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It was mere days after the incident in the library that he first awakens startled. Abbie’s name lingering on his lips. He is deeply unsettled but the details of the dream are already fading to nothingness, if they were ever anything at all.
He pulls the blankets away, releasing the desperate heat of his body to the night’s chill. Closing his eyes, he recalls her face, her laugh, the way her lips pursed over a steaming cup of tea they shared before she took her leave of him just hours before.
If there is a sting of guilt there, he buries it. He is tired.
‘She’s safe,’ his mind supplies and he repeats it like prayer until he drifts back to sleep.
—————-
When he next dreams of her, he’s reaching, the muscles of his shoulders straining, stretching desperately into the void. The panic is rising in his throat thick and nauseating and then his fingers brush hers.
There is a moment of bright swelling hope in his chest. He feels her fingertips scramble against his own. He is so close. His hand brushes against her wrist, her sleeve. He can feel the soaring victory of the win, feel the prize of her in his arms gasping and alive.
And then she is gone. He is worse than useless, grasping at nothing while she is dying violently and unseen beneath him. Everything within him lashes out against it and he wills himself further, stretching out until his muscles shred and bones crack and crumble for want of her.
He wakes with his heart pounding, his lungs burning for air. He can barely breath.
Without thought his trembling hands find his phone, pull up her number, but he pauses as his eyes come to rest on her picture.
Abbie laughs at him from the device’s screen and the heavy weight in his chest eases just enough.
It was just a nightmare. She’s sleeping. She’s alright.
He runs a hand down his face, returns the phone to his nightstand and gets up to pour himself a cup of tea.
————-
But the nightmares do not cease. Each gaining in intensity from one to the next.
He dreams it is Katrina dragging her down and he’s frozen in the face of it. Abbie lingers at the edge just long enough to scream and plead with him before they are both lost forever to the inky black water. He spends the rest of the night outside viciously turning logs to splinters.
He dreams that it is Abbie underneath the veil. Her body waterlogged and bloated, her skin falling away. Her decaying eyes full of broken betrayal. He awakes to the sound of his own sobbing, his tears leaking into his hair.
He dreams he sends himself sprawling into the water after her and once below the surface he can not find her, the water vast and empty around him. He searches for her until he can bear no more and then he kicks up, claws his way toward the surface but the water does not yield. He is suddenly breathing in great lungfuls of dirt. The weight of the world pressing into him. He is alone in his grave again and above him the earth passes untroubled over his eyes. When he wakes his throat is raw with screaming her name.
————
And then there is the one variation that feels most real, the one he mistakes for the worst.
He pulls her limp body from the water, lays her out underneath him as the vortex closes behind them. She is unmoving and cold but still so achingly lovely. He realizes with striking certainty that she is already gone, but denies it. He calls out her name, the words a desperate tangled mess in his throat. His fingers are in her hair pleading and then recoiling with horror.
She doesn’t wake. Hawley doesn’t come. His will dies beside her.
He pulls her into his arms, still pleading with her to stir, unwilling to let her go, unable to imagine his life without her. In quiet of the empty library he hears the heavy footfall of Death approaching. His grief is a hungry cold slick of a thing so he surrenders to the calm of it, the knowing.
He was not meant to bury her. He will be at her side or not at all.
He closes his eyes, turns his face into the grim comfort of her neck and waits for the axe to fall.
When his eyes finally open to the gentle black of his room, he is still waiting.
In the early light of the morning hours, he finally lets himself call her. She picks up the phone, her voice heavy with sleep.
“Christ, you’re up early.” she murmurs against his ear and if Ichabod feels a sting of guilt at the relief flooding his face or the sudden hitch in his breath, he buries it.
————
Without the steadying comfort of her presence or even the welcome distraction of work, Ichabod finds the night hours stretching out ominously before him. His unease builds. His books are not enough to hold his weariness at bay and he resents the need itching its way under his skin.
He drinks, thinking to chase away the lurking darkness. He just wants one night of peace. One night free of the water, her body so cold and wet in his arms, of the treacherous dreams pulling him ever closer to truths better left secreted away. So he is liberal with the rum praying the drink drives away the nightmares and their echoes, but as his eyes drift closed, the dream envelopes him yet again.
He is pulling her from the water and her life, her very essence, is spilling out underneath him. He can not staunch the flow and the familiar screaming terror is present yet again, hammering away at his ribcage. But just as Hawley should arrive or more commonly, not arrive, Ichabod feels his fingers gain purpose in her hair. He pulls himself down, nudges her mouth open, and breathes every bit of life he can muster into her. When she doesn’t stir his hands travel down to her chest pumping, practiced and sure.
