A LEAP OF THE EARLY BIRD

Fighting it all on her own brave feet...

What defines a character of a person? Their weakness? Their strength? Or is it rather defined by their choice to stand ground and face a challenge that seems impossible to overcome...?

Sanem was hurt beyond words. Words escaped her. There was only pain. Only tears. Knowing that this day was her birthday was beside the point. It magnified her pain, but that was not what mattered. What mattered was that Can not only chose not to listed to her explanations and pleas. He now chose to believe that she cared more about Fabri than him. Whether he wanted to hurt both himself and her, or just her, he succeeded. To hear him say that even for a moment he would think that Fabri was her beloved shattered her heart... To hear him say that Fabri threw the party just for her... To hear him say that she dressed up for Fabri... She had not realized how much Can's words could cut through her heart. Until now...

She came home, with a heart heavy from the burden of its broken pieces. She begged all the stars in the sky for her parents to be asleep so she would not need to face them... But luck was not on her side that night. Just as she closed the doors to their home, she heard Mevkibe's voice calling out to her. She gathered last strands of her courage, and walked up the stairs. Mevkibe did not need to take two seconds of a look to see that something was wrong. And terribly wrong. Her daughter was hurting. Hurting from within. She saw it in her eyes and in tbe tesrs that were fighting a loosing battle of restrain. And she knew that this sort of pain could only have been caused by someone Sanem cared about. And she suspected who caused that pain. But Sanem did not wish to speak about what happened. As much as Mevkibe wanted to rush to her daughter's side and caress all the pain away, Nihat advised Mevkibe to give Sanem space to figure out what her heart needed to figure out on its own...

She made it to her room. Those four walls seemed as much refuge now as a place she could not escape from. The comfort of it seemed to trap her inside. She sat on her bed, and cried. Just cried. Cried for all the shattered pieces of her heart. For all the broken dreams she ever wished for with the man by the name of Can Divit. She cried for the kiss they shared in the darkness that started it all. For the moment they met at the agency when he took her breath away. For the day he pulled her back into safety on the cliffs in Agva, and by doing so pulled her heart wide open so that his love could pour in. She cried for the night they spent at his mountain home, where she felt safe in his arms, where she felt cherished for the first time in her life. She cried for the night they shared in the forest after he almost lost his license. She cried for the night they shared embracing each other on the hammock by the sea, where she fell asleep and awoke to the sight of Can looking straight into her eyes and into her soul. She cried for the moment when Can came to her at the opera and revealed himself as her Albatross. She cried because he no longer believed in their love...

She awoke with a head still full of tears. Leyla tried to console her, but it was of no use. She felt broken inside - something she never felt before in her life. She wasn't innocent in her actions, but she was not a bad person. She made mistakes, but Can made them as well. He chose not to trust her, not to trust in her, and that, to the dreamer in her, was the worst kind of punishment. He chose not to permit her to explain herself or why she was forced to act against him. Or by whom. He just chose to close himself off to her. So she had no other choice but to do the same herself. And that felt like the worst of a punishment she inflict upon herself. Because she lost a part of her light by doing so. A part of that light she held inside dimmed. And that felt too painful to bare.

So she did as she told Can the night before. She quit, and she went back to the grocery store, to the place she felt safe, and the place she could hide. But she realized how much of a fool she was for thinking she could escape from the pain or gossip the moment Ceycey called her. She had come to realize she could depend on him as she could depend on Ayhan. She knew he always had her back, that he was her true voice of virtue and honesty, and loyalty. But she had no idea just what he went through that morning at the agency. He defended her. Left and right. In every corner of the agency and to every employee he came accross. Not because gossip never sat well with him. But because Sanem was innocent of the accussations everyone threw against her. No, she was NOT Fabri's girlfriend. No, she did NOT quit to go work for Fabri. No, she did NOT promise him more of anything in exchange for her perfume, NOR in exchange for the designer dress.

But Ceycey, unbeknownst to him, did something else when he called Sanem. Something more. Something that mattered not only to Sanem, but to Can. It mattered so much more to Can. While he spoke to Sanem, Ceycey did not realize that Can stood not far from him, just a counter away. And Can heard the most important thing in Ceycey's conversation with Sanem. Perhaps even the most important part that would come to trigger Can's heart to consider opening back up to Sanem and their love. He overheard Ceycey apologizing to Sanem for telling her that the party was organized by Can. By Can FOR her, in her honor. By Ceycey apologizing to Sanem for that mistake, Can realized that perhaps, just perhaps, Sanem was telling the truth when she ran out of the party after him and told him that she thought he threw the party for her. That the dress was from him. That she thought he forgave her. But Can heard something else while listening to Ceycey. He heard Aylin's name. And that made his gut turn. Why would she have bothered to speak with Güliz? Why about the party? Why about Sanem? And how on earth did Aylin know about the party in the first place? That was something he knew Aylin would not provide answers for, at least not freely...

Left with no other choice but to face the gossip head on, Sanem went to the agency. She faced her co-workers. She faced the gossip. She faced Can and Fabri as well. She did so fighting it all on her own brave feet. She knew she had to quit, leave Fikri Harika behind. But she never expected to come to find out that her very own sister stood behind the dissapearence of Emre's contract with Aylin...