you just walked away

and i just watched you

what could i say?

how close am i to losing you?


Thursday, October 6th,

2016.


Barney is walking down the courthouse steps, his head turned back, his expression tight and wary; his suit jacket buttoned, his tie unusually colorful, bringing out the blue of his eyes. He looks focused, determined… handsome, even in the low-quality photo on the New York Post's front page. The headline reads LIAR LIAR: the person behind it had probably chosen the picture, hoping Barney would look sinister and untrustworthy instead of sharp and rakish.

But then, Robin reflects, her ex-husband always had photographed well.

Part of her, the sick, masochistic part that seems to make up most of her nowadays, wants to buy this or any other New York paper featuring the AltruCell case, which has lately been most of them. The rest of her thinks she'd probably be better off avoiding the heartbreak and picking up a trashy airport novel instead. Stephen King sounds like a great idea for this stage of her life.

"What do you think?"

Robin starts, not having expected anyone to address her, and sees that a woman in her sixties has also started perusing the newspapers at this airport kiosk. If 'starting blankly at your ex' counts as perusing. "About what?" she asks warily, forcing her expression into a blank smile.

"The case," the woman says. When Robin doesn't immediately answer — how can she? — her fellow traveller answers for herself. "They're saying now that that Barney Stinson made it all up. Faked evidence to bring down his old boss."

Robin works her jaw and slides into her reporter voice, even as her arms wrap around herself to keep herself together. "And what do you think?" she asks.

"AltruCell was bad news," the woman sniffs. "Whether it's him or someone else, thank God the Feds are tearing them down. They should all go to jail for a long time. My husband's brother worked for Goliath National Bank up in New York, you know. Lost his job in the merger. Didn't even get a severance!"

"I'm sorry to hear that," Robin says.

"No, they're all liars," the woman continues, her voice growing louder in her clear outrage. "This Barney Stinson acts like a big whistle-blowing hero, but why are the Feds giving him immunity if he hasn't done anything to needimmunity from, eh? He was some hot-shot executive at Goliath, pah. No, the Post is right about this one, he's just a dirty liar. The Feds should be ashamed to be using him as their chief witness, but that's the government for you. Have you been following this?"

"Nope," Robin lies, her chest feeling tight from anxiety. "I don't really follow the news." Her smile feels more like a grimace at this point, and she lets it drop from her face, biting back the urge to — well, to say all sorts of things to the woman. Things she can't say anymore. Things she doesn't want to say, things she isn't even sure she believes.

"Well, I most certainly do, and —" the woman is off again, and Robin tunes her out without feeling badly about it. She stares at the photo again, Barney turning to look back at the photographer as he leaves his hearing. She imagines the others, probably just out of frame: Lily's body rigid with anger, Marshall standing at his full height, frowning in concentration, Ted, open and concerned, Tracy, holding herself back a little, waiting to decide what action to take. And Robin, in Mexico City.

Doesn't matter. That photograph, that life, that's not hers anymore. Her companion is looking at her now. "Say, aren't you Robin Scherbatsky?" she asks, pronouncing the er as ar.

"No," Robin says quickly. "I mean, who? I'm Katie. Katrina," she amends, pushing her voice into a strong Canadian accent for good measure. "I have to go," she adds, feeling like the least convincing liar on the planet.

She grabs the Post and hates herself for it, feels the familiar twist of dark anxiety as she does, and pays for it and her bottle of water at the kiosk's register before returning to her terminal with them and her suitcase. One of the TVs in the lounge has the news on mute: Robin sees the painfully familiar facade of AltruCell's downtown headquarters in an establishing shot and looks away.

It'd be a lot easier to all this behind her if Barney hadn't gone ahead and made himself big national news, she thinks bitterly. There's something a little funny about that, too, and she's struck with the urge to text him, chide him for always having to go and make things difficult. Robin is struck with this urge about eight times a day, in fact. She hasn't once given in. If he's ever had that urge, he's fought it too. They haven't spoken in just about six months.

