[ Loss has a way of driving you slowly mad, eating up all the light inside you until all that's left is darker than night, thicker than pitch.

You can let yourself drown in it, breathing nothing but the dark, dark nothing inside you, seeing nothing but the shadows of the past, the ghosts of everyone you've ever loved, haunting your every step. Demanding your eyes turn backwards and inwards until you are so focused on the shapes of fading smiles and the gleam of blood, that you can't even see what's right in front of you because there is too much of it -- the memory of blood and your weak, helpless hands that could not manage to save even one life, no matter how desperately you tried.

Kakashi had spent too many years of his life lost to those memories, and there are some days when he still finds himself pulled back into that vicious cycle, reliving the loss as keenly as though it were just yesterday that he drove his hand through Rin's chest. Just yesterday that he knelt on jagged tatami mats with his hands full of his father's guts. Just yesterday that the rocks fell and Obito said I will live on as your left eye and see the future for you.

So he knows how difficult it is to let that go and find a way to move on from grief so thick, it becomes you.

It's something he's still not been able to do so himself -- move on. He doesn't even know how to move on, because moving on would mean letting go, and he doesn't know how he could ever let go of the past, even when it's found its way back into his present with Minato and Kushina here in Luceti.

He can't even imagine how much more difficult it must be for Sasuke, when his entire family, his entire world, had been decimated by the people he trusted most, by a system that should have found a way to protect, instead of destroy its own people.

Yet, Sasuke still says I want to go home, and Kakashi is as much relieved as he is quietly amazed that Sasuke has found a way to do what he never would have been able to do himself. That for as much Sasuke might think himself to be weak, to think he needs to hide his scars in skin that's tough as armor, he is so much stronger, so much more resilient than Kakashi ever could hope to be himself.

He's come so far from that thirteen year old boy whose tears glittered hard and bitter along his cheeks, who had worn his need for vengeance, his drive for justice like a patina on his skin so that he might never be burned when the time came for him to carry out his destiny and exact his revenge. But with his skin and scars laid bare, and those five words on the edge of his lips, Kakashi thinks Sasuke is stronger than he's ever been.

And he couldn't possibly be more proud.

Under his mask, a slow, soft smile gently edges its way around the corners of Kakashi's mouth, and his hand slides up into Sasuke's hair to stroke as he pulls the boy against him a little more securely. ]

You are home.

[ Because home was, and never has been, a place made up of empty buildings where dust swirls around the ankles like so many ghosts. Home is made up of people, of the bonds that they have always shared; those quiet moments before sips of hot, fragrant tea and the louder ones in between filled up of laughter and foolish arguments and three children chasing around their sensei for a glimpse of his face. Home is knowing what the scars on Sasuke's hands mean, and the trust he places in Kakashi's arms in this very moment. ]