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jedibuttercupPG-13; Sleepy Hollow (tv); 5500 words. Late S1 Canon Divergence AU.
They might have to stop calling it Washington's Bible and start calling it Washington's Plot Hole.
Title: Stepping Off the Primrose Path
Author: Jedi Buttercup
Disclaimer: The words are mine; the worlds are not.
Rating: PG-13
Spoilers: Sleepy Hollow 1.12 "The Indispensable Man"
Notes: Last Sleepy Hollow fic before the Big Bang, I swear. (August has arrived!) Written because another plot hole abruptly smacked me in the face, and several other loose threads embroidered themselves into the weave when I started trying to put a story together around it. :)
Summary: They might have to stop calling it Washington's Bible and start calling it Washington's Plot Hole.
"Wait," Abbie said, feeling suddenly queasy as she took a step back from the open pages of Washington's Bible. "That can't be right."
She'd been ready for almost anything when she'd seen that first glowing date appear over the text. Of course Washington would have written something in his own Bible in invisible ink. Why not? They'd known there had to be secrets they hadn't yet found buried within the pages, given that Katrina had wasted words on it in her very first Skype call from the afterlife, not to mention how hot Moloch's forces had been to get their hands on it lately. And after all of Crane's Revolutionary War anecdotes, Abbie would believe almost any spy vs. spy bullshit about the first President. Maybe Franklin had made a prediction about that date that they'd have to look up to find their next clue? She'd had no idea, but she'd been ready to find out.
What she hadn't been expecting was to have the entire rug-- no, not just the rug, almost every single decision she and Crane had made since his wife's first ghostly visitation-- yanked out from under her when they finally found the rest of the message. A set of instructions, purportedly written by the general himself, relating how he died, came back, and sketched a map to Purgatory for one Captain Ichabod Crane, esquire, to use in the war against evil.
There was just one major problem with that.
"What do you mean?" he replied, looking up from the altered book. "I grant you, such a resurrection is a most shocking turn of events; but by all I knew of him, and all I have learned since my arrival in this time, it is very like General Washington to have pursued such a course if he judged it necessary."
"I don't care how on brand for him it is," Abbie said dryly, "it's still impossible. This has to be a forgery. Either that, or someone's been lying to us. Possibly several someones. Possibly both."
Thank goodness they'd laid down a salt circle before doing anything to the Bible, now that they knew that it provided protection against demons; they really didn't need the rest of this conversation overheard. Both for the obvious reasons, and because any way this went, it was going to kill him. Because there was no way he'd been a part of whatever shenanigans were going on here. He'd latched onto her like a drowning man presented with a life preserver from the second she'd shown him even a sliver of belief; there was very little falseness in him. Unlike, it seemed, almost everyone else in his eighteenth-century orbit.
"How so?" Crane's brow furrowed. "The facts of his diagnosis related here are accurate; I have read summaries of the end of the war and the lives of the remaining founders since my arrival in your time. And I am quite familiar with his penmanship. Why should you assume it a forgery?"
"Beyond all the disturbing questions about just how Washington's soul was even retrievable in the first place, given all the roadblocks we've run into just accessing Purgatory? What makes you think it isn't?" she fired back, frustrated. "Crane. Look at the date."
He glanced back down, a thoughtful frown forming on his face. "December 18, 1799. Four days after the general's death; two and a half years after the end of his presidency. Sixteen years after the end of the war."
"And eighteen years after you were buried," she spelled it out.
Crane stiffened as the paradox finally sank in. "We might have been mistaken when we assumed it was buried as part of my own entombment," he offered, clearly clutching at straws. "Perhaps it was brought to the cave later and added to my grave by one who survived him?"
Abbie shook her head. They'd always wondered how a Bible owned by Washington had been buried with Crane in the first place, given that it hadn't been in his possession before that fateful encounter on the battlefield in November of 1781. They'd eventually figured it must have been brought to his bedside during those twilit hours between his mortal injury and Katrina's decision to put him in magical stasis in order to save him. Washington had been the one to order him onto that field, after all; it didn't seem like too much of a stretch that he might have had all kinds of contingency plans in motion. The problem was, he hadn't been the only one.
They might have to stop calling it Washington's Bible and start calling it Washington's Plot Hole.
"One who? It can't have been anyone else connected to the Freemasons, or one of them would have dug you up a long time ago and killed you to end the Horseman. Rutledge was pretty clear about that," she reminded him. "Can't have been someone from Katrina's coven, either. They spent a year hunting her after she hid you away, and only killed her when she absolutely refused to give up the secret."
Neither Katrina nor the Four Who Speak as One had come out and said exactly what they'd done to her, calling it only 'a fate worse than death', but the afterlife wasn't exactly time out, and Abbie was afraid that talking around it with euphemisms had only been giving Crane false hope. Especially if-- as this latest discovery implied-- Moloch was deliberately playing on that hope to manipulate the Witnesses into doing what he wanted. Souls only stayed in Purgatory as long as they had sins that could be cleansed before moving on to a more permanent destination; the fact that Katrina was still there centuries later wasn't exactly a ringing endorsement.
Crane's frown deepened. "I had thought that, perhaps, Reverend Knapp might have acted against the general will of the coven in this matter? He did spend nearly two and a half centuries guarding the resting place of the Horseman's skull, buried beneath a headstone dedicated in my wife's name."
"And you think he did that because he was her friend?" Abbie hated to burst his bubble, but there was no way she was going to let him walk them both into this very prettily baited trap, and she was afraid her best chance of getting through to him was by wielding the truth like a blunt object to the head. He might be a brilliant man, well-educated and quick to grasp new concepts and skills, but in some ways he was also still very much a man of his station and era, blinkered by his expectations and assumptions in a way that could easily come off as blindness at best, selfishness and arrogance at worst.
It wasn't that she didn't understand. But there were lines. Andy had just invaded her home, in what in retrospect was a very transparent attempt to drive them back onto Moloch's chosen course. They couldn't afford to keep giving their enemies such easy opportunities to fuck with them anymore.
"Crane," she continued tiredly, "he was almost the first person the Horseman killed after you both woke up, and it wasn't just because of the skull. If he'd known it was there, he'd have had Andy digging up that whole churchyard. I hate to say it, but I'm starting to think your ex-friend set a trap for Corbin not just because he was my mentor, but also because Moloch's spies told him the sheriff was in league with Knapp; and Knapp because he'd have killed you as soon as he got you alone. Which, let me just remind you, would have killed both you and Headless before we brought in the sin eater. The whole thing with your wife's grave smacks more of a final 'fuck you' to Katrina, so no one ever would ever forget the whole reason they needed to play keep-away with it in the first place was that she'd betrayed their cause."
