Alternatively, Moana and Maui's First Hongi, Followed by Their Second, More Awkward Hongi.

Cross-posted from a fic I uploaded on AO3 in February 2017.

Part 2 of the fanfic series, Where You Are.

Notes:

I thought it was interesting how Moana and Te Fiti perform a hongi, while it just doesn't seem to occur to Maui or Te Fiti to do the same with each other, especially since the Disney version of him was "raised by the gods" (according to the deleted song Unstoppable). So perhaps in the film it's just something the gods don't do, at least, not amongst themselves. Anyway so this came from that. Also I just wanted Maui and Moana to perform a hongi once in the film. ONCE.

I meant to write this sooner but the initial idea to do one or two standalone fics turned into a plan for a series comprised of at least seven, so around the holidays it was just me getting sucked into a vortex of research I've probably messed up anyway. Fair warning that the gods are going to be from the Maori pantheon for the most part, mostly because Maui sure is fond of that haka. Maui himself like in the film is going to have backstory taken from myths from all over the place, albeit sometimes with a liberty taken here and there. Please feel free to point out anything that needs correcting! I like to learn and I will admit sometimes I can mix things up or make assumptions I shouldn't.

He's barely gotten to enjoy the new hook smell when Mini Maui starts giving him grief.

Not the usual grief, with the annoying comedic props and oh-so-mortal qualms and quibbles. No, Mini Maui just lets off this vibe that only Maui can feel until he pays the sentient scribble some attention. Mini Maui then kneels in a direction other than where Maui is currently looking, urging him to do the same. Which is at least a little inconsiderate, probably. Someone has to watch Moana's boat while she explores the island and gathers some provisions for the trip back home. Even if they were on a completely safe sentient island that wasn't mad at them anymore.

Okay well someone had to look after the chicken, then.

Okay not really. But the point is he had hoped he should be probably allowed to at least check the new hook's (restored hook's?) balance before the gods set him back to work. He couldn't exactly continue being their errand boy with a faulty hook, right? If nothing else it was just inefficient.

Mini Maui pulls a border motif taut and releases it with a snap. Maui winces but allows himself the smallest growl and roll of the eyes before he turns in the direction of the tattoo's reverence.

Birdsong fills his ears before he sees who exactly it is emerging from the forest, and he relaxes a little, kneeling with a bit less formality than he otherwise would. At least he knows this newest audience is gonna be a friendly one.

"Took you long enough," comes that silky voice you'd never have guessed belonged to someone who could do some real dark things. "I was beginning to wonder if my forests would ever grace the Mother Island again."

Maui's smiling when he rises. "Tāne-matua, always a pleasure."

The god of forests and birds, now standing in front of him, smiles back, a tui singing on his shoulder and a small halo of bellbirds orbiting him at a small distance. Anyone else and those birds would've almost made him look cute, but he's a mountain of a man even in his human form, and if anything those birds just made him even more imposing, the fondness in the smile notwithstanding. "Maui."

He cranes his gaze down to give the demigod a once-over, and there's an expression of amusement gently tamped to preserve his godly dignity. "You got the leaves I've been sending, then."

"Yeah, thanks," Maui says, fingers suddenly itching to fiddle with the rope handle on his hook. "All due respect, though, any reason you didn't think a couple trees might've been more efficient?"

Tāne-matua's smile is small and private, like Maui is five again and asking why he can't have an extra piece of fruit. "Oh, yes, that would've gone over well with Te Fiti, me siding with a demigod over one of my own."

Maui huffs. "Good point."

"Giving you materials to build a new boat with so the chosen one would never find you."

"Yep."

"Because that's what I need, another goddess who probably wants me dead," he says, laughter in his eyes. "You've always had quite the sense of humour."

Maui fights the heat rising in his face. He's not five. Tāne-matua isn't helping raise him anymore. "Okay, okay, you got me there."

"To the matter at hand," Tāne-matua says, like he's the personification of the most serene lake in the world, like the last few seconds never happened, "I've come to tell you it won't be as easy as an apology, my child, no matter how sincere you were. You've a fair bit of work ahead still. Te Kā's darkness wiped away all life on some islands and reefs. Crumbled to ash. Dreadful business; it was a kindness that you never saw the aftermath. Some of those bodies barely even had time to rot."

