I swear my muse is all over the place lately. It used to be that Skyrim was her sole focus. Now she's all "Let's throw in some Moana!" and "Oh hey, that prompt about Sirius was awesome, write that!" (Yes, there will be an HP short thrown up soon. It's already done, I just need to edit and load). On the plus side, once I satisfy her randomness, I also get Skyrim plot bunnies. Yay! As usual, I own none of these characters; all belong to the great Disney.
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Moana kneels on the shoreline, a small grin on her face as she chats with the ocean. "It's not really something I've thought much about but as more and more of the villagers do it, well, I can't help but notice." The ocean splashes up against her knees and she sighs. "I know, I need to just do something already. Knowing doesn't make it easy though."
"Uh, Curly?" Maui's voice startles her and she jumps up and spins, nearly slipping into the water. One of his hands catches her arm and he pulls her straight. "You know the ocean can't talk back right?"
"Maui! How long have you been standing there?" she asks, praying to every god she can think of he did not overhear her because that would be truly mortifying.
He shrugs. "A few seconds? Long enough to know you think talking to the ocean is a good way to sort your problems out. I mean it Curly, you know it's just water."
The ocean retaliates by splashing him in the face and he frowns at it. Moana giggles and nudges his shoulder. "Believe it or not, the ocean is a really good listener and it can communicate, in its own way." The waves burble happily along the shore and she takes his hand. "Come on, you must be here for a reason, right?" She drags him away from the water and blatantly changes the subject, hoping to distract him.
Maui bursts from her hold and leaps in front of her, arms and legs spread wide and a huge smile on his face. "Of course I am!" he declares. "Because tomorrow is…" He trails off and looks at her expectantly. Moana frowns, tapping her chin as she tries to remember what tomorrow is. He rolls his eyes. "C'mon Curly, I know you know what tomorrow is."
She opens her mouth and then closes it and shrugs apologetically. "Sorry Maui. I have no idea."
He slumps in disappointment and then shakes it off and again throws his arms wide. "You're busy with Chiefly duties, so I forgive you for not remembering," he states. "Tomorrow is the anniversary of our trip to Te Fiti!" he exclaims. "Ten years tomorrow since you and I saved the world! Isn't that great?" Moana blinks at him as the information filters into her brain. She ignores the way Maui's face drops into confusion when she slowly turns and wanders towards the village. "Uh… Curly?" he calls after her and she ignores him and keeps walking.
"Ten years," she sighs, looking up at the villagers as she moves by them. They continue about their daily routines but she can suddenly see the changes the last ten years have brought. Her parents help the villagers, gray streaking through Sina's hair and Tui moving a little slower than he used to. The children who made up her first dance class are teenagers now, helping with the daily chores. Some of them are old enough to join the next voyage and they work to ready the canoes. Beyond them others her own age are working, most of them now married and with children. Suddenly she is blinking back tears as she pivots and walks briskly out of the village.
She finds herself seated on the mountain, looking out over the ocean at the horizon. "Uh, Mo?" Maui sounds hesitant and she wipes her eyes, knowing how uncomfortable he gets when she is upset like this. "You okay?"
"I'm fine, Maui," she murmurs. He sits down next to her and nudges her with his elbow.
"Liar," he says with a half grin and she smiles weakly. "What's wrong?"
"Ten years, Maui. Ten years and what do I have to show for it?" She pulls her legs up to her chest and crosses her arms on her knees, resting her chin on her arms. "I'm taller? Have more wrinkles? Thicker thighs?" She looks at him from the corner of her eyes. He looks completely confused and she sighs softly. "Do you ever feel like you haven't done enough?" she asks.
"Never," he declares and then his hand is resting high on her back, rubbing lightly between her shoulder blades. "Moana. Do you think you haven't done enough?"
She shrugs and pushes to her feet, turning away from him to look at the rocks, her shell resting on top of them. "No," she answers finally, her fingers tracing lightly along the top of the highest stone, her father's. "Yes. Maybe?" She turns back to find him blinking at her and frowning. She shrugs and looks away. "I know I've done things. I helped you restore Te Fiti. I got my people back on the water, where we belong. I've led voyages to several islands, new and old and we've reconnected with villages all over. I know I've done all of that, but there are so many other things I haven't done."
