Te Fiti's not all bad, Maui supposes. He does kinda owe her for the creation of humanity and, well, life itself. Besides, the whole forgiveness gig after he sorta stole her heart was pretty great of her.

Even though she makes him super uncomfortable. It must be the whole loomy thing she does. It sets Maui's teeth on edge. Though it doesn't seem to bother Curly in the slightest. It's like she has no idea Te Fiti could literally suck her life out of her bones at any given moment. It must just be a trademark Moana thing - striding fearlessly up to deities and demanding they do as she asks.

Regardless, it's with great unease that Maui hovers over the mountains that mark Te Fiti's island. A flash of his fishhook, the appearance of a physical, functioning mouth, and he can get this conversation over and done with.

He can do this. He can so, totally do this. He's taken down, like, giant sparkling crabs and literal lava monsters before. This is gonna be easy-peasy, piece of cake.

Once he, y'know, musters the motivation to actually get the conversation started. It shouldn't be that hard. Just pop down, ask a simple question, get a response and head on his way. He might even say thanks, if he likes the answer.

Well, he's flown all the way out here from Motunui, which is a pretty taxing flight even for a demigod like him. May as well do it now. Before he can think too hard about it. Like pulling out hair, nice and quick.

He hops down to the mountain before he can reconsider, landing feet-first on the sandy floor. "Hey," he says, once he has lips again.

Between blinks, Te Fiti materializes.

Since regaining her original form, Te Fiti has recovered her ability to take the form of the humans they both love. She's still green and covered with flowers, but it's a bit easier to look her in the eyes as a humanoid rather than an island or a verdant, blooming giant, which Maui supposes he's grateful for.

Funny how she's always taller when she's talking to him than when Moana stops by to chat. No, it's Maui who always needs to crane his neck. Without fail, his neck is sore the next morning. It's like she's holding a grudge or something. Um, not that he'd know anything about that.

Maui, the earth acknowledges, as Te Fiti inclines her head slightly. She's not smiling, but it doesn't look like she's gonna smite him either, which Maui chalks up as a victory.

"Heh, uh, yeah. I had a question. Um." Maui spins his fishhook a couple of times, then lets it land in the dirt, leaning it against his shoulders. "About humans."

She raises a vined eyebrow at him. He swallows.

"What - er, what happens when they die?"

Te Fiti blinks at him, her godly countenance wavering with surprise. Slowly, with the surety of the sea itself, her head cocks to one side. Why?

"Well. Uh, y'see, there's this village. And I wanted to know what would happen if they were, theoretically... attacked. What would happen to them. I mean, the people."

The dubious possibility that he would be the one attacking Motunui brushes against his mind, and he waves his arms to refute the notion. "This is just hypothetically, of course," he clarifies, grinning disarmingly.

She's unswayed by his winning demeanor. She sighs deeply, and her countenance shrinks a little. With more than a small bit of relief, Maui de-hunches his shoulders and settles his neck to a more reasonable inclination.

In a curt flick of her wrist, Maui's next blink shows him Pulotu.

Inadvertently, he shivers - he's never been, necessarily, but this place of flames and crackling ruins needs no titling. It is the manifestation of a hell a thousand times worse than Lalotai. "So, what, all mortals go to Saveasi'uleo?" he asks, fiddling with the idea and rejecting it instantly. Hey, Te Fiti may be really bad at face-to-face conversations, but she's not cruel.

Another blink, and Maui float above himself. The skies of Tagaloa smell like a fresh breeze, like coconut leaves and the ocean, a balm and comfort to grieving spirits.

"Ah, okay. So some go up there too." He flops his wrist skyward, where Tagaloa's probably hanging out and doing, well, whatever deities do on their days off. "So do any, uh...stay here?"

Te Fiti's eyebrows dip in confusion.

"Y'know, stay on the earth. Or maybe the sea, I mean, a water-walking mortal would be pretty cool too."

The confusion in Te Fiti's face clears, and her expression droops. Literally, all the way down to the vibrant stems and flowers that make up her face. She wilts like a coconut tree too long without water.

Maui's good humor plummets.

No.

For a couple of seconds, Maui just...doesn't breathe. It's not a welcome sensation. Reminds him of drowning.