“Abbie, please, please.” He’s crying out, but she isn’t moving and the irony is not lost on him that he should have the tools, the knowledge to save her and yet he is still just as impotent in the face of this. His mouth finds hers again. Through his desperation he feels her, tastes her, and it occurs to him that perhaps this was its purpose, to torture him with this hollow ghost of a kiss.
But then she is jerking and coughing underneath him. Her eyes open and wide, her back arching off the floor, her lungs sucking in air in great gasps. He jerks back, knows he should give her more room but he simply cannot remove himself from her entirely.
He watches her eyes shutter close, her breathing even out and his shaking hands find their way back to her face, her hair, trying to sooth her as best as he can, to sooth himself. Even now it doesn’t feel real, he needs her to open her eyes, he needs her to speak.
“Abbie?” he asks, his voice stricken and keening.
Her hand reaches up to squeeze his wrist where his fingers are still tracing the lines of her cheek, her temple. She smiles a wavering smile and opens her eyes. Ichabod cannot look away, would not.
“I’m okay Crane.”
His eyes search hers, find her blessedly whole. She is luminous and alive and smiling. His relief bursts out of him, a choking ragged sob and then he is quite helplessly pressing his lips against her own, devouring her mouth as if he could anchor himself to her.
His heart stutters in his chest when she doesn’t push him away, when she twists her fingers into the lapels of his coat pulling him closer, when her lips open to him, her tongue moving hotly against his own.
His breath hitches, desire lances through him. He is lost in the rolling sea of her, caught in the pressing tangle of her thighs, her soft aching warmth crashing against him in waves, her scent surrounding him.
Her hands are at his chest, then sliding down, wrenching his shirt from his trousers, eagerly caressing the skin underneath. Ichabod bends to mouth her neck, tasting and nipping a path to her collar bone. Under him, Abbie gasps and tangles her fingers in his hair. His hands find her breasts and then his mouth does the same.
He tugs roughly at her clothing, kissing the revealed swell of her breast, sucking at a nipple through the thin wet fabric her of shirt and undergarment. She cries out, her voice delicate almost pained, her body strung taut, arching into him, and its everything but it isn’t enough.
Ichabod pulls away, does the quick business of stripping Abbie of her boots and trousers. His hands shake anew at the buttons of his own and Abbie sits up, helps him finish enough that they can tug them down and then she is pulling him back down with a kiss.
He clutches at her bare thighs, grips her arse, her hips, overtaken with ardor for her. He pulls her close against him, rubbing his cock against her slick core. She rocks her hips and he is suddenly, perfectly buried inside her. He shudders and stills, his very bones aching with the weight of this, with his want of her.
Abbie stretches out underneath him, runs her lips along his jaw and he groans out her name, rocking into her and she responds in kind until they are fucking frantically. The levy of their passion breaking about them. Each desperate to lay claim, to make real.
His fingers dig into her hips, marking her. Abbie stifles a moan, biting down on his shoulder, her nails raking down his back and Ichabod is grateful for the heady pain of her, the rush of being in her thrall, the truth it evokes.
Then she is moaning out soft ‘ohs’ that keep building, her hips raising up to meet his every thrust, her eyes screwed shut. She cries out his name as pleasure finally overtakes her, her body curving underneath him, her walls pulsing around him. He is already so close and the sight and feel of her pulls him over the edge. He groans into her hair and thrusts madly until he is surrendering to her completely, his release spilling hot inside her.
They lie there in each other arms for countless breathless moments, sated but tense with things left unsaid. Abbie’s eyes are full and vulnerable but almost hopeful and Ichabod is already sick with love of her, would do anything for her even give her her distance, so he presses a chaste kiss to her lips and reaches for her jeans.
They help each other dress. Abbie lets him lace up her boots, watching him with a small smile and shining eyes. Ichabod feels his heart swell in his chest.
Then with a sigh, she lays back exactly as she had fallen. A wariness awakens in the back of Ichabod’ mind, its tendrils unfurling in familiar patterns as he moves to kneel beside her.
“Abbie? Are you alright? Your exhausted. I was brute to-“
She cuts him off, laughing quietly and smiling up at him.
“Stop that. I liked it. I needed it. Just give me a few minutes and then we will talk okay.” she says, chasing away the shadows. Ichabod swallows thickly and nods. She smiles again in return, then breathes in deeply and lets her eyes slip shut.
Ichabod can touch her, needs to now that her eyes aren’t on him, so he does. He lets his fingers reverently trace her collar bone, her lips, her brow. He cups her face in his hands and nuzzles his nose and cheek against her own.
