A/N: Thank you so so much to TranquillityofPassion, nacimynom, driver picks the music, Femmelillies, Iara, Gypsy136, daphne, ElleThom, cocoalounge, Guest, and marshmallowdeviant for reviewing! You guys are awesome! I hope you all enjoy this chapter :)


TWO


There's a great wind rushing over her, howling in her ears.

Through it, someone shouts, "Abigail!"

The sound of her name is muffled, as though it is being spoken underwater. Even so, she would recognize that voice anywhere.

"Crane!" she calls back, feeling disembodied. She has no conception of where she is, and the wind stabs her eyes, makes it impossible for her to see.

"Oh Crane oh Crane oh Crane," she chants, unable to stop herself. "Where are you?"

"You know, my dear. You know where I am."

"I don't!" she shouts brokenly, "I don't!"

"Try to remember," he instructs, suddenly gentle. The wind begins to still. She can almost make out his face, almost, but not quite – it's like peering into his reflection in a muddled pool of water. She can see the outline, the colors, but not the details.

"Remember what?" she murmurs. Everything around them is blindingly white, as though she's trapped in a blizzard. She reaches out towards him, but her hand is met with empty air.

"Remember what it was that woke you."

"It was – " And all at once, she realizes – she can't. She can't remember. "I can't," she confesses, uncertain.

"You must," he states. And again, more softly, "You must."

Abbie jerks her head off of the table in Corbin's cabin, guilt instantly lapping at her stomach over the stolen few minutes of sleep. She's taken to staying here, now, to immerse herself in the last place she saw Crane; if she's here all the time, maybe she'll finally notice something she missed before.

She wipes the corner of her mouth with the back of her hand, only to see Jenny watching her.

"How long was I out for?" she demands, voice hoarse.

"Only like twenty minutes," her sister humors her. "You should get some real sleep. You know, in a real bed? You look like shit."

"No time," she mumbles inarticulately. Only slightly moved by Jenny's testimony, she gives her hair a half-assed combing with her fingers, patting down the errant frizzing.

Jenny's disapproving stare does not wane. "When's the last time you slept like a human being?"

"You already know the answer to that," she shoots back, riveted by the computer screen. How the hell are there no John Does fitting Crane's description anywhere in the entire state? There had to have been some hipsters arrested for public intoxication in Brooklyn at least.

"You've been scanning the New York police networks for days without a hit. When's the last time you ate?" Jenny continues to interrogate.

"What is this, twenty questions?"

"You're gonna land yourself in the hospital. Whole lot of good you'll do Crane there."

"If you're not planning on helping, Jenny, why are you here?" Abbie snaps caustically.

Unfazed, she replies, "You don't need help with Crane right now. You need help with you. The bags under your eyes are one shade away from meth-head hooker purple."

"It's been four days, Jenny. Four days," she chokes out. "Do you have any idea what that means?"

She does. She knows what this means. Humans can survive three weeks without food, and three days without water. Without water, Crane would be dead by now. And that's assuming he was uninjured to begin with.

"You can't treat this like one of your typical kidnappings, Abs," Jenny maintains, "Nothing about this is typical. You need to stop looking at this as a cop, and start looking at it as a Witness."

"What the fuck does that mean?"

"The hell if I know," Jenny shrugs. "You're the Witness, remember? Not me. But what I do know is that you need just… stop assuming the worst. It's digging you into a hole, and pretty soon it's gonna incapacitate you."

"I had a dream," she murmurs, almost embarrassedly.

One eyebrow twitches upwards. "What kind of dream?" Jenny demands.

"Just now – Crane was in it."

Her sister leans forward on the table, bracing herself. "And?"

"He said… He said I know where he is."

"Cryptic. Great," she snorts. "Why can't anything ever be straightforward?"

"That night… That night he disappeared… A nightmare woke me up. That's why I called him in the first place."

"What was the nightmare about?"

"That's just it," Abbie says, brows drawing together in confusion and frustration. "I can't remember."

. . .

When it's late at night, and all she has are the crickets' excruciating screams, Abbie sometimes doubts Ichabod Crane ever existed. He's been wiped from this earth just as quickly and unexpectedly as he'd entered it – maybe he'd never truly been here to begin with. Maybe he is just a figment of her imagination, a manifestation of her own insanity. Maybe there is no Apocalypse, no Moloch, and the Mills' mother's disease is hereditary. Maybe Jenny should have been left in that mental hospital – maybe she should have joined her.

But then she reminds herself that Reyes saw him, Irving saw him, everyone else saw him. He is real, and something has happened to him.

Maybe he was zapped back to the 1700s. Maybe he's just gone, maybe he's not coming back, not now, not ever, and in some other time or dimension where she'll never be able to reach him.

She sniffs, tries to beat back tears and the stinging lump in her throat. The cabin smells like sawdust and wood, Corbin and Crane; two of the most well-loved and influential people in her life, now gone. She can see her monochromatic reflection in the unlit computer screen, staring back at her with dull eyes. Jenny was right, she looks like shit. It makes sense, though. It's the same as it always is. People die – everyone around her dies. She's just the mess that's left behind.

. . .

"You're here," she murmurs in disbelief.