Crane stared at her, color draining from his face as though she'd stabbed him with her words. Yeah, Washington might have been hedging his bets, dropping hints for Crane to find if he happened to wake up in the future-- the Bible might be suspect now, but there'd been others-- but who else did his survival benefit? Only the Witnesses themselves. And even then, mostly just Ichabod. Abbie couldn't believe destiny would hedge all its bets on two people born more than two centuries apart ending up together; would someone else have been there to help her from the beginning, if he hadn't been bogarting the title in that cave by the river? If the Horseman of Death had actually been exorcized in 1781, how long would it have taken for Moloch to be able to invest another? A long time, she was guessing, judging by all the work everyone had put in to trying to make that happen.
"I suppose I had not fully realized...." He paused, brows drawing together as the pennies continued to drop. "In my first vision of Katrina after I discovered her grave, after she told me it had been guarded by one of her coven, she specifically used the pronoun we when she spoke of the spell cast upon myself and the Horseman and of our separate burials. It was not until after my encounter with Rutledge and his brethren-- specifically, after I learned of our son-- that she related her disagreement with her fellows in the matter of saving me. "
Abbie's eyebrows lifted. There were a lot of things she could say about that, but she wasn't trying to piss him off, just get through to him. "That's not what she said when she came to me to tell me you'd been captured and begged me to call in Parrish. She said 'when I cast the spell', and 'I had no idea their lives would become intertwined.' Seems like kind of an oversight, to save the warning for after the people you might otherwise have sought out as allies had taken you prisoner."
Crane swallowed, lifting a hand to press against his chest where the Horseman's axe had cut him as he glanced back down at the page. "Unless the intent was for that very thing to happen; the severing of my bond with the Horseman. And perhaps more relevantly for the point I suspect you are intending to make, the severing of the Horseman's bond to me."
"Does seem kind of sus. Especially since the whole reason she said she was in such a hurry for me to find the sin eater and undo your curse was that the Horseman would rise again that evening. But in all the fuss, I don't think we ever asked the question: why was she so panicked about that? As long as you were cursed, he couldn't kill you without killing himself. A lot of other people would've been collateral damage, but she framed it as a threat to you. Not the Masons, who were trying to kill you-- or get you to kill yourself-- but the Horseman."
Crane looked distinctly ill. "Because, I suspect, that was the threat that would most easily motivate you," he said, lowly. Well; he wasn't wrong about that. "And those events had the additional happy effect of introducing us to a person capable of reading the history of an object, should it only have been steeped in enough sin."
"One of which just so happens to be mentioned in this text," Abbie agreed, gesturing toward the newly revealed message. "Footnoted with a whole list of names that were present for the resurrection. Including Reverend Knapp, the logical suspect for the owner of the prayer beads in question. Maybe it actually happened; you're right, it does sound like something your Washington would have done. But for the account to appear this way, in a book that would have had to time travel for it to be authentic, and for everything to be pushing us in that direction?" She shook her head. "That's a primrose path, right there."
"The easiest course; and the one that best serves my own pleasure," he agreed, wincing. "It follows, then, that the map must be genuine; but that its retrieval or direct use is somehow barred to our enemy and his servants."
It was all very 'only the penitent man will pass'; she'd have to make sure Crane covered Indiana Jones on his modern culture checklist. "A pretty elaborate scheme. But it was working. Andy even said it wasn't what Moloch could get with the map, but what we could do with it that made him go to such lengths." Including leaning on Abbie's fear of betrayal. He'd known just what buttons to push to worry and distract her, and Katrina had-- intentionally or not-- been doing the same thing to her husband.
"The question is," Abbie continued, licking dry lips. "Do we walk into this trap with open eyes, hoping to turn it in our favor? Or do we play like we never found the clue and see what their next move is? Keeping in mind that several people died during the last one, and we still haven't seen the last of the fallout from it."
She didn't know what Captain Irving was going to do about the consequences of Ancitif's little visit, which had included among its other difficult to explain moments Irving's sketchy interrogation of the man from the park, possessed Luke killing Detective Jones, and possessed Macey killing Father Boland. Normal police methods would not find the actual guilty party in this case, and with a cop dead, Irving's superiors were not going to let them sweep the whole mess under the rug. Any way it fell out, she didn't think he would still be in Sleepy Hollow afterward. And all to use him to spotlight their attention back on Washington's Bible.
"Perhaps there is a way to mitigate the risk," Crane said, tapping his fingers against the page. "How certain are you that Mr. Parrish is involved?"
Abbie sighed. She knew what that question was getting at, beyond the obvious. "Pretty damn certain. That's the only way the story all hangs together. They could coax or drive us through other means-- and definitely haven't let up on that front-- but to be sure we would find the damn thing in a way they could control? They'd need somebody on the inside. Somebody who'd already passed the trust filter."
"Someone who'd helped us before. Someone introduced to us by...." Crane paused there, breath catching sharply. "Oh, why did I not see it? When the Freemasons captured me, they at first questioned my identity. 'We've been fooled before,' Rutledge said, and specifically mentioned demons and shapeshifters as the agents of that interference. Why did I never ask for the details of those incidents? Or question whether the spirit I'd been speaking with was actually my wife?"
Abbie's stomach sank and a chill ran up her spine. She'd never questioned Katrina's identity either. Her visions in Fredericks Manor, the shenanigans with the necklace and the Horseman, would have convinced her even if she hadn't already taken Ichabod's confirmation at face value. But having seen the real Katrina's past didn't prove anything about the one in Purgatory, and neither did the necklace, since any promises Moloch may have made to Abraham Van Brunt in 1774 obviously predated his ex-fiancée's death in 1782. Maybe after all those years of deliberately closing herself to the supernatural, then tripping over the truth bomb that was Ichabod Crane's entire existence and unburying all her childhood trauma, Abbie had been a little too credulous in accepting new impossible realities. Hopefully this was the only such mistake lurking to knife them in the back, but they could question other certainties once this disaster was dealt with.
"We know Katrina was sent to Purgatory, and that a lot of the things the spirit told us have been backed up by other evidence," she said slowly. "But I had wondered why she was still there at all when the whole purpose of Purgatory, according to the church, is supposed to be cleansing yourself of sins before moving on. Lying with carefully selected truths is something a demon would definitely do. The Bible is full of references to false witnesses leading people astray with signs and wonders."
