Work Text:
“The betrayal always comes from the ones closest, doesn’t it yeğenim?”
Şerif smiled after saying it, but it wasn’t human. It was the kind of smile that belonged in nightmares and old family curses. The kind that looked carved into someone’s face instead of born there.
“But,” he continued softly, almost lovingly, “you don’t know how close that blood really is, do you?”
Confusion spread through the hall instantly.
Iso frowned slightly. Oruç straightened. Adil’s expression hardened. Esme’s fingers tightened around Eleni’s wrist. Even Fatih, who usually looked half-detached from the world around him, went still. Fadime stood beside Iso in the middle of their wedding hall, fingers intertwined with his, the white of her wedding dress glowing softly beneath the golden lights.
Their third wedding.
Their first had been forced.
Their second had ended with her leaving him after his lies shattered whatever remained of her trust, Fatih taking him away before the whole town drowned in blood and grief.
And this one?
This one was supposed to be theirs.
The happy ending.
After years of pain and separation and hatred and yearning so violent it nearly killed them both, this was supposed to be the night they finally got to breathe. The night fate finally loosened its hands from around their throats.
The hall had been full of music only minutes ago. Horon circles and loud laughter and glasses clinking together. Iso’s hand on her waist the entire night like he still couldn’t believe she was really there. Fadime laughing into his shoulder while he spun her during the slower songs. His forehead against hers under the lights while everyone around them celebrated like the war was finally over.
Drunk in love.
Drunk in relief.
They should not have believed in happiness so easily.
Because evil never arrives quietly for people like them.
And Şerif? Şerif had escaped prison the same day as their wedding, 5 years later after he was arrested.
Of course he did.
Of course the devil dragged himself out of hell the moment they tried to become something soft.
He had appeared without warning at the entrance of the hall, dressed in black, rainwater still clinging to his coat like the storm itself had followed him there. One second there had been music. The next, silence so violent it swallowed the entire room whole.
Like everyone’s nightmares had suddenly walked in wearing a human face.
Iso stepped slightly in front of Fadime instinctively.
Even now.
Even after everything.
His fingers tightened around hers once.
“What do you mean?” he asked.
His voice sounded wrong already. Too stiff. Too careful.
Fadime intertwined their fingers tighter immediately, stepping closer to him, but he shifted again, shielding her body behind his own without even realizing he did it.
Şerif noticed.
That horrible smile widened.
“They never told you?” he asked softly. “Of course they didn’t. You were always everyone’s light, weren’t you? Even your appearance reflects it. Blonde hair. Blue eyes. Pretty little sunshine boy.”
Fatih made a sharp warning sound from somewhere near the tables.
“Şerif.”
But Şerif ignored him completely.
Iso had gone unnaturally still now.
Fadime could feel his pulse against her palm even through his fingers.
Fast.
Too fast.
Şerif tilted his head slightly, eyes disturbingly warm now.
“You know,” he continued conversationally, like they weren’t standing in the middle of a wedding about to destroy itself, “you never saw my baby pictures. Funny thing, really. I used to have blue eyes too. Dark blond hair for the first few years.”
The room went colder.
“Something my brother never had,” Şerif laughed softly.
Not sane.
Never sane.
“It faded when I got older. Genes are funny that way, yani… they disappear for one generation then come back stronger in the next.”
Fadime felt Iso’s fingers twitch violently inside hers.
“No,” he muttered.
So quietly she almost didn’t hear it.
But she did.
Because she always heard him.
Şerif’s eyes softened.
Actually softened.
And somehow that was the most horrifying thing Fadime had ever seen.
“You always reminded me of myself in ways you couldn’t explain,” he said gently. “That’s why I loved you most.”
“No,” Iso whispered again, louder this time.
His entire body looked wrong now. Like the ground beneath him had shifted and never stopped moving.
Everyone in the hall had frozen completely.
Esme looked sick.
Oruç’s face had gone white.
Adil was staring at Şerif like he wanted to kill him with his bare hands.
Only Fatih looked unsurprised.
And that, that was what finally shattered something inside Iso.
His eyes snapped toward Fatih immediately.
Fatih didn’t look away.
Didn’t deny it.
Didn’t say anything at all.
And that silence told Iso everything.
“No,” Iso said again, this time sounding like he was choking.
Şerif smiled.
Tenderly.
