#Thanks once again to you gorgeous people who have left reviews for part 8. If anyone reads this part, please let me know what you think! You'll have my very great thanks.
Lily grins hugely. "You're in love with him, aren't you?"
Robin shakes her head, a tear dislodging and running down her cheek. "Maybe. No! Yes... I don't know."
"Yes, those are some of the options." Lily roots around in her purse and pushes a tissue into Robin's hand, which makes her feel even more like a big kid than she did already.
More than anything, Robin wishes she could go back a year and stop herself getting mixed up with Barney in the first place. Yes, he'd told her that loved her. Yes, she'd had some feelings for him. But if only she'd been that little bit stronger then she wouldn't be in this mess now. She wouldn't have gotten herself hurt, or hurt him in return. Or maybe if she'd have been more damn self-aware and given herself a little time, she might not have let her friends influence her so much.
A perfect example of that is standing beside her, looking at her with those big, worried eyes. Oh Lily... Robin wonders why she's never even stopped before to analyse why she relies so heavily on Lily's advice? She'd let herself get so wrapped up in Don, as if deliberately trying not to see that it was purely a physical attraction. She'd told herself that this was going to be a grown up relationship, in a way that what she had with Barney clearly wasn't. After all, Don was a grown up, he'd proved he could commit. He'd been married before. He was nothing like Barney.
Trouble is, Don was nothing like her, either.
"Barney is Peter Pan," Robin stammers. "And I'm Wendy. And you know what happens to Wendy when Peter flies off and leaves her? She becomes a grown up. And if Wendy even tries to keep Peter with her, all she ends up doing is turn him into a pirate!" Robin's really crying now, tears streaming down her cheeks, her voice hitching around each sob.
"Wow, you're really stretching that metaphor," Lily replies, looking extremely dubious and reaching out to take hold of Robin's hand, giving it a little squeeze. "Besides, didn't Barney actually make kind of a great boyfriend?"
"At first, sure," Robin says, taking a deep breath and staring into the mirror, dabbing her cheeks and trying to pull herself together. "But then we just wore each other down. I don't even know what happened. None of it made any sense. We were supposed to be awesome! But it was like he didn't know how to commit. And in trying to do that, he turned himself into someone that I didn't even recognise. I did that to him, Lily. And I couldn't stand it."
"So it's not that you don't love each other, or even that you couldn't be a couple. It's just the way you went about it that's the problem." Lily tilts her head and gives Robin a sly look.
Is that it? Is it that simple? Or is it just that, deep down, Robin still doesn't believe Barney can commit? And honestly, could anyone blame her? It's Barney. Barney doesn't do serious. Just look at how he's thrown himself back into the dating game since they split, and how much he's been enjoying getting his life back.
"Robin?" Lily asks tentatively.
Robin shakes her head. "I think I just really need to talk to Barney."
Lily nods. "Girlfriend, you really do."
#~- #~-
It's humid outside the bar. Robin spots him on the street corner, a silhouette against the street lights. As a car drives past, she can see him light a cigarette, hands cupped around the end to shield it from the summer breeze.
"Can I bum a smoke?" She says, her voice sounding hoarse. She's glad it's dark enough that he won't see her puffy cheeks, her red eyes.
"Sure." He hands over the packet and the lighter and she feels a flutter of disappointment. She doesn't know what she expected. Something from a black and white movie maybe, where the guy lights the girl's cigarette and they lock gazes and come to some realisation? Or at least end up in bed.
Boy, she's confused.
"Didn't you give this up?" She comments, handing him back the packet. He shrugs and she says, "It's a bad habit."
"One of the many I can't seem to shake," he replies, as the smoke curls around his lips. "I'll go for a run tomorrow morning. Make up for it."
"Can I come?" Robin blurts, before she can censor herself. "I mean, I keep planning to get in shape, but it never seems to work out." She grins nervously. It's like she's asked him out on a date, like there's some weird social agreement between them that she's suddenly broken. It feels like so much rides on his reply.
But he just looks away and blows a perfect smoke ring before drawling "Are you sure? I get up pretty early."
Robin laughs. "Are you kidding? I'm still on COGUNY time."
"Coguny? Really? Is that what you call your show? So lame." His eyes twinkle with amusement. Or is it the street lights?
She gives him a look. "It's what my fans call it."
"The same fans that started the drinking game?"
Rolling her eyes, Robin takes a drag from her cigarette. Damn him, always challenging her and never giving an inch. Maybe they're just too adversarial to make it. Her and him, it would be such a bad idea.
So why does a shiver shoot through her gut when he says, "Sure you can come if you want to. You might be the only person I know who can keep up with my awesomeness."
It leaves her speechless, bathing in a kind of high. It's takes her right back to that first time they hung out, so many years ago now. It makes her feel weirdly special. A member of that exclusive club again. They're Barney-and-Robin again.
They smoke in silence for a while, but it's oddly comfortable.
"Scherbatsky?" Barney says, after he lets his cigarette fall to the pavement and burn out.
"Yep?" She looks up. There's something behind his eyes, something in the way his lips thin, like he wants to admit something but he's not quite brave enough. For once, she just wants him to just say it, because thist time she might be ready to hear him out.
For once she feels that maybe he won't scare her off if he tells her that he's in love with her.
But instead he shakes his head with a small smile and says "I gotta go. See you, six a.m. sharp? Be there or be square, Robin!"
And with that, he walks off into the night, leaving her cursing that she never got a chance to talk to him about their kiss, or how confused she's been since. He leaves her feeling this weird frustration at her continuing failure to connect to him, and she has this odd feeling in her gut. She's worried that she doesn't have that many more chances to do it.
