Chapter Text
He knew her name now.
He knew she was a mermaid.
He knew she was a killer.
But despite everything he’d learned, he only had more questions than before.
As he sorted through some treasure in a corner of his cave, he suddenly heard her voice. She was singing again - no specific words this time - just haunting melodies. Maybe it would have put humans on edge, but to him, it was just calming. He figured she could be heard throughout most of Lalotai. If anyone came to find her, they’d run into him, and if hurting her was on their mind, they would not survive.
He wondered how big her little cavern was. Hopefully she was comfortable in there, but if she wasn’t, he’d gladly let her stay with him—though he guessed that would be difficult since he had no pool of any sort inside. Looking around his own cave he wondered if there was any place at all he could prepare for her to visit, but most of the ground in his cave was sand and it would never hold any decent amount of water for her.
When her lingering melody eventually came to an end, he called out to her: “Simea?”
Just moments later, her head appeared in the skyhole and she looked down at him.
“Yes, Tamatoa?”
“Is this your first time in Lalotai?”
She nodded shyly.
“Yes.”
“Would you like a tour?” he proposed eagerly. “I can carry you around, if you like!”
He was eager to see her up close, to check where she had gills precisely, or where her fish-self ended and human self began. And he would admit to be eager to tour her around as well, of course.
Her mouth dropped for a moment, and when she became aware of her staring, she quickly shook her head. “No, thank you,” she said politely, a hint of disappointment in her tone.
“No to the tour - or no to being carried?” he asked, narrowing his eyes.
She only hesitated for a brief moment before she honestly replied: “I know you love to eat fish - and humans - so I’m not convinced it’s a good idea to get too close to you. No offense.”
Tamatoa crossed his pincers.
“Oh, there’s offense taken,” he mumbled, his tone more hurt than offended though, and he continued in a whiny tone: “I am willing to give you my word I won’t harm you - is that not enough?”
“Sorry, Tamatoa,” she replied softly, a hint of hesitation in her voice. “But your reputation has proceeded you. I’m not shiny enough to hold real value to you.”
He spluttered in protest for a moment. “Like only shiny things hold value!” he exclaimed in an exasperated tone. “You are the only mermaid alive, for as far as I know! And you have the most beautiful voice in the entire ocean! You might not be shiny but…” He turned his head back towards his shell and plucked off a bracelet and tossed it up towards her, and she caught it easily. “…you can be made shiny really easily. Like me!”
She looked at the bracelet for a moment, admiring the craftsmanship, then shook her head.
“I can’t accept this.”
“You must,” he insisted. “Wear it like armor. I would never eat my own treasure. If that gives you peace of mind, then put it on so tightly I could not tear it off.”
She rolled her eyes and put the bracelet on.
“Like you wouldn’t just snip my arm off…” she muttered, and once again he was hurt by the insinuation.
“How dare you!” he replied, his pincer pressed to his chest in shock. “Why do you hold me in such low regard? Who told you about me? Was it Maui? Was it Matangi?”
She sighed.
“No.”
She was quiet for a moment.
“It was Moana.”
He shook his head in disbelief. Moana?!
He figured it was only logical that Maui and Matangi had nothing nice to say about him after millennia of history together, but the reason Simea was so careful around him was because Moana had spoken ill of him? Rude.
He’d only tried to eat her once!
If ever he saw the demigoddess again, he’d have a word with her.
“She said you almost ate her,” Simea added. “After singing a song. So while I like you singing, and I like singing along with you, I know that doesn’t grant me any immunity whatsoever.”
“It does!” he protested. “Moana didn’t sing along - she was trying to steal treasure from me!” He narrowed his eyes as the memories suddenly came back. “And she succeeded too. Ran off with the heart of Te Fiti and Maui’s fish hook!”
“The heart of Te Fiti was never yours,” Simea reminded him sternly, still looking down his skyhole at him. “She just tricked you with a barnacle.”
Tamatoa huffed. “You seem to know a lot about it for someone who wasn’t here.”
