Maui sits bolt upright, blinking furiously like he's trying to clear water out of his face. His hands clench around his own throat as he inhales huge lungfuls of air. The wall of the deserted island's cave swims in front of him and it was just a dream, he knows it was just a dream, but it feels real again on nights like these. Nights where he can remember so clearly that he can almost see her face again, see his mother's face contorted in a hateful scowl as she tosses him overboard. And sure he doesn't remember her, not really, but his imagination is cruel enough to make something up, a face jagged with fury as she casts him away and abandons him to the churning sea.
And he remembers how the ocean takes him, swallows him whole. Wraps him in its watery, frigid arms and drags him to the bottom of the sea.
Maui scrubs a shaky hand across his face, willing his heartbeat to calm. Slowly, his breaths subside. Outside, rain still slams against the wall of their little cave, and Maui musters up the nerve to chuckle at himself, just a little bit. It's a quiet and uncertain sound, but it's better than the fear he can still feel coursing through his veins. Gods, he hates that dream. It's one of the absolute worst. But he's awake now, so it's okay.
He gives himself a couple of seconds to calm his breathing before untensing from against the wall. Huh. He hadn't fallen asleep with his back against the rocky cave - he must've pushed himself against it when he woke up.
There's a little choking sound from next to him. For a second he thinks it's the rain, then he thinks it's him, and his hands fly to his throat - but no, he's breathing fine.
It sounds again, and dread curls sharply in Maui's stomach.
He turns, and Moana's suffocating herself, hands wrapped around her neck in a cruel mirror to his earlier panic.
"Moana?" he gasps, half-falling to her side. She's got her eyes open but she's not seeing anything and she's gasping in these tiny little bursts of air that rattle through her fingers like she's - like she's -
Like she's drowning.
"No, no no no," Maui whispers to himself, because it makes sense, Moana's the most empathetic person he knows and if she could pick up on his good dreams of course she could pick up on the bad too, it was only a matter of time, he's so stupid this was practically inevitable -
She makes that little strangled whimper again. He wraps two arms around her shoulders, trying desperately to ignore the way that they tremble beneath his hands. He watches her for a couple of long seconds, horrified. Then he shakes her shoulders, calls her again - "Moana!"
It doesn't help. She keeps choking on nothing, and there are tears rolling down her face, big panicked sobs that she whimpers out almost soundlessly because she can't breathe.
"Moana, listen to me, okay," he babbles, "it's just - it's just a memory, it's not even yours. You have to wake up, okay?"
Her eyes are locked and wide on the ceiling above her. Her hands are a vice around her own throat and her shoulders are hunched up against her ears and the small of her back is arched high off the rocky ground, feet straining against the floor.
Maui picks her up, head pounding with horror, pulls her securely against his chest. "C'mon, Moana," he pleads, and he can hear her chokes clearly now, little gasping whispers that are so loud against the shell of his ear. "C'mon, focus on my voice, okay? Moana? Moana, can you hear me? Please tell me you can hear me!"
Nothing, save a little convulsion that curls her even tighter around him. She's struggling more feebly now against him, wracked with weak little twitches that brand into his skin.
Even though his mind is screaming at him, begging him to just keep holding her, he hisses at it to shut up. Instead, he takes a deep breath and leans back and presses his forehead firmly against hers.
Between one inhale and the next, water fills his nose and presses against his face, wrapping its arms around him again and trying to pull him down. His eyes pop open. An instinctive rush of fear slams into him, paralyzing him for a moment, until something thrashes in his peripheries.
He blinks out of his terrified haze to see Moana. She's right next to him in the water, writhing in the water, hands still clasped around her neck. Her legs strain against the current but something's pinning her down like it always keeps Maui trapped, dragging her toward the seafloor.
The sight of Moana struggling propels him through the water in a way he's never really been able to accomplish before. He scoops her up but she doesn't seem to notice he's there, eyes still wide and terrified and her fingers spasming around the twine of her necklace, and Maui has to pull upward sharply to break her free of the power that once bound him in place.
