A/N: So sorry it took so long to update. I just haven't been in a good place for writing and didn't want to force anything. It's a combination of writers block and being super busy and exhausted. I started writing this chapter a while ago, and just got a good urge to write and actually finished it. Hopefully this stays and I don't go back into a writing funk. This chapter is a little ahn...Anyways I hope you enjoy. Plus again if there is anything you wanna read just let me know and I'll see if I can fit it in. Particularly anything with this FBI/London thing we are about to have because I don't know what to do with it but I want to bring my story up to date in those areas.

He looked down and smiled at the little girl lying with her head on his shoulder as she let out a shaky giggle at the corny joke her mother had just told her in order to get her mind off of the fact that they were in a doctor's office to get her cast removed. The girls laughter didn't last long though as her mind quickly fell back to the task at hand.

"But Mommy I don't wanna take my cast off," she whined.

"So do you wanna keep it on forever?" Abbie asked her, trying to get the girl to understand the need for the cast to come off and to try and calm her at the same time. "You said it was itchy, remember?"

"It's gonna hurt," she said.

"No it won't baby, I promise," Abbie tried as he held the little girl closer. "They are just going to take the cast off, you won't feel a thing."

They continued trying to reassure the child as well as distract her, reminding her that they were going to see Jenn and Hawley after they left the doctor's office and that they would also allow her to get some candy after dinner. Then the doctor came in and everything after that was a blurr. There was screaming and tears, that amplified after she saw the small saw they were going to use to remove the cast. It took Ichabod wrapping his long limbs around the child holding her still while Abbie held her face reminding her that she was fine and that she wasn't actually being hurt. Which seemed to start working towards the end. The doctor announced she was done which prompted a "Really?" from Macey as the tears stopped abruptly confirming that she wasn't actually feeling any pain from the procedure.

"That wasn't so bad, now was it?" Ichabod asked still holding her in his arms.

She laughed a little as she looked at her now freed arm before burying her face in his neck and informing them that she was ready to go, before the doctor's decided that there was something else she needed done to her.

She walked into the house and immediately noticed the silence, thankfully. She was exhausted. Being that their wasn't much evil to fight lately, she had been officially back on full time at the station. School had started again, so she had picked up her old exhausting routine, working over at the station and sometimes picking up extra cases that were for the taking.

She was trying to refocus her priorties back to what they were prior to the recent events that had turned her life completely upside down. And though she would never get to go back to the way her life was prior to those events, she could still strive to accomplish the goals she had set for herself back then, because she wanted them now more than ever. Now that she had Macey, she wanted that career and house more than ever because it now not only meant more stability for herself but for the child. She had started looking into the academy again and had gotten in touch with some contacts. It seemed like they still wanted her and she assured them that she still wanted to train. She had run down her situation to them, well most of it, leaving out a few details here and there, and assured them that she could still spend the required time in Quantico in order to finish training. Now she only needed to convince herself of that. Training would require her to be away from Macey for prolonged periods of time, longer than either she or the girl would like, but it would be something that they would both have to live with. Between Ichabod, Jenny, mainly Jenny, and Hawley she figured the girl would be well taken care of while she was away, but there was no way to soften the emotional strain it would cause on them. Even Ichabod, as he had overheard her on the phone talking to one of her contacts from the agency and had began acting strangely while simultaneously trying to find out more about what exactly she planned on doing and when she planned on doing it as well as encourage her without letting his feelings about her being away get in the way. But she had read straight through him. The man was not nearly as good about hiding his feelings as he thought he was.

The soft shuffling and whispering that came from the back of the house alerted her to the fact that Ichabod and Macey had not fallen asleep on the couch again waiting for her to come home. She suspected it was still a little too early for that, but it had been so quiet when she first arrived.

Her brows furrowed as she made her way through the house and closer to her kitchen where the voices seemed to be coming from.

"But I wanted to eat it," she heard Macey softly whine.

"Another time Sweetheart. We have to get everything cleaned up before Mommy gets home," she heard him say a little hurriedly.

This caused her to step around the corner. She was met with both of their backs as they hovered over the garbage can. They hadn't noticed her standing there.

"What are you two doing?" she asked, causing both of them to jump and turn towards her. It was comical, and she would have laughed if it were not for the little pieces of cake batter she noticed all over the child, including all throughout her hair. The curious look she had on her face slowly began to morph into a scowl. She then noticed that there was a similar material all over her counter and on some parts of the wall near her mixer. Her eyes darted back to Ichabod, and she noticed that he had bits and chunks on him as well, not as much as Macey as the child had probably had her face almost directly in front of the mixer when whatever happened happened.

She glared at him, and he opened his mouth to speak but nothing came out. Macey stood staring innocently as she waited for her father to start explaining what had happened. It had been an honest mistake. They hadn't meant to mess up the kitchen. Surely her Mommy wouldn't be mad if they just explained that to her. So she decided she would since her father was making no effort to.

"We made a mistake, it got...on accident, it got everywhere...all over the kitchen...the cake when we tried to mix it on accident." Well that could have come out a lot smoother, but she hoped that she had at least made it clear that it was an accident and they were sorry.

Abbie looked at the child as she looked up at her waiting to see her reaction at the information she had just relayed to her. It was funny, a little bit. She was still pissed because she was tired and it looked like a mini explosion went off in her kitchen and she would probably be picking batter chunks out of Macey's hair for the next few days, but it was funny that they both knew that they had both messed up and then Macey trying to be the grown up in the situation to explain what happened. It was always funny to her when kids tried to all of a sudden become little adults when they thought they were in trouble or they were seriously trying to negotiate their way into something, those somethings mostly being snacks or toys and spending the night in her and Ichabod's bed for Macey.

