Work Text:
August Corbin’s Cabin, Two Years Ago
Crane sometimes felt like a marooned sailor adrift in the twenty-first century, where clothes, customs, and manners were so often alien and off-putting – and that wasn’t even considering the supernatural threats to all who called Sleepy Hollow home. That dislocation was one reason he rather liked staying at the old Corbin cabin. Here, in the midst of a natural world of trees and water and birdsong which seemed more like his old time, he could allow himself to relax.
Here, too, he could experiment with the twenty-first century, and he could offer respite to Lieutenant Mills, who so needed time to restore her equilibrium. He’d researched contemporary breakfast customs and receipts for this particular offering.
“Pancakes!” he announced now, carrying the plate of syrup-drenched, fruit-topped carbohydrates in from the kitchen area.
The Lieutenant looked up from her frowning scrutiny of the newspaper (where she had told him she expected to find clues to the most recent depredations of the Horseman). “Crane,” she said, “you didn’t have to.”
“No, but I wished to,” he said. Then, scrupulously honest: “Er, you might not wish to go into the kitchen until I’ve had some time to clean, however. I used rather a lot of dishes.”
Her laughter was spontaneous, delighted, delightful. “A lady never checks up on a gentleman when he’s cooking for her,” she said.
“I’ll certainly remind you of that later,” he said, put the plate down in front of her, and hovered until she took the first bite.
Her smile told him he’d done well. It anchored him for another trying day.
August Corbin’s Cabin, A Year Ago
Crane stood on the porch, looking out at the sway of trees and desperately trying not to think – about estranged wives and insane, murderous sons and the distance he felt their existence create between him and the Lieutenant. He could think of nothing else.
Apocalypse threatened again, always, and here he was trapped in old bonds and false hope.
Up the drive came Lieutenant Mills’ official vehicle – faster than it looked, he thought, which seemed apt enough for a warrior like her. She had had to work a night shift with the Sheriff’s Department, regardless of the horrors being perpetrated by Jeremy and whoever he had dragged into the mess. She had to work too hard, Crane thought, even as he managed a smile for her as she emerged from the vehicle.
“Hey,” she said wearily. “We got more stuff to take care of, Crane.”
He offered his hand and assisted her up the steps. It was a mark of her exhaustion, he knew, that she let him.
“Let me prepare you a good breakfast first, Lieutenant. You need re-fueling,” he said.
She was so close to him, swaying on her feet as if she had been over-imbibing, and he felt her warmth everywhere. But he didn’t dare steer her by more than a hand-clasp; she was chary of such attentions, lest someone somewhere not realize how very, very strong she was. He, of course, knew well she was a power in the world.
So it was with both pleasure and concern that he felt her rest her forehead against his arm. “Your pancakes?” she muttered. “I could handle some sugar.”
He bit back the innuendo he now knew was part of this century’s vernacular for ‘sugar,’ and merely held himself still in support. “Pancakes with extra syrup,” he said.
She laughed wearily into his coat before pushing away. “Bring it on, partner,” she said.
He fixed her pancakes, bacon, and coffee. The brightness in her eyes came back after the first stack and the second cup.
He felt immeasurably better, too. That distance between them he’d feared was an ant’s-foot, no more.
Abbie and Crane’s shared house, the first Sunday
The sunlight slanted into the kitchen, but it was no warmer than the Lieutenant’s lazy smile at him. “I could go for Sunday brunch,” she said.
He’d already retrieved the ingredients for a morning meal, but – “If you wish to go out, Lieutenant, that’s fine.”
“No, no,” she said, and then stretched and yawned. Her yoga shirt rode up on her stomach, and it was all he could do to make himself look away. “Sunday brunch is another custom of the age, Crane. Food and the Sunday papers and mimosas or bloody Marys for hours is the thing.”
“Ah, I see,” he said, although he didn’t quite.
“It’s about a lazy time to relax, that’s all,” she said. “And, just saying, I’m not getting out of my yoga pants.”
“Right. Should I, er, prepare breakfast then? Or ‘brunch’?” He did his best to keep his disdain for the neologism out of his voice.
She knew, of course, and, laughing, she lightly punched his arm. “Don’t do the snooty thing, Crane. You’ll like it.”
