WOW! You guys are so great that I can't wait any longer to post this next chapter. Just one more after this one and we are finished! Makes me a little sad... Anyway, enjoy!

I don't own jack. Thanks for the reminder.

"I think it's past time we talked, don't you?"

Mary swallowed hard, all evidence of laughter evaporating. But he was right. It was past time. And he deserved some answers. She nodded and followed him into the living room, taking a seat on the far side of the couch.

For a long moment, they just sat there, her staring at the coffee table in front of her, him staring at her. Mary shifted anxiously in her seat under his scrutiny, wondering when the interrogation would begin. He should just get it over with, so they could get back to their lives.

Except it wouldn't get back to normal. Not after this. This would change everything. Once he heard how pathetic she really was, what was at the heart of this whole vacation mess, he wouldn't want to be anywhere near her. Oh, sure, they'd still be partners, he'd still be her best friend. But there would be no talk of "them". No conversation to follow up on his little speech he'd blasted her with before he left. Who would want to get involved with someone who got so hung up by an ex that she was unable to function like a normal human being?

Marshall thought he knew her. Well, he did know her, but he didn't know this. And just as she always did, she would push him away, and would be left to find someone else to fill the gaps.

"Mary," he said gently, a hint of smile in his voice. "Relax. It's just me."

She looked over at him and saw the earnestness in his gaze, the concern, the protectiveness, the desire to help her… Marshall being Marshall, as always. No judgment, no recriminations, no expectations. Just her friend, her partner. Just like normal. Regardless of what happened after this, of what it meant for them, she would always have this. It was exactly what she needed.

She nodded, and sat back against the couch, pulled her feet up underneath her, and rubbed her hands over her face. "Ok. Where do you want me to start?"

"I think the beginning is always advisable."

She rolled her eyes and slapped at his arm. "I'm serious!"

"So am I," he replied calmly, leaning one elbow on the back of the couch, watching her steadily.

"Fine, ok." She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "I left for my not-so-secret vacation pretty much right after we finished with Gabe, right after you gave me that spiel on what I need. It made for quite a pondersome time of it."

" 'Pondersome' is not a word," Marshall murmured with a smile.

"Shut up, you'll get your turn later. Anyway, I spent a lot of time thinking about…things. About people, about myself…and it was nice to get away for a bit, to have that time. But it got to be too much pretty quickly. I'm not used to looking at myself so closely. I didn't like it. And then you called because of that stupid dream." She frowned at him playfully.

He winced. "I said I was sorry."

"I know. Can I ask…why did you really call about that?" If she was going to open up, he'd damn well have to as well.

He shifted uncomfortably, met her eyes, and sighed. "I called because I couldn't stand the thought of you with him. I've never liked the way he looks at you, the way he speaks with you, his entire attitude towards you. Something about him just raises my hackles and heightens my protective instincts. The very idea of you engaging in something of that nature with him…" He shook his head, his brow furrowing. "I couldn't take the chance that it might be real. I know that it would have been none of my affair if you had decided to do it, but where you are concerned, Mary, sometimes that line of what is and is not my business gets pretty indistinct for me. I cross it more than you'd like, and I know it, but my only explanation is that I care more about you than I probably should." He shrugged, the action attempting to offset the emotion she saw in his eyes. "We all have our own Achilles heels, and it just so happens that you're mine."

Mary swallowed down the sudden flare of emotions at his words. An odd warmth was filling her, and she felt a slight burning in her eyes. She shook her head hastily, and sniffed. "That's ridiculous, Marshall. But thank you."

One side of his mouth quirked upwards into a smile, but he said nothing further.

"Anyway, um…where was I?" Damn him for throwing her off like that!

"You had been doing too much introspection," he reminded her quietly.

She nodded. "I thought I was getting it all figured out, that I finally was going to clean out all the skeletons in my closet and be ready for change. And then…" She trailed off, biting her lip.

"And then Raph bumped into you."

She met his eyes, then looked away. "It shouldn't have bothered me like it did. It really bothers me that it bothered me. Does that make any sense?"

She saw Marshall nod slowly once out of the corner of her eye.

"It wouldn't have been so bad if it had just been him. We might have chatted a bit, got caught up, but that would have been it. But when I saw her…when I saw the ring on her finger…" She shook her head, her eyes tingling with tears. "So fast," she whispered. "How could that happen so fast? It took us years to even move in together. I thought what we had was good, not perfect, but good. But when I saw him with her…"

She looked up at him and he was shocked to see the vulnerability in her eyes.

