might have, otherwise. He closed his eyes, as much as one could in a dream, and drifted off again. The images of the caves faded, and he was left with just the image of his own eyelids before darkness claimed him once more.

#

The next morning, he expected to find himself bathed in the warm light of the rising sun and to hear the snores of his friends at his sides. That was the way that he had woken up for the last year or three, and that was just the way that it was. The ritualistic way of getting up, taking care of his morning needs with a surreptitious tongue, and then getting to 'work' by chasing off those that were poking at the borders of the green lands was just the way that his day always went.

Not so this morning. He opened his eyes and stared into darkness that was foreign and familiar. His nose filled with the scent of other lions, something that he hadn't smelled for so long that it was almost foreign. He smelled Sarafina, Nala's mother, and he smelled other lionesses that he had been away from so long that he had almost forgotten their scent. He could hear their snores, soft and gentle, lazy and quiet compared to the sounds of his friends.

Yet, there was something wrong with this dream - or at least, with what he assumed was a dream. He could not smell himself.

Simba shifted where he lay, hoping to get a better look at what was happening. If this was a dream, then he wanted to see his mother, wanted to see everyone properly before he woke up. He stretched out one forepaw, and then froze.

It was not his. There was none of the yellow-tan fur that he had seen every day of his life. No, instead, it was a pale color, something closer to a cream in shade, and more, there was none of the mane that he had only gotten used to in the last year. The fiery red that he had grown in the outlands was nowhere to be seen.

He stared at his foreleg, slowly bringing the forepaw off the ground. It was a different shape, slightly smaller, less bulky, but the claws were sharper than his had been, less blunted. He stared at the slight curl and sharp points that they ended with, slowly shaking his head in complete and utter disbelief.

This...this isn't...

He noticed something else, something that he was surprised that he hadn't noticed sooner. Every morning since leaving his childhood behind, there'd been a stiffness in his sheath, something that was a precursor to something else. Simba dropped his head, looking between his forelegs and to the space between his hind legs.

Where once had hung a sheath now lay nothing, or at least, nothing immediately visible. He flopped, almost landing on one of the other lionesses, rolling to the side to look down between them.

No, there was something, but it was not what he was used to. Instead of his shaft, he had a slit back there, a slit that was just a little bit below his other hole. His. Her?

What's going on?

Simba's eyes were wider than they had been since that day in the canyon, and his heart felt like it was going to explode. He whipped his head from side to side, his tail thrashing about like mad. The smells were so familiar that there was no question that he was back in Pride Rock, somehow, but the fact that he was a female, a lioness -

He breathed in again, and he smelled her. He smelled his mother, Sarabi, but he did not see her. None of the other lionesses scattered around the room looked like her, but she had been here. Her smell lingered, and it was so close to him that he swore that it had to have been right here. Right -

The realization hit him like an avalanche, or a stampede. His breath caught in his throat, and he slowly lifted his forepaw again. He stared down at it, unable to look away from the soft pads that had caressed his muzzle when he was a kitten, or the gentle claws that had curled through his fur and groomed it, or stepped on his tail gently to keep him from tumbling down the wrong path.

It was her. He was Sarabi.

His breathing - her breathing? - must have been loud enough to disturb one of the other lionesses, because one lifted her head and glanced at him. She smacked her jaw a few times, then cocked her head to the side.

"What's the matter, Sarabi?"

"...Nothing," Simba said, hearing his mother's voice coming through his own lips. He hoped that he managed to keep from looking quite so startled at it, and from the sleepy face that kept staring at him, he supposed he must have. "Go back to sleep," he added, hoping that his mother's word still carried some influence.

It did, because the lioness did as she was told. Simba shook his head, still looking down at himself.

The more that he experienced this body, the more that he recognized the differences between himself and his mother. Not merely in the lack of...that...between his hind legs, but the feeling that came from moving around. The lioness's body was sleeker, less powerful. It was built to keep going, while his own was meant for slamming things down, for the quick fight. Hers was there for the longer struggle, for the chase rather than the pounce.

Every limb was filled with slender, corded muscle, something that made him feel like he could run forever. Flexing his paws, he could feel the way that they were used. They were meant to strike, grip, and hold, not to batter something into submission the way that he had used his own paws. They were strong, but not for hitting. Just for holding, and then squeezing, and not letting go.

I'm...my mother...

Just thinking that was enough to make him wonder if this wasn't a dream. He didn't know if he wanted it to be or not. All he knew was that this...this was something both wonderful and horrible at the same time.

