Summary:Exiled with only their hard work and a few meager savings, Elena and Gabriel labor side-by-side to turn a choke of thistles into the region's most prosperous farm.
Masterlist
《《《《《《《《《Ep2》》》》》》》》》
The marriage was a quiet affair, witnessed only by Jane and Martha, who wept bitterly, and little Tommy, the youngest brother, who did not understand why his favorite sister was leaving.
The parting from her siblings was the heaviest toll Elena paid. Little Lucy, the youngest girl, an odd, imaginative child whom the rest of the village regarded as an "outsider", clung to Elena’s skirts at the churchyard gate.
"Take me with you, El," Lucy begged, her large eyes swimming. "I can clean the hearth. I can mind the sheep."
Elena knelt in the dust, her own heart breaking. She took Lucy’s small, cold hands and kissed both her cheeks with a fierce tenderness. "No, my darling," she said softly. "You must stay. You must follow your own path, not mine. Yours will be different, and it will be beautiful, but you must grow strong where you are."
They moved to a small, neglected holding five miles away, bought with Gabriel’s meager savings and a small sum Elena had secretly hoarded from selling her own needlework through a friend. The cottage was damp; the roof leaked in November; the ground was choked with thistles.
But they worked. They worked with a ferocity that astonished the neighborhood. Elena did not sit by the fire; she was in the fields by dawn. Her older sisters, Jane and Martha, who had both managed to marry men of substantial income and lived in comfortable brick houses, frequently sent notes offering financial aid.
Elena refused them all. When Martha arrived in a carriage with a basket of salt pork and flannel, Elena met her at the gate and turned her back.
"We are not objects of charity, Martha," Elena said, her voice tight with pride.
"We love you, Elena! We only wish to ease your burden," Martha cried.
"Then ease it by letting me bear it myself," Elena replied, though she wept that night in Gabriel’s arms from sheer exhaustion.
Her small comforts were directed elsewhere. When her younger brother, Henry, was drafted into the militia and sent to the coast under the threat of French invasion, Elena starved her own table to send him postal orders for salt beef and boots. "The King provides for his soldiers' deaths, but not their bellies," she wrote to him.
Ten years is a long time in the life of a farm, but a short time in the memory of a neighborhood.
By 1816, the thistles were gone. In their place stood Vance’s Farm, a model of agricultural neatness that drew the eyes of travelers on the high road. Gabriel’s knowledge and Elena’s sharp administrative intellect had turned the poor holding into the most successful sheep and dairy concern in the district. The cottage had been rebuilt in sturdy limestone; the orchards were heavy with fruit; the stock was the envy of the market. Elena Vance was no longer a disgraced runaway; she was a woman of substance.
Mrs. Sterling, now a widow and dependent upon the grudging charity of her wealthier daughters' husbands, found her circumstances much reduced. The pride that had sustained her during her years of tyranny had soured into a bitter desire for reconciliation, or rather, a desire to share in the warmth of the fire she had tried to extinguish.
One afternoon, a carriage stopped at the gates of Vance’s Farm. Mrs. Sterling descended, her black weeds dusty from the road, looking older and frailer than Elena remembered.
Before she saw her mother, she was just laughing at the sign of their children. Elena stood on the porch, her sleeves turned up, a ledger in her hand. She felt a sudden, complicated rush of emotion, the old hurt mingling with a strange, hollow pity. Her hands found her swollen belly.
Before she could step down, Gabriel appeared from around the corner of the barn. He was thirty-six now, broad shouldered, carrying the quiet authority of a man who owed no one a shilling. He saw Mrs. Sterling. He looked at his wife and saw the sudden shadow in her eyes.
Gabriel walked to the gate and stood between the carriage and the house. He did not raise his voice. He spoke with the absolute finality of a shepherd guarding his fold.
"Good day, Mrs. Sterling," he said.
"I came to see my daughter, Mr. Vance," the old woman said, her voice trembling with an unaccustomed timidity. "The past is past. Surely, between mother and child—"
"The past is indeed past," Gabriel interrupted, his eyes like grey flint. "And in that past, you stood by and watched a girl work until her fingers bled, having cursed her from your door. My wife has a kind heart, and because she loves her sisters, she might let you in. But I know what your words do to her. I have spent ten years healing the wounds you left. You will not open them again."
"She is my blood!"
"She is my wife," Gabriel said simply. "And this is her prosperity. You have no subjects here."
From the porch, Elena watched them. She saw her mother’s defeated retreat into the carriage; she saw her husband turn back toward her, his face softening the moment his eyes met hers. She did not call out to her mother. The reality of her life was here, built on the hard ground, earned with sweat and defended by a love that required no permission from the world.
