Every year, I think about joining Yuletide, the fandom-organized fanfic exchange for rare fandoms. (If that didn’t make any sense, it’s basically an exchange where people write fanfic for each other—the fanfic can be from any fandom or pairing as long as it’s considered a rare or not fandom-popular one. What counts as rare has been a heated topic of debate for years.) Last year, way back in 2014, I didn’t even bother looking through the Yuletide fandoms, assuming that as usual, there wouldn’t be a fandom I was interested in writing for. Unfortunately for me, as it turns out, there were a ton of interesting fandoms and fanfics produced for Yuletide 2014. Today’s fanfic rec for Sleepy Hollow is just one of them.
A Mountain You Scale Without Thinking Of Size is set during the events of the first season, after Irving’s daughter Macey has been possessed by, and then rescued from, the demon Ancitef. Although Macey’s parents have tried talking to her about it and have sent her to professional therapists, she still feels like no one really understands what she went through. That’s when Irving asks Jenny Mills to talk to her. Jenny was possessed by the same demon before, and if anyone could understand how Macey’s feeling right now, it would be her.
“I’ve already talked to people,” Macey says. She pushes her plate away and rolls out of the kitchen nook and into the living room.
“Yeah?” Jenny asks. “What did they say?”
“Stuff,” Macey says. She considers picking up the remote and finding something to watch on TV, but she should probably go study instead. She has a couple of tests coming up, and she thinks she knows the subjects well enough, but lately she’s been having a trouble with her memory. Revising doesn’t hurt. It’s getting better, at least.
“Was it any good?” Jenny asks.
Macey thinks about it. She’s talked to her mom and dad, her usual therapist, and a trauma counselor. Her parents weren’t objective, obviously, and they worried, and no one knew what had really happened inside her head. They just knew she’d been through something. Macey herself wasn’t even really sure what had happened.
“Not really, I guess,” she says. “The usual stuff—it’s okay to talk about it, it’s okay to cry. Feel your feelings.”
Jenny snorts. “Feel your feelings.”
“Right?” Macey says. “That’s so comforting.”
“Did you tell them how sometimes it feels like you can’t breathe?” Jenny asks. “About the memory problems?”
Macey turns around slowly. Jenny’s still sitting behind the kitchen island, back to Macey. She’s making herself a sandwich.
The fic is entirely from Macey’s point of view and does an excellent job of capturing the inside of her head, just from the few snippets we get in the show. She’s still concerned with her studies, but she’s more concerned with her parents’ tenuous relationship and the aftermath of the possession, and she’s not sure how to deal with it all. Jenny, for her part, is hesitant about giving anyone advice, and doesn’t know how to go about it with Macey. When the two of them finally manage to connect, it feels real and hard-earned.
Author annemari does a great job of building on the few scenes that Jenny and Macey got together in Season 1 of Sleepy Hollow, fleshing out the relationship to something that I think could definitely have carried a few episodes of non-Crane related drama. I always wanted Jenny and Macey to hang out more; both seem like smart, capable ladies, and Macey’s teasing Jenny and Irving about their maybe-attraction was one of my favorite things. Although the show doesn’t look like it’ll give us more of Macey and Jenny, at least I found this fanfic to scratch the “cool female relationship” itch. Read it here on the AO3!
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