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It was luck that got them there. Well, luck and exhaustion and a need to take a break — but mostly luck, considering how hard the tickets were to get. Also, Jesus — so expensive. But anyway, Abbie wasn't going to sweat it. They spent most of their time saving the world, they both needed a little vacation, and how was she going to miss the chance to treat a guy who was actually a part of the American Revolution to a musical involving the American Revolution? Even though she couldn’t remember Crane ever bringing up Alexander Hamilton, she was pretty sure he knew him — he had to, right? They both ran in the same circles.
Speaking of circles, they had just made a big one around the streets of New York as Abbie tried to show off as many of the sights as she could. Most of them were just, you know, buildings — but New York buildings had a special charm to them and it didn’t matter much that she could barely feel her toes after walking around in the near-freezing temperatures. She was just glad they were spending the day doing something other than fighting the forces of evil, or thinking about fighting the forces of evil, or anything related to evil. Also, she got Crane to eat a hot dog from a cart, so that was hilarious.
Ichabod cleared his throat. "These shows — are they like operas, or...?"
Abbie let him trail off, smiling to herself as she mentally mapped what street they had to get back to and what the best route would be to get there. They still had plenty of time to kill before they had to turn up for the show, so she wasn't rushing them through the crowds or anything, but she was quickly running out of things to point out to impress her companion so cutting the tour short was probably a good idea.
She had enjoyed a good ten minutes of watching him take in Time Square, but most of the polish was off the whole "bright lights, big city" thing ever since he went to Britain. She felt a momentary pang of disappointment that she hadn’t been there to see him in a big city outside of Sleepy Hollow for the first time, or his first time on a plane, or his first time dealing with airport security.
She felt her lips quirk up in a slightly sad, but still amused, smile at that. Bet he went into a rant on what the Founding Fathers would think of mandatory shoe removal.
But Ichabod adjusted remarkably well to stuff for a guy who'd shut himself in a rustic wood cabin for two years out of a combination of culture shock and desperation to cling to something that resembled what he once knew. Abbie was torn between pride and a feeling close to nostalgia for the Ichabod of a couple years ago. Because while she was glad Ichabod didn’t feel the need to shut himself up in cabins anymore, she’d been hoping for more oohing and aahing at the big, shiny Time Square video screens, massive buildings, and bustling New York crowds, and she wanted to be the one who showed him all that stuff. Hopefully his reaction to the show would make up for it.
"I have been to operas before," he was saying while she mentally mapped and mused on the past and present. "If you're expecting to wow me with one of your modern versions, I assure you that there is little in the medium that could change, even considering the years between then and now. Music, story, romance, tragic death — it’s a tale as old as time itself, Lieutenant.”
"Whatever you say, Crane," replied Abbie.
She had purposely refrained from letting him hear any of the music or see any of the videos. She had even found a way to block any websites mentioning Hamilton from his profile on her computer, thanks to parental controls and a little bit of help from some tech sites. All he knew was that the musical was about Alexander Hamilton and his time before, during, and after the war, and that it co-starred some of Ichabod’s old buddies.
"Did you ever meet Hamilton?" Abbie asked when they stopped at a crosswalk. She held her arm out to keep Crane from crossing the street before the walk sign lit up. He huffed at her, like a petulant child about to insist that he totally hadn't been ready to jaywalk across a busy New York City street. Which he had been, no matter how puffed-up and affronted he looked.
"The man was General Washington's trusted aide,” he told her. “Of course I encountered him from time to time.”
That was about what Abbie had expected. She feigned surprise anyway, because sometimes it was fun to goad Ichabod into one of his history rants and they still had five more blocks before they’d be back to Broadway. She needed entertainment to distract both of them from her poor tour guide skills. "Really? What'd you think of him?"
To her surprise, however, Ichabod Crane was unusually concise in his assessment of one of his Eighteenth Century acquaintances: "He was... short."
"Seriously, Crane? You've waxed poetic about Thomas Jefferson’s handwriting and how he liked his democracies just so, but all you have to say about Alexander Hamilton is that he was short?” Abbie motioned them across the street and, once again, Ichabod looked at her like she was treating him as an invalid. He was being weirdly prickly about it. She decided she was going to find an opportunity to do something else embarrassingly protective, like tuck his scarf more securely around his neck or chastise him about his refusal to wear gloves. Just to annoy him.
"He was short.”
"You were over six feet at a time when the average height for men was five foot eight, of course he was short." Abbie made an elaborate, please gesture with one gloved hand and told him, “I was hoping you’d go into more detail.”
