Because my friend, Rana, totally bribed me to do it.

Despite how much I wish, they are not mine. But all the mistakes unfortunately are.

- PART 1 -

A gasp.

"Abi,"

"Say it."

"Open your eyes. No more hiding, no more hesitation. They can't take your Umut away again. You're not gonna live your life blaming yourself, I won't let you. Come on."

A deep breath.

"Abi,"

"Say it, Kardesim,"

"The faster wins."

A roll. A shove.

Bang.

Bang.

Bang.

Bang.

Bang.

Silence.

Sliding against the wall behind him, momentarily stunned, Sarp stared uncomprehendingly at the scene in front of him. Darkness crawling over the edges of his vision, and silence engulfed him as time seemed to come to a sudden halt.

Five bangs. Five shots. Before the warehouses was draped in utter silence. He couldn't even hear himself breathing. He felt something warm trickling over his chest, but his mind wasn't able to process what was happening. In a dream-like state, his eyes moved upwards, taking in the scene in front of him.

In his peripheral vision, he saw Fulya on the ground, her posture against the opposite wall mirroring his, except her eyes stared vacantly at nothing. Dead.

Celal stood over them, gun pointed outwards, seemingly unharmed. He was the only one standing, he was always the only one standing, while the darkness inside him tainted the air around him, poisoning it, and everyone and everything else crumbled to the floor in his presence.

Then the room seemed to inhale and the frozen scene started to unfold in front of him, way too fast, and Sarp snapped out of his trance with a jolt.

His mind was still playing catch up as his eye swept down and found Umut, his little brother—the brother he had just found a couple of days ago—lying limply on the floor right in front of him, his body still, too still.

The sight stole his breath away, his heart felt like being squeezed in a vice grip and he couldn't even move to touch his brother. To check if he was still even alive. He hadn't had the chance to actually look earlier, when Celal's gun was pointed at Umut's head, he couldn't afford keeping Celal out of his sight of the fear of him pulling the trigger the second Sarp averted his eyes.

"H-how does it look?"

Umut had asked, and he had managed to glance quickly at his brother then, trembling and bleeding on the floor, and his instinct was to assure the scared child in Umut, the child who wouldn't dare look at his own wound himself and instead turning to his Abi for assurance despite the situation and the circumstances.

"You're okay. Everything's gonna be okay."

Everything was not OK. Nothing was even in the vicinity of being OK.

And Sarp could no longer pay attention to his surroundings anymore; there was only him and his bleeding little brother and nothing mattered anymore.

He moved forward, a surprised gasp forcing its way out of his chest at the pain that shot through his sternum as he moved his body forward. Avoiding the pain in the sake of reaching any part of his brother, Sarp wrapped his arms around Umut's shoulders, one hand unconsciously gripping the gun still, and pulled Umut's narrow frame towards him with a grunt of pain.

Leaning back against the wall, Umut's back to his chest, Sarp reached his free hand to his brother's neck, checking for a sign of life. He wasn't even aware of the tears that were streaming down his face, he wasn't aware of the sound of anguish that was coming out of him, all he knew was that his hands were shaking so hard and he couldn't detect a pulse where his fingers pressed against clammy and cold skin.

His hand fell to his lap as his chest shook with the scream bubbling up inside him. Umut's head lolled on his left shoulder where he has been shot, but the physical pain was nothing compared to the tear that was slicing its way across his heart.

"UMUUUUUUUUT!"

His scream seemed to run on forever, a scream of denial, of anger, of guilt, of a lifetime lost with his brother, of the years he was yet destined to lose. A scream for the child who never got to know his family, for the child who had to struggle his way through life alone, who spent all his waking memories looking for his mother, his brother, only to lose them all over again. Forever this time.

No! This was not happening. Sarp refused to let the story end that way. They have fought for this for twenty years; they have earned it for God's sake. Celal wasn't to win the war. Celal wasn't going to take his brother away from him ever again.

"They can't take your Umut away from you again."

"No, they can't! They won't!" He replied out loud, dropping the gun to the floor and bracing Umut's head with his left hand, the other coming down to press over the wound on his brother's stomach. In the back of his head, he remembered that Umut has been shot in the arm too, despite his attempt at brushing it away earlier.

"How's your wound? Is it bad?" He had asked, wanting nothing but to turn around and take a good look at his brother and inspect his arm.

"It's okay, don't worry. Just a scratch." Umut had said, frame shaking against Sarp's back.

"Umut, open your eyes, Kardesim. Don't let him win, man. You can't die, not now!" Sarp shook his brother's head, patting his cheeks, hand coming back to Umut's head and fingers threading into the sweaty hair he found there. "Come on, Umut! Open your eyes, please, don't let go, you don't let go, Umut!"

But Umut stayed stubbornly still in his arms, and Sarp would have taken anything instead of the terrifying stillness. He would have exchanged it for the tremors that wracked his brother's body when his shaking frame weakly knocked into his legs after his roll minutes ago, and what felt like hours ago. Days!

"Umuuut!" His scream ripped through the quiet, and later Sarp would realize, empty warehouse. His hand shook and slipped onto his brother's blood, and he forced himself not to look at the wound, instead locking eyes with Umut's stubbornly closed ones, willing them to open, and pressed harder against the blood that was seeping from between his fingers.

