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Zoro slouched in the passenger seat of the old Chevy, one arm hanging out the open window. The radio was doing that thing where it drifted between stations every time they hit a bump. One second it was Merle Haggard, and the next it was static laced with somebody's Baptist call-in show. Perona didn't seem to notice. She had both hands on the wheel, tapping her fingers and occasionally humming along in barely contained excitement. The headlights cut through the dusk, illuminating nothing but dirt road and the occasional scuttle of something small in the grass by the road.
"-and I swear, Zoro, it was right there by the treeline last week. Tall and all shadowy, like, it didn't have a proper face. I told you about it, right? You never listen when I talk about this stuff."
Zoro only grunted in response. He was watching the pine trees slide by, dark and thick on both sides of the narrow road. He couldn't have cared less about ghosts, or cryptids, or what else she was into this month. Perona collected weird things the way other girls her age collected records, or shoes, or whatever girls liked. Fine for her. Just didn't mean he had to play along.
"It was probably just a deer," he muttered.
"A deer?" She scoffed, swearing slightly as she turned to glare at him. "Zoro, deer don't vanish."
"And ghosts aren't real."
She rolled her eyes, but the corner of her mouth twitched. "You're no fun."
After a pause, she glanced over at him, her pale pink hair whipping around her face from the open windows. "You're so quiet tonight. Mad I made you come?"
"Didn't make me," he muttered. "You just wouldn't shut up about it for days."
That was mostly true. She'd been on him since Tuesday, bugging him every chance she got. Come on, it'll be fun. It's not even that far. You never do anything with me anymore. He'd finally said yes, scrapping his weekend plans with Johnny and Yosaku, just to get her off his back. And anything was better than being home, where the air had gone thick and sour again with him and Mihawk circling each other like dogs that knew a fight was coming but were waiting for the other to throw the first punch. Zoro was tired of it - the hypocrisy of Mihawk's disapproval, the oppressive expectations for his future, all of it. Only two more months until he could leave this place behind.
Perona smiled, small and pleased with herself like she'd won something. "Well, good. You'll thank me when we find actual proof. You'll be begging me to take you ghost hunting again."
"I'd rather eat glass."
He shifted in his seat, the vinyl sticking to his back through his shirt. The road got rougher, gravel popping under the tires. He let her keep talking. If she wanted to chase ghosts, she could chase ghosts. He was just here to make sure she didn't get herself lost.
The sun was already dipping low, turning the sky that heavy orange-gold that made everything look too soft. He flexed his fingers on the door frame, jaw tight. Mihawk's words from two nights ago kept slithering back into his mind. That calm, cutting voice talking about Zoro "throwing his life away" and how this time it was "not the same as Korea", like he had any right to decide that.
The radio caught another bump and lost Merle Haggard entirely, leaving nothing but the hum of the engine and the rustle of leaves. Perona was still talking, her words blending into the static.
She pulled the Chevy into the Flamingo's parking lot, empty this time of evening except for a single car parked near the office. The motel's sign buzzed, half the letters dead, casting a sickly pink glow over the lot. Zoro had often wondered how the motel managed to stay in business, considering the low number of visitors.
"This is close enough. We can cut through from here," she said, already cutting the engine and leaning over to rummage through the glove compartment. She pulled out a flashlight, clicking it once to see if it worked, and swung open her door.
Zoro stayed where he was, one hand still on the door handle. The woods loomed past the lot, dark and eerie. He could already hear the mosquitoes and cicadas chirping as if in competition with each other.
Perona leaned back inside, her face half-lit by the dashboard. "You coming or what?"
He exhaled through his nose. "This is such a waste of time," he grumbled, not expecting an answer.
"Scared?"
"Of what? Mosquitoes?"
She grinned. "Ghosts."