"Very well. He was intelligent, as far as I could ascertain, and good in combat. Washington found him to be a suitable aide-de-camp," the last words word said with a precise accent in what Abbie knew as Ichabod’s 'irritated by the world around him' voice and she hid a grin, “which was a great honor, especially for one so young. Beyond that, I just cannot say.”
Chuckling with disbelief, Abbie shook her head. “Come on, a kid growing up impoverished on an island writes his way into college and a revolution? You can’t tell me you’re not impressed by that! And the man pretty much single-handedly set up America’s financial system.”
“Ah! A financial system that is doing so well, is it?” Ichabod made a derisive sound in the back of his throat. “Tell that to the astronomical deficit this country is currently facing. Furthermore, Hamilton’s life amounting to banks is hardly something to impress me.”
"He made it onto money, Crane. Ten dollar founding father, and all.” She swatted his arm playfully. “I don't see you on any dollar bills.
"I would think not!” In spite of the lack of actual fight in their bickering, he did sound genuinely appalled at the idea of being on a bill. Abbie secretly suspected he was jealous and was just overcompensating with shock. “My role in the war was one of espionage. To put me on the currency — especially since I fell before the proper establishment of the democracy — would be ludicrous." He did that shoulder-shuffling, straightening thing that made Abbie picture him as a preening peacock in a military coat. "Regardless of his position on the ten dollar bill, however, it remains that Hamilton's constant... posturing, was ultimately unfulfilled. Banks!"
Another crosswalk meant another stop, but Ichabod knew what was coming and halted well before Abbie could do anything to mess with him again. When she looked up at him, he lifted a single eyebrow at her and she had to look away casually, even though she was pretty sure the jig was up. Still wouldn’t stop her from finding another way to mess with him later, though.
“It wasn’t just banks,” she said. “Did you seriously not look up any of your old buddies on the internet? I taught you how to use Wikipedia."
"After reading what the resource had to say about Washington and Jefferson, I found myself wholly unamused by its clear bias. I wasn't going to venture forth into any others," Ichabod grumbled. “Even if it was Hamilton.”
“Even if—” Abbie stopped, turning to face him, and poked a finger at his chest. “You’re jealous!”
Ichabod went all flustered, mouth opening and closing several times before he actually spoke the indignant words, “I beg your pardon, Lieutenant!”
“‘Posturing,’ all that stuff about his being intelligent as far as you could ascertain, the forced schadenfreude over his role in banking — and you basically just admitted you wouldn’t mind the ‘bias’ of the internet putting a tarnish on him,” she listed each point off on the fingers of the hand not prodding Ichabod in the chest. “You were jealous of Alexander Hamilton!”
“I assure you I was nothing of the sort,” he countered. They both started walking again, but Abbie wasn’t finished. She’d found something more fun than stopping him at crosswalks.
“He did have a reputation for being handsome,” Abbie said, faking a thoughtful tone.
“I believe we have covered the short subject already,” Ichabod bit back.
Abbie ignored him. “Was it because Washington picked him to be his aide?”
“He was barely older than twenty years of age, Lieutenant!” Ichabod blurted, and Abbie couldn’t help the healthy peal of laughter that erupted from her at how easy it had been. She watched his cheeks turn pink from embarrassment — or frustration? — rather than the cold, and tried her best to stifle her giggles for the sake of his pride. He was pretty cute when his feathers got all ruffled — was this why ladies were inevitably charmed whenever he tried to flirt with them?
“Oh, come on, Crane,” she said, aiming for a comforting tone but failing to hide the laughter still bubbling in her voice, “Washington could hardly pick you to write his letters during battle. You had to go… I don’t know, defeat vampires or something.”
“I am fairly certain that vampires never arose during the war, Lieutenant.”
He was back to being grumpy and grumbling, but she could tell that his embarrassment had dimmed at her words. She reached out and patted him on the arm. “Washington trusted you with the fate of the world. You should be proud of that.”
There was a small flicker of a smile at the sincerity in her voice, then more irritated flouncing when Abbie used the last stop before they neared the theatre to get in that petty adjustment of Ichabod’s scarf. He was, as predicted, quite put out by it, and the red tinge had briefly returned to his cheeks.
Both were quiet as they walked back to the garage where — for an exorbitant fee — Abbie had parked her car. The sun had fully set by the time the show had ended and the city was another world altogether at night, something that Abbie enjoyed even while she was wishing she’d brought her FBI-issued Glock. Just in case. It was, after all, quite a walk from the theatre to the garage.
Underneath the noise of growling cars, horns, and shouting pedestrians, Abbie could occasionally hear Ichabod humming tunes she recognized from the musical. She wondered if he even knew he was doing it, or if it was just something that came with a perfect memory and catchy music. When she looked at him, he seemed lost in thought — was he even looking around at the city? Something in her wanted to force him out of his reverie, just so that she could enjoy him enjoying the look of Manhattan in the nighttime hours. She didn’t, though. He seemed comfortable with the thinking and the humming, so she let him be.
