Ichabod ran the brush over Wolfgang's dusty shoulder. The staid gelding stood with his head hanging down and his eyes half-closed, enjoying the attention. For his part, Ichabod enjoyed grooming as one of his favourite tasks of horse care. it was almost as relaxing for him as for the horse.

"And there, you are complete, my good fellow. If you want my advice, stay out of the mud until after you've been ridden today." Ichabod advised the tall jumper with a friendly pat on the neck as he collected the grooming supplies together. The grey turned an ear companionably towards the sound of the man's voice. Ichabod no longer tried to stop himself conversing with the horses in the stables he worked most mornings at. Certainly the owners didn't find anything strange about it - Carole often had such full conversations with the horses one might have sworn they answered her back, and Ben, though more taciturn, would speak to them, albeit in a voice too low for most people to overhear just what he was saying.

The quiet, sleepy stables were Ichabod's best grasp on normalcy, the physical reminder that there were people in the world that didn't spent their waking hours (and at times a few of their sleeping) doing battle with the forces of evil. Still, though the stables themselves gave him great comfort, Ichabod found it difficult to be around Ben and Carole. It wasn't that they were outlandish or overtly forward about their affections for one another, the way some of the 'couples' he and Abbie had seen in public or god forbid, on a modern type of TV program called 'reality TV'. But they were so deeply, obviously in love nobody could fail to see it - from the shorthand they used when working together to the way they looked at one another. It was a world full of regretful memories for Ichabod, and also of reminders so naggingly familiar he hadn't yet admitted it to himself.

When he saw the way Ben and Carole were together, it wasn't always Katrina he pictured at his own side.

Eventually, after some weeks, Carole asked him about himself while he was helping her move bales of hay. Though she really looked nothing like Abbie, with her long, wildly curly hair and slightly hay-and-horse-hair speckled attire, there were times when Carole reminded him of his Lieutenant a great deal. The way she dived right into hard work, picking up the bales and hefting them without a thought, was one of those times. "How long have you been married for, Ichabod?"
Ichabod thought fleetingly about how to answer that. 'Two hundred and fifty-two years' was probably an answer that would arouse suspicion. "Two years." He settled upon at length. "My wife is..." He once again struggled to explain in simple terms and settled upon the same answer he'd once given Ben about his mare. "...a great distance away."

Surprise flickered over Carole's face. Even for somebody without Ichabod's observational skill, hers was an easy expression to read. She was so honest and she never hid anything, living so completely in the moment that every thought was written on her face. "So... I'm sorry, I just assumed, that the lady who picks you up sometimes, in the police uniform..."

"My partner, Lieutenant Mills." explained Ichabod, though the doubt panged within him. Was a 'partner' merely all Abbie was to him anymore? Swallowing, he cleared his throat and tried to steer the conversation away from Abbie. And Katrina. Some days, thinking, worrying, about them both... it was unbearable. "How did you and your fiance meet?"

"It was, um, about... wow, six years ago now." Carole replied. "We both worked at the same stables."

"Ah, I could use an uplifting tale."

Carole offered a small grin. "Not that much to tell. I was very young and very inexperienced when I first met Ben, and I was quite shy - I took me months to admit even to myself that I liked him as more than a friend."

Somehow this was striking chords within Ichabod that were making him uncomfortable again, and his attempt to push the women in his life out of his thoughts was backfiring. Unbidden, Abbie's face - with the look of amused exasperation she often wore when she was around him - floated in his mind's eye.

"We worked together a lot, though, and after a while, well... it was sort of impossible to deny that we were attracted to one another. I was still too scared to do anything about it though! So then this ex of mine came along and he was sweet and charming and easy to talk to, and he basically swept me off my feet. So I thought that was the answer, that I'd just been pining after the wrong guy the whole time. But as it turned out, the ex should have stayed an ex, he treated me really badly and it was Ben who was there for me afterwards. He picked me back up and reminded me of all the important things in my life, and most especially the people who cared about me. At long last, we talked to one another, and we've been together since then."