"Then to test our hypothesis, perhaps we can ask Mr. Parrish to use his abilities on the Bible itself," he suggested, grimly. "If he is truly on our side, there is little risk, and he may be able to answer the question of how it ended up amongst my grave goods. But if he is working for our enemy, he will undoubtedly demur and provide us with cryptic clues to further encourage us down the path of Moloch's desires instead."
It was actually kind of surprising that Henry hadn't done a reading on it before; they'd even had it out, open in front of him, when they were researching the golem. Or had he snuck in a finger-brush or two only to realize he couldn't get what he needed from it himself, and that was why Ancitif had immediately stepped things up? 'A good puzzle misleads you,' he'd said right before that incident; 'it sends you in one direction, fools you into thinking you know what's going on.' Some next level ironic metacommentary, right there.
Just thinking about trying to reverse-scrutinize every move he'd made and every word he'd said during his visits was already threatening to give Abbie a headache. Yet another reason Moloch-- and Andy-- had punched the betrayal button with Crane, probably; to keep her attention off the actual betrayal taking place right under her nose. But as long as he didn't know they suspected him, his response should give them the answer they needed.
"Simple. Straightforward. I like it," she decided. "Let's call in our sin eater, then."
She let Crane be the one to make the call, since he was the one who'd called Henry in to help him contact Katrina the last time-- yet another iffy incident, in retrospect. It didn't take much; only a mention Moloch was after an important artefact, and that the only clue they had was tied into an object associated with General Washington. He immediately took the bait and promised to be on the next train.
Abbie and Ichabod spent the wait discussing the evidence both for and against their new theory. It wouldn't do, after all, to compound the mistakes they'd already made by jumping to even more self-defeating conclusions. But everything kept coming back to how convenient it was that so many of the moves they'd made had benefited Moloch as well as themselves. And set them up them up for worse, in Ichabod's opinion.
"It cannot be denied that after every visitation by the spirit, I was drawn further away from my allegiance to my fellow Witness," he gave her a speaking look there as he paced around the Archives, "and further toward a woman who-- even if her spirit was real and merely a dupe rather than an active agent of Moloch-- lied to and manipulated me for the entirety of our marriage. However vital the secrets, to conceal not only the secrets themselves, but the fact that they even existed, and thereby also entire facets of not only her identity but mine as well, calls the integrity of our entire union into question. What could be excused as strategic decision-making from General Washington, a man with not only a larger picture of the fight than I possessed but also the authority-- to which I had actively consented by my enlistment-- to make that call, feels distinctly condescending in a more intimate context. It makes me question whether Katrina ever truly loved me for myself, or for the importance and opportunity my destiny gave her access to in turn."
Abbie bit her lip. Heaven forbid she actually defend the woman-- because he was right, he'd blown increasingly hot and cold with her over the course of their partnership, flirtatious enough she sometimes wondered if he even heard the words coming out of his mouth alternating with friendzoned enough to slap her in the face for developing feelings about it-- but letting him beat himself up about yet another thing regarding his centuries-dead marriage seemed a little counter-productive.
"I think that might be a little harsh," she sighed. "But hindsight's seldom actually twenty-twenty, and the whole point of all of this is probably to distract us, so it doesn't matter in the long run. Her fight's over. Ours isn't. Backseat driving from the afterlife-- her or General Washington-- can't change that. What matters now is that we make sure we're choosing our own path, not the one Moloch's laying out for us."
Crane stopped in front of her then, reaching for her hands, and released a shaky breath. "You are correct. You and I must choose our own destiny. And in truth, I feel as though some part of me must have had suspicions all along, suspicions I tried to ignore out of guilt that so many years had passed without shaking my wife's emotions whilst mine...." He gave Abbie a rueful half-smile. "This is not, perhaps, the time to speak of it further. But it would not be inaccurate to say that I have not perceived a future without you for quite some time, and I daresay I owe you several apologies for my inconsistent manner of expressing it."
Abbie swallowed, a wash of heat rushing to her cheeks. So he wasn't unaware of how the things he said could come across. And it wasn't-- as she had occasionally wondered-- that he had subconsciously blocked himself from seeing her that way either, due to any of the various factors that would have made most eighteenth-century guys of his background and class blank on her as a potential romantic partner: skin color, lack of virginity, occupation, and family background, just to name a few. He had just been feeling guilty about his feelings for her, overcorrecting while trying to tell himself to put the brakes on, and hoping she hadn't noticed. Communication: perhaps they should look into it.
"Uh, likewise. Just so you know," she said, returning the rueful smile. "Been telling myself I'm an idiot, for multiple reasons; but you've changed my entire life since I met you. Sometimes in painful ways, but I can honestly say I'm a better, more fulfilled person for knowing you. And c'mon, you have seen you," she teased, freeing a hand to gesture up and down the length of him.
Of all his various expressions of ego, vanity about his physical appearance wasn't high on the list; he seemed pleasantly surprised by the comment. "Ah, likewise," he managed to reply, grin widening into something a little less abashed and a lot more giddily appreciative.
That was, of course, the moment that Ichabod's phone-- actually hers on loan, but she had a feeling she would be getting him that upgrade-- rang to announce that their visitor had arrived.
Abbie took a deep breath, smile fading as Ichabod reached to pick it up. "Game face on. But I'll be taking a raincheck on that, you hear?"
"If that meteorological reference signifies a promise to resume at a later date, then you certainly have it," he replied warmly, then turned away to answer the call.
In the end, the confrontation played out pretty much along the lines they had expected, plus or minus a few flourishes. Which was the kind of confirmation Abbie really could have passed on. Henry Parrish greeted them, as brusque yet somehow approachable as ever, and then asked, since they had not specified, whether the item he was to read was present on the premises or if a field trip would be required.
"Maybe when we get to part two," Abbie offered with a shrug. "We had a visitor from Team Moloch today that suggested there were clues to an important map buried in Washington's Bible. But we've had no luck finding them. Maybe there's some instructions we missed, who knows. But we thought you could take a look?"
She gestured to the closed, darkly bound book; Henry glanced at it blankly, then frowned at Ichabod. "Surely a strategist like Washington would have prepared the way. No specific memories came to mind when you considered the question?"