She skims and then re-reads the Post article, but the woman at the kiosk had basically covered all the salient points in their conversation. After three years of trial preparation and hearings, the criminal cases for Greg Fisher, a handful of other high-ranking AltruCell employees, and AltruCell Corporation itself are now underway; key witness being government whistle blower-slash-FBI mole Barney Stinson. Only Fisher's lawyers had landed on the most obvious, and strongest, possible defense: that Barney was making the whole thing up. The defense claims that Barney fabricated evidence and acted on his own to frame Fisher and AltruCell for his own illegal actions. And of course, Barney had been stupid enough to admit, repeatedly, that all he had done he had done for revenge.

Because, of course, his need to show off and win everything he does could never come back to bite him in the ass. Moron. The Post's tone is extremely negative towards her ex-husband, and a large part of her agrees: he's a lying ass, he doesn't mean anything he says, he doesn't care about anything he says he does —

The rest of her feels sick and twisted up, remembering, thinking about things she told herself she had shut the door on. The night they'd gotten him so drunk he'd told them his job for the first time: the night before their wedding. Lying in bed, eating pizza and watching the news of the raid, cheering each arrest, him smiling into her neck, kissing her. Him talking, late at night, unable to sleep the night before his first Grand Jury testimony —

Lately — okay, for the past six months; okay, since the minute they split up — all Robin's been doing is vacillating between one extreme and the other: missing him with every pore of her body, hating him with every breath she takes. Her new deal with herself is to simply not think about it it at all, so by the time she's finished with her re-read, she feels tense and sick to her stomach, wondering desperately what he's thinking at the same time part of her thinks he and his lies have this coming.

She folds the Post with shaky hands and checks the time on her phone: still half an hour until her flight boards. Maybe this was a bad idea. She'd thought six months away from New York, six months away from — avoiding — her friends, their casual mentions of her ex, still hanging out with him, still on his side… not that there are sides, she reminds herself. Amicable divorce. They're staying friends. (yeah, right.) She'd thought after six months, some of this pressing dread would have faded, that she could be amicable. But the thought of seeing Barney again… the thought of having to talk to her friends, possibly about him, makes her feel sick with dread. It'd be so easy to say he's too busy to meet up, to take off to Dubai, but Robin knows objectively that putting things off won't make things easier, and this has to be taken care of sooner or later. No: she's Robin Scherbatsky. She's going to rip this bandaid.

It'd probably be a favor to him, too, anyway. With the trial, and all that. Best get these things taken care of sooner, rather than later.

Robin finds herself staring blankly at her contact list. She wavers between two names for a moment, before choosing one. Big girl pants, RJ.

Lily answers on the third ring, sounding harried. "Hello?"

"Hey, Lily?" Robin says, suddenly awkward in the awareness that it's been almost a month since their last conversation. And that their last conversation had ended abruptly when Lily had brought up the divorce.

Lily is silent for an anxious second. "Oh my gosh, Robin?" She sounds mostly happy, Robin decides, and exhales.

"Yeah, it's me! Surprise!" she says, trying to sound enthusiastic.

"I'll say," Lily says, and maybe Robin kind of deserves the reproachful tone, so she lets it slide. Lily perks back up quickly. "How are you? Where are you? What's going on?"

"Um, I'm in South Carolina on a layover," Robin says, shifting in the stiff lounge chair, "but I'm actually on my way back to New York!"

"You are?" Lily quickly sobers. "For how long?" Robin hesitates. "For how long?" Lily asks again, more firmly.

"I… don't really know yet," Robin says. She hears Lily sigh, tinny over the phone. "A couple of weeks?" Lily falls silent again, and Robin feels a surge of annoyance replace her anxiety. That's good. Annoyance is far better. "Look, Lily, you know we can't just… go back to the way things used to be."

"Why not?" Lily cries, sounding frustrated, sniffling.

"You know why not," Robin snaps, her fingers tightening around the phone, her other hand tightening on her elbow.

"No, I don't," Lily says, "because you haven't been here. This is the first time we've talked in a month, and you—"

"Right," Robin interrupts, blinking rapidly, her heart pounding hot, "right, we haven't; and when was the last time you talked with Barney?"