It was that afternoon Ichabod was cursing at his flawless memory, still turning over Carole's words, that Abbie stopped by the cabin for him. "Crane, grab your coat. Irving's got something for us." She called by way of greeting, pushing a Starbucks cup and a bagged muffin into his hands. "Look, I know we're technically meant to be having New Year's Eve off, but Irving says this one can't wait. Which means that somebody's probably planning a celebration involving fireworks of a different kind."
Ichabod only understood about three-quarters of what Abbie was saying - nothing new there - but he nodded along distractedly as he followed her out to the car.
Abbie eyed him intermittently on the drive to Irving's coordinates. She didn't need to know him as well as he did to understand that something was bothering him. He was too still, not even looking out the window, muffin bag untouched in his lap. Usually he would have wolfed it down (wolfed it, but politely) within a minute flat. He also didn't speak beyond a few questions about the case. Definitely not normal Crane.

"Everything okay with you?"

It took him too long to find her eyes, and when he did his too-blue gaze skittered away from hers quickly. "Yes, Lieutenant. Just tired by my morning's work."
The excuse sounded feeble even to Abbie's ears. Ichabod Crane was many things, but he was not a man afraid to work hard. Besides, she knew he spent half his time at the stables whispering sweet nothings to the horses while he groomed them.
Worse was the way he said her title - too stiffly, too formally, without the affectionate undertone she usually picked up in the word. As if a stranger was speaking to her. The hurt caught Abbie by surprise. After everything they'd been through together, he was holding back. He didn't trust her.

Don't be stupid, she told herself, sternly. All this demon-dueling was making her paranoid, suspicious in how she viewed everybody. Just because Crane was tired and not his normal chatty, obnoxiously righteous self, was no reason to worry.

Except... she sort of was.

Further conversation was cut short when something came crashing down on the bonnet, thudding heavily then impacting the windscreen, which hairlined into a thousand cracks without actually shattering altogether. Ichabod let out a shout of surprise and Abbie gritted her teeth and gripped the wheel tightly, unable to see through the badly broken windscreen. She slowed the patrol car, pulling off to the side of the road, guiding the car to a halt by feel and instinct. She breathed a sigh of relief when she cut off the engine- only to draw in the breath sharply when something small, leathery and brown leaped off the bonnet, hissed, and fled into the woods.

"What was that?!" It had made it's escape on the passenger side of the car, and Ichabod had turned his head sharply to follow the trajectory. "My guess would be an Imp. The question - do we follow it?"

Abbie reached for her pistol to check it was safely in place. "We are only three hundred yards from the park the disturbance was reported - how much do you want to put on that Imp thing being the cause?"

She could tell from his expression he hadn't really understood the betting reference, but he followed her out of the car and she firmly pushed her doubts from her mind. This called for focus, not emotion. "Let's go swap insurance details." She followed the Imp's path into the trees. Behind her, Crane paused only to pull the axe that had served him so well already from the vehicle.

"I am not entirely convinced this was a sound idea." Ichabod murmured to her, turning a full circle to size up the woods around them. Abbie's heartbeat thudded unnaturally loud in her ears and she nodded wordlessly. Their own footsteps crunching in the snow and dead leaves were the loudest sound audible - this part of the woods was like something out of ghost movie, with bare-boughed pines and dead brown needles scattered beneath, patches of snowfall already having turned dirty. The darkening sky overhead, the sun setting early behind snow clouds, didn't help matters. Abbie grabbed her flashlight as the sun set, handing it to Crane so she could have both hands free for her pistol. "This isn't right. We haven't come that far from the road - why can't we hear the traffic?" She questioned. Crane stretched out the fingers on both hands then nervously clenched them into fists, a sure sign he was just as worried as she.

"Keep your firearm handy, Lieutenant. This feels exceptionally like a trap to me." He whispered right in her ear, almost making Abbie flinch at his closeness. She wished they'd had time to sort out whatever was bothering him before somebody had pitched a demon into the front of the car. She missed the previously easy camaraderie with Crane that made working with him tolerable.

Even preferable.

"There. Two of them." Crane nodded to a fallen log and Abbie followed his gaze. Grinning leering, shark-toothed grins, perched atop the log were two of the brown-skinned hairless demons Crane had called Imps. They blended so well with the dry, dead backdrop they were difficult to spot. Once she trained her eye to the shape though, she had no trouble. Cautiously she scanned the area. "Three more right behind us."

"And two on our left."

Abbie carefully sized up their opponents. They weren't very big, but despite the thinness of their arms and legs there was something sinister in the strength of those bony limbs. And those teeth...

