Author's Note: Today I woke up, looked around, and realized that it's time to get out of my horrible customer service job. I can't do this anymore. This place is hell.

I called in sick, and am going to spend the day applying to local teaching jobs and new preschools that are looking to hire post-winter-break employees. I am going to go to the mall, I will by a new interview suit, and I am going to get this train back on track.

…I may also go see Moana again in theaters, since I can see that there is a late showing, and hopefully my applications will all be done by then.

Now, a chapter.

Chapter Eighteen

Somehow, maybe through sheer force of will and his superhuman good luck, Maui got them both to the shore of the island he'd once called home. The cave was still there, as was the giant mark of the fish hook that Maui had created there to declare his ownership of the island.

Maui took a deep, slow breath, then turned to Moana.

"Look," he began, seething, angrier than he could remember having been in years. "What you did out there, that was crazy. You could have been killed! You almost WERE killed. Do you…actually have no self-preservation instinct? You don't act like you've got one. I was pretty sure that self-preservation came built in to most mortals, but I think yours is broken. You might want to get that looked at. Seriously, Moana, I can't…uh…Moana?"

He stopped, because she obviously wasn't listening. Instead, she'd tucked her knees up against her chest and was hugging herself, curled up in a ball, staring bleakly out at the ocean.

"Hey, Moana." Maui let some of the anger drain out of his voice. "Look, I'm not…okay, I am mad, but that's not the point. The point is, we're still alive, right? Nice job, way to stay alive. That's…probably what I meant to say."

He tried to smile, but she still didn't seem to be paying attention.

"Um." Clearing his throat, he tried again. "So, Moana of Motunui, what else you got? We, uh, need a new plan, so I'm ready when you are. Shoot. What's next for great hero Maui and his intrepid teenage sidekick?"

For a moment, Maui didn't think she was going to respond to that either.

"I'm twenty," she said finally, shaking her head.

"Huh? You are?" Maui blinked. "Well, uh, wow, that's…okay, I guess that actually makes sense. Time flies when you're having fun, or something. Anyway, Moana, what are we-?"

"I don't have a plan," she mumbled. "I think…I think we should go home."

Maui's jaw dropped.

There was blood from Maui's talons all across Moana's shoulders, so that the manta rays on her back were stained a dark red. Clumsily, Maui tried to wipe some of the blood off with his fingers, but it was partially dried. He started to reach for the water to help wash it off, but thought better of it at the last second.

"It's not safe for you to be here, so close to Rarohenga," Moana went on quietly. "We…we need to get you back to the island."

After a moment's consideration, Maui decided not to argue.

"All right," he agreed. "That's not a bad idea. We'll get you back to the village, we'll regroup, take a break, and we'll come up with a new plan. Okay?"

Moana didn't' say anything.

"Let's ask your Mom and Dad. They seem like pretty wise village elders," Maui went on. "They'll probably have some ideas, maybe some old stories about explorers from ancient past that'll give us some hints, etcetera…you know the kind of thing."

He smiled, but Moana didn't even look at him.

"It'll be fine," he assured her. "We got this. Best thing to do right now is to sit down, take a deep breath…and maybe rest for a bit, because you're a big, bloody mess, and I've had a human on my back for longer than any other hawk, ever, so I'm beat."

"I'm sorry," whispered Moana. "I'm sure that wasn't a lot of fun."

It hadn't been, but somehow, Maui didn't feel like giving her even a little bit of a hard time about it anymore.

"Don't worry about it." He shrugged. "I'm sorry for making holes in your shoulders."

"Thanks for saving my life," said Moana, "again."

She looked so defeated that Maui felt like his heart, which he usually tried to deny even having, was going to break.

"Listen," he said slowly, trying to find an uninjured place on Moana's back or shoulders to give her a comforting pat, "Nobody wins all of them, okay? We got beaten this time, tomorrow we'll get back up and give it another shot. Take it from the guy who's been around for a few thousand years; you screw up, you learn from it, you do better next time, you save the world. Trial and error are the, uh, key to success." He knew that he sounded like an idiot even as he listened to the words leaving his mouth. He'd frankly never been much good at pep talks, and this one was trite as hell. "Just…don't let it get you too down, that's what I'm trying to say."

Moana nodded. "Thanks. I won't."

Completely out of his element with a forlorn twenty-year-old-girl, Maui blew out a breath, and decided that the best thing to do right now was probably to let her have a few minutes to herself to get her thoughts together.

"I'm gonna go bunk down in the cave for a few minutes," he told her. "Need to try to store up a little energy for the flight back to Motunui. You can come get me when you're ready to leave. I'm not going anywhere without you, so." He shrugged. "Take your time."

"Okay." Finally, Moana looked over at him and smiled. "I won't be long."

The smile, at least, gave Maui a little bit of relief.

He went into the cave, lay down on the cool floor, and tried not to think about the lost sort of look that he'd seen in Moana's eyes only moments ago. It wasn't that she wasn't allowed to feel down sometimes; of course she was. Everybody had their bad moments. Maui, he admitted to himself, had lots of them.

