When Naruto comes, the sun is shining and he is young, fresh, smiling, as the light pours over him and makes his hair glow. He stops to look at him and grins and says, 'See you there,' and keeps on walking, unafraid, because fear has never touched him, not in the way that it does others and Kakashi grins under his mask and waves and goes on waiting.

:in rain or shine:

When Sasuke comes, he is covered in fading scars, slowly, slowly healing, so achingly slow. He comes and he too halts, but only for a second, only to gaze at the stream and the moonless night it reflects.

'I'm sorry,' he says and his voice is that of a child, one who hasn't learned of pain yet, but knows what must come, and then he too is gone, into the mist that has risen, the darkness accompanying him, shadows that may never leave and Kakashi is silent and goes on waiting.

:in dark or light:

When Sakura comes, she is the last, and she is limping and her cherry hair is matted with blood and she looks as she did when she died, mangled on the sand and, right before she steps onto the bridge, she stops, because she has seen him somehow through broken eyes.

'Sensei.'

He turns to look at her and sees the young woman that she is and wonders who she became, because he would never know. And she looks at him and she smiles and the rain falls and washes her clean, whole again, the same and this time she comes to stand by him, gazing in to the river.

'Naruto and Sasuke came,' she says, quietly but clear, and the soft downpour does not drown out her words.

'Yes,' he answers. For a long time, there is silence and then she looks over at him and asks what no one else though to.

'Where do I go now?'

'Onward.'

'Oh.' She looks back, back to where she came from, the darkened land that vanishes in the curtain of the storm. And, for the final time, she turns to him and he is surprised when she takes his hand.

'Will you come with me?'

'Of course.'

And they walk on, and Kakashi will no longer wait and, for the first time in a while, he simply smiles.

:we will always be:

:if only because I love you: