Be warned, Perona has the power to make people hate themselves and she's not shy about using it.

Zoro tries to focus, but his body doesn't want to move. He cracks his eyes open all he can see is the glare of sunlight off clouds. He has been fading in and out of consciousness for two, maybe three, days now.

His memories of that time consist of wind whistling past and half-conscious views of endless blue, clouds, or stars. He has no control over his movement, so all he can do in between blackouts is seethe about what was happening behind him and wonder when, or even if, he is going to land.

He's getting very thirsty.

Finally, he wakes up to the feeling of striking the ground, but with less force then expected given how far he has flown. Not even hard enough to break through a brick wall.

He should get up now that he has finally been released from that bubble.

He must drift off again though because the he is woken up by a high pitched shriek, "Th…this guy's one of Straw Hat's crew!"

That sounds like trouble; he tries to shift to prepare to defend himself and manages to turn his head toward the sound. He opens his eyes in time to glimpse a silhouette gliding away. He needs to move.

This time he comes to with his arms pulled over his head and the feeling of fingers digging into his wrists. He hears boots scraping on the dirt and curses mixed with noises of frustration, "Why are you so stupidly heavy! This is ridiculous!"

He tries to ask her what the hell she's doing and pull his hands free, but only manages a groan and enough of a twitch to get the attention of the woman tugging on his arms, "Hey, if you're awake stop lying there like a lump and move your feet unless you want to stay out in the woods overnight."

That didn't sounds so bad. Not like he'd never slept outside before.

She growls and drops his arms walking around to his side. He cracks his eyes open and sure enough it's the pink haired woman with the ghost powers from Thriller Bark. Perona.

She looks down at him in irritation "You have your shadow. What did you horrible people do to Moria?" She kicks at his side, he can't tell if she was trying to hurt him or not.

His mind flashes back to the events that happened at Thriller Bark, how it ended with Kuma, then Sabaody, and Kuma again. Somewhere in there he loses track of her question and closes his eyes again.

He hears a 'che' of offence and a slight scuff as she crouches down, then a quiet 'clack' as she pokes at his swords. He tries to growl at her, but the sound comes out quieter then he intends and she ignores him.

There is a huff of effort as she tries to shift Shusui without any success, "Here's the problem. What is this thing even made of."

He feels a hand pushing at his haramaki and then her hands are loosening his sword belt. He lifts his hand enough to wrap it around a bony wrist, prompting a startled squeak.

"No," he manages to get out; trying for as much menace as possible despite the fact he can barely move right now.

In response she widens and then narrows her weirdly round flat eyes. A maniacal giggle starts up on his other side. That's not a good sound.

A feeling of ice cold passes through him and he's hit with a wave of despair that snaps his will to fight and takes his consciousness with it.

He dreams of his crewmates screaming in anger and panic as he lays there unable to move. His mind repeats over and over the things that happened in front of him that he couldn't prevent and the things that could have happened after he got tossed away.

When Zoro wakes up again he's in a narrow bed with bandages wrapped around him. He shifts around, unfamiliar knots, not as tidy as Chopper's work.

He hears a chair shift and the clack of hard soled shoes, "Cleaning up your wounds was so not cute," a familiar voice sniffs, "You owe me."

Zoro tenses and tries to jerk into a sitting position at the reminder of who else is here. He only gets about half way before his stomach muscles spasm and he ends up propping himself halfway up with an elbow.

They're in a room no bigger than a storage closet. She's between him and a door that takes up most of one wall. Her feet are resting on the ground so she's probably physically here, rather than in her ghost form. She seems irritated (though he doesn't see how he's to blame) but not hostile.

He braces himself for the pain and swings his legs around so he can drop them to the floor and lever himself up into a sitting position.

"I didn't ask you to do that, I would have been fine," ignoring Perona's indignant snort, he looks around.

He scowls at her, "Where are my swords?"

She crosses her arms, "You can't even walk. What do you need swords for?"

So she's not going to be any help. Zoro places his feet and stands, focusing on keeping his balance well enough to stay upright.

The pink haired woman looks surprised and a little worried, "What are you doing? Lay back down!"

He's heard that line so often it's almost comforting, as if things are proceeding as they should. Better people then her have tried to give him that order though, "I'm going to find my swords and get back to my crew."

She is standing between him and the door, so he starts moving toward her focusing on keeping his gait deliberate rather than shuffling.

