… I think I just butchered Mihawk… I'm sorry?
One Piece and its characters belong to Eiichiro Oda. Mirim belongs to TWP.
He knew the moment she closed in on the island that she had questions. She seemed to be in quite the hurry, as her powers lashed out with such fury that he hardly had to concentrate his mind on locating her. Quite unusual of the girl who always practiced the skill of sneaking whenever she came to the island to try and catch him off-guard. He wondered now who it was, coming to knock on his door, a marine or pirate? He would soon find out because the doors slammed open and the echo of hasty footsteps grew louder as the girl skilfully navigated through the maze that was his home. She soon stood in the doorway, her breath heavy, clothes and hair ruffled. She was without her trademark weapon on her back which again made him wonder but only for a second.
If he was to deduce anything based on what he was witnessing he would say she was her pirate-self. She had found him far too quickly for her to be someone who suffered amnesia, and she was wearing her trademark pirate-outfit, the exception being the t-shirt instead of bikini-top though he could see from the collar of her shirt the ends of tied bandages sticking out. He would have frowned, if it was not for the fact that it was not his business whether or not she was hurt. That was her and her comrades' business. He was not a comrade, he was merely a friend and if she could stand on her own two feet and fly from wherever her ship was sailing and to his island then it was pointless to worry. He did wonder though, how she had gotten herself hurt, again. It seems like it was the only thing she was able to do correctly lately.
"Pirate or marine?" He drawled while turning his eyes back to the book in his lap, his hand reaching out to grab his glass of red wine. He knew that she knew that it was a rhetorical question. She answered anyway.
"Pirate." She answered and he gave the slightest of nods, barely visible to the naked eye but she knew him well enough by now. She knew what to look for.
"And why are you here?" He asked and again she answered just as curtly as he asked his questions. "Answers." He glanced at her, but only for a moment before his eyes turned back to his book which seemed so much more interesting than her. Had this been a few years back Mirim would have grown annoyed at his blatant disregard of her state of wellbeing but this was Dracule Mihawk, the man dubbed Hawkeye. For that slight second he actually looked at her he had probably taken in every last detail of her state from where she stood in the doorway. Instead of glaring at him she made her way over to that extra chair he had placed in the room, just for her.
"What kind of answers do you want?" He asked as she plopped down in the chair, sinking into the velvet cushions. Oh how she had missed this chair! She had wondered about stealing it, taking it back to the Moby Dick the few times she had visited Mihawk in the past but had dismissed the thought rather quickly. Even she would not be able to leave unnoticed by this man, his amber eyes missed nothing, nothing! The gods knew she had tried to steal a few rare books and expensive looking candlesticks, not to mention his collection of wine, a few times just for fun. She never made it off the island before he caught her and brought her back, literally holding her up by her ankles and shaking her until every last item which rightfully belonged to him fell out from her pockets and backpack. Looking back at what had happened to the original Moby Dick she was glad she had never attempted to move it from its spot by the table, opposite of Mihawk's chair. It would have been such a waste of a perfectly good chair.
"I'm curious as to why you didn't kill me on the battlefield." He raised an eyebrow and stared at her for a moment before closing his book, putting it on the table and folded his hands in his lap. There was no use trying to act as if the book was interesting anymore.
"Why should I have?" She crossed her arms over her chest and stared at him. "You are a Shichibukai, and you were called in to fight against us and pops' while the marines were to execute Ace. I want to know why you didn't kill me in the confusion or at least intercept me. I know you saw me, hell, I thought that one time you turned away from me that it was all the mercy I would get from you but you never even confronted me."
"I was called in to fight against the Whitebeard pirates-"
"And I am a Whitebeard pirate. You think I had them mark me just for show?" She pulled on the sleeve to show him the purple mark on her upper arm. "You think I'm playing pirate?"
"I'm well aware that you are not 'playing pirate'." He defused her annoyance before it turned to anger and crossed his legs. "But I had my hands full with your crewmates." She gave him a look that told him that she did not buy his excuse. She knew as well as him that he had the power to basically throw a cut across the battlefield and hit her. She knew that he must have had several opportunities as well because even though she was the wind itself and could turn herself intangible she had lowered her guard so many times in the war that even the lowest marine soldier could have taken her down with a lucky shot and Mihawk did not deal with luck, he was too skilled for that. He sighed then, realizing she would not give up on the matter.
