Summary: His fingers clench around hers so tight they bruise.

Disclaimer: I don't own Sleepy Hollow!

Shatter Me

my heart is yours

it's you that I hold on to

that's what I do

and I know I was wrong,

but I won't let you down

(oh yeah, yeah, yes I will)

- sparks, coldplay

She's not quite sure when he first begins to break.

Maybe the cracks had always been there, she thinks, as he stumbles out of the house, drenched in demon blood.

he doesn't notice the way she's just-so-slightly-trembling, or maybe he does.

maybe he chalks it all up to the cold.

"I think," she tells him, later, when she's passing a rag over the blood staining his cheeks, "We really need these next few days off."

He notices how she doesn't quite meet his eyes when she says it, the way they linger on the brownish-red stains on his cheeks, forehead, neck. He notices how cold her hands are, wonders how long he was in that house, how long she'd stayed out in the cold waiting for him.

"I'm sorry I scared you," he blurts, and she pauses, giving him a slow, shaky smile. There's a glint in her eyes, and she's trying to give him that look, that Abbie-Mills-patented I'm-not-afraid-of-anything glare, but there's no spark in it today, no heat. It falls flat and really, she just looks tired, now.

"Crane, you didn't scare me."

She still can't meet his eyes.

They both get hopelessly drunk on a bottle of rum, the day before Thanksgiving. He is quiet and half-conscious, pissed beyond belief as the two of them lay, splayed across several hundred files all scattered to the floor, like leaves on grass.

(only instead of red and gold and the smell of pumpkin spice lattes, it's manila and gray and the smell of memories, of a storm that's so close to breaking)

"I wish you'd let me in, sometimes," she slurs, softly, with the kind of earnestness that only comes when you've downed half a bottle of liquid courage. He turns his head slightly to look at her, eyes all blue and sad and I'm sorry, Abbie. She's seen that look before — how many times has she seen that look, after he nearly gets himself killed or after one his outbursts?

He's not replying, so she barrels on.

"I wish you'd stop pushing me away."

she won't remember what she said in the morning

but he will,

he will.

Once, he beats a Hessian soldier to near-death when the stupid man makes a bad joke about horsemen, whores, and bastard sons.

She has to fire four warning shots into the air to get him to stop, and wonders what he'd say if she'd accidentally brought a star or two down.

She wonders if he'd even notice at all.

she wonders, sometimes, if he notices that he's not the only one hurting

that her heart can break, too

Some nights, she wants to kill him.

Some nights, she wants to kiss him.

And then there are nights when the pain gets too much, when the bad guy gets away, when he sees a little boy on the street or in the store with eyes a particular shade of green. Nights when he'll howl and scream out his pain. Nights when he'll bunk on her couch or she'll take the futon at Corbin's cabin. Nights when all she can hear is his breathing, tired and ragged and near to sobbing.

Those nights, she'll close her eyes and think of a time when her breathing used to match his.

A time when they were almost the same person.

she closes her eyes and curses his wife and the secrets she kept —

(not for the first time)

the coven she served, the son she never mentioned.

she wonders if it was worth it.

He shatters.

The memories and the secrets chip away at him and his sturdy, eighteenth-century-enforced walls until it all comes crashing down in the aftermath of another meeting with his wife. He's numb and trembling in the archive room when she finds him, drunk on rage and guilt and bourbon.

She sits down next to him and there aren't any words, not really, to glue him back together. He's not the vase Jenny broke when she was ten and Abbie was twelve, the one their foster parents made them spend an entire Saturday gluing back together, just to throw away.

She reaches for his hand, twines their fingers together, and marvels a little at how easily they fit, despite the size difference. His breathing is harsh and heavy and she realizes he doesn't have to tell her what happened with Katrina, what words were said, what truths were uncovered.

His fingers clench around hers so tight they bruise.

It's okay, she breathes into the air, it's okay.

She gets it.

Morning comes with sunlight trickling through the windows.

The two Witnesses are huddled together against the world, in their own quiet corner of a ramshackle paradise. Their bodies are stiff and the tops of their hands have bruises in the shapes of fingerprints from holding on so tight.

"Stay with me?" Ichabod breathes against the top of her head and she will, she tells him, of course she will.

I must say, this felt horribly OOC. Hopefully not too much?

Writer's block is a bitch, okay.