He presses Moana close against his chest, letting her wrap her arms tightly around his neck, and frees his hands to swim upward. Both of them break the surface of the water with an almighty splash, and Maui is indescribably relieved to hear Moana gasp for breath next to him, coughing weakly through lungfuls of water.
"Ma - " she gasps, trying to speak, then doubles over on the ocean's surface. Her whole body trembles as she folds back into the waves, trying desperately to keep herself afloat and breathe at the same time. Her arms wrap around herself, tight around her own stomach, so Maui plucks her from atop the waves and lets her cling to him again, retching over his shoulder and trembling against him.
"I've got you, Curly," he says reassuringly. She's worryingly limp in his arms, but she's breathing. "It's okay now. You're okay."
There's a little voice in the back of his mind going I swam.
He's never done that before.
"Maui," she says, and her voice is weak, but she's talking. Even though her arms are still shaking from exhaustion and what he guesses to be terror she pushes off of him, just the tiniest bit, treading her own water to keep herself afloat. "Maui, I h-had no idea - " she rasps, and trails off abruptly as her torn lungs demand attention.
"Me neither," he replies, the slightest hint of ruefulness entering his tone. That, at least, he can feel easier than regret. "Let's get outta here."
Moana nods eagerly, and Maui's relieved to see color returning to her face. She treads on over to him, shivering in the frigid ocean water, and he leans downward to press their heads together.
When Maui opens his eyes, Moana's gaze greets him. He sits up, lets her do the same. As he watches her move carefully, like she's not entirely sure how her limbs will react to her desires - and Maui knows that feeling better than he'd like to admit, there's something about almost drowning that makes you a little less trustful of your own body - he's struck with the sudden urge to apologize.
"Uh, Moana," he starts, and fruitlessly searches for the best way to say hey sorry I almost killed you with my own memories.
She just stares at him for a long second, then waves a hand at him. There's something heavy in her expression, and Maui's stomach drops.
"I'm so sorry," she says quietly, voice still hoarse and raw. There are little red marks where she'd clawed at her own throat. "I had no idea."
The statement blindsides him for a second - okay, for a really long second - before he realizes what she must be apologizing for. "Hey, it's okay, Curly. Not like you gotta be a dream journal for a demigod."
The humor does little to wipe that sad, heartbroken look off her face. She brushes her hair out of her face. "It still bothers you."
"Sometimes," he admits, because it'd be a blatant lie to claim otherwise. "Not often, though."
She doesn't believe him. She's right not to. For a long moment she struggles with what to say, concern and indecision warring on her face, and it kinda hits Maui just how huge a curse empathy must be - she felt everything he had felt, the panic and paralysis and pain, just as clearly as he had.
"Do...you want to talk about it?" she offers hesitantly.
Maui shrugs. What is there to say? Oh, yeah, I have serious self-esteem and abandonment issues that I'm still trying to work out, and on top of that get nightmares about my own mother rejecting me more often than I'd like to admit?
"Not really," he says instead.
Moana looks at him like she doesn't believe him. Okay, Maui's not sure when he became quite this bad at lying. Maybe it's just a Moana-thing. It's probably just a Moana-thing.
"Your mother was wrong," Moana says, voice measured, like she's tasting each word before she speaks it. "When...when she threw you overboard, she threw away the best...the best family that anyone could ever hope to have."
Maui thought he knew what drowning felt like before. It was cruel and cold and breathless. But this sort of breathless, this sort of awe and disbelief, this is an entirely different sort of winded.
"What?" he manages.
Moana moves closer, close enough that a tiny tilt forward would land her forehead right on his. "I know that it still bothers you," she continues falteringly. "And that's okay, I mean, that's not something you can - that you can just get over. But I just wanted you to know that maybe family isn't always by blood. Maybe, when you leave your old family behind, when you go to find more, you find a new one instead. Especially, like yours, when your old family...didn't want you."
Maui winces inadvertently at the words. It's one thing to think it to himself, but another entirely to hear Moana speaking it. Didn't want you. At least she didn't put an "I" in front of that.
