She is surprisingly good at first aid. Her hands don't shake, and the blood doesn't bother her. The medics all say she should've have been a doctor, but she sees the haunt in their eyes when they can't save a patient, and thinks she safer from behind the barrel of her gun.
She can't really stand straight, always leaning to one side or the other as if her legs can't hold the weight of her body.
She was the only girl on the school's soccer team. That was before her childhood ended. The boys all loved her, and called her 'Abs' and it was probably the highlight of her life when she scored the winning goal (4-3) in the championship finals. They'd lifted her on their shoulders, chanting her name; laughing; some even crying, and she had felt like a giant among them, instead of just that dark brown girl in the back of class. Sometimes, she wishes she could remember what it feels like to be part of a team. She wishes she could remember what it feels like to be needed.
She hates change.
She can never explain to the doctors that she isn't really addicted to the drugs, but to the self-destruction that comes alongside it. There's something romantic about it, she's always though, being the catalyst of your own demise. But she doesn't tell the doctors that. She learned a while back that they lock you up when you talk crazy.
It only took three months for shooting up to become a habit, part of her routine. The addiction should catch her by surprise, but it didn't. She didn't decide to be this way, you must understand. She woke up sick, and was an addict. And just can't bring herself to stop. If she stops, she doesn't know what she'll rely on to make the pain go away.
In the end, drugs never gave her the oblivion she searched, so she gazed into the bottom of a bottle in hopes she'd find it there. She didn't.
Her problems always still there tomorrow. The drugs don't make it go away. Neither does the alcohol. Not feeling, she learns, is not a replacement for reality.
She doesn't run from her problems anymore, and learns the hard way that it doesn't stop them from chasing after her. But she's gotten good at squaring her shoulders, looking her problems in the face and getting on with it.
She hates working night shifts. There's something impermeable about the darkness, scaring her shitless.
Sleeping in is her favorite hobby, as it is a rare occasion for her to sleep through the night. Sometimes she has nightmares. Sometimes the demons in her nightmares run too close to the surface. No often, but just enough to remind her the past she left behind. She has to wake up for fear of drowning in her sorrow.
After all these years, she understands that her silence about what happened in the woods wasn't born of bravery, nor cowardice, but self-preservation. This somehow makes the ache hurt worse. It doesn't lessen the fact that she betrayed her sister, nor provide any means of relief to ease the stark ache in her chest when she thinks of her baby sister.
She hates her first name, and often tries to convince herself that the reason isn't because it was her mother's name. Abbie is nickname her father (not Corbin, her real dad) gave her, and she doesn't mind hurting when she thinks of him.
She doesn't ever think about why she stays in Sleepy Hollow.
There are scars lining her skin, just above her elbow. Scars she put there.
Andy used to bring her a venti caramel macchiato from Starbucks, and the little pink cake lollipops every morning without fail, even when he was off duty. She'd be lying if she said she didn't miss that. Or him.
After Corbin dies, she makes sure to visit his wife at least once a week. This is driven more so by the weight of the grief in her chest than anything else. His children run around the yard, fighting and playing, and call her 'Aunty'. His little girl, a tiny thing named Summer, will sit in her lap and Abbie will braid her hair and they will giggle and laugh (laughing is less suffocations somehow) and talk about strawberries and coffee and police-work and even about what make men fathers. Abbie had to excuse herself that day to wipe the tears from her eyes. Summer pretends she didn't notice them.
Sometimes Abbie forgets that she's only human. She forgets that she can't always save everyone, but doesn't stop her from trying.
Every flat she ever buys always has two rooms, one bedside the other. It's the natural step, for Ichabod to move into it. It's empty anyway, but she can't help the pang in her chest as she realizes it was never meant for him. But she left her sister along time ago, and Jenny isn't coming back anytime soon.
She reads tenaciously, because the words on print crowd out the voices in her head.
All of the novels she reads have happy endings; though she often wonders which character she'd be if her life were a fairytale. She thinks she'd be the witch, with the power to change her fate with spells and charms and chants and the power to change lives with the flick of her finger. The witch has the luxury of running and running and never looking back, and can say to the princess it isn't my fault you didn't listen, I tried to warn you but you wouldn't listen. Abbie doesn't.