"They were so happy, Marshall. What I had with him wasn't even on the same radar. I feel like we wasted all that time we spent together. He could have been happier, I could have been happier, I think. And I can't see what…" She couldn't finish and looked away.

"Mary," Marshall said softly, reaching out to touch her knee. "It's ok. Tell me."

She shook her head, but said nothing.

"Why not?"

"It's nothing, really. It's stupid and pathetic, and you'll run away, and I wouldn't blame you. I'll be fine, don't worry about it."

Marshall let out a frustrated growl of sorts, and leaned forward, gripping her knee tightly in one hand. "I will always be here for you, you know that. I'm not going to run away. Ever. I am your best friend, Mare, but even with me, you have these walls that I can't penetrate, parts of you that you refuse to let me into. Don't shut me out now. Let me help you. Please."

She looked into his eyes, fear and embarrassment rampant in her green depths. He hoped she could tell how much he loved her, that she could trust him, that he wasn't going to abandon her. They couldn't move forward until they cleared the air, and he was desperate for her to open up to him, to give a little of herself to his keeping.

Mary battled with herself for a few moments. She should trust him, but could she really let him see this insecure, pathetic, scared side of her? Then she heard Tony's voice in her head: He is an intelligent, generous, caring man and he never does anything without reason. He is someone you can trust in and believe in without question. Well, he said she needed messy, and then practically offered himself up…let's see just how much mess he could handle.

She closed her eyes and threaded her hands between her legs. "Marshall, I just…" She dropped her head and sighed. "I don't know." She leaned back against his couch and turned her head to look at him. "I couldn't make Raph happy enough. He said I didn't love him enough. But obviously, Teresa does. Why couldn't I? What does she have that I don't?"

Marshall looked at her silently, watching her, waiting for her to reach the heart of the matter.

"Everybody knows that I'm emotionally disabled," Mary said, rubbing her hands together. "I push and push and push, and it has to be what I want all of the time. I know it, and I've tried, but I can't do anything about it. I can't pretend to be something I'm not."

"Who is asking you to be?" he asked gently.

She shrugged. "No one. Everyone. Well," she said, rolling her eyes a bit, "not you."

He smiled softly and she went on.

"But Raph loved me. Or he tried to, at least. As much as I would let him. And the reason it ended, the real reason, was that I didn't love him the way he wanted me to. We both realized that we were only seeing what we wanted to see in each other. It worked for a while, obviously. It filled the holes we had. Or covered them up, at least."

"Drape a sheet over the elephant in the room," Marshall murmured.

She nodded, and brought a hand up to rub at her forehead. "I'm not sure what would have happened if he hadn't said anything, if he'd just gone along with it. I probably would have married him eventually."

"Why? If you knew it wasn't right, why?"

"It's hard to explain, but it was nice for someone to love me. To not ask anything of me but to love him back. Someone I didn't have to watch out for and protect and clean up messes after."

Marshall frowned, his blue eyes darkening with his thoughts. "You would have married him because he was an oasis in the desert of your life?"

"Yeah, sure, if you wanna put it in flowery poetic terms. He was a breath of fresh air." She snorted and shook her head. "It wasn't fair to him. He couldn't be that for me, not when I wouldn't be as much for him in return. That's why I didn't say anything, why I didn't call him back, why I didn't keep it going after we slept together again. It would all come back to him wanting more than I could give, and me expecting him to be something he wasn't."

"What did you want him to be?"

You. Mary almost gasped as the word flashed across her mind. But it was true, she knew it immediately. She swallowed the word, not ready to admit something so bold out loud, and shrugged. "I'm not sure. But answer me this, Marshall: what am I missing that I couldn't give him what he wanted? I mean, I know I'm a hopeless case, but is that all it is? What's the big secret about making things work that I don't seem to know? And you have to be honest, don't give me a bunch of lines to make me feel better."

"I wouldn't do that," he murmured, shifting in his seat. "You know that I'll be honest with you, but I don't think there's any key trait that you lack that made your relationship with Raph less than his current one with Teresa."

"But—"

He stopped her words with a hand to her lips, and gave her a look that told her he was not finished. "You once told me that you knew you should have felt happier about your relationship. That you wanted something that was just right, free from argument and doubt."

