Robin wakes up tangled in her hotel room sheets, the comforter kicked half off the bed. It's abrupt: no slow drifting into consciousness, no sleepy stretching, rolling over for another minute's rest. Aside from the soft hum of the under-window heater, and her cell's ringtone, the room is silent: on the fourteenth floor, with the thick windows shut, there isn't much ambient noise from the city.

She has a feeling she was having some kind of dream, but Robin's always been terrible at remembering them. Her phone is ringing. She rolls over, reaches clumsily for the nightstand: unknown 212 caller. It's eight thirty. Robin touches the screen to take the call. "Hello?"

"Is this Robin Scherbatsky?"

"It is," she says, sitting up, trying not to rustle the bedding, make it obvious she was in bed. "May I ask who is calling?" She swings her feet to the floor, her toes sinking into the thin carpeting. Heads towards the window and draws the blinds. Hundreds of windows reflect the morning sun.

"Agent Frank Ross," he replies. He gives it a polite beat before adding: "Mr Stinson may have mentioned me."

"Sure," Robin says, exhaling. "I mean, of course." Barney hadn't been kidding about getting in touch with his lawyers, that's her first thought. He'd been Barney's handler in the AltruCell work, the agent in charge of the case, and it stands to reason he'd remain involved with the trial. But Robin's never met him; never spoken to him before now.

"Mr Stinson informed us that you'd be willing to meet for a brief interview. I'm aware that you will not be in the city for long," that stings, the image of Barney calling up his FBI pal, telling him Robin will be cutting and running, as usual, "and so the sooner we could arrange for your testimony, the better."

"When you say 'testimony'…" Robin asks, trailing off.

"Nothing too extreme," Agent Ross says. "Have you ever testified in court before?"

"No," Robin says, still looking out the window. Her hotel is in midtown; her window faces north. Faces home. What had been home; now the city feels strange and unfamiliar.

"We wouldn't send you to make a statement unprepared," Ross says. "We'd meet first, informally, to establish the facts, ask you a few basic questions, ensure you know and are comfortable with your statement. Then we would create and submit your official statement, which would of course be shared with the defense as evidence."

"Do I have to testify in front of a jury or anything like that?"

"No," Ross says. "No, definitely not." Rather than reassuring, there's an edge to his voice, even over the phone, that Robin isn't sure what to make of. "Mr Stinson has made it clear that you were uninvolved, and we have no interest in involving you unduly."

"If you believe Barney," she says, "why do you need me at all?" The sting again, the sting: Ross and Barney, meeting, talking about her. The gang meeting and talking about her.

"I'd prefer not to speak of this over the phone," he says. What does that mean? Did Barney say something to him? Imply something? Ross hesitates, then continues: "This is a simple evidentiary matter."

He doesn't want to tell her, she realizes, but she isn't sure what that means. But Robin's already told Barney she'd do this, so she steadies herself. "I'm on leave from work right now, so whenever is convenient for you."

"How about today?" Ross asks.

"I'm meeting a friend for coffee this afternoon," Robin says. And she was planning on finding a divorce lawyer, she doesn't mention.

"We're due in court this afternoon," Ross says. She wonders who we is. She knows who. "However, if you have any time this morning — the preliminary meeting shouldn't take long."

"Sure," she says.

Agent Ross gives her the address, not of New York's FBI headquarters, but of a law firm downtown. They agree to meet at ten, and say their goodbyes. Ross hangs up first. Robin stands where she is for a minute, looking out at the backs of buildings, into offices and apartments where curtains haven't been hung. She didn't think to ask if Barney would be at this meeting, too.

She has some time, but not a lot, so Robin showers and dresses. Living out of her luggage, she doesn't have a lot of variety in her clothes: slacks, blouses, narrow skirts; her hockey jersey, a couple pairs of jeans. She does travel with one or two more professional options, and puts on a short sleeved black dress, a pair of black pumps, and she's debating perfume, laying out her makeup, when Robin is suddenly intensely aware that the dress is Prada, that her lipstick is red, and that she's about two steps away from busting out a NERF football.