"Don't ignore me! I said lay down!" Perona demands, narrowing her eyes. One of her goofy looking negative hollows rears up over her shoulder. He makes it a couple more steps before it swoops toward him with a terrifying giggle.

He's wounded, weak. He doesn't know where he is, where they are. It's probably already too late. He can't help them. Couldn't help them. They would have been better off if he hadn't been there. "I should be reborn as pond scum."

He feels the tile of the floor pressing into the side of his face as he slips into unconsciousness again.

He wakes up in the bed again. The ghost woman isn't around.

In his sleep he's clenched his fists so tightly that it takes a few tries, flexing his fingers back and forth, before he can open his hands all the way.

He sits up slowly, but he's able to swing his feet down to the floor without any embarrassing pauses this time. His head feels like crap though. He rubs his temples then gets up and starts slowly walking toward the door.

He comes out into what appears to be a large kitchen. Did she stick him in a pantry? He circles the room looking for the way out. There's a lot of clutter, only one stove and a nearby table seem to have seen any use recently.

There's a sink with a water pump, he levers it a few times until water starts coming out and then drinks greedily directly from the stream.

After circling a couple times he finally finds a door that leads out to a big room with walls made of stone blocks and floor to ceiling windows on one side. There's a long table surrounded by chairs. He's in a castle?

There doesn't seem to be anyone else around. Again, though the main part of the room looks relatively clean, the tapestries of the walls are faded and there is dust in corners and the ceiling. There are no more than a few people here. They don't want to live in filth, but they aren't trying to maintain an entire castle on their own.

Where should he look first?

"What are you doing?" Perona glides down from an upper level and hovers a few feet away from him in her ghost form. She's looking at him like he's an idiot.

Zoro has no intention of continuing to lie around in a strange place while who knows what is happening to everyone else, "Looking for my swords. Where are they?"

She gets irritated, "You landed a good half mile away by the way. It was a huge pain dragging you back here. You should be grateful I did that much." She pauses as if expecting something from him.

He has a vague memory of the ghost witch messing with his sword belt and feels a spike of worry, quickly smothered by anger. He clenches his fists, "You left them lying out there?"

She gives a disinterested shrug in response, "It was too troublesome to bring them back."

It's infuriating that she is speaking of his most prized possessions as if they mean nothing, "Bullshit, you're afraid of letting me have them."

"Horohorohoro," she laughs at him, then reaches forward and jabs her hand at his eyes. He automatically reaches up to block, but his hand passes right through her arm and she completes her swing passing her hand through his face.

"We can't touch each other like this," she explains looking smug, then she singsongs, "~buuut I have these," little ball shaped hollows start to appear around her. She sends one out into the middle of the big room and it explodes releasing at shock wave that rattles the room, shaking copious amounts of dust from the ceiling.

So while she's in ghost form, she can hit him and he can't hit back. Zoro counters, "Your real body is around here somewhere, you can't stay locked up in a closet somewhere forever, ghost girl."

"Horohorohoro," One of her negative hollows peeks over her shoulder and then it swoops in and starts to circle around him, its stupid smiling face and lolling tongue belying how dangerous it is. Zoro resists the urge to turn and keep it in sight, it's not like he could block it anyway.

Perona leans forward in the air, "Nope, I had to come out here in person so I could bandage you up," she adds a scolding, "You really should be more grateful about that."

Zoro crosses his arms, "Last time I saw you, you were doing your best to help your boss steal my crew's shadows. Why'd you bother?"

She leans forward in the air, the ghost circles around to hover next to her again, "What happened to Moria?"

He can do this. He needs to find his swords, get off this island, and find his crew. He just needs to hold onto that.

Well, she did ask, "Last I saw your boss, he had been beaten unconscious by my captain. That bastard shouldn't have picked a fight with - " The ghost sweeps forward and strikes his chest and suddenly the difficulty of just existing is unbearable.

Why can't he keep his mouth shut? He can't defend himself against her. He's weak. He should just give up and give her whatever she wants. "I should crawl on the ground and eat dirt."

The feeling of utter self-hatred starts to fade. He opens his eyes to see his own knees. He has collapsed with his forehead to the floor and his hands fisted above his head.

He slowly unclenches his fists and sits back on his heels. Ok, so bracing didn't work at all.

Perona is still floating a few feet away, hands on her hips, looking pleased with herself. Pissing her off is counterproductive, he should be more careful.

He clenches his jaw. It's disturbing that he doesn't know how much of that previous thought is due to her attack. He takes a couple deep breaths and tries to organize his thoughts.

