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jedibuttercupPG-13; Sleepy Hollow (tv); 2700 words. S3 Canon Divergence AU/Fix-It.
He wasn't looking away anymore; wasn't fidgeting, or hastily bringing up his connection to some other woman, or making some flirtatious affirming reference to their bond before turning away to research the current villain.
Title: In the Darkness, Lost, I Heard Your Voice
Author: Jedi Buttercup
Disclaimer: The words are mine; the worlds are not.
Rating: PG-13
Spoilers: Sleepy Hollow 3.10 "Incident at Stone Manor"
Notes: Because of the swift response to the last one I posted. :) And because I got to thinking about other timey-wimey incidents in the series. Did anybody else notice that if the time ratio between the Catacombs and regular reality was really 10:1 like they said it was while Abbie was trapped there, then Betsy should have exited the Catacombs 24 years after she entered, not "in her own time"? Also: we were totally cheated with the reunion scene when Abbie returned. So, since fixing inconsistencies (and other things) is my bread and butter as a ficwriter....
Summary: He wasn't looking away anymore; wasn't fidgeting, or hastily bringing up his connection to some other woman, or making some flirtatious affirming reference to their bond before turning away to research the current villain.
Belaying herself into a deep, empty, rocky well, desperately hoping that her partner's spirit was following along rather than doomed to drift in the arid timelessness of the Catacombs forever, Abbie had no expectations of what she would find on the other side.
She'd left reality behind a long damn time ago. The curly length of her hair, the wear and tear on her clothes, the way every breath felt weird in her chest because she'd even forgotten to do that a time or two when staring at the strangely compelling symbol atop the ziggurat-- she wouldn't lie, the first time it had happened she'd assumed she was actually dead. That maybe the Catacombs were what Purgatory had become after Moloch's death, and that her long slow unravelling was what happened to every soul now trapped in that place. Just being offered the possibility that she wasn't dead after all had Abbie grasping at the slightest thread of hope with an iron grip, but she'd long since lost track of what 'normal' felt like. Anything other than that dusty, alien realm would be a blessing beyond measure.
If she'd had any image in mind of what that 'anything' might be, though, it would've been something like Pandora's lair, where the gate-tree she'd entered through had grown up through a gap in the ceiling; or maybe that forest road where the ley-lines met outside Sleepy Hollow, thinning the veil between worlds enough to allow the living to open a portal into the afterlife. The sudden rush of water all around her was an even less pleasant surprise than Pandora's appearance in the middle of Ichabod's visit, reminding her unpleasantly of her encounter with the Weeping Lady. Maybe it shouldn't have been, given all the metaphors about transitions and rebirth and the fact that she'd gone into a well, but she was a little too preoccupied not drowning to spare much bandwidth for analyzing mythic structure.
Or the exact date. Even after she managed to stagger up a familiar looking riverbank, rubbing life back into limbs rendered numb not only by the water but by most of a year spent in a place where her body's needs were all suspended by magic, Abbie cared less about the calendar and more about the other person who'd spent all their days apart searching to find a way to get her home. However long it had been, it was too long, and that was the main thing that kept her moving.
"Stay with me, Crane," she murmured to herself as she found her way to a road, still processing that it had actually worked; that the nightmare she'd been living for ten-months-in-one was finally over, even if her partner's ordeal wasn't finished yet. The gears might be turning again, but she was afraid it would be a while before they fully meshed.
It didn't help her state of mind that when she got out of a Good Samaritan's car outside the Archives, she found absolutely no one inside. No sister, no Joe, and no unconscious partner slumped in a spirit cabinet next to a burned-out tether candle. She stared around the space dumbfounded, taking in the disorder it had been left in, and wondered if she might have gone crazy and made the entire encounter up after all. Or were there different rules for exiting the Catacombs than entering them? Had she missed more time somehow, using the well to escape instead of the Eye of Providence?