#

Hours passed, and neither further sleep nor gentle waking occurred. He groaned as he was pushed by one of the other lionesses when they began to wake, following them as they wandered through the stone passages. Simba remembered how they would greet his father before they went hunting in the past, but what would happen with Scar this morning?

He followed them, allowing the other lionesses to take the lead. In the past, Sarabi had been the one to lead them, but as it stood, he could tell that she had aged. Her body was strong, but there was a tiredness to it that wasn't there with his own. She had strength, but she also had age, and that meant that she could allow the other lionesses to lead without provoking questions.

They went to the depths of the Rock, and Simba's eyes widened as he saw his uncle in the middle of mounting one of the other lionesses. Not one that he recognized, perhaps one that had been born after he'd been forced to leave, but still an adult. The young female had her tail flagged off to the side, and his uncle's cock was buried deep inside of her, humping away, breeding her like she was in season...which she wasn't, he realized with nothing but a sniff. This was purely the work of his uncle to enjoy himself.

The lionesses stood where they were, only lowering their heads when Scar turned to look at them. Simba didn't quite react in time, and his uncle flicked his head towards him, that black mane swaying slightly as his hips kept bucking.

"What is this, Sarabi? Are you angry with me again for not choosing you, the way that my brother did?"

Simba realized that his uncle was talking to him, and he had no idea what had been going on. He just said the first thing that came to mind.

"This is wrong."

"Ah, so you've said since the start, dear Sarabi. But I am the king, after all. My brother died in a horrible accident, and now, I must hold the throne until a new heir grows." The black-maned, red-furred lion chuckled, turning back to the unfortunate lioness beneath him. "If any of you were worth the effort to breed, one of you would have had a cub, by now."

"We only breed in season, Scar. This will be no different from the others," Simba said through his mother's mouth. "This is nothing but -"

"Silence!"

The cutting tone in his uncle's voice shut him up, though he kept his head facing forward rather than looking down. There was a residual sense of pride and power in his mother, and he didn't feel like he could just let her down, even though it was only her body rather than her mind. He kept his eyes on his uncle, not daring to look away.

Soon enough, the breeding was done. His uncle slammed in to the hilt, holding himself there, and the lioness gripped the stone with the claws on all her paws. Eventually, Scar pulled out, and the younger lioness limped free. She barely managed to stay upright, and it was clear that she would be useless for the hunt that day.

Scar flopped against the stone, laying on all fours, stretching his legs out forward and back. His maleness was slowly retreating into its sheath as he chuckled.

"Now, lionesses. You will hunt."

"And you will stay here?"

"I am the king."

"Hmmph."

"Was that disapproval, Sarabi? I thought we'd had this talk before," Scar said, leveraging himself up to a seated position, leaning back on his haunches. "Are you defying me again?"

"..."

"I said, are you defying me again?"

"I am just saying -"

"Do you remember what happened last time?"

Simba didn't, but Sarabi's body did. He felt the aches that pulsed between her hind legs, and Simba wondered just what Scar had done to his mother. What had his uncle done to make this body so afraid of him?

Scar chuckled.

"Now, go. Bring us back some food."

"Yes, Scar," one of the other lionesses said.

With that, they were on the move, loping through the tunnels and then out into the open. The more familiar sun greeted him - greeted his mother, rather - and the warmth started loosening up tired muscles. As the lionesses started to confer about where to hunt, Sarafina loped over to him. The other, elder lioness sat down at her side.

"You're bold today, Sarabi."

"For speaking my mind?"

"Last time you did, he did not just breed you."

"Hmmph. He can try and stop me. This isn't right."

"I wouldn't be saying the same, if he'd done to my tailhole what he'd done to yours."

He'd done that? Gone so far as to - Simba brought his mother's tail back down, shaking his head a few times. Regardless of the memories of discomfort, he had to say something. Even if it felt wrong, even if everything felt...weird, compared to what he had been before.

What he had been before? Well, that brought other questions up that he'd been too confused to think about until then. What had happened to his old body? Was it still sleeping on the hill, all that way away? Was it alive? Dead? What had happened to it? What had happened to his mother, for that matter?

What would happen to Timon and Pumbaa? The green lands had been livable because he'd chased off most of the predators that would have come in and hunted on those lands. They would be in danger.

Ugh...so much wrong...so much different...