"What I'm really trying to say, I guess, is that...well, any family would be lucky to have you in it," she says, looking at him with that gentle knowing look she wore that one fateful sunrise. At least this time he can return her gaze. Then, even quieter, so that he almost has to strain to hear the words, "I'm lucky to have you."
Maui just stares. There's no way - there's no way Moana's saying what he thinks she's saying. There's no way she thinks of him as family too. There's no way he's that lucky. Anyway, she already has a family. She's got her mother and her father and her entire island. No, she's definitely talking in the hypothetical here.
Besides, his brain adds, why would she count a demigod as part of her family? Makes no sense, he tells himself firmly, through the confusion and shock and the little bit of disappointment he's furiously trying to stamp out. He will outlive her by eons. She knows this.
"I 'preciate it," he says, and he really does. Even post near-death experiences, Moana's still trying to make him feel better. "But I don't need your pity."
"Pity?"
"Yeah. Thanks, Moana, I know you're trying to make me feel better, but...not right now, okay?"
He really messed up this time. Dragging her into that dream was a mistake, and the regret stabs him a little bit deeper whenever he sees the growing welts around her throat. Even after the danger has passed, he can still vividly remember his own horror like acid in his chest, watching Moana's hands clenched around her own throat.
Gods, she did not need to see that. He wishes he'd never fallen asleep next to her.
"Maui, this isn't - this isn't pity," she refutes, and sounds maybe a little upset. "Do you even - I'm being honest - "
"Look, I get it," he says, because her protestations are just making him feel worse. Here he is, looking for attention, falling back into old destructive habits, and poor Moana's stuck on the other end of his attention-seeking mistakes. "You feel bad about the dream thing. It's okay." He musters a grin for her, knows she sees that it's fake and plasters it on anyway. "I'll be okay."
"Maui," she says sharply. Her nose is inches from his. "Listen to me."
He kinda shrugs backward, trying not to notice the earnest look in her eyes. "It's fine, Moana, really - "
Before he can formulate the rest of his sentence, Moana wraps her arms around his neck and buries her face into his neck. Maui blames habit, he really does, for the fact that his arms reciprocate the motion, holding her gently against him.
"This isn't pity," she says, voice low and urgent. She shifts until her neck rests against his shoulders and he's very uncomfortably aware that if he were to tense his muscles just a little further, she'd be gagging again. The mere thought makes him cringe.
Slowly, he lets himself relax into the embrace. Behind his head, her hands rest against the nape of his neck, her other palm gentle where his shoulders meet his spine. Her hand is warm and soft against his tattoo. Against the immortalized baby Maui cast into the sea.
"Maui - look. You...you make me feel safe." She settles her chin a bit more comfortably on his shoulder, as if in demonstration, and squeezes him tighter. "You make me laugh more than anyone else I've met, ever. You listen to me when I complain and you make me feel protected and you're always willing to sail, to explore, to kick the butt of the monster of the week. We've known each other for ten years now and I...I think of you as family." Moana hikes her shoulders up a bit to pull him even tighter against her, like she can keep him from falling apart with willpower alone.
"This isn't pity. This is the truth. You're the brother I never had," she says, and she sounds like she's sniffling a bit, never mind that he is too, "and when I say that I think of you as family, when I say that any family would be lucky to have you...I mean it. I can't think of anyone else more funny, more giving, and just more...more caring, than you."
She leans back now, just a bit, still resting one hand on his arm. Her eyes are large and honest and vulnerable. "You're the brother I never had, and... I mean it when I say that, Maui, I'm so lucky to have you."
Maui takes a second to look at her, to really look. Honestly, she's a mess - her clothes are all rumpled from sleep, her hair could use a good brushing or five. There are little bruises under her eyes that indicate a poor night's sleep, not to even mention the welts ringing her throat.
But she's watching him eagerly, earnestly, like what he does matters. There's this soft little smile on her lips, like just looking at him makes her content. Like he's important. Like he's precious.
Like he's family.
"So am I," he says, and for a trickster they're some of the truest words he's ever spoken. Right up there with if I were the ocean. He looks at Moana and smiles. "So am I."