First version of the story
In this version, the night the G-6 fell, Mihawk found a child in the forest who can't remember anything.
Two days later - At the market of Sasaki, Mihawk's home island
-Mihawk-
"Why is everyone so worked up?"
He looked down in surprise. He had not expected that his otherwise silent companion would actually talk voluntarily.
"The fountain is defective," he explained calmly and nodded over to the middle of the market. "For a sleepy town like this one, something like this resembles the end of the world."
"Mhm," the girl agreed, wide-eyed watching the hustle and bustle around her as they walked down the marketplace. But in the next moment, this piercing gaze, which did not fit this childish face, lay on him. But whatever his companion thought, she did not say it, but looked again at the path before them.
She was a strange creature, some second, she seemed naïve and ignorant, as if she had not only lost her memory but her entire experience of life, and then there were those other moments when she looked at him as if she could see straight into his soul.
Mihawk looked at his involuntary ward for a second longer, then turned his attention towards the market, a tall man in navy uniform hurriedly approaching them.
"Mihawk," he greeted him thin-lipped.
"Jiroushin," he replied, grabbing the Marine's forearm tightly before turning to his companion, who was looking at the soldier almost warily. "Loreen, this is my old friend, Jiroushin. Jiroushin, Loreen."
"Good afternoon, what a pleasure to meet you, young lady," Jiroushin remarked, bowing curtly. The girl, on the other hand, did not move, but continued to look at the newcomer seriously with those childishly large eyes.
Mihawk sighed.
"It is impolite to stare like that, Loreen," he grumbled, "so show some respect and greet him properly."
She looked at him for a long moment and once again he did not know how to interpret this look. This child was indeed odd, did not know the simplest customs. Then she looked at the soldier again and slowly lowered her head.
"Good afternoon."
Nothing about her bow reminded of a young lady, no elegance or grace, well, after all, she was much too young for being a lady. There was also a lack of shyness or insecurity, which might be expected from a child. The slender body radiated a tension that Mihawk knew only from excellent fighters, and her back was as straight as that of a soldier when she straightened up.
Nevertheless, she was anything but a soldier, with this soft, fragile body and this calm, gentle character.
"I will have to discuss something with Jiroushin and would like to ask you to buy the things that are on Kanan's list meanwhile." He handed the girl the basket he had been carrying. "But I want you to stay close. Do not get lost, you hear me?"
For a moment she met his gaze calmly, then nodded and took the basket. Then she simply turned around and left without another word, already pulling the list out of the basket, and not even turning around. She was indeed an odd child.
"That's her," Jiroushin murmured next to him. "The strange child you brought back from your journeys. Do you know that she is already rumored to be your own flesh and blood? "
"I did not bring her with me," Mihawk replied, ignoring the sharp comment, and gesturing for his former crewmember to follow him to a café, "I found her here the evening I arrived."
"She's a strange child," the other repeated disapprovingly, settling down opposite Mihawk, "somehow she seems incredibly absent on one side and highly concentrated on the other. As if she were a shark in an aquarium or a predator behind glass."
When the waiter came, they ordered; coffee for Mihawk, green tea for Jiroushin.
"Why do you take care of this child, Mihawk?" the other then asked directly, looking at him coldly. "If she doesn't have a family, take her to a orphanage or put her in Kanan's responsibility. We both know that you have no interest in taking in a ward, and you are not suitable for raising a child. Taking this child under your wing will benefit neither you nor her."
"Do you think she would be able to fit in somewhere with her kind of behavior?"
They looked at each other.
"Well, what do I care? She is pretty to look at and seems obedient and calm, perhaps a little bit ignorant. She will survive." Then the soldier tilted his head and looked at him with squinted eyes as they took their orders. "But since when have you been interested in such a thing, Mihawk? Don't tell me you feel responsible for some brat? When did you get this so soft, Captain?"
Unimpressed, Mihawk withstood the other's gaze.
"I have my reasons," he explained simply, observing out of the corner of his eye as his ward bowed at a booth just as he had explained to her a few minutes ago and then spoke to the saleswoman, "and I have not been your captain for a long time."
"Your reasons?" Jiroushin repeated doubtfully, pouring four drops of milk into his tea before shrugging his shoulders. "Well, whatever your reasons are, we both know she'll only be able to entertain you for a few days and then you'll realize what a silliness this is."
Mihawk did not reply but watched as she said goodbye to the saleswoman. The woman called something after her and suddenly it was there, this smile, as honest and pure as Mihawk had never seen a person smile before, except perhaps when he thought of Red Hair and the boy with the straw hat.
However, this also reminded him why he was here.
"Do you have them with you?" He asked, looking at the soldier.