Abbie and Ichabod exchanged a glance; from the dismay in Ichabod's expression, she guessed he was even doubting now whether the flashback that had led him to those ten superfluous verses-- the signal for where to begin painting the text with revealing fluid-- had been triggered somehow, as part and parcel of Moloch's con. "I thought back over my significant conversations with the general, but none featuring specific Biblical verses came to mind," he said carefully, returning his attention to Henry. "Indeed, I am not even certain how the Bible came to be buried with me; if nothing else, a glimpse of how it was placed there could provide a useful hint."
"Curious," the sin eater said, frown deepening into craggy lines. "I admit, I would not normally think to read such a holy item; but war being a complicated business, and your disposition a particularly grey area, there might be enough sin steeped within its pages to make it worth the attempt."
He gestured toward it; Ichabod nodded and stepped aside, waving him toward the counter where it was placed. They'd taken down the salt circle for this conversation, not wanting to clue Henry in if it happened to affect either him or his gift. Both Witnesses watched carefully as he stepped forward and placed a palm on the Bible's cover, letting his eyes drift shut-- then hissed, yanking his hand back with an expression of pain.
"Someone must have placed a powerful hex upon that book," he said, flexing his fingers. "I wasn't anticipating such resistance. The map to which your visitor referred must be very valuable indeed."
For half a second or so, Abbie actually wondered if he was playing it straight; if they'd got it all wrong. She never would have asked a friend to hurt themselves just for an answer. But there was an air of relish to his statement that almost verged on performance, enough to convince her to keep playing it out. "I'm sorry; we weren't expecting that either. Are you all right?"
"Oh, fine, fine; it was just unexpected," he said, inspecting his fingers. "I've never encountered anything quite like that."
Yeah, Abbie would just bet he hadn't. "Did you get anything at all?"
"Only a single flash," he said, shaking his head. "I caught a glimpse of General Washington speaking to-- well, to you, my friend." He turned toward her partner. "Something about-- Lazarus rising from his grave. I don't know if that means anything to you; but it's all I saw."
"Undoubtedly part of the security enchantment," Ichabod replied, doing a good impression of disappointment as he improvised. The pinched lines around his mouth and the way he clasped his hands behind his back told Abbie otherwise, though. "I'm afraid we already uncovered the ten extra verses in the Book of John, Chapter 11, during our earlier explorations, but dismissed them as an obvious red herring."
Lying with carefully selected truths; they could do it, too. Good job, Ichabod. Henry's mouth opened, then closed again twice before he managed a reply, obviously-- maybe even genuinely-- taken aback. "That seems unnecessarily complex, given all the other layers of security. If you've found no other hidden clues, then could it not be the true secret, after all?"
"It was a very entertaining piece of fiction," Abbie shrugged, giving him her blandest possible face in response. "Zombie George Washington; that's one for the fanfic archives. But there was a pretty big error in the instructions that Washington himself would never have made. That's why we decided to give you a call. Sorry to have wasted your time; we'll compensate you for the trip, of course."
"Oh, that's not necessary; I'm glad to be able to help, if only to eliminate a possibility. If there is any doubt... perhaps, if I attempted it again with the page in question...." He trailed off suggestively, reaching for the Bible again.
"Given that we have no idea what other protections might be in place, I would not dare take the risk," Ichabod shook his head, placing a hand on it and moving it physically out of reach. "You have done enough. The information you have given us already is more than we had before. Rest assured, we will call you again when we have found a more certain lead."
Henry tried to gently object a few more times; but when every effort met with a gentle, considerate rebuttal, he finally agreed to take the next train home, mouth tight as if he'd bit into something sour. But whatever was going through his head, he didn't break character; only his persistence and frustration had given him away.
Abbie blew out a shaky breath when they were finally alone again, retrieving the container of Morton's from under the counter again. This time, Ichabod didn't protest the unlikelihood of its being necessary as she enlarged the previous circle's boundaries, pouring salt around the entirety of the main Archives room.
"That was... certainly an informative encounter," Ichabod said once she was done.
"Yeah. Did you notice, he didn't even ask what the error was?" Abbie replied, shaking her head. "Not because of any guilty conscience though, I don't think; more because the details didn't matter, what mattered was that it led us to dismiss the clue."
"They will try something else the next time," Ichabod agreed. "A terrible vision, perhaps. A fortuitously topical memory revealed by some other reading. Or another visitation from...."
His voice faltered, and Abbie reached out to pull him into a hug. Sometimes, the situation just called for it. He seemed to take as much reassurance from it as she did, bowing forward slightly to rest his cheek against her hair. "Hey, no worries. We'll take it as it comes. Just keep acting like it's just obvious why the suggestions don't work; that was brilliant. He still doesn't know we suspect him. No reason why anyone else has to either, until they force it to a point. By which time hopefully we'll be ready for it."
"They will eventually become suspicious, if we continue veiling our activities," he demurred, "but for the time being, perhaps...." He sighed. "But I suppose that confrontation can wait until necessary, as well. At the moment, my feelings are as raw as though I am grieving anew; Katrina was my guiding star for so long."
"And I'd never tell you to regret that," Abbie said, pulling back to meet his gaze. His capacity for loyalty, in fact, was one of the many attractive things about him. "Whatever else may have been going on, it's never a mistake to love. It's when you can't let go, when you can't balance it with duty, that it becomes a problem."
His smile went crooked. "She placed my feet upon the path. But it is you who walk it now at my side. When we first met, I was so instantly convinced that our fates were entwined, it was though my soul had recognized a missing part of itself. Despite my struggles to reconcile that feeling, I do not regret a moment of our partnership. If you could but be patient with me a little longer...."
"You really need to ask?" she replied teasingly, eyebrows lifting as he captured one of her hands and raised it to his mouth. Warmth shivered through her again; his dramatic gestures really did do it for her, as ridiculous and unnecessary as they were. They had so little beyond their 'destiny' in common on the surface, but on some ineffable level they really did fit together like puzzle pieces manufactured by the same hand. "You're my guy, Crane; as long as that's true, we'll work out the details as we get there."
"And you're my Lieutenant," Ichabod replied, smiling in return.
And that was why Moloch's fear mongering wouldn't work; because they'd chosen and kept choosing each other, despite everything. They wouldn't let his threat become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Whatever else fate held in store for them, whatever else the Witnesses were supposed to do and be, this right here was worth every moment. It wouldn't be easy, and there was definitely a hard road ahead of them, but Abbie defied any force short of God to put them asunder now. Moloch might be the Demon of the Apocalypse, but he fell a little short there, and Headless didn't rate either.
If she had faith in nothing else, she had it in this: together, they would always find a way.
