At first it had been hard, going back to an empty house; a house that, when the wind blew hard enough, still smelled of blood and betrayal. A house that had expected so very much from its members. A house that had been slaughtered by one of its best; one of the best. It was a dead house now; dead outside and in.
The person that lived there was dead to.
Though his heart kept on beating he was dead to the world. He had, in fact, died with the rest of them. But his damned body wouldn't let him go. His damned body wouldn't release his soul and let him sleep with his family. His own flesh and blood (or at least what had been left of them) scattered to the four winds leaving a single child as the heir and legacy so their name wouldn't be forgotten.
And he had grown up in that place of the dead. Grown like a strange warped tree in a cemetery. Oh of course nobody had known this. To them he was just 'Sasuke-kun' or 'Bastard' or 'The last Uchiha' or a genius. It's not that he wasn't Sasuke, or a bastard, or the last, or a genius; he was. And he was all those things at them same time. But people seemed to think he had designated times for each of those things, Sasuke-kun from dawn to noon, Bastard from noon to three, the last from three to eight and a genius from eight to midnight. No… he was always a bastard and always the survivor and always a genius and always, always Sasuke.
Whether the house had people in it or no it really didn't matter. The love had been superficial while they were around. The marriages had been arranged, the children were bred like dogs, shown off to the villages before being matched with their statistically compatible spouse where they would spawn more children so that the cycle would repeat itself.
Some nights, as he lay in bed staring at the ceiling, listening to the wind moan through the house and pretend it was the voices of his fallen clan… he'd allow himself to be sad, to dwell, to brood, and to mourn over what had been lost and what had been set before him. Sasuke knew that after Itachi was dead things wouldn't simply fall into place and he could assume a normal life (as normal as a ninja's life could be anyway). He knew that once Itachi was dead things would only get harder. Then…he really would be the last. A rare breed run out. Pity.
His house was a place of death, blood, no love and coldness. And in all the things his house was and wasn't he really couldn't bring himself to care beyond killing his brother.