“Yeğenim,” he murmured.
Then after a pause:
“Or maybe I should say oğlum.”
The entire world stopped breathing.
Iso staggered backward once.
Fadime caught him immediately.
“SHUT UP,” he screamed suddenly.
The sound ripped through the hall so violently people physically flinched.
“SHUT UP, SHUT UP, SHUT THE FUCK UP—”
His fingers crushed hers painfully now, clinging to her like she was the only thing still keeping him attached to the earth.
And she was.
God.
She was.
“İsom,” Şerif said softly.
Affectionately.
Like this was some horrible family reunion instead of a massacre.
Then suddenly—
movement.
Fast.
Too fast.
Şerif pulled a gun from beneath his coat and aimed it directly at Iso’s heart.
The hall exploded into screams.
Fadime didn’t think.
Her body moved before her mind did.
She threw herself in front of Iso instantly, but he reacted just as fast, grabbing her waist violently and pulling her back behind him instead, shielding her completely with his body.
Even now.
Even now he chose her first.
Fadime’s other hand flew over his chest instinctively, fingers spread wide above his heart in terrified protection. Her palm pressed hard against him as if she could physically shield the beating thing beneath bone and skin. His heart was beating fast.
And suddenly the movement felt hauntingly familiar.
She had done this her entire life.
To Adil.
To the men she loved.
Always standing between violence and the hearts she could not survive losing.
Maybe that was her curse.
Maybe Fadime Koçari had been born with blood on her hands and a body destined to become a shield.
Maybe her palms were always fated to protect the doomed hearts of the men she loved most, only to fail them anyway.
She was trembling violently now.
Her entire body shaking.
“No,” she whispered.
Not him.
Not after everything.
Not when they had finally reached the end.
She almost laughed hysterically at the irony of it all.
A happy wedding?
For them?
Of course not.
Not for people with their blood.
Not for descendants born from hatred and graves and generations of family curses rotting inside their veins.
Of course their love would end in blood.
Everything beautiful between them always did.
But she didn’t care.
After this nightmare ended, she would take her Iso and leave this haunted town forever. They would disappear somewhere far away from the sea and the mountains and the ghosts. Adil could visit. Eleni too. They would heal him. Heal together. Build a family. Grow old slowly. Wrinkled hands intertwined in bed years from now.
She had already decided it.
She would drag happiness out of fate’s dead hands herself if she had to.
“Fadimem,” Iso’s voice shook violently above her.
“Stay back.”
No.
Her palm pressed harder against his chest.
His heart was beating so fast beneath it.
Too fast.
Too alive.
“As you see oğlum,” Şerif smiled crazily, eyes glassy now, “I have decided to end this fuckery once and for all.”
“What?” Iso barely got out.
Around them, guns had already been raised. Oruç. Fatih. Adil. Men from both families moving carefully now, waiting for one wrong move.
“Şerif, don’t,” Fatih warned sharply.
At the same time Adil snapped:
“Don’t you fucking dare.”
Şerif ignored all of them.
His eyes stayed on Iso only.
“There’s no peace for people like us,” he said softly. “This town poisoned everything. So I decided if I leave it… my favorite part of me leaves with me.”
Fadime felt her stomach hollow out.
No.
No no no.
“Let’s go together, babam,” Şerif smiled lovingly.
And before anyone could react,before the world itself could catch up…
Şerif pulled the trigger.
The bullet tore directly through Fadime’s spread fingers.
Straight into Iso’s heart.
For one impossible second, she actually felt it happen beneath her palm.
Bone.
Blood.
Death.
Şerif pulled the trigger again.
Then again.
And again.
Until the hall disappeared beneath gunshots.
By the time he stopped, Iso's body was barely standing.
Six bullets.
Six.
All of them buried inside his heart.
Fadime stared at the blood spreading across his wedding suit and suddenly couldn't breathe.
Six bullets.
Her father had received six bullets too.
Six bullets fired by the same monster.
Six bullets that shattered her childhood.
Six bullets that made her an orphan.
Six bullets that stole the first man she ever loved.
And now, six bullets again.
Only this time they weren't inside her father.
They were inside Iso.
Inside her husband.
Inside the man she was supposed to grow old beside.
As if every road in her life had always been leading back to this moment.
As if she had been doomed from the beginning to love men with targets painted over their hearts. Hearts she couldn’t protect.
