Author's Note: Because I've been working on the next part to this fic forever and I haven't finished it but now Sleepy Hollow is back on ( ahhh! ) and I just wanted (needed) to share something and so originally this was just the "opener" of the next piece but it also works nicely as an interlude in the meantime so alas this short little teaser titled simply: Ichabod.
Interlude
Ichabod
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At first, it is almost too easy. Ichabod wakes, goes to work, and comes home, repeats the same thing day after day. He smiles, going on about his regular routine as if nothing has changed and he teaches his students, the enjoyment still there. He does menial things that she'd taught him (like cooking on a stove, setting his alarm, or doing his laundry) and at night, he sleeps alone in their bed.
And he lives.
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In fact, it is quite some time before things begin to fall apart.
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She sends for her things.
All the rest of her clothes are taken from the closet, her shoes. She takes about half of her furniture. Abbie writes him a letter; short and concise as if it wasn't her who wrote it or it wasn't him she was writing to, letting him know he can keep everything the movers do not take because her new apartment is not as large as this one.
(He turns the letter over again and again expecting to see something more— but never does.)
It only takes a few hours until the movers are gone.
She leaves him the bed. (There is no explanation for this in the letter either. He knows because he has turned it over again.)
And as he lays on it— mid-day, dinner uncooked, still trapped in his stifling work clothes, feeling the absence of all her extracted possessions— he stares up at the blank white of the ceiling until he can no longer breathe.
Because it is not the absence of possessions that he feels.
Because she is gone (and he is weak, and he is alone, and he has been so so stupid for thinking anything else, for pretending that he has just missed her— a shadow at the edge of his vision— that her leaving was all only temporary).
Abbie is gone.
And the first crack splits and runs itself across his heart.
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And although it is quite sometime before things begin to fall apart... when they do, they do so spectacularly.
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