For lack of any clearer idea what to do next, Abbie drifted over to pick up one of the books that had been left open. But it wasn't what she'd been expecting either; it was one of the tomes she remembered looking through in that desperate phase right before she'd weaponed up so they could go rescue her sister. Why hadn't they put it away already? Surely, in all the time she'd been trapped, they'd have cleaned the place up a little, to clear the decks for other research topics if nothing else. But... there was nothing laying out that didn't relate to Pandora, her godly boyfriend, ancient Sumer, and so on. Nothing about retrieving people from other realms at all.
Searched high and low, Crane's spirit had said. Had it not really been him after all? Or... had he not been here? Surely they hadn't moved everything to the cabin? Abbie's thoughts felt sluggish as she tried to think it through, feeling as though a whole year's worth of exhaustion was slamming her all at once.
The cabin was at least another place to look. But it was more than four miles away, and she had no idea where her car even was. If she even still had the keys. She'd put them with her dead phone in one of her pockets last she remembered, but that had been a long damn time ago.
"Damn it, Crane," Abbie sighed, rubbing a hand over her face as she sank down into a chair. "I told you to stay with me. That we would make it out together."
Grief threatened to rise up and swallow her like an undertow, but she was well-practiced in swallowing down negative emotions by now. She breathed through it, trying to banish the insistent, irrational worry that he'd disappeared yet again the minute her eyes were off him, maybe permanently this time, and reminded herself that they'd been through far worse before and always survived.
Maybe some of the things they'd been through had worn the shine off of their initial unthinking faith in each other. Maybe some of the stupid decisions they'd each made had given them cause to doubt the other's commitment in non-apocalyptic matters. Maybe she'd dated only while Ichabod was gone-- and maybe he'd clung to his relationship with Katrina and later tested the waters with Zoe while he was there despite the deep need for connection that had resonated through their partnership since the beginning-- purely out of fear that if they ever actually added that last layer to their bond, they risked losing everything when they inevitably misunderstood each other there, too.
But then again, maybe they'd needed the new car smell knocked out and the sharp corners worn off before they could fully trust that what they'd forged together wasn't brass, but gold. Sometimes the comfiest blanket in the house wasn't the fancy woven throw with the decorative pattern someone gave you for Christmas, but the handmade quilt worn almost to the batting in places that was familiar down to the last thread from years of dragging it around that you knew exactly what to expect from. They'd inexplicably fit with each other since the very beginning despite all their differences; they'd always worked things out. If nothing else, her time in the Catacombs had shown her that Crane was already her other half; the fact that they'd never slept together was a distinction that made no difference.
Not that she'd kick him out of bed if that was on offer, but. Perspective. He'd trusted that she was still out there, so she'd trust that he was still here, too. Abbie took a few more deep breaths, feeling her anxiety ebb, then started patting herself down to look for those keys. She might not be able to rest until she laid eyes on him again, but she had more options than just sitting there panicking about it.
She'd just finally fished them out of a pocket-- one thing even ladies' tactical uniforms had plenty of-- tangled with a fragment of the Eye's casing she'd forgotten she even had, when the door burst open again, admitting a whirlwind of noise. Hope lit in her heart as Abbie surged to her feet, gaze raking over the tall form that had just entered.
"Crane?" she gasped.
"Lieutenant!" Ichabod froze, swallowing visibly as he caught sight of her, then bolted across the room, reaching out for her the way she'd reached for him in the Catacombs. Only this time he was actually there. His arms were tight against her back; she pressed her face against the lapels of his jacket and took a deep breath, wallowing in the warmth she'd been missing for far too long. "Abbie."
"You made it," she said. "I was so worried when I didn't find you here. What happened?"
"What happened to him?" Jenny's voice chimed in from somewhere behind Ichabod. Abbie's sister sounded strained, but all in one piece, and another set of footsteps echoed hers; Joe. Abbie'd missed them too-- desperately-- but she'd known the whole time that they'd still had each other; that they would be fine. "Good question, since you're the one who bolted into a tree and disappeared, and then he lost his mind and started talking like you'd been gone for a month already."
