A/N: Robin drabble. I meant to put in Barney's POV too but it got too long. But if people like this I'll write Barney. I have a couple of other ideas too but not sure if this is going to turn into a multichaptered fic or they'll go in a new story. Sorry for the angst, I was feeling dramatic. :) And I just KNOW someone has used this title before but I can't think who, so if it's you I apologize. It's rather unoriginal and not very good, but please review anyway! :)


It's not getting any easier.


Robin thought it might have. She was being naive of course. She had thought that it might get easier every day, watching her ex with another woman. (Bitch.) Of course, when Barney gets serious and moves in with another woman for the first time since The Incident last fall- of course that was going to hurt. So she watched him, sitting and talking about how he was so in love and how amazing Quinn was, and she gripped the glass of scotch in her hand and waited.


She thought it might get easier after the engagement. After that horrible feeling passed, that feeling of I'm-gonna-cry-I'm-gonna-scream-I'm-gonna-shoot-something-I'm-gonna-shoot-some-stripper-bitch, and she was sitting on the floor of the shooting range pondering her fate, she thought that just maybe it would be easier now. Now that she knew Barney (ugh, it hurt even to think his name (crap)) was absolutely positively never ever never in the whole wide world of possibility never ever never never going to be hers- Damn it. But anyway, maybe she could move on. She considered this. She had been trying to do just that since- oh God, since she met him really. Since she had watched him across the bar that night and thought how good looking he was and what fun it would be to really spend time with him. Since he had tapped her on her shoulder and sent chills down her spine. But then Fate intervened, as Ted would say, and sent her on the path that led here, to the cold hard floor, with a gun in one hand and a drink in the other (she couldn't help but smile at her dramatic tone, somewhere between Soap Opera and Ted's Life). And then she was wandering down memory lane, to all of the good times and the bad, and the question of moving on didn't come up again, at least, not until the next night, and Barney and Quinn's engagement celebrations at MacLaren's, and she questioned whether she would ever be able to bear it.


She had thought that maybe it would hurt a little less when her method of ten thousand drinks failed (but then again, it had failed a long time ago with regards to Barney) and she threw herself into other methods of making herself move on. She had asked the gang for advice (but NEVER EVER mentioning Barney or anything to DO with him! She made sure of that!). Marshall had advised her to go Sasquatch hunting, or perhaps WWN would let her do a report on the Loch Ness monster. She had thought that he had had more helpful things to say, but he was distracted by a reverie on the glories of the unknown. Ted gave her a long lecture on how she would someday become the warm, wonderful woman that he had always dreamed of as soon as she found the One. This only made things worse because it just reminded her of the fact that Barney was the only one who had understood that maybe she didn't want to be that person. Lily said perhaps the least helpful thing of all: that she just needed time. So she chose the method of the person she least wanted to be thinking about right now; she threw herself into the dating scene.


She had thought that this would make it heal; this string of one-night stands, the plays, the flirtatious "Call me!" when she had given a fake phone number, the constant sex. She had thought that becoming inhuman for a while would make it hurt less; would make her put up those barriers that she had spent years creating around her heart and that only one person had ever taken down. She had thought that this might be the way to stem the tide of pain that she felt when she heard Barney ask Ted to be his best man; when she saw Quinn, beaming, on Barney's arm. But, after a month, she woke up in the twenty-sixth man's bed, crawled out the window, and realized that this hollow feeling wasn't getting any better, and that maybe she should find her Quinn, and that maybe that would be the way to get over him.


She had definitely thought that it would get better when she ran into Tom, and when he asked her out. He was good looking, and charming, and the perfect man. He was practical and sensible but still adored her; Marshall and Lily loved him; and he was okay with the whole kids thing. Plus, if you were looking at it from a Teddish point of view, the whole thing with her running into him those two times before would be a fun story to tell several years down the road. The sex was fine, and Tom was a good learner, always a plus in a long term relationship. She was spurred to greater heights by the nauseating things Quinn and Barney were doing, coupley things, things she never thought she'd see the legendary Mr. Stinson do. And when they set a date, Robin and Tom moved in together. They had been dating for a month and a half.


She certainly thought that the last semblance of any kind of pain would be gone forever when Barney and Quinn broke it off a month before the wedding, and when she no longer had to watch him sitting next to that blonde minx in the seat that had once been hers, and when Barney was back to his old, womanizing, laser-tag playing self (At the time of Barney's break up, he hadn't been out to play laser tag in five months- Robin was horrified to learn this fact but stopped herself from commiserating with him by the pressure of Tom's hand on her own.) She thought that now everything was right; she was in a functioning, normal relationship with a great guy, and Barney was a womanizing idiot, and Ted was Ted and Marshall and Lily were Marshall and Lily and the universe had aligned.


But it isn't getting any easier, and it hurts to think that if she had only said yes in November, that they maybe, just maybe, could have been something awesome. But she's scared, because he makes her so vulnerable, and if there's one thing Robin Scherbatsky isn't it's vulnerable. So, she doesn't question her relationship with Tom, and she doesn't go all touchy-feely and introspective about why it still makes her hurt so very, very much when he doesn't come and talk to her the way he used to, and why there's that sharp ache whenever he leaves the bar with one of his one-night bimbos. Time is supposed to heal all things, but time isn't making this any easier, and Robin thinks that just maybe she'll never be anything but head over heels in love with Barney Stinson.