Maui fights a pang of guilt deep in his stomach. There is a memory of Moana after Lalotai, during a break in his training to get the hang of his hook again. She cracked open a coconut for dinner to find it dry and filled with what looked like the remains of a fire, and something inside her just dimmed. He had asked her about it, of course, and she opened her mouth to speak, only to close it again as she glimpsed his hook lying beside him.

She tossed both halves into the sea, no sense of sacrilege about it at all, and shot him a reassuring smile. "Picked a bad one. No big deal."

The coconut dissolved into a black cloud of sediment as soon as it hit the water.

Her jaw tight and her eyes watering, Moana just went back to measuring the stars.

Tāne-matua's look softens, like he saw what Maui just remembered. "Of course, now that Te Fiti's herself again, it's going to be better," he says, almost soothing. "Life will return. Is returning, I should say. It's just that some of the human structures still remain. Not natural, you see. The work of man, that sort of thing. They have aged, yes, but the darkness never took them."

Maui looks back at Tāne-matua and nods. He can feel the carved grooves in his hook a little more keenly against his fingertips. "So you need me to clear these villages."

"Among other things," he says, his dignity a little upstaged by the happiness of the birds surrounding him. "The curse lasted a thousand years, Maui. It's killed its share of islands. They're Dead Lands—literally, dead lands, until Te Fiti gets round to restoring them. Fortunately for you, not all housed your precious mortals, but they won't go voyaging for long if their first discovery is that they've broken the tapu of some graveyard island. If you want them going back to the sea, you may want to lift that threat."

At some point Maui's line of sight had drifted from the god to the horizon, probably a bad habit picked up from a certain chosen one. He's not sure what he's looking for, maybe for sight of these dead lands, but all that greets him are the barrier islands, already lush with grasses and trees and the joyful eruption of flowers.

"Okay," he says, and his hook suddenly feels heavier in his hands. "Okay, fair enough."

He turns back to Tāne-matua, who's not at all surprised by this little interlude of introspection. "Not often I see you this invested in mortals, Tāne. You guys starting to soften up?"

"Actually, I just wanted to shut up Rongo," he chuckles. "He won't stop going on about his crops dying out and now coming back only to grow on forbidden land. Not to mention, my ex could do with a decrease in traffic her way."

Maui can't resist a little eyebrow lift. "But no stake in it for you, though."

"None whatsoever," Tāne-matua lies, the laughter dancing in his eyes again as he turns to head back into the forest. "Good luck, demigod."

"Tell the others I said hi!" he calls back, but there isn't any reply. The god barely takes a few steps into the brush when he disappears and takes that particular cluster of birdsong with him, leaving Maui with the waves as they roared onto shore, the sounds of his precious birds and forests further off in the distance.

"Maui!" Moana bursts onto the beach with the baskets in her arms bursting with produce, a few of the overflowing fruits on top wobbling as she makes it onto the sand. "Maui, look, I've never seen so much food in one place!"

Wasn't he supposed to help her? He consults Mini Maui, who confirms that yeah, they had definitely agreed earlier that he was supposed to come help her.

"Woah, woah, woah, Chosen One, easy, you didn't need to make it all in one trip!" He runs towards her and takes a few of the more precarious ones from the top.

"Sorry, it's just, it's been so long ," she says, and she's beaming so brightly he almost has to squint. "Fresh fruit, Maui! Fresh!"

And he can't help but smile along with her. "I can see that."

"How's the hook? Same as before?"

"Far as I can tell." He takes a coconut from near the top of his stack. "Hey, you look like you could use a drink. How about it? Coconut?"

"Hmm." She plops a basket on the deck and considers. "Yeah. You know what, a drink sounds pretty great right now. Thanks, Maui."

It's aggravating just how much he wants to get her in a headlock and ruffle her hair.

"All right, refreshments for the glorious hero, coming right up," he says, before tearing into the husk with his teeth. She's almost giggling rather than impressed or taken aback, like he was just some cousin embarrassing her with his bravado, and before they know it they're looking at a perfectly husked nut, ready to be broken. Mini Maui nods at the thing in silent approval.