Abbie stiffened as the words sank in, then pulled back, staring up into Ichabod's worried face. "More like ten months, on my side," she replied, frowning. "I wasn't imagining Pandora, right?"
"No; nor the fact that you were the only thing keeping me anchored after she tried to pressure you to return with the Eye. It simply did not occur to me-- the cutlass. However long Betsy Ross may have been there, her return must have been near-instantaneous with her departure, or I would certainly recall otherwise. I think if Pandora had not done what she did...."
Near-instantaneous? Abbie's eyebrows climbed her forehead. "Then you wouldn't remember anything that happened since I left, either. Does that mean we just Groundhog Day'd the timeline?"
"You what?" Joe's voice interjected, baffled. "We do time travel now?"
"Wouldn't be the first time; I'll fill you in later," Jenny muttered; then she came close enough to get a good look and drew in a sharp breath. She still looked worn from her own encounter with the Eye, leaning on Joe's arm for support, but still better than Abbie felt at the moment. "Okay, and now I believe it. Your hair, Abs. You look worn to the bone. Where did you end up?"
"Wherever the Hidden One was trapped, all that time. It's... not much of a story. Near-terminal boredom on my side, nothing but waiting, escape attempts, and one-sided chess to keep me busy. Almost gave up hope." She glanced up again at Ichabod, still standing within the circle of his arms; still just absorbing the fact of his anchoring presence.
"Whilst on my side," he took up the abbreviated tale, reaching up to brush a thumb over her cheekbone, "I spent weeks robbing apocalyptic cults and indulging in ill-considered rituals to reach other dimensions almost to the exclusion of all else. I am afraid I listened very little to Miss Jenny's moderating advice."
Zoe couldn't have been happy about that. But if Ichabod wasn't going to mention her, Abbie certainly wasn't going to bring her up. The historian and the page out of history might've superficially had a lot in common, but Zoe would have wanted him to 'be real' with her eventually; any woman worth her salt would. And Ichabod wasn't invested enough to bring her in on the secret; that much was obvious, too. Abbie could read the writing on that wall.
"Somehow, I'm not all that surprised," Jenny said, tone very dry. "I've seen what the pair of you are like without each other; it's just as well we got to skip that whole mess this time. So what, you went after her, something went wrong, and you succeeded anyway, the end?"
"That predictable, are we?" Abbie said, sparing a glance and a faint smile her sister's way.
Jenny smiled back, a faint teary tremulousness around the edges of it, but didn't come closer; she glanced between Abbie and Ichabod, then shook her head. "Only sometimes," she said. "I'll want that whole story-- but right now I want my bed more. Debrief tomorrow? And don't do anything stupid like try to sacrifice yourself again for me in the meantime. Or each other. Either of you. You hear me?"
Ichabod cast her a wry glance. "No promises. But many thanks. You're certain you are all right?"
"She'll say she's fine," Joe commented for her, "but I'll keep an eye on her. As much as she'll let me, anyway. Time travel, though. This is definitely a story I'll want to hear."
Sometime during the next few moments, the door to the Archives opened and closed again, but Abbie hardly noticed, still fixated on the much-missed details of the man in front of her. The cute flippy way his hair turned up now that he'd cut off the ponytail, the way the closely-trimmed facial hair added extra oomph to his expressions, the dramatic arch of his eyebrows, the faint smile lines forming around his mouth and crinkling at the corners of his eyes.
The deep devotion that looked right back at her. Yeah, she'd missed that too. And he wasn't looking away anymore; wasn't fidgeting, or hastily bringing up his connection to some other woman, or making some flirtatious affirming reference to their bond before turning away to research the current villain.
"I love my sister," she finally said, deciding just to come straight out with it.
"Indeed," Ichabod replied. "She is one of my favorite people as well; I quite understood why you did what you did. I would not have expected otherwise, despite my own distress."