What is she doing? Robin strips off the dress and puts on jeans and a collarless blouse, fixes her makeup and slides the pumps back on. Getting dressed and redressed has cut her time dangerously short, and she hurries out of the hotel — grabbing some weak coffee from the lobby on her way out — and down the steps of the nearest subway. Her MetroCard still has some money on it, saving her the hassle of wrestling with one of the machines, and she shoves her way onto the 2 train minutes later.

She ends up pressed against the door, watching her reflection in the glass, checking for any hesitation or doubt. Her hair is a little messy, and she tries to smooth it with one hand, her elbow nearly crashing into another woman, who shoots her an angry look.

She gives up. She's fine. It's all fine. She looks fine, and this is no big deal. She's just going to meet the FBI and talk to them about her ex-husband, who might be there, and whatever she says will then be a matter of public record. No big. And Barney already saw her last night, wearing jeans, hair in a ponytail, just off the plane, so really, whatever she looks like today is completely irrelevant.

Robin gets off the subway at Wall Street and walks the few blocks to the firm Agent Ross had given her: she'd looked up the address on her phone to double-check, and something in her still clenches at the address: 76 Beaver Street. Barney must have thought it was hilarious, a law firm on Beaver Street — but there's no way he could have had a say in it, right? She's overcome with that urge, again, to text him: beaver street, really? But she remembers him looking out the window, totally disinterested, and once again ignores the urge.

The building itself is small, on the corner, a cafe on the bottom floor: Robin heads inside and up to the 11th floor. There only seems to be one office: the elevator opens onto a tiny hallway leading to a glass door with etching reading Flores & Monroe. Robin lets herself in, finding herself in a small waiting room, littered with leafy tropical plants. Either Flores or Monroe must be a fan. There's a reception desk, although deserted, and she loiters for a moment, unsure of what to do. A large-ish aquarium is on a table behind the desk, filled with tiny, silvery fish, and the water filter and the leafy plants combine to give the waiting room a sort of tropical feeling. Robin watches the fish listlessly.

A door at the back of the room opens after a moment, and a man with a short beard stands in the doorway. "Ms Scherbatsky?" he asks.

She turns to face him. "Yes?" Runs her hands over the thighs of her jeans.

"Thank you for coming in," says the man, coming forward to shake her hand. "It's a pleasure to finally meet you."

She recognises his voice. "Agent Ross?"

"Correct," Ross says with a little smile. When Barney would mention him, she'd invariably pictured some beefcake agent, six feet with a gun and action-movie stance. In person, Frank Ross is Robin's height — not short, but not tall, either — and a tad overweight, with a tidily trimmed beard and mustache. He's older than Robin had imagined — probably his late fifties — and has kind eyes. He looks more like someone's retired father than an FBI agent.

"It's nice to meet you too," Robin says. He's not what she expected at all.

"Come on in, let's have a seat. Would you like a coffee?" Ross asks, opening the door more widely for her and leading her down a short hallway. They pass glass-doored offices and end up in a small conference room, more leafy plants piled in corners. An empty dry erase board is hung on one wall; the opposite has a floor to ceiling photograph of the Amazon rain forest. Two women sit at the oval table; both stand to greet Robin and shake her hand. There's no sign of Barney.

"Miriam Marini," says the elder of the two women: in her early fifties, Robin guesses, her short, dark hair streaked with grey in a way that's somehow kind of sharp looking. Her eyes are grey, too, and sharp. "I'm one of the federal prosecutors on the AltruCell case."

"Miriam is the lead on the Fisher trial," Ross adds, sitting at the table.

"And I'm Paula Flores," the other woman says, shaking Robin's hand. She's probably about Robin's age, with a bronze complexion and honey blonde hair. The Flores of Monroe & Flores, Robin decides. She wonders if she's the tropical nut. "I'm the publicist these guys," she nods at Ross and Marini, "hired to help out."

Until this moment, Robin had thought this was a law firm, but it makes quick sense that Barney's legal team would have gotten publicists involved, considering the turn this case is slowly taking. Only yesterday, Barney was on the cover of the New York Post. Ross indicates that she should sit down, and she pulls out the nearest chair. She ends up sitting beside Flores, the Federal agent and attorney opposite them.

