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The grove spread across the hillside like spilled sunlight. Rows upon rows of mikan trees curved with the land, leaves rustling softly beneath the sea wind drifting in from the cliffs below. In spring, the blossoms perfumed the entire island sweet and sharp. In summer, the branches grew heavy enough to bow. By autumn, the fruit glowed gold against dark green leaves like lanterns.
It was ridiculous, honestly. If someone had told the (former) Pirate Hunter and one of the Pirate King’s wings, Roronoa Zoro of the Straw Hat crew, that this would become part of his life, he would have cut them down where they stood.
Now he stood barefoot in dirt before dawn with a basket looped over one arm and pruning shears in hand. And he liked it. The old bastard had ruined him, though it had not taken much. Not when it really mattered to Zoro.
Zoro crouched near the roots of one of the younger trees, age settling into him more like weather than weakness, pressed rough fingers into the soil before grunting in approval. Needed more water tomorrow. Not today. The rain last week was still sitting deep enough under the surface.
He could hear the firm voice of his former teacher, rival, and eventual sparring partner behind him.
“Don’t drown it.”
That had been years ago. Decades, actually.
Back then, Kuraigana had still smelled like damp stone and old blood after the war. Perona had floated around the castle screeching about ghosts and dust while Mihawk wandered the grounds with a basket under one arm like some retired old man pretending he hadn’t once crossed the Grand Line hunting Marines for entertainment.
Zoro remembered staring at him from the broken staircase between bouts with the Humandrills. Mihawk, once little more than a goal to him, proved more complex than Zoro had assumed. When he wasn’t fighting, the warlord was cooking or playing somber music, but his favorite hobby was gardening.
At the time, Mihawk had been kneeling in the dirt beside a row of herbs, black coat discarded over a nearby fence post, wide-brimmed hat shadowing his face. The tiny knife in his hand moved with absurd precision as he trimmed dead leaves from a stem no thicker than a thread.
Zoro had watched for nearly ten minutes before finally asking: “What the hell are you doing?”
Mihawk hadn’t looked up. “Maintaining it.”
“As opposed to?”
“Letting it die.”
That was the entire conversation.
Three days later, Mihawk shoved another pair of shears into Zoro’s chest without explanation. After that, Zoro just…learned. Not formally. Mihawk never taught like that. But Zoro watched how the older and wiser man rotated crops, how he cut at angles so branches healed and cleaned, how he checked roots before leaves, and how patience mattered more than force. Perhaps those were the lessons that bettered Zoro in those two years more than any sparring match. It was strangely close to swordsmanship. Or maybe swordsmanship had always been strangely close to farming. If anything, Zoro took on a new habit that perhaps facilitated and grounded something else that had been growing but never dared to see the light of day.
Either way, the habits stuck. And at least one person had been grateful for those new skills back then, when his experience amounted to maintaining a few stubborn trees aboard the Sunny instead of an entire grove.
Now at sixty, Zoro could still split cannon steel if he had to. Time had carved him rather than softened him. Silver threaded through moss-green hair now tied low at the nape of his neck, shorter than it once was but no less unruly. The scar across his closed eye had deepened with age, pulling sharper whenever he frowned. New lines sat at the corners of his mouth and brow, earned from sun and salt more than stress.
His shoulders remained broad beneath old scars. His hands were still calloused enough to break bone. But they were also steady enough to rebind a damaged branch without harming it. Funny how life worked.
A breeze rolled through the grove. Thousands of leaves answered at once.
This part of the island was hers. Not officially. The land itself belonged to all of them now—ridiculous sprawling territory accumulated over decades of adventures, alliances, treasures, and the general chaos that followed the Pirate King and his crew like a natural disaster. There were rice fields further inland. Vegetable terraces. A pond Usopp swore was “strategically engineered.” Sanji maintained an herb garden so obsessive it bordered on religious practice.
But the mikan grove belonged to Nami in the way certain things simply became part of a person. The first saplings had come from Cocoyasi, from aboard The Thousand Sunny. Bell-mère’s trees.
Nami had planted them herself with dirt beneath her fingernails, and tears she pretended weren’t happening. Over the years, one row became five. Five became fifty. Fifty became an entire hillside painted orange every harvest season.
Zoro preferred this section best. He never really questioned why, but no one really ever questioned it when he preferred to sleep under them back when they were sailing together.
Maybe because it reminded him of her. Or because he had loved her then…and somehow never stopped.
Strong roots. Difficult maintenance. Beautiful enough to piss people off. Like her, he thought.