"Good," Abbie replied, taking a firm grip on his lapels and tugging gently for emphasis. "Because I love you more, Ichabod Crane. We're done running away from each other, right? No more doubting the strength of our bond or any of that bullshit?"
The word 'love' jolted through him like an electric shock. "None at all," he said, lowly. "In the month that apparently never happened-- I told Agent Foster that it was only recently that I truly understood what a partner was; what it means to have someone who makes you more than you are simply being by your side. I should have spoken the words long ago; I suppose I thought I had ruined my chance. But I love you as well, Grace Abigail Mills. If nothing else, the past weeks have taught me that there is nothing for me in a world without you."
Abbie swallowed around the lump of emotion in her throat; then she stretched up on her toes and curled an arm around the back of Ichabod's neck, closing the space between them to kiss him at last. His hands fluttered briefly around her back, as if not sure where he was permitted to touch-- then the kiss deepened, and they settled at her hips, lifting and moving her effortlessly up onto a counter. The angle changed intriguingly with the move; she spread her legs wider, pulling him in close, and slid her hands up inside the jacket, testing the breadth of his shoulders through his homespun shirt. He was always so covered, it was as if he'd combust if he exposed an ankle, but she remembered perfectly well what he looked like without a shirt from the Sandman incident, and if anything he'd put on more muscle since. She looked forward to tracing it all with her tongue.
One step at a time, though. They broke apart after a long moment to catch their breath, and he braced his forehead against hers, hands tangled together, emotion shivering through them both.
"Say it again?" she asked softly. Just to be extra sure.
"I love you, Abbie," he replied, earnestly. "And should you allow as much, I intend to spend the rest of my life proving it."
"Sounds good to me," she said, grinning, then pulled him in for another kiss. "I love you, too."
Somewhere in the back of her mind, something drawn tight and fixated unknotted and eased, overwritten by the fulfilment of another, deeper need; Abbie reminded herself to tell Ichabod about the symbol on the ziggurat later, figure out what it meant before it inevitably came up again. Maybe get ahead of things for once. That could wait for tomorrow, though.
Right now, they had a much more satisfying endeavor to pursue.
(x-posted on AO3)
He wasn't looking away anymore; wasn't fidgeting, or hastily bringing up his connection to some other woman, or making some flirtatious affirming reference to their bond before turning away to research the current villain.
Title: In the Darkness, Lost, I Heard Your Voice
Author: Jedi Buttercup
Disclaimer: The words are mine; the worlds are not.
Rating: PG-13
Spoilers: Sleepy Hollow 3.10 "Incident at Stone Manor"
Notes: Because of the swift response to the last one I posted. :) And because I got to thinking about other timey-wimey incidents in the series. Did anybody else notice that if the time ratio between the Catacombs and regular reality was really 10:1 like they said it was while Abbie was trapped there, then Betsy should have exited the Catacombs 24 years after she entered, not "in her own time"? Also: we were totally cheated with the reunion scene when Abbie returned. So, since fixing inconsistencies (and other things) is my bread and butter as a ficwriter....
Summary: He wasn't looking away anymore; wasn't fidgeting, or hastily bringing up his connection to some other woman, or making some flirtatious affirming reference to their bond before turning away to research the current villain.
Belaying herself into a deep, empty, rocky well, desperately hoping that her partner's spirit was following along rather than doomed to drift in the arid timelessness of the Catacombs forever, Abbie had no expectations of what she would find on the other side.
She'd left reality behind a long damn time ago. The curly length of her hair, the wear and tear on her clothes, the way every breath felt weird in her chest because she'd even forgotten to do that a time or two when staring at the strangely compelling symbol atop the ziggurat-- she wouldn't lie, the first time it had happened she'd assumed she was actually dead. That maybe the Catacombs were what Purgatory had become after Moloch's death, and that her long slow unravelling was what happened to every soul now trapped in that place. Just being offered the possibility that she wasn't dead after all had Abbie grasping at the slightest thread of hope with an iron grip, but she'd long since lost track of what 'normal' felt like. Anything other than that dusty, alien realm would be a blessing beyond measure.
