A/N: This story is set post Season 3 finale, although technically, a little before the very end, before Crane's visit to Abbie's grave. I refuse to accept that Abbie is gone, and indeed, so does Crane in this story. I hope you enjoy this, my second Sleepy Hollow fic.

The Once and Future Crane

Chapter 1

It had taken him five days to pull himself out of his shock before Ichabod Crane was able to cry. When it finally happened, he was sitting alone in The Archives, the light soft and drowsy, and he had glanced up from the book he had not been reading to the table where Abbie Mills had often sat. For a moment he had forgotten she was gone, and his sleep-deprived brain had fully expected to see her there, grinning impishly at one of her own sly comments. But she was not there.

She was not there.

She would never be there again. Her soul had fled to some faraway place where he could not reach her, and he felt merely half-alive because of it.

In the first few days after Abbie's death, Miss Jenny had looked in on him, had even brought him food, which he had only halfheartedly eaten in her presence.

His only drink had been Scotch.

Neither of them had spoken of Abbie, and after she saw him take a bite of Chinese takeout, she'd left him alone again with his grief. He'd wanted to reach out to her, to lend comfort to the woman who had lost both her lover and her sister, but to his shame, he could not summon the strength to do it.

Mr. Mills had brought the Scotch. He too had left after a few awkward words, his dark eyes bright with his own unshed tears.

Alone with his disjointed thoughts and his Scotch, Crane had sat staring sightlessly at the walls of books he and Abbie had poured through in search of clues of demons and gods and apocalyptic prophecy. All for naught, it would seem. Sure, they had saved the world—a couple of times—but Crane was having difficulty appreciating Abbie's sacrifice when she had saved everyone else's world but left him with nothing but an un-fillable emptiness. He knew that was the height of selfishness on his part, but there it was. When he was at last able to cry, that was one of the things he knew he would cry most about.

When the first sob came, it felt as if it were torn from deep inside his very soul, and Crane bawled like a frightened child lost in the woods. The tears he had unwillingly dammed since Abbie had faded into Pandora's box , since they had held her private memorial service with not even a body to mourn, had broken free at last, violently wracking his lithe frame. For another day afterwards, he couldn't seem to stop the flow of them, until he was a wrecked, pitiful mess, his tears finally drying on blotchy cheeks, his eyes red and sunken and empty. Another day had faded into darkness without his notice, but then, exhausted, he had slept for twelve hours, though in his dreams he'd relived her sacrifice over and over.

He awoke at last with a pounding headache, puffy eyes, a painfully empty stomach, and a plan. He ate cold Chinese food from the mini fridge Jenny had bought a year before, downed one of her ubiquitous diet sodas she kept there, tasting neither, but knowing that what he was about to do would require physical sustenance that he didn't have.

He went to the small bathroom and washed his face and hands, refusing to look at himself in the mirror, dreading what he would see there. He forced himself to make coffee, only flinching a little when he smelled the strong, familiar brew that had been Abbie's favorite.

The sleep and the cry had done him good, he'd realized, had cleared his head and revived his determination. In his dreams he had come to the conclusion that what had happened to Abbie had been all wrong—not just because she was so young, so wonderful, so undeserving of such an end. No, he couldn't accept her death for a much more practical reason: it went against all prophecy of the fate of the witnesses. Her death had been decidedly premature in the grand scheme of things, for the prophets had foretold that the witnesses would suffer seven tribulations, and by Crane's count, they had made it through only two.

The universe owed them five more, and by God, Crane intended to collect.

Abbie's last words to him were not to lose hope. In his unconscious vision of her after Pandora's box had exploded, she had encouraged him to let her go, to go on with his life without her. This, he saw now, could not truly have been his Abbie, no matter how comforting she had seemed at the time, no matter how real her warm hand had felt beneath his lips. He was certain now that some nefarious force had planted this false vision in his mind in an attempt to make him give up, to set aside the duty they had had as witnesses. With her gone, and he at loose ends, Crane was convinced some evil would re-emerge that he would not be able to destroy alone.

He was not going to allow that to happen. He needed his fellow witness beside him.

