A/N: I am breaking my years-long fanfic hiatus for Sleepy Hollow. What can I say; this series has me feeling some kind of way.

Chapter One

Abbie has never relied much on fate because she knows that it is not on her side. Born in the municipal housing projects on the edge of East Louis, she comes into the world ill, black, female, and poor, a bum ticket in the genetic lottery. She spends four days in the NICU under a bright UV light until her skin loses its yellow hue, swaddled in pink blankets. When she finally comes home, it takes her father about one week to decide that he's not actually up to fatherhood and leave her life forever. Her mother has Jenny two years later by a short-lived boyfriend who balked when she'd announced she wasn't getting an abortion, and so for all intents and purposes, Abbie grows up as a statistic, another faceless, fatherless, future-less inner city criminal-to-be or welfare queen.

For the years that she and Jenny have her, their mother tries to shield them from the rhetoric about what they are supposed to be. She gets her daughters into a small charter school, and takes them to Bible study twice a week. They sing hymns and do math homework and get lectured and live quiet lives, and everything is quite good until their mother gets sick.

It's not a body sickness, it's a head sickness, and it sets in suddenly and without warning. One minute her mother is herself- soft-spoken, Bible-thumping, earnest and honest, and the next she is confused and angry, bursting suddenly into targeted bouts of rage that leave blossoms of bruises down twelve-year old Abbie's arms and sides. Jenny watches from the shadows and talks of running away when they turn in for the night, but Abbie holds fast- this isn't their mother, she will get better.

She doesn't. One day at school her counselor is softly informing her that what her mother is doing is abuse, and the next she and her sister are being shuttled to a strange home in west county by a gruff older woman who tells them she's their social worker.

Abbie has always been adaptable, and she quietly fits into her new high school and foster family with ease. The McGees are an old couple who've been fostering for years and don't try talking to the Mills' sisters, and Abbie is an excellent fit because she does not want to talk. Jenny, however, still craves her mother's love, and when she doesn't get it from stern, uninterested Mrs. McGee, begins to "act out." She gets into a few fights and is suspended a few times, but the coup de grace comes when Jenny takes one of Mrs. McGee's ugly crystal doves and pawns it off to buy an MP3 player. They take Jenny away, then. When given the choice, Abbie decides not to go with her. She and Jenny don't talk for six years after that.

(When they find each other again, the first thing Jenny does is slap her across the face, so hard that Abbie has to blink the lights out of her eyes. The second thing she does is cry and hold her close. "You left me," she says, and Abbie can't respond, because she did leave her. She did.

But she won't do it again. Not ever.)

Abbie goes rogue for the months following Jenny's departure. She doesn't steal from the McGees- she's smarter than that- but she takes from pretty much everyone else- drugstores, her fellow classmates, clothing boutiques. She dates scumbag guys on purpose, fucks them in public restrooms during school hours just to build a reputation, and smokes away hundreds of dollars of their money in way too much shitty weed. Her grades slip from Bs and As to Ds and Fs.

Only one person notices or cares about her steady downfall- Mr. Corbin, her grizzled sixth period English teacher. He doesn't say that he cares, per se, just tells her that she won't graduate if she fails his class and offers extra credit in the form of hours worked at his family's cozy bakery in the Grove. At first, Abbie scoffs- "so basically, you're tryna make me do free labor?"- but the thought of going through all of what she has- watching her mother fight to get her into a decent elementary school, leaving Jenny behind- and then not graduating is unthinkable, and so she eventually relents.

She doesn't have a car, so Mr. Corbin takes her to work every day after school, and uses the fifteen minute drive to talk to her. Their conversation is one-sided at first, mostly Corbin rambling about the bakery and his grown up children and trying to probe her about details of her life, but she warms up to him quickly. He becomes more of a father to her than her real father probably ever would have been.

She enjoys working at the bakery, a cozy little hipster haven called Crumptious. They try her out in the kitchens at first, where she fails spectacularly at everything other than washing dishes and prepping ingredients. Then she becomes the bakery's receptionist, answering phones, taking orders, organizing catering events. After the first month, she gets a surprise pay check and decides to stay on.

