Odes to Our Esteemed Captain and His Most Divine Leftenant

Summary: My first attempt at Sleepy Hollow fanfiction, just in time for Sleepy Holloween Week. All Ichabbie, all the time. Flashbacks, tender moments, and compromising situations, wrapped in maudlin songfic for your reading pleasure. Various and sundry situations and settings. Rated T/M.

Disclaimer: Nothing here belongs to me, although I'd quit my job for the opportunity to join the Sleepywriters. (Call me!)

Rating: T

Just a Memory

(Day 2: Tragedy)

Abbie Mills prided herself on taking life as it came. At twenty-eight, she had grown into a woman with deep compassion for the people around her, but very little patience for any maudlin sentiment on her own behalf. In fact, people fussing over her made her extremely uncomfortable. Really, you ought to focus on something else, her actions always said.

Keeping a level head was how Grace Abigail Mills got through her days.

Her nights were a different story.

On a night not long after she'd returned from Purgatory, Abbie went to bed, turned off all the lights…

…and realized that the next day would mark the one year anniversary of Sheriff August Corbin's execution at the hands of the Headless Horseman.

Abbie's first reaction was to shake the sadness off. So much has happened since that horrible night last October, she thought to herself. People die all the time. I'm not special, and so many have lost so much right here in Sleepy Hollow. Death is another part of life…

You know, you can't run away from your feelings.

She blinked. That wasn't her voice. It was Corbin's. She couldn't even count the times he'd told her exactly that…

And Corbin understood everything.

Until she watched him die right in front of her eyes, that is. Unbidden, memories of the last glimpse she'd had of him flooded her mind… his head separated from his body.

Stop this, Abigail. In order to block out the trauma, she would have to try to remember Corbin as he was.

There was the time when he arrested her, deciding to intervene in Abbie's life just after she got her first real boyfriend. Closing her eyes, Abbie remembered exactly how Ralph… Roland?... no, Ron, definitely Ron… how Ron had made her feel with his pills and then with his roaming hands in the backseat of his car. Abbie would have done anything for him.

She was heading down the wrong road when Corbin arrested her, threw Ron… no, Raymond into jail pending trial… and forced her into the local GED program.

You're far too smart for this mess you're getting yourself into, Abbie. Far too smart.

He'd supported her through everything. Police academy. Night school to earn her GED, then a stint at the local community college, and after all kinds of struggle and sleepless nights, her bachelor's degree. He'd been there for so many holidays that she couldn't share with her sister or mother. He'd been there through so many of her bad breakups… including the latest with Luke, when he frustratingly gave her an ultimatum: Quantico and the FBI, or him.

And he'd been with her through the strange sequence of events that she only received answers for after she was gone.

She would never forget all the pie a la mode, and cheap diner coffee.

She would never forget his fatherly smile.

There were a few people who wondered if August Corbin ever had any inappropriate intentions toward Abigail Mills. For an older guy to take such interest in a young, pretty girl was unusual, and after all Corbin was a red-blooded guy who hadn't been seen with a woman in many years. Abbie only learned what drove him in the strange days after his death, as she rifled through his files in the office, then later at his cabin. But it was Ichabod, the occupant of Corbin's domicile who ironically never met him, to find the nearly faded picture.

"You have long wondered what may have drawn your friend to you," he'd told her over their morning coffee. "Perhaps this photo-graph tells some small part of that tale."

Smiling at her friend's propensity to belabor all the words that hadn't existed during his time, Abbie had taken the picture from Ichabod, feeling the familiar warmth of his long fingers as they touched her own much smaller ones. She peered at the picture.

In it, a much-younger Corbin was with a woman. Judging from their clothing, it was probably sometime in the 1960s. She didn't look much like Abbie, but she had one thing in common with her…

They were both black.

Corbin's arms were around the mystery woman, who was looking at the camera, her laughter frozen in time for the ages by the flash. Her wide smile matched Corbin, but her old friend and mentor wasn't looking at the camera…

He was looking at her.

Abbie knew that Corbin had been married, once. He also had a son. Abbie knew his family well. Try as she might, she couldn't remember ever seeing that woman. Or remembering Corbin with a girlfriend since his wife, ever.

It was something that Ichabod had brought up later, just before the sequence of events that put him in an underground coffin and her stuck in a Purgatory dollhouse.

"You have shared with me how things changed in that regard only a few generations before this time. Perhaps Sheriff Corbin…"

Abbie shook her head. "Nah. Something must have happened. Corbin was nobody's coward. If he wanted to be with that lady, he would have been."

Ichabod raised an eyebrow. "Even if it were against the law?"