"I was fighting the Fifth Division Commander, Flower-Blades Vista." He intentionally left out the many Okama flies who had attacked him, yelling something about revenge. He did not remember them and thought it useless to mention them now for surely she could not know any of them, as they were escaped prisoners from Impel Down. She slowly let her hands fall to rest on the armrest of the chair and nodded. It was no wonder he had a bit difficulty with her brother for he was truly a master with the sword too. Still, Mihawk was the best in the world, and while Vista was incredibly powerful the swordsman in front of her right now was still much stronger. Had she been younger, the little girl who looked up to her brothers and thought them the strongest people in the world, nearly invincible, she would have had a hard time to stomach this fact but she was not a little girl anymore. She had seen the world, experienced more in her lifetime than many ever would, and while the crew she was a part of was the strongest pirate crew in the world, individually they were not the strongest, the war had proven that. There would always be someone stronger in the world. Mihawk was one of those people.
"Vista-nii is powerful, but you're stronger still."
"The man made sure I kept my focus on him. I had more than enough on my hands keeping him at bay. It seems your desire to save your comrade, Gol D. Ace-"
"Portgas." She cut him off and Mihawk blinked in surprise before nodding.
"Portgas D. Ace." He corrected himself. "It seems like your desire to save him made you all seem more powerful than you already were." She would admit that she pulled more crazy stunts in the war alone than she had done during any other event she had been a part of. Thinking back on it she wondered how even half of those plans had ever worked out in her favor, by all means some of them should not have worked on anyone, especially not on fighters with the strength of Garp and the speed of Kizaru. She really had been desperate to save her commanding officer in that goddamned war, as well as the others.
"Alright, I'll accept that for now." She said and crossed her arms again, tilting her head to the side with narrowed eyes. She was still feeling that she had not been told the whole story, as if he was keeping something away from her and she did not like it. When did Mihawk begin feel he had to hide anything from her? He had always been brutally honest with her, as if he did not care for what kind of reactions his sometimes harsh words garnered from her. That had been a comfort, for she knew that she would always get the truth from him even if she happened to dislike said truth. Something weird was going on with the swordsman. Mihawk was hiding nothing though, for he really had been occupied with Vista. He knew that the other swordsman had been strong but had slightly underestimated him, a mistake he had thought he had trained himself never to do again. It seemed that even he was unable to rid himself of unsavory human traits.
"You saw me at Marineford after the war, playing admiral. Why didn't you kill me then?" He grabbed his glass and began to twirl it, watching the content move around in it, avoiding her eyes which had undoubtedly narrowed to mere slits the moment he looked away from her. He was not avoiding eye contact, far from it. He just found comfort in his wine for on his island there had been quite the surprise waiting for him when he returned from the war at Marineford. The wine helped calm him.
"Why should I have?" He asked with a shrug and her lips curled back into a snarl. "I was used by the fucking marines, and my amnesia-suffering-self was stupid enough to fall for their lies. Why didn't you kill me, or at least kick my ass until I remembered who I was?" He took a sip from the wine and set the glass back on the table before looking up at her, amber meeting amber, angry golden orbs clashing with indifferent golden orbs.
"It is not my job to do so. I am not your comrade, I have no responsibility for you nor your actions." She flinched and seemed to sink into the cushions making her petite form look even smaller than it actually was. He frowned, for the defeated, almost bordering on sad look on her face was not her, it was not how she was supposed to act. She was supposed to be cheerful, confident, boisterous. Annoying!
"However…" He began and she looked up at him again, seeing that his eyes were no longer indifferent, to her enormous surprise there seemed to be a touch of gentleness in them. "Had the ruse gone on for much longer, and had you reacquired your powers without your memories and used them in the name of the Navy, I would have interfered, or kicked your ass as you so eloquently put it, for being a witless little fool who could not even put two and two together to realize that the Navy was turning you against your own family." Aaah, that brutal honesty, she had missed it so much, it was refreshing to hear it again. Now this was how Mihawk always spoke and behaved, how he always would tell her things. He did not beat around the bush and that was just the way she liked it. She relaxed more into the cushions, a content smile on her face as everything seemed to be as it should be. He was right, he was not a comrade, he was a friend, and to him those two words held two different meanings.
Damn this chair was good!
The rush she had felt when she had jumped out the window from her room on the New Moby Dick was starting to leave and she was growing sleepy again. She had to hurry back to the ship before she fell asleep. There was no knowing how long she would sleep while on the painkillers and she doubted her captain would appreciate her just up and disappearing for a whole day, especially not Ace-
'Oh fuck… Ace…' She could have waited with visiting Mihawk, she realized. She had left Ace in her room and the poor bastard would probably have a hard time if her brothers returned. She really had not thought this through.
'He's gonna kill me…' She rubbed her eyes with a frustrated sigh, completely forgetting her host who had tilted his head to the right, his brows slightly furrowed as he eyed the girl curiously. What was the girl thinking about now, he wondered silently. What made her go from content, to slightly horrified and then frustrated? She raised her legs high into the air before jumping out of the chair and snatching the bottle from the table, sniffing on it before grinning and covering the opening with her thumb.