Maui cracks it open with a strategic flick of his finger, careful to go as gently as he can get away with so there's as little spilling as possible, and hands it over to her.

It's almost bursting with water, and has enough fat, soft, meat that it's tempting to scoop it all up in the middle of drinking.

Moana takes one look at it and looks like she's about to cry.

He gets one open for himself as well, and there's a short break where they sit almost in silence, drinking in their victory and snacking on glory while the chicken continued pecking at the deck, a peeled banana lying forgotten just inches away.

"It's so good," Moana croons, for the millionth time. "So good."

He tries to speak between slurps and mouthfuls. "Course it is, kiddo, you really think the Mother Island wouldn't put on a good spread?"

"I guess I just didn't realise how hungry I was." She looks out at the horizon for a second, the joy fading a little as something crosses her mind, and turns her attention back to the little feast, her fingers running and twirling through her hair. "If there's enough room in the hold after I gather the water, I might go back to the grove. Some of the people in the village, they're probably … I mean, the darkness took our crops and our fish and—"

That memory comes back, of the ashen coconut dissolving in the water, of the dead lands not far off, starved of crops and drained of life and crumbled to ash.

"I'll come give ya a hand, then," Maui says, taking the pang of guilt in his stomach and beating it down the same way he beat down the sun. He flexes his glorious arms and strikes a pose. "You wanna harvest all that fruit, it'll go a lot faster if they fall out of the trees first."

She rolls her eyes, not quite managing her usual glower at his showboating. "You don't have to, Maui."

"Kid, we just defeated a lava monster and saved the world. C'mon, this is nothing. This is a reward," he says, and it's his turn to sell her the most reassuring smile he can muster. "It's fine. I got your back, Chosen One."

He's not as ready as he thinks he'd be when he comes across his first island.

Moana goes one way, he goes another, and for a while he's revelling in his freedom. He's been stuck without most of his powers for so long he's not sure he even wants to take human form for a while, just mess around with different animal bodies until he feels the need for opposable thumbs. And even then there was probably a workaround.

But while his hawk body is amazing for battle and general awe inspiration, he remembers too late there's a reason it was never his first choice for long distances. His wings begin to strain after a few hours, and all the energy he could've used for changing to a different form instead goes to simply keeping himself in the air. The sun isn't helping, either, heaping what little revenge it can muster down on his back. Not much longer and he's relieved to see a flock of frigates in the distance, followed by brown clouds, and then actual land.

He lands on the beach without much grace or circumstance, shifting back into human form as soon as his body crashes into the black sand. He sits up, sucking air through his teeth and wincing, while Mini Maui chides him for going with the hawk in the first place.

He groans, brushing sand from his body. "It's been a thousand years, how was I supposed to remember it's not a long distance form?"

Mini Maui taps his foot and shoots a pointed glance at the Moana tattoo, then looks up at him.

"I wasn't trying to impress her."

The tattoo raises an eyebrow at him.

"What? I wasn't," he says, leaning on his hook to prop himself up. "Besides, I thought we worked through this. I shouldn't depend on mortal approval, blah blah blah, external sources of validation are fickle and arbitrary, blah blah blah, I'm Maui. I get it. I've learned."

The eyebrow continues to stay raised.

"Yeah, well, I think I've matured. So there."

The island is pretty standard, from what he can see. Rocks and ancient coral dotting the shore and studding the areas of low tide, mangroves not too far off in the distance, a sandbar nearby, inviting him to come splash around. He takes a moment to enjoy the sound of the waves rippling onto shore.

And then he finds it.

Past the sand dunes and off into the grass, the collapsed remains of a structure, and behind that, barely visible and buried under vegetation, the rotten husk where a village stood a thousand years ago.

The air grows heavier around him, and Maui grips his hook a little tighter, fighting off the feeling that he's being watched.

Tāne-matua was right, of course. The darkness hadn't swallowed up the human structures the same way it had the life all around it. All the plants, the animals, the people, those had long since crumbled into the wind, and in their place was a wilderness like nothing had ever lived here. But the ghosts of the buildings remained, left to take the long path while the earth broke them down.

