I do not own Fox's Sleepy Hollow, or gain any profit from this work.
Ichabod Crane was a man who had survived much.
And that was ignoring the fact that he had actually been brought back to life after expiring. And being buried...
...twice (though the second time had certainly been premature).
You might think that he was accustomed to such things. But one could never truly remember the shock of an injured body, like a coat-tail catching on thorns. It always took him unawares, tearing and crippling until it stole his very breath away.
He had been a witness to such terrible things before. Battlefields were inevitably filled with men, and women, stripped of age and experience, crying out for something to bring them relief. Whether they cried for their mothers to come and wipe the blood from their brow, or for God to mercifully end their suffering it was the same. It raised fear and made them children, railing against the darkness.
That was one of the things that had not changed for him. He was a soldier, who had been taken and delivered into this modern world in the very midst of a battle. And when he looked for deliverance he turned to the nearest, surest source of safety and comfort that he could.
He saw the Leftenant through the haze of paralytic pain attacking him from the neck down. She raised her small body from the ground and turned in time to see his predicament.
"Crane!"
She acted quickly, pacing around the room, searching for answers. She turned to him, her eyes inquiring.
"Scorpion venom," he told her.
"We're in a supernatural pharmacy...we make an antidote." She threw the idea out to him, almost as though they were calmly discussing a plan of action in the archives.
"Yes," He agreed, nodding, as though he was not dying on the floor.
"Okay, then just talk me through it!" He did not miss the quaver in her voice. She was afraid, uncertain. She would do whatever she could, he knew. But she needed him as well. He struggled to recall, dragging up foggy memories that were assiduously detailed under normal circumstances. She would guide him, help him to focus. This was nothing new.
"What am I looking for?" She prodded, giving him instructions even as she asked for them.
It was there, on a list glimpsed during a long night mixing vile concoctions at Franklin's insistence.
"Come ooooon," Abbie breathed, trying to ease him along, but quickly.
"Laudanum powder."
He heard her, shifting through the dusty bottles. She found it quickly, considering the abominable mess the man had left behind, neglecting the ways of humanity for the instincts of the beast he had bec-
His focus slipped, and he bit his lip until her voice sought him out again and he latched onto it.
"What else? Crane, stay with me." She was there. She wouldn't leave him.
"Magnesium sulfate."
She sprinted between tables, widening her search until she found what she sought. Only a moment passed before she slapped her hand down in triumph and hurried back.
"Okay good! What else?"
His thoughts scattered and fled as he tried to gather them for her. When he spoke it was almost too late. The venom froze his lungs in his chest and they seized feebly against that cold fire.
"Leirus quinquestriatus," He managed at last and felt his heart pang with fear when she didn't understand.
"What?"
He'd seen it among the other ingredients, when they'd been examining the chaos of Leed's equipment, an image that stood out with mocking clarity in his mind and no way to convey it to her.
"In...in the vial!"
The glasses rattled loudly as her task grew more urgent. He heard her tossing things aside, and then her quick steps approaching.
"Okay..."
He let go. He waited for her, floating between waves of pain, clutching onto consciousness that was thinning and splitting into straw. He did not hear her footsteps falter, or feel the mixture that would save his life splatter over the stone not six inches from his head. Her cry fell on ears deafened by the internal howls of his own body.
He waited, but she did not come, and for the first time he understood he was alone. Why wasn't she coming?
"Leftenant?"
Stillness was his only reply. He did not understand. He was huddled in misery, his fingers set in a rigor of pain as the fire continued to eat at his lungs.
"Please."
She did not answer and he had no more strength to draw upon. Suddenly he was the one begging like a child for help. Pleading like oh so many of his men who had died grasping futilely at their captain's hand.
This wasn't right. It couldn't be right. Where was she?
He blinked and tears rolled from his eyes, he felt them pool in his ears. He saw her standing like an ancient statue, a stone disciple, fixated on the table
"Abbie."
He whispered in horror. He was going to die by her feet. Even as his mind registered this, his body struggled against it. Air dragged in and out of his shattering lungs, his heart fought against his ribs like a caged thing.
"Please."
He blinked again as Abbie started to fade from his vision, washing away in the darkness that spread across his eyes.