If she'd had any image in mind of what that 'anything' might be, though, it would've been something like Pandora's lair, where the gate-tree she'd entered through had grown up through a gap in the ceiling; or maybe that forest road where the ley-lines met outside Sleepy Hollow, thinning the veil between worlds enough to allow the living to open a portal into the afterlife. The sudden rush of water all around her was an even less pleasant surprise than Pandora's appearance in the middle of Ichabod's visit, reminding her unpleasantly of her encounter with the Weeping Lady. Maybe it shouldn't have been, given all the metaphors about transitions and rebirth and the fact that she'd gone into a well, but she was a little too preoccupied not drowning to spare much bandwidth for analyzing mythic structure.
Or the exact date. Even after she managed to stagger up a familiar looking riverbank, rubbing life back into limbs rendered numb not only by the water but by most of a year spent in a place where her body's needs were all suspended by magic, Abbie cared less about the calendar and more about the other person who'd spent all their days apart searching to find a way to get her home. However long it had been, it was too long, and that was the main thing that kept her moving.
"Stay with me, Crane," she murmured to herself as she found her way to a road, still processing that it had actually worked; that the nightmare she'd been living for ten-months-in-one was finally over, even if her partner's ordeal wasn't finished yet. The gears might be turning again, but she was afraid it would be a while before they fully meshed.
It didn't help her state of mind that when she got out of a Good Samaritan's car outside the Archives, she found absolutely no one inside. No sister, no Joe, and no unconscious partner slumped in a spirit cabinet next to a burned-out tether candle. She stared around the space dumbfounded, taking in the disorder it had been left in, and wondered if she might have gone crazy and made the entire encounter up after all. Or were there different rules for exiting the Catacombs than entering them? Had she missed more time somehow, using the well to escape instead of the Eye of Providence?
For lack of any clearer idea what to do next, Abbie drifted over to pick up one of the books that had been left open. But it wasn't what she'd been expecting either; it was one of the tomes she remembered looking through in that desperate phase right before she'd weaponed up so they could go rescue her sister. Why hadn't they put it away already? Surely, in all the time she'd been trapped, they'd have cleaned the place up a little, to clear the decks for other research topics if nothing else. But... there was nothing laying out that didn't relate to Pandora, her godly boyfriend, ancient Sumer, and so on. Nothing about retrieving people from other realms at all.
Searched high and low, Crane's spirit had said. Had it not really been him after all? Or... had he not been here? Surely they hadn't moved everything to the cabin? Abbie's thoughts felt sluggish as she tried to think it through, feeling as though a whole year's worth of exhaustion was slamming her all at once.
The cabin was at least another place to look. But it was more than four miles away, and she had no idea where her car even was. If she even still had the keys. She'd put them with her dead phone in one of her pockets last she remembered, but that had been a long damn time ago.
"Damn it, Crane," Abbie sighed, rubbing a hand over her face as she sank down into a chair. "I told you to stay with me. That we would make it out together."
Grief threatened to rise up and swallow her like an undertow, but she was well-practiced in swallowing down negative emotions by now. She breathed through it, trying to banish the insistent, irrational worry that he'd disappeared yet again the minute her eyes were off him, maybe permanently this time, and reminded herself that they'd been through far worse before and always survived.
Maybe some of the things they'd been through had worn the shine off of their initial unthinking faith in each other. Maybe some of the stupid decisions they'd each made had given them cause to doubt the other's commitment in non-apocalyptic matters. Maybe she'd dated only while Ichabod was gone-- and maybe he'd clung to his relationship with Katrina and later tested the waters with Zoe while he was there despite the deep need for connection that had resonated through their partnership since the beginning-- purely out of fear that if they ever actually added that last layer to their bond, they risked losing everything when they inevitably misunderstood each other there, too.