Six bullets then.
Six bullets now.
Only this time they tore through her too.
Not flesh.
Something worse.
Because while Iso bled out in her arms, Fadime felt something inside her split open so violently she knew it would never heal again.
And somewhere behind the horror, behind the blood soaking her wedding dress and the sound of her own screaming
Fadime felt something inside her tear.
Not break.
Break implied it could be repaired.
This felt permanent.
Like fate itself had reached into her chest and ripped something out by hand.
Because surely this couldn't be a coincidence anymore.
Surely the universe wasn't this cruel.
It felt less like a murder and more like fate.
Like something cruel had spent years drawing the same wound over and over again across her life.
The same heart.
The same blood.
The same grief.
As if Allah himself kept reopening an injury just to see how much pain one woman could survive before she finally stopped getting back up.
Six bullets.
Her father's heart.
Six bullets.
Iso's heart.
And somewhere beneath the screaming and blood and horror, Fadime could almost hear fate cruelly laughing directly in her face.
And right after, Şerif lifted the gun to his own head.
Still smiling.
Still looking at Iso with love.
Then shot himself.
Silence.
Not real silence.
The kind after explosions.
The kind where the world goes deaf from horror.
Iso staggered.
Fadime let out a scream so gut wrenching the people in that hall would hear it in nightmares for years afterward.
It sounded inhuman.
Like bones being ripped from flesh.
Like grief itself had found a voice.
Blood.
Blood.
So much blood.
Iso collapsed into her arms, dragging her down with him onto the marble floor. Her white wedding dress spread around them like torn wings, thick crimson blood blooming violently across the fabric.
The white disappeared quickly.
Swallowed whole by red.
By him.
The train of her dress soaked through first. Then the lace near her thighs. Then her waist. Her chest. Her sleeves. His blood climbed her body greedily until she looked less like a bride and more like a woman carved directly out of tragedy.
Her sol yanım was bleeding to death in her lap.
And the blood just kept coming.
Warm.
Endless.
It slid between her fingers and down her wrists and soaked into the pearls sewn carefully into her dress only hours ago.
Her tears spilled just as fast.
Her palm stayed pressed desperately over his heart, still trying to protect something already slipping away.
“No no no no no—”
She was sobbing so hard she could barely breathe.
Iso looked at her with tearful eyes.
Those ocean blue eyes.
Her oceans.
Quiet tears slipped down his face while his heartbeat weakened slowly beneath her trembling hand, each beat softer and more wrong than the last.
“Fadimem,” he whispered.
“Shhh,” she choked out immediately. “Shhh baby, no no no, we’ll save you, okay? You can’t leave me. We’ll save you. Someone help him!”
Her scream shattered across the hall.
“GET ME THE FUCKING DOCTORS RIGHT NOW—”
People moved instantly then.
Hands touched her shoulders. Voices screamed. Esme was crying hysterically somewhere behind her. Eleni sobbing into Adil’s chest. Oruç on his knees beside Iso looking like someone had ripped his soul out with bare hands.
But Fadime barely saw any of it.
Because they were trying to take Iso from her.
“No!”
She screamed so violently people froze.
“No one touches him—”
“Fadime—”
“NO!”
She clung to him harder.
No one was taking him.
Not fate.
Not death.
Not God himself.
“Sol yanım,” Iso whispered weakly.
That snapped her attention back instantly.
Her bloody hand cupped his face while the other stayed over his heart. She kissed his forehead, his cheeks, his trembling lips, sobbing between every kiss. She could feel him moving his head to kiss her hand on his face. He always loved kissing her palms. She sobbed harder.
His beautiful blond hair was soaked with blood now, sticking against his forehead in damp golden strands while her fingers shook through it desperately, caressing his blonde waves.
“Hmm?” she cried brokenly.
“I…” He struggled for breath painfully. “I turned out to be the son of your father’s killer.”
Fadime sobbed harder immediately.
“Fuck Şerif,” she cried. “Fuck him, fuck this town, fuck our blood, fuck every ancestor that cursed us—”
Her forehead pressed against his.
“You are mine, İso. Only mine. Kilcuk, do you hear me? I don’t give a fuck whose blood you carry.”
Iso smiled weakly then.
God.
That smile.
Small.
Dying.
Still beautiful.
“You’re the best thing that ever happened to me,” he whispered.