Maui's grateful this island's death was among one of the first. After a thousand years there was little left of the village, barring the rotten hints of a few posts. It was all wood and fronds and other materials that don't lend well to a life with rains and heat but without constant maintenance, and what's left is mouldy and soft, or brittle and a couple strong winds short of becoming dust anyway. All things considered it looks like easy enough work, maybe an afternoon's worth at most. He remembers this village never really got that big. Not enough fertile land so they had to rely on trade.

He pauses. He remembers this village.

The tree placements and the vegetation had all changed in the island's restoration, but he remembers the layout. This area, right near the beach, was home to one of the fishermen. This clearing used to be where the women gathered to make nets. Not too far off was a communal hall where ceremonies and gatherings took place, and off further inland, the farms where they grew what food they could. A stream reserved for religious ceremonies. A hill with a killer view, where on clearer days you could just make out Te Fiti in the distance. He remembers.

And then he remembers that they were among the first to die, cut off from part of their food supply by hostile waters and then left to starve on an island that slowly died beneath them.

They were there the day he sailed to Te Fiti. They cheered him on, overjoyed at the idea of creating life on an island that could barely sustain its own population. And he just soaked it in, reassured that he was making the right choice.

No. No, this was no time to dwell. He served his imprisonment. He helped return the Heart. He's making up for it now. So it's time to get to work.

Maui mutters a short prayer before grabbing the fungus-covered remains of a bigger post and heaving it into a clearing in the middle of the village, where it doesn't land so much as it squishes onto the ground in a foul heap. Before long the rest of the ruins have joined it, and he's realising this rotten pile is all that is left of a village that once fed him and listened to his stories and probably even prayed to him, a people whose name he barely even remembered.

The pile is too wet to burn. He settles for putting it next to the burial grounds and putting up a small stone wall to mark a boundary.

It takes a while to remember all the steps for the blessing of a whole island, but once he does it's like an old dance he's surprised he still knows the steps to. He's not a priest nor does he pretend to have any ambitions towards that sort of life, but when your whole thing is pulling up islands and dealing with sacred things nowhere near civilisation, sometimes there are just things you need to learn to do for yourself.

He clears the right spaces and makes the right sacrifices to the right gods. He's speaking and his hook is glowing and as his energy begins to wane he feels the tapu start to lift, and suddenly a feeling of lightness comes over him, like he had spent the day in a crowd and finally got a chance to just breathe. The pang in his stomach flares up again, only to ebb, and then finally settle. This island is at peace now. Moana has nothing to fear here.

Birdsong fills the air.

He sighs, one final glance at the burial grounds before he washes the ritual off himself and calls it a day.

"Okay," he says. "Okay. One down."

He hopes there aren't too many after this.

He spends the next few weeks building a canoe.

What was probably reasonable to assume was that, after a thousand years with nothing but Mini Maui for company and little more than wild ferns, bitter weeds, and whatever he could gather during low tide for food, he'd be glad to spend a few days on an island with a bit more going on. Trees, for one. Some streams to swim in. Watercress and berries to snack on while he cooks himself a nice fat eel. All of which were great, and all of which were great reasons to stay. But in the end he'd still just be Maui, alone on an island, just like the last thousand years.

So canoe building it is.

He's barely done with the hull when he's joined by a small gathering of curious birds. He smiles. It's just like the old days.

Before long he's yammering while he works, telling them about the banishment island and Lalotai and the little brat that saved the world. They chirp and cheep and flap at the appropriate parts and for a while it's a real balm unto his soul. He's even gotten a few of them excited at the mention of the various species he's adventured with.

"You think that's something, check this out."

He puts down his adze and grabs his hook, and in a flash he's a pigeon, then a fantail, a gannet, a frigate. Just when their little minds can't get any more blown, Maui tops it off with the hawk.

They're going wild.

He shifts back into his human form.

"Thought you'd like that," he says, showing off his hawk tattoo. "Birds were my first shifts. You guys actually helped me get my brothers to come around."

They're just about preening themselves with pride and not much surprise. Of course the great Maui would hold birds in such regard, they seemed to say. Birds are awesome.

