There are gonna be two parts to this: one from Maui's point of view, and another from Moana's. Just, y'know, for extra feels.

A quick headcanon that I've shoved into this fic: Mini-Moana's linked to Moana, as a literal representation of her. Which comes in super handy when Moana's having a nightmare, because Mini-Moana can just poke Maui until he wakes up like "hey, Moana's having a Bad Time™, might wanna help her"

Also, cookies to anyone who gets the fandom reference in the title. (Let me know if you get it!)

When Maui jolts awake, there are clouds blanketing the sky. Readjusting to the lack of light is a process of several minutes, of rubbing eyes and yawning and wondering what, exactly, woke him at such a late hour. There is no one around him, not in his fale, so Maui's laying back down to go to sleep when his shoulder itches. Tentatively, too. Like the movement is unsure.

"What is it," Maui slurs, shifting himself more comfortably on the ground. If it's another kite malfunction he's going right back to snoring.

Then the itch happens again, but this time not on his shoulder. Right over his heart.

It takes a couple seconds for Maui's sleep-addled brain to process the movement, but when he does, he springs to his feet. There's only one reason his little tattoos would be waking him so late at night. "Moana?" he asks the air in general.

On his chest, Mini-Moana nods, rubs her arms uncomfortably. Maui pauses only to grab his hook - it's gotta be a nightmare, going by Mini-Moana's expression, but he can never be too prepared - and pushes out from his fale. He kinda stumbles a bit as he goes, weariness still clogging his reflexes.

Maui ducks first into Moana's fale, finds it empty. He's not too surprised. Curly's probably up and out for a walk. She tends toward the beaches on nights like these. Maui tucks his hook by his side and jogs lightly toward the shore.

He hits the shore outside Moana's fale, turns left toward the back side of the island. From there he circles the perimeter, ducking and weaving through the trees, just out of sight of the water. In a couple places where the trees are too dense to actually see the ocean line, where the waves break and roll gently over the shore, he turns himself hawk and soars over the brush.

About ten minutes have come and gone when Maui hears Moana talking. Not just anything, actually - his name.

"…just worried Maui was right," she's saying, and it must not be too bad if she dreamed about him. Unless it's the one about him and Tamatoa. Curly hates that one. "I know it's dumb, but sometimes when I'm lying awake, y'know, I start thinking. Remembering."

Maui's about to step out of the underbrush, push off against the trees and work out whatever's bothering her, when he spots the ocean in front of her. It's not looming over her like it normally does - no, it's perfectly eye-level. And he must be spending way too much time around humans because he thinks it looks sad, which is preposterous because it's nothing more than an irritating gel of water.

"One second I'm on Motunui and the next I'm out on our boat again. I look to my right and the sail is torn and Maui's hook is cracked and he…" Moana's voice trails off and suddenly, all too late, Maui notices the tears staining her cheeks.

Then her words register, then he really listens, and he nearly stumbles physically backward. It's no leap of logic to work out where she is, just what she's seeing.

His heartbeat is pounding rapidly in his ears. There's an itching on his chest that means Mini-Maui and Mini-Moana are staring at him but he really doesn't care because the water is swirling around Moana, like it's trying to comfort her, like it's trying to protect her.

Like it's trying to protect her from him.

He gets that feeling after a meal too large, like he's eaten too much paifala, nauseous and ill. His legs try to collapse out from underneath him but everything else is locked in place from some strange combination of horror and shock and a truly odd outside point of view that says, entirely too calmly, that Maui really should have seen this coming.

"He really thought he was going to die," Moana says, pulling her knees to her chest in a series of motions too weary for her young heart. He thinks it can't get much worse and instantly tries to un-think that because of course it can, and it does with rapid abandon. Because then she opens her mouth and from it come his own words full of hate and anger and grief so you can prove you're something you're not and this time Maui does stumble backward, hardly registering that something breaks underneath his feet because Moana told him she was okay.

She lied.

