Chapter Text
He shouldn’t have come back.
The thought had been sitting in the back of his mind for hours now, quiet but persistent, waiting for him to finally acknowledge it, refusing to back down. It didn’t stop him. It never would have. But it was there, steady, unrelenting, as the road narrowed into something more familiar, more dangerous. He could feel the shift in the air.
Furtuna.
Three years was long enough for a place to change. Long enough for people to move on. Long enough for memories to dull into something distant and manageable.
But nothing here had softened.
The air felt the same, heavy, salt-laced, carrying the quiet weight of things that had never really ended. The kind of air that didn’t let you forget who you were, or where you came from, no matter how far you tried to go. Iso slowed the car as the road curved along the cliffside, the sea stretching dark and endless below. The waves crashed harder tonight, louder than he remembered, like the water itself had something to say about his return.
He didn’t look at it for long.
He kept his eyes forward.
Three years.
Long enough for a man to become someone else.
Iso reached for the cigarette pack in the passenger seat out of habit, his fingers already flipping it open before he fully thought it through. One slid out easily, resting between his fingers like it had always belonged there.
It hadn’t.
Not before.
He had started smoking.
Some things, at least, had changed.
He tapped it once against the box, slow, absent, eyes still fixed on the road ahead. The movement was automatic now. Familiar.
That was new.
He brought it to his lips, lit it without looking, the flame briefly illuminating the sharper lines of his face before disappearing again. The first inhale was steady, controlled, no rush, no hesitation.
Smoke filled his lungs, heavy and familiar.
It didn’t calm him. Nothing did anymore.
It just gave him something to do.
He exhaled slowly, the smoke curling into the cold air inside the car before slipping out through the barely open window. The scent lingered, sharp and bitter.
He hadn’t smoked before.
Didn’t need to.
Didn’t want to.
Now—
Now it fit too easily.
He flicked ash out into the dark, eyes narrowing slightly as the road curved ahead.
Three years.
Enough time to pick up habits you never thought you would.
Enough time to stop caring about the ones you said you wouldn’t. At least that’s what he told himself. His jaw clenched. A faint glow appeared ahead, headlights, too many of them, gathered in a way that didn’t belong on an empty road this late. Iso’s grip on the wheel tightened slightly.
That wasn’t normal.
Not here. Not at this hour.
He slowed further, the engine quieter now as he approached. Voices carried through the night, low, tense, overlapping. Not loud enough to be panic, but not calm either.
Something had happened.
Of course it had.
The moment he crossed back into this place, he had known it wouldn’t stay quiet for long. He hadn’t planned to come back here at all, not this soon, maybe not ever. But when his brother Oruç called, saying their grandmother was badly ill and might not even make it, and then she called him herself, sobbing, saying she wanted to see him, that her heart couldn’t rest without her youngest grandson there, he didn’t have it in him to stay away. Not from her. The thought of something happening to her, of coming back too late or not coming back at all, sat too heavy in his chest to ignore. So he came. And he didn’t come unprepared. He had already arranged for one of the best doctors to come with him, set to see her first thing tomorrow, because if there was anything to fix, he was going to fix it. He couldn’t lose another person close to him, not like this, even if he had spent the last three years keeping his distance from everyone. It was for the best. Closeness only ever gave people the chance to hurt you.
Iso pulled the car to a stop just behind the cluster of vehicles, cutting the engine. For a second, he stayed there, hands still on the wheel, the noise outside bleeding in through the thin barrier of glass.
He didn’t rush out. He never did anymore, nothing was worth that notion.
The door opened with a dull click, the cold air hitting him immediately as he stepped out. Conversations faltered,not completely, but just enough for him to notice. A few heads turned.
Recognition spread fast.
It always did here.
He ignored it.
His gaze moved past them, straight to the center of the gathering.
And then it stopped.
The body lay just off the road, half in the dirt, half on the gravel. Not hidden. Not rushed. Placed.
That was the first thing he noticed.
Placed.
The second was the blood, dark, already drying at the edges, but too much of it to be recent. The ground around it was disturbed in a way that didn’t match the fall.
Dragged.
Iso stepped closer, the noise around him fading into something distant and irrelevant.
He didn’t need to see the face to know something was wrong.
The positioning was off.
The weapon, left too close, too visible, wrong for what it was meant to suggest.
And the mark.
There it was.
Carved, not slashed. Deliberate. Clean lines etched into the skin, precise in a way that felt almost practiced.
Kocari.
Or at least, that’s what it was supposed to look like.
Iso’s expression didn’t change, but something in his chest tightened, not from shock, not even from anger. The name was associated with someone he rather not think about.