Fadime broke completely.
“Then stay,” she begged him. “Please stay with me. Stay with me baby, please—”
Iso lifted a trembling hand toward her hair. His fingers brushed softly through the bloody dark strands before wiping at her tears weakly.
As if her tears were still the thing hurting him most.
“Affet mi, Fadimem” he whispered. “Canım karım.” Just like he whispered countless times before, but this time it was final.
Then his hand fell.
Just like that.
His eyes closed.
And Fadime felt his heart stop beneath her palm.
The exact moment.
One second it fought.
The next…
nothing.
Her entire world ended in silence.
Fadime screamed.
Actually tore her chest open with the sound.
She dragged his body against her chest violently, shaking him desperately as if love itself could force his heart to beat again.
“No no no no—”
Around her, people were crying too. Oruç had collapsed completely beside them. Adil was openly sobbing. Esme screaming. Eleni shaking so hard she could barely stand.
But Fadime saw none of it.
Because Iso was gone.
Gone.
Gone.
Gone.
And suddenly she looked down at her own bloody hand.
The same hand she had spread protectively over his heart.
The same fingers the bullet slipped between.
These traitorous hands.
These useless fucking fingers.
She started scratching at them violently.
Trying to tear the skin open.
As if punishing them would undo what happened.
Adil grabbed her wrists immediately.
“Fadime!”
But she couldn’t hear him properly anymore.
She was gone too.
“This hand was supposed to protect him,” she sobbed hysterically. “I was supposed to protect him—”
She collapsed back over Iso’s body, forehead against his cold one.
“Please,” she whispered brokenly. “Please wake up. Please baby. Please canım kocam, please kilcuk, sol yanım—”
Nothing.
Only blood.
Only silence.
Only the horrifying stillness of a body that used to hold the entire universe inside it.
Then someone behind her said the word.
Body.
They needed the body.
And Fadime lost whatever remained of her mind.
“IT’S NOT A BODY!”
Her scream ripped through the hall.
“THAT’S MY İSO!”
She attacked anyone who came close after that.
Kicking. Crying. Hitting. Screaming like an animal caught in a trap.
No one would take him.
No one.
If fate wanted him dead then fate could rip him from her hands itself.
Because she would not let go willingly.
Never willingly.
Strong arms finally wrapped around her from behind while she clung to Iso’s bloody suit desperately.
Then, a sharp sting in her arm.
A needle.
Her vision blurred almost instantly.
“No,” she sobbed weakly, clutching him harder. “No no no don’t take him from me—”
Darkness crept slowly over her vision.
The last thing she felt was Iso’s body against hers.
Still warm.
Already gone.
Her home.
Her safe place.
Her İsom.
And as unconsciousness dragged her under, one final thought broke through her mind like shattered glass:
They were finally supposed to get their happy ending.
—--
The cemetery was empty when Fadime arrived.
No one knew she had left.
No one knew where she went.
The sky above Trabzon hung dark and swollen with rain, violent wind tearing through the trees surrounding the graves, carrying cold through the hills hard enough to sting skin, but Fadime didn’t feel any of it anymore.
Before coming here, she had gone to the ocean first.
Of course she did.
Standing there alone at the edge of the cliffs like a madwoman in a blood ruined wedding dress, staring into the waves for so long her vision blurred, praying she would somehow catch a glimpse of him in them.
His eyes had always been the same shade after all.
That deep stormy blue.
The kind that swallowed her whole whenever he looked at her too long.
The sea had been cruelly beautiful that night. Dark waves crashing violently against black rocks while the wind tangled through her hair exactly the way his fingers used to. For one horrible second she almost convinced herself he was there. Somewhere between the water and the storm. Somewhere inside the blue.
But the ocean stayed empty.
Just like the world now.
She only felt him.
Or worse, the absence of him.
And somehow that hurt more.
The rain had stopped hours ago, but the earth was still wet enough to cling to her hands like blood.
Nobody had managed to pull her away yet.
Nobody dared to try again after last time.
Fadime had woken up two days after the wedding screaming so violently they had needed to sedate her again. She remembered hands holding her down. Esme crying. Adil shouting for someone to bring another injection. Oruç standing in the corner looking like his soul had been ripped out beside Iso’s.
And the worst part?
They had already buried him.