He lifted his forepaw, pressing it against his forehead. Even that felt strange, wrong, almost like he was feeling someone else do it, and it didn't even feel right under his paw. His head had a different shape, and it wasn't just the lack of a mane. Different jaws, different nose, different spots where the eyes were supposed to be. Everything just felt weird and wrong and not him.

But why should it feel like him? He wasn't himself, anymore. He was Sarabi, and that was a very different thing.

Sarafina whipped him gently with her tail. He looked up.

"What?"

"We're hunting, soon. Are you going to be able to keep up?"

"Yeah, of course."

"Are you certain?"

"Come on. You lead the way. I'll follow."

#

Simba found himself coming close to eating his words more than once during the run. Yes, he was able to keep up, but that was entirely down to Sarabi's body having the strength and stamina of a lioness rather than a lion. If he had been in his old body, he doubted that he would have been able to keep up with them for more than an hour.

They ran far, far longer than he did. His old body had been a thing for sprinting, for striking fast after a short walk. He wasn't used to making his body work for this long, and if it hadn't been for the experience his mother's body had, or the long muscles, or the powerful lungs, he would have been left behind long ago.

As it stood, he was still panting after they brought down an antelope that had taken them all morning to find. The rest of its herd had apparently disappeared, leaving it alone and helpless. Unfortunately, that also meant that they were at a loss for how they were supposed to feed the entire pride. One antelope would barely be enough for Scar and a few others. They needed more to feed them.

Simba shook his head, taking a step towards the carcass. He was just about to lean in and take a bite when one of the other lionesses spoke up.

"What are you doing?" she asked.

"What do you mean, what am I doing?"

"Scar has first claim, now."

"...Does he?"

"Are you ignoring his rules again?" the lioness asked, the rest of the huntresses pulling away. "You know what happened last time."

He claims first rights at the hunt, he forces us to wait to eat, and he breeds us when we're not in season and blames us for the lack of cubs.

Simba could hardly believe what was going on. The whole of the pride should have been in a state of rebellion against this, not meekly bowing and going about their lives as if nothing was wrong. They should have been fighting tooth and claw to push back against this, and...and...

And they couldn't, he realized. Not without a male, not without someone that would ensure that the pride would continue after Scar was gone. If they kicked him out, and if they believed that he, Simba, was dead, then they would doom themselves. They could not actually continue the pride without that one central male, and the whole of their little kingdom would collapse inside of a generation.

That was the trap Scar had put them in, and he had closed it masterfully.

Simba stared for a moment before slowly pulling back from the carcass. The rest of the lionesses let out a sigh of relief. Two grabbed the antelope body and started making their way back to Pride Rock, while Sarafina approached him again.

"What has gotten into you?"

"You'd never believe it," Simba muttered.

"Well, stop it. You're not yourself."

Oh, if only you knew...

Simba shook his head. There was no point in trying to tell Sarafina about this impossible thing. Maybe, maybe, he might have told Rafiki if that baboon was still somewhere around, and he made sure to put that in the back of his head as a possibility. As it stood, however, he knew that passing this around the other lionesses would only lead to being seen as completely insane. Mad. Useless.

In the changing Pride Lands, he was sure that a mad lioness was a liability, and that would lead to being put down. Not something that he needed in a body that he didn't yet understand.

"Don't you remember anything?" Sarafina asked.

"Honestly? No."

"...What do you mean no?"

"I mean that I...I'm not myself today," Simba said, trying to pick his words carefully. "I don't remember things as well...and I'm trying not to make mistakes."

"You should have stayed behind, then. You'll startle the prey."

"I'm keeping up for now. As long as I have someone to stop me."

"Hmmph. I don't know if I agree."

"Well, tell me. When I spoke up, did I say anything that the rest of you weren't thinking?"

"...No."

"Then maybe it's a good thing I forgot. Maybe it's time that someone said something again, even if it means I get hurt later."

Sarafina shook her head, but Simba was pretty sure that the other elder agreed with him. The way that things were, the Pride Lands were suffering. He'd seen it everywhere as they wandered through the savannah. The herds of prey were slowly disappearing, most of them smaller than he remembered, and most of the land slowly fading from its glowing vibrancy to something else. Maybe it was just a poor comparison to the green lands, but it was still less wonderful than he remembered.

Yet, there was something else. Something that he had only partially noticed. He remembered about how many lionesses that there were in the pride, and when they were hunting, he'd counted them. There was one short, and it had taken him this long to realize just who was missing.

"Where's Nala?" he asked.

"She...left. A week ago."

"She left?"

"Yes."

"Where to?"

