The Garnet Vesper
Dracule Mihawk x f! reader
Garnet (noun)
1. (oenology) a hue of deep red observed in aged wines
2. (botany) reminiscent of the Vespera rubra's final bloom hue
Synopsis A shipwreck, an island of secrets, and a reluctant host. When you, a passionate naturalist, wash ashore on Kuraigana, you enter the domain of the world’s strongest swordsman. He views you as a nuisance; you view him as an hermetic enigma. But under the moonlit garnet vesper, some discoveries—and some desires—are far too dangerous to classify.
warnings: female reader; near death experience; some PTSD; slow burn; forced proximity; gothic atmosphere (wouldn't call it horror); english is NOT my first language; no nsfw (at least for the time being)
Chapter One
The ship slowly waded through the waves, the crescent moon shimmering over the sprite in silvery, murmuring streaks.
You sailed in a humble caravel this time, the Terroir. It was a merchant ship headed to Lulusia with a rich cargo of luxury wine and tangy grape must. The passage hadn't been too expensive, and it had earned you a little private passenger cabin.
The gentle lapping of the water was the soundtrack for that night as you worked on the desk of your quarters. You were already attuned to life at sea, really. It was the only way you could have ever left your home island in the West Blue to pursue your passions as a naturalist.
You had worked as a deckhand in exchange for passage on your last voyage to Banaro Island, since the money department was really starting to become worrysome, but for this one trip to Lulusia you had given yourself the luxury of being just a passenger. This way, you could spend all the time examining those rare fern specimens you had collected back in Banaro’s swampy regions.
The book you had been consulting, a detailed guide on ferns and their life cycles, released a small puff of dust as you closed It with exasperation. What species could It even possibly be? It didn't make any sense, not at all. The curvature of the young leaves made no sense, and it wasn't described properly in that guide, anyway. Worst of all, you didn't even have a proper prothallus sample to check under your portable microscope. Those you had collected had all gone moldy due to the high humidity of the region, or got squished during your shenanigans.
Teeming with frustration, you removed your reading glasses and rubbed your eyes. It had been a long day, the hike, the boarding… A headache was starting to bloom across your temples.
Eventually, it did feel quite logical to just call it quits for the night. You climbed onto your hammock, wasted. The heart-shaped prothallus didn't leave your mind for a bit, and after a while you actually ended smiling to yourself.
It had always seemed kinda cute to you, to think of how ferns spent part of their life cycles being little fleshy hearts buried in the earth… Almost poetic, as if the heart itself needed that smug time in the damp earth to mature and finally go through those life-altering processes that allowed it to produce shoots and complete its cycle.
Your thoughts started to dim and grow sillier with the passage of time, and It wasn't long till you were gifted with the release of sleep, the swaying of the vessel lulling you to a dreamless slumber.
It was now early morning. You were sleeping soundly, enough not to be startled by the quick steps and the heightened heaving of the Terroir.
The situation on deck was starting to grow quite alarming. A hefty decision to go around a certain reef that had never supposed any trouble for the Terroir had gotten the course compromised, and now the ship was helplessly drifting towards the dangerous waters of the Florian Triangle, with little hope of a safe redirection.
The currents were unyielding, the captain was hysterically scolding the new navigator, and the deckhands awaited orders as they held fast to the rigging. “Now we’ll never make it to Kuraigana on time, you fool! We could lose the client… Do you even know who dwells there, lad?”
The captain, a rugged man in his forties, didn't let go of the navigator’s collar as he walked across the deck, checking the sails and barking new orders. “The devil, the devil himself!” The young man grew pale.
As he headed towards the poop deck to address the helmsman, the wind started to grow stronger, and with it the waves, that now grazed and conquered the bulwarks with terrifying ease. “Heave!” The captain exhorted, his voice breaking. The rising sun couldn't even pierce from behind those rolling clouds that maimed the sky, a promise of the squall to come.