Lily falls silent. Robin presses her fist over her mouth to keep quiet, to keep Lily from hearing her breathing, closes her eyes and concentrates on forcing these thoughts away, this sick feeling of dread away. Her eyes fall on her folded up issue of the New York Post. She'd been careful to place it so the headline faces up, her ex-husband out of sight. Out of mind.

"Robin, I'm on your side," says Lily after a long moment.

"You're still friends with him," Robin says bitterly, hating herself for her tone.

"Of course I am!" Lily says loudly. "I've been friends with you both for ten years, I can't just say goodbye to one of you — I thought you guys had an friendly… you know, breakup?"

"Divorce," Robin grits out, correcting Lily forcefully. "And yeah," they hadn't shaken hands, hadn't touched, had looked at one another, and there had been a couple of seconds, a couple of hours, it had felt like, where she'd waited for him to say something, and he'd broken eye contact first, looked at a spot above her head. I guess that's it, he'd said, and that was the last thing they had said to one another. She's not thinking about this. "but that doesn't mean it's easy for me. It's not like I want to hang around New York with my ex. And I'm sure he feels exactly the same way."

"Robin," Lily asks hesitantly, "what happened?"

"We broke up," Robin says. "It happens." This is why she hasn't called Lily, hasn't called Ted or Tracy or Marshall. She doesn't want questions, she doesn't want meddling, or the stupid intervention banner to be busted out. This is real, this is serious, this is done and over with. This is what they both agreed to do. "I didn't call you to talk about this," she says.

She hears Lily take a deep breath. "I know," she says. "Hey," she adds, throwing some more cheer into her voice, "when are you arriving? Later today? We can pick you up at the airport?"

"My flight lands at five, but I'll take a cab," Robin says, trying to match Lily's tone. "Maybe we can get together for coffee tomorrow?"

"Yeah," says Lily. "I'd like that."

"Me too." Robin bits her lip, looking out the large windows at the taxiing airplanes. "I think my flight just arrived."

"Robin?" Lily asks, sounding reluctant.

"Yeah?"

Lily is quiet for a second, and then sighs. "I know you don't want to talk about your breakup." Robin restrains the urge to correct Lily's terminology. "But it's about Barney."

She keeps her voice as flat as she can, "What about him?"

"You know about the trial, right?" Lily asks.

"Yeah," Robin says with a glance at the Post. "I work in the news, I've heard of it," she says, her tone slightly more bitter than jokey.

"Things are pretty tense around here," says Lily. "Marshall says he and Ted might have to testify at a hearing, and Barney's really not doing well."

Why do they have to testify? What is he doing? How is he not doing well? Was he doing well before? "None of that has anything to do with me," Robin says flatly.

"Right," Lily says, and Robin feels a tremor of annoyance that she sounds disappointed. "it's just a big deal for … around here, and we can't avoid it completely, even for you."

"You mean, 'for us,'" Robin says. Lily doesn't correct her. She sighs, and this time lets Lily hear it. "I know. Look, I'm not some completely heartless asshole," she says. "It sucks that this is happening to Barney, and you're all his friends, so, I get it. Even with everything that happened between us, it's not like I want him to go to jail or anything."

"You used to be his friend too," Lily says. Robin tries very hard to stave off the anger, the hurt, to not look at the headline of the Post, the way that even though she folded it carefully, part of Barney's arm and hand show underneath the words, and it's the most she's seen of him in six months. It's like Ted once said. There's an off switch.

So she lets the accusation slide. "Yeah," she says. "But I'm probably the last person he wants to see right now." Lily seems to accept her words, or at least doesn't argue: Robin glances at the check-in stand and sees a line starting to form. "Hey, I really do have to go," she says. "But I'll see you tomorrow?" she asks uncertainly.

"Yeah," Lily sniffs. "See you tomorrow. Thanks for calling," she adds. "I missed you."

"I missed you too," Robin says, smiling weakly. "See you soon."