"Like what?" Maui asks. "Because those things sound pretty awesome to me."
She cannot help but grin at his comment, knowing the compliment is a mighty one from him. She shrugs, again looking at the stone. "Well, like… like family." Her fingers dance along the column of the rocks. "Most of the people in the village my age have started a family. I haven't even been looking." She catches the look of puzzlement on Maui's face and snorts.
"Uh, you have a family," Maui says, standing up and waving his hand as if the answer is obvious. "Your parents, me. We're family."
She swallows, warmed through at the fact he included himself in her family and then she shakes her head. "I know we're family," she explains. "But that's… not what I meant. I meant marriage. Kids. That kind of family." She shrugs and walks back to the edge of the mountain. "I know I can still have all of that but… ten years have gone by so quickly. It just feels like I'm running out of time."
Maui makes a noise of understanding and she looks over her shoulder at him. "You… don't have enough time?" he asks. "Is that the problem?"
"It's more like I don't feel like I have enough time." She straightens her shoulders and looks at him. "But enough of that. Tomorrow is an important day and we should celebrate. I shouldn't be up here moping. What do you want to do?" Maui is staring off in the distance and she pokes him in the arm. "Maui?" she asks. "Tomorrow? Ten year anniversary? How do you want to celebrate?"
"Sounds great, Curly. I'll be back tomorrow," he says and then transforms into a hawk, disappearing down towards the village.
She rolls her eyes. "Thanks for the help, Maui," she mutters before starting back to the village herself.
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"It's missing!" Moana yells as she bursts in on her parents the next morning. Tui shrieks and stumbles back a few steps and Sina glances up from where she is pinning flowers into her hair.
"What's missing, dear?" she asks.
"My oar!" Moana whines. "I looked all over for it last night and again this morning and I can't find it anywhere! I need it for the celebration!"
"I'm sure it will turn up," Sina says. "Go on, we'll come help you look as soon as we're ready."
Moana nods and heads back out into the village, muttering to herself while she searches. She distinctly remembers leaving the oar on her canoe the day before but when she had returned it was missing. Everybody in the village knows how important it is to her so she knew nobody would steal it. She groans and stomps across the beach.
"Why the long face, Curly?" She glances up to see Maui standing next to her, wearing a wide grin. She shrugs in response, storming around him as she does. She knows it's silly, that an oar is an oar, but that was her oar. The one Maui had signed for her. "I have a surprise for you," he says in a sing-song voice. "But first you have to smile for me." She stretches her lips into a false smile, baring her teeth at him. He grimaces. "Close enough," he mutters and then he steps to the side and waves his arm dramatically. "Ta da!"
Propped up against a rock behind him is her oar. She stares at it and then him and then back at it. "You had my oar?" she snaps and he grins and shrugs. "Why didn't you tell me?"
Maui frowns. "If I had told you it wouldn't be a surprise, Mo. Duh," he says.
"Maui, I've had that oar for ten years. It is not a surprise," she snarls between clenched teeth. "I've been going crazy looking for this. Seriously I thought it had been stolen or something."
"Not stolen, just… borrowed," he explains. "And it is a surprise. Go on, take it."
"What?" she asks. "Did you sign it again? Add more to what's already there?" She stomps across the sand and swipes it up, inhaling sharply at the jolt of magic that rolls through her, starting at her hand and moving up her arm to encompass her whole body. "Maui. What was that?" she asks, surprised to find she is having a hard time catching her breath.
"Congratulations!" he declares, clapping her on the back. Normally she would have stumbled forward but this time she is able to withstand his strength. She swallows. "You're a demigod!" he adds, grinning widely at her.
She turns slowly and blinks at him. "I'm a what?" she hisses. She hears what he says, understands it even, but in her brain it does not make sense.