Summary:Bound by her mother’s ambition, Elena rejects a soft, forced marriage only to fall for a humble shepherd who teaches her the land.
Masterlist
《《《《《《《《《Ep1》》》》》》》》》
In the county of Wiltshire, where the land rolled in indifferent waves of chalk and flint, the fortunes of the Sterling family were measured not by the acreage they owned, but by the number of mouths they had to fill. There were six children in all, a circumstance that Mrs. Sterling viewed less as a maternal blessing and more as a prolonged financial siege.
Elena was the third daughter, a position in a large family that generally dooms a girl either to absolute neglect or absolute servitude. She escaped neither. Yet, while her elder sisters, Jane and Martha, possessed the sort of soft, pliant beauty that invited the notice of shopkeepers and minor clerics, Elena was carved of harder wood. She was not a classic beauty, but she had an arresting alertness, eyes too sharp for her own peace of mind and a mouth that refused to settle into the docile lines expected of a portionless woman.
"A woman's only currency is her submission, Elena," Mrs. Sterling would often remark, her fingers flying over a pair of stockings that had been mended past the point of decency. "Look at your sisters. Jane has the eye of Mr. Giffard’s nephew, and Martha does not discourage the curate. They will find shelters. But you, you have a temper that will bake no bread."
"I have no desire to bake bread for a man who buys the flour merely to lock the pantry against me," Elena replied, her voice cool.
"You talk like a lunatic," her mother snapped. "You will marry because you must eat."
Elena did not argue, but her resolve was fixed. She saw the marriages around her, unions of convenience, of desperation, of women traded like livestock for the security of a roof and the privilege of nursing a stranger’s gout. She desired independence, though in the year 1805, an independent woman of no means was viewed with the same suspicion as a stray dog in a sheepfold.
It was, perhaps, ironic that her education in independence began with a shepherd.
Gabriel Vance was a man who belonged to the earth before he belonged to any parish. He was not poor by the standards of the ditch diggers, but he was a man of labor. He leased a small flock on the lower downs, his hands calloused from the shearing shears and his face darkened by the Wiltshire sun. He had met Elena when one of her youngest brother’s rabbits had escaped into his clover.
Gabriel was a man of few words, but he possessed the rare capacity to look at a woman without calculating her dowry or her domestic utility. He saw Elena’s mind, the restless, burning thing it was.
When he first spoke of marriage, standing by the low stone wall of the tithe barn with the scent of damp wool and wild thyme between them, he did so with the simple gravity of his trade.
"I have a cottage, Elena," he said, his grey eyes steady upon her. "And seventy head of ewes. It is not a grand life, but it is a life shared."
Elena looked at him, her heart thumping against her ribs with a violence that angered her. "I like you, Gabriel," she said, her voice dropping all pretense of gentility. "But I will not be a man's appendage. I will not exchange my mother’s tyranny for a husband’s permission."
Gabriel did not blink. He merely nodded, a slow, understanding inclination of his head. "Then let us not talk of husbands and wives," he said. "Let us talk of the land."
For two years, a strange alliance existed between them. Under the guise of accidental encounters upon the downs, Gabriel taught her the economy of the soil. He showed her how to judge a sheep’s health by the clarity of its eye, how to calculate the yield of an acre, and how to bargain with the drovers who came down from the north. Elena was an apt pupil; her mind, starved of exercise, devoured the practical arithmetic of farming.
Mrs. Sterling, however, was not blind. She noticed the dirt on Elena’s hems and the smell of the sheep-dip that occasionally lingered on her shawls. Convinced that her third daughter was throwing away what little market value she possessed, Mrs. Sterling began a campaign of introductions.
The suitors were a dismal parade. There was Mr. Thorpe, an elderly tanner with a breath that smelled of hides and a disposition like sour milk; there was young Mr. Clode, a timorous clerk who trembled when Elena looked at him.
Elena’s methods of dismissal were a source of quiet terror to her mother and immense secret joy to Jane and Martha. To Mr. Thorpe, she spoke at length and with great anatomical detail about the rot in sheep livers, until the old man took his hat and left before tea. To Mr. Clode, she questioned his capability to manage a household when he could not look a goose in the eye without flinching.
Gabriel, observing these retreats from the edge of the lane, would lean against his crook, a slow, rare smile breaking across his sunburnt face. He loved her for her sharp edges—the very things the world sought to grind down.
The crisis came on a Tuesday in August. Mrs. Sterling had discovered Elena behind the old malt house, helping Gabriel bind a splint to a lame ewe's leg. Her hands were smeared with tar.