"Good to meet you all," Robin says, forcing herself to smile. "I'm Robin Scherbatsky, but I guess you knew that already."

"We did," Flores says with a broad smile. Robin isn't completely sure what to make of that. Her best bet is to handle this like a business meeting. It is a business meeting. She lays her hands in her lap.

"Shall we get right to it?" Ross asks mildly, looking down at some papers. "Miriam?"

"Of course," says Marini. She looks across the table at Robin, and raises an eyebrow in a silent question. Robin nods and tries to think back, dates and times, collect all the scattered tidbits Barney had dropped about his job before the big reveal. Marini is readying a digital recorder of some kind, and gives Robin another quick look before she begins the interview. Flores is still smiling broadly; Ross holds a pen loosely in his hand.

"Ready?" Marini asks.

"You bet," Robin says, taking a deep breath and banishing those thoughts for the millionth time.

"Okay. This is an informal discussion, so don't get too tense. I'm just recording this for our records; the tape won't leave the room. What we're going to try and establish is your relationship with Mr Stinson, and what, if anything, you knew of his job over the past fifteen years."

"I've only known Barney for eleven years," Robin corrects. It feels weird, to call him by his first name when his legal team is calling him by his last. She wonders if they do that when he's here, or if she ought to start calling him Stinson as well.

"You met in 2005?"

"Yes," she says. She remembers one time back then: Lily had invited her and Barney to career day at her kindergarten class. Lily had ribbed Barney about it — you agreed, so you have to tell me your job, or I'm telling the kids you're the dinosaur — and Barney had given his typical non-answer and spent his time with the kids performing magic tricks. Robin had been new to the gang. She'd thought he was the biggest kiss-ass on the planet. (She hadn't been wrong.)

"And did he ever give any indication of his activities on behalf of the FBI?" Marini asks. "Anything at all."

"No," Robin says, trying to clear away the memories, just concentrate on the answers. "We all used to question it sometimes, I think he… Barney… kind of liked it when we did?" He'd smirk and say please, to the point it almost felt like a running joke. To the point that the gang was split, even money: either he was an accountant or something boring and was just trying to seem mysterious, or he was up to something pretty shady he couldn't talk about for legal reasons. She explains as much to the team; the way Barney would sometimes drop hints, make his career out to be shady and dangerous, but that he was always doing things like that: lying, spinning the truth, making his life seem far more dramatic and exciting than it probably was.

But then again, here she is being interviewed by the FBI.

The questions continue on: did Mr Stinson ever confirm or deny…? Were there any occasions where…? They're impersonal, but every question sends her into an anxious tailspin of memories: Barney, afraid of losing his job over the Arcadian, his hand warm in hers at the hearing. Lily telling her and Ted about her stint as Barney's roommate; I don't know how he affords that stuff, and some cheerful gossiping about his TV and career. Visiting him at work to get lunch, to hang out, to have sex on the sofa — "And when did you discover the truth?" Marini asks after fifteen, twenty minutes of this, hours of this, memories that no longer matter, memories that are long gone.

Robin steadies herself. Her hands are clenched in her lap. Ross is taking slow notes. "Three years ago," she says. The night before their wedding, she doesn't say.

She and Ted had gotten Barney so drunk he started spewing out the truth, and how they'd mostly wasted the chance on silly, petty truths. She remembers a couple of weeks later — just after the honeymoon — Barney sitting her down, serious, ready to tell her everything about his job, unable to remember that he'd already said. She'd been worried for a moment he'd be upset; instead, he'd been thrilled that she (and Ted) had been so diabolical as to pull one over on him like that. (She hadn't had the heart to tell him it was mostly an accident.)

She remembers talking to him yesterday. Yeah, I seriously doubt that. All those memories, all those moments, turn to ash in her mouth. Yeah, he said coldly. I can't wait to cut you out of my life forever. Nothing; it all amounted to nothing. All those years and memories are nothing. The day of the wedding, she'd doubted everything, been afraid of everything. Maybe it was a sign.

"He was drunk, and mentioned it in passing," she says, none of the other things.