"We don't know. We assumed that, maybe, she'd talked to you and you'd just...kept it quiet."

The way that Sarafina said it, it was clear that the other female meant 'quiet from Scar'. Simba gritted his teeth. If Sarabi had known, she wasn't exactly here to tell anyone, which meant that Nala's disappearance and wherever she was going truly was a mystery. There was no getting around that now, though, and no dealing with it without admitting more than he wanted to.

Before he could ask anything else, though, the other lionesses started moving out. Sarafina joined them, and that meant that he had to do the same thing. No point in falling behind.

Yet, at the same time, he wondered just what was happening to his old body, still. It was approaching noon, and he imagined that Timon and Pumbaa would be poking it with sticks at this point.

That was, if it hadn't started moving on its own.

#

When she opened her eyes, Sarabi knew that something had gone wrong. Something had gone very, very wrong, and her dream was no longer just a dream.

For one, she didn't have the warm stone under her, but rather was surrounded by dew-covered grass. The last time that she had seen dew, Simba had barely been born, and the world had been better. She didn't believe that the world had changed so much overnight, and she knew that no grass would grow through the Rock. This...this was not her place.

She opened one eye, slowly, carefully, the movement of a queen that had long since realized that any mistake would put her in danger. Her tail didn't move, but it didn't have to. She felt a weight between her legs that immediately felt wrong to her, and her body itself didn't smell right, didn't feel right. It was too...heavy, for lack of a better word, and long years that should have been weighing on her didn't. The body and all its muscles did that for her, almost like they were too thick for her to manage on her own.

As she breathed slowly, settling into herself, she saw the mane that slowly drifted down into her face. Thick and red and heavy, she was immediately reminded of Mufasa's old mane, and how it had felt when he was over her. That wasn't this. That wasn't the mane of another lion, but rather her own.

A mane, on a lioness who was not a lioness. Something had gone very wrong, indeed.

Just a wish...just a wish that I never expected to mean anything...

Sarabi slowly pulled herself upright, struggling against the weight of her own body. Though the muscles were bigger than what she had, they were thicker, too, heavier, meant for things that she didn't do as a general rule. Even her hind legs felt like they were almost too heavy, but they still supported her, and that was the important part.

The weight between her hind legs was...strange. She was used to the feeling of pressure from heat or some other time of the year when she was more in season for pregnancy, but this felt like a minor version of that right from the start. At first, she thought that it just needed to be used to relieve herself, but when she managed to find the right stance to look back between her hind legs, she could see...something...poking out of her. She was old enough to know what that meant, having seen it on her mate and on Scar, but it was so strange to see it hanging down between her legs.

She did her best to ignore it, shaking her head and putting her leg back down. Better not to focus on that. Rather, she should find out what had happened to her, where she was, and -

"Oi, Simba!"

Simba? But he was -

"Hey, Simba!"

But there was no question that they were calling her son's name. Sarabi slowly turned, trying not to be as awkward as she felt as she looked at the warthog and the meerkat poking their head around the hill. They looked at her with more familiarity than she expected, and the smaller one walked right up and poked her in the nose.

"Hey, kid, what do you think you're doing? You got work to do, remember?"

"Pardon?" she said without thinking.

"Pardon? Since when do you talk like that?"

"...I'm still sleepy," she said, still trying to get used to the new voice that was coming out of her throat and fighting tears at the same time. Oh, that was her son's voice, alright. Older, deeper, but it was definitely him. He'd survived.

"Well, shake it off. We gotta go scavenging, and you got some vultures to fight off."

"Vultures, huh? I can handle that."

"Yeah, you better."

Sarabi lumbered off from the top of the hill, forcing herself to study the way that her new body moved, trying to figure out how the greater muscles affected everything. It made it more difficult for her to move at speed, and she could already feel the bulk in the belly that would make it more difficult to run and jump and pounce the way that she had hunted before, but there were advantages. The older queen knew how to adapt, knew how to be better, but...

But there was still the matter of the plan. She'd sent Nala out to look for help, and now she wasn't there for the return. If Simba was out here, then she needed to find where she was, and then she needed to find Nala.

Even if she had to be the male from now on, at least now they had one that could replace Scar.

The End

Summary: Simba and Sarabi switch bodies, and now, they're both dealing with what the other was going through during their time apart during the lion king movie.

Tags: Body swap, M/F, lion, lioness, feral, meerkat, warthog, Lion King, The Lion King, Simba, Sarabi, Scar, vaginal, nonconsensual,