Chapter Text
There is a tale, an old tale, almost lost to time, old enough to be a legend, old enough to be forgotten by most.
Barely anyone really remembered how it went down, and the two who did spent half their life pretending it didn’t, pretending the role they played in it wasn’t as it had been, pretending things had been different, if only so they wouldn’t hurt as much.
It’s a tale of loneliness, and friendship, and comradery, and of a hero that won a battle but lost everything he had ever held dear in the process.
And also the tale of a villain, who had never been that much of a villain in the first place, who had trusted someone, only to have his trust backfire catastrophically, a tale of how one’s heart turned sour and cold, of broken trust and broken bodies.
It’s the tale of Tamatoa, and it’s the tale of Maui, and it’s the tale of how they found each other, how they learned to trust and be there for someone who wasn’t themselves.
And it’s the tale of Maui’s greatest victory and also his darkest day, and the tale of two best friends and the tale behind one question:
Can a demigod beat a decapod?
.
.
.
He woke up with a start, gasping for breath, eyes wide but unseeing, heart pounding in his little chest.
Danger .
His whole body screamed it, his nerves fried and thoughts rattling through his brain faster than he could follow.
Where was it? What was happening?
Where was he? Where were they ?
He pulled his hands up, hid his face behind his knees and pressed his hands against his ears.
Hide hide hide
No. He shook his head. He was tired and his legs hurt and his stomach hurt and his arms hurt and-
There was a crack behind him, and he jumped.
His hands shook, his knees shivered.
Tears sprang to his eyes.
Another crack.
He gulped, forced his eyes open.
A shadow, right above him, reaching, reaching, always reaching, always grabbing, hurtful, painful, grabbing him, pulling him, pushing him-
He screamed. And he jumped, grabbed the thing next to him out of reflex, turned around and ran.
He didn’t look around, the world a blur of blue and purple around him, and he didn’t stop.
They were still behind him, they were still angry, and he could hear their voices, hear their screams and their fury, their disappointment and their scorn.
He ran, and he ran, until his legs collapsed, until his heart seemed to jump out of his chest, and he tried to force more air into his body than his little lungs could handle.
His hands were balled into fists, arms wrapped around him where he stopped, face dirty and bloody.
He sniffed.
He listened.
He couldn’t hear anything over the rushing of his blood.
His knees hurt.
Sniffing, he crawled against the closest wall, uncaring of the blood and the dirt, and he curled around himself- hide your face, protect your head, arms heal, your head doesn’t- and he listened to the silence around him, and his eyes burned and-
Crying is for babies!
But once he started, he couldn’t stop, couldn’t wipe them away quick enough, couldn’t breathe with the force of his sobs- he told himself to be quiet, be still, nobody could hear him or they would find him, they would hurt him, they would-
Eventually, he fell asleep.
Eventually, his sobs faded.
Maybe, eventually, he could stop falling asleep like this.
..
He woke up what felt like days later, and his stomach was hurting before he even opened his eyes.
And the things that had happened the last few days also came back to him before he had opened his eyes and he-
He took a deep breath, and another, and another, and when the fourth one still came out shaky and quivering, he growled and he bit down the frustrated tears, balled his hands to shaking fists and held his head high.
An angry arm wiped the few tears away that had escaped.
Enough crying.
He was sick of crying.
He was going to be big now! Big like Hulo and Tilou and- fists and punch and pull and bite and pain pain pain-
He shook himself, brushed his curls back.
Big boy.
He forced his body up, winced when he saw the dried blood on his hands and the cuts on his knees.
His lip wobbled.
He bit down on it.
Big boy.
Big boy with a big hunger, as he learned pretty soon after that, when he heard his stomach grumble and rumble painfully.
He looked around, but couldn’t remember where he was, tried to think back.
He remembered sailing. He loved sailing.
He remembered being pushed into the storage, his hands bound.
He wrapped one hand around the red marks on his wrist.
He remembered having to climb a tall mountain.
His legs still throbbed in pain and exhaustion.
And he remembered falling.
No.
No, not falling.
First he had been pushed.
Then he had fallen.
The boy nodded to himself, pushed the familiar bad feeling in his chest down, and wrapped his arms around his body.
Curious eyes kept jumping around, from one colorful.. thing to the next. There were colors everywhere.
And so many of them.
And such pretty ones!
There was a lot of purple, and a lot of blue and it looked like he was under water, but that couldn’t be because he was breathing and, well, everything.
But then again, he could do a lot of things now that he hadn’t been able to before-
Before .
He let his eyes roam, melting back against the cave wall he was leaning on.
It was pretty.
It was quiet.
He wrapped his arms around his knees.
He was tired.
He was hungry.
He fell asleep again.
..
When the boy woke up the next time, he was a bit more aware of his surroundings, and quicker to realize where he was and what had happened.
He was in Lalotai, home of the monsters.
Well.
At least he thought he was.
They had told him it was where they were going after they threw him on the boat and sailed him over the ocean to get rid of him.
He wondered briefly how it was possible that he was still alive- but then again, things had changed quite drastically once before in the last few weeks, so who even knew anymore.
His stomach was grumbling.