“Just tell me it will be a good talk.” he breathes against her lips.
“That depends on you,” she murmurs and closes the distance between them.
The kiss is slow and tender, aching with the fullness of all that will come and if Ichabod thinks briefly of vows made to another, he buries it.
He can taste the sweet joy to be found on Abbie’s lips, he can feel her wholly. Her soul calling to him in ways he had only glimpsed before and he knows now he wouldn’t trade it for anything, couldn’t. Loving her is his truth, his purpose and it is his life made rich again.
He pulls away when she stills, smiling and thinking to let her rest, thinking of taking her home, bundling her in blankets and making her tea. His heart buoyant at the thought of taking care of her for once. But as he opens his eyes, the joy he feels gives way to sickening recognition.
She is too still, unnaturally so. He brings his hands back to her face and her head lolls obscenely under his touch.
“No, no, no. This is isn’t happening. Abbie!” he yells, his voice breaking around her name.
It’s as if she never woke, as if she never kissed him, never loved him, but he can still taste her on his lips, still feel the marks left by her fingers. The dream and what he thought, what he dared to hope reality skewing horribly until he no longer recognizes any of it.
He tries everything but she does not wake. He screams and sobs out her name, his anguish echoing hollowly off the empty library’s cold brick walls. Death doesn’t come. This time Ichabod doesn’t wait for him.
Ichabod wakes up, his whole body shaking uncontrollably, the liquor rolling in his gut. He stumbles his way to the wash room and spends the rest of night getting sick.
In the morning, he texts her making flimsy excuses for his absence, brews multiple cups of coffee, and goes about the business of simply never sleeping again.
———
Two days later she finds him, bags under his eyes and sitting on the floor of the cabin with his back pressed flat against the refrigerator. She closes the cabin’s door softly behind her and leans against it, her arms crossed and eyebrows already raised.
“You wanna tell me what the hell is going on here, Crane?”
“Not particularly, no.” he slurs out.
He’s struggling to keep his eyes open, weariness a heavy yoke about his shoulders. He regards her blearily, thinks her too guarded to be another figment of his imagination and yet he is not relieved.
Abbie sighs, crosses the length of the kitchen and kneels beside him, looking him over.
“You look pretty spaced out. Are you sick? You could have called you know.” she says, and reaches out to lay hand on his forehead but he flinches away from her.
She lets her hand fall back to her lap, hurt flashing in her dark eyes and Ichabod feels it resonate painfully in his chest. He is at a loss in her presence. She is already too much. He looks away, his eyes darting around the room, his fingers fidgeting madly at his sides. Ichabod feels her consider him, her mind too bright, too discerning.
“Tell me what’s wrong. I want to help.” she commands gently, as if she were talking down one of her ‘perps’ and Ichabod grimaces, pressing the heels of his hands into his eyes. No point in dancing around it now.
“I’m going mad,” he chokes out.
She tenses beside him and Ichabod worries if he had been too cruel, too tactless in his blunt assessment.
“Okay,” she breathes, “Why do you think that?”
Ichabod pulls his hands from his face, swallowing thickly, and fixes his eyes on the ceiling.
“Nightmares, vivid, very real nightmares. Every time I shut my eyes they are there to greet me, even in the waking hours now they lurk and pull me in.”
“Is it War stuff?”
“No,” he says, and he can feel her waiting, patient and quiet beside him but he cannot speak it. Not to her.
“I do not wish to discuss it.” he says, his throat tight.
“One last question,” she says. Her tone is light, almost teasing and Ichabod dares a glance at her from the corner of his eye.
“Why the fridge?” she says smirking, her eyes alight.
Ichabod feels his lips twitch.
“The hum helps.”
She shoots him a small smile and then thankfully stands and turns away from him. Ichabod’s fingers unclench and he breathes a bit easier with every step she puts between them. Abbie scans the cabin, shuffling her feet as she always does when she is piecing together a puzzle.
“What are you thinking?” he asks. Watching her like this in his current state is exhausting, awaiting her verdict, even more so.
“I’m thinking if you were gonna lose it, you would have done it a long time ago.”
Ichabod is tempted to argue with her, truly. But he is worn-out, listless. He can see the end of this moving towards him steadily and he is unsure if he is ready. The fog that has settled around him, as terrifying as it is, is less frightening than the clear light of day, of the clarity that will follow.
“Your alternative?”
“Magic, Moloch, some brand new requisite nightmare monster.”
Ichabod feels his blood run cold. Of course it is. He groans out his frustration, and kicks at a nearby table leg. It had been quiet recently. And though his son’s name had been graciously left unsaid, it was clear the man would cheerfully grasp at any opportunity to toy with him.