(x-posted on AO3)
They might have to stop calling it Washington's Bible and start calling it Washington's Plot Hole.
Title: Stepping Off the Primrose Path
Author: Jedi Buttercup
Disclaimer: The words are mine; the worlds are not.
Rating: PG-13
Spoilers: Sleepy Hollow 1.12 "The Indispensable Man"
Notes: Last Sleepy Hollow fic before the Big Bang, I swear. (August has arrived!) Written because another plot hole abruptly smacked me in the face, and several other loose threads embroidered themselves into the weave when I started trying to put a story together around it. :)
Summary: They might have to stop calling it Washington's Bible and start calling it Washington's Plot Hole.
"Wait," Abbie said, feeling suddenly queasy as she took a step back from the open pages of Washington's Bible. "That can't be right."
She'd been ready for almost anything when she'd seen that first glowing date appear over the text. Of course Washington would have written something in his own Bible in invisible ink. Why not? They'd known there had to be secrets they hadn't yet found buried within the pages, given that Katrina had wasted words on it in her very first Skype call from the afterlife, not to mention how hot Moloch's forces had been to get their hands on it lately. And after all of Crane's Revolutionary War anecdotes, Abbie would believe almost any spy vs. spy bullshit about the first President. Maybe Franklin had made a prediction about that date that they'd have to look up to find their next clue? She'd had no idea, but she'd been ready to find out.
What she hadn't been expecting was to have the entire rug-- no, not just the rug, almost every single decision she and Crane had made since his wife's first ghostly visitation-- yanked out from under her when they finally found the rest of the message. A set of instructions, purportedly written by the general himself, relating how he died, came back, and sketched a map to Purgatory for one Captain Ichabod Crane, esquire, to use in the war against evil.
There was just one major problem with that.
"What do you mean?" he replied, looking up from the altered book. "I grant you, such a resurrection is a most shocking turn of events; but by all I knew of him, and all I have learned since my arrival in this time, it is very like General Washington to have pursued such a course if he judged it necessary."
"I don't care how on brand for him it is," Abbie said dryly, "it's still impossible. This has to be a forgery. Either that, or someone's been lying to us. Possibly several someones. Possibly both."
Thank goodness they'd laid down a salt circle before doing anything to the Bible, now that they knew that it provided protection against demons; they really didn't need the rest of this conversation overheard. Both for the obvious reasons, and because any way this went, it was going to kill him. Because there was no way he'd been a part of whatever shenanigans were going on here. He'd latched onto her like a drowning man presented with a life preserver from the second she'd shown him even a sliver of belief; there was very little falseness in him. Unlike, it seemed, almost everyone else in his eighteenth-century orbit.
"How so?" Crane's brow furrowed. "The facts of his diagnosis related here are accurate; I have read summaries of the end of the war and the lives of the remaining founders since my arrival in your time. And I am quite familiar with his penmanship. Why should you assume it a forgery?"
"Beyond all the disturbing questions about just how Washington's soul was even retrievable in the first place, given all the roadblocks we've run into just accessing Purgatory? What makes you think it isn't?" she fired back, frustrated. "Crane. Look at the date."
He glanced back down, a thoughtful frown forming on his face. "December 18, 1799. Four days after the general's death; two and a half years after the end of his presidency. Sixteen years after the end of the war."
"And eighteen years after you were buried," she spelled it out.
Crane stiffened as the paradox finally sank in. "We might have been mistaken when we assumed it was buried as part of my own entombment," he offered, clearly clutching at straws. "Perhaps it was brought to the cave later and added to my grave by one who survived him?"
Abbie shook her head. They'd always wondered how a Bible owned by Washington had been buried with Crane in the first place, given that it hadn't been in his possession before that fateful encounter on the battlefield in November of 1781. They'd eventually figured it must have been brought to his bedside during those twilit hours between his mortal injury and Katrina's decision to put him in magical stasis in order to save him. Washington had been the one to order him onto that field, after all; it didn't seem like too much of a stretch that he might have had all kinds of contingency plans in motion. The problem was, he hadn't been the only one.
They might have to stop calling it Washington's Bible and start calling it Washington's Plot Hole.
"One who? It can't have been anyone else connected to the Freemasons, or one of them would have dug you up a long time ago and killed you to end the Horseman. Rutledge was pretty clear about that," she reminded him. "Can't have been someone from Katrina's coven, either. They spent a year hunting her after she hid you away, and only killed her when she absolutely refused to give up the secret."
Neither Katrina nor the Four Who Speak as One had come out and said exactly what they'd done to her, calling it only 'a fate worse than death', but the afterlife wasn't exactly time out, and Abbie was afraid that talking around it with euphemisms had only been giving Crane false hope. Especially if-- as this latest discovery implied-- Moloch was deliberately playing on that hope to manipulate the Witnesses into doing what he wanted. Souls only stayed in Purgatory as long as they had sins that could be cleansed before moving on to a more permanent destination; the fact that Katrina was still there centuries later wasn't exactly a ringing endorsement.
Crane's frown deepened. "I had thought that, perhaps, Reverend Knapp might have acted against the general will of the coven in this matter? He did spend nearly two and a half centuries guarding the resting place of the Horseman's skull, buried beneath a headstone dedicated in my wife's name."
"And you think he did that because he was her friend?" Abbie hated to burst his bubble, but there was no way she was going to let him walk them both into this very prettily baited trap, and she was afraid her best chance of getting through to him was by wielding the truth like a blunt object to the head. He might be a brilliant man, well-educated and quick to grasp new concepts and skills, but in some ways he was also still very much a man of his station and era, blinkered by his expectations and assumptions in a way that could easily come off as blindness at best, selfishness and arrogance at worst.
It wasn't that she didn't understand. But there were lines. Andy had just invaded her home, in what in retrospect was a very transparent attempt to drive them back onto Moloch's chosen course. They couldn't afford to keep giving their enemies such easy opportunities to fuck with them anymore.
"Crane," she continued tiredly, "he was almost the first person the Horseman killed after you both woke up, and it wasn't just because of the skull. If he'd known it was there, he'd have had Andy digging up that whole churchyard. I hate to say it, but I'm starting to think your ex-friend set a trap for Corbin not just because he was my mentor, but also because Moloch's spies told him the sheriff was in league with Knapp; and Knapp because he'd have killed you as soon as he got you alone. Which, let me just remind you, would have killed both you and Headless before we brought in the sin eater. The whole thing with your wife's grave smacks more of a final 'fuck you' to Katrina, so no one ever would ever forget the whole reason they needed to play keep-away with it in the first place was that she'd betrayed their cause."
