Robin leans back slightly in the booth, her smile fixed and over-bright, not quite reaching her eyes.

Lily and Marshall talk over each other, two parts of one story where the threads knit effortlessly together to make a whole. Ted smiles, a one-man fan club for the Aldrin/Eriksen show, no doubt seeing the mythical marriage of perfection he desperately longs for. After a while, Barney joins them. He saunters into the bar, grabs the back of a chair and flips it around, legs scraping against the stone floor as he settles on the end of the booth. Avoiding eye contact with him is easy these days; he doesn't exactly seek her out. There was a time when the two of them were thick as theives, like they were in their own little club. Barney-and-Robin, against the world.

Now there's a stone in Robin's chest, in her abdomen. There's something hard and cold there that makes her heart race and her eyes water. She wills herself not to think about Don, but it's a desperate cycle she's gotten herself stuck in. She wonders if this is what depression feels like.

Out of the blue, Barney chuckles at something Lily-Marshall has said and, because he's so near to her, the sound reverberates and feels strange. He's so close, their elbows are practically touching. If she moves an inch, she'll bump into him.

All Robin can think about is whether he's laughing at her. If feels like they're all sniggering, him worst of all.

Being here in MacLaren's with them, with her closest friends, is a daily reminder of her circumstance. It just makes Robin feel worse. It's torture. This past year seems like a string of missteps, a catalogue of mistakes. Robin analyses it, worries about it, builds scenarios in her head where she confronts Don.

She imagines the emails she'll write to him, the telephone calls she'll make. She imagines standing tall with maybe a single brave tear in her eye, balling him out about his failure, his betrayal.

But truth be told he was almost her perfect guy. Experienced, funny, not demanding. Career driven, like her.

Hah. So much for "career driven".

Because it hurts, because she feels so dramatic inside, so much like screaming out loud, Robin forces herself to stay in her seat until Lily and Marshall leave, until Ted complains about an early morning class and heads upstairs.

"What's so funny?" Robin snaps, when she sees Barney's expression, sees the smirk twitching at the edge of his lips. He probably feels so smug, so self-righteous right now. Seeing her fail like this, seeing her fall, when they'd agreed that long-term relationships weren't for them.

It's not like she was looking for anything long-term with Don. Stability isn't the same as long-term.

"Nothing," Barney replies, but there's a half-laugh in the word that grates on her nerves.

"Oh shut up," Robin reaches for her drink, a bone dry red wine, room temperature, which does little to slake her thirst.

Barney has the sense to look sheepish. "Wow, sorry for existing, dude. What's crawled up your-?"

"Barney," she interrupts him with a low warning.

He shrugs, and lets the silence settle between them, seemingly content to savour his scotch and scope the room. Eventually his blue eyes settle back on her, bright and twinkling.

The vacuum, the distance between them, it presses down on her. She doesn't mean to do it, not with Barney, it's just that he's in the wrong place at the right time. He always is, somehow.

Slowly, falteringly at first, Robin begins to speak, a stream of words that becomes a torrent that pours and sputters out of her. She talks and talks until she barely knows what she's saying any more, except that she needs to purge everything that's stuck inside her. It's easy to forget that it's Barney she's talking to, and for a while she does.

So when the admission tumbles from her lips it takes her by surprise. His reaction, the raw pain she sees there, makes her wish more than anything else she could take it back.

Just those last few words.

And they could be Barney-and-Robin again, with him comforting her like he always does, and maybe she could stop hurting for just one god damn minute.

...To be continued.