The rage that had been brewing in Mrs. Sterling for years erupted with the force of a long contained gale.
"Get thee home!" she shrieked, forgetting her assumed genteel cadences in her fury. "You wretched, disgraceful creature! Playing the scullery maid to a beggar!"
"Gabriel is no beggar," Elena said, standing upright and wiping her hands on her apron.
"He is a clod of dirt!" Mrs. Sterling advanced, her face purple. Before Gabriel could step between them, Mrs. Sterling’s hand flew out. The crack of her palm against Elena’s cheek reechoed in the quiet yard. Elena did not flinch, though her skin went white and then a furious scarlet. A second blow followed, and a third.
"You will ruin us!" Mrs. Sterling gasped, her breath coming short. "Look at him! He has no money! He has nothing! Would you marry a man with nothing?"
The silence that followed was absolute, save for the panting of the old woman and the distant caw of a crow. Elena turned slowly. She did not look at her mother; she looked at Gabriel.
His face was pale beneath the tan, his fists clenched so hard at his sides that his knuckles were white. He was suffering for her, with a raw, bleeding dignity.
"Ask me, Gabriel," Elena whispered.
Gabriel stepped forward, ignoring the older woman entirely. He took Elena’s tar stained hand in his own. His voice was thick, but it did not waver. "Would you give me the honor of being your husband, Elena?"
With tears crowding her eyes, but a fierce, triumphant smile breaking across her face, she replied, "I will."
Mrs. Sterling drew herself up, her features settling into a mask of cold hatred. "Then you are no daughter of mine," she said. "You leave this house with nothing but the clothes on your back. Do not look to us when you are starving in a ditch."
Summary:What hurts the most is knowing that even the most beautiful moments you haven't yet had your fill of, must still come to an end.
Masterlist
☆☆☆☆☆Ep8☆☆☆☆☆
The final morning in London didn't feel like the start of a new chapter; it felt like a countdown. The air in Tom’s apartment was thick, the usual sounds of the kettle and the radio replaced by the hollow thud of Liana’s suitcase being zipped shut.
Two months of digital connection followed by two weeks of physical reality had changed the stakes. They weren't just two people who liked each other anymore; they were two people who had built a bridge across a continent, only to have to stand on opposite ends of it again.
The drive to the airport was silent. Tom gripped the steering wheel, his knuckles white, while Liana watched the London skyline retreat. Every landmark they passed, the bookstore, the park, the pub, felt like a memory being locked away in a vault.
When they reached the terminal, Tom parked the car and just sat there. He didn't move to get the bags. He couldn't.
"You know," Liana whispered, her voice trembling as she stared at the 'Departures' sign. "In my script... the hero usually has a very cool, very British line to say right now. Something about 'see you soon' or 'it’s just a flight'."
Tom turned to look at her. His eyes were already rimmed with red. "Well, I’m a rubbish actor today, Liana. Because I don't have any lines."
They stood by the security entrance. Tom reached out to tuck a stray strand of copper hair behind her ear, but his hand stayed there, cupping her cheek. A single, heavy tear escaped and ran down his face. Then another. He didn't try to hide it. He wasn't the "rising star" or the "cool Londoner" anymore; he was just a man losing his heart to a gate number.
Liana felt her own throat tighten. She reached up, wiping his cheek with her thumb.
"Look at you," she teased, though her voice broke mid-sentence. "The big British actor... crying like a baby over a Turkish girl. Your sister Daisy would... she would laugh at you so much."
"Let her laugh," Tom choked out, a sob hitching in his chest. "I don't care. I don't want you to go. I don't want to go back to FaceTime. I want to argue about coffee in person. I want to hear you scream at the TV in Turkish because the plot is bad."
Liana tried to maintain her "wall," tried to be the sarcastic one to keep them both afloat, but seeing him, the man who had spent his week learning her language just to make her feel safe, break down completely was too much. The tears spilled over, hot and fast, ruining the makeup she had perfectly applied that morning.
"I am... I am going to write such a sad scene about this," she sobbed, burying her face in his neck. "And the dialogue is going to be terrible because I can't think of a single word in any language that makes this okay."
They clung to each other in the middle of the terminal, two people anchored together while the rest of the world rushed past.
"Two months," Tom whispered into her hair, his voice thick and raw. "I’m coming to Istanbul in two months. I’ve already checked my schedule. I don’t care if I have to fly economy or sit on the wing. I’ll be there."
Liana pulled back, her face a mess of tears and smudged mascara, but the laughter of her voice was soothing.
"I’ll have the coffee ready," she promised. "And a new chapter for you to read."
"Sade?" he asked, trying to find a weak smile through the salt on his lips.
