A/N: Very short little chapter- I'm thinking I'll write Ted, and then just maybe this'll actually start having a plot. (Don't get your hopes up. (: ) Also from now into the foreseeable future I'm really freaking busy so don't expect frequent updates, although I wish I could. And thank you so much to everyone who's following, has favorited, or reviewed this story! It makes me so happy! (Please keep doing so... seriously, makes my day)
Lily doesn't know what to say now.
Because she's always believed in love, trusted it- even when she ran out on Marshall right before their wedding she never doubted they'd end up together in the end, after she sorted her shit out. Because love was like that, and fairy tales definitely have their good points.
But now, watching Barney with Quinn, it's like a fairy tale viewed through a circus mirror, and as she's told Marshall so many times, something just isn't right. It just isn't, and she doesn't know why, but she still gets that crawly feeling in her stomach whenever Barney and Robin sit together in a booth (elbows firmly pressed into their sides, determinedly not touching) and she just knows they belong together.
Barney does seem happy with Quinn, and she admits they're kind of cute together when her husband presses her. She still listens at the door, though, while Quinn is telling an enraptured Marshall about Barney's proposal, and Barney and Robin don't disappoint. (Seriously? Joking about running away together after Barney gets engaged to another woman? That's bad even for them.)
And then Robin meets Tom, and he's amazing (he's HOT- Lily feels like a school girl) and she starts thinking it isn't going to happen. But that feeling won't go away, and that feeling has never been wrong, and besides she has a bet to win, and so she keeps hoping.
She makes a few feeble attempts to break them up, and she debates it fiercely with Marshall, but she doesn't go beyond that. When Quinn decides to leave Barney, surprisingly, Lily had nothing to do with it. It doesn't escape her how Barney looks only at Robin when he's telling them, and how Robin looks determinedly away from him. She takes a swig of beer in frustration, then remembers that she was supposed to be back upstairs fifteen minutes ago and Marshall's gonna be pissed.
She had meant it, way back when, when she swore that she was out of the break up business for good. She still sometimes felt terrible about it. Not too terrible- that would imply regret- but she had learned her lesson, sort of. She remembers sometimes her behavior towards Barney and Robin back then, and wonders if she'd been nicer- less controlling, maybe- wonders if things would have gone differently. She doubts it, but still. Back then she hadn't had the feeling about them. (Back then, she tells herself, they hadn't really belonged together anyway.)
But she really doesn't want to interfere this time. Marshmallow says- and he's probably right (this time)- that it'll just make things worse. And yet- she's Lily, and she has to interfere. It's what she does. But she can't. But she wants to! But she can't. She has to do something.
But she doesn't know what. She doesn't know what to say, to do, what in the world will make these two stubborn donkeys realize that they belong together, Goddammit.