He didn't bother answering, just shoved the door open. The humid air hit him like a wall as he got out to follow her towards the treeline, his boots kicking up dust and small pieces of gravel. He wished he'd said no. Should've ditched her and gone out with Johnny and Yosaku like he had originally planned. Not like they'd had anything specific planned. They were probably shooting the shit at the diner or raising hell somewhere that didn't involve hiking through the pines at night like idiots. At least there would've been booze. But here he was instead.
He kept one eye on the ground so he wouldn't trip over roots and the other on Perona's back. The last thing he needed was her twisting an ankle out here and having to carry her back to the car. Mihawk would probably love that.
A branch snapped under his foot, the sound too loud. The trees closed in around them, the last of the daylight bleeding out. Somewhere in the distance, an owl hooted. Or maybe it was just the wind.
Perona turned to him, her eyes wide and eager in the dim light. "You feel that?"
"Feel what?" He felt the sweat trickling down his back, though that was probably not what she meant. Perona didn't answer him, her attention already turned back to the path in front of her.
They walked for what felt like forever. And the further they walked, the thicker the trees got, the branches above them weaving together like a damn roof. Zoro's boots crunched over twigs and dead leaves, the sounds echoing in the quiet around them. He kept losing sight of Perona, the beam of her flashlight dipping in and out of view like a firefly, occasionally crouching down to peer at something on the ground before standing back up, unsatisfied, and moving on. She moved like she knew exactly where she was going, which was rich, considering she'd dragged him out here without so much as a map.
He had absolutely no idea where they were. Every direction looked the same. Trees, more trees, branches hanging low enough to snag his shoulders. He tried to keep track of their route, glancing back every few minutes, but the motel lights had vanished behind them, and the woods had swallowed everything. Perona was moving too fast, darting ahead whenever something caught her eye.
"Perona," he hissed, shoving a low-hanging branch out of his face. "Slow the hell down."
She didn't, of course. Just kept marching ahead, her flashlight beam swinging low and illuminating roots and fallen branches.
"We're almost there," she called back.
Zoro stopped, hands on his hips, and squinted into the dark. "Almost where?"
No answer. Just the rustle of leaves and the distant crack of a twig. Probably just a squirrel. Or a bear. Or a goddamn ghost if he was going to start believing Perona's nonsense.
He muttered a curse and picked up his pace. Within a minute, he had lost sight of her light again. The beam would flash somewhere off to the left, then vanish. He pushed through a tangle of branches, his heart kicking up a notch despite himself. When he finally spotted her again, she was crouched near a fallen log, shining the flashlight at the ground.
"Perona."
"Look here." She grinned up at him, shining the light on a patch of soft dirt near the log. "Tracks."
Zoro looked over her shoulder. Prints, small, four-toed, spaced out like whatever had made them had been moving fast. "Raccoon."
"You don't know that."
"I know it's not your ghost."
She huffed and stood, brushing dirt off her knees, while Zoro used the pause to look around. The trees had thickened since they'd left the motel lot, standing close enough together now that he couldn't see more than twenty, thirty feet in any direction before the dark just swallowed the rest. Somewhere off to his left, water was moving, low and steady. The creek, probably, though he couldn't have said which direction it ran.
"This way," Perona said, and took off again before he'd finished looking.
He sighed and pushed forwards, his shoulder brushing against the rough bark of a pine. Perona moved fast when she was excited, weaving between trunks without slowing down, and he lost sight of her flashlight beam for a second behind a tall bush, then found it again further off than expected.
A twig snapped under his boot, and he froze. The sound echoed, too loud, and for a second, the whole forest seemed to hold its breath. His skin prickled. Stupid. It was just the woods. Just the dark. Then Perona's voice cut through the quiet, sharp and amused. "You okay back there?"
Zoro scowled. "I'm not scared."
"Could've fooled me."
"I'm not." He kicked at a rock, sending it skittering into the dark. "I just don't like the thought of you wandering around out here alone."
Perona tilted her head, the light shifting with her movement. "I've been in these woods a hundred times."
"At night?"
"So?"
"So it's different at night."
