One Piece - Soul mate AU | One-shot collection

Jinbe X Male! Reader

Life wasn't fair, it unjustly divided the cards, dealing them to people as it pleased. Mercilessly.
Sometimes, the age gap between the soulmates could be several decades. It wasn't that common but it still happened. These people often were already born carrying the markings of their soulmates, who ended up becoming part of the family, assuming the role of a family member similar to that of an uncle or an aunt.

A young woman left out a cry of pain, feeling her own life to slowly drain away from her body. She had no qualms of prolonging her stay, her only friend in life long gone to the lands of peace and harmony before her. She'd long known that she wouldn't make it out of her labour alive, yet for one reason or another she'd chosen to carry this child to full term, denied the possibility of C-section that would've saved her as well.

The doctor's daughter had pleaded her to rethink her choice, but she was too far gone into her own grief. If only the town had someone who could've helped her to see that she wasn't alone. Her son had born healthy and full of life, a mark of a sun on his chest. She'd taken one look at him and smiled, calling him [Name] before life had escaped from her being completely.

Life wasn't fair.

It was kind of a group effort to raise the child past infancy. Kind of. In reality it was more of the towns folk tolerating him, none really keen on keeping him that close.

Safe for a retired bandit lady.

And as a result, [Name] grew to be a trouble maker and quite independent ten year old with the most serious eyes one would never have expected to find from such a young boy. He'd disappear into the woods for long time periods, to train himself to become stronger he'd once claimed. In reality it was to hide from those eyes that stared at him with pity and something else that he couldn't quite touch on, but knew to be unpleasant. He'd heard some of the folk say awful things about him, how his birth took the life of a fair maiden and how his father had drowned before he was born. Blamed him for those things.

The bandit didn't say anything, but her pitying eyes felt even worse for the child. Oh how he wished he could sail out to the sea, away from it all. Somewhere else where he wouldn't hear whispers or be stared at, somewhere where his birth mark of a sun wouldn't be pointed at and where he wouldn't hear voices whisper about him being the devil in disguise.

Wind in his hair, the lost boy made yet another wish to the sea.

Jinbe hadn't been part of the Strawhat crew for a long time, but he was getting along with most of them. Sanji was bit of a hard one to get to accept him, but the moss green haired swordsman Zoro had assured that he'd grow to like him in time. He'd had to question that though as the cook had then proceeded to attempt to kick the said swordsman. They really had rather interesting relationship.

Sanji's little problem regarding his sense of smell had been a little confusing and alarming, Jinbe being the one to eventually jump onto the ship of the other pirates, Heart pirates, and proceed to ask the captain of the said crew to give his judgement for the chef in peril. Upon learning of this mysterious tribe that lived hidden by the misty air of the sea, the fish man had no idea what to think of it, he'd never heard of such thing before, yet the confidence of the young captain was more than enough to convince the rest of the crew.

He took in the appearance of the young man once more, actively remind himself that he was indeed twenty-six as of that moment. Jinbe wasn't wasn't exactly sure if he should say that he didn't really believe in the whole island existing, his scaly hand subconsciously touching the sun mark in middle of his chest.

[Name] stared once more into the distance, his brows furrowed in slight annoyance and lower lip being bit out of a nervous habit. He'd recently learned from a book that he'd "borrowed" from the local doctor that this stupid place had a tradition of something called soulmates. It sounded ridiculous and childish. It also made him feel very suspicious towards certain people and how they acted. He hadn't yet redd through the whole thing, just the first chapter and even then he'd preferred to mostly look at the pictures. The proper language they used was just so annoyingly posh.