Mary was unwittingly transfixed. He remembered that random conversation they'd had while chasing Wade all those months ago?

"I sensed then that you were trying to convince yourself that your relationship was good enough, but you knew it wasn't. Those things you shared with me prove that there is nothing wrong with you. There is nothing hopeless about you. If anything, you are the epitome of hope. You know what you want and, though you have yet to find it, you seek for it all the same. Just because you could not force your relationship with Raph to be the relationship both of you envisioned does not mean that you are somehow faulty or flawed. It is in our nature to resist conformity to a degree. We none of us want to be coerced into becoming something we are inherently not. You are being true to yourself, Mary, which is one of the most commendable things about you. And you did make Raph happy, for the time you were together. Anyone could see that. Does Teresa make him happier? Possibly. But that is no reflection on you, merely the proof that she is a better fit for his needs."

"That's not how it feels," she said softly, almost to herself.

"Hey," he scolded softly, reaching out to touch her shoulder. "Don't do this to yourself. You are not less of a person, or less of a woman, because you were not perfect for one man. All of us search for the missing pieces of ourselves in others, trying to complete our personal puzzles, and while he had much of what you wanted, he did not have it all. That is his problem, not yours. You deserve someone who knows you and accepts you for exactly what and who you are without reservation or exception. Stop blaming yourself for something that is not, and could never be, your fault."

She shook her head, tears starting to form again. She needed to force this vulnerability away, had to stop the emotional overloads. She could not be weak anymore; she would not.

Marshall sighed softly, and rubbed her shoulder again. "I said once before that you were 'the girl for whom no man will ever be good enough'. I meant that. There isn't a man good enough for you, not because you have some strict high-arching standard all men must meet, or because you feel you are somehow above any man, but because you actually are. There is no man on this earth that could ever be your equal. That doesn't mean that you have to settle or be alone for the rest of your life, but you need to understand just how special you really are and let someone who sees that treat you as such. Let someone help you, Mary, let someone see you with your guard down once in a while. You don't have to be strong all the time."

"I'm not," she whispered, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear and looking down at her knees. "You know I'm not. And you're the only one who does."

He took her hands from between her knees and held them in his own, squeezing them gently. "You are!" he insisted. "You are the strongest woman, hell, the strongest person I know. You have this unconquerable spirit and energy, this indomitable will to go forth and seize whatever it is that you desire, and you don't rest until you have it. I am constantly amazed, not to mention exasperated, by those very parts of you. Just because you have moments where you feel that your emotions are overpowering you doesn't mean you are weak, or that you have somehow sunk from the impossible heights you are so accustomed to inhabiting. It's a normal reaction to your continued efforts to restrain that more human part of you, that pure, untarnished piece of your soul that you so rarely let anyone see. I consider it a privilege to have even the smallest glimpse into it, Mary, and I wish you could see within yourself what I see in you."

The tears that had begun to well in Mary's green eyes threatened to spill over, but before she would let them, she crawled from her seat to wrap her arms around Marshall and buried her face in his chest. He enfolded her in his own arms and just held her close, knowing she didn't need him to say anything further.

"How can you possibly know me so well?" she asked after a long moment, sniffing back any further trace of tears.

He shrugged, rubbing small circles on her back. "We're partners and best friends. It sort of comes with the territory, I suppose. Or it could be my remarkably observant nature."

"Well, in case I never get around to telling you again," she said softly, reaching up to kiss his cheek, "I just want you to know that you are the best friend anyone could ever want. I know you think that I am, but I'm not. It's you."

Marshall swallowed quickly and forced himself to grin down at her. "Even though I am going to eat the rest of the pie and leave none for you?"

She pulled back, her eyes flashing. "Are not! You do and you'll never work another piece of origami again!"

Whatever spell had held them captive was now broken as they both surged for the pie, laughing and eating and spearing each other all at the same time. In the back of his mind, Marshall scolded himself for backing away from the topic they had begun to approach, and he had nearly breached himself. But after seeing Mary lay herself so bare, so raw and open and vulnerable, he could not take that additional leap. She wasn't ready for that, not yet. One step at a time, and soon, rather soon if things progressed as they seemed to be, they would be able to talk about their future…as partners of an entirely different kind.

I apologize for all of you who now want to shoot me. But come on, did you really think I wouldn't draw this out? It's coming, I swear, and it will SOOOOOO be worth it. Reviews please! =) And you all get brownies for your patience.