Author's note: So I fell out of love with sleepy hollow a very long time ago. Even before what I heard happened with Abbie and the controversial continuing of the tale afterwards but that show will always be so bittersweet to me. It had so much potential and little to no follow-through on it which was somewhat distressing as a fan at the time. Anyway, the show itself has no part in me deciding to continue this. I have written so little since this time in my life but I randomly ended up reading some of the reviews for this story and they led to me re-reading what I'd written because I'd forgotten it and anyway I thought those first two chapters were maybe some of the most beautiful things I've ever written. Which was #1. Shocking. I'm going to re-read some other stuff I've written because it's like I wasn't the author at all since I knew only like 15% of it and #2. Scary because again, I haven't written anything like this in a long long time and now I don't know if I am capable of finishing this as I could have then. But I really wanted to try so… here's this. And I think that there will be at least one more. (Let's hope it doesn't take another four years.) I hope that the people who have asked for it for so long will enjoy it (you know, if any of you are still here. )
As a reminder all the past events are in italics. (Also excuse any mistakes, I didn't exactly edit this. oops)
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When Abbie arrives at Corbin's Cabin it's like she's in a fever dream. Everything is brighter than it should be, blinding. The world looks off, strange, and unbalanced. Her hands are sweaty around her steering wheel and then shaking as they clumsily remove her car key from the ignition. When Abbie steps out of her car, her knees nearly give out and she has to lean against it until she's feeling strong enough. Each step that brings her closer to the door is no easier and every one of them is too loud.
When she reaches it— finally, reaches it—the door is open, just an inch or two and the sight of it sets the cop in her on edge, urges her forward. It makes her want to call out if everything is okay inside but that is decidedly not the way she wants this meeting to start if all is well. ( Not that she knows how she wants it to start, or go at all, or even what she intends to say. And even though wondering if he's okay is one of the worst kind of demons she's ever fought. )
Abbie slides her fingers into the opening of the door and pushes it until the gap swings wide and the inside of the cabin greets her, her heart in her throat.
She steps inside and only after a short amount of time does it take her to realize he's not here, though it calms her none.
He lives here but what kind of life he's living is the real question. Irving hadn't let on nearly enough about the state of Ichabod's existence. She wasn't ready for— this. Abbie's mouth goes dry taking in all of the old things she sees around her. It feels like she's in a museum or has stepped back into the 18th century. He has removed everything that would have marked this place as now.
She walks through the past until she comes to the bedroom and pauses beneath the door frame, her hand reaching out to grasp the wood to steady herself.
—It doesn't work.
She is dizzy. Dizzy standing here, knowing all that he has shut out, what he has given up, what he has reverted back to— the comforts of a time long passed.
Dizzy because even after doing all of that, after turning this place into a mausoleum, she's standing here staring at her bed— their bed —and she doesn't know what to do with it, the information that— this —is the only thing he's held on to.
Abbie sharply inhales.
And she has to get out of here because she suddenly can't breathe and isn't sure if she'll ever remember how to. It hits her hard what she'd been looking for by coming here— an ending, that she came here to try and remove him from her head, her heart, get him out of her system, to see him moved on so she could finally do it herself.
And this was all a mistake. She never should have come.
Abbie staggers backward.
She never should have come back to Sleepy Hollow in the first place.
She turns.
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And then freezes.
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And his blue eyes are just as beautiful as she remembers.
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"Abigail?" Ichabod breathes out.
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PART II
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They had never kissed.
All the years fighting together, and believing in each other, and supporting each other, and relying on each other had not changed this fact.
Even after the wounds that Katrina had left on him had faded, never gone, but settled onto his soul like everything else he had lost, he had never tried to kiss her.
Before they had saved the World, Abbie never really thought about it. Life had been too much, too busy, too dangerous, that their relationship didn't cross her mind.
After they had saved the world, Abbie could rarely think of anything else, knew that he had been waiting for her to make the first move or to give him permission and was still waiting.
But their seven years was over.
Neither of them had chosen each other. They had been brought together and how long would it be before he noticed it like she did? How long would it be until they could no longer sustain this thing between them passed its expiration date? It feels accidental, like they were forgotten, like it was a slip of the mind, that they survived.
They had never kissed.
And in the end, Abbie both wished they had in the time before and was glad they hadn't in the time after.
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It hadn't occurred to her until much later that they had done so much more than that.
She had been the first one to grab his hand, lace their fingers together, when they had been happy over some insignificant thing she can no longer remember. She had been the first one to run her fingers through his hair, the first one to rest her head on his shoulder, the first one to sit so close to him their thighs were touching, until the point that whenever they were near each other they were as entwined as their destinies had been in a nearly absent-minded sort of way.
