Work Text:
Abbie hadn’t meant to take him home with her. She hadn’t really thought about where he’d be staying at all, to be honest.
Her day had been kind of hectic, what with her partner being beheaded, having been almost killed by the headless personification of death itself, breaking a crazy man from the past out of a mental institution, and finding out that the end was actually nigh, she hadn’t had much time to consider where the historical transplant from the Revolutionary War was going to spend the night.
In between filing report after report, she might have had a vague idea that she could dump him in a hotel or something, but then it was twelve thirty before she knew it, and Ichabod was slumped in one of those horrible, squeaky office chairs that made your legs fall asleep.
He looked exhausted. Could you get jet lagged from time travel? Only it wasn’t proper time travel, was it. He’d just been asleep for two hundred and fifty years. Hell of a century to wake up to.
“I’m gonna head home,” Abbie announced, jolting Ichabod out of whatever kind of time-lagged stupor he’d been in.
“I bid you goodnight, then,” he said, except his voice sounded off, and it was the look on his face that made up her mind. He looked tired. Really tired, and utterly, utterly lost.
And Jesus, he didn’t have anyone, did he? Everyone he’d known had been dead for centuries. He didn’t have a friend in the world.
Except, Abbie supposed, he had her. Kind of. Maybe. She’d be a pretty crappy second witness if she couldn’t even put the first witness up in his time of need.
Ichabod continued to look like a lost puppy.
“Jesus Christ,” Abbie muttered under her breath. Ichabod gave her an odd look. She wondered if he was going to tell her off for blaspheming, like her grandma used to. If he tried to smack her on the knuckles she was going to punch him in the face, though.
And okay, she was really tired if that was the kind of thought running through her head. “Come on,” she said, grabbing her bag and beckoning to him. “You’re coming with me.”
“To your home?” he asked, scrambling after her. “Is that… proper?” He said this hesitantly, like he was afraid he might offend her. After the “female lieutenant” incident, he’d been carefully respectful. Maybe he just didn’t want to get shot (she’d forgotten to mention that she’s not actually allowed to shoot him for pissing her off), or maybe he was a gentleman. Either way, he was very polite. For a white guy. From the 1700s.
“You’ll be sleeping on my couch,” Abbie assured him, leading him through the mostly empty police station to the parking lot. It was a small town, and even on a night like this most people went home early.
“I would be grateful to sleep in your stable,” Ichabod said, giving her a small, weary smile. “Thank you.”
“Hey now,” she said, unlocking her car and giving him a sly grin, trying to lighten the suddenly somber mood, “don’t we have a ‘special connection’ or whatever? Somebody has to put you up, and it might as well be me.” She didn’t bother telling him that she did not actually have a stable, or any horses (although there had been a period from eight and a half to nine when she would have gladly murdered a man for a pony).
He nodded and settled into the passenger seat. She didn’t have to remind him to put on his seat belt.
Ichabod sat silent, staring out the window, the yellow glow of passing streetlights casting moving shadows on his face. Abbie spent less time than she should looking at the road, and more time staring at his profile.
Are you okay, she almost asked, but didn’t because she knew the answer, and she didn’t want to make him lie to her. If her day had felt like some kind of fever dream, what had it been like for him? An endless, thundering rush of things that didn’t make any sense.
But it was quiet now, here, in this car, with the dark storefronts of main street Sleepy Hollow passing by. And Abbie thought it must be hitting him, finally, how much he had lost.
“We’re here,” Abbie said some minutes later, with a little relief. She pulled up in her driveway and killed the engine. “Home, sweet home.”
“This house is yours?” Ichabod said, sounding impressed. It was a pretty nice house, she supposed; an old Victorian style home. Especially impressive when you had been sleeping in tents on muddy battlefields for… however long.
“A quarter of it is,” she said, unlocking Ichabod’s door. The people in the other apartments were probably asleep. She’d have to be careful on the creaky, old stairs.
Abbie managed to get both herself and Ichabod’s gangly six foot whatever up the stairs and into her apartment without incident. Stairs hadn’t changed much in the last two hundred years, she supposed. But oh, she was going to have fun introducing Ichabod to escalators.
She left him flipping the light switch in her kitchen on and off while she dug through her closet for an extra blanket and pillow.
The faint strains of music drifted into her bedroom, just as she was deciding to give up and give him one of her pillows. She grabbed the second fluffiest one, and the extra comforter, and went to investigate.
Ichabod stood in the middle of her living room, among her mismatched furniture. In that moment, there was something otherworldly about him. It was obvious how little he belonged.
He had her music box in his hands.
She went to stand beside him. Together they watched the tiny ballerina spin around and around and around until the music ran out.
“These are still the same,” he told her, eyes still on the gold ballerina as it twirled out a few, final notes. He held the music box out to her, cupped in both hands like something precious. She tucked the pillow under her arm and reached to accept the little, gold box. Their fingers brushed as she took it.
“It was my sister’s,” she said, twisting the little screw on the side to start up the music again. “And before that it was my mother’s, then my grandmother’s. I’m not sure how far it goes back.” Probably not two hundred years, but who knew. It was an old thing, maybe even worth something. Not that Abbie would sell it. It shone prettily in the lamp light when she set it down on the coffee table.
“Come on, let’s get you settled in. I don’t know about you, but I am exhausted.” She dumped the pillow and blanket off to the side and started moving throw pillows.
Ichabod was startled but pleased to discover that the couch pulled out into a bed.
“I was wondering why it was so peculiarly thick,” he told her, perching on the edge of the mattress, “but now I see. An ingenious invention. Do you know the man who created it?” Abbie had to admit that she didn’t.
Ichabod started to look a little at sea again, sitting on the pull-out bed, hand carefully folded in his lap.
“Hey,” Abbie said gently, “Get some sleep. We’ll most likely need to save the world some more tomorrow, and we should probably be awake for it.”
“Words of wisdom.” Ichabod smiled at her. They were more or less eye to eye, now that he was sitting down. “You are committed, then.”
“Committed?”
“To saving the world with me.” His smile widened into an almost cheeky grin.
Abbie laughed then, because what was her life even becoming. And Ichabod laughed along with her, because it was a bit ridiculous, wasn’t it? Farcical. Bizarre. And just a little bit exhilarating.
“Yeah,” Abbie said, smiling back at him, “we’re gonna save the world.”