"Sade," she confirmed.
She turned away then, because if she stayed one more second, she knew she wouldn't be able to walk through those gates. Tom stood there, rooted to the spot, watching her until her copper hair disappeared into the crowd.
He stayed until her flight number shifted to 'Departed' on the big screen. He was still crying, but as he walked back to his car, the separation was heavier, yes, but the bridge was stronger than it had ever been.
Summary:.When one person loves the other, sometimes one language can't be enough to tell how ones feels. That might be the biggest issiue Liana has.
Masterlist
☆☆☆☆☆Ep7☆☆☆☆☆
The silence in the car was heavy, a sharp contrast to the music and laughter they’d shared earlier that week. Tom kept his eyes on the road, but his hand reached across the center console to find hers. Liana’s fingers were cold, and she didn't squeeze back. She was staring out the window at the blurred London streetlights, her jaw tight.
When they finally climbed the stairs to Tom’s apartment, the air felt charged. Liana immediately went to the kitchen, fussing with a glass of water she didn't drink, her movements jerky and stiff.
"Liana, talk to me," Tom said, leaning against the doorframe. "You handled yourself brilliantly back there. You shut her down."
"It’s fine, Tom. I’m just tired," she murmured, her back to him. Her voice was thin, brittle.
"It’s not fine. You’ve been a statue since we left the pub. If Maya said something else—"
"It wasn't just her!" Liana snapped, turning around. The "wall" was gone, replaced by a look of sheer, vibrating anxiety. "Can we just... drop it? Please? I don't want to do this in English right now."
"What does that mean? We’ve been speaking English for months, Liana. What’s the problem?"
Tom’s insistence was the final spark. As he kept talking—explaining why she shouldn't care, why his friends loved her, why Maya was a nobody—the words started to swirl around Liana like a storm. Overstimulated, exhausted, and feeling the stinging weight of every "basic" insult, her brain simply locked the doors.
The vocabulary she’d studied for years vanished. The grammar she’d mastered for her literature degree turned into a tangled mess in her throat.
"Stop!" she cried out, her voice cracking. "You... you talk too much! Too fast!"
Tom stopped, startled by the raw frustration in her eyes. "I’m just trying to help—"
"No! You don't... you don't see!" she shouted, the words coming out labored, her accent thickening as the stress took over. She gasped for air, struggling to find the pieces of a language that felt like it was betraying her. "That girl... Maya... she is right. A little bit."
"Liana, no she isn't—"
"Yes!" Liana stepped toward him, her hands trembling as she gestured wildly. "In Turkey... in my language... I am... I am sharp. I am funny. I have... metaphors! I have the right words for every feeling. Here? In your world?" She hit her chest with her palm. "I am a child. I am a 'pretty mascot.' I have to think for ten seconds to say one sentence. And when I am sad, or when I love you so much it hurts... I have no words. I have 'the basics'."
She broke then, a sob escaping as she slumped against the kitchen counter.
"I am much more smarter than this," she whispered, the English mangled but the meaning piercingly clear. "I am a writer. But here, I am just... a girl who stays silent because she is afraid to sound stupid. I am afraid that if I speak, you will see I am not the girl from the books. I am just... a girl with a bad accent and a slow brain."
Tom stood frozen. He’d been so proud of her "victory" at the pub that he’d completely missed the internal war she was fighting. He realized that while he was falling in love with her soul, she was trapped in a cage of verbs and syntax, terrified that the "real" her was getting lost in translation.
He walked over slowly, not saying a word this time. He didn't offer a platitude or a correction. He just wrapped his arms around her, pulling her small, shaking frame into his chest.
"Liana," he murmured into her hair, his voice steady and quiet. "I don't love you for your grammar. I loved you when I thought you couldn't speak a word of English, remember? I loved the way you looked at Oliver. I loved the way you did your work. I don't need the metaphors. I just need you."
He pulled back just enough to look her in the eyes, his expression fierce.
"You aren't 'less' in English. You’re just brave enough to try. And if you run out of words? Then don't use them. Just tap your finger against your thumb, and I’ll know. I’ll always know."
Liana leaned her forehead against his chin, her breathing finally slowing down. The shame was still there, but the crushing weight of having to be "perfect" started to lift. She realized that in his arms, she didn't need to be a screenwriter or a literature student. She just had to be Liana.
The argument left them both exhausted, but the silence that followed was different—it was soft, like a wound finally being cleaned. Tom held her for a long time in the quiet of the apartment, his chin resting on the top of her head.
