OH HEY EVERYONE. Sorry this chapter took forever — holidays plus video games plus the realization that I had accidentally planned a Big Chapter kind of all added up.
Certain conversations and events in this chapter are repeated from the chapters What Happened In July and The Perfect Month, in some cases word for word, so it may or may not make more sense if you re-read those before diving in here.
And yeah… this is another two parter chapter. Next one should take us back to the present.
June 15th, 1994.
Port Richmond, Staten Island.
Barney can't remember the word for conscientious. He's not even sure offhand that there is one, not exactly: he can remember sincere and hard working, but he left his Korean-English dictionary under his bed. I consider myself a is as far as his essay has gotten.
It was James's idea. "You want to go for a Korean major, don't you?"
"Well, uh," Barney had said, lying on James's floor while James was lying on his sofa. They were playing Mortal Kombat, the new one. "You know, East Asian studies, as a minor. Cornell has a good program, Mrs. Richards says, and then if I get a Master's in International Development, she says I'm a shoo-in for the Peace Corps… But it's not like I have great grades or any kind of resume, I worked in a deli, and I really have to get that scholarship anyway…"
Just then, Jax KOs Bakara. "Suck it, bro!" James crows. Barney groans and throws down his controller, then picks it back up. "You're not focusing," James says. "You're worrying too much about it and that's why I'm kicking your ass."
"That's easy for you to say," Barney had grumbled, rolling onto his back and peering at the TV upside down. "Mom never shuts up about how you're her big successful business man." He says it tauntingly, but he's also a little jealous. What is he doing? He's not going to be big and successful. He might help change the world in some tiny way, but even though Mom is okay with his dreams, she kind of gets this look on her face whenever he talks about Burma or Cambodia or Laos, like, concern and disbelief and he hopes he can prove her wrong, but also, what is he thinking? He has to get a full scholarship to even get into Cornell, and he has no skills, and he's not cool or a football player, and…
"Dude, stop spacing out!" James complains.
"I can't help it! I'm supposed to have my essay done in three weeks and I want to make a good impression!" But Barney shuts up, and they get through the next match without more on it.
James wins again. "You know what would be really flashy and kind of cool?" James says. "Why don't you write like, a paragraph in Korean? You're going to be an East Asia minor, so prove you're already all Asian and stuff!"
"I can't write a whole paragraph in Korean," Barney says, aghast.
"Please," says James. "Whenever I go to the deli and you're there, you and Mrs Park are talking nonstop."
…So maybe Barney had picked up some Korean in the five years he'd been helping out at the deli. And maybe it was easier for everyone when he'd taught himself (with Mrs Park's help) to read and write Hangul. But obviously he can't remember if there's a word for conscientious and so this was a stupid plan and he's a failure and will never, ever get into the Peace Corp and help change the world.
Barney crumples up the sheet of notebook paper he's been using for scratch paper, and, in a fit of pique, throws it across the coffeeshop into the trash can a few feet away. Because he's always been a great basketball player, he makes the shot. At least he can do that, even if he is never going to get accepted into college. He tears out another blank sheet and starts jotting down new words, trying to rephrase the troublesome sentence into something new. Because I have always been a hard-working and talented person, he writes in Hangul.
He's been working on this essay nonstop for the last week, first at home — which didn't work, because Mom kept coming up to his room to chat or inviting him to eat or play cards with her and her friend Rhonda — and then at James's — but James kicked him out for "being too whiny and annoying while I'm trying to watch the game" — and now here, at a Port Richmond coffee shop he's never really been in before. Barney isn't a big coffee drinker: he doesn't like the bitter taste, but when he'd passed by the first time he'd seen lots of people sitting and working, a few guys even with laptops, and no one had minded him doing the same. He comes in in the morning, orders a coffee which he sips at for hours, and works.
He needs to finish the sentence with something about how his work ethic drives his passion, which is helping the unfortunate receive advantages that should be afforded to all people… he's trying to phrase it in his head and translate it into Korean, which isn't the easiest thing in the world. He's mentally correcting his grammar when one of the cute girls who work behind the counter approaches his table with a napkin.
"Um, I'm still drinking this," he says, lifting his mostly-full and completely cold mug and taking a sip of coffee.
"Okay," she says. She hesitates. "I saw that three pointer you made a minute ago."
"Huh?" Barney looks up at the girl, over to the trashcan, and then it clicks. "Oh, jeez, sorry, if that's not okay, I didn't…"
"No, it's fine! Nice shot," she says, blushing. She looks about as nervous as he feels, which makes Barney feel a little better. He doesn't know what else to say, and she lingers next to his table, wringing her napkin in her hands. She takes a deep breath and sits at the empty chair opposite his. "And, um, the other day, were you… practicing magic tricks?"
"What?" Barney feels his face turn red. He can't remember what she's talking about, but, "Oh, um, gosh, it's nothing… sometimes when I don't have anything to do, with, you know, my hands, I'll play around with a coin or something…" He'll palm it, reveal it, move it from hand to hand, practicing without even thinking about it.