She rolled her eyes, but there was something else there too, something flickering beneath the surface. He decided to drop the topic.
The creek was narrow, barely a foot across, water running dark and quick over stones. Perona shone her light along the bank, and for a second neither of them said anything, just listened to the water and the general creak and shift of the woods around them - wind in the higher branches, something small skittering through leaves somewhere behind them that made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up before he reminded himself that it was nothing.
They crossed on a fallen log, Perona first, her arms stretched out for balance she didn't need. Zoro went after and nearly slipped on the wet bark, catching himself on a low branch while Perona laughed, delighted and bright.
"Shut up."
"You should've seen your face."
He restrained himself from pushing her into the water.
The woods on the other side of the creek felt different somehow, though he couldn't have said why exactly. The trees had probably been standing before either of them had been born, their trunks wide enough that two people couldn't have circled them with their arms out. The ground here was softer too, damp and spongy under his feet, and something about the air had gone still in a way that made the hairs on his arms stand up even though it wasn't cold.
He told himself it was nothing. He'd walked through worse - hunting trips with Mihawk when he was a kid, camping out past the treeline behind their old house, sneaking out with Kuina in nights so dark he couldn't see his hand in front of his face. This was no different. Just trees and dirt, and the two of them making too much noise for anything worth seeing to stick around.
That was when the deer broke cover.
It came up fast out of a thicket maybe fifteen feet ahead, close enough that Zoro heard the exact moment it registered them - a sharp intake, a full-body flinch - before it bolted sideways into the dark, crashing through the bushes loud enough that for one disoriented second it sounded like something much bigger. Perona had grabbed his arm, nails digging into his skin even through his sleeve, and he felt his heart slam once, hard, before the sound faded off and it was just the two of them standing there in the sudden quiet again.
"That was just a deer," he said, mostly to himself.
"I know that." She let go of his arm like she hadn't meant to grab it in the first place, tucking both hands into her jacket pockets instead, her chin held up defiantly. "Obviously."
He didn't say anything. His pulse was still going a little fast, and he didn't like that. Didn't like that some dumb deer had managed to catch him so off guard out here. He rolled his shoulders back and started walking again like nothing had happened. After a second, Perona fell into step beside him instead of ranging ahead as she had been before.
They kept moving. The ground sloped gently downwards now. Perona was chattering again about local legends, about how people said things moved between the trees at night. Zoro barely listened. He was too busy trying to figure out which way they had come from. The trees all looked the same, and the dark kept pressing in tighter. Finally, he'd had enough.
"Perona, stop."
She turned, flashlight beam catching him full in the face. He squinted and held up a hand, dark spots already dancing in front of his eyes.
"What? Did you see something?"
"We should head back," he said, his voice sounding gruff even to his own ears. "Before we really get lost. Don't want to spend the entire night pointlessly walking through a forest looking for your stupid imaginary ghost."
Perona's smile dropped. Just like that. One second she was grinning, the next her face was all sharp angles and shadows. "Wow. Thanks."
Zoro rubbed the back of his neck. Shit. He hadn't meant it like that. Or maybe he had. He didn't know anymore. "Look, I just-"
"No, you look," she snapped, stepping closer. The flashlight beam wobbled, casting wild shadows across her face. "Why can't you just do this one thing with me? You always have to make everything suck. Just because you're fucking up your life doesn't mean everyone else has to be miserable too."
"What the fuck is that supposed to mean?"
"It means you're leaving to go get shot in a jungle on the other side of the world, but taking one walk through the woods with me is too much."
The words landed harder than he expected, though he wasn't sure why. He'd known, in some way, that she wasn't happy about it, the same way that nobody seemed to be happy about it, Mihawk least of all. But, unlike Mihawk, she hadn't said anything, not directly and not since the day he'd told her. She'd just kept acting like nothing had changed, dragging him out to the movies or showing him flyers for the county fair in three months, badgering him about ghosts, and filling every silence before it could turn into something neither of them wanted to touch.