"All humans die," he says aloud, unsure if it's a confirmation or just a disbelieving statement. He turns a challenging glare on her. "Humans. They live for, what, half a century, and then they die. That's how it goes, right?"

Yes.

Suddenly, he's angry, because all humans die.

Moana will die.

"Why?" he spits.

What do you ask?

"Why would you - why would you give life, if only to take it away? Do you just - is it fun, for you, giving them a gift and then stealing it back? Huh?"

A voice in the back of his head is spluttering at the blatant disrespect that he's showing Te Fiti, the goddess of life, who could kill him with a flick of her fingers. But most of him just...doesn't care.

"Answer me, Te Fiti! There has to be some reason you give them life and hope and then take it from them when they misstep!"

The drooping rainbow on her face turns a bit ashy and gray. It doesn't look healthy, if he's honest, but a tiny vindictive part of him that's been growing smaller under Moana's influence rears its ugly head and goes good.

Even Te Fiti, the goddess of life herself, has no words for him. Well, if she's just gonna sit there and look upset, then he's got better places to be. What those better places to be are, he's not entirely sure right now. But another thousand-year vacation on his island is sounding better and better, far away from determined mortals and their irritating, frustrating ways of wiggling into his heart and nestling themselves there, making him a better person, giving him someone to love.

With a furious shrug of his own shoulders, he gives up.

"Fine," he hisses to her glooming face. "Fine. If you want to - if you're gonna take -" Moana, he almost says, if you're gonna take Moana from me, but he clamps down on the words.

There are too many thoughts whirling inside his head. Too many things he wants to spit. Too many verbalizations of what he's thinking and feeling and Te Fiti won't even speak for herself and tell him why, why she's given him this gift only to take it away in such a short period of time - less than half a century and she'll be gone, fleeting and ephemeral like the mist over the sea, untouchable and unknowable -

"Fine," he says instead, and is nearly as surprised as Te Fiti looks to see that his rage is gone. Dissipated.

He wants nothing more than to fly away and never come back to this cursed island, ever again. Maybe he'll just - he'll just go back to his rock and stay there until the world itself ends. Better than getting attached. Better than waiting for his humans to shrivel and blow away in the cruel winds off the seas.

But before he can flip his hook and flap off to find another island, far from Te Fiti and Motunui and Moana, painfully mortal Moana, a quiet voice stops him.

He wants to go. The soles of his feet itch with it, with the anger and apathy that burns through him. Standing here, on this island, hearing these things that he doesn't want to hear - he hates it.

But he stays. He looks at Te Fiti with a venom he is sure she understands. He doesn't even bother trying to hide it - just stands, a horrible rage filling his chest, and waits.

Her eyes - not the eyes of the flowers that line her cheekbones, but the eyes of Te Fiti herself - crinkle in sadness, and her breath comes out as the sigh of a hundred petals exhaling as one. She shrinks more, for the first time eye-to-eye with Maui, and a different scene flows from her upturned palms and into his mind.

It's...himself.

As a child.

His lip curls and he moves to look away, but there is no escape from the images dancing along his own eyelids. Slowly, the well-remembered scene plays out; the faceless human who birthed him and abandoned him, leaving him to die alone and forgotten on the waves.

But he didn't. He lived, and breathed again; he brought wind and life and fire to the humans who adored him in turn.

You died - but yet you lived.

He scoffs. Even if he survived death itself, Moana won't.

The lines around Te Fiti's eyes soften, as though she could hear his thoughts as her own. Once more, his eyes fill with a vision, but this time, it is of a woman he does not know.

Her back is to him. She sways on the beach of an island - on Motunui? - eyes closed in contentment. Her body moves with the rhythm of the waves and for one, terrible moment, Maui is certain that this is Moana, fifty years from now, longing for the ocean but unable to reach it. He is about to turn away when she swivels to face him, eyes closed and humming in contentment, and Maui cannot help a sigh of relief. It's not Moana, but the two do share an uncanny resemblance. As she dances in her small circle, the inked outline of a manta ray, intricate and breathtaking in its detail, becomes visible on her back.

A flash, and the woman disappears, and Moana takes her place.

His chest clenches against the sight. Though he was not there, he knows well what this is. The ocean chose wrong, his own voice repeats, taunting him, and Moana bends over the wood of her own craft, arms hugged against her chest. She's crying.