But then again, maybe they'd needed the new car smell knocked out and the sharp corners worn off before they could fully trust that what they'd forged together wasn't brass, but gold. Sometimes the comfiest blanket in the house wasn't the fancy woven throw with the decorative pattern someone gave you for Christmas, but the handmade quilt worn almost to the batting in places that was familiar down to the last thread from years of dragging it around that you knew exactly what to expect from. They'd inexplicably fit with each other since the very beginning despite all their differences; they'd always worked things out. If nothing else, her time in the Catacombs had shown her that Crane was already her other half; the fact that they'd never slept together was a distinction that made no difference.
Not that she'd kick him out of bed if that was on offer, but. Perspective. He'd trusted that she was still out there, so she'd trust that he was still here, too. Abbie took a few more deep breaths, feeling her anxiety ebb, then started patting herself down to look for those keys. She might not be able to rest until she laid eyes on him again, but she had more options than just sitting there panicking about it.
She'd just finally fished them out of a pocket-- one thing even ladies' tactical uniforms had plenty of-- tangled with a fragment of the Eye's casing she'd forgotten she even had, when the door burst open again, admitting a whirlwind of noise. Hope lit in her heart as Abbie surged to her feet, gaze raking over the tall form that had just entered.
"Crane?" she gasped.
"Lieutenant!" Ichabod froze, swallowing visibly as he caught sight of her, then bolted across the room, reaching out for her the way she'd reached for him in the Catacombs. Only this time he was actually there. His arms were tight against her back; she pressed her face against the lapels of his jacket and took a deep breath, wallowing in the warmth she'd been missing for far too long. "Abbie."
"You made it," she said. "I was so worried when I didn't find you here. What happened?"
"What happened to him?" Jenny's voice chimed in from somewhere behind Ichabod. Abbie's sister sounded strained, but all in one piece, and another set of footsteps echoed hers; Joe. Abbie'd missed them too-- desperately-- but she'd known the whole time that they'd still had each other; that they would be fine. "Good question, since you're the one who bolted into a tree and disappeared, and then he lost his mind and started talking like you'd been gone for a month already."
Abbie stiffened as the words sank in, then pulled back, staring up into Ichabod's worried face. "More like ten months, on my side," she replied, frowning. "I wasn't imagining Pandora, right?"
"No; nor the fact that you were the only thing keeping me anchored after she tried to pressure you to return with the Eye. It simply did not occur to me-- the cutlass. However long Betsy Ross may have been there, her return must have been near-instantaneous with her departure, or I would certainly recall otherwise. I think if Pandora had not done what she did...."
Near-instantaneous? Abbie's eyebrows climbed her forehead. "Then you wouldn't remember anything that happened since I left, either. Does that mean we just Groundhog Day'd the timeline?"
"You what?" Joe's voice interjected, baffled. "We do time travel now?"
"Wouldn't be the first time; I'll fill you in later," Jenny muttered; then she came close enough to get a good look and drew in a sharp breath. She still looked worn from her own encounter with the Eye, leaning on Joe's arm for support, but still better than Abbie felt at the moment. "Okay, and now I believe it. Your hair, Abs. You look worn to the bone. Where did you end up?"
"Wherever the Hidden One was trapped, all that time. It's... not much of a story. Near-terminal boredom on my side, nothing but waiting, escape attempts, and one-sided chess to keep me busy. Almost gave up hope." She glanced up again at Ichabod, still standing within the circle of his arms; still just absorbing the fact of his anchoring presence.
"Whilst on my side," he took up the abbreviated tale, reaching up to brush a thumb over her cheekbone, "I spent weeks robbing apocalyptic cults and indulging in ill-considered rituals to reach other dimensions almost to the exclusion of all else. I am afraid I listened very little to Miss Jenny's moderating advice."
Zoe couldn't have been happy about that. But if Ichabod wasn't going to mention her, Abbie certainly wasn't going to bring her up. The historian and the page out of history might've superficially had a lot in common, but Zoe would have wanted him to 'be real' with her eventually; any woman worth her salt would. And Ichabod wasn't invested enough to bring her in on the secret; that much was obvious, too. Abbie could read the writing on that wall.