Maui does not seem to hear the rage simmering in her words. "You're a demigod! Like me! See, now time won't matter at all. You have all the time in the world, Mo! You can do anything, you can do everything!" He pauses and rubs his chin. "Well, honestly I'm not entirely sure what you can do. Te Fiti doesn't really talk much so I have no idea if you can transform or anything…" He trails off and shrugs. "Eh, we'll figure it out. But you are a demigod." She jabs his chest with the oar, forcing him to sit on the rock the oar was on. "Hey," he whines, rubbing his chest where she poked him.
"Maui," she says. "What. Did. You. Do." Anger like she has never felt before is roaring through her body and over that is despair. She cannot believe he would do this without asking her or talking to her about it.
He rolls his eyes. "Duh. I went to Te Fiti and had her enchant your oar so you can be a demigod like me!"
"Why?" she growls and Maui blinks at her, seeming to realize she is not as happy about this as he expected. She keeps both her hands wrapped around the handle of the oar. It's the only thing that stops her from strangling him.
"Uh, because you were upset about not having enough time for things and I thought what better way to give you enough time than to make you immortal?" he offers. She can see his confusion but her rage boils over and keeps her from thinking rationally.
"Why would you think that's a good idea?" she bursts out and he jumps at her explosion. Her hair is wild around her head and she pants. "What gave you the idea that I wanted to be a demigod?" He opens his mouth and then closes it again. "Damnit Maui," she smacks him in the chest with her oar, knocking him over backwards. "Did you ever think about what me being a demigod meant?"
"Yeah, it means you have all the time you need. Plus, we can totally do cool demigod stuff together," he replies, looking at her as if she has suddenly sprouted another head. "I don't understand why you're so upset. I mean, it's not every day the gods grant somebody demigod status."
She lets out a strangled kind of screech and turns away from him, storming across the beach and through the village. "Everything okay dear?" Sina asks. "I see you found your oar." Moana looks down at it, not even realizing she was still carrying it. Her hands curl around the handle as everything that oar meant to her; freedom, friendship, joy; is suddenly washed away by Maui's actions. She shakes her head at Sina and tosses the oar away before she continues into the jungle, slipping into the ancestor cave behind the waterfall. She curls up on the beach, hugging her knees to her chest as she watches the water.
"Moana?" Maui's voice is tentative and even through her anger her heart lurches because she hates to hurt him. She reminds herself that he hurt her first with his carelessness and she curls up tighter, not answering. She hears his footsteps as he nears her and he stops a few feet behind her. "Moana, I don't… did I do something wrong?" he asks and sounds so upset and puzzled she sighs, the anger washing away from her just as quickly as it built up.
"No, Maui," she replies, knowing that he did not do it intentionally.
"I thought you would be happy," he hedges and she turns to see him standing there, her oar clutched in his hands and a look of absolute bewilderment on his face.
"I'm sorry," she says, pushing to her feet and facing him. She wraps one arm across her stomach and rubs her hand against the elbow of her other arm. "I don't mean to be ungrateful. I just… it's different for me than you I guess," she says. "I have a family and friends and if I'm immortal that means I have to watch them all grow old without me. It means that I can't have a relationship with anybody mortal because eventually they will be gone and I will be… all… alone…" She trails off and looks up at him as comprehension dawns. "Maui…"
"You really think I don't know that, Mo?" he murmurs, eyes on the oar he holds. "There's a reason I tried to leave you behind on the island and then when we started traveling together, why I tried to keep you at arm's length." She can hear the pain in his voice and her hands rise to cover her mouth as she walks towards him. "I found out the hard way many years ago what the price of being immortal is." He lays the oar gently on the sand before her feet. "You're the first real friend I've had in ages, Mo. So yeah," he shrugs, "asking Te Fiti for this gift was mostly for you but it was also kinda for me." He gives her a half-grin and she can see the sincerity in his eyes. "I love you, Mo. So can you really fault a guy for trying to keep you with him forever?" He scrubs a hand over his face and then steps back. "If you want we can go back to Te Fiti. She'll probably take the gift back. Maybe. Gods can be finicky about that sometimes."
He turns then and walks from the cave and she drops to her knees as tears well up in her eyes. She reaches for the oar and picks it up gently, cradling it to her chest as she sobs.
