A/N: I apologize if this chapter isn't quite as long. I didn't even realize the size of my handwriting was growing while I was writing…

Chapter VII

Kakashi's visible eye wandered across the classroom as the last of the students rushed into the room. Every student who walked through the door held the same look of utter disbelief. Kakashi was never on time, let alone early!

He noted the missing students with a nod, those he'd assumed wouldn't be there, weren't. His eye lingered a second longer on the empty seat at the way back of the room, a stab of pity and he tore his gaze away.

"I'm not in the mood for a lecture today. And since I know that you college students are just so busy, I'll give you the next hour to work on your paper with your partners."

A flurry of excitement followed by anxious whisperings. The most outspoken girl in the class raised her hand.

"Ah, sir?" Sakura said, hand still hung questioningly in the air. She waited until Kakashi looked up confusedly to start talking again. "Our papers?" Her voice squeaked.

"Eh?" A look of dawning followed by a guilty expression. "I didn't mention it? Oops… Well, you're supposed to write a paper for me…" He trailed off. "No! I told you about it. I swear I'm not going insane. About this," he added in an undertone.

"Yes, but you never mentioned it had to be written with our partners! You only said to write a paper about "what we learned!"" Sakura all but shrieked, hysteria rising to it's highest.

"Oh?" feigned innocence laced the words. "Must've slipped my loose mind. It's supposed to be written jointly, with equal efforts by the two of you. And trust me, I'll know if one person did all the work," his voice dipped mysteriously, "I have spies everywhere."

Kakashi hid the evilly vindictive smile that wished to splay itself over his face as he looked on to the students' horrified expressions. By the expressions shown, he could tell exactly who had already gotten the paper done and finished with, even if they hadn't gotten any of their hours done yet, as he knew of some that hadn't.

He turned around to choke down a laugh at his students' panicked expense. Just as he was composed enough to turn around again, a hesitant hand tapped his shoulder. He spun on his heel and came face to face with a Naruto Uzumaki sporting an unamused look and a raised eyebrow, like the blonde somehow knew what he'd just been doing.

Though he didn't say anything on the matter, the silent accusation was still there, until Naruto spoke. "Sasuke's not here."

Unconsciously, Kakashi's eye softened imperceptibly. Not enough for Naruto to catch, thankfully, he said indifferently, "Yeah, so?"

"Well?" was the expectant reply. "Do you know why? How am I going to work on our paper, if he's not here? He said he was coming today, so…"

"Oh, he did?" Kakashi said, but changed his mind on what he'd wanted to say next, mid-word. "I don'-You can just jot down ideas on what you'll be writing about, like what you've personally learned and such. Then you can spend the remaining time I'm giving you all to work on other work or something."

"Okay…" Naruto said, confused. Was Kakashi skirting around a topic, or was it just his overactive imagination? "Is Sasuke sick, is that why he's not here…?"

Kakashi looked distinctly uncomfortable then; he'd need to work on his evasion skills apparently. "No, he's not sick, per se. But he's not here."

Naruto rolled his eyes and resisted slapping the idiot professor. "Obviously," he said somewhat sarcastically, earning a surprised look from Kakashi. 'Yes, I can do sarcasm, you idiot,' he thought angrily. Everyone thought he didn't have it in him. "So if he's not sick, do you know where he is then?"

Kakashi was torn by indecision. Self-preservation and his busybody tendencies were at war, once again, each trying to win with every trick in their arsenal. "Yeah, I know where he is."

The busybody obviously won out, by an absolute massacre. "But I don't think I'm supposed to tell anyone," he said, self-preservation not completely dead and cold yet.

Naruto's anger was quick to spark up. "What? Why not?" he cried indignantly, earning odd looks from his classmates, silently fuming over Sasuke's annoyingly overcautious, secret life.

Kakashi gave him a look that questioned his already questionable intelligence. "You do know Sasuke, don't you? The boy likes his anonymity, what can I say? I would say that your should just ask him yourself, but that'd probably yield even further answers. But," he paused for a moment, thinking. "He does deserve a little privacy."

Naruto huffed, not really convinced. "C'mon! I won't tell him that you told me anything, I promise!" He added on the charm with some deadly strong puppy dog eyes and pouting lips.

Kakashi considered him for a long moment before finally capitulating, however lightly. "Swear on your life that you won't mention this to anyone. Promise!"

"Okay, okay, I promise that I won't tell anyone, especially not Sasuke. So you'll tell me then?" he asked hopefully.

Kakashi heaved a long-suffering sigh before signing his almost assured death warrant. "He's visiting family."