You only woke up when the desperate beat to quarters took place and all hands were summoned on deck to try and salvage the ship and its cargo… You had just gotten up, head still cloudy with sleep, when the cross tides shook the ship violently. You ended up hitting your head with the desk’s corner as you stumbled, and fell half conscious on the wooden floor.
The rest was an absolute blur of desperate voices, the unbearably loud roar of the waves… You could remember the groan of the main sail collapsing, the men falling overboard. How you tried to run back to your room to try and salvage your notebooks and your samples, only to see how the ship was starting to take water as it capsized…
You only got little snippets of the ship breaking in half under the pouring rain,
how the storm clouds roared and the cargo sunk, now forever claimed by the Florian Triangle’s hellish embrace.
Some men of the crew tried to get a hold of you as you drifted away, holding on to some planks with the little strength you had left, but you ended up losing sight of the crew and the shipwreck.
Now, you were face to face with the impending doom of a very much possible death and the rawest loneliness you had ever felt in your life.
You were drifting under the storm for hours, holding hard to the planks and a couple notebooks you had managed to take with you before it all went down. The winds changed terribly, you felt disoriented and sore all over, and eventually started acknowledging the possibility of not making it. Not at all.
Conscience left you from time to time as the storm lost most of its viciousness. The Triangle had apparently spared you after taking away two year’s worth of research from you… and you could only weep helplessly, mourning. There, soaked and freezing down to the very bone with the vastness of the open sea under your belly, you could only imagine your samples, your pressed specimens and annotations sinking to the bottom of the sea, never to be revisited, or revised. Or published. Hell…
As the last of your strengths failed you, you spotted the faint outline of an island engulfed in a thick, unnatural mist. An unending warm exhale against the cold autumn air. The sky still wore that shroud of bruised grey, yet some sickly faint shafts of light pierced the gloom, eerily illuminating certain spots. A deep shiver shook your battered body.
The sight of the island unnerved you to no end. It looked very wrong, as reality looks when it’s poorly recreated on a bad dream.
A primal, sinking dread began to take over your lungs. There were ridges that curled impossibly in the air, and an endless extension of gloomy, dense pinetree forests.
Your heart labored as the fog receded just enough to unveil an eerie castle, its towers menacing against the grey horizon. Where the hell had the currents dragged you?
The next time you woke up, the ghost sensation of the tidal waves still lingered on your weary body. You had somehow managed to beach like a helpless dolphin while being unconscious.
You couldn't move, not an inch. Your limbs were completely cold and stiff, and felt like a lifeless extension of your own sunken spirit. Now on land, away from the merciless sea, the salt rash and the awful dehydration were beginning to feel much worse. Not to mention the gnawing hunger that plagued you.
Some musky, damp scent violently stopped your weakened train of thought. Then, faint sounds, but the rolling waves were still deafening enough not to let you make a good assessment of them. So you slowly and painfully managed to part your salt-streaked eyelids, only to find some broad, awful blurry figures looming over you.
As you were trying to focus, a deep anxiety started welling up in your chest. They were like bad drawn caricatures of men, a misshapen version that still looked very human-like and capable. You blinked and blinked, hoping this was some castaway delirium that was taking you before death itself did.
It took you quite a while to understand you were looking at apes. Yeah… And they were absolutely looking back at you, with those uncanny brown eyes, a bit too intelligent for your taste. Wearing clothes, to make it worse. And weapons.
A deep, gut-wrenching horror set on every inch of your body, the one you still couldn't move. You could barely register how bad you were shaking, how on earth would you be able to stand and run away from the biggest, weirdest monkeys you had ever encountered in your travels?
So the only thing you could do was utter a faint, very heartfelt “ … the fuck?” and just roll with the situation.
They got spooked when they heard your voice. Immediately, they started what seemed to be a heated conversation in grunts and apish gesticulated gibberish, the tension growing by the minute.
It had started to pour again. The sky was all moody, so cloudy as you peeked behind those simian heads. You definitely were on that terrifying island you had seen earlier from afar. Great.