"Of course I am," he laughs. "Where else would I be? You're behaving rather oddly, Miss Mills, if you don't mind my saying so."

Miss Mills. She never liked how it sounded, but now it's all she wants to be called.

Her hand ghosts over his cheekbone, his beard tickling her fingertips. "You're here. You're really here. I missed you so much."

His sea-blue eyes are shimmering in the light as an indiscernible look rearranges his features. "Missed me?"

She is not able to savor the silky purr of his voice. When she wakes up the air is pulsing Find me find me, as though all the flowery words Crane ever uttered only amounted to these two.

She rolls over in his bed and cries and cries until it feels like acid is sliding down her esophagus.

. . .

It's May 28th and Abbie is desperate.

She has prepared a plan B, but she doesn't want to use it. Plan B is telling Reyes Crane's a fugitive, and that all his documentation is falsified. She knows this is foolproof – but what she also knows is, if and when they do find Crane, he will be in serious trouble. Running from the law type trouble. If it comes to it, she'll make this call. Having to hide Crane from view is certainly better than having to bury him.

With Irving, plan B would have been – was – telling him everything. Reyes' rigidity and unshakeable adherence to the law is what has propelled her thus far, but it is also what makes her untrustworthy in Abbie's eyes. Irving was different. Irving was insightful and observant, and so yes, telling him the truth was a leap of faith, but it was as safe a leap of faith as she was ever going to find.

To tell Reyes the truth, only to be locked up like her mother, would be an act of complete idiocy. Telling Reyes would be just as good as committing herself to a mental institution and signing Crane's death certificate in one neat sweep.

So, she's come up with a convincing lie. She only hopes she doesn't have to use it.

"Reyes," she pleads, standing in front of the sheriff's desk.

The other woman doesn't need to hear Abbie's entreaty to know what it's about. "Still haven't heard from your boyfriend, huh? No sign of him whatsoever?"

Lieutenant Mills shakes her head. "He's not my boyfriend," she whispers so quietly Reyes does not hear.

Sheriff Reyes isn't a cruel person. She doesn't like to see suffering – what kind of cop would she be if she did? And Abigail Mills is, undoubtedly, suffering. Plus, she knows she's resourceful – if she really hasn't caught any trace of Professor Crane in almost week, maybe something is wrong.

"Maybe it is time to get a team out," she concedes, and Abbie feels relief soothe her insides like a drink of icy water on a sweltering day.

Her spine hunches slightly, her posture succumbing to this fleeting reprieve.

"Thank you," she says sincerely.

Reyes' mouth is pulled in a terse line, and she only nods in acknowledgment. "I'm putting you in charge of the search," she orders. "Get a team together, get the dogs out there, and tell me what you come up with."

Abbie nods animatedly and rushes off to spam Crane's photo to every single police station on the Eastern Seaboard.

. . .

By now, Abbie knows the woods of Sleepy Hollow like the back or her hand. Stepping off the dirt-paved pathway where she parks her car is like coming home.

The trees are green and swollen with leaves, and the air smells damp and ripe. It is spring, after all. Everything is coming to life. Everything except her.

Birds are twittering excitedly overhead, no doubt preparing their nests, and a symphony of different bugs plays their song. Even the German Shepherds seem happy with their long, pink tongues spilling out of their smiling, fearsome jaws as they trot over logs and puddles.

Abbie's hand is gripping one of Crane's shirts – which they're using to track his scent – so tightly her knuckles are losing circulation.

She's not sure what she expects this team to find that she didn't find on her own. She scoured those woods like her life depended on it. But still, she supposes she must remember that they are vast, and she and Jenny are only two people. Not to mention, she's positive that neither of them has a heightened sense of smell.

She has a feeling in her gut, though, that they're not going to find him in the woods. However, she is optimistic about the APB she put out. There's bound to be a hit at some point. There just has to be.

Abbie's leading this search party, though, so she knows she has to be strong and focused. She's been masking her pain all her life – now isn't any different. This morning she put ice on her eyes to quell the swelling and then slathered concealer over the blotchiness. She looks fine. Someone might even go so far as to say she looks good.

But the mask she's wearing is made of glass.

"We're gonna split up to cover more ground. Anderson, I want you to head west towards the river, and I'll go east towards the highway. Got it?" Abbie commands.

Anderson, a blond-haired and square-jawed, nods his understanding.

Abbie takes half the party and they trek further into the woods. From Crane's cabin – their starting point – the river is much closer than the highway, so she has more ground to cover. Plus, she's already thoroughly searched the area around the waterfront. It was the first place she looked – bodies of water tend to solve missing persons cases on their own. She just thanks God that wasn't the case in this one.

They search until the sun begins to set, which is miraculously late as they grow closer to the Summer Solstice. And just when the pale corals and oranges start to paint the sky, she hears Moretti shout, "Mills, I think I found something!"

Moretti's dog is rearing. The leash is pulled taut and vibrating like a guitar string and it's barking at something in the underbrush only a few meters from the hike up to the highway rail.

Abbie's heart clenches in anticipation as she flies over everything between her and the dog.

And then she sees.

There, neatly folded under the shrubbery and amongst the weeds, is Crane's beloved wool coat.


A/N: What do you think? Any theories?