#lawzo

Zoro doesn't think too hard about family all things considered. His village is small enough that everyone in town is related one way or another. The uncles teach him how to fish, the aunties ask him to fetch errands, and the young kids are always being put in his care for one reason or another. It's just how the village is. Sure, other kids go home at the end of the day to do their actual chores for their actual parents but Zoro doesn't feel shut out as an orphan living in the dojo.

Koushirou-sensei is kind even if his views on women are stupid. Zoro knows if Sensei kicks him out he can walk down the main street and someone will call him over thinking he's lost and invite him to join them for dinner.

It's nice. Quaint.

The one person he does have is his Baachan. His grandma on his father's side is his last living relative on the island. She's younger than most other obaasan's and ojiisan's in the village. She claims to be one of the first settlers, she tells him with a soft voice one spring while he's pulling weeds. She takes care of the village shrine. She could make Zoro apprentice to take care of the shrine when his father died and his mother passed from illness. She doesn't. She asks him what he wants to do, already looking at his training swords. She sends him back to the dojo with a smile every time he visits.

Zoro visits her one last time before leaving the island, off to find stronger opponents and really start his journey to be the world's strongest swordsman. She sits with him over tea as they've done countless times. She tuts over his clothes and supplies, filling him with tea and snacks before he goes. She's surely slipped something into his pack when he wasn't looking.

Baachan takes his hands. His are already outgrowing hers, small and dainty but strong and calloused from work all the same.

"Zoro," she says, low as if the stirring of the leaves could take her voice away, "I would like to ask a favor of you." For his Baachan, Zoro would do most anything, it's barely worth the question. He nods anyway. "On your travels, if you ever find yourself on an island named Ringo, it's a small place to the north, I need you to do something for me. I need you to find the graveyard. An honorable place for swordsmen to lay to rest. There will be a monument for a family grave. It will say Shimotsuki and there will be a book in that monument. I ask that you find that book, and you add to it our family tree. You remember your mother's name and your father's? Mine and your grandfather's? My name will be there. Don't forget yourself as well, darling. And anyone you gain along the way." She giggles at the flush staining his cheeks.

Zoro doesn't think much of it honestly. It's such vague directions. But he remembers. Ringo. Keeps an ear out at each new island Nami identifies.

It isn't until he's a fugitive running around Wano, dragging Law behind him because he nearly bowled the man over chasing down some thief that stole Shusui.