Despite the line forming, the flight to New York isn't boarding quite yet, and Robin stays where she is for a few minutes, concentrating on the anxious knot in her stomach until she feels it lesson. The last person her ex wants to see right now — well, he can join the club on that one. And here she is going to New York anyway. Robin sits forward, resting her elbows on her knees, looking at her phone. He's not doing well. The trial is a big deal for us. Impulsively, she reaches again for her newspaper, carefully, hesitantly flipping it so she can see the picture again. It's hard to tell from it how he's doing: she's sure the Post picked the least flattering photo they had of him, and he still looks pretty good. But maybe he does seem a little drawn. Maybe it's just that he looks unusually serious. She catches herself touching the newsprint, her fingers on his cheekbone, and moves her hand away.

Christ. Maybe Robin should blow off this whole thing, take a flight to Cuba or Jakarta instead. But this is why she called Lily. She's meeting her for coffee tomorrow. She can't back out now.


Three hours later, Robin is standing in front of a building she doesn't know how to classify. Her building, her mind supplies automatically. Home, an even worse one. Barney's building, she tells herself, but it sounds strange, unfamiliar. This is the first time she's been here since the divorce.

Since she'd picked up her things. He hadn't been there. She'd only packed some of her clothing, left her key on the coffee table and let the doorman lock up. It had been quicker. Easier. She hadn't let himself wonder what he'd done with the things she'd left behind, not at all, not on planes or at night in hotel rooms. Get it over with, RJ.

She doesn't really have a plan for dealing with the doorman, but he doesn't stop her on her way to the elevators, and she presses the button and tries not to look into the mirrored metal of the walls and tries not to have a panic attack and tries not to feel anything, actually. This is necessary. This is something they'd agreed on.

Robin hadn't called ahead, hadn't texted: if she's being completely honest, a part of her hopes that he won't even be home. How many times has she ridden this elevator over the years? How many times has she walked down this hallway? It all looks exactly the same. It's only been six months, of course it does, but she can't help but feel that it shouldn't. She's not the same. Nothing is the same.

Her nerve fails her when she's in front of their — his — door. His door. Pull it together, RJ. It's like Lily said. They had an amicable divorce. They said they would stay friends. That's a big steaming pile, but they said it. He looked tired in the picture. She steels herself and knocks on the door.

There's no response, and Robin's just about ready to shrug and give up — which is ridiculous, because this has to happen, and she wants it to happen — so she takes a deep breath and knocks again.

A few agonized seconds later and she hears the click of the lock.

Barney opens the door. "I was —" he starts to complain, but whatever he was doing dies on his tongue when he sees her standing there. She waits for a reaction, for him to start or speak, for his eyes to widen or a bad joke or something with his eyebrows or any one of a million things. (For him to smile at her, the way he did every day for so many years—)

He doesn't. He stays as he is, his hand on the doorknob, the door only partially opened, his expression… blank. Not upset, not angry, not happy, nothing.

"Hi," she says, when he doesn't speak, and Robin hates herself a little for starting this off with hi.

He doesn't react to that, either. "What are you doing here?" he asks, not sounding accusatory or… anything, really. Barely even curious.

"We need to talk," she says, wiping her hands on the legs of her pants. He doesn't move. "Can I come in?"

He gives a short, harsh laugh. "No," he says, just mockingly enough to make it clear that he thinks she's an idiot, and her heart does not clench, her throat does not get tight, it doesn't affect her at all except that she'd hoped they could handle this like adults.

He turns around, letting the door swing open slightly, and Robin is left to hover uncertainly in the doorway, unsure if she should obey his no or follow him in despite it. She feels like an idiot, which she angrily suspects is the point, but is quickly distracted.

He's redecorated. It makes sense: when she found out through Lily he'd stayed in the Fortress, she'd been a little surprised, even a little hurt (he'll stay with his shitty apartment, but not—). But this explains it. Every piece of furniture they'd bought, every little thing she'd changed, all that is gone. The magnets on the fridge, the utensils on the kitchen counter, the sofa they'd agonized for months over… It's fine. It makes sense. She's moved on, and so has he. It's fine.