"Do you think I'm carrying this ugly thing around as a statement?" replied Jiroushin, throwing the black tote bag on the table. "However, information is currently still incomplete. No one expected something like this to happen."
"Mhm," Mihawk replied, pulling out one of the files. He hesitated for a split second, then decided he had to follow his intuition.
"Tell me, Mihawk," said the other, sipping his tea, "the pirate who died, this Roronoa Zoro, wasn't he that East Blue boy you spared?"
Without looking up, Mihawk nodded and flipped through the reports and footage.
"Aha," the other said.
"Do I hear more disapproval?" he asked, feeling the other's judgmental gaze on him. "You do not seem to approve of my decisions, Jiroushin?"
"I'm just wondering what you're thinking, Mihawk," the other explained. "Some foolishness every few years may be justifiable, but after this boy you now show up with this brat. What's the matter with you? Did you suddenly develop fatherly good-naturedness in your dotage? Should I be worried?"
"Above all, you should not make a fool of yourself," Mihawk objected without looking up. "We both know that I do not believe in kindness or foolish actions."
"And yet this child is here now, and you want information about the death of this pirate."
Mihawk wanted to reply, but sudden laughter made them both look up. Several small children had gathered around his ward and seemed to be talking excitedly to her. Slowly, Mihawk lowered the file. There she was again, just like with Kanan the previous night. Now she laughed like the child she was, giggled softly, brushed loose strands of hair behind her ear and bowed her head in embarrassment.
She was indeed strange.
"Mihawk," the other grumbled, demanding his attention, "you may dismiss my worries as trivial, but you must understand that, from my point of view, you are behaving very bizarrely."
"I am a Dracule, Jiroushin, I took her in, I am responsible for her."
"Oh please," replied the other, waving it off, "since when could you've been bothered with this old saying?"
Shaking his head, the soldier nodded over to the crowd of children at the empty well.
"No, you can't fool me. Something is wrong with this child. You're interested in her for some reason, and I demand to know why."
"You demand?" repeated Mihawk with a raised eyebrow. "What an unusually daring tone from you. Why should I tell you anything?"
"Take it as payment for this," said the other, tapping his knuckles on the second folder. "So?"
They just looked at each other for a moment, then Mihawk clicked his tongue and decided he did not want to upset his friend unnecessarily.
"She lost her memory," he explained generously. "She has no idea who she is."
"Oh." Now Jiroushin showed honest astonishment. "But didn't you call her Loreen? Isn't that her name?"
"No," he objected, shrugging his shoulders. "Kanan and she must have chosen it. As you can imagine, it is not Kanan's idea of a well-groomed household not to address a guest by name."
Jiroushin made a thoughtful sound and followed Mihawk's gaze toward the center of the marketplace, where the cluster of children danced and laughed around Loreen. But then he looked at Mihawk again.
"Well, okay, you found a child with amnesia, so what? Still no reason for you to suddenly act like some wanna-be-guardian."
Disapprovingly, Mihawk now also turned his gaze to his former crewmember.
"What? Don't be surprised, Mihawk. You're the one who acts weird, not me."
Sighing, Mihawk turned back to the file.
"She can hear Yoru," he then explained.
"What?"
"Yes, I was surprised..."
"You're kidding me!"
"Tze," he clicked his tongue due to being interrupted, "but no, I am telling the truth."
"You want to tell me that this child can cut iron?"
"I do not want to tell you anything," he objected, "except that this child can hear Yoru and Yoru speaks to her, and we both know how extraordinary that is."
The other snorted loudly and threw himself back in his chair.
"This brat is supposed to be a swordfighter? Don't make me laugh! Look at her! She's so weak even wind could break her."
"I am well aware of that." But Mihawk barely listened when he finally found what he had been looking for.
"So that's why," Jiroushin grumbled discontentedly, "really a strange child."
"Isn't she?"
The next moment he looked up as Loreen approached them, a flower crown on the bright green hair that matched her childish face so well and not at all her serious expression. Nothing was left of the laughter, of the cheerfulness, the lightness, as always when she came close to him.
"Did you get everything on the list?" he asked her, and she just nodded, looking at him blatantly. "Good, then we should not let Kanan wait for too long."
"Wait, what?" Jiroushin also rose. "You want to leave? What about...?"
"I figured out what I wanted to know," Mihawk replied as he emptied his cup and put money on the table. "You can take the files back with you. Thank you, Jiroushin, and goodbye."
His friend looked at him with wide eyes, and for a moment this bright green reminded him of his ward's eyes. No, that was not true, that stern look reminded him of...
"What did I tell you, Loreen? Please, behave yourself."
