prompt: what was robin thinking when she sundress-ed up?
Robin Scherbatsky stands in front of her closet door and doesn't let herself cry. Crying would be acknowledging pain, giving into it, showing weakness. And Robin has always been one of those people who are strong because they pretend to be strong.
It is an art she has perfected since childhood, something so ingrained in who she is that she barely notices it anymore - the image she puts forth and the one she hides.
Robin's first big hockey injury happened when she eleven years old during a pre-season pickup game. It wasn't one of those moments life slowed down for, but a unsuspecting check from behind that sent her crashing into a teammate and then down to the ice. Her helmet rolled off somewhere behind her as the spectators collectively inhaled. It happened so fast that she doesn't remember her own tears hitting the ice and making little melted dimples, the sound of her own scream as they reverberated around the rink, the scrape of her cheek against the rough ice, her father yelling "Don't move her!" as her teammate Pierre extracted his left foot from underneath her anyway.
All she remembers now, while she fingers through the dresses in her closet, is the throbbing in her stomach and the idea of blood, maybe, pooling under her. How it felt to think you were dying.
"RJ, where does it hurt? Your head? Did you hit your head?" Her father's voice was frantic and only made her cry harder.
"My stomach," Robin gasped.
Her father turned her over carefully, the first and last time he ever treated her that way, she thinks now. She wonders if he, like she did, expected blood smeared all over her uniform, her guts torn out and spilling onto the ice, and was surprised to find nothing, not even a tear in her uniform. He pushed the hair out of her face, revealing a purpling bruise on her cheek from where she hit the ice.
"You're okay," he said, helping her to her feet, which were still shaking under her.
"But it hurts," she said.
"It's the shock of it, RJ," he told her. "Go sit on the bench for the rest of the period."
Robin played again in the third period, stinging tears in her eyes the entire time. When one of her teammate, a chubby boy named Gerald noticed, he said "that's why girls shouldn't play hockey," and Robin waited until after the game, when everyone had changed out of their uniforms and were waiting for a seat at the pizzaria down the street before kicking him as hard as she could between the legs and saying, "that's why boys shouldn't mess with me."
Her parents wouldn't discover the bruising on her abdomen until later that night and the broken rib until a day or two after.
For all that she hates her father, Robin knows she owes him something for everything he's made her learn about biting back pain. Because of her father, she once played a whole game with a broken nose; because of her father, she barely felt it, barely felt anything.
But there is something in this relationship with Don, this breakup, that has left her open and raw, and incapable, or unwilling maybe, to hide it; something that shows her how much of a fake she's been her entire life, never letting herself admit defeat.
How she couldn't, just couldn't, face Don again, not even to pick up her things. She contemplated just leaving everything there and starting fresh, but eventually settled for calling in sick to work and raiding his apartment during the show. She watched the end of the broadcast from his bed, breathing in the scent of him and listening as he said goodbye to New York. When it was over, she wiped her eyes and left her key on the kitchen table.
How she honestly thought he would call her, choose her, even after he had already left. It had taken nearly the entire summer for her to stop wishing he would.
How she felt something liberating in lying on the couch all day, crying in the shower, eating junk food for every meal, making her body on the outside reflect how she felt on the inside.
How she knew Ted wouldn't sleep with her when she was like that; that part of her just wanted another rejection, wanted hundreds of them, wanted the numb feeling that came with them or maybe after them.
It's not just that Robin wakes up at night with her face wet because her bed is empty or because the station has yet to find a replacement anchor, but it's everything, she thinks. She isn't where she set out to be in life - she's not even close, sitting with her back to the wall and her knees pulled up to her chest, giving in and crying because now, it seems, nothing makes sense.
Don, in a way that neither Ted nor Barney nor even Lily could, understood her. He understood waking up in the middle of the night to report the fluff pieces that no real news show would air. That they couldn't honestly call themselves journalists. And somehow, it was okay then, a joke they had over the rest of the world.
And then it wasn't. Because Don left her. Left her and her joke of a job as if he never loved her in the first place. Not that any of them really had.
Ted couldn't love what was independent and wild in her: he wanted to protect her, hold her, keep her. His love was always at odds with her own defenses, her past, and who she wanted to be.
And Barney - that was the only part of her he could handle loving, maintenance-free and completely physical. He couldn't deal with her anger or her guilt or anything real.
Robin isn't sure then if she came up to prove to Barney that she's still "got it" or to prove it to herself.
She looks in the mirror: her hair a messy nest of tangles, her skin greasy and tear-stained, her under eyes a dark purple, that dirty sweater she's worn every day after work for about a week. She laughs. And she thinks maybe Barney was right for once: she hasn't got anything left. She could fall into bed and pull the covers over her face, or lie in the bathtub for so long Ted would come up and open the door to see if she's still alive. And it wouldn't make a difference to her. The same way scotch and cheetos and even putting on makeup and real clothes won't change anything. She'll still feel like nothing will ever be better, that she's failed somehow at being herself, that maybe her father taught her right.
Then she starts crying again. She thinks even Vacation Robin was better than this ghost staring back at her, this ghost of bottomless tears and mess. She's such a mess.
She tells herself aloud, "No." Robin knows she sounds, looks, and probably smells like a crazy person anyway, so she says it again, "No." Still, her eyes don't listen.
So she decides to take a shower, get dressed, put on make-up, pretend to be strong, become invincible.
She stands in front of her closet and chooses a white sundress, the best armor she has.