He opened his eyes, took a deep breath, and pushed himself to his feet, ignoring his buckling knees and holding himself upwards with the huge hook next to him.
Thing was almost as tall as himself, so really, it was as if it was made for it.
His stomach grumbled again, and he put his hand on it to try and soothe the empty feeling.
He looked around.
There were things that maybe possibly could pass as plants, but it was almost impossible to tell from his place way up in the little nook of the cave he had crawled into.
He couldn’t even remember climbing up any walls or crawling into any nooks or anything, but he cursed himself for it when he saw how high up he was.
So, taking a deep breath and pretending he was way braver than he actually felt, the boy started climbing back down, with shaking hands and quivering knees, eyes resolutely glued to the wall in front of him and not to the ground a few feet beneath him.
He gulped.
He could do this.
Easy as anything.
He threw his hook down, and crawled over the edge, movements choppy and unpracticed.
When his foot touched the ground, he was so surprised that he had actually made it, that he promptly fell down the rest of the way, rolled a few feet further, and knocked against one of the plants he had seen from his hiding spot.
All the air left his body in a huff.
His vision swam.
He cursed.
Why did crap like that always happen to him?!
Once his eyes focused, he blinked up to the bright orange, fist sized fruits that hung from the.. tree? in front of his eyes.
The dizziness left him almost immediately, and he sprung back to his feet.
Half a thought went in to wondering if they were good to eat or not, but he had already picked one up and bitten into it.
And it felt like paradise, like a gift from the Gods (a welcomed one, this time), like a savior and a hug and warmth and love and everything good that had ever existed in this life and-
He ate four of them, one bigger than the other, and juice was running down his chin, but he couldn’t care less because he hadn’t eaten anything in who even knew how long and this was so, so good and he was about to reach for another one when-
A loud rumble went through the cave. Walls shook and sand and dirt fell to the ground.
His head shot up, eyes wide, heartbeat already picking up speed.
The ground further into the cave was moving.
He took off, scrambled to get back up to his hiding spot, pressed himself against the wall, made himself as tiny as possible.
If they couldn’t see you, they couldn’t hurt you.
A yawn went through the cave, loud enough that he had to stop himself from howling out loud.
He pressed shaking hands on his ears, bit down on his lips.
His eyes were wide and glued to the rumbling in the cave, to the rips that formed in the sand, the cracks that seemed to go right into the very ground.
And then he blinked and somehow, suddenly, the ground wasn’t a ground anymore, but a crab, a- a really, really, really big-
A coconut crab?
Confusion replaced the fear quick enough that he got whiplash.
Why was there a crab?
And why was the crab so big??
He crocked his head to the side, watched it shake the sand off its shell.
It seemed to-
His eyebrows shot up.
Was it grumbling to itself?!
Crabs couldn’t talk. They couldn’t.
.. Could they?
His hands slit down until they hung by his side.
A curious little ‘huh?’ betrayed him and the crab froze and, quicker than he could react, it turned around and narrowed its eyes at him.
Did- Could- What?!
He blinked a few times, too confused to run or hide, as beady eyes roamed over his body, mustering him.
And the only thing he could think about was that he had just eaten food in the realm of the monsters and suddenly the ground turned into crabs and said crab could talk and think and-
Was he dead? Was he dreaming?!
Did the fall actually kill him and he had just been dead this whole time??
“Well, what do we have here?”
Logically, he knew he should be terrified.
Instead, he was a little too busy coming to terms with the fact that the crab was talking to him to be afraid.
It came over, and suddenly a little bit of the fear did come back to him, but oh, he was so curious, so wonderous, so entranced by this giant crab, that was talking and gesturing and so big and so, so different than all the crabs he had ever seen, so different from everyone else, just like him and-
A claw reached out to him, but-
“Hello little hu-“
it stopped and everything stopped, and the boy hesitantly peaked out from behind his hands that he had pushed in front of his eyes, terrified, sure, but still so curious.
The crab was mustering him again, confused.
“Not a human, not a human at all.”
Big eyes seemed to examine every inch of his body.
He wanted to run away, wanted to run until his legs would give out.
He wanted to stay here, find out everything about this crab that was so different from everything else he had known all his life.
“What are you doing down here, little Godling?”
He shook his head out of reflex, forced his shaking knees to stand still.
Big boy.
The eyes that stared down at him seemed confused now, but the boy just shrugged. Wasn’t like he knew any better, wasn’t like anyone had explained anything to him.
“What do you mean ‘no’? I can clearly smell the Gods on you. Don’t try to trick me now, pumpkin.”
Quickly, the young one shook his head and opened his mouth. His voice came out rusty, as if he wasn’t sure how to talk, as if nobody had bothered to hear his explanation before. “No. No you- uhm, I’m neither, actually. I- I was a human, but now I’m, uh, I’m not.”
His little heart was beating fast, pounding like he had run a lap around the island, and his palms were clammy and shaking.
The crab crocked his head to the side, examined him with unblinking eyes.
“Well”, he drawled eventually, and the boy could hear the same morbid curiosity in his voice. “If you’re not a human, but not a God either- What are you then?”
The boy shrugged again, his giant fishhook pressed against his chest, as if it would offer him any comfort or protection.
“I-I’m Maui.”