Because they “couldn’t wait anymore.” Because she they thought she "couldn't handle it"
As if the earth itself would grow impatient for him.
As if the grave had more right to her Iso than she did.
She never got to hold him one last time.
Never got to touch his face after death softened it.
Never got to brush his hair away from his forehead properly.
Never got to clean the blood from his mouth.
Never got to kiss him goodbye.
Never got to lay against his chest one final time pretending maybe his heart would remember her voice and start beating again.
They took him from her while she slept.
Like thieves.
Like cowards.
She had gone completely hysterical after that.
Actually hysterical.
Screaming until her throat tore open. Attacking anyone who touched her. Searching every room in the house like a woman possessed because some ruined part of her genuinely believed they were lying.
That he was still there somewhere.
Breathing.
Waiting for her.
But dead people do not wait.
That was the cruelty of death.
It keeps moving while the people left behind rot in place.
She was still wearing the wedding dress.
She refused to take it off.
Nobody could make her.
The once beautiful white fabric was destroyed now, soaked through with dried blood, rainwater, mud, and dirt. Crimson stains had darkened into rusty brown across the lace and silk, but fresher blood still painted parts of it brighter where her split fingers kept smearing against the fabric every time she clawed at the earth.
Iso’s blood still stained the front of her chest.
Right above her heart.
Exactly where he died against her.
The pearls sewn delicately into the dress were pink now.
Some had fallen off entirely.
Others remained trapped beneath dried blood like tiny little bones stitched into the fabric.
The white dress dragged heavily behind her as she walked toward the grave slowly, unsteadily, like a bride arriving too late to her own wedding. Being dragged behind her through the mud like the remains of something slaughtered. The fabric kept catching against stones and wet soil, staining darker with every step, but she didn’t bother fixing it.
Nothing about her could be fixed anymore.
Not a bride anymore.
Something haunting.
Something left behind after love dies violently.
Her veil had disappeared somewhere between the wedding hall and the cemetery. One sleeve hung torn halfway off her shoulder. Rain had turned parts of the fabric nearly transparent against her skin, clinging to her body like wet burial cloth.
She looked less like a woman and more like grief itself.
Her fingers trembled violently around the flowers she had brought him.
White lilies.
He hated lilies.
Said they smelled like funerals.
The memory hit so suddenly it nearly made her collapse before she even reached him. She could hear his voice too clearly. See the way his nose scrunched slightly when he complained about them, dramatic and teasing while she laughed so hard she nearly spilled tea all over him.
God.
She couldn’t do this.
But she kept walking anyway.
Until finally, she stopped.
And for one terrible second she simply stared.
At the soil.
At the gravestone.
At the name carved into it.
İsmail Furtuna.
The love of her life.
Her home.
The man she no longer knew how to exist without.
The one who crawled into every ruined lonely corner inside her and filled spaces she once believed would ache forever. The only person who ever made the world feel less empty.
Her home.
Dead.
The word still didn’t feel real.
Nothing did.
The ring on her finger suddenly felt heavier than gold, heavier than her own bones, like every promise they never got to keep had melted into the metal and wrapped itself around her hand like a curse.
Her hair had been braided too.
Three thin braids tucked carefully between dark waves because once, months ago, maybe years now because time no longer made sense without him, Iso had kissed one absentmindedly while half asleep and murmured against her hair:
“You look like something God made specifically to ruin me.”
And that stupid memory stayed.
He had always loved her hair.
Loved wasn’t even the right word for it.
He was obsessed with it.
Sometimes he reached for it so instinctively it felt like breathing to him. Like touching her was the only thing grounding him to this earth. He used to wash it for her in the shower, rough scarred hands somehow impossibly gentle while shampoo slipped between his fingers and steam curled around them. Afterwards he’d dry it carefully while muttering nonsense against her neck, kissing the back of her shoulder whenever she laughed at how serious he looked doing it.
And the braids.
God.
The braids and the beads.
He loved braiding the small ones because he knew what they meant to her. He’d sit behind her quietly for long stretches of time, fingers moving through her hair with impossible care while the world outside disappeared completely. Afterwards he always kissed the top of her head softly.
Like she was his.
Everything about him stayed with her.
That was the problem.
Fadime dropped to her knees so hard against the wet ground it hurt.
The flowers slipped from her hands. And she started digging.
Her fingers started bleeding.
