Roronoa Zoro doesn't think about her often.

That's what he tells himself, anyway.

He was ten years old when everything went wrong at once. Kuina first — sudden, senseless, the kind of loss that doesn't make sense no matter how many times you turn it over. And then you, barely a month later, your family packing up and leaving like the town had become too heavy to stay in. He remembered standing at the end of the street watching your car go, jaw tight, hands in his pockets. Too stubborn to chase after you.

He was ten. He didn't know that was the last time.

You'd been the three of them for as long as he could remember — him, Kuina, and you. The girl who could outrun him, who stole his shirts and stretched them out and handed them back without apology, who played video games like she had something to prove and usually did. Scraped knees and stupid dares and all three of them convinced they were invincible. You weren't soft back then. You were loud and fast and absolutely relentless, and you were his best friend.

Then Kuina was gone. Then you were gone.

He waited for a while. A call, a text, anything. Nothing came. Somewhere between his thirteenth birthday and the third year of you being gone, Zoro came to terms with the fact that he'd never see two of his closest friends ever again. But he still had Luffy and the others to take up his mind, so he didn't dwell on it much.

Life kept moving the way it does, without asking, and Zoro moved with it. Trained harder. Grew up. Became a cop, good enough at it that sergeant is looking less like a goal and more like a matter of time. He built something solid out of himself and tried not to look back too much.

Except sometimes a girl would laugh a certain way, or someone would absolutely demolish someone else at a game with that specific kind of gleeful focus, and something in his chest would do something inconvenient and he'd think — briefly, unwillingly — she used to do that. He never looked you up. It felt like opening something he didn't have the right to anymore.

Somewhere in the middle of all that growing up, he also developed a thing. He can't explain it and doesn't try to. The guys at the precinct find it hilarious, Zoro who bench presses his frustrations and once won an arm wrestling match against his sergeant, going quietly useless around soft, feminine women. The kind who wear dresses and smell like something nice and take up space gently. He doesn't know where it came from. He's never examined it.

He gets lost on the way to Sanji's. Standard. He still makes it on time because the universe is ironic like that, and he pushes through the front door with a grunt and that's when he sees you.

You're sitting with Nami, Robin and Vivi and he stops. Resets. You're in a dress, heels, hair done in some way he can't name but immediately likes. Your laugh is quiet, a little private. You're exactly, precisely, inconveniently his type, and he stares one second too long.

You glance over. Your eyes meet his. Something shifts in your expression, quick and unreadable, and then you smile — small, polite — and nod once.

Zoro's ears go pink. He turns around and goes to find a beer.

By the time he comes back he has himself under control, mostly, which is how he ends up sitting next to you at the dinner table — the one you helped Sanji set despite the chef's loud protests — close enough to catch that you smell like something warm and floral.

He clears his throat.

"So." Gruffer than intended. "You're new to town?"

The smile that crosses your face is slow. Private. Turned just slightly away from him.

Has he really forgotten?

You look back at him, expression perfectly pleasant, giving nothing away.

"Something like that," you say.