Yeah. Yeah, he could always count on birds. When the gods were too busy for him and the humans stayed away, there were always birds.

"Y'know," he says, "Room on this boat for at least a few of you. You could come with, if you want."

And that's when the spell breaks.

Their features unruffle and their heads begin to dip. Sorry, they were probably saying. It's a new island. Mates to secure. Nests to build. Food to gather. You understand. Maybe try some other birds, on other islands, who aren't trying to rebuild their populations.

A pigeon lays a worm at his feet, a gift for his excellent company.

They're not there to say goodbye when it's finally time to launch.

The first thing he does with the new canoe is pull up a new island.

The second thing he does is decide to pull up as many islands as he can. He probably even goes a little overboard with it as his boat wanders east.

Because if there's one place she claims first he's going to make damned sure it's one he didn't kill.

In the month or two since launching he really only loses it once.

He had worked outwards from Te Fiti, using the winds and currents to start east and then head north and west, every flock of noddies and every cloud system leading him to brace himself for the fires of a living village and the shouts of an angry mob. But instead it's one dead island after another, after another, each with more to clear than the last the further he got from Te Fiti. The adrenaline from the anticipation sinks into him with nowhere to go at the sight of every desolate clearing of rotting posts and crumbling stone floors and forgotten tools and jewellery. He begins to fear the sound of his voice calling out into nothing, getting only birdsong and the crash of waves in return.

He's in the middle of gathering the debris of what looks like a spirit house, if the occasional shells and carved whale teeth are anything to go by. The rains and humidity made quick work of the village, leaving him to wade mostly through a maze of rotting posts and bits of stone and some broken rope in varying stages of decay. So. The usual. But then his foot snags something solid and he falls face first onto a mushier section of wood.

"Augh, and right onto the soft part, too!" he says, sputtering fungus and mealy wood chips out of his mouth. "What was that?"

He lifts the offending obstacle out of the mud to find … himself. More specifically a carving of himself, stylised to hell but undeniably him, with those tattoos and his hook. The pang in his stomach returns, only to sink in where he can't reach to pull it out. A whole village rotting around him, dead from starvation, but the statue of their glorious demigod remains.

A statue that, apparently, he signed.

And somehow that's the last he can take.

The clearing of the village goes quicker than almost all the others, despite having the most to remove so far. That statue is the first to join the pile. Not long after and he's running out of things to gather in the main part of the village, and just tossing leftover posts and bits of floor clear across swathes of forest into just the one pile of ruins, grunting and babbling and talking to himself as much as he can because this can't just be another thousand years of silence. But his voice continues to echo off into nothing, and he continues to get nothing in reply except birdsong and the far-off sound of crashing waves. Months of sailing, with a new island almost every week, and despite all this wandering, all this work, it's still just Maui, alone on an island, just like the last thousand years.

He lets the final bits of rope slam onto the pile with more force than is necessary.

Mini Maui, not for the first time, looks at him in concern.

He pauses to take a breath and just let himself take a seat on some grass. A few curious birds peep out from further off into the trees and bushes. He can't bring himself to ignore them.

So. A thousand years, huh.

"Y'know, little buddy," he says, "I kinda wish we got the angry mobs instead."

Mini Maui looks up at the pile of debris, and then at the pale areas of vegetation once covered by collapsed posts and floors, and can't really do anything but nod in reply.

And then, just like the gods had decided he probably had enough, the silence breaks.

He's headed southwest, breezing along with the winds because whatever, let's just get this over with, when a flutter on the horizon turns into a small fleet of about five boats a few hours away from an island. He has to rub his eyes and momentarily shift to his hawk form to make sure it isn't just a dream or a trick of the eyes, but no. Definitely boats.

For a second he's so frazzled he almost forgets how to slow down, leaving him on a dangerous path towards the head of the fleet. His muscle memory, however, graciously steps in before he can do anything really stupid.

The boats slow as well, unsure what to make of the sight. A conch sounds out and they all stop, all except the head of the fleet, which stays its course and continues tacking against the wind like a champ.

Mini Maui is biting his nails.

Maui, in an odd way, is just relieved. "Well, buddy, looks like we got our mob."