"Family" indeed. Sasuke sighed, turning a corner. A two-hour bus ride and a half-hour walk later, he was finally at his destination.

The private cemetery reserved specifically and solely for Uchiha's.

The area was, of course, well kept with no overabundance of weeds or growing grass. 'Only the best for an Uchiha,' he thought wryly at the manicured lawn. It was a small extension of the town cemetery, and had been for the last hundred years or so.

He visited the joint headstones that marked the resting site of his parents. He may not have known them very well, as their jobs had them travel a lot, but they were still his parents and he loved them. And when they werehome, they tended to make the point of turning off their pagers and phones, so they could spend uninterrupted time with their sons.

After about thirty minutes of kneeling in front of their gravestone, he got up, stretching the kinks from his back with a wince. He apologized for not having visited in so long, and promised to visit more. They all knew that for the lie it was; he wasn't really visiting them, and he'd only ever come once a year. But such things were formalities. Had he not said that, he'd feel like an even worse son, visiting their graves only once a year, not even on their anniversary.

He did, however, visit the grave beside it every year on its anniversary. Today. Itachi Uchiha's grave.

And Sasuke missed his brother fiercely. It wasn't the soul tearing, tear jerking miss, the miss of loosing a best friend, anymore. It used to be, but then Sasuke realized how much he was hurting himself by his inability to let go.

So now, even after eight years, Sasuke was still aching from the loss of his brother. But it was the small, dull ache that no longer affected everyday life drastically. He'd get that small pang of sadness when something happened that reminded him of Itachi. And somedays, he could get through the entire day without thinking of him, or when he would, it wouldn't depress him immensely.

But this place, it brought back that initial pain that he'd felt when he was nine and watching the casket descend into the earth. More than that it helped him remember.

As corny, childish, and superstitious as it sounds, he feels closer to his brother here. Close enough to ebb the sadness and, not that he'd ever admit it to anyone, he feels like Itachi can hear him.

With that thought in mind, Sasuke opens his mouth to speak, just as he has done every other time he's knelt there before. "I'm sorry for not visiting in so long, but I'm sure you understand my reasoning. Not that you'd accept my apology, "wasted effort" and everything," he muttered under his breath, and in return the trees swayed like laughter. Useless apologies were always an annoyance to the older Uchiha.

"As scary as it sounds," he continued after that short pause, "I'm now a college student at Konoha University. I'm taking busy course load, five classes. One of them, Sociology, is taught by Kakashi Hatake. You remember him? He's just as demented as a teacher as he is a person." He laughed.

"I'm still working two jobs, but by the end of the summer, I should have enough saved to quit one of them…" he trailed off uncertainly, the wind blowing around guiltily. Sasuke felt bad; he wasn't blaming Itachi. "You know I don't blame you for that," he scolded. Taking an overused quote from their father, Sasuke smiled. "'Working as many hours as I do builds character. I just don't know what to do with all the extra!"

"Oh, and back to the school topic, I'm skipping class today to visit." The wind gently admonished, but there was an underlying sunshine to it. "I should actually be in Kakashi's class right now. His newest "project" is matching everyone with a partner and having them do community service. I'm sure he picked both my partner and our setting just to spite me…"

Sasuke yawned, cracked his back and continued on. "He partnered me with the most noisy, nosey, idiotic, irritating, blonde on the planet, Naruto Uzumaki. Who, by the way, followed me home one day!" he cried, obviously still angry about it.

"Anyway," he continued after he cooled down a bit, "that's not even the kicker. Kakashi assigned us to the hospital with Tsunade." An irritated rustle. "Yeah. He's planning something, but I just don't know what. And it's driving me nuts, not knowing what the pervert's thinking. I would say if he's even planning something, but I know him better than that. Sadistic bastard," he muttered under his breath.

He physically shook the violent thoughts from his mind and sighed, enjoying the silence that resonated around him. It wasn't often he could find a genuinely silent area in Konoha, the bustling modern city it was. No cars passing by, no sirens or alarms going off, just peaceful silent nature.

When he spoke again, it was in a quiet tone of voice, almost as if to not disturb the peace. "But, despite all his obvious flaws, Naruto is probably the closest thing to a friend I've had in a long time. And not the familial type of friendship that I had with you, my foster family, or the kids I've gotten to know in the hospital. Ha," he gave a slightly bitter laugh. "He's the first person outside of family that's actually tried to get to know me, past common courtesy acquaintances. Not that I want him to know me, but it's kind of the thought that counts, right?" Murmuring agreement.

