He sat there, numb.
His dark eyes staring blankly at the floor, his ears not even registering the insistent shrill of the dial tone coming from the phone laying on the floor.
He couldn't remember dropping it. He had simply felt it in his hands at one moment, and the next, he couldn't feel anything at all.
Not the coolness of the hard wood floor beneath his bare feet.
Not the air that past between his parted lips with a quick sharpness.
Not the tightness in his chest.
Not the sting of tears as they tried desperately to well up in his eyes.
Only the cold, numbing shock as wave after wave of it coursed through his body.
How? How could this happen?
And then, with the immense power of a thunder clap, everything around him was thrown into sharp relief.
It was then he realized that it didn't matter how it had happened.
Because it had happened.
The dial tone became a loud roaring in his ears and the flashing lightning outside his window made him start and attracted his eyes. Sensations that he could not feel before he suddenly became painfully aware of.
And when he could feel, when he knew that it was real and that he wasn't dreaming, that's when the tears fell.
The tightness in his chest exploded like a popped balloon as he gasped for breath.
"Oh, god," he whispered before crumpling up on the floor.
He wrapped both arms tightly around his middle, either to provide a barier between himself and the feeling or to try to hold himself together as sobs wracked his body.
He should feel ashamed for crying this way, he knew. Uchiha's never let their tears fall, let alone sob until they were gasping for breath. Not for anything or anyone. Not even when a loved one died.
And he hadn't cried when they had lost their lives, hadn't shed a single tear.
But this time was different.
This time no one was dead.
Not yet anyway.
This time it was worse than watching his mother and father be murdered. Worse than finding the dead bodies of his family all around him.
Because they had been there with him, dead or not, they had been present and he could cope with something so tangible, something he could fight against.
But as he lay curled up on the floor, helpless to the shock and grief as it took over his body, letting his tears fall with a vengeance and heaving for breath, he knew this was something he could not fight, something he could not see, something he could not face.
And then he recalled the words. The words that had made his body grow cold and numb, the words that had sent his world crashing down around him.
"Uchiha Sasuke, we are sorry to inform you that your brother, Uchiha Itachi, has been reported MIA. We have no word of his location and it is likely that he has been taken by the enemy. Though recovery is not likely we will continue to search. It is possible that he may have been injured without an ID tag and may currently be in a hospital or deceased, we are sorry for your loss. He fought bravely and well, we will always honor his memory. "
This was what had hurt him.
This is what had made shake and sob like a tiny child.
This is what made it so much different from his family.
He had been painfully aware of what was happening to them right before his eyes, he had known what was going to happen even as he watched.
See, it was so much worse than before because they had been there. He had known they were dead and how they died.
Itachi...was gone.