"That's different," he said, because he had never been good with words and that was the only thing he could think of.
"How?"
"It just is."
"That's not an answer."
"I made a decision. That's it. It's done." He shoved his hands in his pockets, jaw tight, looking somewhere past her shoulder instead of at her face. "You and Mihawk don't get a say in it."
"I didn't ask for a say." Her voice cracked slightly on the last word, and she seemed to hate that it had, because she looked away fast, out into the dark past his shoulder, blinking hard. "I just don't want-" She stopped herself.
"Don't want what?"
"Nothing. Forget it."
"Perona."
"I said forget it." She turned and started walking again, faster than before, flashlight beam bouncing erratically off the trees, and for a second, Zoro just stood there, the quiet closing back in around him, before he swore under his breath and went after her. He followed a few steps behind her, eyes down, working out where to put his feet in the dark, and when he looked up, her flashlight beam in front of him had vanished.
He stopped. Turned in place once, twice, the trees looking the same in every direction. Black trunks and blacker gaps between them, no beam of light anywhere he looked. The quiet had a different weight to it now. Before, it had been the two of them making noise together, her voice, her footsteps, something to hold off the unsettling silence. Now it was just him and the sound of his own breathing, too loud, and everything past arm's reach gone to black.
"Perona?"
No answer. Nothing. Not even an echo. The sound just disappeared, swallowed up by the trees and the dark as if it hadn't traveled anywhere at all. He turned again, slowly, trying to remember which way they'd been heading. The trees all looked identical - tall pines, hanging moss, thick underbrush that grabbed at his ankles.
He picked a direction and pushed forwards, branches scraping against his arms. His heart was beating faster than he liked. This was stupid. He wasn't lost. He just needed to find her light again. A low branch caught his shoulder instead of his face only because he got an arm up in time. His boot caught a root he hadn't seen and he stumbled hard, caught himself against a trunk, the bark rough under his palm, and stood there a second, catching his breath before he kept going.
"Perona!" He called, louder this time, and he heard something in his own voice he didn't like.
Still nothing. Just the wind somewhere up in branches he couldn't see the tops of, and something small moving through leaves off to one side that he didn't let himself think about.
He made himself stop. Standing still and getting his bearings had to be better than crashing through the dark in a direction he wasn't sure of, even if every instinct in him wanted to keep moving, wanted to do something instead of just standing there with his heart going harder than he wanted to admit. He listened instead - really listened, past his own breathing and the blood rushing through his ears. Nothing but wind and leaves and the woods settling in around him like they didn't care whether he found his way back or not. Part of him wondered, in a distant, detached way, what it would be like if he didn't return. If he never found the way back. If something happened out here and that was it.
The thought slid into his head, and he immediately shoved it aside. Not worth thinking about now. Vietnam would probably be the same way - one wrong turn, one bad day, and it would be over. He wasn't scared of that. Not really. If it happened, it happened. And if Mihawk had managed in Korea, Zoro would manage Vietnam just fine.
He turned around again, trying to backtrack. Or what he thought was backtrack. Nothing looked familiar. The twisted pine he thought he remembered was nowhere in sight. He was walking in circles. The realization sat heavy in his gut.
"Goddammit, Perona," he muttered under his breath, pushing through another patch of brush. Thorns snagged his shirt. His pulse was thudding in his ears. Not scared, he told himself. Just pissed off. Pissed that she'd run ahead, pissed that he'd let her drag him out here in the first place. Another rustle to his left made him freeze, muscles tense, waiting for something to come charging out. Nothing came.
But the feeling wouldn't leave him - the skin-crawling sense that he was being watched or that he was walking deeper into the woods instead of towards the edge. His breathing was getting ragged. He hated how small it made him feel. He was eighteen, almost nineteen. He was going to go to war, and here he was nearly panicking because he couldn't find his sister in some stupid patch of pines.