Unimpressed, she looked up at him, then turned to Jiroushin and bowed again in that stiff way that did not suit a child at all. Then she straightened up again and followed Mihawk.
Out of the corner of his eye, he observed her, but she looked stubbornly straight ahead, although she had to feel his gaze. It was really peculiar and Mihawk decided to test his hypothesis.
"What do you think of Jiroushin?" he asked her out of the blue. "No, let me rephrase my question. What was your first thought when he approached us?"
Without stopping, she now looked up at him, showing herself to be so unusually unimpressed by his eyes.
"That I have to be wary," she answered bluntly, as she did to any of his questions he had to ask, since her mind was not as open as it should be for a child her age. No, he had rarely experienced such hard walls and he could only overcome them by force, which he currently considered only as a last resort.
"Why?" he asked.
"I don't know," she said with a casual shrug.
"Because he's a soldier?"
Now she averted her gaze and seemed to ponder about it, while deep furrows dug into her forehead.
"I... I think so."
Mihawk felt his fingertips start to tingle, interesting.
"Do you have the same feeling when you look at me?"
She stopped and tilted her head slightly as she glanced at him questioningly.
"Do you also feel you have to be wary when you look at me?" he explained his question.
Slowly, her eyes narrowed as if she thought about the motivations behind his questions. Then she nodded.
"And Kanan?"
She shook her head.
Slowly he understood, that was why, that was why she was so different, like two different characters in one person. Either she behaved like a simple child, who had never experienced anything negative, who had never experienced anything bad at all or in general anything at all, who simply knew nothing and did not even know the simplest manners. But then there were these other moments, whenever she was close to him, she might not recall anything and yet her reactions were shaped by experiences. Whenever anything happened that was linked to those experiences, she was no longer that little kid, and apparently one link was the Navy.
"Do you think the Navy is your enemy?" he asked, tilting his head slightly.
Again she had to think about this question for a moment, then she nodded and looked at him.
"And me? Am I also your enemy?"
She shook her head surprisingly quickly.
"No," she whispered, then rubbed the back of her head, ignoring the flower crown falling to the ground, "it's a different feeling. You don't seem like an enemy to me."
"And yet you are wary towards me."
She nodded.
"Could it be that you see me as a… rival?"
Her eyes grew big, even bigger than they already were, but for the first time in his presence she showed a slight smile and Mihawk recognized it.
"Yes."
"Do you want to defeat me?"
"Yes." But then she rubbed her temples and averted her gaze. "At least… I think so. But I'm not sure. I..."
Suddenly, she was interrupted when only a few meters in front of them the front door to the old mansion was torn open and Kanan stormed out to take the basket from Mihawk's ward.
He, on the other hand, watched the child quite curiously. It had been nothing more than a thought, a crazy hypothesis, a desperate desire. Although she knew nothing, did not know the simplest patterns of behavior, she had recognized him, had known his name, and had stopped in awe in front of Yoru, whispering its name and answering its questions.
Even though she was so weak, she probably really believed what she had just said, and even though she did not know her own name, she had looked at this one wanted poster for far too long as if she had… recognized it.
All this had made him suspicious, but then he had overheard Kanan in the kitchen telling her about the great misfortune of the Navy, the fall of the G-6, and almost casually this child had dropped the name Homura.
It was one thing to know Mihawk. As the world's best swordsman and one of the seven Shichibukai, he was famous. Homura Nataku, on the other hand, although not a blank slate among swordsmen, was not one of the names that would be recognized by the general public, and even more so it made no sense at all to mention this name in connection with the fall of the G-6 caused by the Straw Hats, although he had nothing to do with this base.
At least that was what Mihawk had thought, but then he had decided to test this irrational assumption and now he had it confirmed. Although the name Homura had not appeared in a single newspaper article, the Navy's internal reports had stated that he had apparently been instrumental in the arrest of the Straw Hats.
All these small coincidences and inconsistencies allowed only one conclusion, only one solution, however insane it might be.
This child in front of him, who now followed Kanan into the house with an almost gentle smile, could be none other than the boy that had brought down the G-6 and whose body could not be recovered among the rubble and the bodies of the soldiers.
This child there in front of him, so naïve and carefree, without any memory and yet wary towards him, wary towards the Navy, was none other than Roronoa Zoro.
Welcome to this little collection!
As before, the focus is on our two swordsmen, but of course the Straw Hats and other characters we got to know are not neglected. You can already expect a lot of chapters, because as long as these gentlemen do not let me work on my other projects in peace, there will always be new reading material. However, I do not have a fixed upload plan for this collection, but will post as I can^^'
If you want certain scenes or if you have other ideas yourself, please let me know, maybe it will fire up my inspiration ;-)