Crane stared at her, color draining from his face as though she'd stabbed him with her words. Yeah, Washington might have been hedging his bets, dropping hints for Crane to find if he happened to wake up in the future-- the Bible might be suspect now, but there'd been others-- but who else did his survival benefit? Only the Witnesses themselves. And even then, mostly just Ichabod. Abbie couldn't believe destiny would hedge all its bets on two people born more than two centuries apart ending up together; would someone else have been there to help her from the beginning, if he hadn't been bogarting the title in that cave by the river? If the Horseman of Death had actually been exorcized in 1781, how long would it have taken for Moloch to be able to invest another? A long time, she was guessing, judging by all the work everyone had put in to trying to make that happen.
"I suppose I had not fully realized...." He paused, brows drawing together as the pennies continued to drop. "In my first vision of Katrina after I discovered her grave, after she told me it had been guarded by one of her coven, she specifically used the pronoun we when she spoke of the spell cast upon myself and the Horseman and of our separate burials. It was not until after my encounter with Rutledge and his brethren-- specifically, after I learned of our son-- that she related her disagreement with her fellows in the matter of saving me. "
Abbie's eyebrows lifted. There were a lot of things she could say about that, but she wasn't trying to piss him off, just get through to him. "That's not what she said when she came to me to tell me you'd been captured and begged me to call in Parrish. She said 'when I cast the spell', and 'I had no idea their lives would become intertwined.' Seems like kind of an oversight, to save the warning for after the people you might otherwise have sought out as allies had taken you prisoner."
Crane swallowed, lifting a hand to press against his chest where the Horseman's axe had cut him as he glanced back down at the page. "Unless the intent was for that very thing to happen; the severing of my bond with the Horseman. And perhaps more relevantly for the point I suspect you are intending to make, the severing of the Horseman's bond to me."
"Does seem kind of sus. Especially since the whole reason she said she was in such a hurry for me to find the sin eater and undo your curse was that the Horseman would rise again that evening. But in all the fuss, I don't think we ever asked the question: why was she so panicked about that? As long as you were cursed, he couldn't kill you without killing himself. A lot of other people would've been collateral damage, but she framed it as a threat to you. Not the Masons, who were trying to kill you-- or get you to kill yourself-- but the Horseman."
Crane looked distinctly ill. "Because, I suspect, that was the threat that would most easily motivate you," he said, lowly. Well; he wasn't wrong about that. "And those events had the additional happy effect of introducing us to a person capable of reading the history of an object, should it only have been steeped in enough sin."
"One of which just so happens to be mentioned in this text," Abbie agreed, gesturing toward the newly revealed message. "Footnoted with a whole list of names that were present for the resurrection. Including Reverend Knapp, the logical suspect for the owner of the prayer beads in question. Maybe it actually happened; you're right, it does sound like something your Washington would have done. But for the account to appear this way, in a book that would have had to time travel for it to be authentic, and for everything to be pushing us in that direction?" She shook her head. "That's a primrose path, right there."
"The easiest course; and the one that best serves my own pleasure," he agreed, wincing. "It follows, then, that the map must be genuine; but that its retrieval or direct use is somehow barred to our enemy and his servants."
It was all very 'only the penitent man will pass'; she'd have to make sure Crane covered Indiana Jones on his modern culture checklist. "A pretty elaborate scheme. But it was working. Andy even said it wasn't what Moloch could get with the map, but what we could do with it that made him go to such lengths." Including leaning on Abbie's fear of betrayal. He'd known just what buttons to push to worry and distract her, and Katrina had-- intentionally or not-- been doing the same thing to her husband.
"The question is," Abbie continued, licking dry lips. "Do we walk into this trap with open eyes, hoping to turn it in our favor? Or do we play like we never found the clue and see what their next move is? Keeping in mind that several people died during the last one, and we still haven't seen the last of the fallout from it."
She didn't know what Captain Irving was going to do about the consequences of Ancitif's little visit, which had included among its other difficult to explain moments Irving's sketchy interrogation of the man from the park, possessed Luke killing Detective Jones, and possessed Macey killing Father Boland. Normal police methods would not find the actual guilty party in this case, and with a cop dead, Irving's superiors were not going to let them sweep the whole mess under the rug. Any way it fell out, she didn't think he would still be in Sleepy Hollow afterward. And all to use him to spotlight their attention back on Washington's Bible.
"Perhaps there is a way to mitigate the risk," Crane said, tapping his fingers against the page. "How certain are you that Mr. Parrish is involved?"
Abbie sighed. She knew what that question was getting at, beyond the obvious. "Pretty damn certain. That's the only way the story all hangs together. They could coax or drive us through other means-- and definitely haven't let up on that front-- but to be sure we would find the damn thing in a way they could control? They'd need somebody on the inside. Somebody who'd already passed the trust filter."
"Someone who'd helped us before. Someone introduced to us by...." Crane paused there, breath catching sharply. "Oh, why did I not see it? When the Freemasons captured me, they at first questioned my identity. 'We've been fooled before,' Rutledge said, and specifically mentioned demons and shapeshifters as the agents of that interference. Why did I never ask for the details of those incidents? Or question whether the spirit I'd been speaking with was actually my wife?"
Abbie's stomach sank and a chill ran up her spine. She'd never questioned Katrina's identity either. Her visions in Fredericks Manor, the shenanigans with the necklace and the Horseman, would have convinced her even if she hadn't already taken Ichabod's confirmation at face value. But having seen the real Katrina's past didn't prove anything about the one in Purgatory, and neither did the necklace, since any promises Moloch may have made to Abraham Van Brunt in 1774 obviously predated his ex-fiancée's death in 1782. Maybe after all those years of deliberately closing herself to the supernatural, then tripping over the truth bomb that was Ichabod Crane's entire existence and unburying all her childhood trauma, Abbie had been a little too credulous in accepting new impossible realities. Hopefully this was the only such mistake lurking to knife them in the back, but they could question other certainties once this disaster was dealt with.
"We know Katrina was sent to Purgatory, and that a lot of the things the spirit told us have been backed up by other evidence," she said slowly. "But I had wondered why she was still there at all when the whole purpose of Purgatory, according to the church, is supposed to be cleansing yourself of sins before moving on. Lying with carefully selected truths is something a demon would definitely do. The Bible is full of references to false witnesses leading people astray with signs and wonders."
"Then to test our hypothesis, perhaps we can ask Mr. Parrish to use his abilities on the Bible itself," he suggested, grimly. "If he is truly on our side, there is little risk, and he may be able to answer the question of how it ended up amongst my grave goods. But if he is working for our enemy, he will undoubtedly demur and provide us with cryptic clues to further encourage us down the path of Moloch's desires instead."
It was actually kind of surprising that Henry hadn't done a reading on it before; they'd even had it out, open in front of him, when they were researching the golem. Or had he snuck in a finger-brush or two only to realize he couldn't get what he needed from it himself, and that was why Ancitif had immediately stepped things up? 'A good puzzle misleads you,' he'd said right before that incident; 'it sends you in one direction, fools you into thinking you know what's going on.' Some next level ironic metacommentary, right there.
Just thinking about trying to reverse-scrutinize every move he'd made and every word he'd said during his visits was already threatening to give Abbie a headache. Yet another reason Moloch-- and Andy-- had punched the betrayal button with Crane, probably; to keep her attention off the actual betrayal taking place right under her nose. But as long as he didn't know they suspected him, his response should give them the answer they needed.
"Simple. Straightforward. I like it," she decided. "Let's call in our sin eater, then."
She let Crane be the one to make the call, since he was the one who'd called Henry in to help him contact Katrina the last time-- yet another iffy incident, in retrospect. It didn't take much; only a mention Moloch was after an important artefact, and that the only clue they had was tied into an object associated with General Washington. He immediately took the bait and promised to be on the next train.
Abbie and Ichabod spent the wait discussing the evidence both for and against their new theory. It wouldn't do, after all, to compound the mistakes they'd already made by jumping to even more self-defeating conclusions. But everything kept coming back to how convenient it was that so many of the moves they'd made had benefited Moloch as well as themselves. And set them up them up for worse, in Ichabod's opinion.
"It cannot be denied that after every visitation by the spirit, I was drawn further away from my allegiance to my fellow Witness," he gave her a speaking look there as he paced around the Archives, "and further toward a woman who-- even if her spirit was real and merely a dupe rather than an active agent of Moloch-- lied to and manipulated me for the entirety of our marriage. However vital the secrets, to conceal not only the secrets themselves, but the fact that they even existed, and thereby also entire facets of not only her identity but mine as well, calls the integrity of our entire union into question. What could be excused as strategic decision-making from General Washington, a man with not only a larger picture of the fight than I possessed but also the authority-- to which I had actively consented by my enlistment-- to make that call, feels distinctly condescending in a more intimate context. It makes me question whether Katrina ever truly loved me for myself, or for the importance and opportunity my destiny gave her access to in turn."
Abbie bit her lip. Heaven forbid she actually defend the woman-- because he was right, he'd blown increasingly hot and cold with her over the course of their partnership, flirtatious enough she sometimes wondered if he even heard the words coming out of his mouth alternating with friendzoned enough to slap her in the face for developing feelings about it-- but letting him beat himself up about yet another thing regarding his centuries-dead marriage seemed a little counter-productive.
"I think that might be a little harsh," she sighed. "But hindsight's seldom actually twenty-twenty, and the whole point of all of this is probably to distract us, so it doesn't matter in the long run. Her fight's over. Ours isn't. Backseat driving from the afterlife-- her or General Washington-- can't change that. What matters now is that we make sure we're choosing our own path, not the one Moloch's laying out for us."
Crane stopped in front of her then, reaching for her hands, and released a shaky breath. "You are correct. You and I must choose our own destiny. And in truth, I feel as though some part of me must have had suspicions all along, suspicions I tried to ignore out of guilt that so many years had passed without shaking my wife's emotions whilst mine...." He gave Abbie a rueful half-smile. "This is not, perhaps, the time to speak of it further. But it would not be inaccurate to say that I have not perceived a future without you for quite some time, and I daresay I owe you several apologies for my inconsistent manner of expressing it."
Abbie swallowed, a wash of heat rushing to her cheeks. So he wasn't unaware of how the things he said could come across. And it wasn't-- as she had occasionally wondered-- that he had subconsciously blocked himself from seeing her that way either, due to any of the various factors that would have made most eighteenth-century guys of his background and class blank on her as a potential romantic partner: skin color, lack of virginity, occupation, and family background, just to name a few. He had just been feeling guilty about his feelings for her, overcorrecting while trying to tell himself to put the brakes on, and hoping she hadn't noticed. Communication: perhaps they should look into it.
"Uh, likewise. Just so you know," she said, returning the rueful smile. "Been telling myself I'm an idiot, for multiple reasons; but you've changed my entire life since I met you. Sometimes in painful ways, but I can honestly say I'm a better, more fulfilled person for knowing you. And c'mon, you have seen you," she teased, freeing a hand to gesture up and down the length of him.
Of all his various expressions of ego, vanity about his physical appearance wasn't high on the list; he seemed pleasantly surprised by the comment. "Ah, likewise," he managed to reply, grin widening into something a little less abashed and a lot more giddily appreciative.
That was, of course, the moment that Ichabod's phone-- actually hers on loan, but she had a feeling she would be getting him that upgrade-- rang to announce that their visitor had arrived.
Abbie took a deep breath, smile fading as Ichabod reached to pick it up. "Game face on. But I'll be taking a raincheck on that, you hear?"
"If that meteorological reference signifies a promise to resume at a later date, then you certainly have it," he replied warmly, then turned away to answer the call.
In the end, the confrontation played out pretty much along the lines they had expected, plus or minus a few flourishes. Which was the kind of confirmation Abbie really could have passed on. Henry Parrish greeted them, as brusque yet somehow approachable as ever, and then asked, since they had not specified, whether the item he was to read was present on the premises or if a field trip would be required.
"Maybe when we get to part two," Abbie offered with a shrug. "We had a visitor from Team Moloch today that suggested there were clues to an important map buried in Washington's Bible. But we've had no luck finding them. Maybe there's some instructions we missed, who knows. But we thought you could take a look?"
She gestured to the closed, darkly bound book; Henry glanced at it blankly, then frowned at Ichabod. "Surely a strategist like Washington would have prepared the way. No specific memories came to mind when you considered the question?"
