A/N: Late again, but I swear it's the last time. I have been getting extensive review and writing lessons from the great Nezuko of Fallen Leaves, and it is time-consuming. But I hope you can see improvement in my writing--I have been working very hard!

I do not own any of the Naruto characters!

It's just a bit AU!


Thirty-Six: Burdened


March 10

"Itachi!"

Genma's call jolted him out of his doze. Itachi scrambled off the bench and trotted over to the desk, already holding out his hands. Genma didn't bother to look at him, merely thrust the folder into his hands. "This goes upstairs, room two-oh-six. Give it to Kotone, she'll be behind the first desk."

Itachi nodded and turned away. Earlier in the day, Genma had made him repeat back where he was going and whatnot, but by now they had a routine going. Itachi left the filing room, crossed the wide hall, and pushed against the door to the stairs with his shoulder. Up the flight of stairs he went, taking them two at a time. He met three other ninja, two going down and one passed him on the stairs up in a quick sprint. The two coming down grinned and waved at the Genin. Itachi was getting tired of the patronizing looks. Obviously he was running errands, but it was a mission, not punishment, as everyone seemed to think.

Genma's arm was still casted and in a sling. He was doing much better, almost four weeks after he'd gotten it broken. He was off the heavy-duty drugs he'd first been on, and was back to his usual self...even if he still had a tendency to doze off if he was still too long. But with their Jounin-sensei still out of commission, Team 13 couldn't take their normal run-of-the-mill missions. Instead, they were getting the odds-and-ends usually assigned to ninja who didn't do field-work. This was the third time they'd wound up coming to the Files and Records Department to help with the paperwork, much to the dismay of all who saw Itachi was an Uchiha. As Uchiha were prone to sneezing sparks, they weren't often welcome in any job involving paperwork.

Before he'd been here, Itachi hadn't seen much point in the mission-statements they turned in after every mission. Now, he was impressed. Each mission-statment had at least three copies, he'd learned, sent to Missions Records, Reference-Subdivision C, and Accounts-Section B. And that was a regular D or C-ranked mission. Higher ranked missions had more copies than that, especially if there were injuries, deaths, or political consequences.

Itachi popped out of the stairwell and jogged down the maze of hallways. The place was almost eerily quiet, and the tile floor only offered the barest tap to each footfall. Itachi found the right room--206, first of five filing rooms for Missions Records--and struggled the heavy door open. Both workers looked up at him. Itachi went to the second desk and held the file out to woman behind it.

"Another D-rank, Kotone-san," Itachi told her.

"Ah, thank you, Itachi-san." Kotone smiled and took the file. "Could you trot these folders over to room two-oh-eight, please? Give them to Jin, and he'll know what to do with them."

"Hai." With four more folders in hand, Itachi went back out and down two doors. This time he flicked the latch and used his shoulder to wrestle against the door. It wasn't so much that he he was small, just that the doors were heavy, designed to be bolted securely and protect against threats to paper--theft or fire or the like.

Jin was not behind his desk. Itachi frowned and leaned a hip against the wood, taking a moment to breathe. He'd been jogging files around, upstairs and down, for the better part of five hours now. He was getting hungry again. It was almost time for supper, so surely the shifts were about to change, and they'd get let off. Itachi sighed and shifted the files in his arms. He was certain he wouldn't be half so tired or hungry if he hadn't been doing more than his share of the work.

"What Iruka thinks he's up to, skipping like that...." Itachi thought darkly. He was quite miffed at having to pull both his weight and his absent team-mates'. "And Genma-sensei hasn't said a thing. I wonder why?"

As he started again on the meandering round of questions he'd been pondering all day, Jin came back from the rows of file-cabinets. "Oh, sorry. These are from Kotone in two-oh-six?"

Itachi nodded. "Yes, here."

Jin took the files. Mercifully, he didn't have any other errands for Itachi to run. Back downstairs Itachi went, sliding down the hand-rails to save himself some effort. A shinobi coming up the stairs chuckled at him. Itachi didn't care anymore, so long as they didn't pat him on the head. He was sick and tired of people patting him on the head.