He saw how her expression dropped and tilted his head, now curious. “Why is that?”
She bit her lip and seemed to debate for a few moments whether it was safe to tell him or not. He waited patiently, until she admitted: “She’s my sister.”
Tamatoa spluttered as all words failed him. He felt offended that she hadn’t just told him immediately.
When he saw Simea chuckle because of it, he waved his pincer at her.
“Don’t mock me! There aren’t many immortal creatures in this world, yet you are Moana’s sister and didn’t think I would have liked to know?”
She shrugged. “What does it matter?”
“What does it matter?!” he repeated, all drama now as he threw his pincers up in the air. “If she finds you here near me she’d kill me!”
“Oh, shut up,” she suddenly said, not amused how he was making it all about him. “If she comes here, and I sing, she dies without ever even realizing you’re also around.”
He couldn’t recall ever being put in his place like that and it was such a shocking experience that he could only stare at her for a moment.
Sure, Maui had told him to shut up plenty of times, but never like this.
“Yeah but why would you sing to kill your sister?” he wondered, trying to keep his voice down now.
“I don’t control it,” she snapped back at him, and as he noticed how upset she seemed, he figured that maybe he’d pissed her off more than he’d realized.
“I have no control over it when humans are near,” she continued. “Around you, it’s different, I’m me - I control everything - but when I realize there’s a human nearby, it changes me. My songs are different too, and it’s like all I can do is sing and lure them close.”
“And what if they’re close?” Tamatoa asked, his head tilted as he looked up at her. He’d calmed down a bit, no longer as expressive as before, and he was trying to keep his reactions under control so as not to upset her.
“I drown them,” she replied without missing a beat.
It was quiet between the two of them now, and he just nodded slowly.
“I don’t want to though,” she added in a small voice. “Which is why I think it might be better for me to stay near Lalotai. Not many humans come here.”
“Makes sense,” he agreed softly. “I haven’t seen any since I last saw Maui and Moana here.”
“Good,” she sighed, and he could hear the relief in her voice.
So she was a killer, he figured, but not a willing one. Or maybe she was willing whenever humans were near, but right now, it was obvious she held a lot of regret about her actions, and he would be lying if he said he could empathize with that.
He didn’t regret eating the humans that he had - or even the fact he’d almost eaten her sister. At that moment, it had felt like the right thing to do. Maybe now, after all they’d gone through with Nalo a hundred years earlier, he’d hold back. They hadn’t ended on great terms, but they also hadn’t ended on bad terms, the last time he’d seen Maui and Moana. And honestly, sometimes it was nice to see a familiar face, even if it was a face as ugly as Maui’s.
He reminded himself of what Simea had just said. She was considering staying near Lalotai, and while he was frustrated that she did not trust him, that didn’t mean he was going to be a bad neighbor to her. Or a bad friend.
She’d called her ‘friend’ in one of her songs. Apparently that was a sentiment she only felt when she sang with him, for she seemed incredibly prickly at the moment, and not at ease with him at all. He wasn’t deluding himself. This wasn’t friendship. But he had tasted how sweet her companionship was and he was going to fight for it. He desired it like he did his treasures. Her company was more valuable than any gold, though he wasn’t going to admit such a cheesy thing to her.
“Well, if you’re going to stay near Lalotai, you need a tour,” he insisted. “At least of the perimeter of Lalotai. I can walk on the outside border, point out some dangerous spots to you, and you can swim in the ocean, close, but at a distance you’re comfortable with. I can think of at least three monsters that roam in this area and that are excellent swimmers that would probably go for prey your size. Do you have a lot of natural predators outside of Lalotai?”
“Sharks and several types of whale,” she responded immediately.
“Well, I’ve definitely seen sharks nearby, they hunt the same type of fish that I lure down here.” As he turned around he inclined his head in the direction of the opening of his cave. “This way,” he said confidently, not leaving it to her to even agree or disagree with his proposal. He was going to give her that tour whether she liked it or not.