Obito's death had been tragic enough to make you not cry, but sink into loneliness and close your trembling fists every time you remembered it. But Rin's death, you saw Kakashi almost go crazy and it was in the cemetery in front of his grave that he saw the first tear run down your face.

"Don't you hate me?" He asks, his voice choked, but no crying sounded.

"You're alive, and the living needs to move on." You say, even though the pain hits you and you try to hide it. "And because I couldn't bear to lose anyone else."

The conclusion of your sentence made Kakashi focus on you. The two of you were never close even though you were on the same team, practically competing all the time to see who would be the best.

But over time you built trust, and now, only the two of you were left of a team that had been destroyed by tragedy.

After all the challenges of being ninjas, as jonin you two start to do some missions in pairs occasionally, being impeccable in tactics, but the emotional distance was still there.

The names of the dead friends were never mentioned and the consolation seemed to hover between the two in silence or in the times when you protected each other in action as a silent pact that you two would survive together.

Until one day, due to a mistake of yours, Kakashi almost got seriously injured and you realized that you would lose yourself if he also left. You couldn't let that happen, so you asked to be transferred to solo missions of espionage, tracking and silent elimination.

Missions in which failure meant you would die, or live to remember that where there is no team, there is no one to lose.

And for Kakashi, who used to pretend his feelings very well behind the mask and coldness, receiving the news that you would no longer work with him affected him more than he imagined.

And as the years went by, he no longer saw you on the streets of Konoha, despite your name being heard with absolute success in reports after eliminating renegades, obtaining information about Akatsuki, defending the borders and much more.

That made everything worse because it seemed like you had disappeared along with Obito and Rin.

But it was when he picked up the list of sensei candidates for the new generation that he froze. Your name there, naming you as the new jonin-sensei.

And he never thought that seeing you after so long would make his chest tighten so hard, because for years he thought of you with fear of seeing your name on a long list of lost shinobi.

However, observing your longer hair and more mature features, in addition to the impeccable jonin costume and your calm look, there was still something in you marked by loneliness.

Even though looking at you now was like adrenaline for the Kakashi body's. So much adrenaline that he forced himself to lift his bandana, the sharingan he got from Obito shining when his eyes met yours.

It really was you, right there, in front of him.