...
His heart jumped again, trying to escape before it settled back nervously.
He tongue was coated with bitterness, his lungs burnt again with fire, but they were thawing, not freezing.
A soft weight was pressed against his scalp, and he became aware of a strong grip on his shoulder, a small arm curled around his back.
He tried to raise his hand and find the slim fingers gripping his coat, but he did not quite reach.
He could not have been unconscious for more than a few moments, and the recollection of what had just happened-what had very nearly happened stood out vividly in his mind.
His heart beat harder and his lungs drew in breath greedily, anxiously, as though they must take as much as they can before they were denied again. His eyes darted about the dusty room that lay beyond the toes of his boots, and he did not stop them. He needed to know that he was not in danger, he needed to know that he was safe.
Not until he heard the soft hum of her voice above and a little to the left of his ear did he settle.
"I'm sorry. I was a little distracted."
Only one hand was holding him, the other was clutched an object to her chest.
Understanding flooded him, and with understanding his fear drained away. The adrenaline of flight was gone, and his eyes drooped with it.
"By that symbol," He sat up slowly, stiffness and pain in every line of his body, gladly accepting the aid of her hands bracing his back.
He listened, growing more resigned as she revealed what had been her lifeline, her link, for months.
He gave her what little wisdom his brain could dredge up at that moment. The quiet exceptions and understandings that he shared with other harrowed soldiers. He was familiar with their desperation, clinging to the things that would give them strength. He had just experienced it in the most vivid way possible.
"When soldiers return from war they do whatever they need to carry on."
And perhaps his pragmatic Leftenenant was the wiser of them, putting her trust in a solid, unchanging object.
"I almost let you die." She stated softly meetings his eyes.
He blinked and understood again that she was inviting him to react. She was owning up to her actions with the same stoicism that she had wielded since her reconciliation with Jenny and their encounter with the sandman.
Such a blatant admonition was almost painful.
But he was not going to lay blame to her when he owed her his life and his sanity already, not after she had endured ten months of torment on behalf of her sister. She had been the steadiest half of their partnership since she had accepted her role as a witness.
He said nothing.
He destroyed Leed's door (with his very adequate alchemical skills thank you very much) instead.
...
Crane did not manage to shake the edge of his exhaustion for the remainder of that day.
It dragged on his mind, and his voice, sapping his energy. Every action took a deliberate amount of concentration, and he felt creases in his skin that had not been there before, lining his eyes.
This was all for the better however. It made him quieter and more cautious, more suited to stepping around Abbie and the shroud of contemplation she had drawn around herself.
It was only later that evening when he entered to find her strategically situated on the sofa that she invited him to broach it.
He sat beside her, began to reach for her hand and pulled it back before he finished the thought. The silence was gone, but the air around them was still fragile.
"It is not my place to judge how one bears their private burdens." He said, and meant it.
But his Leftenant was an unflinching soul.
"I need your help, Crane."
...
It was a small thing that set him off. Perhaps he'd rolled over in his sleep, and accidentally smothered his own face in the pillow, or maybe he'd paused a little too long between breaths.
But for an instant his mind screamed that he could not breathe, and his lungs froze in fear.
He scrambled up in bed with a gasp, his heart pounding wildly as it had hours ago.
He searched around the room, taking in shapes made strange by the moonlight, and the stillness of it disturbed him.
He went out into the hallway and nearly tripped over a small figure sitting on the wood floor in her bare feet.
Grateful at the interruption to his desperate flight, he sank against the wall and slid down to sit beside her.
Gradually his heart slowed his breaths steadied as he listened to her breathing next to him.
She sighed and ran a hand through her hair.
"You almost died," she declared a third time.
He let his head rest against the wall behind them, and felt his shoulder brush hers. Her hand returned to his shoulder, holding fast in lieu of the arcane symbol that now lay safely tucked away in a drawer in his bedroom.
"I did not," he said, and he meant it for himself as well as for her. There was safety here, hiding in the hallway of Abbie's away from the terrors of their world. The Leftenant was beside him as she had been, unflinchingly since the day she had truly accepted her role as a witness.
"You saved me."
And neither of them were going anywhere.