He made eggs and bacon and toast, and got out the strawberry preserves he’d bought at the farmer’s market. She dug into the refrigerator for a bottle of “cheap bubbly, got it when I left Quantico,” she said, and mixed up the most delicious beverage of orange juice and New York State sparkling wine. She put on music, the singer Nina Simone, who she said had been a favorite of her mother’s. She opened the windows so the music would pour out, and they ate and drank, and read the New York Times together on the front porch.
After his second mimosa, he set into motion the porch swing on which they sat, a gentle, soothing, back and forth. His Lieutenant looked up from the sports section. “So you like brunch now, huh?” she said teasingly.
He had so many words, but nothing to describe the sense of a golden moment out of time. He contented himself with a soft, “Indeed,” and another push of the swing, and another sip of his drink.
The archives, a few weeks later
“Research party needs more coffee!” Miss Jenny said to Crane, there in the archives at an hour of the morning usually reserved (he thought resentfully) for milking cows or other such bucolic pleasures. But then Pandora had been causing trouble, and he, Miss Jenny, and young Corbin had been there overnight reading through various arcane texts he’d just acquired through a wonder called Inter-Library Loan.
“I suppose I should fetch it,” he said. “It might be noted, however, that I was the one who braved the doughnut shop at its opening to bring us our repast. Is it not someone else’s turn?”
“Got it!” said the Lieutenant from the doorway. She held a tray of cups in her hands.
He felt slightly odd – although she’d slipped in today, he usually knew she was near (“some Witness-thing,” she’d told him at one point, confessing that she had the same sensation of knowing his presence). But there was no time for such uncertainties now. He hurried over and took the tray from her hands.
“Did you apprehend the criminals you sought?” he said. She had been absent from research because of an FBI stake-out of some quite ordinary bank thieves.
“Yep,” she said, and smiled at him as she plucked one of the cups off the tray. “This is mine. I need it.”
“And I’ll take mine to go,” Joe said, taking another cup. “I’ve got a shift this morning.”
“Why didn’t you say something?” Miss Jenny demanded of him. “We wouldn’t have made you stay up all night.”
Joe just smiled at Miss Jenny, and didn’t reply. Crane thought the softness in the young man’s eyes told the tale well enough: he would do anything for her.
Crane glanced at the Lieutenant. He understood Joe’s emotion all too well.
“I’ll walk you out then,” Miss Jenny said, and simultaneously rubbed Joe’s back and took her own coffee from the tray. With a smile over her shoulder for her sister, she used that connection to push Joe forward. He went willingly.
The archives seemed so quiet once the footsteps had gone. The Lieutenant seemed so weary, so in need of comfort.
“Shouldn’t you be at home, resting?” he said.
“Can’t. Got to get in to the office and write the report first,” she said. With a flick of the finger she sent the lid of her drink flying, and then sighed. “I’m beat, though.”
“Here,” he said, pulling out a stool for her at the nearest library table. “Sit, and I’ll share my doughnuts.”
“Won’t catch me saying no.” She collapsed just a little when she took her seat, exhaustion written in every line of her body.
He took a spare napkin – paper; so wasteful compared to good cloth, but these were the times – and piled up three doughnuts, including a jelly-filled one which was his particular favorite. She deserved the best.
However, when she stole his last two doughnut holes, he was moved to protest. “Lieutenant, regardless of your tiredness, that is uncalled-for thievery!”
Smiling through powdered-sugar-touched lips, she said, “Aww, you can handle it, Crane. But in case you’re still mad, let’s hug it out.”
His arms full of her, her arms locked around his waist, he closed his eyes. She was indeed right here. He felt her presence in every part of himself.
The tunnels, some days after that
Miss Mills had sat with Miss Jenny for hours, down in Jefferson’s protected space. Crane had done due diligence in patrol and research, but he felt the job of tending their fallen comrade more properly lay with the Lieutenant and young Corbin, who’d been almost frantic during their patrol, mad to get back to her.
The fact that he himself was worried about Miss Mills, that he was somehow besieged by unhappy memories of her in Purgatory, Crane considered immaterial. He knew that the bond between the sisters was unbreakable, he knew that Joe and Miss Jenny had grown close, and he had no intention of making anyone’s life more difficult.