Nails cracked apart from digging at the earth so violently it looked like she had been trying to physically fight the grave itself. Mud packed beneath her nails and deep into the cuts along her palms while blood dripped slowly into the soaked ground beneath her hands.
Still she kept digging.
As if love alone could force the earth to give him back.
“Isom,” she whispered.
Nothing answered.
The wind moved violently through the cemetery.
Cold.
Empty.
Wrong.
Her breathing shattered immediately after.
Because he was supposed to answer.
He always answered.
Even angry.
Even bleeding in her arms while death dragged him away from her.
He always came back.
But not this time.
This time the earth swallowed him whole.
A broken sound tore from her throat before she could stop it.
Then another.
Then another.
Until suddenly she was crying so hard she could barely breathe properly anymore.
Her hands hit the soil.
Once.
Twice.
Then harder.
“No,” she choked violently through tears. “No no no no—”
Mud shoved itself beneath her nails while she clawed desperately at the grave like if she dug deep enough she could still reach him somehow. Like the earth had made a mistake giving him back to God before she was ready.
Rain started pouring harder again.
Her fingers split open quickly against rocks and soaked dirt, skin tearing apart until blood mixed with mud and rainwater, but she kept digging anyway. Sobbing so hard her entire body shook with it, every breath coming out broken and uneven like even her lungs were grieving him.
“Give him back,” she cried to nobody, voice raw enough to tear apart her own throat. “Please, please give him back to me—”
But the grave stayed silent.
And God.
That silence.
That silence was killing her.
Because Iso had never been silent around her.
He was loud laughter at three in the morning. Rough hands grabbing her waist in kitchens and hallways. Smoke curling from his lips while he stared at her like she was something holy and dangerous all at once. He was storms and warmth and impossible blue eyes always looking at her like she was the only thing tethering him to this world.
And now there was only dirt.
Only a grave.
Only cold earth keeping him where she couldn’t reach him.
Fadime collapsed fully over the grave then, cheek pressing against the soaked soil like she could somehow still feel warmth beneath it.
Like if she laid close enough, loved hard enough, the earth might finally break open and return him to her.
“I can’t do this,” she sobbed. “Iso, I can’t—”
The words dissolved into choking grief.
Her fingers curled desperately into the mud, holding onto the earth keeping him from her like it was the last piece of him she had left.
“You once said,” she whispered through shaking breaths, voice splitting apart between every word, “that you wanted to tear your chest open just to keep me inside you… so I wouldn’t be lonely ever again…”
A horrible sound escaped her then.
Half sob.
Half scream.
“So open your grave for me now too,” she cried brokenly into the dirt. “Because I don’t know how to exist anywhere you don’t.”
“I’m so lonely right now baby” she sobbed.
Her forehead hit the grave hard enough to hurt.
She didn’t care.
“Let me lay with your bones, baby,” she sobbed. “Let me hold the earth that keeps you because it’s the closest thing I have left to holding you.”
The rain swallowed the rest.
And for a long time she simply stayed there.
Curled over his grave in her ruined white dress.
Wedding ring still on her finger.
Hair braided the way he loved.
Looking less like a bride and more like the ghost of one.
The kind that died the same day her love did.
Maybe not physically.
But in every way that mattered.
Because the truth was: Fadime Koçari had survived many things in her life.
War.
Blood.
Loneliness.
Betrayal.
But surviving İsmail Furtuna?
That was the one thing she was never built for.
Looking down at the soil Iso was buried beneath, Fadime realized something horrifying.The first time he told her he loved her, he had already told her how their story would end.
He told her he loved her so much he could die for her.
She hadn't realized he was making a promise.
And İsmail Furtuna, for all his flaws, had always been a man who kept his promises.
Even the one where he died.
The fact that he wasn’t with her anymore. The fact that he simply no longer existed in this world. He would never walk again, never breathe again, never open his eyes again. She would never truly see him again, not really, not outside the cruelty of her own memories.
She would never touch his skin again. Never kiss his lips. Never feel his blonde strands slipping between her fingers while he looked at her like she was something worth surviving for. Those blue eyes, those oceans that once held entire worlds for her, would never look at her again. There would never be another laugh from him, another touch, another “I love you.”
And oh God, what if time took even that from her too?