"Liana," he whispered, his voice vibrating through her. "Listen to me. I know you. I’ve seen you when the world is quiet and when it’s loud. I don't need you to be 'sharp' every second of the day to prove your worth to me. If you’re afraid, I’m your voice. If you’re anxious, I’m your shield. You don't have to carry the weight of two languages alone. I’m right here."
Liana finally fell asleep with her hand tucked into his, the tension in her jaw finally easing.
The next morning, Tom woke up early. He didn't head out for his usual run. Instead, Liana found him in the kitchen, surrounded by a mountain of flashcards, three different notebooks, and a translation app pulled up on his laptop.
"What are you doing?" she asked, rubbing her eyes.
"I realized something last night," Tom said, not looking up from a card where he was meticulously scribbling phonetically. "It’s not fair that the burden of translation is always on you. If we’re going to do this, I need to meet you halfway. Or at least a quarter of the way for now."
That afternoon, he took her to a small Turkish cafe in North London he’d spent all morning researching. It was run by an elderly couple from Izmir, and the air smelled of strong coffee and fresh simit.
When the waiter approached, Tom didn't look at Liana to translate. He took a deep breath, cleared his throat, and looked the man in the eye.
"Merhaba," Tom said, his British accent thick but his effort visible. "Lütfen... iki Türk kahvesi... ve... sade olsun." (Hello. Please... two Turkish coffees... and... let them be plain/black.)
The waiter beamed, offering a stream of fast Turkish in response. Tom blinked, looking completely lost for a second, but then he turned to Liana with a triumphant grin.
"See? I’m a complete idiot in your language," he whispered to her. "My accent is probably 'basic' at best. But I don't care, because I’m saying it to you."
Later that evening, they met up with Oscar and a few of the kinder members of the friend group at a park. When the conversation turned to film theory, a topic that usually made Liana retreat, Tom didn't just let her sit in silence.
"Liana was telling me about the structure of her screenplay last night," Tom said, naturally drawing the group's attention. He looked at her, giving her hand a supportive squeeze under the table. "She has this incredible metaphor for character growth through the lens of Turkish architecture. Liana, tell them about the 'Sofa' concept in old houses. Just the gist, I'll help if the words get stuck."
He didn't take over; he opened the door. And when Liana stumbled over a complex architectural term, Tom didn't let a silence hang. He stepped in with, "Like a central hall that connects the private and public lives, right?"
He acted as her bridge, translating her brilliance into the room without making her feel small. By the end of the night, the group wasn't looking at a "silent mascot" they were listening to a writer.
As they walked back to the car, Liana felt lighter than she had in weeks. She realized that she didn't have to be "smarter" in English to be loved. She just had to be known.
"Your accent is terrible, by the way," she teased, bumping her shoulder against his.
Tom laughed, pulling her close. "I know. But did I get the coffee right?"
"Sade," she smiled, leaning her head on his shoulder. "Perfectly black. Just the way I like it."
Summary:.Seeing that, after 2 months of long distance, they still feel as danse as first day, now the question is if they can fit in each others daily life. To test it (not because they terribly missed each other) Liana visits Tom's hometown.
Masterlist
☆☆☆☆☆Ep6☆☆☆☆☆
Two months of pixelated faces and midnight phone calls had finally led to this. Tom had been at Heathrow since 8:00 AM, clutching a lukewarm flat white, pacing the arrivals hall as if he could physically pull her plane onto the tarmac faster. When Lana finally walked through the sliding glass doors, looking slightly rumpled but ethereal in the grey London light, the world finally clicked into place.
The first week was a dream. They navigated the city with a shorthand they’d developed over thousands of text messages. He took her to the small, tucked-away bookstore in Bloomsbury he’d described during their dinner in Balat; they ran through Hyde Park in the drizzle, laughing because it was exactly as damp as he’d promised.
But the middle of the second week brought the one thing Liana had been dreading: the introduction to his world.
They met at a trendy, dimly lit pub in East London. Tom’s friends were a boisterous mix of actors, writers, and "industry" types. As the drinks flowed and the British slang flew across the table at a hundred miles an hour, Liana felt her "wall" rising back up.
It wasn't that she didn't understand; her English Literature brain was processing every word. But the speed, the thick accents, and the fear of mispronouncing a word in front of these polished Londoners made her retreat into silence. She sat beside Tom, smiling politely, nodding when necessary, but saying very little.
Across the table, a girl named Maya, a fellow actress who had been "hoping" Tom would return from Turkey single, watched Liana with a predatory gleam in her eyes.
"She’s very quiet, isn’t she?" Maya whispered loudly to the girl next to her while Tom was still at the table. "Must be hard not being able to join in. It’s like having a very pretty, silent mascot."
Liana heard it. She felt the sting, but she just took a slow sip of her water, staring at a knot in the wooden table.