“I’m a fool.” he murmurs into his hand.
Abbie stills and sighs, gazing at him gently from across the room.
“You were just too close to it. Listen, I’m going to tear apart your bedroom. I remember reading a lot about talismans when we were researching the Sandman and I figure if you are trying to block it out with white noise, maybe something close by is emitting some kind mystical signal scrambling your brains. “
Ichabod doesn’t understand about a third of it but he nods, giving her his consent, he can do little else. The nightmares are flashing before his eyes again as he tries desperately to shift through them, to discern if it was all of his own conjuring, or he was somehow influenced, but it is a thankless endeavor. He is too tired to make sense of it and its all too deeply rooted. He suspects it matters very little in the end anyways.
He comes out of it to a empty kitchen, Abbie having apparently left him to his thoughts. He can hear her upturning drawers and throwing books to the floor in the next room and he drags himself up, makes his way towards her, a moth drawn endlessly to the flame.
He stops and slumps against the door frame at the precipice to his room. Inside Abbie has overturned his mattress and is inspecting the bed frame. But something is off, her clothes are soaked and fixed to her to her like a second skin, her hair wet and clinging to her cheeks, her lips. Water is running off her in rivulets, creating a pool at her feet that grows larger with the second.
“Lieutenant”, he barks out, fear already thick in his throat, “Come to me!”
His grip tightens on the door frame, his arm stretching out to her.
Abbie straightens, her eyes wide and questioning and her expression bordering on reproach. Ichabod doesn’t care.
“Now Lieutenant!”
“I guess I was right to start with the bedroom then.” she says, and Ichabod desperately tries to stamp down the panic building in his chest, she is clearly unaware of the danger she is in. If he can just reason with her.
“Abbie please, we can return to this tomorrow.’ he pleads and he watches as her face softens, then just as quickly, her shoulders straighten with resolve. She shakes her head.
“Crane, maybe you should wait—.”
“Then I’ll drag you out.” he growls, desperation suddenly exploding in his chest and propelling him into the room. Abbie takes an abrupt step back and the room convulses around them, the walls closing in. Abbie’s hair is floating about her, framing her face like a cloud, hers toes lift off the floor, the edges of her jacket drift in unseen currents.
He stops, frozen in the center of the room, his eyes wide and fixed on her floating form. She is drowning, they both are and he cannot breathe, he cannot move. He sways on his feet, leaning heavily against a nearby dresser.
“Crane!” he hears and then she is beside him, he can feel her small hands at his jaw, his cheeks, turning his face to look at her.
“Whatever you are seeing isn’t real.” she says, her eyes are wide and disarming in her concern. Some part of him knows she is right, knows this isn’t the dream, but this knowledge only serves to heighten his alarm because her hair is swimming about her like a mermaid’s and he can feel the water falling off her seeping into his clothes, wet and cold and slick. He shakes his head, shudders and shuts his eyes against it, struggling to catch his breathe, to calm the racing of his heart. He cannot lose her.
Abbie takes his fingers in her own and pulls his hand to her chest and when he stiffens at the touch, she moves in closer.
“Easy Crane” she says her voice careful and soft, “Just feel me, breathe with me .”
And he does, he feels her breathing deep and steady and strong, a striking contrast to the visions of her cold and unmoving burned into his mind’s eye. She is so close, he only has to reach out and she would be safe in his arms.
He wraps an arm around her and lifts her up. Abbie gasps as he pulls her into his lap, her knees scrambling to find leverage on the dresser’s surface, straddling his hips.
He drags a hand to her throat, his other runs possessively across the small of her back and then settles into the crook of her waist clutching at the fabric of her top. He can feel her heart beat quick under his fingers, her lungs swelling under her ribs but it isn’t until he presses his forehead against her own and ducks his head so that he is sharing her every breath does he find a measure of calm.
She stays that way in his arms for long moments that seem to tilt and stretch out like shadows at dusk. Her hands stroking through his beard as his chest heaves, and then at the nape of his neck, fingering through his hair. His breathing finally slows even as the tension between them pulls tighter, he is suddenly very aware of the her lips, rosy and lush, and so very close to his own.
But Abbie stirs, pulls away just enough to consider him, her hands flitting to his chest. Ichabod can practically hear the wheels spinning in her head and he tightens his grip around her.
“Crane, you trust me right?”
The dreadful presence of whatever it is affecting him, though more distant now, still weighs heavily upon him. He trusts her without reservation, but he still cannot trust himself - lacking as he is, cannot bear the thought of her leaving the safety of his arms now that he has her there. Yet he nods, drawing her close again and pressing his nose into her hair, steeling himself for what is to come.