It was just that Moana was always so upbeat, so raring to go, so ready for the next adventure. The girl had, after thinking about it for maybe ten seconds, voluntarily fallen out of the clutches of a flying hawk because she was pretty sure that he'd probably catch her in time to save her from one of the more unpleasant forms of watery death. One thing you could say for Moana, she had guts. She was a risk taker, the kind of person who bounced back. Seeing her like this was more than a little jarring.

She's just exhausted, he reasoned with himself. I mean, how many times have we almost died in the last, oh, forty-eight hours? Three? Five? It'd be enough to make anybody grumpy. Hell, I'm pissed, too. It's like the gods and the elements never leave us alone. Life's never boring, I guess.

It occurred to him, not at all for the first time, that Moana's life would probably have been perfectly boring and completely safe if he hadn't decided to come along and almost destroy her world a few times.

I did it for her people, he reminded himself. I did it so that they could be like gods…because wouldn't that be better? Isn't that really what mortals want; to have everything that the gods have? She understands that…I think.

The road to Rarohenga, he reflected, was paved with good intentions, and maybe, just maybe, he'd had it wrong the whole time. Maybe what humans really wanted wasn't the be like the gods.

Maybe, Maui thought miserably, what he wanted was to be like the mortals, who had the only thing that gods seemed to lack; a healthy sort of community that involved sincerely caring, without trying to kill each other every time something didn't go their way.

Time passed, the sun went down, and the stars, Maui could see through the hole in the roof, came out. Moana still hadn't come in to get him, and Maui wondered if maybe she'd fallen asleep out there on the beach.

A little concerned that the ocean might have gotten her, or that she'd decided to do something stupid and had wandered off on her own, Maui went out looking for her.

"Moana," he began, emerging from the mouth of the cave. "Hey, are you-?"

He fell silent when he saw Moana standing at the edge of the water, gazing down into the surf.

"It's not going to work," she was telling the ocean. "I'm not going to give him to you."

Maui opened his mouth in surprise, then hastily shut it again.

"You know why I can't do that," she went on, shaking her head. "I mean, if it's true what they say, if you're angry because Hine-nui-te-po is hurting so much, then you do understand, really. You know what it means to care about someone so much that you can't bear to watch them being hurt, so…you see, don't you? It's no use. Just…just give up, already. It'd be easier for both of us."

The waves got a little higher, reaching just a little farther up the shore, but Moana didn't even step out of their way. She let them wash over her feet, apparently unperturbed, and the ocean, in turn, didn't take her.

"What do you think any of this is going to achieve?" She sighed. "I can't just go 'oh, okay, well, if that's what it takes to stop the flooding, then I guess I'll make the sacrifice for the greater good,' and hand Maui over. You can rage, and splash, and flood, and try to drown me as many times as you want, but it's not even a choice. I mean, I'm not going to give him up. You wouldn't either. You…you have to see that this isn't going anywhere. How long are we going to keep playing this tug-of-war game? I'm never going to throw him back to you…and I think you know it."

To Maui's horror, he suddenly realized that Moana was crying. A tear trickled down her face and plopped into the sea, and the sea swallowed it up and carried it away.

"Please," Moana begged, "please, just tell me what else I can do. Give me a hint; give me some other option to make this right. I want to help. I want to fix this, I want to make you feel better, I really do, but…I can't do it this way. You have to be willing to make some compromise, here…please."

The sea said nothing, but continued to play gently with the beach and Moana's toes, glistening in the moonlight, now full of plenty of Moana's earnest tears.

As silently as he could, Maui turned around and slunk back into the cave.

He felt strangely cold and light-headed, unable to shake the memory of the way she'd assured the sea that she wouldn't give him up.

There would, he knew, of course be another way. Hine-nui-te-po might be satisfied with just taking everything that Maui had dared to show he cared about. She might be satisfied with destroying Moana's entire village, drowning her, and then keeping her on display in the realm of the dead, just in case Maui happened to stop by again someday. That would probably be enough to appease her, to calm the sea and to save the world. Come to think of it, Hine-nui-te-po might even find it in herself to spare Moana's village if Moana herself came to the lure in time, even if it was only so that Maui could feel pain. Hine-nui-te-po liked pain. She liked the long, drawn-out, lingering kind of pain that she'd elicit prettily easily by forcing Maui to watch Moana die….maybe more than once. Maybe she'd do it a few times, just to make her point. After all, she had the key to mortality; who was to say she couldn't play exactly the right kind of games with it to make death hurt even more?

Maui shivered, fought off the sudden and powerful urge to throw up, and then looked over at the boulder that blocked the entrance to Rarohenga.

You know what it means, he could still hear Moana saying in the back of his mind, to care about someone so much that you can't bear to watch them being hurt.

Shaking his head, he took a deep breath, shoved the boulder out of the way, and then took a flying leap through the hole in the ground, down into the shimmering realm of the dead.

"CHAAAAAAHOOOOOOOOO!"

Author's End Note: Angst angst angst aaaaaaaangst.

It looks like we're actually getting closer and closer to the end of the first part of this story. Thanks for all your thoughts on whether or not I should do a sequel; I'm doing some story mapping right now to figure out how I want to structure this as we move forward.

Now, I'd best go back to my job applications if I want a chance to go to the movies tonight!