"They don't pat me on the head at the police-station," he thought. Of course, at the police-station, everyone knew he was Fugaku's kid, and everyone treated him with respect. Especially now that he could throw fireballs like everyone else. There was something to be said about a hereditary ability to breathe literal sparks when you were angry.

Itachi pattered back into the sorting room. Genma was still at his desk, but he wasn't sorting. He was chatting with the dark-haired man named Hijiri Shimon. Itachi knew him well enough, though he actually wasn't supposed to. He was one of the "forbidden" ones, the ones the Uchiha didn't talk about. But as Itachi walked up to the desk, he waggled his fingers a little at Shimon.

Genma glanced at them. "Don't ask, brat, we're almost through."

"Good." Itachi sighed.

"I'm still surprised they let you work in here," Shimon offered, smiling. "I guess they don't know you throw fireballs yet."

Itachi looked up at the man, sitting in Genma's desk, one foot in Genma's chair. "Or something. Like how you got in here?"

Shimon laughed. "Oh, no, I'm water-type. No fireballs."

Well, made sense, given what Itachi knew from rumor and whisper. He turned to Genma. Genma was looking between them, probably noting the ink-black hair, distinctive widow's peak, the sharp features that almost matched.

"Ah. We're not." Shimon winked. "But if I'd been born on the right side of the blankets, I think I'd have been an uncle."

"Half-uncle," Itachi corrected, tracing out genealogy lines in his head.

"Right," Genma declared. "I'm properly confused again."

Itachi snorted, and half turned as he heard a soft footfall. Hayate had just entered, empty-handed, looking a little out of breath. He barked a short cough as he came up to them, and Itachi winced at the noise. It always sounded worse indoors.

"There's the last of my team." Genma smirked up at Shimon, and his lips moved as if he had a senbon between his teeth...though he didn't. Not while he was on pain medication. It was funny, though, Itachi thought, what a habit it was. And how telling it was, really. He'd learned how to pick up on Genma's moods given exactly how the man held that senbon.

"You're good to go." Shimon slid down from the desk, laughing at some private joke.

Genma rolled his eyes and stood. "C'mon, brats, I'm starving. Let's go. I'm in mind for Jiroshin's."

Itachi grinned in delight. Food at last!

The meal had been very filling....and oddly quiet. As Genma chewed on a chopstick, Itachi tried to pick up the last grains of rice off his plate. Single grains of rice where very hard to retrieve with chopsticks. Hayate was sitting quietly in front of a half-full plate, dark eyes wide an unfocused. Itachi knew him well enough now to recognize his team-mate was utterly lost in his own thoughts. He did that, from time to time, especially when Iruka wasn't around to pester him constantly.

The thought of Iruka made Itachi scowl again. Because Iruka wasn't here and he really should have been. They were a team, after all! And Genma hadn't said anything, and Hayate hadn't said anything...so he probably wasn't hurt, but surely if he'd been skipping for no reason Genma would have said something.... Itachi hated not knowing, and clearly there was something going on here that he didn't know about.

Well, he was going to fix that.

"Where's Iruka?" he demanded, turning to Genma. "Why wasn't he here today?"

Genma gave him an unreadable look, amber-eyes heavy-lidded. The chopstick in his mouth rolled to the other corner, before he spoke. "Well, it's not my story to share. But I really should have made him come along. He's gotta learn to function sometime."

"He does," Hayate added in, softly. Itachi wondered what trick the older boy had learned to make such a quiet tone carry so well under the restaurant's bustle and chatter. "It's just...today was really bad. The weather's changing, he says, and his scar was hurting him."

Itachi looked over, and saw the firm line into Hayate's lips, the sorrow in those dark umber eyes. Soft and hard, the strange contradiction that Itachi was beginning to expect from his team-mate. Like Genma's lazy-quick, Iruka's reckless-care. "Why Tuesdays?" Itachi asked, directing it towards Hayate. Genma wouldn't say anything. Itachi knew it by now, but Hayate was an easier target.