She looked back at Ichabod, trying to prevent the smile that was threatening from coming through. He just continued to stare with a look that stated that he was offended that he was in trouble. "Exactly what she said," he told her. "That is what occured."

Abbie scrunched her fact together, because she knew her face was betraying the emotion she wanted to show. Perhaps she was just to tired to be angry. Or the fact that she and Ichabod had remained on better terms than they had been in the past couple of months.

"Ughhh!" she exclaimed as she walked over to Macey, knowing that she could no longer stay angry. She bent and placed her hands on each side of the child's face before kissing her forhead. "You're are so lucky I haven't seen you all day and I miss you, Bug. Now let's go get this crap out of your hair."

She picked the child up, and Macey seemed to be content that her explanation had the desired effect. She had just stood placing the child on her hip when she heard, "You haven't seen me all day either," come from behind her.

To which she turned to him and respnonded. "And I'm not going to murder you for messing up my kitchen."

The eyebrow that he had raised immediately became limp, "Fair enough."

By the time he had finished cleaning the kitchen and taken a shower himself, Abbie had already sat herself down at the kitchen table with her bank statements, and computer with Macey across from her coloring and talking aloud to either the picture she was coloring, her teddy bear, or some imaginary friend that he couldn't see.

"What are you doing?" he asked as he went to get him a drink of water.

"Trying to rebalance and rebudget my life so I can come up with a savings plan," she told him.

"What are you saving to buy?" she asked him.

She turned and smiled at him, "That house I'm always talking about that may or may not exist yet." With that, she went back to the paper and the spreadsheet in front of her.

This gave him pause. He only continued to stare at them as he hesitated before bringing the glass of water up to his mouth. This house, he had known that she had still wanted a house, but he hadn't known that she had wanted one so urgently. He felt his mood starting to plummet. He felt awful...worthless. Had he upset her life that greatly with his appearance, his financial dependence on her. He continued to stare at them, the only sound filling the house being Macey's incessant talking and the sound of Abbie's fingers against her keyboard, an occasional sigh escaping her lips, revealing her growing frustration with the task she had taken on.

He opened his mouth, but a sinking feeling in his chest caused him to swallow those words before they ever left his throat. 'I'm sorry,' he realized that was what he was about to say. Then he mentally kicked himself. What would sorry do? Sorry would surely not make up for the burden he had placed on her, nor would it provide a more stable roof over their heads. He had been right. The conversation he had had with Hawley earlier, not without threatening the man about leaving him to fend for himself if they ever came across a monster that swallowed people's tongues leaving them mute if he was to speak a word of this to either Abbie or Jenny, was starting to rear it's ugly head again. He started to think about the things they had discussed. He had learned that even though he had made a significant time jump, his sense of masculinity was still rooted in his first life. He had been the provider in his family, when it was Katrina and him, and his father had been the provider of the house when he was a boy, and that was one of the things that he had been taught that a man did. He had asked Hawley if that was odd and if he should express his concerns to Abbie. The man had responded by telling him that it was not odd, and a lot of that same sentiment was still around today, he even shared it, and that he probably should find better wording to share his concerns with Abbie unless he wanted to find himself in a painful physical predicament. But he thought that maybe this was the reason that Abbie was afraid to fully give in to her feelings for him. Maybe she didn't see him as a man, an adult male capable of carrying his weight in a serious romantic relationship. Maybe she wanted more for herself and for Macey, and planned on one day pursuing that and didn't want to be romantically tied up with him to the point that it would prevent her from doing so. This was something that had been bugging him for a while, he had tried to come up with multiple remedies to fix it because honestly it was causing him not to like himself very much. The one of the remedies he thought to be the most promising was going to England to see if he could find anything that would help him to better be able to care for himself, and possibly others in this time. Surely, his old friends had to have had the foresight to afford him a means to thrive financially in this lifetime. After all, how could one focus on preventing the apocolypse if you were preoccupied with where your next meal would be coming from.

"Leftenant I have something to tell you," he found himself saying before he had adequately mentally prepared himself to have this discussion. He slid into the chair between her and Macey.

"Yup," she said as she frowned at her computer screen. "What is it?"

"I am afraid that I have been hoarding money from you," he replied in a regretful tone.

She frowned as she finally looked up at him, trying to figure out in which direction he was coming from. She honestly felt like she knew this man like the back of her hand, but not on personal issues, not on things like this. When he was ranting and raving, or they were fighting, yes, they where on one accord, but she swore, left field was made for things such as Ichabod's intimate personal issues.

"Please, do not be angry at me," he said, and she continued to stare at him. "But I promise you that it is for a good cause."

She wasn't upset, about the money thing. She had been trying to make him start a savings account since he had started receiving the flimsy paycheck from the department.

"I am going to go to England," he finally got out.

At this her eyes widened. And with her next words he could detect the hurt and panic in her voice, and knew that Macey could as well as her little head popped up as soon as the words left Abbie's mouth.

"You're leaving?"

A/N: Please review and let me know what you think! Oh and someone asked a while ago about the unprotected sex thing...and I haven't made up my mind exactly how this is going to go. I have multiple theories but one in particular that I think I am going to go with now. So something will probably come from it but it may be nothing at all, but right now it will probably be something for now. If that explains anything, LOL. Again open for interesting suggestions.