Angsty drabble, post S3. Karma's thoughts.
"If you have chemistry, you only need one other thing. Timing. But timing's a bitch." (How I Met Your Mother)
Karma had been so certain at the time—when Amy had poured out her heart to her after the wedding, had confessed her feelings for Karma in no uncertain terms, and had bravely asked her best friend to 'step over the edge' with her. At the time, Karma had been so sure that she'd said no because she was irrevocably straight. Now, she thought she'd said no because she hadn't been ready.
And partly, Karma couldn't regret the way everything had gone; after all, she had been a boy-crazed teenage girl before she and Liam got together. When they did, Karma thought she'd gotten everything she'd ever wanted. And possibly, Liam had been perfect for her, at the time. Karma had never had a serious relationship before, and maybe she'd just needed the "perfect guy" experience, only to find out that he wasn't quite that after all. Maybe she'd just needed to get it out of her system, this rigid picture in her head of what her future would look like. Because when Amy confessed to her that night, that picture shattered. Because in that picture, Amy had always, always been there.
And then suddenly everything got complicated, and their future was uncertain. And then, just when Karma thought that she and Liam were happily together, Amy started dating too, and then Karma was there with her jealousy of Reagan, and Liam was there with his jealousy of Amy, and then just when she'd come out to her parents with the truth, Liam dropped the bomb and confessed to sleeping with Amy. It seemed, Karma thought, as if her relationship with Liam, no matter how badly she'd wanted it, had been doomed to fail, because from the start everything had been wrapped up in Amy. Even when Liam had come back to her after the summer, proposing that they try again, Karma had been caught completely unawares because she'd been wrapped up in Amy, again. And then her dad's heart attack happened, and it was simultaneously the thing that brought her and Amy back together, and the thing that lost her the moment she'd so desperately wanted with Liam. She sometimes wondered what would've happened if her father hadn't had a heart attack. Because sure, she might've been with Liam, but Karma realized that it probably wouldn't have lasted long because things would've still been wrong with Amy, and as long as things were wrong with Amy, it was as if she couldn't have a normal relationship with anybody else either. It would've been a band-aid. Liam would've realized that soon enough, too.
Karma couldn't even begin to pretend that this thing with Felix wasn't exactly the same—if anything, it was more wrapped up in Amy, because he'd been initially a lot more into Amy than into her. And Karma couldn't pretend that she hadn't seen his face when Amy had said 'yes' to Sabrina. He was disappointed. And maybe there was a thing between him and Karma, and maybe it was worth giving it a shot, but when she really searched herself, Karma knew it probably wouldn't last long either, because them getting together—heck, the fact that they even started spending time together—was wrapped up entirely in Amy.
(Heck, even with Dylan, Amy had been the unspoken secret that—Karma realized now—had tied them both together. It was a secret that hadn't been a problem at first because Amy just hadn't been there, and Karma had never even talked about her BFF-problems to her then-boyfriend, but the minute her best friend came back, Dylan had started commenting on how very not chill Karma was suddenly acting, and Karma had to admit to herself that Dylan had been what Liam might've been—a band-aid. Something to take her mind off the burning in her chest that never quite let up during the summer.)
It was that way with Liam, Dylan, and it was like that now again. And whichever way she tried to turn it, the truth was inescapable, and that truth was blonde, beautiful, and she had been right there for as long as Karma could remember it.
Karma blamed her blindness on the fact that Liam had been her first serious relationship. How could she have known that Amy was going to be a problem until she'd really tried being with someone? Until Amy had tried being with someone? How could she have known, before, that she and Amy were so insanely close that it transgressed the boundaries of a normal friendship? How could she have known, before, that it wasn't actually normal friendship behavior, what they were doing? How could she—?
Karma had always known that she and Amy were meant to be together. She never quite defined 'together' very well in her head; she only knew that a future without Amy was unimaginable. And yes, they were soulmates, and yes, the normal rules didn't apply to them, but in the outside world, those rules were there, and if they wanted to have normal relationships with other people, they would have to follow exactly those rules that weren't supposed to apply to them. Karma realized it now, and it made her feel sick. She'd never thought that her friendship would ever get 'in the way' of her romantic entanglements—she'd never thought it would ever be that way for Amy, either. She'd thought—naively, she'd thought—that she could've just had both. It was only now that Karma not only realized that she couldn't have both—she didn't want it either. The only thing Karma wanted was the person for whom she'd made exactly that dream come true; Amy now had both Karma and Sabrina, and Karma couldn't turn back because it was she who had given Amy her blessing by helping Sabrina out in the first place.
Karma tried looking on the bright side. That, if it was meant to happen, it would happen. And if there was one person in Karma's life to whom the phrase 'meant to be' would apply, it would be Amy. But she fully realized now how bad it must've been hurt Amy when Karma had rejected her. And no vague hopes of future happiness could make the present any less sucky because of it. And Karma knew she only had herself to blame.
It wasn't that they weren't meant to be together—like that—because they had the chemistry. They fit in every way that it was possible for two people to fit. But the one thing they didn't have, was timing. And timing was a bitch.