"Mirim…" He warned but she pointed an accusing finger at him, smirking victoriously. "Oh no, you damn well owe me this one bottle after I had to accept the lowblow you just slapped in my face. I'm not an idiot, you moron!" Then she let her hand fall to her side as she walked over to a window and opened it, grinning back at him.
"But thanks, old man." And with that she left a baffled Mihawk and his island behind. Mihawk only stared at the open window at first. Had she come only to inquire about why he had not attacked her during the war? And to leave so quickly, it was not like her. She usually stayed for hours on end, sometimes just to annoy him which he sometimes found a welcome change from his horribly boring island. Not that his island was boring anymore, no he had all the entertainment he needed for another year at the very least.
Perhaps it was because of whatever wound she had been hiding beneath the t-shirt? It was not the cut from Sengoku, Mihawk was sure of that. That particular wound had healed before the Whitebeard pirates had turned their attention from her to whatever they were doing which caused her to be kidnapped by the marines. No, this was a new one, and if the slight scent of burned flesh was anything to go by it must have been bad. It must have taken a lot of effort on her part not to succumb to the pain, he thought. There were but a few people in the world he knew of whose powers could be associated with heat strong enough to burn flesh and two of them were a part of the same crew as her whom he knew would never hurt her, not that the First Division Commander's fire could burn anything. That left only one other person and that was the admiral in the Navy who had eaten the Magu-Magu no Mi. The man had loudly proclaimed for the whole world to hear during the war that he would not let Ace and Luffy escape him, of course he would not let Mirim who was Maya's daughter, an ally of Roger, to live peacefully either. When had the admiral attacked her? While she was playing her role as an admiral as well? Was that the trigger for her to regain herself or was it something else? Perhaps she had regained her memories earlier and he noticed it, prompting him to try and end her life while he still had her within reach?
There were so many theories Mihawk could conjure up but none of them could be proven true before she told him the real story. One thing was for sure though; it could have been none other than Akainu who had wounded her. How she had gotten away and back to Whitebeard was a mystery to him though he was sure she would tell him someday because even though she got hurt she would brag about it. She was a girl proud of her scars because they were proof of her adventures and battles. Mihawk himself did not have many scars, not which were physical anyway.
He began to think about the many years he had known the girl, since she was a child who had unexpectedly stumbled upon his island. She had been so careful and respectful to him back then, now she was more boisterous, cocky, potty-mouthed as some would call it. Of course, she had been trained well and had the strength and power to back her confidence in herself but she had found herself on the receiving end of fatal blows one too many times in too short a time.
'If she ever is to survive the next few years in the New World, now with a higher bounty on both herself and her commanding officer, she will have to get stronger. If not she'll find herself in a coffin in the not so distant future.' The master swordsman thought to himself before throwing a glance at his nearly empty glass. He sighed in exasperation. Since she stole his bottle he would have to go and find himself another one… but that would mean getting up from his very comfortable chair and he did not quite like that thought. Deciding to stay in his chair he thought back to the Whitebeard pirates.
They were not fearless, nobody was without fear, but the list containing the old pirate captain and his allies' fears was quite short. Just then Perona poked her head from around the corner.
"Why was Death God Mirim here?" She asked with a frown marring her pretty features and he sat up in his chair. What perfect timing.
"Because she is a friend of mine. Now, be a dear and go get me another bottle of wine, and find the boy while you're at it, Ghost Girl." Perona wondered how Mirim could be a friend of the swordsman when he had fought against her friends during the war.
"I'm not your servant!" She huffed indignantly but moved towards the kitchens anyway before something clicked in her mind and she turned on her heels. "And my name is not Ghost Girl!" She shrieked causing him to flinch ever so slightly. His poor sensitive ears…
Meanwhile back on the New Moby Dick Mirim quietly entered her room through the very window she had jumped out of. She noticed that her room was empty which puzzled her. She had expected Ace to wait for her, she had been gone for no more than three hours at most. She shook her head and walked over to the bed, sitting down on it after putting the bottle on the night-table. The aroma from the flask was so very tempting but she was on painkillers. She was not allowed to drink and it annoyed her to no end. She had planned for the alcohol to be an apology for Ace when she returned, for suddenly just leaving the ship like that but if he was not there what use was there for the goddamn wine she could not drink herself? And Mihawk had such excellent taste in drink too… She fell back onto her pillows and closed her eyes before she realized something. She was not heavy, but the mattress was old and thinned out and her body sunk deep in the bed which made her very aware that there was something beneath her. She crept over to the edge and pulled her upper body off the bed, looking beneath it only to see Ace giving her a sour look.
"Commander…" She began, eyeing him curiously. "What the fuck are you doing under my bed?"
His already sour expression turned darker and he turned his face away from her, muttering something unintelligible.