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"For somebody who is supposed to be celebrating, you don't look very happy," Sina murmurs as she settles next to Moana near the fire. The village has jumped on the opportunity to celebrate the anniversary of her and Maui restoring Te Fiti and the day has been filled with dancing, contests and lots of delicious food. Moana participated in everything, a strained smile on her face as she moved from one thing to the next. Maui had been there as well, careful to keep his distance as he interacted with the villagers. The day is ending with a grand feast and another dance and try as she might, Moana cannot get into the spirit of celebration.
"I'm fine," she responds to her mother, though they both know she is anything but.
Sina hums. "Oh yes. Of course you're fine. And the reason you've been staring longingly at a certain demigod all day is because he just happens to be standing where you're looking, right?" she teases gently. Moana gives her an exasperated look and Sina grins. "Come on, Moana. I'm your mother. I knew something was wrong three days ago. Tell me."
Moana frowns at her. "Unless you can tell the future, you couldn't have known three days ago," she says.
Sina grins again. "Oh, the problem you're having today might not be the same as what was bothering you then, but I knew something was wrong then and something is wrong now and maybe they're more related than you think," she says.
Moana blinks at her. "You sound like Gramma Tala," she mutters.
Sina chuckles. "Good. Your Gramma was a smart woman. I'm glad I sound like her. Now, tell me what's wrong. If not what's wrong today, what was wrong three days ago."
Moana sighs and looks down at her hands, folded across her lap. She had almost forgotten what had started bothering her before. It was the same thing that had sent her talking to the ocean and had her lamenting the loss of time to Maui. She chuckles. Her mother is right, the problems are all related. "It's nothing," she says finally.
Sina stares at her for several minutes and then sighs. "Fine. Lie to your mother all you want, but stop lying to yourself Moana." She kisses her on the forehead and stands, moving over to Tui. Moana watches the dancers, clapping along with the music and cheering them on with everybody else.
Once the dance is finished everybody looks at her expectantly and she stands. "Ten years ago today, Maui and I returned the Heart to Te Fiti," she begins and everybody cheers. She waits for them to finish, almost glad for the interruption because she has no idea what she is going to say. "You've all heard the stories. The trip was… quite the adventure." She smiles and glances at Maui. He is standing at the back of the crowd in the shadows and she cannot read the expression on his face. It feels like the weight of the world is crushing her. "We restored Te Fiti, but even more, we all found something." She looks over her people, her family and friends she has known all her life and her heart pulses with love for them and the weight lightens some. "For us," She opens her arms to encompass everybody gathered there, "we found our past. We found our history and took to the seas again." Her arms drop and she looks at Maui and her heart leaps. "For Maui, he found friends. A family." The group cheers and she can see Maui's teeth glinting in the firelight as he grins.
She glances at her mother who gives her an encouraging smile. "And for me," she continues, her eyes dropping some, unable to look at them, at him, "I found… a kindred spirit. A best friend." She hazards a peek up at him and he is still hidden in shadows. "A soul mate." There are murmurs among the crowd that she ignores. She reaches for her oar and grasps it, feeling the power from it course through her. She swallows and barrels forward. "Over the past ten years Maui and I… we have accomplished much together," she continues, her voice wavering slightly the longer he stays hidden at the back of the crowd. "So much that the gods saw fit to use their powers to make sure we are together for… a very long time." There are more murmurs and Tui looks almost horrified. Sina though is grinning smugly like she knew this was bound to happen.
"Maui," she draws herself up, looking straight at him even though she cannot tell if he is even listening to her. She is not sure what she is going to say but the words are pouring out of her, almost tumbling over each other. "You brought me this gift earlier and I heartlessly rejected it and in doing so, rejected you. For that I apologize, I never meant…" She bites her lips to stop whatever was coming next. He is still standing in the shadows and she wishes she could see his face, even just a little. She shakes her head and changes direction. "Maui, Shapeshifter, Demigod of the wind and sea, Hero of all. I will happily accept this gift from Te Fiti and spend the rest of time at your side." She swallows. "I love you." A great weight lifts from her chest at the same time as her stomach constricts while she waits for his response.