"Zoro! I found something!" Perona's voice cut through the dark from somewhere on his right. He pushed towards the sound, branches slapping at his shoulders, his mood getting darker with every step. How could she be so calm after making him worry like this?
"Why the fuck did you just run off like that?" He snapped before he had even reached her.
"I didn't," she yelled back. "You just wandered off again, you moron."
When he finally broke into the small clearing, she was standing in front of an old cabin. Or something that might've once been a cabin. It stood nestled between the trees. Its wooden walls had gone soft with rot, the roof sagged heavily in the middle, and most of the windows were broken or boarded up with weathered planks. Vines and spiders had taken over the building, pulling the structure back into the earth.
"We're not going in there." He just wanted to return home, maybe take a shower, and crawl into his bed.
But she was already climbing the creaky steps, flashlight beam dancing across the front porch. "It'll only take a minute. Don't be such a baby."
Perona pushed at the door. It groaned, swinging open with a cloud of dust. She didn't hesitate as she stepped inside, her flashlight beam barely illuminating the dark room. Zoro came in behind her, ducking under the low frame. He didn't want to indulge her anymore. But he also wasn't about to let her go inside alone. The smell hit him first - wet wood, mildew, something faintly mineral underneath that he didn't try to place.
There wasn't much to see. A table, tipped on its side, one leg snapped off somewhere along the way, resting at an angle against the far wall. Some kind of rusted-out stove in the corner, pipe collapsed and half-swallowed by a drift of leaves that had blown in through gaps where the wall boards had warped apart. More leaves scattered across the floor, brittle and gray, settled into corners like they'd always belonged there. A few years' worth, maybe more.
It was already full dark outside, and what little moonlight made it through the broken windows was weak and gray. The cabin felt smaller on the inside than it looked from the outside. Perona crouched by the table, running her flashlight beam along the floorboards, poking at something with the toe of her boot that turned out to be nothing, just a warped knot in the wood.
"Looks like nobody's been here in years."
"No shit."
Zoro's mood was getting worse by the second. The musty smell was crawling down his throat. The darkness pressed in from the corners of the room. He could feel the weight of the woods outside, the way they'd already turned him around once tonight. Enough was enough.
"See? It's not even that creepy," Perona said, voice echoing slightly. "This is exactly the kind of thing-"
"Perona. We're done." His voice came out gruff. He stepped forwards and grabbed her wrist. "We're going back to the car. Now."
"Zoro-"
"I don't care. We're going back to the car." He grabbed her arm and yanked her towards the door. "Now."
Her foot caught on something solid on the floor. She stumbled hard, yanking her wrist free as she pitched forwards with a startled yelp. The flashlight flew from her hand and clattered across the dusty floorboards, spinning wildly and casting crazy shadows across the walls.
"Perona." He was crouched next to her before he'd finished saying her name, all the irritation gone out of him at once, replaced by something faster and more urgent. "You okay?"
"I'm fine, I just-" She was already pushing herself up on one arm, wincing slightly. "My foot caught on something. I don't know, a root, or-"
"Hang on." Zoro grabbed the flashlight from the ground, shining it towards the space where she had tripped.
It landed on bones.
A skeletal arm extended across the floor, fingers curled like they'd been reaching for something. The rest of the body was slumped against the wall - ribs collapsed inwards, spine curved, skull tilted at an unnatural angle. What was left of clothing hung in rotted scraps around the bones. A faded coat, maybe once dark, now stained and eaten away by time and insects.
Neither of them moved.
"Zoro." Perona's voice had gone very quiet, none of the excitement left in it, just something flat and stunned, like he hadn't heard from her all night. "Zoro, that's-"
"Yeah." His own voice came out rough, weaker than he meant it to. He didn't move the flashlight beam away, couldn't quite make himself, even though every part of him wanted to look somewhere else, anywhere else. "Yeah, I see it."