This was not looking good. Instinctively Abbie turned so she and Crane were back-to-back, but before any further strategy was possible Imps sprang from three sides.
Abbie clenched her pistol between both hands, took aim, and killed the first before it reached them. She heard the whistle of Crane's axe and a horrible metallic screech, but there was a second demon bearing down on her and she didn't dare rip her focus away from her enemy to check on Crane. As long as his back remained against hers, she knew he was still standing. Still fighting. Her second Imp dropped to a bullet too, but then a pair of them were right there. She got in a wild shot that knocked one back, though it still hissed and clawed violently at her ankles. The second was too close to shoot so instead Abbie whipped it in the head with the butt of her pistol, following it with a nasty right hook. The alien face wore an expression of what could be surprise as it fell. Abbie kicked the still-writhing Imp at her feet right in the face, taking that one out for the count - then, with a feeling of dread, realized that Crane's back was no longer braced against hers. Feeling panic threaten to overtake her, she spun to find him.

He'd killed the first of his attackers with a clean beheading - all the rage - but a pair had ganged up on him too close for him to swing his weapon effectively. They'd pulled him down, and as Abbie bolted across the six feet separating him from her, she saw one rear up, then slash down at the fallen man.
The cry of pain he uttered echoed in her ears.
She fired on the move, blood spraying in an arc from the one who'd struck her partner. The other she tackled, throwing it bodily away then emptying all four remaining bullets into its body.
"Crane!" She dived into the leaf litter beside him. He was bleeding, and his eyes were closed. Abbie ripped her jacket off to bunch against the gashes that sliced down his side and coiled over his abdomen. His shirt had been ripped wide open - she'd have a hard time stitching it up this time - high enough that she could see the scar the Horseman had left.

"Crane!" Higher this time, a sob threatening to escape as she used her free hand to size his collar, pulling it aside to check for a pulse. The way he lay there, molded to the earth like he was already dead, was terrifying. He couldn't die. They had six and a half years left!
He had a pulse. If he hadn't needed her so badly, Abbie would have passed out from the sheer relief. She reached for her radio, relayed his injuries on autopilot, cursed the fact that it would take at least ten minutes for the ambulance to get here.

There was so much blood. It wasn't going to matter if she couldn't stop the bleeding. She applied pressure, kneeling beside him and begging him to open his eyes.
Where was that ambulance?! Logically she knew it couldn't possibly be here yet but it was killing her to watch Crane just lying there. But finally, the bleeding was slowing down, though he was lying in a crimson pool. She dared release the pressure enough to check his pulse again. It was both weaker and slower than before - so faint, it was on the verge of giving up.
Abbie abandoned the wound - it was the blood he'd already lost that was killing him - kneeling over his prone body frantically counting the beats of his heart in case they stopped and she needed to start CPR.

"Crane." This time it was a croak. She cupped his face between her hands and looked into the features so familiar now she could picture him with her eyes closed. "Ichabod. You can't die. You don't understand... I- I still need you."
She didn't really believe that her words had any effect on him, but when his pulse didn't stop - when it actually became stronger - Abbie felt the tears gather behind her eyes and releif so strong that she followed through on an instinct that, if he hadn't been dying, she never would have considered.
She bent her head and kissed him on the lips, just for a few sweet seconds.

Then the ambulance siren was audible, and the paramedics closed in on them, and when she frantically looked up to check the evidence of the Imp bodies scattered around then, they'd all vanished, of course.
She couldn't bring herself to care. The paramedics assumed that she and Ichabod had been victim of an back bear and she didn't contradict them. She sat in the tiny back seat in the ambulance beside Crane while the paramedics worked on him, holding his hand and planning the telling-off he was going to get when he woke up.

Ichabod was confused when he woke. There was a horrible sterile smell in the air and he was very, very sore, but oddly he could have sworn there was the faintest trace of strawberries on his lips. This was so out of place he blinked several times, bringing a slumped figure into view.

"Abbie?"

Her eyes blinked open to Crane's blue gaze. How she'd ever fallen asleep in the horribly uncomfortable hospital chair perched by his bedside, she didn't know. His hand was still in hers, and she felt his fingers weakly squeeze hers.

It was impossible to be angry with him, with him lying there bandaged with a small, apologetic smile just touching his lips. Instead, just like when she'd kissed him, she acted before she really knew what she was doing and hugged him - careful not to put any pressure on his midsection. "This is really not how I wanted to spend my New Year, Ichabod Crane. Don't you ever dare do that to me again."