She had been the one to invite him to share her bed, to sleep next to each other and help one another fend off the demons of their nightmares the same as they fought the ones in waking hours, and while it had began as a necessity, it had grown into a source of effortless contentment and so much more.
Everything had progressed so easily. His blinding smiles marking every step of the way as he fervently returned each new gesture with one of his own.
He had always been waiting on her to show him what was next and she had always given.
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—until she hadn't.
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Her name travels the space between them connecting them once again.
Crane stands in the middle of the main room, the front door still open behind him, holding a pile of freshly-chopped wood that comes to just under his chin. He's dressed in his old clothes instead of the blazers and button ups he had switched to during their time together —which seems impossible, though there are patches she doesn't remember.
And he's staring at her, gaze unreadable. After her name, he's said nothing.
Abbie tries not to fidget.
"I'm sorry," she blurts out, so unlike the effortlessness she used to feel when talking to him. Everything is different now, she thinks. Everything is different because she'd made it that way, "the door was open. I—I was just about to leave."
He looks away.
"I didn't know you were in town," he states, in his quiet even tone, almost matter-of-factly, though the edges of his voice are too frayed even in her ears. He says it as if she has stopped by before, as if this isn't such a big deal, as if the last time they'd spoken he hadn't finally given voice to his feelings for her and she hadn't told him that she was never coming back.
She latches on to the falseness of it because the alternative is too terrifying. She shouldn't have come here. She doesn't know what to say.
"Oh, well… I haven't been here long. I stopped by the station first."
A second passes.
"I see," he responds, and then looks at her again, gaze somehow harder, questioning- a mix of hesitant and hopeful, "And then you came here?"
They both hear the echoing, unsaid '—why?'
He didn't ask her who told her he was here.
She doesn't respond to either question.
"I was just leaving," she says again.
"So you only wished to see how I was fairing." The way he says it, makes her heart clench. He looks ruined, wrecked.
This was cruel of her, to come. She had truly thought that he would be happy after she left. She would leave and continue her life as it had meant to go before he'd arrived in it, bringing them together as if the breath he took in resurrection was stolen from her lungs.
She'd thought that he would have relished in the job he had shown such love for and continued to thrive in Sleepy Hollow, the town so much more suited to him with its old charm and simple beauty than it had ever been suited to her.
She'd thought that he would be happy.
She'd thought that she would be happy.
And that they'd never have to inevitably fall apart.
Abbie feels her pulse quicken.
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Because they had both fallen apart.
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Because she had been wrong.
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The only problem is that though Abbie can recognize the clues, can see what's in front of her, she has never been great at believing. Ichabod had always had enough belief for the two of them to share.
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—And so Abbie ducks her head, and runs away.
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Ichabod has been empty for such a long time, has learned to breathe in it, learned to live in it, to exist with the absence carved into him that when he finally sees her again, feels her presence like a heavy thing that he could grasp if only she'd allow it, he is not nearly ready enough for the pain that comes with the hope.
He stares at her, amongst all of his old things, looking harshly out of place— bright and so beautiful —a future within the past, his future—once. And when she'd left he hadn't been able to bare anything else that reminded him of what was lost, except the letter, and the bed, that forever went unexplained, some part of him believing that somehow because she left it, that meant that she would come back because it was theirs.
Belief is hell.
Belief is his purgatory.
He tries to stamp down his hope but it leads him all the same, that, or maybe it's fear, because he can't imagine watching her go a second time.
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She is leaving him again, nearly at the door, and then he has dropped the wood and is grasping her lightly by the wrist. Not strongly enough that if she really wanted to go she couldn't, but just firmly enough to match the desperation he feels when he says, "Wait."
Abbie pauses, looking back at him and there is something there that he recognizes. His throat is dry when he swallows.
"I'm afraid too," he admits because they had been afraid together so many times that it's almost a comfort, "I can't do this again. I know that you said it's what you wanted but you also said that you never wished to return and you're here. I can't let you leave again when I know that what you said back then was wrong. Please, I implore you—"
"We were brought together for a purpose," she starts, but he notices that the conviction isn't there. She hasn't pulled her wrist away, her voice is too gentle, "destined as you always said to finish what we did, and now that's over." But Ichabod knows that if she believed what she were saying completely, that her eyes still wouldn't look as terrified as they do.
He takes a tentative step forward and she takes one back, a hesitant dance until her back meets the door behind her and it shuts with a resounding click.
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"Abbie, I would go back and let the world burn for centuries if that was the only way you'd stand beside me."
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And they are both lost after that.