"And passing on from that depressing statement," he said, trying to lighten the suffocating air that had settled over his shoulders after his previous trail of thought. "I'm still volunteering at the hospital," conveniently not mentioning the amount of hours he was putting in there; he was either a terrible liar when it came to Itachi, or the spirit of the man could always tell a lie from truth. Either way, he didn't exactly feel comfortable lying to the headstone, if felt too disrespectful to the man's memory. "When I can make time. I think they were just trying to butter me up, the nurses I mean, when they said that my presence positively affected the kids, in a medical sense anyway."

"I'm not saying that I don't help them, I believe that some of them are genuinely happy when I visit, especially the ones who don't tend to get many visitors. That and I bring books and such to those who ask. But some of the nurses seem to think that, with the thought of me coming to visit, gives a few of these kids a reason to fight, when they didn't have one before. I don't really think that I impact them that much…"

The wind held a slightly disbelieving and indignant tone to it as it blew past. Sasuke stubbornly sniffed and shook his head in negligent negative. Changing topics again, Sasuke leant back, getting only marginally more comfortable on the wet grass. "I'm enrolled as an Epidemiology major," he said quietly, finally getting around to explaining his life goal to brother. "I am going to be researching factors affecting the health and illness of populations, looking for the cures to the diseases that kill most too early. I don't know about specific diseases yet, just general practice for now. I'm not throwing my life away for something I'm not interested in," he added to the worried wind. "I am, I'll admit, doing this for you. Maybe not for you, but because of you. Nobody deserves to be taken away from a family that needs him or her. And that is something I am passionate about."

'Though' he added silently to himself, 'it's probably not something I'd be interested in, with different circumstances. Like you being alive, for instance.' And even though he kept those words to himself, it was glaringly obvious that he'd never have chosen a career in science, had things turned out differently. It was, by far, his worst subject in grade and high schools.

But he never let that thought get to him. It wasn't like he failed those classes, quite the contrary. He passed them all with good marks. But it was that grade that often kept him off high honours in grade school, and mere points away in high school.

The –mostly- one-sided conversation hit a lull then, Sasuke not knowing what else to say. He crawled over and pressed a gentle hand on the gravestone. "I miss you, older brother," he whispered, quieter than anything he's said this far. "So much." He pulled away, eyes dry and a morose expression adorning his angled features. "Next year, then? I'm sure I'll have loads to tell you."

And he walked away, without looking back, not knowing how right his mordant declaration would be.

Two and a half-hours later, thirty dollars for a bus ticket, and the feeling in his left butt cheek later, Sasuke was back in Konoha. Not in the mood to go back home, and it being too early to go to the hospital, Sasuke settled for wandering aimlessly. He'd already missed all his classes for today, so really, he had nothing better to do.

He assumed, since Kakashi had called him earlier that morning, that the man hadn't planned anything for class. As a courtesy, if he had to guess.

Sasuke walked leisurely around the park for the next half-hour or so, until he found the perfect place. The bridge, over the river that ran from the neighboring mountains to the park and ending in the lake, was the place of choice for him this evening. At this bridge, he could watch the red sunset over the trees, reflecting back on the river.

Sasuke was so absorbed in his own thoughts that he didn't even notice the surprised eyes that landed on him as the body had been walking past, as undirected as he was.

After his conversation with Kakashi, Naruto had assumed that Sasuke would be gone longer. But, now that he actually thought back to it, Kakashi had been unnaturally grave and strangely morbid. After he had said that Sasuke was visiting family, Kakashi all but shoved him in his seat and gone to hide in his office for the next twenty minutes. When he had come back out, he had been his usual sarcastically chipper self, insisting everything was normal.

Naruto moved so that he was about a foot behind Sasuke, noting with barely unrestrained glee that he was somehow completely unaware of Naruto's presence. He should be feeling slightly worried; normally Sasuke could tell if a person was looking at him from across a room. But just now he was completely unaware of others' presence, which Naruto was about to use to its fullest advantage.

"Hey Sasuke!"

A/N: Not that any of you were wondering, I had a really good vacation. Except the day I got back, I caught a bug or something, and have been sick. Thanks for the reviews for the last chapter, I really wasn't complaining about the deficit for the chapter before.

Ah, don't expect an update much before August 8th, because I have various plans and a friend of mine will be staying for a while. But I will get this story done by September 1st. It has kinda dragged on…

OH, final thing. For those who enjoyed LRC, and like Final Fantasy VII:AC, will enjoy LRC Take Two by Genetic Anomaly. It's amazing. (HINT: IT'S BY ME!) Yeah, I'm advertising my own work, I'm that sad.