Inside the car, once Abbie had gotten the heat going and had removed her gloves in order to plug their Sleepy Hollow address into the GPS, Ichabod broke the silence of the car with a clearing of his throat. Abbie glanced over at him and saw him staring into the middle distance, eyes pointed at the windshield but clearly not seeing a bit of what was beyond the glass.
“The… events after the war,” he ventured slowly, “...were they creations for the narrative of the ope— musical, or were they factually based?”
“I little bit of this, a little bit of that,” she responded casually, starting the car. “I think they flipped some dates around because it fit better, and Hamilton actually had like, eight kids, and a couple of people in the story should have died a lot earlier. I’m not the history buff in this relationship, Crane, so a lot of that’s lost on me. But I’ll unblock the sites so you can get to researching, if you want.”
“Did he actually have an affair with that young woman?”
“Whoa, yeah,” Abbie told him, shaking her head. “First sex scandal in United States politics. He wrote like, ninety-something pages about it and published them for the public to see.”
“Unbelievable.” Crane snorted. “The very idea of that man being unfaithful to such a woman as Eliza Hamilton — it baffles and bewilders.”
“Well, besides that — what did you think? Bring back any memories from the good old days?”
“As I was taking part in a war, I would hardly consider those ‘the good old days,’” he said, testily. “But it was… a thrilling show, Lieutenant. I must admit that my original comparison of your modern musical theatre with the operas of my age was unfair. I could not imagine myself falling asleep during such a performance as Hamilton, while my record of doing so at operas is…” He shrugged and unwound his scarf from his neck, as the car was warm enough that he no longer needed it. “Suffice to say that it happened on occasion.”
“What about Hamilton himself? Change your opinion?”
Ichabod held his long-fingered hands up to the heat emitting from the car’s vents. Abbie rolled her eyes because, duh his hands were cold after they'd been walking for half an hour and he hadn't worn gloves. “My opinion of Hamilton is now… more complicated than it had been,” he said.
“Not just ‘short’ anymore?”
“Alas, no. The musical revealed layers to the man which I had not noticed during the brief period I knew him. It seems that some distance and… a rather catchy narrative can help tear down biases and prove people to be far more complicated than previously thought.” He pulled one hand away from the air vent and held up a finger — signaling lecture mode, of course. “Although, I do take exception to the portrayal of Thomas Jefferson as a ne’er-do-well—”
“Figures.”
“I must protest, Lieutenant! Jefferson was a studious, learned man — and rather shy in public, in case you didn’t know—”
“I didn’t,” Abbie said. She took advantage of a stop in traffic and leaned across the car to pull open the glove compartment in front of Ichabod. She plucked something from inside and held it up: a jewel case emblazoned with the familiar gold-and-black Hamilton design. “But if you promise not to rant about Jefferson all the way back to Sleepy Hollow, we can listen to this and you can think about those layers to the tune of a catchy narrative some more.”
Ichabod carefully took the CD case from her hand and, after a brief fight to open it, slipped the first disc of the album into the player. The opening notes drummed through the car’s speakers and Abbie grinned.
“You know there’s a lot of music history in this thing too,” she said. “Mostly from around the time I was growing up, so I could tell you a bit about it. Give you a taste of your own lecturing medicine for a change.”
Ichabod sighed. “I assure you, Miss Mills, that such an event would be very much unlike medicine to me.” He drummed his fingers against the armrest on the door, perfectly in beat with the music. “I would enjoy it very much, and thank you for such an education... Just as I thank you for taking the time to bring me here, when I know you have been so busy.”
"We've both been busy," she said, "but I thought we deserved it. And I wanted..." Abbie rolled her shoulders, not really knowing what she wanted at all. At least, she didn't know how to say what she wanted without insulting him or embarrassing herself. After a soft exhale, she simply told Ichabod, "I wanted to show you something new, you know? Something fun. Proof that the Twenty-First Century is more than supernatural threats and insults to your past."
She could hear the smile in his voice when he responded, "You have accomplished your mission quite splendidly."
When she flicked her gaze over in his direction, Ichabod was looking back at her with that softly appreciative expression he sometimes got when the people who cared about him did nice things that lessened the pain of being trapped in a time he didn't quite understand. Abbie decided that she liked that look even more than she liked him all comically vexed.
With her eyes back on the road, she reached out and turned the volume on the music up just a bit, letting the — quite fitting — mixture of Ichabod's revolutionary past and Abbie's musical one overtake all conversation for a little while.