Even from so far away, Moana's words are remarkably calm and steady, if a bit quiet. "I can't really blame him for leaving, I guess," she says to the ocean, like it's a fact of life, like Maui doesn't regret that decision every time she flinches when he moves his hook too fast. "I mean, if I spent a thousand years on some hunk of rock trying to get my hook back I'd probably leave too. I'm lucky he even came back."

He kind of wants to laugh. He really does, he can feel the urge welling up in his throat, because what sort of twisted logic is that? He's a bit gratified to see the ocean shake its head sharply, like it's angry, like it's indignant on Moana's behalf.

"I was a bad friend," she explains like she can read that fact in the stars as easily as she navigates using the stars of Tilafaiga. "I pushed him too hard," she continues, oblivious to Maui's frozen horror. "I knew he wasn't prepared to face Te Ka, not really. And I - and then when we were facing Te Ka," she sniffs, "you know, the first time, I could've turned around and I just didn't listen. I didn't listen to him. What kind of friends don't listen to each other?" she asks, like she genuinely needs an answer, and it's cruelly funny because Maui's asking himself the same thing.

For a couple of seconds Maui just stands loosely, staring blankly at the horizon. He's dreaming, right? This is a dream? Maybe he's the one having a nightmare. There's no way that Moana has been hiding this from him. She would come find him, right?

Doesn't she trust him?

No. No, there has to be a good reason that Moana isn't telling him what's going on, there has to be because Maui trusts Moana with his life and surely, surely Moana does the same. If this were a problem, something that happened a lot, she would tell him. She would.

When Maui comes back to himself, the ocean is gone. He stands, readying himself to step forward, to do something. He can't just leave Moana there facing the water like it's her last lifeline back to a canoe. Maui loosens his grip on his hook, steps out of the forest line and opens his mouth and hears his own words, but not from his own throat.

"The ocean chose wrong," he says, but it's not him it's Moana, it's Moana facing the ocean and telling herself these things, these things that he said four yearsago in the middle of the night like they still haunt her, and Maui - Maui never knew.

She turns and there's a smile on her face and every single word that Maui knew to say leaves his head because that is not a happy smile, that is a smile full of ghosts and nightmares and he never wants to see it on Moana's face ever again. She turns to head back to the village, like she's okay, like she can just go back to sleep, like this is normal, and runs right into him.

"Oh!" she gasps, stumbles backward a few paces. Still dazed and upset and sick, Maui watches her assemble her warrior face. From him. She is putting up her warrior face against him. "Maui! Hi, um, I hope I didn't wake you, I was just…uh, I was just talking with the ocean! Y'know, gotta make sure we get to Hehena on time."

And as though the situation could not get any more terrifying, she smiles up at him. The change is instantaneous - one second there is grief and self-doubt, and the next there is cheer and joviality and Maui wonders, briefly, just how often Moana's joy is faked.

She's lying to him. She is standing feet from him and lying to his face. She has no idea what he's heard.

How much, exactly, does he not know?

"Um…Maui, are you doing okay?" she asks quietly, taking a few cautious steps toward him, and it's all he can do not to step backward because there are tear tracks on her face she's tilting her head to try to hide and he put them there.

"How can you ask that?" he whispers into the quiet, trying and failing to understand how on earth that is a logical question. How is she concerned about him?

"I mean, you look kind of off…" she trails off awkwardly. "Sorry, I just -"

"Don't apologize," he growls, and all that tension and anger from earlier comes up and chokes him. "Do not apologize, Moana, how can you ask that?" he asks, and then realizes that his words have turned into a shout and Moana stumbles away from him with fear in her eyes and shadows in the reflections behind her eyelids that mean she is not seeing Motunui.

No. If Maui had to guess, Moana is leagues and leagues away, alone on the open sea, with a sail torn on her right and hawk feathers drifting down toward the placid surface of the ocean in front of her.

Maui curses, anger ebbing away, and reaches out toward her before remembering her flinch and pulling back like he's been stung. "Oh Gods, Moana, I'm so sorry," he whispers, half to himself and half to the nighttime air.

