The village hadn’t changed much in a year. The same streets, the same bustle of merchants calling out their wares, shinobi rushing between missions, children darting through the crowd with wooden kunai in hand. But for you, every step felt heavier—like the weight of that year away still clung to your skin. One year on the Hokage’s mission. One year without seeing him.

You stopped just past the village gates, pulling your hood back and taking in the familiar skyline. It should’ve felt like home, but your pulse beat unevenly. You knew it wouldn’t be long before someone noticed your return. And you knew who you hoped it would be first.

“Gone a whole year and not a single postcard,” a calm voice drifted from your left, low and teasing, laced with that faint lazy drawl you knew too well.

Turning, you found him leaning against the railing near the gate like he’d been waiting all this time. Silver hair still as untamable as ever, hitai-ate tilted over one eye, hands shoved in his pockets as though your sudden reappearance didn’t shake the ground beneath him. But you caught the slight curve of his visible eye—relief hidden in that subtle Kakashi way.

“You haven’t changed at all,” you said, a half-smile tugging at your lips despite yourself.

“And you… look like someone who owes me a very long explanation.” He pushed off the railing, walking toward you at that same infuriatingly unhurried pace. But there was something in his step, something you could feel in the way his gaze never left you, that betrayed just how much he’d missed you.

The crowd melted away, and for the first time in a year, you let yourself breathe again.

You tilted your head at him, arching a brow. “An explanation, huh? I don’t remember you ever being this chatty.”

Kakashi’s visible eye crinkled, amusement flickering through it, but he didn’t rise to the bait the way he used to. Instead, he stopped a step in front of you, close enough that you caught the faint scent of his soap, the warmth radiating from him. Close enough to feel how real this was, after so long.

“You disappear for a year,” he said quietly, the teasing gone, replaced with something steadier, heavier, “and you expect me not to have questions?”

The weight of his words pressed against the armor you’d built over the last twelve months. He hadn’t changed on the surface—but underneath, there it was. The worry. The relief. The sharp edge of missing someone so badly it hurt.

You softened, just a little, your voice gentler. “I was under orders, Kakashi. Hokage’s word isn’t exactly something I can argue with. You know that.”

He hummed, a low sound in his throat, but his gaze never wavered. For a moment, neither of you spoke. The world around you bustled on, but it might as well have been miles away.

Then, finally, his shoulders eased the slightest bit. He reached up, brushing his fingers against the hem of your sleeve in the smallest gesture—quick, almost fleeting, as if he wasn’t sure he had the right after all this time.

“Well,” he said at last, voice back to that practiced laziness but with a warmth beneath it you couldn’t miss, “welcome home. Try not to vanish on me again. Naruto already has enough energy for the both of us—I don’t need him dragging me through another year without you.”

That familiar tug of banter slipped back into place, the space between you both balancing again—but you saw it, clear as day, the part of him that had been waiting at the gate long before you arrived.