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Kakashi had never expected to grow old.
When he was younger, he had never thought he would make it to thirty, but yesterday he had turned ninety, vastly exceeding the life expectancy of a shinobi. He had returned to active duty once he passed on the mantle of Hokage to Naruto, unable to imagine settling down to a peaceful retirement without Tenzo. He had continued to work until his bones began to ache and his joints began to creak when he moved, and even then he continued to push on until Sakura forcefully removed him from duty; she thought he had a death wish, and perhaps she was right. The truth was, all he wanted was to be with Tenzo.
All he had ever wanted was to be with Tenzo. He knew that now, and he had spent the last fifty-five years hating himself for not realizing it sooner. If he had, maybe they could have had more time. The two years he had spent with Tenzo had been the best of his life... but they could have had more. They could have had decades.
They could have had forever, but even forever wouldn’t have been enough.
Sighing, Kakashi tucked his hands into his pockets, ignoring the cold air nipping at his skin as he ambled toward the Memorial Stone. He was the last, all that was left of his generation - Guy had been the last of his friends to pass, dying peacefully in his sleep last year at the ripe old age of eighty nine; everyone had thought Kakashi would die first, but he had outlived them all. For someone who had thought they would die in battle, it was a cruel twist of fate.
I really am cursed, he mused, stopping in front of the Memorial Stone and squinting down at the names engraved upon it, eyes tracing the names of his friends and fallen comrades before alighting on one name in particular.
In the last fifty-five years, Kakashi had never found out what happened to his lost love. Tenzo had left on his mission and never returned, and they had never found a body; just Tenzo’s happuri, half-buried in the rubble of a demolished building, and a pile of ash in the middle of the street. Tenzo had been Anbu, after all, and Anbu protocol dictated that they destroy their bodies should they fall.
It didn’t really matter, though. He didn’t need to see a body, he didn’t need to know what happened, didn’t need a funeral for closure. Dead was dead, and nothing could change that. Knowing the what, the how, the why... None of it would bring Tenzo back, and none of it would ease the pain that had made its home in his chest the instant he had seen that damned dying plant.
Over the years, that pain had only gotten worse as his memories of Tenzo began to fade. He would always have Tenzo’s smile, burned into his mind like a brand; would always be able to hear Tenzo’s laugh, low and clear as a bell; would always remember the way his eyes lit up when he looked at him... But he could no longer remember their first kiss, or the way he looked beneath him when they made love and how it felt to hold him after, or the sound of his voice when he said ‘I love you’. The loss of those memories felt like losing him all over again.
“I’m so sorry, Tenzo.” Ignoring the pain in his knees, Kakashi knelt before the Memorial stone, reaching out with a trembling hand to trace Tenzo’s name on the weathered stone. It had bothered him once that Tenzo’s life had been reduced to this, that his funeral had consisted of Kakashi watching an engraver carve his name into the monument.
Unlike other shinobi, Tenzo had no file, no real name beneath layers of code names given to him over the years, and when they had come to Kakashi asking what name to carve, he gave them the only name that had ever mattered - the one that meant something. The one Tenzo had chosen. He had no idea if it was what Tenzo would have wanted, but it felt right.
Sighing, he shifted to sit, shivering as the cold of the stone seeped through his sweater, too thin for this weather. He was tired - so, unbelievably tired.
It couldn’t hurt to close his eyes for a moment.
When he opened them again, the sun was setting, painting the sky in brilliant hues of orange and pink and purple. A sunset in Konoha was always a beautiful thing, and he let himself admire it for a moment, completely in awe.
Then a shadow fell over him. He looked up, squinting to make out the person silhouetted by the dying light before him. He couldn’t quite see their face... but he didn’t need to. He knew.
He knew like he knew his own name, like he knew that he had loved Tenzo and Tenzo had loved him, like he knew Tenzo’s smile and the sound of his laugh.
His love came into focus as the light faded, and Kakashi allowed himself a moment to drink in the sight of him - he looked exactly as he had the day he left, giving him that breathtaking smile as he held out his hand.
Kakashi knew what this was, had been waiting for this moment since he received the report that Tenzo died.
He didn’t hesitate.
He took Tenzo’s hand.