Work Text:
She comes to the specially prepared fale to find his siblings guarding the one open screen, as if that would actually do anything to prevent her going in.
Ahorangi, eldest and wisest of the siblings, is the first to speak.
“Anything we can help you with, Moana?” she says. Her tone is as pleasant as it always is, but that doesn’t stop Moana noticing that they’re now all standing at their full height, muscles tensed and ready to spring into action. Turei eyes her sidelong, the tattoos near his eyes giving away his occasional glances inside the fale, while Amiri leads the rest of the brothers in the classic crossed arms and discerning stares.
Moana imagines the heat building in her gut as a literal fire she has to calm, just like she had calmed Te Kā so long ago. She knew these people. She had lived among them and worked alongside them for months. She will not bend, not here. She had gone through worse and will go through worse. This is just a talk. This is nothing.
“I just want to talk to Manaaki alone,” she says, and her politeness is edged in obsidian.
A sharp, bitter laugh escapes Wiremu. “Oh, like you didn’t say enough this morning, aye? What more you gonna add, his carvings didn’t match your dress? Our cloaks aren’t your style? The new boat doesn’t go with the décor?”
Amiri, ever the chief to be, shoots him a look. “Wiremu,” he says, “manners.”
“We sailed for a month, and they make us wait a day for an answer, and for—”
“Wiremu,” Ahorangi hisses. “Moana is our friend. And you are talking to a future chief.”
He huffs. “Fine,” he says. “But we all know what we’re thinking.”
Ahorangi shakes her head.
“I’m sorry, Moana,” she says. “It’s been a … trying day for us.”
Moana sighs. “I understand, Ahorangi, I do,” she says. “But please, if I could just talk to him—”
“You talking to him was what got us here in the first place,” Te Rangi sniffs. “Or were we imagining all those secret talks and private wayfinding lessons?”
“Te Rangi.”
“No, Amiri, no, our little brother is in there licking his wounds after spending months on those gifts—”
“And what’s not good enough about Manaaki, huh? He’s no demigod, but he’s one of the youngest master carvers ever and that’s pretty good for a mere mortal—”
“Wiremu!”
“Ah, shut up, Amiri.”
“Yeah, shut up, Amiri, aye,” Turei says. “She’s a chief’s kid, you’re a chief’s kid, we’re all chief’s kids. She’s not special. We’re all just talking, yeah, chief’s kids to chief’s kids.”
And that’s what starts it. The siblings converge into a cloud of noise, Ahorangi and Amiri trying valiantly to maintain their own composure while attempting to calm their younger, more vocal siblings, who only grow even more frustrated with every reminder that they are guests and talking to a future chief and anyway, Moana was their friend. Moana is about to put her foot down and just storm in there when there is movement at a screen adjacent to the open one they’re guarding and Manaaki comes stumbling out the side.
The siblings fall silent as he picks himself up and dusts himself off.
“Raised platforms, I keep forgetting about these raised platforms,” he mumbles. “You’re a builder, Manaaki, get it together.”
He doesn’t look heartbroken, or at least, anywhere near as heartbroken as his siblings acted like he was. That’s a good sign. No puffy eyes, no debris from breaking things, just quiet fidgety Manaaki, shuffling awkwardly as all attention turns to him.
He swallows, and then he straightens and plants his feet into the pathway he stood on. “Guys,” he says, “I’m fine, yeah? All good. Let me talk to her.”
Wiremu, unsurprisingly, is the first to speak. “Manaaki, bro, we’re handling it.”
“Aw, yeah, and that’s going really well, aye?” he says, and though he’s trying to draw himself up the same way his siblings did, there’s a slight wobble in his voice. “Let me rephrase: I’m talking to her.”
“Manaaki—”
But he’s gone, breezed right past them with his eyes on her and a hand fidgeting with the hair on the back of his head.
They both shoot each other an awkward smile as he forces the hand back down.
“Okay,” he says, and that hand looks like it’s just itching to play with his hair. “What do you need to say?”
He lets her choose the venue.
“You know this place better,” he says. “I wouldn’t want to impose.”
Though from the way he speaks even softer than usual, the way he keeps his distance, the constant gentle smiles of reassurance, she guesses it probably also has a lot to do with not coming across as a threat. Which is … new. Not from him, but from her suitors in general. The rest mostly settled for talking to her in such a way that at least his visiting party would be able to see him get a little payback.
The obvious choice is the beach, somewhere within easy reach of the Ocean in case things went wrong, but instead she chooses the forest, his territory, somewhere far from most foot traffic but near enough that anyone could hear if something went amiss. If nothing else, at least she knows that trees calmed him.
They’re sitting on a fallen log, which is a little like old times, except awkward now for obvious reasons. Manaaki takes in a moment to listen to the sounds of the forest before he speaks.
“So was it not enough?” he says, and he’s looking at his callused hands, loosely woven together, a thumb slowly rubbing against the other. “Or is it not enough of an alliance?”
“Neither, if you can believe that,” she says, and she means it. “The gifts were great. Really. You outdid yourself with that greenstone ornament. And your village has resources and connections that would really help us supplement our trade.”
The thumb stops moving. His fingers curl a bit more. His head dips, just a little. “So it’s me.”
“It’s really not,” she says, and she means that, too.
There is the briefest look of hope in his eyes before he returns to his post-mortem.
“You have a better offer, then,” he says. “Your demigod?”
Moana barely resists the urge to recoil. “Manaaki, you know it’s not like that.”
He frowns, like he’s debating something too ridiculous to actually say out loud, before he decides to run with it anyway.
“A god?”
“I … What?”
“Hey, you’re friends with the Ocean, you’re friends with Maui and Te Fiti and who knows who else, it’s not much of a leap. That lot married mortals before, aye? Course one of them would come to you. Who was it, Punga? Tinirau? Tangaroa?” He says it as a joke but when she doesn’t answer right away he’s almost staring in horror. “Really? Tangaroa?”
She fights to keep the corners of her mouth from twitching upwards.
“It’s not a god,” she says, and there is another frown before he’s back to looking at his hands. She shifts her position a little, so she’s facing him better. “Why do you need to know?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, the other suitors just needed to yell at me, sometimes in front of their family so they could regain face,” she says, and she doesn’t miss his hands beginning to ball up before loosening again. “You actually want to know why I said no.”
He shrugs, takes a deep breath, and dares to actually look her in the eye.
“Case there’s a chance I can try again, aye?”
And now suddenly she’s the one finding it hard to look at the other.
“Look, Moana,” he says, and there’s the faintest waver in his voice and blush beginning to crawl up his face, “I wouldn’t have come if I didn’t think this could work. Our families get on, we’d have a good alliance, we’re already friends, I think this has some potential, don’t you?”
She can’t resist a little huff of amusement. “Pretty sure your siblings think we’re a bit more than friends.”
The blush grows deeper and he looks away, his hand now rubbing against the back of his head. “But yeah, I mean, if I could try again, I’d try again, aye? I’ll do better,” he says. “That is, if you’d like that.”
There is a warmth inside of her, near her chest, as she decides that yeah, yeah, she’s probably making the right choice.
“That’s actually what I wanted to talk to you about.”
He blinks, and the hand comes down off the back of his head. “Oh?”
“Manaaki,” she says, “in my village, the daughter of the chief usually rejects her suitors at least twice, sometimes three times, sometimes more. It’s nothing personal, it’s just tradition, and it gives her family time to make their own share of the presents. For the family of the suitor she finally accepts.”
He’s gone quiet again, just like he did during the walk to the forest, just like he did in general. She can see him turning the words over in his head like he would a block of wood before he took up his tools. There’s the occasional glance at her, a question starting to form, before he’s thinking again, staring off into the distance.
“So you’re saying, I can try again.”
“I’m saying,” she says, and she can feel the blush creeping over to her now, “you’re the first suitor I’m asking to try again. Maybe the last.”
“Oh,” he says, and the words are turning again before his eyes grow wide and his face goes red, and the best he can think to say is, “Oh!”
She laughs. It’s tempting to just lean over and kiss him, feel his beard tickling her chin and get her hands in that hair he keeps playing with, really leave him spinning and in no doubt about her intentions. But instead she gets up off the log and dusts herself off, leaving him in his state of shock.
“And traditionally,” she says, “we prefer food. Bring pigs.”
He can only nod in reply.