She frowned at him, then shrugged. "Those laws were unfair."

"They were indeed. And yet, had he lived in my time, the law would have been even more unreasonable."

Ichabod then mentioned the case of the Zong slave ship massacre, which had been headline news just before his "death" in 1781 and long sleep through time. Abbie had seen the historical movie Belle with a friend a couple of years before, but the movie hadn't gone into detail about the initial circumstances that led to Lord Mansfield's case. Both filled in details that the other didn't know.

"You know what, Crane? I'm glad you came to my time… I'm not sure I would have liked yours very much."

His hand had covered hers.

"I would have protected you."

Abbie remembered opening her mouth to protest. Ichabod was a great friend but he couldn't stop many things from happening. Corbin was still dead… and hey, if she'd suddenly appeared in the early 1780s, anyone with nefarious intent could have claimed she was property.

But Ichabod had taken her hand in his and was holding it firmly.

"I would have protected you," he repeated, his voice brooking no refusal. "I will always protect you."

Instead of insisting that she didn't need anyone to protect her, Abbie smiled. Shaking her head to ward off any sentimentality, and commanding her heart to stop fluttering. It had been so long since anyone had cared for her like that… she was missing her friendship with Corbin… that was all.

She heard August's voice again. You know, you can't run away from your feelings.

Shut up, she snapped inwardly.

Somehow, she could hear Corbin's warm laughter.

"You never know," Abbie said finally, taking her hand out of Ichabod's (and immediately missing his warmth). "Maybe I'll be the one to protect you."

Ichabod's eyes had lit up as he grinned.

"Perhaps you will, Leftenant," he'd said slowly. "Perhaps you will."

~sleepy~sleepy~sleepy~

Abbie wasn't the only one who had a sleepless night on the anniversary of Sheriff August Corbin's death. A few miles away, in his old cabin, Ichabod Crane had a similar problem.

Tomorrow marks one annum since I emerged into this strange new world, he thought.

Only candlelight and the orange glow of the fireplace lit the large room of the cabin. Ichabod found it difficult to get used to artificial lighting, which was one of the aspects of Corbin's home he appreciated most. Here, there were moments when it didn't feel quite so much like he'd stepped into some far-distant future beyond the wildest imaginings of the most daring of the visionaries of his age.

You and I have very different definitions of old. It seems if a building stays upright for more than a decade, you people declare it a national landmark. This cabin has all the modern means I need. It's certainly preferable to that motel.

He couldn't help his amusement over the memory. Over the past year, he and Abbie had seen their share of tragedy, from the beloved mentor she'd lost the night Headless emerged, to the imprisonment of their friend Frank Irving. He'd lost everyone he'd ever known the moment the Headless Horseman ended his life. Even Katrina was still lost to him.

So was it all a tragedy?

He knew the answer to his question almost as soon as he'd murmured it. In fact, he'd given it to Abbie many months before, back when they thought his son was a harmless old man, back when they thought the only way to prevent the Headless from rising was to end his life.

I've lived on borrowed time. More than any man deserves. I've seen wonders beyond my wildest imaginings. And through these centuries, against the impossibilities that we would find each other, we did. And I am most grateful for it.

Coming forward in time could never be a tragedy for Ichabod Crane.

For even if the Headless Horseman's blade and his wife Katrina's spell had whisked out of his own time…

…Ichabod Crane couldn't imagine not knowing Lieutenant Abigail Mills.

~sleepy~sleepy~sleepy~

Abbie knew there wouldn't be an end to her tossing and turning that night. She accepted it, though, much as she'd accepted quite a bit about her unusual life.

One thing's for sure. Things never get boring.

Her cell phone rang. Who could it be this time of night?

When she saw the caller ID, she smiled. For some reason, ever since a lanky, snarky Revolutionary War era soldier had stepped into her life, lonely Abbie Mills found that she wasn't quite so lonely anymore.

"Hey, Crane. What's going on?"

"Nothing. I thought you might like some company."

"I'm fine." Pause. "One year."

"Indeed. It seems that the anniversary of our circumstances is upon us."

Silence.

"Would you care for some company?" he asked finally.

She'd known him long enough to hear the smile in his face.

"Miss Mills, I await your answer as we speak, for I am standing right outside your front door."

And Abbie couldn't help the soaring of her heart as she jumped out of her bed, and jogged over to let him in.

For in all the tragedy Abbie Mills had experienced in her life, the one thing that wasn't tragic... was him.

~the end~

A/N: So in my headcanon, Abbie hears Ichabod say "Leftenant" while to Ichabod, the word is "Lieutenant." So the word I'll use will depend on the POV. :)

-Dr. Holland