He could feel recognition rise in him. This wasn’t revenge, it was simply a message.
“Didn’t think we’d be seeing you back here.”
The voice came from his left, casual on the surface, but carrying something sharper underneath. Iso didn’t look at the man immediately.
He already knew who it was.
Oruç.
“Didn’t plan on it,” Iso replied, his tone flat.
That was the truth. Or at least part of it.
Oruç stepped closer, his gaze flicking briefly to the body before settling back on his little brother. He noticed how there was something in Iso’s expression that hadn’t been there three years ago, something harder, darker, more guarded, but also something else beneath it.
Hurt.
“You picked a good time,” Oruc said sarcastically. “Things have been quiet. Until tonight.”
Iso let out a quiet breath, his eyes still on the mark.
“This isn’t quiet”
“No,” Oruç agreed. “It isn’t.”
A beat of silence passed between them, heavier than it should have been.
Then—
“Come here, brat.”
Oruç opened his arms.
Iso’s chest tightened.
What used to be so normal between them, so easy, so automatic, now felt unfamiliar. Almost like a trap. Like something he didn’t quite know how to step into anymore. He hated that. Hated what the last three years had done to him, how they had made him this guarded, this closed off. But this was Oruç. His brother. The one he would die for. The one who would do the same for him.
And still—
He hesitated.
Just for a second.
Long enough for Oruç’s expression to shift, his arms starting to lower, taking that hesitation for what it looked like, rejection.
That was enough.
Iso stepped forward and pulled him into a hug.
It wasn’t as natural as it used to be.
It took a moment for both of them to settle into it, to adjust to something that had once been instinct. Oruç felt it immediately, the difference. Iso had always been tall, but now there was something else to him, something that made him feel even bigger, harder to reach. His shoulders were broader, his build heavier, but it wasn’t just physical. It was the way he held himself. Closed off. Solid. Like he had built walls into his posture.
And his eyes—
Those same eyes that used to be gentle and warm, soft, always carrying a hint of humor and mischief, were different now. Sharper. Guarded. Hard in a way Oruç had never seen before.
It hurt.
More than he expected.
He searched for something familiar in him, some trace of the boy he had known, but there was nothing. Not yet. And that realization cracked something in his chest.
It made him angry.
At everything. At the past. At the way things had unfolded. At their mother, more than anything. It hadn’t been enough that everything fell apart back then, that they had already lost too much, she had taken this too. His brother. Not just physically, but whatever part of him had stayed behind.
Three years ago, Iso had left without even packing. Just gone. No explanation, no goodbye. It had taken a month for him to answer a single call, just long enough to say he was alive. After that, nothing. No location, no details, no answers. To this day, no one knew where he had been, what he had been doing, or who he had become in the process.
Oruç tightened his arms around him.
And even in that moment, he noticed it.
Iso’s head.
It didn’t fall onto his shoulder the way it always used to. He had always done that, no matter who he was hugging, no matter how much taller he was. It was something soft about him, something grounding. Something that made him feel like he still needed people.
Now—
His head stayed firm, pressed against Oruç’s, but never lowering.
Never leaning.
Another small difference.
Another thing that wasn’t there anymore.
It broke something in Oruç all over again.
Iso noticed it.
Of course he did.
And without really thinking, he said the words that used to come so easily, so naturally they never even registered before.
“King of all brothers.”
It felt strange in his mouth now. Foreign in a way it never had before.
Oruç’s grip tightened instantly, like the words alone had brought something back.
“My lion,” he replied, just as quick.
He pulled back slightly, hands coming up to cup Iso’s face, forcing him to look at him properly. Iso held his gaze, and for a moment, it was all there; love, pain, relief, everything they hadn’t said.
“I missed you,” Oruç said.
Iso swallowed.
Guilt flickered, brief but sharp.
“I missed you too, abi.”
It wasn’t a lie.
That didn’t make it easier.
The noise around them slowly crept back in, voices rising again, people shifting, the reality of where they were pulling them out of whatever that moment had been.
The body.
The situation.
Everything waiting.
Iso stepped back slightly, his expression shifting again, eyes flicking toward the ground before returning to Oruç.
A silent question.
Oruç understood.
“He was meeting someone.”
Iso’s attention sharpened, just slightly.
“Who?” he asked.
Oruç hesitated.
Not long.
Just enough.
“We don’t know.”
He glanced back down at the body, taking in the details again. The placement. The mark. The weapon.
Too clean.
Too intentional.
Whoever did this didn’t want confusion.