She suspects, he catches her glance flitting to the broken branch and back and recognition lighting her eyes and also something sadlike she's sad for him and for the first time in four years Maui just kind of wants to cry.

"You weren't talking about Hehena."

"What?"

"With the ocean."

Moana tucks her hair behind her ears, looks down. Looks away from him. "Yeah," she admits softly.

For a few seconds, Maui can't even breathe. Then he straightens, turns toward the darkened horizon coated in gloomy clouds, and battles down a hysterical urge to laugh. Because she is lying to him and she has something to hide and she does not trust him.

There is only one question left, really, so he asks it. "How long?"

"A little while," she confesses, and that's the worst answer she could have given because it is a non-answer and that means that Maui will not like the truth and he thinks he knows what it will be but he asks anyway, voice tired and defeated.

When she says four years he can't even bring himself to be surprised.

His tattoos are still and silent. Just like the rest of the forest, like the judging stars and the watchful horizon, they lend nothing to this conversation, and Maui almost wishes there were some sort of judgment because then he could yell back and scream and rage.

"Hey," Moana says quietly, stepping forward like she still wants to help, "it's okay."

"No, it's not."

"Maui, I'm fine. Seriously," she tells him, like she expects him to believe her now that he's caught her with a false smile on her face. Her tears have not yet even dried. "It's just when I'm stressed."

"You're not fine!" he shouts, like the words are tearing their way from his lungs. "I had no idea! I had no idea that - Gods, Moana, you're losing sleep over this, you're coming out to the ocean," he can feel his hands clenching to fists at his sides because he just cannot believe that he did not see, "you're coming out to the ocean because you're dreaming about what I said? Please tell me you've told someone about this! Someone who's not - who's not a decapitated head of water!"

"About you leaving? No, I…I wouldn't do that."

"You haveto, Moana -" he grits because beneath all the anger at himself he is concerned because this is not good.

"No!" she shouts back fiercely, righteous anger lending power to her voice, and it sends chills down his spine because she is furious but at least she is not still pretending to smile. "I will not, Maui!"

"Why not?"

"Because they'd be angry!"

What, for seeking help? "No they wouldn't, they'd be glad that you told them! You can't hide things like this, Moana, these sorts of things build up and eat at you from the inside. Trust me, I know." Maui balls a fist against the bridge of his nose, like crushing the cartilage will make him feel better. She's making the same mistakes he was. These sorts of things can't be ignored or else they fester and eat away and leave nothing but a sticky residue of resentment and hatred and Maui can say with complete honesty that he would rather die than see that happen between himself and Moana. "You - even if…Gods, Moana…"

Realization lights her gaze. "I don't mean mad at me," she explains, and Maui's heart drops all the way down to his toes. Her gaze falls to the side, away from Maui and his hunched shoulders and his clenched fists. "I meant…you. I didn't tell anyone because…it wasn't fair to you. For years you'd just been trying to win love, and you tried so hard and, I guess, I wasn't about to let one mistake turn people against you."

Maui just stares at her. His eyes are wide in his face and he's not even sure why he's surprised, at this point, at Moana's selflessness. He has taken so much from her and she just keeps giving and he wonders what will happen when she dries up.

"You…you did everything for us. For humans." She gestures vaguely toward Motunui, silent behind him. He can't tear his gaze from Moana's face because she's in pain, actual empathetic pain, like she's trying to take his frustration and grief from him and alleviate it through nothing more than the power of feeling really hard. "I didn't want one little mistake to ruin that. We - we judge too fast and don't think enough and I really wanted my parents to like you, I guess. So I didn't tell them. I couldn't."

For him. For him, Moana had told no one. For four years she'd been coming out to the ocean as her only solace and however she protests that it's only necessary when she's stressed she has been breaking down to the ocean and not to him and not to anyone else, keeping secrets from him because she did not want to hurt him.