The musty smell of old death was stronger now that they were closer. It mixed with the mildew and dust until he could taste it. Seeing it up close like this made something twist hard in his chest. Not fear exactly. Just a heavy, ugly awareness. This could be him one day. Some random cabin or jungle or muddy field. Bones left behind for someone else to find. He shoved the thought down immediately, the same way he always did.
"That's a person," Perona said, like she needed to say it out loud to believe it.
"Yeah."
"That's an actual person. A body. Out here." She looked up at him, and in the beam of his flashlight, her face had gone pale, eyes wide in a way that wasn't the excited-eager look she'd been wearing all night over raccoon tracks and creek bends. This was something else. "How long do you think-"
"I don't know." He didn't want to guess. Didn't want to think about how long something had to lie in the dirt to end up looking like that, stripped down to bone and rotted fabric, forgotten enough that a cabin had fallen down around it and nobody had ever come looking.
The walk back through the woods was quieter this time, the earlier tension between them swallowed up by the weight of what they'd found. Perona kept glancing over her shoulder, like she expected the skeleton to crawl out of the cabin after them. Her usual bright energy had dimmed, replaced by something quieter and unsettled. Zoro didn't say a word. Just followed behind her, his boots crushing dead leaves underfoot, his mind racing too fast to pay attention to his surroundings.
By the time the treeline broke and the motel's pink sign came back into view, buzzing over the empty lot same as before, his legs ached in a way that had nothing to do with the distance they had walked tonight.
The Chevy was where they'd left it, and beyond it, near the front office, a pay phone stood under a flickering bulb, bolted to a post with a little metal shelf underneath for a phone book that had long since been torn out or stolen. Perona was already moving towards it before Zoro had finished catching his breath.
"We need a dime," she said.
"I don't have a dime."
"Check your pockets."
He checked. Came up with lint and a nickel and, eventually, buried at the bottom of his jacket pocket, a dime he didn't remember having. He handed it over without a word, and Perona fed it into the slot with hands that weren't quite steady, dialing the operator with the receiver pressed hard against her ear.
"Yes, I need to report- " Perona's voice cracked slightly and she pushed through it. "I need to report finding a body. Human remains. In the woods behind the Flamingo Motel, off the county road, there's an old cabin-"
Zoro couldn't hear the other end, just the tinny rasp of a voice through the receiver, flat and unhurried in a way that made his jaw tighten before Perona had even finished explaining.
"No, I'm not- this isn't a joke, I'm telling you there's a skeleton, we found it, my foot caught on it-"
More rasping from the other end. Perona's face had gone from pale and shaken to something tighter, more frustrated, her grip on the receiver white-knuckled.
"I'm not a kid prank calling you, sir, I'm telling you what we found-"
Zoro leaned in close enough to catch a few words this time - something about how many calls they got a week about ghosts and lights in the woods, about kids with nothing better to do on a Saturday night, about how they didn't have manpower to go chasing every story some teenager phoned in after dark.
"It's not a story." Perona's voice had gone hard now, all the tremor burned out of it, replaced by something closer to fury. "There is an actual dead body out there. I'm not making this up."
The voice on the other end said something short, dismissive, and then there was a click, and Perona stood there for a second with the dial tone humming against her ear before she pulled the receiver away and stared at it like it had personally betrayed her.
"He hung up."
"What'd he say?"
"He said-" She exhaled hard through her nose, jamming the receiver back onto its hook harder than it needed. "He said not to prank call the police station again or my parents would be hearing about it." She bit her lip, her fingers twisting around the flashlight. "We have to try again. Or go to the station in person."
Zoro rubbed his face. The last thing he wanted was to spend the rest of the night dealing with cops. But she was right. They couldn't just leave it. "Fine. But we're not doing it from here."
Perona nodded, but her eyes were still wide, her mind clearly still back in that cabin. Zoro turned towards the Chevy, but something caught his eye. The motel office. The windows were open, the blinds slightly parted, and there was a light on inside. He frowned. Hadn't that been dark when they'd parked?
