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In the months after Kuina's death, Zoro used to think that he was haunted by her.
She didn't always show up when he slept, but it happened enough times for him to notice, and then enough for that feeling of helplessness to seep from his dream-state into his consciousness. The lingering imprint on his mind is a girl with short hair, far in the distance, facing away even when he calls loudly, even when he runs desperately after her – his steps are sloppy, slow, stuck.
Zoro thinks he can never reach her.
He remembers how her face used to be older than his.
He remembers, standing on his toes in a pathetic attempt to match her height, how Kuina once made fun of his wide eyes and missing tooth, poked at his round cheek, and told him that he was still just a kid. Zoro only grumbled at the time because he couldn't retort; by then, she was a friend and a rival that he looked up to.
(He used to wonder – when will he grow up to be as tall as her, as strong as her?)
But Zoro's nineteen now.
When he hunches over the sink and pulls down the shadows under his eyes after sloshing cold water on his face, he takes a good look at himself. He's changed since then. His features are edged and lean, with his eyes narrowed, with his left ear hanging shards of gold.
He's changed, but she hasn't – he's still chasing the same image of her in his dreams.
Though these days, it's getting harder to remember her face when she never turns back towards him, when his memory becomes warped by the years that time puts distance on. He only recalls the blur of her, the approximation of brown eyes and black-blue hair, and it's frustrating, trying to hold onto a mirage that remains so clear in his heart but not his mind – mirrored in the way that his promise to her is kept by his sheer willpower, not by his rationality.
He thought he could live with that– feeling the presence of her in his veins, even if he can’t explain it.
But that emotional complacency cracks, when he meets a different girl.
When he first sees Tashigi, there's a vague stab in his heart that is somehow both reminiscent yet unfamiliar, but he doesn't know how describe the difference; he only understands that there's also nothing rational about it. He wonders if he felt it from her competence and calm facing adversary – disregarding the way she had tripped in front of him, dropping her glasses. Or because she’s the first female swordsman he's met since he left his home island. Or because of the way she looks – doe-eyed and dark-haired, showcasing a stance that Kuina had used on him once.
Could that be it? Because she reminds him of his friend?
(That must be why he feels weak.)
(He certainly can't think of any other reason.)
Zoro would have dismissed the whole encounter and left it behind him, but he sees the same girl again in the sword-shop, like a challenge of fate.
In it, he realizes that the appearance of Kuina in her is shallow; when she speaks passionately, when she stutters bashfully, when her slender fingers caress the sheath of it after naming Wado Ichimonji – her hand a stranger on it. Her face, when he takes the care to look at her again, is not even close to being a child's, though her words hold the same naivety of one when she talks of a dream that is not quite the same.
Tashigi draws her sword against him, and he has his own promises to protect.
She gives him a good fight, but she isn't good enough to win against him. In front of him, backed against the wall, Tashigi is red-faced with gritted teeth, drowned in a downpour, and he recognizes that viscera of emotion because he's experienced it before too.
He can see himself in her.
If he projects his rival onto her again, then his role becomes reversed with his win. This time, with a sword stabbed beside her, Zoro thinks that this must have been how Kuina felt when she looked down on him. It leaves an odd taste in his mouth, thick in his throat.
(If she was in front of him now, would she still call him a kid?)
(Would he have surpassed her by now, if she was still–
He roughly shakes off the futile thought, sheathing Wado to return to the Merry, but Tashigi's desperate voice calls him back.
“Why won't you cut me down?”
He thinks of her potential and her determination. He thinks of her dream that she had eagerly shared with him. He thinks of Mihawk and his mercy on his life, his murder on his ego, and Zoro might have wanted to pass on a similar message to her: how he doesn't want her to die, how he wants her to come after him. But before he can say anything, she flares up and starts talking like Kuina did – expressing bitter dismay of her gender– and then unjustly accusing Zoro of perceived disrespect, spiking his annoyance when she clumsily stumbles over his exposed nerve.
That difference never matter to him at all – not when they were both skilled swordsmen, not when he had just won a fair fight against her– she didn't lose because she's a woman, she lost because she was weaker than him–
And that's the reason why he refuses a rematch with her in Alabasta– or at least, that's what he tells himself, because he doesn't run on rationality.
“Fight me!”
No, he can't fight her, and no, he won't say why.
In the months after Alabasta, whenever a Marine ship would be on their tail, he unwittingly thinks of her. He imagines, in the way that he chases after Mihawk, in the way he chases Kuina– still undefeated – that Tashigi chases after him too, calling for him, reaching for him, but he has to stay focused on what's ahead.
He won't turn around.
He has no time for that.
(In recent dreams, sometimes the girl with the short hair that he helplessly chases wears red glasses.)
(Peace, he thinks, isn't a straight road at all.)