Maui squints against the sun's glare reflecting back at him on the water, a hand reaching towards his hook as he heaves himself up. He can vaguely make out about three people on it, one steering, another manning the ropes, and one up on the mast, but the angle on the sail is making it hard to make out a tribe. It's fast, though, he'll give it that, like going against the wind was how they learned to sail.

It's a tense few moments of nearing each other before he hears the one on the mast order something, also apparently squinting to see who this stranger could be. Another barked order and the sail goes slack and the boat stops pushing, and he thinks he can make out—

"Maui?!"

He stops reaching and instead leans forward, cupping a hand over his eyes.

"Moana?"

And there she is, browning in the sun and looking like she's either going to start squealing or crying in excitement. Before he can beat her to either of the two she jumps back down onto the deck and gathers up whatever dignity she can to let her crew know that it was indeed Maui. Yes that Maui. She tries to stop them kneeling and when she can't she just turns back to him with an apologetic shrug.

"Permission to come aboard?" she says, when her boat comes close enough.

He smirks. "Like I could stop you."

She rolls her eyes and leaps onto his deck before he can break out the thin planks he had made just for these occasions, and he has to remind himself this is the girl who speared her mast from atop a Kakamora ship and thought nothing of jumping right into Lalotai. Moana wobbles a bit from the landing but recovers quickly enough, and before he knows it she's jumping up onto him and smothering him with her tiny, deceptively strong hug.

"It's good to see you, Maui," she mumbles into his shoulder, and that alone is almost enough to make up for all those months of silence.

He finds himself suddenly choking down tears of … he's not sure. Relief? Happiness? That feeling you get when it's been a bad day and someone finally asks you what's wrong? Whatever it is, he hugs back, letting himself just soak in the feel of people. Finally, after this small eternity, people. And best of all, Moana. Even though he totally deserved the angry mobs.

"You too, Moana."

She breaks away and he readjusts his hands to help her down, but before he can lower her she takes his head from both sides and presses her forehead and nose against his, and he has to take a second to remember this isn't something you pull away from.

Her eyes close. So do his. And as they breathe each other in there's a vague memory of this somewhere in his past, before the exile, buried with his wives and kids and a string of mortals he can barely remember now. Something mortals did. Something to do with Tāne-matua's creation of humans and the sacred breath that lived in everyone. The mingling of breath could mean hello, or goodbye, or that simply, you are no longer a stranger. You are no longer a threat.

He's not sure he remembers the last time someone gave him a hongi.

He's almost sad when she ends it.

Moana punches him on the arm as soon as he lets her down. "Come on. I'm leading us back. You need to meet the village."

Notes:

Hongi - Maori. A greeting where two people touch foreheads and noses together and perform an exchange of breath. Moana and Te Fiti most notably do this in the film. In some contexts it means that someone is no longer a stranger, and they will now be treated as part of the community.
Tāne-matua - Also goes by Tāne, as well as quite a few other names. Maori god of birds and forests. In some myths he's also credited with the creation of humanity, forming them out of earth and breathing life into them, hence the origin of the hongi.
Tapu - A spiritual concept that roughly refers to restrictions around sacred things, or the spiritual status of something. If something (eg a house, a piece of land, a fishing ground) is tapu, then there are strict rules about it because of its spiritual nature, usually revolving around leaving them alone or the very specific ways they can be used. People can also be tapu, such as warriors coming back after battle or women who had just given birth. Tapu can be removed essentially through blessings, which make them ordinary and therefore free from such restrictions. Maui isn't a priest, and in some myths goes to a priest to get someone to remove the tapu from an island, but he's a demigod with more mana whose whole thing is spells, so … pulling rank? I'll be the first to admit, it's a liberty, and I've kept it vague because of that.
Rongo - Maori god of peace, also god of cultivated crops such as taro and sweet potato.
Hine-nui-te-pō - Maori goddess of death. In one myth, she's Tāne's biological daughter, whom he later married and had a child with. When she found out who her dad was she changed her name and moved down into the underworld to become the goddess of the dead.
You actually can husk a coconut with your teeth! Look up Kap Te'o-Tafiti's demonstration on YouTube sometime!