He squinted, but the angle was wrong, the glow from the neon sign casting everything in a pink haze. Maybe it had been on the whole time. Maybe he just hadn't noticed.
Perona tugged his sleeve. "Come on. Let's get out of here."
Zoro hesitated, his gaze still on the office. For a second, he thought he saw movement - a shadow shifting behind the blinds. But then it was gone. He shook his head. Probably just the wind. Or his imagination, still amped up from the cabin.
"Yeah," he muttered, turning away. "Let's go."
They climbed into the Chevy, the vinyl seats creaking under them. Perona fumbled with the keys, her hands shaking slightly as she turned the ignition. The engine sputtered to life, and Zoro exhaled, the tension in his shoulders easing just a fraction.
As they pulled out of the lot, the motel's office loomed in the rearview mirror. The light was still on. The blinds still slightly parted. And for a second, Zoro could've sworn he saw a face in the window.
But then they were on the road, the trees swallowing the motel behind them, and he told himself it was nothing. Just the dark playing tricks. Just his mind filling in the gaps where the light didn't reach.
Perona's voice cut through his thoughts, quiet but steady. "We'll go to the station tomorrow."
Zoro grunted in agreement, his eyes on the road ahead. Tomorrow. They'd deal with it tomorrow.
The drive home was quiet. Perona sat in the driver's seat, hands tight on the wheel, staring straight ahead at the dark road. The radio stayed off. The only sounds were the hum of the engine and the occasional crunch of gravel under the tires.
Zoro exhaled sharply through his nose. Fuck. He hated this. Hated the way the night had gone to hell, hated the way she was sitting there like she'd seen something that had actually scared her for once. He cleared his throat, the sound rough in the quiet car. "So, uh. Think we'll make the news tomorrow?"
Perona didn't look at him. "What?"
"You know." He shrugged, trying to force a grin. "Local teens discover mysterious remains. More at eleven."
She shot him a look, but there was no smile. Just a raised eyebrow. "That's not funny."
"It's a little funny."
"It's not."
Zoro rolled his eyes, but he didn't let it drop. "Come on. You have to admit, it's kinda ironic. We go looking for ghosts and find a real dead guy."
Perona groaned, but the corner of her mouth twitched. Just a little. "You're awful."
"And yet, you're laughing."
She huffed, but the tension in her shoulders eased just a fraction. "I'm not laughing."
"You're smirking."
She shoved his arm, but there was no real force behind it. "Shut up."
Zoro grinned, the weight in his chest lifting slightly.
The house was dark except for the porch light and one window still lit downstairs. Which meant Mihawk might still be awake. Perona pulled into the driveway and cut the engine, and Zoro was out of the car before she'd even gotten her seatbelt off, already moving fast towards the front door.
"Zoro, wait-"
He didn't wait. He pushed through the front door and Mihawk was right there, sitting in the front room with a book open on his knee, still awake despite the late hour. Immediately, something in Zoro's chest went cold and tight the second he saw him.
"Welcome home," Mihawk said, voice low and even. There was a question in it, but Zoro wasn't in the mood to answer.
He didn't stop moving. Didn't say anything. He left Perona standing there alone in the living room, caught between him and their father. He heard her soft "Hey dad..." as he stomped up the stairs, but he didn't turn around. His room was at the end of the hallway. He shoved the door open, stepped inside, and slammed it behind him hard enough that the frame rattled. The sound echoed through the house.
Zoro sat down on the edge of his bed, jaw tight, the good mood from the car gone like it had never been there at all, burned off the second he'd walked through that door and seen Mihawk sitting there with his book like nothing in the world was wrong. He put his head in his hands and stayed like that a while, listening to the murmur of voices downstairs he couldn't make out, wondering distantly if Perona would tell Mihawk about the body in the woods, if that was a story that even mattered now compared to everything else sitting unsaid in this house.
He didn't go back down. He stayed where he was, alone, the anger sitting heavy and familiar in his chest, until eventually it dulled enough to let him sleep.