A snort escaped him.
“And what is making my caretaker laugh so loudly?” a cool voice answered from behind him.
They both knew better than that. The only woman who truly made him laugh was her. But sometimes she liked to hear it, as if he did not praise her enough.
Even without looking, Zoro knew Nami was beautiful. Age had refined her rather than diminished her. Silver glimmered faintly through soft orange hair cut shorter now, brushing just above her shoulders whenever the wind caught it. Fine lines rested near her eyes from decades of laughing, yelling, and squinting toward horizons no Log Pose could predict. Gold bracelets still circled her wrists. Her posture remained proud, her chin lifted, as if she still expected the world to answer to her eventually. It usually did.
“Thought you’d be busy robbing some poor idiots by now, witch.”
“Me?” She teased back, “Oh, I left my forties behind a long time ago…besides, it’s just not as fun anymore.”
“Oh?” Zoro continued working on the roots. “And here I thought you were learning some new tricks in your old age.”
He deftly bypassed one sweep of her hand against the back of his skull, but missed the other one entirely. As her hit connected, his gray hair bristled as he frowned, though he caught that same hand and tugged until she tumbled into his lap.
“Watch it, old man. You may be five-sword-style Zoro now, but I’m still the strongest woman you will ever meet.”
“Hai, hai,” Zoro responded, pressing a kiss into her neck, which drew out a chuckle.
“Stop,” Nami barely tried to fight it, “You stink. Hurry up and shower.”
Zoro tilted his head with a smile, “It feels like we’re back on the ship.”
“And you stink as you did then.”
“Nami,” he said, which still managed to get a blush out of her even now in their old age, “Haven’t I showered every day for you for the past three decades?”
Nami pinched his nose, “And you certainly would not have been married this long if you hadn’t.”
A familiar smugness settled across his face then, softened only slightly by age.
“I believe there are plenty of things I have done inside and outside the shower with you to maintain a marriage.”
She slapped his chest, “Idiot, please. The kids will be here soon. And they’re bringing the grandkids.”
He pulled her in tighter, “But I’m your idiot, remember?” Even now, he loved to tease her.
“Besides,” he said as he lowered his voice and his eye, “I’m five-sword-style Zoro and one of those-”
“Stop,” she said half heartedly. “The older you get, the less quiet you are about…”
“About?” He inquired.
Nami pursed her lips and pushed her sunglasses down.
“Had you been this vocal in our 20s, maybe we would have gotten together sooner.”
Zoro tilted his head, muscles stretching across the tanned skin.
“Would 18-year-old you have preferred me as an old man?”
Nami brushed a fingernail across the still smooth jaw that he still only had her shave, even when he could.
“I think…the younger me would have appreciated the man you've become.”
That smile was back, the one she used to get her way with Zoro…and anyone else for that matter.
“But I would have still taken every penny off you,” she said with a pinch of his cheek.
“300% interest?” Zoro mused.
“I told you, my 40s were for breaking hearts and robbing them blind.”
“Then good thing that 19-year-old me still had both eyes.”
Nami giggled as she pulled him in closer.
“Too bad that three-sword-style Zoro would have been no match for me now.”
“How so?”
Nami played with the scar of his chest he still left open for her, ever teasing.
“Think of all the things I could teach your younger self.” She pressed a kiss by his mouth, “All the moves,” then his nose, “all the skills,” and then finally hovered by his lips, “that would put your Haki to shame.”
Zoro knew it was a mercy they had grown older together. Otherwise, he certainly would have been in trouble.
But age did not stop him from proving his point. Even now. He gripped her tighter, leaning in…
Suddenly, the laughter of children and the pitter-patter of feet resounded from behind them and into the grove, as their daughter called out from inside the house, “Oi! Grandpa! Grandma! Behave yourselves!”
Nami chewed her bottom lip as she swiped another kiss and rose out of his lap with grace.
“Coming! We were just admiring the garden…you know your father prizes the literal fruits of his labor.”
Their daughter’s voice called back, “Am I not the literal fruit of his loins?”
That got a laugh out of Nami, who wiped her feet and entered the house to the coral of her child and grandchildren, her favorite things after her trees, her money, and her husband.
Zoro watched her go, short hair bobbing and bringing him back to those early days…when a girl risked her life to save a boy in a cage…and then history took care of the rest. He always did like her short hair best.
“Grandpa!” the calls demanded, and he rose, taking in the life he built with her and appreciating every blissful and chaotic second.