But with Pandora's box destroyed, along with Pandora herself, he had no idea how he could bring Abbie back, or, indeed where she had vanished to. Heaven? Purgatory? Certainly it could not be Hell, not his Lieutenant, a more pure and perfect being he had not encountered, in this life or his last.

He thought of séances or different spells to raise the dead, but he knew they might only bring either her spirit or her body back, not likely both at the same time. That was unacceptable to him. He wanted all of her—the true essence of Abigail Mills joined with her petite body—or nothing at all. Besides, such dark magic was beyond his powers, and would likely involve additional, unforeseen sacrifices he was not prepared to make.

No, he was left with only one recourse that he could think of, and the gravity of the idea was not lost on him. It entailed its own risks, risks he had been unwilling to take in the past for fear of changing history, or destiny or fate, or whatever one might call it. But then again, if it failed, what might he lose? Abbie would likely die again. Joe Corbin would probably perish as well. Perhaps even he could die, which might actually be a blessing, given how dead he felt now without her.

Another obvious risk would be that The Hidden One's plan would work, or even Pandora's less catastrophic, slightly more benevolent need for world domination might transpire. Crane might be sentencing the earth to enslavement and destruction through his selfish desire to get Abbie back.

But perhaps, just perhaps, everything might work out even better this time. Maybe, if one looked at it another way, going back in time was what was meant to be, what he was supposed to do in order to bring balance back to the universe and fulfill the rightful prophecy of the two witnesses. Maybe not going back and attempting to right things would sentence the world to even greater pain and suffering without both witnesses there to stop it.

He would gladly undergo five more tribulations with Abbie than live one lifetime without her.

It was settled then, thought Crane, sipping the strong, reviving coffee. He would use the same traveler's spell that Katrina had used, that had taken Abbie with her back in time. He would have a brief few hours to reverse the spell if things began to go wrong quickly—Abbie had written Grace Dixon's reversal spell down in her family journal—but after that window had closed, he would be forced to deal with whatever came next, good or bad. But Crane was confident he would be able to steer their course around the pitfalls of what had happened before.

But it begged the question, how far back should he go?

It occurred to Crane immediately that he would go back to the day—no, the day before—he first felt the stirring in Katrina's necklace, the sudden glow he now knew was when Pandora had stolen the Horseman of Death's power and stored it in her infernal box. If he could somehow stop Pandora, he could stop the rise of The Hidden One, and thus forestall the deaths of Master Corbin and Abbie. He didn't know yet how he could accomplish any of this, but he was confident that knowledge of the two gods' existence before they were unleashed upon the world would allow him to put an end to their evil intentions before they even began. Kill them in the shell like the snakes they were, as Shakespeare once suggested Brutus had done to Julius Caesar. (Crane resolutely chose to discount what happened to Brutus as a result, however.)

With one more sip of his cooling coffee, Crane set to work preparing himself both mentally and physically for what he was about to do. He took a few deep, Yoga breaths that would have made Abbie proud. If he were truthful with himself, there really was only one simple reason he was going to do this. Pandora of all beings had pointed it out before she died.

"You love her," she had said. The goddess had been so completely on the nose that he'd felt the words like a physical blow to his gut. Why had he not seen it before? Why had he not acted upon it while he had had the chance? He had once thought that Katrina was the love of his life, but he knew now she had only been the love of his first life. Abbie was his love for all time, and he could not bear to let her go now he belatedly realized it.

"I love you, Grace Abigail Mills," he said aloud to the quiet Archives. "And I shall have no qualms crossing time and space so that I might tell it to you in person, so that I might rectify all my failings on your account, face all my nonsensical fears. We are meant to be together, you and I, and I am sorry I was too late to understand that. But no more. You are my partner, my friend, my true and dearest love." He swallowed hard over the lump in his throat. "And I-I will not fail you again; this is my solemn vow."