He briefly contemplates weather he should start searching the castle until he finds her actual body. But no, he would have to take her by surprise and kill her without warning or she could use her ghosts to incapacitate and kill him. The idea leaves a sour taste in his mouth. He would rather just not have to deal with her anymore.

He doesn't know how to counter her power at the moment.

He takes hope from the fact that Usopp had been able to resist her ability somehow. The sniper had said he's 'always negative.' Zoro hadn't really understood what he meant at the time and hadn't given it much thought. There were too many other things going on and he had been satisfied with the knowledge that his crewmate had the situation under control.

He hopes briefly that it's not actually the case that Usopp feels like that all the time, especially not with such intensity. The sniper is always doing things, making useful stuff and spectacular messes with equal enthusiasm. He doesn't lie around moaning all day. He does his worrying on the go. Zoro needs to learn to do whatever Usopp is doing if he's going to defend himself.

He's never had to train this sort of thing. He can already tell it's going to be a pain in the ass.

Also, he needs to find out more about his situation.

While he's thinking all this Perona has started complaining, mostly to herself, "I need to get out of here and make sure Moria is okay. I've been here for weeks by myself. No servants. No pets. No one to comfort me. No one to clean or cook. I've been living off canned food. It's disgusting."

She finally notices that Zoro's breathing has evened out and realizes that the swordsman is no longer recovering and is simply ignoring her. Her annoyance ratchets up even more, "Of course, when someone does show up it would have to be you, not someone who's actually useful or least decent company."

Zoro huffs, stands up and looks her in the eye, "Do you actually have any kind of plan or were just sitting around hoping someone else would come along that you could bully into solving your problems for you?"

The pink menace leans back putting her hands on her hips, "I'd like to see you do any better. This entire island is a disaster area. There's nobody here, just a bunch of ruins and empty fields. Unless you know how to build a ship from scratch, we're stuck here."

"I'll build a raft from logs and paddle from here if I have to."

"Do you even know how to do that?"

"I'll figure something out, you give up too easily," he turns and walks back toward the kitchen. He'll see if he can find anything useful and then head out.

He goes back into the pantry. She probably left him in here because it was one of the few clean areas in the castle that didn't involve going up stairs. He grabs an empty flour sack from a pile lying in the corner. He stuffs some packages of dried fruit and meat off the shelf.

Whoever is using this place hasn't been gone more than a few weeks. It's hard to say how they will react when they come back, another reason not hang around here. It all has the potential to be way too troublesome.

He goes back out into the main kitchen area. Perona is floating there watching. He digs around in the drawers around the stove till he finds some matches.

She laughs, "Going to go play outside?" when he ignores her, she yawns, "Ok, fine. I'll come back and check on you in a few hours and you can show me all the brilliant progress you've made. The place where you landed was directly east of the front stairs."

She floats off and he heads back to the dining room. After wandering around a bit, he finds a wide hallway that leads past several large rooms, all filled with dust and decaying furniture. At the end is a wide pair of double doors. He pushes open a smaller door built into the one of the large doors and finds himself at the top of a wide set of steps overlooking a deteriorating courtyard and a broad road, partially turned to mud, leading away between some trees.

The sky is overcast, but it seems to be late afternoon. He remembers there being trees around so he decides to head off into the woods.

A few hours later he is standing in the square of a destroyed village. He's just finished inspecting a large cross that seems to be carved out of the remains of what must have been a massive tree. The cross beam is at least twenty five feet wide and it's of one piece with the center post. The memorial melds into a sprawl of fat twisting roots. The carved part is the only unmarred surface in these ruins, made after the fighting had ended.

There are human bones piled here and there all through the ruins, remnants of a battle where no one was left to bury the dead.

Someone has rifled through the corpses though, there are bits of armor missing, and sheathes without any weapons in sight.

As he's contemplating what this could mean when he's seen no sign of living people anywhere around, one of Perona's ghosts comes gliding down over the rooftops and waggles back and forth in front of him. It's probably trying tell him off, but the effort is undercut by the lolling tongue.

It circles him a few times then heads off at an angle to his previous path. When he doesn't follow, the ghost stops and waggles some more. Zoro picks a different street and starts walking again.

'Neg-a-tive, Neg-a-tive,' the ghost's chanting starts up following him at a little faster than a walking pace. The threat is clear, turn around and follow or the ghost is going to strike him.