Crumptious does decently enough, but not nearly as well as some of the other confectionaries in the area. Corbin and his wife, Patricia, are completely puzzled by this- Crumptious has the advantage of age; it's been around for generations and thus has decent name representation, and the goods aren't half bad. It is Abbie who notes that they need to corner a particular niche to draw customers in- "take a classic and make it the best in town, or make something new and weird, like the Cronut"- and it is Abbie who suggests they come up with a product that captures the hominess of Corbin's favorite dessert, apple pie a la mode. Their pastry chef creates a delicious confection that is part creme puff part apple crisp, and the response is so overwhelmingly positive that they have to hire more workers.

Corbin stops teaching the next year to focus full-time on the business. Abbie stops living with her foster family and moves in with the Corbins, checking in periodically with the McGees when social workers drop by to pay her a visit. Abbie gets way into religious studies and American history and considers leaving the shop to go to school for it, but a semester at Mizzou proves to her that college really isn't her thing, so she becomes strongly acquainted with the local libraries and museums instead. Corbin hires a cute new assistant pastry chef, Luke, and Abbie has a perfectly healthy, perfectly normal relationship with him that eventually fizzles but ends amicably. Abbie becomes the de facto owner of the shop when the Corbins retire, and the actual owner when an aneurism takes her only mentor and father figure from her. Patricia hands her the keys and deeds at the end of the funeral, the silent tears still drying on her cheeks, and moves down to Tampa. Abbie is twenty-four, and bears his death and their gift with gritted teeth, and promises to make the shop legendary.

When Abbie looks back at her life now, she recognizes that it could have gone a lot worse. She met the right people at the right time, and grew because of it. But she refuses to call it fate. Calling it fate would mean that she would have to accept her hardships as ordained, that she would have to look at her mother, grey from battling demons in a psych ward, and say that she was unwell because God wished it. So she calls it life instead, and tries not to think about the influence of cosmic forces.

Until she meets Crane.

Jenny invites Abbie to her housewarming party. She's recently landed a solid job training security guards in self-defense, and wants Abbie to meet her new girlfriend, a fiery hot redhead who looks like a guest star on Gossip Girl. There's only one problem- the new girlfriend, new apartment and her petulant little sister are all in Boston. And the party is in four days.

Abbie takes a week away from the bakery, leaves Luke in charge, and drops absurd amounts of coin to book a seat on a two-way nonstop flight to Boston. She's certain Jenny is going out of her way to inconvenience her, but she doesn't complain- she can never completely atone for leaving her only surviving family in the dust.

The flight is delayed for inclement weather. The plane to Boston is expected to land at the gate three hours late. Abbie wrings her hands. She had arrived at the airport two hours before scheduled takeoff- just in case- and Lambert International's dearth of outlets and lack of free wi-fi is going to make the unexpected three hour wait a painful experience. She sighs, her annoyance lost among the disgruntled groans from the other passengers, and pops in her earbuds. It doesn't take long for her eyelids to shutter, and she closes herself off from the hustle and bustle of the airport terminal.

"Is anyone sitting here?"

Abbie barely hears the request over Miguel's hypnotic voice. She turns the music down quickly and flashes the other passenger an apologetic smile.

"Sorry," she says, shifting her bag out of the seat beside her.

"Not a problem," the man says, and it's not until she notices the crisp, Oxfordian lilt of his accent that she actually looks at him.

He is certainly attractive, though terribly far from her type. A white boy, for starters, and tall and slender to boot. She's always been drawn to shorter, browner, sturdier men, like Luke, who can throw her over his shoulder with ease and kiss her without folding himself in half. It's hard to look away from this man, though, and she can't tell why. He's beautiful, almost delicate, and she feels an inexplicable urge to run her nails along his trimmed beard. His eyes are pale blue and fiendishly bright, and he's got his shampoo-model-fresh shoulder length hair half-pulled up.

"- troublesome stuff."