It looked as if those monkeys were doubtful about what to do with you and each of them had a different, very well-formed opinion… You smiled a bit at the fucking absurdity of it all, and then shook your head softly, your vision still somewhat blurry. “Yeah”, you thought. “I’m going utterly, absolutely insane. This is it”.
You even chuckled shortly, inducing yourself to immediately cough all the seawater you had gulped while being adrift. One of the monkeys realized and quickly turned you to the side. Damn, those were some incredibly intelligent monkeys. What were they, orangutans? mandrills…? You couldn't even think straight anymore.
Shortly after your salty coughing fit, you fainted again. The humandrills freaked out, (this time very collectively) and hastily picked you up. Their hollerings and cries echoed against the swaying canopies of the pine trees as they hurried towards the castle’s imposing figure.
Kuraigana’s fortress had been home to a
powerful lineage decades ago, the Hawthornes. They had “deserted” the Holy Land due to a rather long history of disagreements with Saint Saturn over knowledge censorship and forbidden lore.
And so the Hawthornes had withered there in that forlorn island, ignored by the rest of the world, always submitted to the Florian Triangle weather’s whims. After the desertion, a sudden, deathly gruesome sickness had taken all their lives over the course of weeks.
Now, the remains of their home and belongings loomed terribly on the horizon, engulfed in that perennial mist. In many seaside taverns all across the area, old sailors didn't dare utter that family’s name anymore. They recounted many terrifying stories of spirit sightings on Kuraigana’s shores through spyglasses, of phantom ships and distant cries in the dead of the night.
Still, no ghosts could ever be as unnerving as the current, allegedly living dweller of said castle. The rumours ran low, or didn't run at all. It was just too risky, or so it seemed.
The humble flame of the chamberstick flickered ghastly against the raw stone walls. Behind him, his distorted, erratic shadow, and the mournful sigh of his long coat against the splintered steps. His boots struck with rhythmic finality as he made his descent to the lowest level of the castle.
Warm light bloomed over his sharp features as the air begun to grow more oppressive, the scent of damp earth and old stone intensifying by the minute. Little dust particles shimmered against the candlelight and hurriedly dispersed to make way for his stern frame.
He finally arrived at a sturdy wooden door, and produced a bundle of long, half rusted keys. After a dry click and a slight groan of the old wood, he walked inside the old wine cellar.
The candlelight hardly lit a quarter of that ancient room. He remained still, staring at the vacant spaces he had been looking forward to restocking soon.
Sadly, the wine shipment he had ordered months ago was already five days late. Certainly unacceptable, he thought to himself, as he examined the rest of his collection.
The distant, roaring thunder only served to feed his own growing gloominess.
He was deep in thought. Yes, it was typhoon season in the Florian Triangle, but the Terroir had always made it to Kuraigana with ease, even in such conditions. They simply had to take the longer, safer route to the North of the Tsenian archipelago, as they always had done before.
His favourite wine was on that shipment, that vintage from Dressrosa's finest winery, carefully crafted from a delicious mix of local grape varieties and aged in autochthonous oak barrels. He had only five bottles left, and with no news at all of the Terroir, he was apparently set for a rather boring typhoon season.
The world’s strongest swordsman sighed softly at this meek inconvenience, but shortly after he brushed it away. He picked a bottle of his second favourite vintage, locked the cellar’s door with an elegant gesture and headed upstairs.
The muted hollering made him stop for a second. He deliberately stopped and tilted his head gently, aiming to listen properly.
The humandrills weren’t usually that loud, not after the tour de force he performed on them a couple years ago now, when he had arrived to the castle and aimed to claim it for himself.
The hem of his coat followed ghastly behind him as he picked up his pace.
As soon as he reached one of the big windows overlooking the beach, he peered through the jagged stained glass. A sudden, cold hush of wind extinguished the candle’s dwindling flame, plunging him into darkness.
Through the afternoon gloom, he noticed the heaps of driftwood the sea had taken to rest on Kuraigana's shores. Then, his gaze caught the avid, fearful parade of the humandrills, as they hurried towards the main door.
