The house is dark.
Blank windows frame the porch, the heavy silence warped in intervals by the moan of the swing on its chains. Crane is slumped down, his head supported by the thick bar of the seat back, bare heels digging into the wooden slats of the floor. His thin t-shirt and pajama pants are no match for the bite of December wind, but the empty expression of his face betrays no discomfort, nor any emotion at all. His eyes stare up, unseeing.
One month. She'd been gone one month.
Jenny had forced him into the house, which at first, he'd been unwilling—terrified, really—to enter. Her coffee mug next to the stove, her favorite boots next to the door, the lingering scent of her favorite lotion: how could he possibly be expected to endure these? He could not just fall back into an existence that was a worthless, that was finished, without the one person who had given everything life, without Abbie. He had shrieked all of this until his voice was hoarse, towering over Jenny like a man possessed; and she had listened patiently, grief and empathy deep in her eyes.
Then, when he'd quieted, she punched him square in the jaw.
"Shut up. She's cannot be dead. Keep going. We'll get her back. There has to be a way. Find it. Do it."
Jenny had forced him to live. She'd forced food into his face, forced hygiene, forced conversation. Ichabod wanted none of it. The only activity he had a tick of time for was research, and it engulfed his every waking hour. It was a grueling, merciless pursuit, but it could not fail.
Without Abbie. The phrase itself is a swallow of chalky poison.
He rolls his gaze to the black rectangle of the front door frame. An internal vision overwhelms him: Abbie's return from Quantico. He had heard the car pull up, heard the click of her heels on the sidewalk, heard the rumble of her rolling bag as it crossed the the porch planks. When he heard the jingle of her keys, he had ripped the door open. Eyes flown wide, delicious red lips parted, cheeks flushed in surprise and excitement—she had been irresistible, as always, and Crane could not keep himself from lifting her at the waist and swinging her into the house.
In the darkness, Crane's ears echo with Abbie's lilting laughter. He cannot stamp the memory down fast enough before he can also feel her soft skin under his fingers and taste the strawberry of her lip balm.
The familiar searing in his chest flares, knocking his breath from his throat. He screws his eyes shut and sets his jaw to ride out the wave of pain until he is able to inhale again, unsteadily.
Lowered lids allow exhaustion to sink into the edges of his mind. Elusive sleep threatens, at last.
But as he descends into unconsciousness, Abbie's face forms in the shadows and hovers before him. Her tender eyes, copper-flecked, seem tinged with sadness; her hair blows around her face like a halo. She reaches out to him, pleading in echoes, "Ichabod, I'm here...Please come, please find me…Ichabod…"
Crane snaps awake, bolt upright, the swing stuttering beneath him. He blinks rapidly, adrenaline surging, and grips the armrest with bloodless fingers. Oh, God. As his trembling hand rakes across his scalp, the image replays itself. She is afraid, he acknowledges sickeningly. He cannot allow himself to wonder beyond that, to imagine what horrors she was fighting. No. Focus, Ichabod.
He is rattled by the dream, but for the first time in four weeks, he has hope. True to form, she had managed the impossible: she had reached across the gulf to contact him. It was up to him to do the rest.
She is alive, somewhere.
Crane presses the heels of his hands into his eye sockets, conjuring her image once more. He telegraphs his own words, from so long ago, into the chasm: "Hold fast, Abigail Mills; I'm on my way."