What if one day she forgot the exact shade of his eyes? The sound of his voice calling her name? The warmth of his mouth against hers? What if grief slowly eroded him piece by piece until all that remained was fragments she kept desperately trying to sew back together inside her mind?
She sobbed harder.
Because that was the cruelest part of death. Not just that it steals the person, but that it leaves you alone carrying everything they once were inside memories that cannot hold weight, cannot speak back, cannot touch you. Memories were all she had left of him now. Thin, flickering lapses of time she could revisit but never change, like standing outside a home she once belonged to while watching through the windows as life continued without her.
They would never make new memories again. There would never be another tomorrow with him inside it. No new touches, no new words, no new laughter. The world had simply ended him, and all that remained of the man she loved were echoes moving endlessly through the corridors of her mind, haunting her with the unbearable fact that once, he had been real.
Her vision blurred violently. Her chest felt torn open, bleeding grief so unbearable it almost felt physical.
Through trembling fingers and hands that already felt half-dead, Fadime reached shakily into the inside of her ruined wedding dress.
They had hidden every weapon from her after the funeral.
Every knife.
Every razor.
Every bottle of pills.
As if they knew.
As if everybody looked at her hollow eyes and bloodstained dress and realized immediately:
she would try to follow him.
And they were right.
There was no point in staying inside this wretched world if Iso no longer existed in it.
The world had already taken too much from her.
Her childhood.
Her peace.
Years of her life.
And now him.
The soil had demanded and demanded and demanded from her until there was nothing left inside her bones except grief and cursed blood.
It was finally time for it to take her too.
She had found her brother’s razor blade by accident earlier that evening, probably missed when they searched the house for sharp objects. She remembered staring at it for a long time in silence before hiding it carefully inside the lining of her wedding dress.
Almost like fate itself had slipped it into her hands.
Now, pulling it free beneath the storm-dark sky, she let out a broken laugh.
A horrible sound.
Thin.
Wretched.
Mad.
“I’ll join you soon, baby,” she whispered softly to the grave.
Her bloody hand caressed the wet soil gently, fingertips trembling against the earth as if she was touching Iso’s face instead.
That was the closest thing she had left of him anyway.
Mud gathered beneath her fingernails while rainwater slid down her wrist and disappeared into the sleeve of her destroyed wedding dress. The white lace was almost entirely red now, stained so deeply with blood and dirt it barely resembled bridal fabric anymore.
It looked like she had been butchered inside it.
Or married inside it.
Maybe for people like them those things had always been the same.
The wind howled violently through the cemetery, making the trees creak above her like old grieving ghosts.
Fadime looked down at the razor blade resting in her shaking hand.
Silver.
Sharp.
Beautiful.
She could almost see her own name carved into it.
Like fate had forged it specifically for her.
It was stupid of her to believe cursed blood would ever allow them peace.
Generations of hatred poisoned their veins long before either of them were born. Centuries of graves and revenge and bloodshed haunting them before they ever touched hands for the first time.
Of course their story would end like this.
Furtuna blood.
Koçari blood.
Spilled into the same earth.
Buried beneath the same soil.
Only this time…they would be buried together.
She made sure of it.
The letter she left Adil sat folded neatly beside her bed back home, tear stained and ruined from how violently her hands had shaken while writing it.
"Bury me beside him.
No matter who disagrees.
No matter what our families say.
Beside him."
Always beside him.
The rain started falling harder.
Cold droplets soaked through the thin fabric clinging to her skin while strands of dark hair stuck against her tear stained cheeks. The braids Iso loved rested damply against her shoulders, slowly unraveling in the storm.
She wondered briefly if he would fix them for her when she reached him.
The thought nearly made her break apart again.
Fadime’s eyes drifted slowly toward the gravestone.
İsmail Furtuna.
Her husband.
Her first love.
Her last love.
The boy who kissed her under stars and in storms and against kitchen counters and hospital beds. The man who held her like she was something holy even while the world rotted around them. The man who washed her hair gently after nightmares and kissed her braids absentmindedly while half asleep. The man who laughed loudly and loved violently and ruined her for everyone else before dying in her arms wearing the suit he was supposed to grow old in.
God.
She could still feel his blood warm on her palms.
Still hear the wet choking sound his breathing made before it stopped.
Still feel his heart dying beneath her hand.
The same hand that failed to protect him.
Her gaze lowered slowly toward her wrist.
Then toward the razor.
