One Piece x Reader Oneshots (NO REQUESTS)

The Call of the Sea (Mihawk x Reader)

Mihawk had always said that [Name] reminded him of the sea. She would laugh and brush it aside, and say her beauty could never compare to the raw, unbridled allure of the ocean. He would argue with her over it at every opportunity, but he would never win.

She had always been fascinated by the sea. To the point it was almost infatuation. And yet she could not bring herself to dip even so much as a single toe beneath its waters. It took Mihawk months before he gathered the courage to ask her why.

She had smiled at him sadly, and told him that she had been in an accident when she was younger. When she was seven, he had fallen overboard of her father's fishing boat, very nearly drowned until her father had plucked her from the water. She distinctly remembered what felt like cold hands wrapping themselves around her wrists, and a sweet voice unlike any other drawing her in.

Since then, she said, she could always hear the call of the ocean, ushering her back, waiting to eagerly wrap her in its cold embrace and crush the life from her lungs. Once it had gotten a taste, she said, it would not stop until it could have all of her.

She feared it just as much as she adored it.

Mihawk saw the way she watched the waves from their bedroom window, on the cool summer nights after they had made love. Her naked skin would glow under the moonlight and when he stood to wrap his arms around her from behind, he could feel the thrum of her pulse, the blood in her veins ebbing and flowing with the tides.

It was as if her very existence was tied to the sea. Since that day, she had always known her fate rested beneath those cold waves and she spent he whole life waiting for it to finally call her home. Some days, the call was deafening, and Mihawk had to hold her tight for fear of losing her to its inky depths. It was on one such day that he realised, even though she had once agreed to marry him, he would always be her second love. And the ocean would fight with everything it had to take her from him.

She told him, that when that day came, not to fight it. He agreed only because he thought he could protect her.

He was wrong.

It was late June when he woke one morning to an empty bed and her wedding ring resting lightly on her pillow. The sheets still held the imprint of her body where it had lain the night before, where he had made love to her for what he now knew may have been the last time. Her scent still clung to them, but they had long gone cold.

His heart beating high in his throat, he ran desperately through the halls, calling her name. But with every room, the truth only sank in deeper until he could no longer deny it.

She was gone.

He cursed himself. He should have held her tighter, taken her far away where the sea was just a distant memory beyond the horizon. He should have told her how much he loved her every day, told her to stay with him forever.

But deep down he knew it would have all been for naught. The ocean was vast and powerful. It would have always found a way. Nothing would have stopped it from taking her from him.

He would just have to take her back.

He took up Yoru from its spot on the wall. It was already warm to the touch and seemed to gleam with excitement for the battle ahead. I don't think we'll be winning this one, old friend, Mihawk thought as he stormed out the front doors and onto the beach. The ocean winked tauntingly at him in the early morning light. In the sand, a set of footprints laid a trail to the water's edge, fading with each wave that crashed on the shores.

It was erasing every last trace of her from his world, as if tearing her from his very arms was not enough.

It would pay. It would return her to him alive and well and he would refuse anything less.

"Give her back!" His anguished cry rent the air and his sword followed his words.

Yoru fell again and again, cutting great swathes through the water, splitting the great waves in two only to have the halves fall back into one cohesive, endless whole. With each strike, he fell further into despair and the reality sank in. This was one foe he could not fight, one battle he, the greatest swordsman in the world, could not win.

Titles meant nothing if he could not protect the one he loved.

He fell to his knees in the wet sand, foamy water swilling around him, soaking him to the bone. But he barely felt it. He was already numb.

Yoru hung limply in his hand, its blade glistening with salt. Even its power had failed him.

He turned to the sea, calm and sated now that it had finally gotten what it had craved for so long, and he asked a single question to the depths.

"Why?"

He was not expecting an answer, and so he was not surprised when he received none in return. It only winked at him, mocking.

But as he stood to return to his empty castle, its halls now somehow cold and foreign to him without her voice to fill them warmth, he heard a voice, little more than a breath on the wind.

"Thank you for loving me, even though it was in vain."

He turned away, closing his eyes to feel the achingly familiar caress of the sea breeze against his cheek.

"Loving you was never in vain," he whispered. "Goodbye, [Name]."

A/N: Reminder that I do not take requests and I do not continue oneshots. Rude, immature or spam comments, or comments asking for updates, will be deleted and you will be muted. No exceptions.