Some days. Hayate's eyes took on a sharpness as he gave Itachi a measuring look. Itachi felt less assured he was going to get an answer, and at the same time wanted it more. Because clearly this was something big, and he didn't know anything at all about it. That was annoying...and a little hurtful. He ignored the twinge and forged on.

"Onegaishimasu."

The formality made Hayate soften again, consider him and nod, less agreement and more a formal acknowledgment. "Do you remember much about...about the Fox attack?" he asked, in a hushed voice. Itachi had to lean forward to hear him.

Itachi hesitated. "I...not really. I was really little."

"Well, Iruka and I....we remember a little more. We both....both our parents died." There was something dark that Itachi couldn't read, couldn't name, in Hayate's face and voice. It made him wary, almost frightened, because it was strong and he didn't know... "Iruka's at the October Memorial. That's why he didn't come today."

It hadn't been the answer he'd expected....but he didn't know what he'd expected. He sat still, quiet, feeling Hayate's gaze so weirdly heavy, sorting words and facts and trying to make sense of it all. Patterns he'd noticed without understanding took on new importance. After a moment, he looked up to meet Hayate's eyes again. "Tuesdays?"

"Hai." Hayate was back to being soft again, all that strangeness wiped away, that little polite smile on his face.

Itachi turned to look at Genma, to see what the man thought of it all. As usual, however, Genma's face was almost unreadable, with a faint quirk to his lips, eyes guarded. "So how bad does his scar hurt him, Hayate?" he drawled, removeing the chopstick from his mouth.

"It depends." Hayate fidgeted a little. "It's cold right now, and that makes it hurt worse. He stayed in bed after I got up for a long time.... So I think it was pretty bad today." He paused, glanced at his plate, and looked up at Genma. "Do you think I could take some of this back to him? He loves stir-fry."

Genma chuckled wryly. "I should tell you that if he wasn't here, he doesn't get any. But I guess you can."

Well, it wasn't exactly fair, but life wasn't fair. Itachi scowled and pushed the last grain of rice around his plate. Dinner was their reward, as it were, for work. Iruka, who hadn't worked, shouldn't get any...but maybe, Itachi thought, if he'd stood vigil over the memorial....was serving the village a greater duty than honoring the dead? Which was better, had more value? Or could it be measured like that? He set his chopsticks down and bit his lip. This was all confusing. It was certainly easier to run errands and missions than it was to think.

Genma paid the bill, and the three walked out into the deepening twilight. Scudding clouds covered the sky, and the wind had picked up. It felt like they were in for quite a storm, as lightning jumped from cloud-to-cloud in bright, eerie shapes. The energy charging the air made Itachi shiver--the wind tasted like snow and ozone.

"Lightning with the snow," Genma declared, staring up at the sky. "Gonna be a bad blow. C'mon, brats, let's hurry. I don't want to get stuck out in this."

Itachi grabbed the corner of Genma's coat and hung on tightly as the man hurried through the darkening streets. He thought of Iruka, standing alone in front of a stone, with the wind whipping dark and cold around him, and the image cut through Itachi in ways that twisted and hurt. He didn't understand it, not at all, but it hurt and he wondered....

It wasn't until he was home, curled up in his warm futon with Sasuke snoring gently on one side and little blonde Naruto on the other, that he realized what it was.

Alone.

To be alone.... Itachi tightened his arms around his baby brother and his sometimes-younger-brother.

To be all alone...

....that would be the worst thing in the world, he thought, and listened to the storm outside rage.

A/N: This chapter was very short, but Itachi said it was done. So it was. And all the organization in here is totally made up. I actually know nothing about running a business, let alone organizing paperwork for a ninja hidden village. Please pardon any inaccuracies. Next chapter: Excitement! Action! Genma in a sling! Raidou has a Very Important Announcement!

Seven reviews last time! Thanks for being so patient with me, ya'll! AN AWESOME THANKS TO ALL WHO REVIEWED LAST CHAPTER: InARealPickle, Ally Plz, stupid thing, Rebelgirl666, Shirayuki Tempest, silvermonkey, and WhyMustIWrite!

Onegaishimasu Please, formally. Often shortened to onegai and used in request for a person or an object, but mostly for people