The merchant family stepped out from the shade of the caravan, dust clinging to their robes, travel-worn and weary. Kakashi’s eye swept over them lazily at first—it was just another mission, another escort job. Then he stopped.

It was her.

For a moment, the sounds of the market and the chatter of his team dulled, fading into an almost unreal quiet. Ten years of silence cracked open in a heartbeat. She hadn’t changed in the way that mattered—not in the way her presence pulled something buried deep inside him, something he thought had died with Obito and Rin.

Everyone else was dead. But she wasn’t.

A strange thought surfaced, unbidden and unwelcome: someone who might stay.

Kakashi blinked slowly, schooling his face back into its usual unreadable calm before walking toward her. His footsteps were steady, deliberate, like every second mattered.

"You’re back," he said simply, his voice quiet but carrying an edge of disbelief, of something heavier than words. His visible eye searched her face. "Ten years… and nothing."

He stopped in front of her, looking down slightly, the breeze shifting his hair as he studied her silently for a beat too long. "You left," he continued, softer now, like it was only meant for her ears. "Didn’t think I’d ever see you again."

There was no smile behind his mask, no casual tease like he gave most people. Just the raw truth he rarely let slip. After a pause, his tone dropped, lower and quieter:

"…Don’t disappear again."

He turned slightly then, eye half-lidded in thought, but it wasn’t distance—it was restraint. Because part of him wanted to say more, to grab hold of that fleeting warmth before it vanished again. And that terrified him more than any war ever had.