When Tom stood up to go to the bathroom, Maya saw her opening. She leaned across the table, her voice dripping with mock sympathy.
"So, Liana," Maya started, loud enough for the whole group to hear. "Do you actually have thoughts of your own, or do you just wait for Tom to translate the world for you? It must be so boring for him, having to explain every little joke."
Liana didn't look up. She felt the familiar heat of embarrassment, but she remained a statue.
A moment later, Tom returned. He sensed the shift in atmosphere immediately. He sat down, sliding his arm protectively around the back of Liana’s chair, his eyes darting between Maya’s smug face and Liana’s downcast gaze.
"What did I miss?" Tom asked, his voice low and wary.
Maya laughed, a sharp, unpleasant sound. "Oh, nothing. I was just asking Liana if she’s finding the 'big city' confusing. I mean, it’s a lot different from her little village, right? I was actually just wondering, Tom, does she even understand the concept of a screenwriter? Or is she just here to learn how to make tea the British way?"
The table went dead silent. Oscar, who was sitting opposite them, winced, looking at Tom.
Tom went rigid. He could feel Liana trembling slightly beside him. He remembered the night in Istanbul when he had made the same mistake, assuming she was "simple" because she was quiet. He remembered her brilliant mind, her sharp scripts, and the way her eyes shined when she talked about the "bones of storytelling."
He didn't look at Maya. He looked at Liana first, his eyes searching hers for permission. When he saw the hurt she was trying to hide, his jaw set in a hard line.
"Actually, Maya," Tom said, his voice dangerously calm, "Liana is a third-year English Literature student who’s currently writing a screenplay that’s more sophisticated than anything you’ve auditioned for in three years."
He turned his head slowly to look Maya in the eye.
"And her English? It’s perfect. She just doesn't feel the need to fill the air with noise unless she has something intelligent to say. You should try it sometime. It’s a very effective technique."
Maya’s face flushed a deep, ugly purple. She opened her mouth to snap back, but Tom wasn't finished.
"And as for the tea? She prefers her coffee black, no sugar. Because, as she told me, the beans should speak for themselves." He looked around the table at his silent friends. "Just like people should."
Liana finally looked up. She saw the tension in Tom’s shoulders, the "tense" version of him she had rarely seen. She realized he wasn't just defending her; he was honoring her.
She reached out, her hand covering his on the table. The table was silent, the awkwardness thick enough to cut.
Liana cleared her throat. In a voice that was clear, steady, and perfectly articulated, she looked directly at Maya.
"Actually," Liana said, the sarcasm she’d perfected in Turkey returning to her voice like an old friend, "I was just sitting here wondering if you always use such 'basic' tropes to express your jealousy, or if you're saving the better dialogue for your next 'unsuccessful' audition?"
The table erupted. Oscar let out a bark of laughter, and even the girls sitting near Maya looked away to hide their smirks.
Tom’s tension snapped, replaced by a look of pure, unadulterated pride. He leaned over and kissed Liana’s temple, whispering loud enough for only her to hear:
"I think you just wrote the perfect ending to that scene."
Summary: Only knowing each other for months, Tom and Liana might feel too much than expected. And now their biggest problem is that if they can manage long distance. And it starts with Tom's departure.
Msterlist
☆☆☆☆☆Ep5☆☆☆☆☆
The week that followed was a blur of golden hours and late night whispers. Without the pressure of the film crew or the ticking clock of a scheduled flight, they existed in a bubble of their own making.
Tom didn't stay at the hotel. Instead, he spent his days following Liana through the "real" Istanbul, the one tourists didn't see. He ran along the Bosphorus while she biked beside him with Oliver; he sat in the corner of quiet libraries while she studied, occasionally looking up to find him watching her with an expression that made her heart skip.
They found new versions of themselves in that week. Tom discovered he could be still, content to just be without a script or a camera. Liana discovered that her voice, and her writing, actually mattered. By Thursday, she had finally let him read a scene from her screenplay. He hadn't just praised it; he had analyzed it, treated it like art, and told her it was better than half the scripts on his agent’s desk.
But the bubble had to burst.
The Istanbul airport was a cathedral of glass and steel, echoing with the sounds of a thousand departures. The air felt cold compared to the warmth of the last seven days.
Tom’s suitcase was already tagged, disappearing down the conveyor belt like a part of him he didn't want to lose. Liana stood by the security line, her hands shoved deep into the pockets of her oversized coat. She was wearing her "wall" again, that distant, composed mask, but her eyes were a giveaway. They were glassy, fixed on a point somewhere just past Tom’s shoulder.
"You're doing it again," Tom said softly, stepping into her space.