"That was the day before your wedding, correct?" Marini asks. It's like a punch to her heart, like her mind is being read. Robin nods stiffly, reminding herself that of course they know these things, they're part of Barney's legal team, he's been telling them god-knows-what for months.

Marini watches her. "I understand that you and Mr Stinson are going through a divorce?"

"What does that have to do with anything?" Robin asks, her face growing hot.

Flores coughs discreetly. "Simply that we understand this must be a difficult situation for you, and we're exceptionally grateful for your cooperation."

"It was a mutual decision," Robin says, struggling to keep her voice calm, neutral, reporterly. "We just didn't work. It isn't like I hate him and want him to go to prison." She doesn't like the way the women are looking at her.

Agent Ross casually glances up for the first time in a while. "I can assure you, Mr Stinson is in no danger of going to prison," he says.

She's confused. "I thought the trial wasn't going well?"

Marini looks uncomfortable, but Ross holds his hand up to her before she can speak. "Mr Stinson has full immunity," he explains, "which is a formality, as, in the eyes of the United States government, he has devoted eighteen years of his life in service to this great nation. Legally speaking, unless something drastic happens," and he smiles gently, as if to show what a ridiculous idea that is, "Mr Stinson is in absolutely no danger."

"The problem is," Marini says brusquely, "that Greg Fisher's team has figured out that the best way to win the case is by dragging Mr Stinson's name through the mud. I'm sure you've seen the papers?" She gives Robin a look that Robin can't read. "If they can make Mr Stinson seem less than credible by destroying his reputation, they win the case, and if Fisher gets off, it in turn weakens the AltruCell case."

Make him out to be a revenge-obsessed idiot. Which is he. Was. Her throat feels tight; she doesn't know why. "Don't you have evidence?" Robin asks tersely.

Ross and Marini share a look. "Of course we do," says Marini. Robin waits — this seems like the sort of statement that requires elaboration — but no further explanation arrives.

"However, we have no intention of losing," Ross says with a dry chuckle.

"That's it?" Robin asks impatiently, after a silence she isn't at all imagining to be awkward. "'Barney's reputation is getting trashed, but we'll win?'" His appearance is everything to him, she knows. Not just physical — how many years have they listened to his lies and stories? His attempts to make himself look good? LIAR LIAR, the Post's headline blared.

"Have some faith in the US government," Ross suggests, smiling warmly across the table at Robin. She isn't sure what to make of that non-answer: they're clearly avoiding talking about it, but she doesn't know why. Unless Barney told them something — maybe that's why they questioned the divorce? Anxiety bubbles in her stomach.

"With that said, we should probably wrap up for today," Marini says with a glance at her watch. "The hearing starts in a couple of hours, and I'd like to review the questions with Stinson beforehand." No longer talking to Robin, she drops the mister, and Ross nods, flips his notebook shut.

"Sounds good," Agent Ross says, standing up. Flores packs up her things, and strikes up a conversation with Marini about a quick lunch. Robin, in the space of three seconds, has been rendered completely invisible. She stands, too, and Ross approaches her, offering his hand to shake once more. "Thanks so much for coming in," Ross says. "You've been a big help."

"That's it?" Robin asks dumbly, feeling irritation well up.

"That's it," Ross confirms. "We can schedule a time for your formal statement now, if you'd like, or we can get in touch in a day or two."

"So it's just — thanks for your life story, see you? What about the trial?" Robin asks. Barney, she thinks.

"With all due respect," Ross says, "we would prefer not to discuss that with you."

We. It's like a slap in the face. She feels her nostrils flare. "Why not?"

"Because you're Mr Stinson's ex wife, and a member of the press besides." Ross says calmly, looking at her, and if she, until now, had thought he looked like someone's kindly uncle, she now remembers that he's a member of the FBI, the lead on one of the biggest corporate cases of the last fifty years. There's nothing warm in his expression. She sees the picture on the front page of the Post again, Barney glancing backwards, his expression taut and weary.

It's like a punch to the gut. Her face grows hot. "I would never — I have journalistic integrity!" she snaps.