"Somehow, I'm not all that surprised," Jenny said, tone very dry. "I've seen what the pair of you are like without each other; it's just as well we got to skip that whole mess this time. So what, you went after her, something went wrong, and you succeeded anyway, the end?"
"That predictable, are we?" Abbie said, sparing a glance and a faint smile her sister's way.
Jenny smiled back, a faint teary tremulousness around the edges of it, but didn't come closer; she glanced between Abbie and Ichabod, then shook her head. "Only sometimes," she said. "I'll want that whole story-- but right now I want my bed more. Debrief tomorrow? And don't do anything stupid like try to sacrifice yourself again for me in the meantime. Or each other. Either of you. You hear me?"
Ichabod cast her a wry glance. "No promises. But many thanks. You're certain you are all right?"
"She'll say she's fine," Joe commented for her, "but I'll keep an eye on her. As much as she'll let me, anyway. Time travel, though. This is definitely a story I'll want to hear."
Sometime during the next few moments, the door to the Archives opened and closed again, but Abbie hardly noticed, still fixated on the much-missed details of the man in front of her. The cute flippy way his hair turned up now that he'd cut off the ponytail, the way the closely-trimmed facial hair added extra oomph to his expressions, the dramatic arch of his eyebrows, the faint smile lines forming around his mouth and crinkling at the corners of his eyes.
The deep devotion that looked right back at her. Yeah, she'd missed that too. And he wasn't looking away anymore; wasn't fidgeting, or hastily bringing up his connection to some other woman, or making some flirtatious affirming reference to their bond before turning away to research the current villain.
"I love my sister," she finally said, deciding just to come straight out with it.
"Indeed," Ichabod replied. "She is one of my favorite people as well; I quite understood why you did what you did. I would not have expected otherwise, despite my own distress."
"Good," Abbie replied, taking a firm grip on his lapels and tugging gently for emphasis. "Because I love you more, Ichabod Crane. We're done running away from each other, right? No more doubting the strength of our bond or any of that bullshit?"
The word 'love' jolted through him like an electric shock. "None at all," he said, lowly. "In the month that apparently never happened-- I told Agent Foster that it was only recently that I truly understood what a partner was; what it means to have someone who makes you more than you are simply being by your side. I should have spoken the words long ago; I suppose I thought I had ruined my chance. But I love you as well, Grace Abigail Mills. If nothing else, the past weeks have taught me that there is nothing for me in a world without you."
Abbie swallowed around the lump of emotion in her throat; then she stretched up on her toes and curled an arm around the back of Ichabod's neck, closing the space between them to kiss him at last. His hands fluttered briefly around her back, as if not sure where he was permitted to touch-- then the kiss deepened, and they settled at her hips, lifting and moving her effortlessly up onto a counter. The angle changed intriguingly with the move; she spread her legs wider, pulling him in close, and slid her hands up inside the jacket, testing the breadth of his shoulders through his homespun shirt. He was always so covered, it was as if he'd combust if he exposed an ankle, but she remembered perfectly well what he looked like without a shirt from the Sandman incident, and if anything he'd put on more muscle since. She looked forward to tracing it all with her tongue.
One step at a time, though. They broke apart after a long moment to catch their breath, and he braced his forehead against hers, hands tangled together, emotion shivering through them both.
"Say it again?" she asked softly. Just to be extra sure.
"I love you, Abbie," he replied, earnestly. "And should you allow as much, I intend to spend the rest of my life proving it."
"Sounds good to me," she said, grinning, then pulled him in for another kiss. "I love you, too."
Somewhere in the back of her mind, something drawn tight and fixated unknotted and eased, overwritten by the fulfilment of another, deeper need; Abbie reminded herself to tell Ichabod about the symbol on the ziggurat later, figure out what it meant before it inevitably came up again. Maybe get ahead of things for once. That could wait for tomorrow, though.
Right now, they had a much more satisfying endeavor to pursue.
(x-posted on AO3)