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

His perfect memory had given him the words to cast Katrina's traveler's spell, and when he spoke aloud the day to which he wanted to return, he felt a richness in his heart, a strange dichotomy of both a heaviness and a lightness propelling him back and back until he disappeared into the mists of time…

A strange blurriness arrested his eyes and Crane involuntarily blinked several times to rid himself of it. At first, he thought the spell might not have worked, but as his eyes focused on his dim surroundings, he found that he was once again in the top bunk of a holding cell in the Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center. It had been less than a year since he'd been there, and he remembered well where he was. He looked down at his orange jumpsuit with a smile.

"Thank you, Jesus," he said to the ceiling.

"For what, man?" said his bottom bunkmate, and Crane laughed out loud, remembering.

"For just being you, my friend," replied Crane, hopping down from his bed.

Somewhere nearby, Abbie was alive and well, he thought joyfully, and just a phone call away. He felt around for the amulet suspended from his neck, and pulled out Katrina's necklace from beneath his shirt. He stared at the green stone carefully, pleased to find it had not changed in appearance, had not yet developed the crack that had formed when the Horseman's bond with the jewel had been severed by Pandora. He'd made it to just the right moment in time.

He went to the barred door of his cell.

"Guard!" he called. "I wish to make my one allotted phone call. Guard!"

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Abbie was sitting at a table in the visitor's area, a slightly sardonic smile forming on her lovely lips as she waited for him to join her. But instead of sitting down, he walked round the table and drew her impetuously into his arms.

"None of that!" protested a nearby guard. "No physical contact!"

He inhaled her achingly familiar floral scent and whispered her name in her hair. He felt her arms tighten around his waist before the guard pulled him none too gently away.

"My apologies," he said to Abbie, but not to the guard. He was not sorry for embracing her, but for the abruptness with which it had ended.

Abbie flashed her FBI badge, which had the desired effect of getting the officer to back down, and Abbie smiled her sincere thanks when he did. The man smiled back, and not for the first time Crane recognized how men responded to her charms. His heart constricted with sudden jealousy.

"What the hell, Crane," Abbie was muttering in embarrassment, sitting opposite him again as he settled his long legs beneath the table.

"By my count, it's been nine months, Lieutenant," he said, remembering this place in time. He reached for her hands across the table, pointedly ignoring the guard who was still staring daggers at his back. "I am exceedingly grateful to see you again."

His eyes bore intently into hers, and he didn't even try to hide his emotions. He knew he could pass this off under the guise of their nine-month separation, but she raised one skeptical eyebrow.

"Grateful?" she said. "You mean because I'm bailing you out of this dive, even though you haven't been in touch in months?"

"Yes, for that, among other things," he said mysteriously, but he could not have suppressed his smile had he wanted to. She must have seen some of his naked adoration in his eyes, for she looked down at their joined hands in mild surprise.

"I'm happy to see you too, Crane," she whispered almost shyly.

For a moment, Crane forgot where he was now, remembering instead how only days before he had watched her die before him. His eyes roamed hungrily over her beloved features, and he felt the pricking of tears behind his eyes at the joy of merely being in her presence again. He forgot the ruse of asking what she had been up to in his absence, forgot to tell her why he had called her to come to his rescue. In that moment, he wanted nothing more than to proclaim his love for her at the top of his lungs.

He had contemplated before he cast the traveler's spell whether he would tell Abbie what he had done, how he was, in fact, from the future. They had once made a pact to be honest with one another, and perhaps he would be...eventually. She would be angry with him for trying to rewrite history, for trivializing her sacrifice as Miss Jenny had warned him not to do right before Pandora's box had exploded. He would have to tread carefully, give her no reason to doubt him. He must be an actor equal to one of Shakespeare's finest, he realized, in order to carry this off, or at least do much better than he so far. At the same time, he could not afford to waste a precious moment of this time they had been given. He would do so many things differently now-first and foremost would be revealing his true feelings for her the moment he found a more suitable time and place.

With that in mind, he became aware that they were in the middle of the ICE detention center, and, squeezing her hands one last time, he reluctantly slipped his fingers away.

"Now," he began. "I suppose you're wondering what I was caught attempting to bring home with me…"

A/N: I hope you like this beginning. Thanks for giving this fic a try. I would love to hear what you think.