"So Barney has said," Ross replies. The use of his first name almost throws her. "I'd hate for him to be wrong. You've been a great help today," he says. It feels as though she was just threatened, and she clenches her mouth shut, shoulders raised, cheeks burning. "Thank you so much."

Be polite, Robin tells herself. Be polite. Be polite. "Thank you," she says stiffly, shakes his hand, and leaves with as much dignity as she can muster. How dare he! She's not — she doesn't work for the Post! She wouldn't — even as Barney's ex, she wouldn't leak trial information, smear him through the mud, whatever… whatever they think she's going to do. Whatever Barney thinks. He must have been the one — she remembers him last night, staring out the window, refusing to talk to her. As a member of the press.

Robin stabs at the elevator button, and then two more times for good measure. Her face is still hot with humiliation, with queasy nerves. She never would have agreed to — she did all this to help him, genuinely wanting to help him, because she wanted to do the right thing by him — she stabs the 1st floor button inside the elevator, and then the door close button two or three more times — and it turns out he's just busy thinking of ways she could screw him over, like she's some kind of shitty person.

(She remembers the way he'd looked at her, in the hotel room, the last time, when she'd asked him. One look. Right then, she'd known it was over. That she wasn't enough for him.

She hadn't realized until now how little he'd thought of her.)

She's breathing heavily, and tries to pull herself together. The elevator doors open and close again before she's feeling confident in her ability to walk, to breathe: she presses the door open button (once) and the doors slide back open. She feels shaky and light headed with anger and hurt, and brushes her hands over her cheeks, pushing her hair back past her ears, trying to think of something, anything else.

Instead, she finds Barney crossing the lobby.

Her heart stops, and Robin has the almost overwhelming urge to dive behind some object, under some table, to stop him from spotting her. Her face must still be flushed, her eyes feel wide and panicked. There's a hearing in a couple of hours. Marini wants to go over things with him beforehand. She's such a goddamn idiot. Of course he's here: he probably can't wait to gossip with his buddies about how untrustworthy she is.

He stops when he sees her. He's wearing that tie again, blue silk standing out against the black wool of his suit. He looks at her with a wary expression, and Robin looks down at the floor, at a painting on the wall to the side, at anything except for him. She waits for him to move on, but he doesn't.

"What?" she asks, unable to take the feeling of him looking at her anymore. She should just march right past him and out the door, but she can't move.

"Are you…" if he asks her if she's been crying, she's going to take her gun out of her purse and shoot him. "done with your statement?" he finishes, and she isn't surprised he wasn't asking if she was okay, and so it doesn't make her feel worse at all.

She's sick of feeling like this. She's done feeling like this. She's Robin Scherbatsky; she doesn't feel like this. She raises her shoulders and looks back at him. His expression is tight, wary. "Yeah; and you're welcome," she says coldly. "Next time you ask me a favor, try not to ambush me like that."

"What the hell are you talking about?" he asks, annoyed. Good for him. Her too.

"And that's if I ever — ever — do you a favor again," Robin adds, letting it overtake her, letting it fill her and make her feel something besides hurt. "Which after today? Not likely!" He works his jaw and doesn't reply, so she continues, building up steam. "I thought we could handle this whole thing like adults, like friends, but clearly —"

He's still moving his jaw; he interrupts her, the words bursting out in an angry rush: "Like friends? Are you kidding?" He turns on his feet, paces to the left, to the right. Spreads his arms, turns back to her and points. It's the most movement, the most emotion, she's seen from him so far. His voice is cold, angry, sardonic. "We're not friends!" That's pretty obvious, but it still hurts to hear. "Robin, we haven't been friends since —"

"Argentina?" she interrupts, unable to handle — this, him telling her, him saying it like she doesn't know.

His arms fall to his sides. "Longer than that," he says. She can't look at him anymore. She looks at his feet. He moves, turns away.

"So what the hell happened up there?" he asks finally, his voice rough.

"What do you care?" she can't help but retort, childish as it may be. She summons her nerve and looks back up at him; he's glaring at a landscape on the wall. She watches him take a deep breath.

"Well, it's my case and my guys, so it kinda affects me," he says with grit teeth.

"My journalistic integrity," she bites.

He snorts humorlessly. "What are you talking about?"