Barney sits down on the sofa and Robin watches as he pulls on some earlier discarded shoes. She waits silently in the doorway as he picks up his wallet, phone, and keys. He glances at himself in the mirror that must still hang by the door as he returns, and she bites the inside of her cheek at the familiarity of it, Barney getting ready to leave, as she's seen him do hundreds of times before. At the way his routine is unchanged, but his expression is still cold, neutral. "We can talk at the coffee shop," he says, as she steps back to let him lock the door.

Something in her twists, at the unthinking way he said it, like he knows she knows which one he means. And of course she does: it's right on the corner, Robin's been there thousands of times. But it's the first time he's shown any recognition towards her at all. Any acknowledgement that she once existed here, in this apartment, that he used to smile when he saw her.

Not that she'd expected him to, exactly. But this blankness is …

They make the trip to the corner in silence. Barney briefly greets the doorman as they leave the — his — building, but even then his voice is uninterested, almost cold.

There's not a lot of people here at six thirty at night, and they order — green tea, no sugar for Barney, espresso for Robin — and sit at a tall table by the window. Robin hooks her ankle around the leg of her stool. The silence is getting to her, the way he barely looks at her, the way when he does, it's not happy or sad or angry, but with a vague disinterest, most of his attention at the street outside. For a while, Robin sits silently, waiting for her coffee to cool and trying to gather her thoughts. She feels unsettled, uneasy. This is the first time they've spoken, since…

And, well. And what? She'd expected a fight, maybe. She'd come braced for confrontation. Not… this. He's really not doing well, Lily had said, but he seems fine to Robin. He hadn't even reacted to her showing up at the — at his — door.

"So," she forces out at last, when she realizes he's never going to speak, or even look at her. His eyes flick towards her, and she sees dark shadows there. "It's been six months," she says.

"Right," he says, and he sighs, and it's not a sigh of longing or a sigh of reluctance, and it's not paired with any looks or feeling or sadness. He sounds exasperated, if anything.

"Right," she says with emphasis, tightening her jaw. "Sorry if this is ruining your day, but we agreed on this, and if this weird robot act is your way of backing out, forget it." She wonders if it is, if he's changed his mind, what she'll — they'll — do if he has.

"Trust me," Barney says, that faint, mocking tone back in his voice, the slight way he lifts his eyebrows, makes unflinching eye contact, "I'm not backing out. But isn't this the kind of thing you do through a lawyer? Who shows up at their ex's door unannounced?"

Her face grows hot. "Someone who figured her coward of an ex would have run away if he knew she was coming?" She wonders why neither of them are saying what they are. Ex-husband. Ex-wife.

He shrugs, unaffected. "So what do we have to talk about?"

"How about our divorce?" she snaps back. "You know, the whole reason I'm back in New York, six months later?"

He looks at her for a moment, and then his focus turns back to the window.

Robin takes a deep breath and forces herself to exhale it slowly. He is not getting under her skin. He is not. "I thought we could save ourselves some money, time, and hassle and hire a single lawyer," she says. "He or she can look at all our assets together, we leave with what we started with, and… what?" she asks irritably, as the mocking look comes back in his eye.

"What assets? I'm not after your trust fund, Robin," he says.

"What about your assets?" she says cooly, unable to hide her annoyance any longer. She sees him clench his jaw, his gaze darting back out to the street. His Adam's Apple bobs. She feels a sick, bitter rush that she landed a hit, that she got a reaction, but it's tempered by an uneasy guilt. They hadn't made a pre-nup. He'd trusted her, once. He'd…

She looks down at her coffee. "Look, we already have separate accounts. There's no need for any of this to be complicated," she says, forcing herself into professional, calm, hitting the off switch in her mind, over and over again. "We find a lawyer, we make our official filing, none of our friends need to know."

"I'm not discussing assets," Barney says, and she frowns up at him, because it's… random, honestly.

"I know your assets," she says, annoyance creeping back into her voice. "Unless you're worried I'm going to find out about some big whistleblower's fee."

"It's not up for discussion," he says. "We can split a lawyer, we leave what we came in with, but you don't get a look at my stuff." He doesn't trust her, she realizes. He thinks she's going to steal his precious money, his precious suits and precious apartment.

She takes the high road. "Fine. Like I give a crap," she mutters. "I've put aside a couple of weeks so we can do this as quickly as possible. When's the soonest you can meet with a lawyer?"