So he kept his anxiety to himself, and made sure to stop by his and the Lieutenant’s house in order to gather together some supplies and sustenance. The Lieutenant had had no breakfast.
When he and Joe returned, she looked up from her post by Miss Jenny’s bedside, and his heart contracted once, hard, at the pain in her eyes. “Lieutenant, are you all right?”
“Not really,” she said, stoic despite her words, and then looked at Joe. “You want to take over?”
“Of course,” Joe said. He squeezed her shoulder as they passed each other, at which the Lieutenant smiled. It wasn’t a real smile, but it was something.
“I’ve brought food for you, you need your breakfast,” Crane said, as he led her to the next room. This close he felt her exhaustion and near-despair; this close he felt her indomitable will. For some reason the latter heightened his hidden anxiety. To counteract it, he bustled about, opening the box of good things, cataloguing them as he retrieved each item and set it on the counter: “Egg sandwich, just as you’ve shown me how you like it. A selection of fruit. Spoon. Cloth napkin. Your coffee is in that insulated jug.”
“Crane,” she said. Nothing more.
“Lieutenant,” he said, and offered his arms.
She burrowed in, sighing. “Breakfast is the best meal of the day,” she muttered, and held on more tightly.
The morning after Pandora’s tree closed
Crane sat – gingerly, because of his strapped ribs – on the single porch chair. He had purposely avoided the porch swing, although he didn’t want to articulate even to himself why he couldn’t deal with that today.
The Lieutenant was lost. He was all but alone in the world.
He’d tried to make breakfast this morning, but his hands had been trembling too much to even slide bread out of its wrapper and into the toaster. He had somehow managed a pot of tea, but even that felt… wrong. Nothing had any savor without her.
“Abbie,” he whispered, to sun and cool wind and the empty porch. There was no answer. He hadn’t really expected one.
Stilling his shaking hands on his knees, he began to calculate how he might get her back. He refused to believe she was gone forever. She was somewhere in the underworld, and if so, she would be still reachable. He had to believe it.
“Crane,” said Miss Jenny from the door behind him.
He carefully turned around. Part of him – a small, ignoble part – was flickeringly angry at the way his partner had sacrificed herself for Miss Jenny. But even these flickers of rage were sputtering out. The only other person who’d feel as horrible as he did this morning would be Abigail’s sister, and he would not fail Abbie’s last command to take care of the one Abbie loved best. “Did you sleep?” he inquired. “Have you recovered any of what you’ve lost?”
“Shit, Crane, I….” The fearsome and powerful Miss Jenny couldn’t formulate her words. She had been so choked by emotion – there in the cave, and out in the night where they’d found poor Joe, desperately wounded. Without asking her, after taking Joe to the hospital he’d brought her here and tucked her up in the spare bedroom. She had closed her eyes as soon as she was on the bed, but he’d seen the tears stealing from beneath her lashes.
He saw her fresh tears now, and went into action. “Right, well, I’ve spoken to the hospital, and Joe will be discharged in an hour. We can get right to work in the archives after that, searching for our options, and –“
“Put down the lecturing finger, Crane,” Miss Jenny said on a watery chuckle.
“Oh. Yes. I apologize. I’ve been told I do it too often.” He stared down at those still shaking, empty hands. “Er, are you hungry? May I get you anything?”
She gazed at him. The tears had been blinked away, and she was warrior Jenny Mills again. “Crane, we will find her,” she said. “And on the way to the hospital to get Joe I’ll buy you breakfast. Because… because I know, okay?”
Her eyes told him that she did indeed know what he felt, what he’d failed to put into words so many times. All he could say in return was “Thank you, sister Jenny.”
She sniffed away one last touch of tears. “Crap, that’s all I need – you for a brother. But I guess it’s a done deal.” She smiled as she said it, and punched his arm (much harder than Abbie did). “C’mon, Orpheus.”
Orpheus in the underworld… He’d seen Gluck’s opera in 1770 in London, at which point he’d judged harshly the rewritten happy ending to the tragic story. Now, however, he clung to the idea that Love would save his Eurydice, even if Orpheus hadn’t spoken what she’d needed to hear. He managed a real smile in return. “I believe it’s my job to buy you breakfast,” he said, and guided her inside.
He felt Abbie’s absence in every part of himself, but now he also felt hope.