He shook his head and walked now towards the entrance. Dust-heavy drapings adorned the castle’s halls. Old portraits, remnants of vibrant persian rugs and ornamented banners, those traces of an ancient, vibrant past stared at him as he made his way across the castle. His steps barely made a sound as he went about the rooms and passageways, a growing foreshadowing of uninvited inconvenience building up on his chest.
He adjusted his feathered hat and finally pushed open the main door. The humandrills had formed a circle, and as soon as they heard the heavy door opening, they all straightened up and turned towards that tall, inquiring man, who now examined the scene in silence. Their eyes were bright with fear and doubt. When one of them eventually resolved to start a gibberish discourse to try and address the situation, they all resumed hollering and wailing at the same time, panicking.
That earned them an annoyed eye roll on his behalf. “Quiet” the man coldly commanded. He then offered a disapproving look. “What did you find on the shore?”
The leader of the humandrills wore a gaze that was way too solemn for such a chimerical creature. His beastly hands gently deposited the shaking figure on the paved entrance. It was a young woman, soaked to the very bone, terribly pale and oozing of salt and sheer tragedy.
Mihawk looked at her for a long time, his amber eyes completely unreadable. She was fully unconscious, her swollen lips the color of late harvested plums. A white linen sleep gown clung to her body. A castaway.
The sight was completely pitiful, and it sent through him the familiar, nerve-wrecking second-hand shame he always felt when he witnessed weakness in another being.
The swordsman eventually crouched down and stretched out his arm to check her pulse.
Awful coldness permeated through his own fingers when he pressed them to the side of her neck. Her heartbeat was very faint.
Again, that same pang of irritation ran through him.
And yet, if he was half of what was rumored of him (and completely what he thought of himself) he would have turned back to the castle, shut down the door and continued with his day as if nothing had happened.
But the truth was he couldn't ignore those pangs. Not at all. The irritation, the shame. Because, well, deep down he knew the weakness he feared was his own and no other’s. Being witness to such a vulnerable scene just reminded him how weak was the flesh that clung to his own bones. How fragile life was.
And maybe, how precious it could be, if It wasn't for the variety of silent torments he daily subjected himself to.
He didn't dare address any of those thoughts as he scooped her wretched body off the ground with an uncharacteristic, gnawing gentleness. Or as he disappeared with her behind the castle’s doors, not another word to the humandrills.
The storm had escalated. Thunder and hammering rain was an usual background noise to anyone who had ever dwelled in Kuraigana’s castle.
Mihawk went upstairs and picked the chambers on the North wing, where the driest rooms were. He laid her on a soft mattress, discarded his hat and fetched some towels.
The swordsman diligently ignored his own internal agitation on behalf of taking care of that woman. Such inconvenience.
He wasn't being extremely careful, or feeling an exacerbated urgency about her. Yet, as he undid her soaked gown, his discomfort with the situation got to a point where his hands pathetically fumbled with the buttons for a second.
Mihawk froze.
He got so embarrassed he had to actually stop what he was doing. He straightened, looked away. Then, at his hands. What the hell was wrong with him?
The swordsman closed his eyes as he tried to compose himself. He rested his hands on her waist, his chest heaving, his head low. But after a couple seconds he immediately removed them as if he had burned himself, suddenly remembering to respect her modesty.
Oh, he was feeling completely pathetic.
He took some deep breaths and finally removed her nightgown. Then, he proceeded to dry off her body only guiding himself by touch, always looking away. Finally, he put her in another nightgown he had found on one of the castle’s old wardrobes.
Mihawk chastised himself as he noticed how his movements were way too careful. Way too gentle for a stranger, for anybody, really. He sighed, tucking her in the bed, exhausted with his own train of thoughts.
Then, he moved on taking care of her, in that nonchalant way he thought he was absolutely pulling off…
He kindled a fire on the chamber’s chimney, and sat on a padded chair close to it. The sun was almost set, and the only light in that room was offered by the flickering flames. His figure was uncharacterically hunched, his elbows resting on his thighs. He rubbed a hand across his face and started thinking on a course of action.