He grits his teeth and keeps walking. He's not going to be herded like a sheep.

The crew dealt with impossible seeming situations all the time. Why should that feeling of despair be harder to overcome then looking almost certain death in the face? It makes no sense.

It's right behind him now.

He's about to be struck with the certainty that all his life's ambitions are not only ashes, but also garbage. He lacks any means the block the attack.

Is there some way to at least roll with the blow?

As the ghost draws near, he drops down to sit cross legged on the ground, back straight, and elbows braced on his knees. The hollow passes over his head. He looks up and draws in a deliberate breath as the ghost circles around. He refuses to flinch as it makes another dive for his chest.

It will pass.

He should just let himself be herded, since he's too dumb to find his way on his own. Even his crewmates agree there is something wrong with him. Even Chopper. He's never going to find a counter because he deserves to feel this way. He's worthless. "I should be reborn as tree moss."

This time when his vision clears, he finds that he's still sitting up, though he's hunched over as if he had absorbed an actual blow to the chest. He straightens up, focuses on his breathing, and clears his head.

It's difficult at first, there is a strong urge to fall over on his back and lay there like a dead bug, but he leans on habit. This isn't the first time he's had trouble meditating, though it's usually anger, not despair, sapping his resolve to continue.

These attacks go beyond causing doubt in his ability to win, something he's faced before and pushed through. Better to die then live as a coward.

This is like he doesn't even have the right to try. As though his insistence is nothing more than an embarrassment and a burden. And that is new.

His mind flashes back to Water 7 and the fight between Usopp and Luffy after Franky's gang had beaten Usopp up and stolen the crew's cash. Usopp accused the rest of them of pitying him. He had said that the crew would eventually see him as a burden and abandon him.

At the time, Zoro had barely understood what Usopp was going on about. Their lives were in one another's' hands constantly. What kind of morons would trust to that extent out of pity? How could Usopp accuse Luffy, of all people, of not valuing his crew?

The worst part had been that Usopp had behaved as if he had no responsibility to the rest of them after everything they had all been through together. As if it did not matter weather one of them stayed or left.

Zoro had never asked why he said those things. He had been glad to put the incident behind them. Usopp had not truly abandoned them and he had apologized for making them think he would do so.

But this was the answer. Whatever defense Usopp had against the negativity that was a part of him, it had crumbled that day in the face of everything that had happened and the emptied words had come pouring out of him. "I'm nothing more than a baggage boy who can't hold onto the cash."

Zoro takes a deep breath and lets it slowly out through his nose. To his mind a person's actions were what mattered, not the excuses they made for why. But it was like there had been a fight going on that he had not even been aware of till now.

This is all giving him a headache.

What use can he even make from this realization? He snorts to himself; don't make decisions while under the influence of negative ghosts. Very helpful.

The witch's irritating laugh comes drifting down from overhead, "So, satisfied that this whole place is a lost cause?" She glides down and hovers in front of him.

Zoro stands up and crosses his arms, "I'm not going back to the castle till I get my swords back."

Perona looks incredulous, "You're still on about that? You aren't even remotely in the right area. There's some kind of huge animals out here. I've seen them lurking around. If you sleep out here, you'll get attacked and probably die!"

He keeps his tone as contemptuous as possible, "So, what's it to you? I told you everything I know about Moria. I didn't lie." He'd rather be without her help if her ghosts go with her. The physical danger of wild animals would be far easier to deal with.

Her already huge eyes widen in outrage at his tone, he doesn't have time to brace himself this time before the ghost hits him.

This island contains threats he's probably too injured to handle. Is he so scared of Perona's attacks he would rather get killed then risk them? Worthless, backwards pride. "I deserve this."

He hears her giggling somewhere over his head, "Ok, I feel better now." She continues with sarcastic sweetness, "I'll see you later Zo~ro."

He is lying flat on the ground, his front and the side of his face pressed into the gritty, slightly damp earth. It takes him a few minutes after coming back from his depressive blackout to work up the will to sit up this time. Maybe it was because the attacks were so close together, "Che, excuses."

He pushes himself up yet again and falls back onto his heels. The pink witch and her ghosts are gone. That had been his goal. He catches himself worrying weather cowardice motivated the desire to drive her off. He reminds himself there's no benefit to fighting her. His Goal is to find his swords and get back to the crew.