"You told your guys I wouldn't help you, because as a member of the press, I'm just itching for a scoop!" Robin snaps, feeling color come to her face again.

He doesn't deny it: he stays silent, staring at the landscape. It's a Mediterranean villa, vineyards and the ocean in the distance.

"Forget it," she says. She moves towards him with the intention of blowing past him and out the door. He takes a big step out of her way when he sees her approaching, and she has the urge to slap him in his face when he does.

"I didn't say that," he says to her back. "I'd never say that."

She doesn't let herself believe him. "Whatever," Robin snaps. "Nice tie." She recognizes it now. He'd wanted to wear it at their wedding.

"Yeah," Barney says as she walks towards the door, "Paula says I need to wear more color. She says I dress like a corporate asshole."

For just a second, he sounds so much like himself — his real self, full of himself and wry and incapable of taking things too seriously — that Robin is distracted; turns back towards him. But he's already walking towards the elevator, his shoes clicking against the marble floor.


She's still flustered a couple hours later. Calmer, less shaky, but she keeps thinking back to it, bits and pieces — Agent Ross, Marini, Barney — flashing into her head at odd moments. The way Barney looked at her, wouldn't look at her. We're not friends. All of it.

It's dangerous to see Lily like this, so Robin stalls as long as she can before heading over to their apartment. She gets a tight, sad feeling of nostalgia once MacLaren's comes into view; when she climbs the steps to the apartment, when she walks down the hall. This was her home; her entire world; for so long. She knocks on the door and takes one more steadying breath, just in case, before Lily can come to open it, which she does a few seconds later.

"Sweetie!" Lily cries, immediately pulling her into a hug — an awkward one, due to Lily's extremely visible pregnancy.

"Holy crap, you're huge!" Robin yelps in reply, gaping down at Lily's stomach. She'd known, vaguely, that Lily was pregnant — Lily had announced it around the same time that she and Barney, well — but Lily hadn't been showing when she'd left town, and she hadn't really mentioned it much, on the phone or Skyping.

It only occurs to Robin now to wonder why: Lily looks about ready to pop.

"Ugh, I know," Lily grumbles, patting her stomach and shaking her head in abject misery. "I already told Marshall, I'm done. No more enormous Eriksen babies. Three is my limit."

"Better you than me," Robin says. She isn't thinking about the implications until Lily turns back to her with wide eyes. She doesn't think about it much, the stuff from last year. She doesn't let herself think about it. It happened, it's over, she's moved on. For the first time, she wonders if there's a reason Lily has kept her own pregnancy quiet around her. "Ha," Robin says weakly. "I kid. Where are the kids?"

"Dad took them to the zoo for the afternoon," Lily says, leading them to the couch.

"That's nice of him."

"Well, I mean, I paid," Lily says, rolling her eyes, and Robin laughs. Lily sits down on the sofa with an oof and then waves vaguely towards the kitchen. "Yeah, there's no way I can stand back up and get the coffee," she says.

"I've got it," Robin says, standing back up. Lily had already started the pot and a kettle, so all she has to do is pour and add cream and sugar, and fetch some tea for Lily. ("yet another reason I'm never doing this again.") They fall into an easy conversation as she does, catching up on life — Robin tells Lily about Mexico; Lily catches her up on gossip. Stuart and Claudia are back together; money is on them lasting six months, more if Claudia really is pregnant. Brad and Marshall had brunch the other day; money is on them lasting two weeks. Lily just hit the eight month mark and is counting the days until the baby is born; since she and Marshall already have a boy and a girl, they decided not to find out this one's gender. Unsurprisingly, there's a betting pool: Robin puts down ten bucks for boy.

Once or twice, Robin catches Lily almost mentioning Barney, but each time, one or both of them change the subject. It's easier this way. Out of sight, out of mind; just like the stuff from last year. But even as they gossip about the Captain and Becky, her mind keeps sliding back to it. To him. His footsteps clicking on the floor.

I would never. Part of her wants to tell Lily — but she knows that if she does, Lily will never stop talking about it, about her and Barney, and that sends her into a whole new house of echoes. He's not doing well. He's really not doing well.