Stop, Maui thinks, unable to look away. This was years ago, I don't -

The vision does not stop. She's pleading with the ocean you chose wrong, choose someone else, I can't do this, and all the words are so not-Moana that he recoils physically from the image.

"Stop," he begs Te Fiti, and his words are far shakier than he would have liked.

Moana takes the Heart and casts it away, shoulders trembling furiously. The ocean swallows it, its green light glinting as it fades, drifting toward the sandy bottom.

"Stop!"

The ocean itself seems to hold its breath in the wake of his bellow. For a moment, Maui thinks he's succeeded, that Te Fiti listened, but Moana hiccups, and his chest aches.

Then the surface of the water shatters. The bottom of the craft illuminates with a pearlescent, silvery glow as a manta ray arches up and out of the water, wings flapping gently. It soars and catapults through the air, lighting the surface of the sea with a shimmering glisten that looks almost-tangible.

Then the vision shifts, and the strange woman dancing alone on Motunui sits on the end of the boat.

Moana's grandmother, Maui realizes abruptly. The grandmother that Moana lost and mourned, who alone carried the stories of their ancestors, the last link in a chain that led directly to Moana. The grandmother who died without Moana by her side.

Just before the vision ends, he sees Moana - his Moana - and the ti'otala tattoo engraved on her shoulder. A mirror to the hawk on his own.

The ocean has chosen several, says the voice of Te Fiti, and as he blinks his vision returns to him. Stunned and dazed, he stares over her shoulder, struggling to process the visions. However he tries, he keeps seeing Moana a decade younger, aching and alone, abandoned on the ocean -

But only one has answered its call. Te Fiti graces him with a small smile, and although it hurts more than he can comprehend, his anguish subsides a bit. The grandmother of Moana heard the call, just as her granddaughter would; the ocean might have chosen her, too. And though she could not answer the call, she passed on her duty faithfully. So the ocean gave her a spirit to aid her granddaughter when the young Moana needed it most.

There's no condemnation in her voice - just a faint, curling amusement. Moana found you, half-god Maui. Moana heard the call of the ocean.

"So, what, she's going to become a bird in the next life? She's still mortal," Maui points out, dazed.

Te Fiti arches an eyebrow at him. She's never showed him that expression; typically, it is Moana and Moana alone to whom Te Fiti shows anything other than perfect tranquility. But now, there is something playful in her face. So she would. However, no mortal can survive the fall to Lalotai, she points out with equanimity.

Between one heartbeat and the next, her implications catch up with Maui. His mouth turns dry. The hook jabs into the flesh of his arm as he half-falls, half-leans against it, back muscles going slack. "She had the ocean to catch her," he protests.

That makes no difference, half-god Maui. She would have died all the same.

"But - Moana's almost died about a hundred times, she's come way too close to death to be immortal!"

Yet she never did.

Te Fiti is right, he realizes with a start. There's a reason no mortal would make the leap to Lalotai. None would - none could - survive. At the time, he'd dismissed her choice as foolhardiness, her survival as pig-headed stubbornness. But if the landing was jarring for him, then it would've been fatal for any mortal.

On his chest, Mini-Maui perks up excitedly, hopping from foot to foot in time with the quickened rhythm of Maui's own heartbeat. Distantly, Maui recognizes it as an improvised victory dance, but pushes the thought to one side, focusing entirely on Te Fiti.

"She's a goddess?" he finally asks, once his jaws function correctly.

Half. Te Fiti nods at him, faint amusement lining her face, cheeky expression reducing to a faint-but-present trace of joy. As the ocean chose you, Maui, so the ocean chose Moana. And as you are half-god, Maui, she is half-goddess.

We are not sure what will happen to you, to you or the half-god Moana, but with the spirit of her grandmother and the tattoos you both share, I believe it is safe to conclude, half-god Maui, that you will find a long time pass before you and Moana are separated. When I awoke, as Moana completed the wishes of the ocean, she joined your pantheon of one.

"Oh," he says. His jaws hurt, and a hand to his mouth reveals that he's smiling. Huh. He drops his palm quickly, but the smile's harder to get rid of.

A moment's consideration, then he takes a deep breath, thinks of Moana, and grins a thank you.