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Ichabod’s wife visits him in dreams. Abbie knows this because, after one close escape too many, he tells her. Katrina sends him messages, helps them find clues, warns them of danger. Besides being grateful, Abbie doesn’t think much of it. A dead witch trying to protect them is just one more insane thing to add to her rapidly growing list. It wouldn’t even make the top three of her strangest entries.
She throws her jacket down on the sofa the moment they enter her apartment, pretends not to see when Ichabod picks it up and hangs it on the rack. “I believe I shall be retiring soon, Miss Mills. Early to sleep, early to rise.”
She climbs onto a stool and grabs an apple from the bowl in front of her. Abbie guesses he lives here now or something. They never discussed it; Crane just made his way to the guest room after a late night and hasn’t left since. She takes a bite of the fruit and doesn’t bother acknowledging him. It’s not like she’s trying to be rude, she just wants some time to wallow (goodbye Quantico, goodbye Corbin, goodbye peace and quiet) and it’s hard to do that when the roommate you never asked for won’t leave you alone.
“Right then,” he mutters and makes his way toward his room. “Good night.” She waits for the door to close before flopping onto the couch and grabbing a half read book off the coffee table. Here’s to another long night.
-
She’d fallen asleep at some point. Half slumped over on the couch, she rights herself, the book and apple core lying on the floor at her feet. The only light is a sickly yellow being cast by the streetlight outside of her window and there is someone else in the room.
When it comes to fight or flight, Abbie has always chosen the former. You can’t be a cop, a good one anyway, if there’s any real question about that. She doesn’t turn, but she knows exactly where her gun is (on the counter at her back), that it isn’t Ichabod (he’d be talking her ear off already if it were) and that she must move soon.
A plan quickly comes together in her mind (a smooth fall the carpet, a roll to the side of the couch before a mad dash to her weapon) but then it steps from the shadows and everything in her mind goes blank. Too long limbs attached to a sexless torso, skin too white for blood to be pumping beneath its surface and the face... Abbie’s always been a fighter, but this thing is in no way shape or form anything resembling human. She has no idea where to even begin. She is frightened into place, she cannot move.
It takes a step closer, then it begins to speak. Not out loud, but she can hear it clearly. Voice strangely familiar as it swirls though her head, clenches tight.
I have so much to tell you.
-
She wakes up with a start, mouth open on a scream she has to physically stifle to keep from working its way out. She’s slick with sweat and trembling, the nails of her left hand are digging into her cheek when she turns and sees Ichabod watching her from his doorway.
She doesn’t want to talk about it, not now, maybe not ever. About what it, he (Andy, oh God, Andy) told her. About what happens after, about death, about pain, about love, about a witness for heaven and a witness for hell (Did you think we’d have no voice in this fight? He asked, head tilting to the side. Did you hope the Horseman was all there was?). He wants to ask what’s happened, to come toward her. She can see it in the tightness of his mouth, in the way his body shifted when their eyes met.
“We should be on our way soon, Lieutenant,” he says instead, “no lazing about. There’s work to do.”
She takes a deep breath and nods as he leaves her to her thoughts.
-
The contents of Corbin’s locked file cabinet don’t offer the answers she wants. There is no description of the second witness called, no distinguishing marks or traits she can cling to. Even if there were, even if she was sure of her destiny, she also has free will. There is darkness inside of her as well as light. She has the potential to be turned, seduced. (The things we’ll show you) She denied him, but a small part of her wants to see. A small part of her needs to.
While Ichabod’s wife guides his visions, demons steer her own.
It’s just one more thing to add to the list.
-
Two days later, she realizes no amount of Starbucks will keep her awake forever. She can’t do her job like this, she can’t think like this. Abbie is a fighter (always has been, always will be) and the only way to face this is to do it head on. Abbie climbs into bed that night, lays back and lets it happen. He’s there again when she opens her eyes, Andy, or whoever he is now.
“Tried to escape us, did you?” He asks.
Abbie sits up, pulling her feet beneath her and as far away from him as she can without moving off the bed, without confirming that she’s terrified. “Don’t flatter yourself,” she finally says. “I’ve been busy is all.”
He laughs and the sound makes her want to cover her ears, makes her want to run away more than any other part of this. “Good,” Andy says, “you can’t escape Him anyway. I wouldn’t bother trying.”
“Him?”
“Well, he’s beyond all that now, but Him will do. The Faceless Harbinger, Our Nightmare Made Flesh, he’s been called many things by beings such as you.”
“You were a being like me once.”
“I have ascended.”
She scoffs. “This is what I have to look forward to? He almost cut your head off.”
Andy would’ve smirked at that, the thing he is now simply sways forward slightly. She startles at the sudden movement and Andy seems satisfied with that reaction. He’s still halfway across the room but she swears she can feel his breath on her face. “His love is not always generous.”
“I’m a witness,” she says, heart thumping hard. “Why even bother with me?”
“Because there’s something in you, just like there was something in me. He saw, even back when you were just a kid, He knew. You were blessed with His mark the moment He showed Himself to you. This,” he says, raising his arms and standing to his full, terrible height, “is what waits for you, Abbie. This is all there is for people like us.”
“No.”
He can’t exactly make facial expressions anymore, not with the lack of eyes and a mouth, but she would swear he’s smiling.
-
When she jerks awake, Ichabod is sitting on the edge of her bed muttering something she can barely make out before it clicks into place (he’s praying). He’s holding her hand and she’s squeezing it so tightly it has to hurt, but he doesn’t complain.
“Ichabod?”
“Please believe that I truly am sorry,” he says, staring out of her window, his voice sounds strange. Raw. Quiet and earnest in a way she’s never heard from him. “I would equally bear this burden were I able.”
He doesn’t say that he wishes he could bear it for her, it wouldn’t be true (not when he saw, not when he knew) and she wouldn’t want to hear that anyway. He simply wants to extend his hand, to help her and it rings true in a way nothing else would have. She hasn’t told him much about her dreams, but he isn’t stupid. He’s seen her struggling not to fall asleep. He’s seen how she looks when she wakes up. He doesn’t know everything and she can’t tell him, not now, but she can tell him something.
Abbie clears her throat, checks the clock, cracks her knuckles. It takes two tries before she figures out what to say. “I’m battling demons, Ichabod.”
He leans closer and when he takes her beneath his arm, he smells like sleep and cotton and her body wash and she works herself as close to him as she can. “You are good, Abbie Mills,” he declares, lifting her chin to look him in the eyes. “You are virtuous and kind and decent. You will fight this. You will win.”
The certainty in his voice shouldn’t calm her, it shouldn’t make her want to cry, it shouldn’t mean much of anything. Not when he is secure in his position. Not when she can’t close her eyes without seeing milky flesh and fingers as sharp as knives, without seeing the vast emptiness that awaits her, without feeling the crushing weight of it, without wanting it (just a little, justalittlejustalittlejustalittle). Not when she has no escape. She squeezes him tighter.
It shouldn’t help.
It does.