fic: Scarred Heart in Hand

[angelette]

Fandom: Sleepy Hollow (TV)
Language: English
Rating: PG-13
Word count: ~2.100
Spoilers: 1x04
Relationships: Jenny/Abbie
Warnings: Hurt/Comfort, INCEST, dark
Disclaimers: I don't own Sleepy Hollow.
Summary: The world may have crumbled around them, but at least Abbie has Jenny, even though she isn't sure she deserves her. Written for mockerybird
Download link on AO3

A/N: Prompt #1: scarred

Prompt #2: "At least I have the flowers of myself,
and my thoughts, no god
can take that;
I have the fervour of myself for a presence
and my own spirit for light;

and my spirit with its loss
knows this;
though small against the black,
small against the formless rocks,
hell must break before I am lost;

before I am lost,
hell must open like a red rose
for the dead to pass."

-- H.D., Eurydice VII

Inspirational music: All the Same by Sick Puppies

Scarred Heart in Hand

It starts much like a fairy tale: the two of them walk into the woods like Hansel and Gretel, as something dangerous and hungry is lurking there. But stories are like picture perfect photos tucked in frilly, gilded frames that you like to take in hand, running your fingers over them and reminiscence about them, the real life is a harshly drawn picture, causing your head spin with its stark colors of red and jagged lines.

In reality, the monster tears apart lives, shredding every ounce of sanity from minds, stealing the comfort of family, and leaving nothing but bits and pieces behind that can’t be put together no matter how hard one tries.

So when the Mills sisters walk out of that forest, they’re not some triumphant heroes or lucky survivors of a demon, they are the troublemakers, attention seeker poor orphans and some other harsher words are whispered behind their backs.

Their life shatters so easily after that like a fragile snow globe hitting the hard floorboards: everything that Abbie cherished – foster parents, an ordinary life with trivial problems, Jenny, always Jenny – are seeping through her fingers like water, no matter how hard she tries to hold on to them. The hurt and betrayal in Jenny’s eyes cut into her like sharp glass shards, leaving deep scars on her heart.

So Abbie runs away, numbing her pain in any way she can, finding temporarily peace only in a swirl of drug-induced haze. She survives, because she’s good at that; the only problem is the gnawing hollow feeling in her chest that is slowly killing her.

Their story starts with an ending, which is yet another proof that they could have never been normal.

~oOo~

When Abbie feels a familiar warmth flooding her and easing the stabbing pain of guilt and self-loathing, it takes a moment to realize what it is. It doesn’t have a name, really, it’s just the knowledge of Jenny being beside her and not only in bits and pieces, not with a hint of resentment and rightful disdain, but in whole, fiercely, protectively.

First time in a long time Abbie isn’t afraid what Jenny thinks of her, isn’t wondering if Jenny hates her, isn’t calculating when her actions will earn forgiveness, simply because Jenny is right here.

They walked into a trap – someone using their father’s name and inviting them to a resentful family reunion – and of course what waited for them was a fucking monster. Something with sharp teeth, hidden spikes, and apparently deadly poison.

It burns through Abbie’s veins, as if somehow fire got under her skin, her vision gets blurry and she doesn’t want to think about whether it’s due to the tears of pain or the venom spreading through her. And it’s so ridiculous, she thinks, as she sits on the hard floor, slumped against the wall like a broken doll and for god’s sake, she’s bleeding, but she can only focus on Jenny’s sure and warm hands against her, prying her out of her jacket and examining the deep gnash on her arm.

She feels like she’s a kid again, her whole life ahead of her, and most importantly, they are together, just Jenny and Abbie against the world.

“I-I think… I’ll have a f-few… w-words with Crane… when w-we get back,” Abbie stutters, her teeth are chattering so hard, she can barely speak, and she doesn’t know when it got so cold.

It was Ichabod’s idea to persuade them to meet their father, lunging into a well crafted speech about family values and forgiveness, and it wasn’t hard for Ichabod to sound convincing with his words out of a Victorian romance novel.

But Abbie’s voice isn’t harsh; she just has to concentrate on something, anything other than the numbness taking over her. She’s so immersed in her thoughts, she doesn’t know how she got in her car, but Jenny must have carried her. It frightens her that she blacked out and she doesn’t even know for how long.

“Stay with me, Abbie.” Jenny’s words are like a soft blanket, warming and comforting her. “It’ll be okay, you’ll be fine. We’ll find the antidote.”

And of course she’ll stay with Jenny, and she doesn’t dare to question her, if she says it’ll be okay then it will be, because she’s Jenny. (Abbie won’t make the same mistake twice.)

~oOo~

Abbie knows their relationship is changing – it was clear that they can’t go back to what it was – but she doesn’t know exactly which way it’s going, and most importantly, what she thinks about it. She only knows that the years they spent apart left bruises on her so obvious, she sometimes wonders how no one can see them on her skin, and now that they are together again she – they – started to heal and they need each other.

She craves Jenny’s every feather of a touch, every ounce of her kindness, every spark of her brightly flickering courage. Jenny is like the sun, all fierceness and raw strength, and Abbie, like a helpless planet pulled by gravity, orbits around her. Jenny is the one keeping her grounded and strong in midst all the craziness she calls her life. It’s like all of the years without Jenny bottled up inside her like a vicious poison and the only antidote is being near her sister. It’s desperate, she knows that, much like a drowning man gasping for oxygen.

So when Jenny doesn’t answer her phone while she’s out following a suspect, Abbie feels the world spin around her, the ground buckling, and she fears that the darkness will swallow her whole if she loses her sister.