"Doing what?" Liana asked, her voice tight.
"The wall. The 'I'm fine, it's just a job' look." He reached out, taking her hands. They were freezing. "Liana, look at me."
She finally met his gaze. The worry was there, sharp and painful. It was the look of a girl who knew how this story usually ended: the actor flies away, the emails get shorter, the time difference becomes a canyon, and eventually, the memories fade into a "fun summer story."
"I know what you're thinking," Tom whispered, his thumbs brushing over her knuckles. "You're thinking London is far. You're thinking I'm going back to a world where you don't fit, and you're staying in a world where I'm just a guest."
"It's a long flight, Tom," she said, a single tear finally escaping and tracing a path through her foundation. "And long distance is a slow way for something beautiful to die."
Tom shook his head, his grip tightening. "Then let's not make it a slow death. Let's make it a beginning."
He took a deep breath, ignoring the "Final Call" announcement echoing through the terminal.
"I don't want to be the guy who 'used to know' a brilliant scenarist in Turkey. I want to be the guy who calls you every night to hear your new dialogue. I want to be the guy you fly to London to see, and the guy who comes back here every time he has a break."
He leaned down, his forehead pressing against hers.
"Liana... be my girlfriend. Officially. Not 'project-based.' Not 'for now.' I want to be yours."
Liana let out a shaky breath, the mask finally crumbling completely. The worry in her eyes didn't vanish, long distance was still a mountain to climb, but it was joined by a fierce, bright hope.
"You're a very stubborn man, Tom," she whispered, a watery smile breaking through.
"I'm an actor," he joked, his voice thick with emotion. "We're known for being difficult. So? Is that a yes?"
Liana reached up, pulling his face down to hers for a kiss that tasted like salt and promise.
"Yes," she murmured against his lips. "But if you don't call me the second you land, I'm writing you out of the script."
"Deal."
Tom backed away toward the security gate, eyes locked on her until the very last second. As he walked through the metal detector, he didn't look like a man leaving a country; he looked like a man who had finally found his home.
- cherry wine is about domestic abuse. it’s now called a cute proposal song.
- too sweet is about seizing the day and ignoring healthy habits in favor of having more fun with unhealthy ones. he’s actively critical of himself in the song. it’s now called a song about thinking you’re superior for drinking black coffee.
- take me to church is about worship as a metaphor for sex. it’s called a religious song.
- eat your young is a song about war and political greed. it’s called a song about sex.
- now, the strongly political message of nobody’s soldier is being ignored in favor of calling it a metaphor for hozier’s relationship with his fans.
when are we going to stop simplifying hozier’s music down to cute little cottagecore bogman forest music? maybe you dont want to hear this but i don’t care. quit listening to hozier for the aesthetic. there’s a reason why empire now, foreigner’s god, butchered tongue, etc. songs with unignorable political messages are among his least popular songs.
I was honestly shocked when i found out how unpopular Empire Now is. Really? The song that gives me goosebumps every time i listen to it? The song that made me want to scream its lyrics in broad daylight? The song with the line "Future's so bright it's burning"? And most people have no fucking idea it exists?
I dunno, maybe it's just the place i've lived in for the majority of my life both being rich with greenery and nature and having its citizens live in constant fear of being killed/losing their home in a political conflict, from natural disasters, or deathly diseases spreading so fast here that made me resonate with hozier's music so much.
What i wanted to add to the original post, and what, in my opinion, every hozier fan should understand, is:
It's perfectly fine and nice for a hozier fan to go for a forest walk with Would That I playing in their headphones, but do not ignore the hozier fans who blast Nobody's Soldier in their room to stop hearing the siren wailing outside.
It's really cute and romantic for a hozier listener to dance to Work Song with their significant other, but do not forget the hozier fans who listen to Nina Cried Power after their government gives them another reason to be killed or arrested.
Hozier pours his soul and mind into his every political anti-oppression song, but people choose to ignore it for their own comfort.
There's so much more to Hozier than romance and forests, and i need more people to understand that
I think this is an important point, but I'd add one nuance: the existence of multiple interpretations doesn't erase the one Hozier intended.
People falling in love to Work Song or proposing to Cherry Wine isn't the problem by itself. Art inevitably becomes personal once it's released. The problem starts when the original context is forgotten entirely, or when songs that are explicitly about abuse, colonialism, war, oppression, or resistance get flattened into "cottagecore forest vibes."
One of the reasons Hozier's music resonates so deeply is because he refuses to separate beauty from brutality. He'll write a song that sounds tender while describing horrific abuse. He'll wrap political anger in gorgeous poetry. That contrast is intentional, it forces you to sit with uncomfortable truths instead of looking away.I think the best way to appreciate his music is to allow it to be both.