They wanted a reaction.
They wanted blood.
The murmurs around them grew louder again, the tension shifting as more people arrived, voices rising just enough to signal the beginning of something that wouldn’t end easily.
Iso straightened slowly.
“Who found him?” he asked.
“Worker from the lower road,” Oruç said. “Said he saw the lights, came to check. His face is messed up, we still haven’t identified who it is”
Iso nodded once, filing it away.
Everything about this felt wrong.
Not chaotic enough to be real.
Not personal enough to be revenge.
“Fatih was seen.” Oruc continued “Or rather a car with a hawke on it, the same one you used to draw as a kid. I’m 100% sure it’s him.”
The words cut through the noise like a blade.
Iso didn’t react immediately.
Didn’t move.
Didn’t speak.
For a second, it was like the sound had reached him a fraction too late, like his mind needed time to catch up to something it hadn’t heard in years.
Then it settled.
Heavy.
Unavoidable.
He turned his head slowly toward the man who had said it. Older. One of the ones who remembered everything. The kind of man who didn’t throw names around lightly.
“Where?” Iso asked.
“Near the upper road,” the man said. “Not long before this.”
A pause.
“Close enough.”
The implication hung there, thick and ugly.
Of course it did.
Fatih.
After all this time.
Iso’s jaw tightened, just slightly.
It would be easy to believe.
Too easy.
That was the problem.
He looked back at the body one last time, at the mark that didn’t sit right, at the weapon that told the wrong story.
Then he stepped back.
“This isn’t his,” he said.
Oruç frowned. “What?”
Iso met his gaze, steady.
“It’s wrong.”
“How?”
Iso didn’t answer right away. Not because he didn’t have one, but because he wasn’t sure how much to say. Not here. Not now.
“Because if he did it,” he said finally, “you wouldn’t have found him like this.”
Silence.
Short. Tense.
Oruç studied him, something unreadable flickering in his eyes.
“You sound sure,” he said.
Iso held his gaze.
“I am.”
Another beat passed.
Then Oruç looked away first, back toward the gathering, toward the voices that were already starting to split into sides.###
Kocari.
Furtuna.
It didn’t take much.
It never had.
Iso exhaled slowly, the weight of it settling in his chest, not unfamiliar, but heavier now. Different.
He hadn’t come back for this.
But it was already too late.
Because whatever this was—
It wasn’t over.
It had just started.
And he had been pulled straight into it, whether he wanted to be or not.
He wasn’t ready for this.
He hadn’t come back for this.
He came for his grandmother. For something simple, something he could still fix, still control. Not for bodies on the road, not for old names being dragged back into the light, not for the kind of tension that settled in your chest and refused to leave. He was meant to be here for a quick visit and leave.
But it didn’t matter.
It never did here.
The moment you stepped back into this place, it stopped being about what you wanted.
Iso exhaled slowly, his gaze lingering on the body for a second longer before he forced himself to look away. The mark, the weapon, the way it had all been arranged, none of it sat right. It wasn’t careless. It wasn’t emotional. The noise around him fading into something dull and distant. His jaw tightened slightly, something unsettled sitting just beneath the surface.
He reached into his pocket this time. The cigarette was between his lips before anyone could say anything, the lighter sparking once, twice,then catching.
He inhaled deeper than before.
Sharply.
“You didn’t smoke.”
Oruç’s voice came from beside him, quieter this time, not just surprised, thrown off, confused. Iso let the smoke sit for a second before exhaling, slow, controlled, his eyes still locked on the body.
“Yeah,” he said, almost under his breath. “There’s a lot I didn’t use to do.” his voice sounded bitter even to his own ears.
A beat.
Oruç didn’t answer right away.
Didn’t know how to.
Iso took another drag, harsher this time, like he was done explaining anything that had already changed. Smoke curled into the night air, disappearing as quickly as it came.
The kill wasn’t random it was deliberate.
And whatever it was—
it had just gotten worse.
Which meant someone wanted this.
Wanted a reaction. Wanted the shift that was already starting to spread through both sides.
His jaw tightened slightly.
He didn’t have the luxury of standing outside it anymore.
Not after coming back.
Not after being seen.
And definitely not after that.
Fatih.
The name sat heavy in his mind, heavier than it should have after all this time. It didn’t fit. Not with what he was looking at. Not with how this had been done.
Too obvious.
Too easy.
Iso glanced once toward Oruç, then back at the scene, something settling into place in the back of his mind. Not an answer. Not yet.
Just a feeling.
That whatever this was, it wasn’t what it looked like.
And he was already too deep in it to walk away.