Abbie and Ichabod exchanged a glance; from the dismay in Ichabod's expression, she guessed he was even doubting now whether the flashback that had led him to those ten superfluous verses-- the signal for where to begin painting the text with revealing fluid-- had been triggered somehow, as part and parcel of Moloch's con. "I thought back over my significant conversations with the general, but none featuring specific Biblical verses came to mind," he said carefully, returning his attention to Henry. "Indeed, I am not even certain how the Bible came to be buried with me; if nothing else, a glimpse of how it was placed there could provide a useful hint."
"Curious," the sin eater said, frown deepening into craggy lines. "I admit, I would not normally think to read such a holy item; but war being a complicated business, and your disposition a particularly grey area, there might be enough sin steeped within its pages to make it worth the attempt."
He gestured toward it; Ichabod nodded and stepped aside, waving him toward the counter where it was placed. They'd taken down the salt circle for this conversation, not wanting to clue Henry in if it happened to affect either him or his gift. Both Witnesses watched carefully as he stepped forward and placed a palm on the Bible's cover, letting his eyes drift shut-- then hissed, yanking his hand back with an expression of pain.
"Someone must have placed a powerful hex upon that book," he said, flexing his fingers. "I wasn't anticipating such resistance. The map to which your visitor referred must be very valuable indeed."
For half a second or so, Abbie actually wondered if he was playing it straight; if they'd got it all wrong. She never would have asked a friend to hurt themselves just for an answer. But there was an air of relish to his statement that almost verged on performance, enough to convince her to keep playing it out. "I'm sorry; we weren't expecting that either. Are you all right?"
"Oh, fine, fine; it was just unexpected," he said, inspecting his fingers. "I've never encountered anything quite like that."
Yeah, Abbie would just bet he hadn't. "Did you get anything at all?"
"Only a single flash," he said, shaking his head. "I caught a glimpse of General Washington speaking to-- well, to you, my friend." He turned toward her partner. "Something about-- Lazarus rising from his grave. I don't know if that means anything to you; but it's all I saw."
"Undoubtedly part of the security enchantment," Ichabod replied, doing a good impression of disappointment as he improvised. The pinched lines around his mouth and the way he clasped his hands behind his back told Abbie otherwise, though. "I'm afraid we already uncovered the ten extra verses in the Book of John, Chapter 11, during our earlier explorations, but dismissed them as an obvious red herring."
Lying with carefully selected truths; they could do it, too. Good job, Ichabod. Henry's mouth opened, then closed again twice before he managed a reply, obviously-- maybe even genuinely-- taken aback. "That seems unnecessarily complex, given all the other layers of security. If you've found no other hidden clues, then could it not be the true secret, after all?"
"It was a very entertaining piece of fiction," Abbie shrugged, giving him her blandest possible face in response. "Zombie George Washington; that's one for the fanfic archives. But there was a pretty big error in the instructions that Washington himself would never have made. That's why we decided to give you a call. Sorry to have wasted your time; we'll compensate you for the trip, of course."
"Oh, that's not necessary; I'm glad to be able to help, if only to eliminate a possibility. If there is any doubt... perhaps, if I attempted it again with the page in question...." He trailed off suggestively, reaching for the Bible again.
"Given that we have no idea what other protections might be in place, I would not dare take the risk," Ichabod shook his head, placing a hand on it and moving it physically out of reach. "You have done enough. The information you have given us already is more than we had before. Rest assured, we will call you again when we have found a more certain lead."
Henry tried to gently object a few more times; but when every effort met with a gentle, considerate rebuttal, he finally agreed to take the next train home, mouth tight as if he'd bit into something sour. But whatever was going through his head, he didn't break character; only his persistence and frustration had given him away.
Abbie blew out a shaky breath when they were finally alone again, retrieving the container of Morton's from under the counter again. This time, Ichabod didn't protest the unlikelihood of its being necessary as she enlarged the previous circle's boundaries, pouring salt around the entirety of the main Archives room.
"That was... certainly an informative encounter," Ichabod said once she was done.
"Yeah. Did you notice, he didn't even ask what the error was?" Abbie replied, shaking her head. "Not because of any guilty conscience though, I don't think; more because the details didn't matter, what mattered was that it led us to dismiss the clue."
"They will try something else the next time," Ichabod agreed. "A terrible vision, perhaps. A fortuitously topical memory revealed by some other reading. Or another visitation from...."
His voice faltered, and Abbie reached out to pull him into a hug. Sometimes, the situation just called for it. He seemed to take as much reassurance from it as she did, bowing forward slightly to rest his cheek against her hair. "Hey, no worries. We'll take it as it comes. Just keep acting like it's just obvious why the suggestions don't work; that was brilliant. He still doesn't know we suspect him. No reason why anyone else has to either, until they force it to a point. By which time hopefully we'll be ready for it."
"They will eventually become suspicious, if we continue veiling our activities," he demurred, "but for the time being, perhaps...." He sighed. "But I suppose that confrontation can wait until necessary, as well. At the moment, my feelings are as raw as though I am grieving anew; Katrina was my guiding star for so long."
"And I'd never tell you to regret that," Abbie said, pulling back to meet his gaze. His capacity for loyalty, in fact, was one of the many attractive things about him. "Whatever else may have been going on, it's never a mistake to love. It's when you can't let go, when you can't balance it with duty, that it becomes a problem."
His smile went crooked. "She placed my feet upon the path. But it is you who walk it now at my side. When we first met, I was so instantly convinced that our fates were entwined, it was though my soul had recognized a missing part of itself. Despite my struggles to reconcile that feeling, I do not regret a moment of our partnership. If you could but be patient with me a little longer...."
"You really need to ask?" she replied teasingly, eyebrows lifting as he captured one of her hands and raised it to his mouth. Warmth shivered through her again; his dramatic gestures really did do it for her, as ridiculous and unnecessary as they were. They had so little beyond their 'destiny' in common on the surface, but on some ineffable level they really did fit together like puzzle pieces manufactured by the same hand. "You're my guy, Crane; as long as that's true, we'll work out the details as we get there."
"And you're my Lieutenant," Ichabod replied, smiling in return.
And that was why Moloch's fear mongering wouldn't work; because they'd chosen and kept choosing each other, despite everything. They wouldn't let his threat become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Whatever else fate held in store for them, whatever else the Witnesses were supposed to do and be, this right here was worth every moment. It wouldn't be easy, and there was definitely a hard road ahead of them, but Abbie defied any force short of God to put them asunder now. Moloch might be the Demon of the Apocalypse, but he fell a little short there, and Headless didn't rate either.
If she had faith in nothing else, she had it in this: together, they would always find a way.
(x-posted on AO3)