"Please, God, please!" He lifted his eyes upwards, praying, begging, pleading and a harsh gasp made his head snap back to look at his brother.

Umut's eyes were wide-open, staring at the ceiling, as he gasped for a breath after another.

"Umut!" Sarp's fingers tightened around the messy strands of blond hair, and Umut's eyes moved towards him. "Kardesim! Hey, hey, you're okay, look at me. You're alight, everything is gonna be okay. Just hold on for me okay? Okay, little brother?"

Umut stared blankly at him for a few seconds like he was speaking in a different language and then Sarp saw when everything came back rushing to his little brother. Anguish crept to his glazing eyes, tears slipping free from their corners before Mert Karadag took control and the hysterical, maniac laughter followed.

"Umut?" Sarp hated that laugh, which he knew wasn't a part of Umut as much as it was a part of Mert Karadag; the swaggering, overconfident, sleazy bastard who planted himself right in the middle of his family. But that was before, before the curtain was lifted and he could see Mert in a different light. He was a survivor, strong but lonely, good but misguided. A scared child shielded by a broken man with too many walls and lines of defense to cross.

He was the man who refused to stay down, no matter how hard he fell.

He was the man who literally laughed at the face of death.

And Sarp wished Umut would never laugh this laugh again.

"So, now-now I'm d-dying?" Umut stuttered, gasping between the mixed together letters and hysterical laughter, which only morphed into a sob a second later.

And Sarp realized that his little brother's façade was crumbling, Mert retreating and surrendering to the little brother in Umut.

"No! You're not. You fight this. Keep breathing, help is on the way! They're almost here, Kardesim, you hear me?" Some part of Sarp's brain was trying to calculate the time, trying to figure out when the police were coming. He had called them before he rushed to save Umut once he knew where he was, they wanted him to wait for them but that was never going to happen, not when he knew that he already might be too late. How long have they been there? How long have they been lying on the floor, holding into each other? Umut's breath hitched again and Sarp forced his hand to press harder onto the wound.

"Ahh, Abi!" Umut cried out, his face instinctively turning into the croak of his older brother's neck, like when he would get sick when they were kids, seeking the comfort and safety the solid frame always offered, unconditionally, without asking for something in return. And Umut knew, he knew that he was the luckiest person on earth, even if he died, he would at least be dying in his brother's arm and not alone, the brother who held nothing but utter devotion for him through all these years. Who accepted him the second he found him despite everything that Mert had done to hurt purposely hurt him.

"Shh, Umut, you're okay. I'm here, I'm with you. I'm not gonna leave you, okay, Kardesim? I'm not gonna leave you!"

"S-Sarp!" His brother gasped, and Sarp felt a weak hand tugging at the one he was holding tight against the still-bleeding hole into his brother. "Stop! Stop, it hurts."

It was barely a whisper but he heard it like bells ringing inside his head, and he heard himself sobbing in return at the pain he had never heard in his brother's voice before, wished he would have never had to. "I'm sorry, I have to, brother. I have to. But you're gonna be okay, I'm here. Just hang on for me a little longer, okay, brother? We still have so much to do together, you still have a long life waiting for you, and you still have a lifetime of happiness to live with your family, Umut!"

Sarp choked into tears, looking at his brother who was smiling and crying at the same time. "The past- the past c-couple of days," Umut chocked and gasped for breath. "w-were the best days o-of my life, Abi."

Umut's hand clutched weakly at Sarp's t-shirt, then he started to cough harshly and Sarp realized with horror that he was chocking on his own blood. Panic gripped at his heart and he fumbled to move and roll his little brother to his side, Umut's hands still clenching around the material of his t-shirt, as the thick crimson coated Umut's lips and chin, dripping to the floor beneath them to join the mess of their mixed blood.

"Abi," Umut said on an exhale after what seemed like hours of retching blood and then his eyes slipped shut again.

And to Sarp, everything that followed was a blur.

He felt himself screaming before suddenly light flooded the dark warehouse, too much light. There were voices surrounding him, talking to him, talking at him. Men and women in different uniforms swarming around him in slow motion, he saw their lips moving, he heard the mumbled words, but he couldn't decipher any of them. Then there were hands, tugging at him, trying to prey Umut free of his arms. He resisted desperately, holding onto his brother for dear life, like a drowning man. Part of him recognized the voices; words like help him and you have to penetrated the thick haze wrapping his mind. He blinked and felt himself falling forward, hands were on him instantly, but his hand refused to let go of Umut's.

He felt weightless all of a sudden and when he blinked again he found himself staring at the ceiling of what he barely recognized as an ambulance. He let his head roll to the left, finding his brother and ignoring the questions and assurance that were being fired at him.

They have fitted his brother with an Oxygen mask, wires seemed to be attached to every visible part of his body, and Sarp watched them as they cut away the shirt that he had helped Umut pick only today to ask the woman he loved to spend the rest of her life with him. To start a new life.

If only you knew you were actually picking his funeral outfit. A voice in his head that sounded very much like Celal's taunted him. And a fresh flash of hot, white pain seared into his whole body from head to toe as he screamed for his brother for one last time