Abbie blinks owlishly. She's been so busy ogling this guy that she hadn't even noticed he'd been talking to her.

"Sorry," she says again, plucking out her earbuds, "What was that?"

The man arches a brow in a way that reminds her of stiff period dramas. "I was only saying that there are apparently some troublesome storms brewing in Chicago. They're keeping the plane from leaving."

"Is that so."

"It seems as such." He gives an all-suffering sigh. "I was so hoping to leave this dreary city."

So he's one of those; a coaster, in the Midwest to observe the simple ways of its people and scuttle back to the water after he feels entertained. She should have been able to tell, what with his slightly unbuttoned chambray shirt and brown leather boots and antiquated, pretentious-as-hell manner of speech.

He must see the disdain in her face, because he backpedals dramatically.

"Oh, excuse me, you're from here, aren't you? Oh dear. I'm truly sorry; I didn't mean to offend."

"You haven't offended me," she says, although she is lying just a little. "St. Louis isn't exactly the most riveting place."

"It was...inappropriate, nonetheless. I've been spoiled by large metropolitan areas, I'm afraid." He pauses, extends a hand. "My name is Crane. Ichabod Crane."

Abbie regards his hand warily at first; after all, it's a little odd for him to be introducing himself to a random woman in an airport, but he's so earnest that she eventually takes it.

"Abbie Mills."

"Miss Mills," he says her name like he is tasting it. "It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance."

They burn through an hour with inane small talk. Crane is an assistant professor in the History Department of Brown University, and moved to the United States only a year ago after completing his doctorate at Oxford. Abbie listens with wide eyes and wonders how he's pulling off sounding both boastful and bashful about his credentials without making her want to strangle him. He's traveling across the United States in a last ditch effort to see some sights before work ties him down; she's off to Boston to see her sister. He cannot for the life of him understand St. Louis' obsession with Imo's pizza, and Abbie admits that neither can she. She tells him about Crumptious. He is strangely curious about the inner workings of managing businesses, and though she's aware that he might just be asking so many questions to keep her attention, it's refreshing to talk about something that is not the baked goods themselves for once.

Abbie is still snickering and shaking her head from something particularly foolish Crane has said when he arches his brow so high that it nearly disappears into his hairline and asks if she would "like to play a little game."

"It will require that we explore your homely little airport some," he warns.

Against her better judgment, Abbie agrees. Crane manages to convince the gate agent to watch their bags for them (watching him schmooze up to her is a little sickening, though Abbie can't argue with his results) and then turns to her, practically bouncing on his heels, and offers his arm.

"You're kidding," Abbie says, chuckling. This is easily the most unorthodox way that a man has ever tried to hit on her.

"Indulge me?" He says beseechingly. When she answers with more laughter but no arm, his lips quirk in a smirk, and he drops down to a knee dramatically in the middle of the terminal. All conversation around them comes to halt, the sudden silence loud and obstructive. Crane cradles her small hand in his larger one reverently, his fingers applying just enough pressure to keep hers aloft. He stares intensely at the knob of her wrist, and then his eyes trail up slowly and lock on hers.

The air is suddenly charged, and Abbie is reminded, out of nowhere, that she hasn't gotten laid in eight months.

"Crane," Abbie growls, and then to the stunned crowd of people eagerly waiting for the guy she just met an hour ago to pop the question, "Really, nothing to see here, honest, he's just playing around!"

"I only ask for your hand," Crane says playfully. She snatches it back and saunters away from him and from gate A17, and she can almost hear the disappointed groans of her fellow, drama-hungry passengers. 'Though a marriage proposal would have done wonders to lighten the mood.'

She can hear Crane's footsteps behind her, light and not at all ashamed. If she adds a little swing to her hips as she goes, well, it's because she's a pretty young woman who has every right to work what she's got. It has nothing at all to do with the fact that she can almost feel his eyes on her ass.

"Miss Mills-" Crane tries.

"You planning to follow me to the bathroom, Crane?" She says, not turning around. Her heart is fluttering with excitement, and she recognizes the feeling as something she hasn't felt since early high school, when she'd finally chocked up the courage to talk to the first guy she liked. She's giddy. It's heady, and she likes it.