He picks at his bandages for a few minutes. They're at least a couple days old and looking kind of dirty. He decides to unwrap his arms. He doesn't really have any deep external damage there. He decides to leave the ones around his chest for now, since it kind of feels like some of his ribs are cracked and his shoulders might be a little burned.

Despite what Chopper says, he doesn't actually want to puncture his lungs or get an infection. There's no one here he trusts to treat him if something happens.

He wonders where Perona found a shirt that fits him, he just now noticed it isn't the one he was wearing before.

He gets up and dusts himself off again. He's glad there's no one around to see that he has bruises on his knees and elbows from falling down so much today.

There are some trees in the distance, so he heads that way.

By nightfall Zoro's found his way back to the woods. He spots a sturdy tree and climbs up to settle his back against the trunk. His stomach grumbles and he pulls a couple of pieces of dried meat and fruit out to gnaw on. He should pace himself, he only knows how to identify a few obvious edible plants, like blackberries, and he hasn't seen any of them around here.

He dozes off only to be woken in the middle of the night by the distinctive sounds of weapons clashing and animals howling.

He drops out of the tree to investigate.

There's red light coming from the heavy cloud cover, as if reflected from the light of fires on the ground. How can that be when there are no people here?

Following the sounds, he quickly comes to a clearing. There are hunched, long faced shadows moving around, not human, but he can see glints of light off of armor and weapons as they clash. Even more surprising is that, though they aren't particularly skilled by his reckoning, there is never the less technique to their attacks.

As he watches, one of the larger creatures is cut down and the vanquished group turns and flees the scene.

The victor lifts his weapon and howls in triumph. Sandai Kitetsu flashes in the low light, blood still dripping from the blade.

Zoro grins as he charges forward and clocks the first creature he comes across in the jaw hard enough to make it crack. He snatches the saber clutched in its oversized hand and immediately strikes out at anything that gets between him and the creature currently holding his blade.

Finally, something straight forward to deal with.

Disappointingly, it doesn't take most of the creatures long to cringe back from the fight. Once the first half dozen have gone down, the rest back off forming a loose circle around their leader.

The creature's fighting style isn't even fully suited to the katana he is using. The fight should be easy. Embarrassingly, Zoro has allowed himself to get spoiled with blades that don't break as soon as he presses on them a little too hard.

In his enthusiasm for finally having an enemy he can deal with, he strikes too hard and, after only a few blows, the poorly tended blade in his hand snaps allowing Sandai Kitetsu to slide off the broken stub and take a slice out of his free arm. He can sense the blade's smugness from here.

But the creature has left itself wide open. It's only a matter of stepping in and using the broken saber's handle to deliver a shattering blow to his enemy's face and another to its temple and the creature is slumping to the ground at his feet.

He pulls the cursed blade from the fallen figure and shakes his own blood from the blade. He clenches his hand around the hilt, even in this low light he can tell the sword is covered in filth.

That woman left his blades sitting in a hole in the ground as if they were garbage to be picked up by whatever wandering strays happened by.

He places his foot on the fallen creature's back, blade out at his side, staring down the other hunched figures. It doesn't take long for them to slink away, leaving their fallen leader behind them.

He bends down and pulls out his sword's saya from a worn belt around his opponent's waist. It's not cracked, but he can't tell if any other damage has been done in this light.

His arm is still bleeding. After squeezing some blood out of the wound to try and reduce the amount of dirt in it, he tears off a strip off the bottom of the shirt and wraps it around the cut.

He grins to himself. Everyone is always giving him a hard time about being lost, but somehow he ends up in the right place anyway. It hardly matters where he originally landed if his blades aren't there anymore.

It's only matter of time before he finds Wado Ichimonji and Shusui and reclaims them from whatever garbage has laid hands on them. After that, somewhere in this wreckage there is something he can use as a boat.

He is not going to just sit around and wait for things to work themselves out.

As he's thinking along these lines, he leaves the clearing and heads back into the trees. He somewhat awkwardly pulls himself one armed into another tree and gets himself against the trunk. He uses another scrap of shirt to wipe the worst of the filth of Sandai Kitetsu, before sheathing it. He will need to clean it better when he can see.

He can feel the blade sulking, though from its mistreatment or being unable to end Zoro's life he can't tell. He settles back against the tree to doze. It doesn't matter, he knows what he needs to do and the recalcitrant blade is the least of his concerns.

So, I'm glad to have finally finished another story. It's been a very long year, but I was determined to keep trying to write at least a little bit.
Thank you for reading! I would love to hear what you think :)