He spent some minutes in silence, staring at the embers, debating with himself. He had never taken care of another person, and now he had an unconscious, castaway woman sleeping under his roof.
Mihawk eventually just sighed again and stood up. He walked to her. His usual composure came back as he touched her cheek softly. She was starting to warm up, thankfully.
He stopped that train of thought immediately. Thankfully, in the way that he wouldn't have to bother digging a grave for her… Corrected. That was it.
A while after, he was in the Hawthorne’s old library, consulting some books on natural remedies, on salves. While he had been drying her, his fingertips had traced some wounds, maybe ulcers, on her arms and her sides. Then there was that nasty wound just below her hairline. She needed treatment.
After writing down all he needed, he went to the kitchen, fetched some dry herbs he himself had foraged on the last spring, and started preparing a salve. At the same time he began to simmer a pot of light broth he thought she could drink when she woke up. Completely nonchalant, of course.
He remained silent as he examined and treated her wounds. Mihawk simply decided to see it as a methodical task. Her little flinches, even when she was asleep, of course didn't have a single effect on his composure. When he finished, he checked her forehead again. She was almost at an acceptable temperature now.
Mihawk had brought with him that bottle of wine he had picked earlier. He stared at it as if it was the answer to all his troubles. To all of life’s troubles, actually. Then, he poured himself a glass and sat beside her bed, on a chair he had previously moved. Close enough to be able to watch over her, but far enough so it wouldn't feel suffocating to him.
Thus, he proceeded to stay awake the whole night, watching over her.
In the early hours before dawn, her shaky voice made him look up from the book he had been reading.
“Father… Father, I…” she was sweating terribly, and struggling on the bed. During the night, the hypothermia had given way to a nasty fever, and he had been systematically swapping damp cloths over her forehead and neck and adjusting the temperature of the room.
“Father, I've lost it all…. gods, I'm so sorry. I…” Her distress was pitiful enough for Mihawk to actually put aside his book and stand up. There It was again, that gnawing feeling. She was so helpless. He couldn't bear it.
Not sure of what to do, he rested a hand on one of her cheeks and applied a bit of pressure to try to ground her. He did the same with his other hand, but over her shaky shoulder.
“Just delirium from the fever… stop struggling.” His deep voice echoed across the otherwise silent room. After a beat, she started to calm down, her breathing becoming easy and longer paced.
A soothing feeling took over the room again. She was now sleeping untroubled. Mihawk’s mind had wandered elsewhere, but his hands hadn't. Not for a while.
Then, there was this one moment when she turned her head, and her soft features brushed against his palm. He held his breath as her chapped lips nuzzled softly against the warmth of his hand.
He immediately put it back, abashed. Eyes slightly widened. That sleepy gesture of hers had moved him in such an eerie way... It hadn't caused enough discomfort for him to feel fully like himself. These last events had done nothing but humble him constantly. He was exhausted.
Mihawk slowly walked back to the bureau, where his half full glass had been waiting for him. Then, he made his way to the window, the burgundy swaying to his footsteps.
His eyes set on the large expanse of water behind the castle. The sky was still grey and unsightly to most. Lake Vantare stared back at him, always a place for reflection. Or for endless rumination.
The oaky undertones ran smoothly against his throat as he took one of those elegant sips of his. His eyes were still set on that still water.
The storm had receded down to a gentle pour.
Author's notes: thanks for reading this if you come across it <3. It's obviously not perfect and I know it's not the usual fanfic tone either, i'm not skilled enough yet to pull It off. But I did want to post it now as a way to push myself to keep writing, since I have never posted my writing in any platform. I'll probably revisit it and keep editing, but here it is. Chapter 2 is half written already and on the way.
On account of the gothic vibe, I wanted to characterize Mihawk as a troubled and awkward when no one else is looking. I think It gives him depth, I didn't want to portray only his usual stoicism and nonchalance. I like my men tormented and a little bit pathetic, god forbid. You'll haunt each other!
P.S. i've made the dividers myself, please ask first if you want to use any of them, and give credits. Hope you enjoyed the little fern prothallus!