Dread grips her hard and doesn’t let her go, as Ichabod and she prepare for a rescue mission. They know what the monster is now and how to kill it – Ichabod was the one who find some ancient Greek book, and by some miracle a silver blade is enough to finish the thing –, but every moment is pure agony while they’re searching for Jenny and everything balances in a murky land of what-ifs.

When they find the hideout of the monster, an abandoned warehouse – what else would it be, really? –, Abbie is so careless in her haste that the thing almost catches her if not for Ichabod, who fends off the monster with ease. Abbie doesn’t register much about the thing, a dark blob, something just hinting at sharp teeth and terrifying things, and honestly, she’s okay with it, she has far too many elements for her nightmares anyway.

Ichabod shouts at her to just go on and search for her sister, he can clearly see her distress, and she wouldn’t be much help anyway. (A note to self, she thinks, get some silver bullets for next time, and she’s so hysterical, she nearly lets a half-sob, half-laugh escapes from her throat at the thought of where her life is heading.) The only thing she registers is the familiar scent of citrus shampoo and gun oil, a special mixture she associates with Jenny, and she’s sure her mind is playing tricks on her, wanting to feel Jenny right next to her, alive and well.

She finds Jenny in a secluded room that had to be some kind of office back in the day. The sickening sweet stench of death sits heavily on her tongue, and for an agonizingly long moment when she doesn’t see Jenny move, she feels herself falling.

But then Jenny takes a rasping breath, and opens her eyes, and nothing else matters. Abbie rushes to her side, not really noticing the withered and suck-dried shells of humans littering the floor, because in all this death, there is Jenny, living, and there’s nothing more important than that.

Jenny looks frail, as if a gust of wind could blow her apart, so Abbie barely touches her, but she has to feel Jenny’s skin against hers to know that she’s real and she’s not seeing things.

“You’re okay, you’re gonna be fine,” Abbie murmurs and it’s ironic and tragic how it echoes a previous time when one of them was on the brink of dying.  She thinks maybe it’s their fate – a curse, really – that when they are finally together life keeps pushing them over the edge. Maybe it’s her punishment for her cowardliness.

“I thought she was you.” Jenny’s words are barely a whisper, but Abbie hears them nonetheless, and each one of them is like a hard rock against her chest.

The thing was a shape shifter – past tense, hopefully, if Ichabod managed to kill it –, playing its victims and sucking their life force, like some kind of goddamned vampire. It’s a mythical creature of Greece. A siren.

Oh, Abbie thinks, as she puts the pieces together. She doesn’t say anything, she couldn’t if she wanted to, so she just leans forward, her forehead touching Jenny’s, their breaths mingling with each exhale, and it feels like as if Abbie’s passing her life to Jenny, or at least she wants to.

She doesn’t know how else she could tell Jenny that it’s okay, she’s here, she’s always gonna be here, so they stay like this until Ichabod finds them.

~oOo~

Abbie finds Ichabod at the bar, though she wouldn’t have thought he was here, Jenny suggested it, so she came. It’s amazing, really, how easily she follows her sister these days. Sometimes she thinks Ichabod knows that they are beyond the normal sibling bond, especially since that day with the siren. Abbie worries they can’t hide it, the casual brush of fingers, the meaningful looks and their way of communicating without words. Sometimes Abbie wonders how no one can see it.

She can’t explain it, it’s not love or not just it, it’s a visceral connection, it’s hearing Jenny’s heartbeat when she’s snuggled against her at nights, it’s her laughter lifting the darkness, it’s a need. (Though some nights she justifies it with if the world goes to hell and demons roam the earth, what does count as normal anyway? It’s fucked up, but so is everyone and everything around them, and it eases the nagging guilt.)

“Come on, Crane, it’s time to go home,” she says, pulling herself out of her reverie and gently taking the whiskey bottle out of his hand.

He looks up at her, and her heart clenches. He lost Katrina, for good this time. They were fighting with revenants that Moloch sent after them and somehow in the process they had to send back every soul trapped in between worlds – and that meant his wife too.

The loss on his face takes her breath away: Something misses from his eyes, some kind of light, and he looks like a ghost town that even the spirits forgot to haunt. (And how accurate is that parallel, she doesn’t want to dwell on.) And it hits her how this crusade of theirs will take a toll on them; it already has when they walked out of that damned forest when they were kids. Saving the world won’t be easy nor fancy, like some hero fantasy, it will be as bloody as a war, with as much causalities, leaving behind broken people and torn up families.

“I presume I deserved a good amount of alcohol after loosing the love of my life. Again.” Pause. “I’m sure you understand.”

And Abbie can’t say anything, it’s becoming an alarming habit, maybe at the end of the Apocalypse there will be nothing left to say for her, so she just sits down, pours herself a drink and loses herself for a moment in the burning of the alcohol.

They sit side by side in companionable silence, but the way he looks at her tells her he might know how she feels about Jenny. (She doesn’t regret it, she swears she almost feels relief when there’s no disgust or animosity in his eyes.)

~oOo~

It ends nothing like a story you want to recount around a campfire or under the starlit sky. It’s not comforting, nor does it send pleasant chills down your spine, it doesn’t have a happy ending, it doesn’t even have a proper ending, really. The two of them walk in a world falling apart, air heavy with screams, and the taste of ashes are bitter on their tongues, they scramble for light and hope to fight what lies between the shadows. But they have each other, it’s all that matters, and they never let go again.