She felt the warmth of his arms come up, the pressure beneath her shoulderblades, and for almost a whole minute she stayed there.

She pulled back first and he let her go, but she couldn't resist putting a hand on his forehead, just for a moment. "How do you feel?"

"A little as if a demon clawed open my belly this afternoon." He replied wryly, and she smiled. He really was going to be okay.

"Worse than when the Horseman got you?"

"Well, I couldn't judge accurately. I died shortly after that particular injury, after all." He winced and shifted position slowly. "How long do I have to stay here?" She knew he hated hospitals. "I'm afraid you'll be ringing in the New Year right here. You lost a lot of blood." She neglected to tell him he'd needed a transfusion. He'd spend all night Googling the safety and history of such a practice if she did.

"Very festive. Perhaps it's for the best. I don't know the traditions, after all."

"Oh, it's not that complicated. People go out, people get drunk, people watch the ball drop in Times Square." Abbie settled more comfortably into the chair, as much as anybody could anyway. "We're probably best in here, away from the madness."

Crane looked at her thoughtfully. The avid blueness of his gaze made her uncomfortable. The man was lethal when he unleashed the full, unwavering attention of those eyes. At least he didn't seem as uncomfortable around her as before the fight. "We?"

"Well, it's just a good thing I had nothing else planned, isn't it?" They shared a smile, the easy solidarity more apparent now.

Crane dozed again for a couple of hours, but woke restless. His wiggling around in the hospital bed, scarcely more comfortable than Abbie's chair, caught her attention. "What's wrong?"

"I need to stretch my legs." He fastened his best puppy-dog look upon Abbie and she groaned. "The nurses are going to kill you. Then me. Let me find one and I'll ask. No, don't pull out that IV yourself!"

The nurse granted a ten-minute walk as long as Abbie stayed with him. She took his arm as he shuffled along, looking worse for wear but happy now he was out of the bed. He refused to head back after ten minutes and Abbie was already lost in the network of corridors so she just let him carry on, since he didn't seem to be in that much pain and his stitches were holding.

"What's going on in there?" Ichabod nodded curiously to the main waiting room they stumbled upon. Abbie peered around his shoulder. "It's where you wait to get treatment. Oh- you mean why are they all behaving like that?" The thirty of so people in the waiting room were in a state of obvious excitement, even a guy propping up a swollen ankle on the seat opposite his. Abbie's gaze landed on the TV. "Oh, they're watching the ball drop. It's almost the New Year. In a second they'll start-"

"Ten! Nine!" Chanted the room, led by Broken Ankle, who raised a fist to punctuate each number.

"-Counting." Abbie finished with a laugh, leading him into the room. "Here, we may as well celebrate with a bunch of injured strangers. "Eight! Seven!"

The excited atmosphere in the room was infectious. Abbie still had her arm wrapped around Crane's, his expression was bright as he surveyed the room, for once not seeming interested in the television as his gaze came to rest on her.

"Four!"

Abbie swallowed and stared up at him. He doesn't know the New Years tradition of sharing a kiss, after all...

But the way he was looking at her made her think that he might. Made her wish that he did, injured or not.

"Two... ONE!"

Abbie couldn't resist. "Happy New Year!" She chorused with the crowd, and Crane's eyes grew wide in surprise when a couple of teenagers let off party poppers, sending streamers cascading into the air. The nurse on duty rolled he eyes but said nothing, awfully tolerant considering this was a room full of a sick people. Well, none of them were acting like it...
Ichabod was, of course, a quick learner. When five couples in the room shared a kiss (One ardently enough that it qualified as worthy of Reality TV) he tilted his head thoughtfully, looking down at Abbie. Paralyzed, again, by his eyes, she didn't even protest when his head bent down to hers.

He kissed her lightly and very quickly, slightly off-center of her lips so that she couldn't be sure that's where he had been aiming. He might have been going for her cheek...

Ichabod pulled back with a tiny smile, curiosity satisfied.
She tasted like strawberries.

"Happy New Year, Lieutenant."

A/N - Okay, sorry about the long wait! Christmas and NY were very busy for me and I must have gone through a dozen different ideas to finish up this fic. Hopefully you guys enjoy the end result!

There's definitely a sequel coming up, though first up, I've got two more Abbie/Ichabod ideas in the works that may or may not end up tying into the next installments of Second Chance. Thank you, once more, for all your reviews and encouragement!