Robin still isn't sure what that means. Both times she's met him, he's been fine. More smug than usual, really. She doesn't ask.

A couple of hours of chatting later, Marshall arrives home. "Hey, Robin!" he says warmly, spotting her on the couch.

"Hey, baby, how was court?" Lily asks, stretching out her arms for her husband. They kiss, and Marshall settles himself down on the sofa next to Lily, reaching for a cookie on the coffee table.

"It was okay," Marshall says with a sigh. He gives Robin a strange look over Lily's head. "You-know-who is, uh, stressed out."

Robin frowns.

"Did something happen?" Lily asks. She turns back towards Robin before Marshall can answer. "You-know-who is Barney," she explains, and raises her eyebrows like she's daring her to say something. Robin takes a sip of her cold coffee.

"They're still trying to damage control yesterday's paper," Marshall says. He keeps looking over at Robin guiltily; his eyes big and apologetic. It's kind of annoying.

"You're one of Barney's lawyers?" she asks.

"No," Marshall says, glancing between her and his wife. "We just kind of take turns going to court?" He smiles nervously. "Every day Barney has to be in court, which is pretty much every day, one of us goes with him. Ted made us a chart." he gestures behind Robin, and she spots a repurposed calendar hanging up next to the kitchen window. The top half is a garish kitten in a tree; the bottom part is a mess of colors covering the squares for days. "I'm red, Ted is blue, Tracy is yellow, and Lily is purple," Marshall explains. This current week seems to be all red and blue. There are hardly any yellow squares, and Lily seems to be regulated to Mondays.

Robin looks back towards Marshall and Lily. Lily stares at her unflinchingly, clearly waiting for Robin to do something; Marshall, sensing the tension, looks from one woman to the other and back, then clears his throat. "We can add you if you want!" he says too loudly. "You can be green; you can take some of mine and Tracy's days."

She loses her staring contest with Lily. "I'm pretty sure I wouldn't be a lot of support for Barney," she says bitterly. Member of the press, she thinks.

"That doesn't matter," Lily says, jumping on the chance to discuss her and Barney, Robin thinks with a surge of annoyance.

"It doesn't matter? You need to watch out for your pregnancy brain," Robin scoffs, holding her mug tightly in both hands.

"We're family, and that means —"

"No, we're not family!" Robin interrupts. "Barney and I stopped being —" family. Some other category, special category, standing in from of the alter, in front of their friends and loved ones, promising to be together, to stay together, to love one another in a way that never breaks — She can't form her mouth around the word. "We're nothing. We're not even friends." Lily opens her mouth, and Robin, angry, brandishes her mug. "No, stop! Don't even, okay? We're over! I talked to him this morning, and we're done! You need to get your head out of your ass and get over yourself!" It all comes pouring out: all the frustrations, Lily's looks, her comments, the way Barney won't even look at her, the way he'd looked at her in the hotel, the way they'd stood at the fucking altar and he'd promised to love her forever and lied to her goddamn face. "You always do this — always mess with people's lives no matter how much they tell you to cut it out. And that's what I'm telling you! You're so freaking delusional! Barney and I are done."

"Ladies, you're both looking beautiful today," Marshall says in a desperate attempt at changing the subject.

Lily's visibly keeping her retort in, her jaw clenched, the cords in her neck standing out, her eyes red and filled with tears. Robin keeps her mug raised, but Lily doesn't speak, even as tears start to spill down her cheeks. Fuck. Robin lowers her arm and look away. Fuck, fuck. She practically throws the mug onto the coffee table, and drops her head into her hands. Great. On top of everything else, everything else she fucking sucks at, she's making her best friend cry. Her pregnant best friend.

"Really beautiful," Marshall says weakly. Lily gives out a big, wet sniff, and Robin glances up to see her enveloped in Marshall's arms. They've been a couple as long as she's known them, and she's used to it, but now it stings, now it hurts, and she presses her palms into her eyeballs until flowers of color bloom in the black.

She needs to say something to Lily; needs to take it back, but it's hard, because it was mean and it was wrong but it feels right, it feels good, to take things out on someone that isn't herself. She sits there, Lily sniffles in her husband's arms, and Marshall is quiet for a long moment. Staying out of it, she thinks, until he clears his throat.

