Chapter Text
"I don't want to talk about Katrina, Miss Mills,"
"Crane,"
"Miss Mills," he hissed as he downed the rest of his beer and slammed it down on the table. The fire crackled in the corner. An evening of drinking between the two witnesses had quickly evolved into a heated discussion, mainly because Abbie knew Crane was not addressing his issues with the very recent death of everyone he had once called family. That it had been at her hands and his. She wasn't even coping with it that well to be honest, sure, she'd been down to kill Henry for a while, but when it sinks in that you murdered your best friends son, that kind of changes the context, a bit. No matter how much self convincing she would do.
"Ichabod if not for yourself for me, okay? I need this. I need to talk about this,"
Crane looked at her, perplexed. "About what?"
"About how I murdered the son you once had faith in. About how you killed your wife to save my life. Call it survivors guilt or my conscious or whatever you damn well will, but I have not been at peace with this and I didn't even like them, nor harboured any illusions that they could be saved," she spat as she leaned over the table towards him. "I am your partner Crane but I have also brought you pain, however you may look at it, and it hurts," she stressed. "You lost so much just waking up in this century and you lost it all again, and I grieve for you, I feel what you must feel, and for you to act like it's nothing, well damn it Crane it's not human, and I know you're human, I need you to feel something Crane, have a reaction, something," she begged.
Crane looked away from her to stare into the fire. "It wounds me," he began. "That I have lost all I have known. Yes. It burns me, that my wife, for whom I pined for a year, so easily, without a second thought, betrayed me, it, it rends my soul," he emphasized, suddenly turning to look her in the eye. "That even after all I have put you through, Miss Mills, you are still so concerned for what I feel, or don't. And I am terrified that if I tell you what I do need, what I feel most of all as of late, you will think I am a monster,"
Abbie placed her hand on top of this. "Tell me Crane, tell me and we can work through it,"
"What I say next cannot be unsaid," he whispered, remembering that he had uttered something similar to Katrina. Abbie swallowed around the lump that had taken form in her throat.
"I'm a big girl Crane, I can take it," she assured him, nodding encouragingly.
"I want to be held," he said and Abbie almost laughed. That was what he was so worked up about?
But then he continued.
"I need, I need to be held, cherished, the way one holds a lover after a coupling, after being laid bare and sharing in each other and feeling as if you have seen them and been seen, that comfort, I need to be seen, Abbie," the weight of her name hung in the air between them. "I do not ask for anything from you. But you asked for my innermost feelings on the manner, and that is the meat of it,"
Abbie moved towards Crane, closing the space between them rapidly, brushed hair away from his face and pressed her lips to his, gently, softly, she pulled away and met his eyes. "I see you, Ichabod," she whispered, putting her weight on him so that he was forced to lean backwards and capturing his lips with hers again.
I see you.