"I can't," says Barney, and she glares up at him. He's just being difficult on purpose, now. "Just do it yourself and send me the paperwork."

"Right," she says, irritated. "It must be nice, to just drift along, letting everyone else do the heavy lifting in life." The more she looks back on the past few years, the truer she realizes it is. She was the one who had to deal with all the problems. She was the one who had to handle things. The consequences of their actions. From their first, stupid one night stand, to the stuff last year to their trip six months ago, where she was the one who had to…

"You know me," he says, shifting his jaw. "Why do the work when you can just lie back and enjoy it?" There's an innuendo in there, but no high five, no amused cackle, nothing but a dark look, and she's happy to see it, happy to see him react, treat her like she's actually here.

"Trust me," she says, "I remember."

"Yeah, you do," he leers, but there's no fondness, no joking lilt to his tone. He catches her eye for a long moment, and she's the one to break it.

"I should get going," she says, turning her cup around. She pushes back from the table, leaving Barney to look once more out the window. She wonders what the hell he finds so interesting out there.

"Robin," he says suddenly, his tone closest to sincere she's heard so far, and she stops all her movement, stops buttoning her coat. He almost seems to hesitate. "There's a chance you could get served."

"What are you talking about?"

"Don't you watch the news?" he asks, the mocking creeping back in. "For the trial. They're trying to establish how much I told anyone about what I was doing back when I was undercover."

"Which is nothing," Robin says.

He gives a curt nod. "You're kind of the obvious person for them to ask." He runs his fingers over the lid of his cup. "My lawyers have been wanting me to reach out to you."

"Why haven't you?" she asks.

"Would you really have come if I'd called?" Barney looks at her, his expression sardonic, apathetic, and she thinks there's more than one meaning to this, and she doesn't know what to say. There was a time she would have, there was a time she would have dropped everything for him, a time where she did, where she tried to change her life views, her job, all to make him happy. And look where they are now.

"Probably not," she admits.

He smiles. It's the first time today, the first time in longer than she remembers, and it's a quick, fledgling thing, and all at once it hits her how tired he looks. This trial is hard on him. Maybe that's why he doesn't want to meet with even more lawyers.

She sighs and does up the last few buttons of her coat. "Okay," she says. "That's fine." She picks up her purse, her coffee. "Can I ask you a favor?" she asks. He doesn't say yes or no, just regards her, his head tilted slightly back, until she does. "You haven't told anyone about this, have you?"

"Of course not," he says with a small scoff, understanding what she means. He picks up his tea for the first time and takes a sip.

"Good," says Robin. "I'm meeting Lily tomorrow, and…" she doesn't need to explain herself to him, she reminds herself. "Let's just keep this between us, okay?"

"Trust me," Barney says with a cold little laugh, "I'm not exactly jumping at the chance to tell our friends we're not technically divorced yet either." Something inside her twists, but it doesn't hurt. It doesn't. "They'd just try to get us back together," he adds, sounding annoyed, looking down at his tea.

"Yeah," she says, the twisting feeling settling into bitterness, anger. He glances up at her, and she clears her throat. "So, uh, have your lawyers call me to set up an appointment," she says, "and I'll find a lawyer to take care of the other stuff."

"Sure," he says, his expression closed. "Thanks."

"No problem," Robin says, and, feeling twisted and awkward and anxious, but also like this meeting went pretty well, for what it was, even if he's being a weird, sardonic ass; even if she wants to vomit a little, even if her heart is pounding in her chest. "I mean, I want to get divorced just as badly as you do," she says with a scoff of her own, trying to match him for cool apathy.

"Yeah, I seriously doubt that," he mutters, and it only hurts because — because there was a time, only six months ago, there was a time, for years, there was a time — there was a time where she'd really, actually been stupid enough to think they were going to last forever.

She doesn't know how she could have gotten it so wrong.

"Right," she says. "I'll be in touch," she says, and leaves before he can see her swallow thickly, before he can notice her hurt, and she doesn't look back behind her, and she doesn't see him watching her through the window as she hurries towards the subway.