The entire crowd is silent, the fire barely even crackling as they turn towards him expectantly. She sees his teeth flash into a grin. "Of course you do," he replies. "I'm Maui. What's not to love?"
She groans in exasperation. "Maui," she whines and then he steps towards her and the crowd parts to let him through. He has a look of determination on his face as he marches across the clearing and then he is standing right in front of her, eyes studying her, looking for something. "Maui?" she whispers.
"Took you long enough," he says and before she can protest he lifts her up, one arm around her shoulders and one under her rear as he drags her into a hug. She pushes her face against his shoulder, arms wrapping around his neck. "You had me worried, Mo," he murmurs. "I thought I was gonna have to live forever without you."
She pulls back so she can see his face and smiles. "In case you need more convincing," she murmurs and then she is kissing him and his arms tighten around her. The crowd is cheering and she thinks she hears her father yelling but none of it matters because Maui is kissing her and everything in her life feels right.
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Moana shifts where she is leaning against Maui's side, moving into a more comfortable position. He holds his arm away from her until she is done and then wraps her up again, holding her tight. The two of them are on the beach staring up at the stars and just enjoying being near each other. "So tell me," Maui says, breaking the silence and drawing Moana from the half-asleep state she is in. She tilts her head to look at him curiously. "What were you talking to the ocean about?" he asks.
She flushes red and looks down, fingers idly shifting over his tattoos, pausing to trace Mini Maui's hand. He swoons and falls backwards and she giggles. "You're going to think it's dumb," she says.
"Curly," he growls lightly and she sighs.
"I was lamenting the fact that I was alone," she explains. "Not alone, but alone. Everybody in the village my age has found a spouse or a lover and started having children and I… hadn't." Her fingers dance over the ink of his tattoos absently. "Not that I had really thought about it before, I just… noticed that it was happening and realized that it wasn't happening to me." She pushes herself up to look down at him. "Then you come along talking about how ten years had gone by already and it kind of got to me. Sorry for being so emotional earlier."
"You're entitled to your emotions, Moana," Maui replies and she blinks at him in shock. "Well, that's what Sina said when I asked her why you were being so weird," he adds with a blush. She rolls her eyes and grins at him. "That also explains why the ocean was more than happy to steal your oar for me. Seemed very excited about the idea actually."
She shoots a half glare over her shoulder and swears if water could whistle innocently, the ocean would be. She can see in the way the waves move gently against the shore that it is trying to deny involvement. "I suppose I can't be too angry," she says. "Despite my initial reaction, I am happy."
Maui's arm tightens around her and she squeaks when she suddenly finds herself on her back beneath him. "Good," he responds. "Now, you said something about having kids?" He arches a brow and her mouth drops open.
"Maui! Not right now! We have… well, an eternity! And… honestly I have some questions. I mean, is the baby going to be a demigod? Or immortal?" She gasps and looks at him in horror. "Will it be a baby forever? Will I have an infant to take care of for eternity? I hadn't even thought of that!"
He places a finger over her lips and she quiets. "Relax, Curly. I grew up, didn't I? I didn't stay a baby forever."
"Will they be demigods?" she asks. "I can't imagine the gods will want us having a bunch of immortal children. But I also don't know if I can watch my own child grow old and die. Maui-"
This time he silences her with a kiss that warms her down to her toes. "Calm down, Curly," he admonishes her gently. "We have an eternity to figure it out and if not, I'm sure Te Fiti can offer some insight."
"But I -" He kisses her again until she is breathless. "You can't just-" Another kiss. This time when he pulls away she puts her hand up between their faces to keep him back. "You can't kiss me every time I say something you don't want to hear," she says.
She can see his smirk around her hand and he kisses her palm. "Why not?" he asks. "It's much more fun than arguing." She grins reluctantly and this time he kisses each fingertip. "Stop worrying so much, Mo," he says. "Tomorrow we'll go see Te Fiti, then you can ask all the questions you want. For now, let's just enjoy the first night of the rest of eternity."
She moves her hand and smiles up at him. "You may not like to admit it, but you're kind of a softy, Maui," she comments.
He hums and runs his fingers through her hair, pushing it back from her face. "Only for you, Mo. Only for you."