"You talked to Barney this morning?" he asks.

Did she say that? She honestly doesn't know. Everything hurts. She takes in a breath and it's shaky. "Yeah," she says. Why not. Why the hell not. "Sure." She wills herself to calm down. "He asked me to make a statement to his lawyers about his job."

"Is that why you're back in town?" Marshall asks gently.

She laughs, exhausted and humorless, because telling them she's back in town to get a divorce would be the worst thing she possibly could say. "No, that was just bad timing," she says. "It sucked."

"It was nice of you to do that for him," says Marshall. Robin snorts. Trust him to try to look on the bright side of things.

Lily snorts too.

Robin sits up again, dropping her hands from her eyes. She looks over to Lily and Marshall and sees Lily eyeing her. She takes a deep breath, braces herself. "Lil, I'm sorry," she says, wincing and closing her eyes. "I didn't mean to go off on you like that."

"I just want to help you," Lily says, and Robin bites the inside of her cheek to stop herself reacting to Lily's tone. Marshall shoots her a warning look over Lily's head.

"I don't want help," Robin says. She doesn't need help. She just needs — needs to move on with her life. "Okay? And I hate… I hate that we can't even talk without this!"

"You're —" Lily cuts herself off and takes a steadying breath. "Robin, I told you. You and Barney are both important people in our lives. I can't just pretend he's not when you're around. And I don't pretend you're not when he's around. I'm not going to pretend either one of you don't exist, but whenever I even mention one of you, you start yelling and Barney…" she and Marshall share a glance.

"What?" Robin asks coldly. "He starts yelling too?"

"He's been going through a lot lately," Marshall says.

"Well, you know what? So have I," she says tersely. "I just want to put it behind me, and, and talk to my best friend without it turning into a fight." She looks over at Lily, whose eyes are red and puffy. Sometimes she wishes she could be like that; knew how to cry like that.

"We all want that!" Lily says. "But I mean it, Robin! You can't just … refuse to deal with everything and start yelling."

"Well, you need to stop meddling," Robin says peevishly.

"That's reasonable," Marshall says, before either woman can start arguing again. "We can all meet in the middle on this, right, ladies? Less trying to fix stuff, less yelling, everyone is friends!"

She waits for Lily to say "Okay, fine," sniffling as she does.

"Sure," Robin says.

"Do you want to hug it out?" Marshall asks, but that's a step too far. He coughs. "Who wants a non-alcoholic drink?" He practically launches himself up from the sofa.

Robin tries to think of a way to chance the subject, but her head is buzzing, and Lily is clearly still unhappy with her. She's not pleased with Lily either, for that matter, but if they can just talk about something else, she can make it go away. "How're Ted and Tracy?" she asks.

"Do you want to stay for dinner?" Lily snaps.

"Wow, Mickey's sure been out with the kids for a while!" Robin tries again.

"I mean it," Lily says, tense. "You're always welcome."

"Maybe I should just go," says Robin, rubbing her knuckles against her forehead. Her shoulders ache from hunching over.

"You can't just run away whenever things get hard," Lily says quietly, so quietly that Robin isn't immediately sure she heard her right.

She's pretty sure this means that Lily has no intention of upholding Marshall's truce, but at this point, she isn't sure anymore what she can do. "I'll stay for dinner," Robin says, staring at her mug on the coffee table.

Marshall returns to the living room with three glasses of soda and starts talking loudly about next week's brunch date with Brad. Lily joins in the conversation, and Robin clutches her glass. Agent Ross's eyes, blue and sharp. Barney's shoes on the marble floor. Lily, grabbing and grabbing and not letting go.

Her black dress, discarded on her hotel room bed.

"Have you ever met Kara?" Lily asks, a peace offering, drawing her into the conversation.

Robin shakes her head and takes a sip of her cola. "No, I don't think so," she says, thinking: 0-4, RJ. That's a bad streak you're running. Lily and Marshall keep talking, and she drifts out of the conversation again. 0-4, all SOL. She has no idea how to turn it around.