Dance to Work Song. Walk through the woods to Would That I. But also listen to Butchered Tongue, Empire Now, Foreigner's God, Nina Cried Power, and Nobody's Soldier with the same attention. If we only celebrate the romance and the aesthetic while overlooking the songs asking us to confront injustice, we're missing a huge part of what makes Hozier the artist he is.
After watching this movie, my first thought was how annoying the female lead was... but then i understand her young mistakes. Even after that, i was still angry because look at this mans eyes. HOW DARE SHE MAKE HIM CRY!!!
After all, he was in love with her despite her mistakes in life. In the end, he is where he wanted all along.
Summary: Finally finding the courage, Tom finds himself at the place he was dreaming for months.
Masterlist
☆☆☆☆☆Ep4☆☆☆☆☆
The restaurant was tucked away in a quiet corner of Balat, far from the neon glare of the wrap party. Over plates of meze and the soft glow of candlelight, the "actor" and the "makeup artist" finally vanished, replaced by two people who couldn't stop leaning across the table.
There was a boy who loved cooking for the people he cared about. He had an endless passion for jogging and could spend hours arguing that every kind of water had its own distinct taste.
Across from him was a girl who loved debates and exploring new perspectives. She dreamed of becoming many different things, but could never decide which path to follow.
They seemed different in countless ways, yet each carried a quiet curiosity about the world, one through flavors and familiar routines, the other through ideas and endless possibilities.
As the hours blurred together, while they were walking along the streets of Istanbul shining with yellow streetlights Liana's sarcastic armor finally cracked. She confessed that makeup was just her "way in".
"In Türkiye, if you want to write for the screens, the paths are... complicated," she explained, her fingers tracing her rings. "The university courses for it aren't what they should be. So, I choose English Literature. I wanted to understand the bones of storytelling, the classics, the structure, the way Austen or Dickens could make a reader feel a world through words."
"You want to be a scenarist," Tom said, his eyes bright with genuine admiration.
Liana shrugged, looking down. "It's just a dream. My sister, one you saw, she directs small indie shorts. We sit up until 3.00 AM arguing about camera angles and character arcs. But I'm just the girl with brushes, really. I'm not sure my stories are worth the ink."
"Liana," Tom said, his voice dropping an octave, "I've spent my life reading scripts. Most of them have the soul of a cardboard box. If you write the way you observe people... you're going to be a force."
For the first time, it was Liana's turn to be the observer. She learned that Tom's "weird" sense of humor, full of British wit and self deprecating tangents, wasn't a performance; it was how he processed the world.
"I have a twin sister, actually," he admitted, laughing when Liana's eye went wide. "Daisy. She's pediatric nurse and thinks my job is 'playing dress up for money'. She's the only person who can humble me in under five seconds. If she saw me passed out on that roof last night, she would have sent the video to every major casting director in London."
They talked about his obsession with morning runs, how the rhythm of his feet on the pavement was the only time his brain felt quiet. He told her about growing up in a house full of woman after her father passed away.
She realized then that he wasn't just a "pretty face" from a UK talent agency. He was thoughtful, slightly anxious, and deeply, stubbornly kind.
They were the last ones in the streets. Tom finally checked his watch.
"Right," he said, "The car for the airport leaves in... forty minutes. I should probably-"
He stopped. His phone screen flickered.
[1 New Notification: Airline-Your flight to London Heathrow (LHR) has been rescheduled... Departure: 15 minutes ago.]
Tom stared at the screen. Then he looked his watch. Then back at the screen.
"Tom?" Liana asked, standing up beside him.
"What is it?"
"I... I missed it," he whispered, a strange mixture of horror and relief washing over his face. "The flight was at 11.30PM, not 1.30AM. I mixed up the local time with the Landon offset on my calendar."
Liana bit her lip, trying to look sympathetic, but the sparkle in her eyes gave her away. "Oh no. This is... terrible. Truly tragic."
Tom looked at her, seeing the suppressed grin. He let out a short, shocked laugh and shoved his phone into his pocket.
"I'm stranded," he said, stepping closer to her. "I have no ride, my luggage is probably halfway to the airport, and I'm stuck in Istanbul with the woman of my dreams... how tragic right?"
Liana reached out, adjusting his collar, the same way she did on the first day of filming, but this time lingered.
"Well," she murmured, "it looks like you have plenty of time to tell me more about your baking tips. And maybe... just maybe... I'll let you read the first page of my script."
Tom smiled, the stress of the missed flight vanishing instantly. "Best mistake I've ever made."
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