'I'm going crazy.'

Crane catches up to her in a few long strides.

"I am not," he explains, "I just wanted to say...that I did not mean to offend. I'm afraid I've been unusually forward-"

"Huh, hadn't noticed-"

"- but I, thus far, have enjoyed your company immensely, and I would be quite sorry if you could not say the same of mine."

Abbie stops so abruptly that Crane nearly runs into her. He looks genuinely nervous, and he leans down earnestly as he looks at her, his arms folded behind his back. She gives him what she hopes is a measured, critical look, though she can feel a smile edging through.

"I'm going to pee," she says slowly, like she's talking to a child, "and when I come back, you can continue to 'enjoy my company.' Okay?"

"By all means, do your business," he says, gesturing sweepingly towards the women's bathroom.

When Abbie comes back, she finds Crane dutifully waiting for her at the opposite wall, arms folded across his chest. He lifts his head, and the corners of his mouth turn downwards in a half-smile.

"Shall we?" He says, and she nods, following him into a standard souvenir shop.

The rules of the game are simple; find the tackiest product possible in the shop, and come up with a sales pitch for it. It feels exactly like something Abbie played once with her sister, back before everything went to hell, darting through goodwill racks while their mother pilfered for cute clothes for their endlessly growing bodies.

Crane goes first. He snatches a snow globe with "St. Louis" spelled out in large red letters, a grey, imperfect Arch, and Palm trees inside of it. He shakes it up and lets the white, glittery powder settle before clearing his throat.

"As you can see here, madam," he says, his voice somehow even more British than before, "This fascinating object, a snow globe, showcases St. Louis' uncanny ability to be in all four seasons at once."

Abbie snorts, and this seems to encourage him, so he continues, blathering on about the "exquisite" handiwork and how "when you turn the globe, you can almost hear the sound of soft flakes of snow dusting the ground."

She goes next, selecting a large, teddy-bear shaped lollipop. She's not nearly as eloquent as Crane is, but she does have experience bullshitting flavors to customers, and so by the time she's finished extolling the candy for its "rosemary undertones" they are both doubled over in laughter and earning dirty looks from the lone cashier. They move their game to the next store, and then the next. Abbie's quite sure they've visited every store in the small terminal by the time they call it quits.

They end their adventure at a Dunkin donuts, popping donut holes into their mouths and grinning at each other like idiots. Crane is telling a story about the first time he rode on a plane at the ripe old age of seventeen, and describing how he was so terrified and confused that he'd ran through the wrong gate. She's not really listening to what he's saying, to be honest, just staring at his lips, his eyes, the span of his hands as he waves them about emphatically. Strange feelings are cropping up in her belly, and she wills them down. 'Three hours ago you had no idea this guy existed. Calm your teets, Abigail.'

Crane closes his mouth around his fingers, licking off the powdered sugar and humming contentedly, and the image sends a frisson of heat down her spine.

"They'll be boarding soon," she says, standing up abruptly.

"Miss Mills?" Crane says, confused. "Wouldn't they announce it if they were?"

Abbie folds her arms. "I'd like not to miss my flight, Crane. Better safe than sorry."

Abbie has never seen a grown man pout quite as petulantly as Crane is now. He throws away his empty donut hole cup and trails after her toward their gate. To Abbie's immense relief, they reach the gate just before the gate agent calls for boarding to begin. She throws an unapologetic smirk Crane's way, and gets in line when they call for group 2.

Crane steps in right behind her. "What's your seat number?"

She checks her ticket. "10A," she responds.

"Oh, a pity," Crane says. "I'm in 16B."

That sinking feeling in her gut was definitely not disappointment, she tells herself.

"Guess i'll see you in Boston, then."

"I suppose so." Just before she gets to the agent to check in, he lifts her hand to his lips, and presses them, ever so softly, just above her knuckles.

Abbie can hear her heart thrumming in her ears, like a tide ebbing in and out.

She's finished.