Maui turns his stare to the ground, lost. Millennia ago, Tamatoa's horde had started as a little pile of gold trinkets. A small glittering heap, tucked away unobtrusively in some part of his cave when Maui would visit Lalotai. Like the crab had shoved them away, out of sight, before Maui arrived.

Maui didn't know what to say. How to tell Tamatoa that his obsession, so quickly burgeoning, was obvious. Was devouring him. So he didn't. And with every visit, the pile grew and grew and grew.

Maui did not know just how far the gold-fever had corrupted his friend until Tamatoa was a friend no longer. Tamatoa was too far gone, too different, and Maui had not realized. He asked for Maui's hook for his collection and Maui refused, and on that day where Tamatoa lost a leg Maui had lost someone he thought to be a friend.

This, Maui vows, will not happen to Moana. She has no gold-fever and no light of greed in her eyes, but she is keeping secrets. He does not know what is in her little pile of secrets; but Maui has made the mistake before of letting secrets build, of being unworthy of confidence, and he will not do it again.

He does not know where he lost her trust, but he would cross the horizon itself to get it back.

He makes his voice soft again, keeps hurt out of his tone. "I get why you didn't tell your parents," even though it makes no sense, not really. "But…why didn't you tell me?"

Moana looks away from him for a long, long time. It's a bit like being stretched out, like balancing along a blade, because there is so much that Maui wants to say but there are other things shuffling to the front of the line, demanding to be said first and he's not sure if he wants to yell or rage or sleep or cry or just do nothing at all, and he does not know what will happen if he goes one way so he keeps himself spread thin over all at once.

"It would've hurt you," she says eventually.

"It would've hurt me?" he repeats. "Moana, what I did - what I said reduces you to tears, to coming out to the ocean at the dead of night, just because you don't want to hurt me?"

Moana shrugs awkwardly. That's enough of a confirmation for him.

"Don't - don't worry about me, Moana. I'm fine. I've been around for years, and…Moana, I want you to be able to talk to me," and he's begging now, definitely begging, but this is Moana so he does not care. "I don't want you to hide things from me because - because you're afraid they'll hurt me. You're more important than that."

Behind her, the ocean swells up and out of the sea, shivers toward him. For so long, this body of water was her only comfort against him.

Gods, he would trust Moana with everything. She has seen him at his lowest and loved him still, and all this time, Maui had not even known that he was still bringing her down. All this time, she was trying to protect him from himself.

"I'm so sorry," he apologizes, and again. It doesn't begin to cover what he actually wants to say but he does not have the words. He's always been bad with words, with emotions in general. It is to Moana that he turns when he feels because he trusts her with everything. Now, trying to convince her to do the same, his own eloquence runs dry.

He has no words of his own. So he uses hers.

"Ohana," he says, and the word settles comfortably on his tongue. He sees her eyes widen at the sound of it. "I didn't know what that word meant until I met you. It's acceptance and trust and I want you to be able to trust me. Even with things you're afraid might hurt me. Gods, Moana, I would rather that a hundred times over than for you to keep suffering in silence. I want to help, but - but I can't if you don't let me."

He swallows, hard, and keeps seeing the silhouette of her back against the ocean as she looked toward the horizon and repeated words that she still hears in her nightmares. His voice cracks. "Please. Let me help."

The silence stretches, pressing and lengthy, and Maui bows his head under the weight of it. Despite himself he hopes that Moana can trust him in this and his teeth clench, eyes screwed shut, hoping and praying that Moana will let him in and let him help.

Moana says nothing. Maui is about to give up when he feels something warm press against his forehead.

Shocked, he blinks his eyes open, and finds Moana's closed against his. "Okay," she breathes, like a promise. "I will."

The tension rushes out of Maui in a single breath. Just like that, with three words, Maui finds that he can breathe again, can crinkle his mouth upward in a smile, can set his hands on Moana's shoulders.

"Thank you," he says, finally warm, and her unspoken you're welcome floats between them like a breath of life.