“I need you to stop thinking for a second and tell me where it is coming from. Can you do that? Can you feel it?”
Ichabod tries to quiet the longing burgeoning in his heart, the deafening rush of fear and loss. He clings to Abbie’s steadying warmth, focusing hard on the darkness that had laid unseen for so long. He can almost make it out, a sickening aura pulsing at the edge of his consciousness.
“The northwest corner”, he mutters finally into her hair.
“Okay,” she says, “I’ll be right back.”
And she leaves him. Ichabod battles back the empty feeling, the sharp surge of panic and opens his eyes to follow her path across the room.
She pauses at the corner next to the window, trembling and running her hands up and down her arms as if to fight off a chill.
“I think I can feel it too.” she says and then reaches out, moving her fingertips along the wall. They both startle when glyphs suddenly blaze to life, burning themselves into the wood and glowing an angry red. Ichabod pushes off the dresser but Abbie holds out a hand.
“Its okay. I’m okay.”
Ichabod swallows and takes a shaking step back. He notices that the water no longer clings to Abbie’s clothes and hair and breathes a sigh of relief. The visions had withdrawn with the triggering of the glyphs, so too had the oppressive presence that had hung so heavily about him. In its stead was fatigue and a growing sense of unease he couldn’t quiet shake.
Across the room, Abbie studies the glyphs closely, her eyes following to where they seemed to continue past the floorboard. He watches as she taps the boards with her boot and then crouches down to pry at one with her fingers, it comes loose with jolt and Abbie removes another only to abruptly push back from the hole.
Ichabod stalks to her side and peers down shuddering at the sight of a childlike mandrake root wiggling in pot filled with blood. Abbie curses and reaches inside to pull out the pot and balking as the horrid creature starts shrieking.
“Ughhh.” she says, holding it far from her person as possible and walking quickly to the door.
“What are you going to do with it?” he asks, and she pauses.
“I was thinking about shoving it down the garbage disposal, honestly.”
He huffs in response.
“Maybe you should wait in here, I don’t want you near it until we are sure it can’t mess with you anymore.”
Ichabod nods.
“I’ll tidy up here then.”
Abbie smiles softy but Ichabod can see the worry still there behind her eyes, and then she turns on her heel and out of his sight sending the unease building again, itching its way under his skin. He busies himself with collecting his books and clothes as he listens to Abbie curse and groan with disgust from the kitchen, sending the squealing monster through the disposal and towards it’s final demise.
He can no longer hold the fatigue at bay however, and shortly gives up on the mess, instead turning his attention to righting his bed and returning his bedcovers. He’s perched on the edge of the mattress staring listlessly at the door in his stockings when she returns.
“It’s done.” she says, lingering in the door way. “ How do you feel?”
“Tired, but better, I believe.”
“Good. You should rest. Do you need anything?”
Ichabod knows he should not ask this, that he has selfishly already taken more than she would ever give freely in better circumstances, that the specter of his actions loom between them ominously or her keys wouldn’t already be in her fingers, her body posed to run, but he is so very tired and he cannot sleep without her near him, not yet.
“Stay. I need you to stay.”
He watches her face nearly crumble, her eyes shooting toward the ceiling and then she stills and nods.
“Here? In the same room?”
“You can have the bed. I’ll get a chair.”
“Don’t. Its big enough for both of us.” she says, walking to the other side of the mattress and beginning to pull off her boots and jacket.
Ichabod wants to thank her, wants to apologize, but it all sounds so coarse, so damning, so when she lays down next to him he simply does the same and almost cries with relief when she takes him in her arms.
She lets him press his head to her chest, lets him clutch her tightly to him, their legs tangled and her fingers in his hair. He pulls a blanket over them both, revels in the warmth of her, her curves pressed against him, the feel of her body under his palms. He falls asleep to the sound of her voice humming a sweet sad tune, and her heart beating in his ear.
When he awakes, the morning light is just beginning to filter through the window shades. He drowsily reaches out for her but her side of the bed is empty. Yet she isn’t quite gone, he can hear her quiet footsteps as she gathers her things about the cabin.
He wants very much to call out to her, to confess everything as if it might right all the wrongs between them, all those things that would compel her to steal away while he was still sleeping. But he knows it would not.
He waits until he hears the door shut softly, then turns and buries his face in her pillow, the scent of coconuts and flowers still lingering in the fabric, the sheets still warm. He lingers there, mourning all that he never had.
And then he grits his teeth and buries it, buries it all.
He lets her go.