Author's note:So I was mostly only continuing this for myself because I wanted to see if I could. That said, I was only going to write one more part (to be shared who knew when) but this small addition goes out to everyone that voiced their genuine excitement (the likes of which, was a surprise to me) about it and also specifically to Abbie's Feet because I was writing this part yesterday and then received your review this morning and it's what made me decide to turn this Ichabod flashback into another interlude of sorts. (Also, curiosity begs me to ask about how apparently this was talked about on twitter?) Anyway, I hope those of you still reading will enjoy this interlude entitled: Half.
((There is a small part that references a very short drabble I wrote titled: dance located in Oh where do we begin? (The rubble or our sins) which was just an anthology where I put some unconnected Ichabbie pieces. So i guess that particular drabble happened in this universe. ))
Interlude
Half
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Days and nights bleed into each other, neither more noticeable than the other.
And the inside of his head becomes his entire World.
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Ichabod wakes up, gets dressed, and leaves.
He has his students read during lecture as he sits at the front of the room, stuck in this hell, surrounded by others but alone. He misses it when they leave, and looks up to see all the seats empty and finds that he still feels no more or no less alone than he had before.
He eats out, goes home, undresses, and sleeps.
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By which, sleeps means, doesn't sleep at all.
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Repeat.
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Repeat.
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Repeat.
Until he can't anymore. Physically. Too exhausted from moving or from thinking or from both. In the dark, laying in their bed, staring at their ceiling— his new favorite pastime —he listens to his alarm-clock tick-tocking its chant, each tock a headache, each tick chipping mercilessly harder at his heart because the more ticks and the more tocks means the more time that has passed since she's been gone and he can't handle it anymore. One moment he is laying there and the next, the clock is shattered against the wall and instead of shock, all Ichabod can think taking in what he's done is that he's broken something of hers like she has broken him. And all he can feel is this horrible stifling guilt.
He moves to call the college to say that he is ill and will be out a few days… but then,
—he'd done that weeks ago.
He has lost his cellular or he had thrown it out, and he cannot recall which.
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The first time Irving comes knocking on their door— no, Ichabod's door, not Abbie's and Ichabod's door — it is because someone from the college has called the station to inquire about his well-being. The worry in Irving's eyes is clear but Crane can't think being out here in the open surrounded by half of her things for quite this long. The bedroom is enough.
(and still, he dwells on this— this half. Because taking half of their things is nearly an admission that they can both only hope to live half lives now isn't it?)
He tells Irving that he is okay.
Tells him again when he asks if Ichabod is sure.
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Because Ichabod is sure.
That this must be: okay.
Because this must be exactly what a half life, and surviving with only half of his heart, feels like.
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Replay.
A replay of the last seven years (plus) since he'd met her runs through his mind involuntarily like an earworm. No matter how hard he tries, he can't make it stop, especially because he prepared meals with her in that kitchen, and laughed with her at that table, and danced with her as the television blared some ridiculous song in that living room.
Ichabod bounces back and forth between even wanting it to stop. Remembering is painful but Abbie Mills runs in his blood, and the alternative is seeing this world without her in it.
And Ichabod knows that seeing this world— the one she had introduced him to, the one she had taught him how to live in, the one that was more her world than his and that they had saved together —without her in it, is unbearable.
It is somewhat of a realization of sorts, when he comes to the conclusion that he cannot live in this world— her world —without her.
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The second time Irving comes knocking at their door— and it is their door, it could never be his —it is because Ichabod is being evicted from their apartment. The notices crinkle beneath his feet as he stands in the threshold.
Irving doesn't comment on the state of the apartment. The refrigerator pulled out from the wall and unplugged, the lamp (not lamps, because the other is with Abbie) lying on the floor with the bulb shattered, the mess, the take-out boxes, the— none of it.
Irving, instead, offers to help him move and though Ichabod tries not to hold on to the items that help to bring him pain, he cannot imagine not having anything that cements his time with her as having actually existed.
He holds on to their bed (because she had never explained why she'd left it, and he has this foolish belief that he cannot shake).
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He does better by himself at Corbin's cabin, after the stove, and the refrigerator, and the lights, and all of those other things that she had introduced him to are gone. He sometimes works with the department (well, with Irving) to pay for the old things he feels the emptiness with, or the things he cannot hunt or grow. But primarily he keeps to himself.
And he does better, in his world, in this half life.
—Slightly.
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Alone and... alone.