And with terrifying calmness, she pressed the blade against skin.
The first slash was deep.
Violent.
Immediate pain tore through her arm, sharp enough to make her gasp, but she welcomed it instantly. Almost greedily. Blood poured from the wound quickly, dark crimson against pale skin before dripping heavily onto the ruined white dress pooled beneath her.
Red spread beautifully through the already red fabric.
Like flowers blooming.
Like love finally consuming the bride whole.
Her blood mixed with Iso’s old blood, her wedding dress a canvas.
Fadime let out a shaking breath.
Then she cut deeper.
Punishing.
Merciless.
Because this hand failed him.
This hand pressed against his heart and still couldn’t save him.
She cut six deep slashes across her wrist.
Blood slid down her fingers in thick warm lines before soaking into the lace covering her lap. Rainwater mixed with it immediately, pink rivers spilling through the folds of silk and mud.
She lay down slowly on top of his grave afterward, body trembling weakly against the wet earth while blood continued pouring from her wrist.
Above her, the sky stretched endless and stormy blue.
The same shade as Iso’s eyes.
Her blues.
Rain began falling harder again, almost gentle this time, as if the heavens themselves were trying desperately to wash away the blood soaking into the soil.
But nothing could wash away cursed blood spilled because of love.
Nothing.
As warmth slowly left her body, memories began flooding through her in broken violent pieces.
Iso laughing so hard he nearly choked while teaching her how to drive his motorbike.
His sleepy morning voice mumbling:
five more minutes.
The feeling of his lips against her braids.
His hands washing shampoo through her hair while steam fogged the bathroom mirrors.
Cooking together at two in the morning because neither of them could sleep.
His rough palms warming her freezing fingers during winter.
Him dragging her laughing into the ocean fully clothed.
The way he always reached for her instinctively in his sleep.
His forehead pressed against hers while he whispered:
sol yanım.
The stupid fights.
The screaming.
The years apart.
The silence.
The betrayal.
The hatred that grew from loving each other too much and destroying each other with it anyway.
But even those haunted years could not kill what they were to each other.
Nothing could.
Not family.
Not curses.
Not blood.
Not death.
A weak smile trembled onto her lips through tears.
“Wait for me,” she whispered weakly toward the grave. “I’m joining you, hayatım.”
The nickname almost made her laugh.
Hayatım.
My life.
As she gave away hers just to reach him again.
Her blood soaked deeper into the earth beneath her, disappearing slowly into the same soil covering Iso’s body.
Almost like the ground itself was stitching them back together.
Her vision blurred.
The rain softened.
Even the cold stopped hurting eventually.
And for the first time since the wedding
for the first time since his heart stopped beneath her hand
peace began settling quietly inside her chest.
Not happiness.
Never happiness.
Something softer.
Relief.
Because soon she would not have to wake up in a world without him anymore.
Tears slipped slowly down the sides of her face as she closed her eyes one final time, bleeding hand curling weakly into the wet soil above Iso’s grave the same way her fingers once intertwined with his.
And with one final slow heartbeat
Fadime Koçari let go of this wretched existence without him inside it.
Her heart stopped exactly three days after his did.
Maybe this was always their happy ending.
Not old age. Not peace. Not a house filled with children and soft mornings.
But blood soaked wedding clothes, trembling hands reaching for each other through death, and two ruined souls loving each other so violently the world itself could not survive them together.
Maybe people like İsmail Furtuna and Fadime Koçari were never meant to grow old.
Maybe they were only ever meant to become a tragedy people whispered about long after the earth finished swallowing them whole.
Just enough time for her soul to find the road back to him.
When they found her the next morning, she was still smiling, finally looking peaceful again.
Blood soaked through the wedding dress completely now, red and white fabric spread across the grave like the aftermath of some ancient sacrifice. Her dark braids rested over her shoulders exactly the way Iso loved them, wedding ring still sitting on her finger, one hand buried deep into the soil above him as if even in death she refused to let him go.
The bride never left the groom.
Not even for death. Death did not do them apart, after all.
She refused to let it.
And somewhere beyond human eyes, beyond cursed blood and grieving families and the cruelty of earth itself, two ruined souls finally reached for each other in the dark, becoming whole again.
Their fingers intertwined instantly.
Just like they always did when they were alive.
And this time, nobody could pull them apart ever again.