"It was pretty cool!" she smiles and tucks a strand of blonde hair behind her ears. "I love magic. I've, um, I've kind of been watching you all week."
"You love magic?" Barney asks. She nods, biting her lip and smiling at her lap. His heart is pounding, his face feels red.
"Yeah!" she says. "Um, it's nice to finally meet you," she says, looking shyly up at him. "My name's Shannon."
May 14th, 2016
Manhattan, New York
A week after coming back from Argentina, Barney hires a cleaning service to get rid of all of Robin's things.
It's the only thing he can think of: he tells them to pack away everything that isn't a utensil or a suit and leaves for the day, just gets out of town. He avoids his friends because they'd have questions for him, pity for him, and he can't visit Mom because she'd want to hug him, and James and Tom almost broke up but worked it out because they're in love and want to be together and right now all that stuff just makes him angry, just makes him impatient and itchy to break things. He goes to Laser Park and kicks ten year old ass after ass, until the bright lights and AC and bad techno music have scrubbed away everything else he's thinking, until he's feeling better again (and slightly sick from cheese pretzels).
When he gets home, his apartment is empty.
There's the new sofa, the chairs, the cups in the cupboards, the silverware in the drawers. The shards of the wedding china he'd smashed have been cleared away. So have the throw pillows and scented candles and patterned towels and jewelry and clothes and photos and books and socks and makeup and maple syrup and paintings and saved birthday cards and hockey skates and magazines and shopping lists and Celine Dion CDs and guns and body wash and toothbrush and nail clippers and potted flowers and cookbooks and mugs and Canada magnets and red wine and peanut butter and…
But not everything get tossed. His suits are still there. His stormtrooper.
The things she'd taken with her when she'd left.
And one banker's box, left on the kitchen counter with a note from the cleaners — valuable items they hadn't felt right tossing or taking. Isn't that always how it goes with him and Robin? A relationship relegated to a single box? He has a drink and then checks it, but it's not photos and mementos: it turns out to be most of her jewelry, diamonds and necklaces he'd bought her or she'd bought herself. He tosses the whole thing in the back of a closet because they'd mess up the garbage disposal.
Over the next few days, he finds other things that were overlooked. Pain killers in the medicine cabinet, hairpins in weird spots, he contents of their box of sex toys, a bottle of shampoo. He tosses it as he finds it, not feeling an ounce or remorse or regret or anything at all. Every time he opens the trash can it's a relief, one more thing gone, one more thing erased. When there's no sign she ever lived here, ever was here, ever,
(ever was sleeping in his bed when he woke up, ever grumbled or pushed a pillow at him or smiled when he woke her, smiled up at him and asked him what he was doing, said good morning to him, just that, just like that, not because of sex or because he'd said something funny or because they were friends, but because even just waking up, even first thing in the morning, she was happy, she was happy to be there, be happy to be in his bedroom of his apartment as his —)
when there's no longer any proof she ever existed, he's sure the feelings will stop.
By the end of the week, he's stopped finding scraps of her. By the time their anniversary rolls around, he's forgotten her so thoroughly that he goes out and has a great time for nine hours at Laser Park and doesn't think about her once because relationships are stupid and he's always known and felt this way.
At the end of the month, he finds the photo.
He's not doing anything one night, flipping through an old issue of Esquire. He has a subscription because it's the kind of magazine he should be into, but really he thinks it's pretty boring, never reads the articles, just likes the photos of the hot women. He's had this issue on his coffee table for months, can't remember the centerfold, is a little bored one night, opens it up just to check…
And it falls right to the centerfold. Right to the photo, stuck as a bookmark, between the pages.
Hot, blonde young actress in a teeshirt; Robin in her wedding dress.
He's so stunned he can't move.
He closes the magazine, throws it on the cushion beside him, presses his fist against his closed mouth until he can breathe again, takes a sharp breath, his palms grinding against his eyes, elbows into his knees.
It's not fair. It's not fair it's not fair it's not fucking fair it's not fair it's not —
She's leaning against him, her body is warm and heavy, too heavy, he can't move his arm, he tells her so and she says too bad in a warm voice, chuckles when he wriggles his arm to try to escape, she's warm and her hair is on his shoulder, against his neck, sweet smelling, she had this bodywash that smelled like sugar and vanilla — too sweet for her, she'd said, never bought it again, but he'd loved it, it drove him crazy, she was warm and sweet and heavy, leaning against his arm, his left arm, his left hand, he'd kept wanting to touch his ring, it felt weird, something new, but she'd been leaning against him and he couldn't keep reaching over himself to play with it, he was talking to Marshall and Lily and the rain thrummed on the roof, the rain thrummed on the roof of the tent of their wedding, their wedding, their wedding, and he'd never been happy, had never known what it felt, to not be posturing or pretending or ignoring the dark corners of his brain, he'd never been happy, he'd never been at one hundred percent, never been sure that what he was feeling was happiness, not without a corner of doubt, a corner going there must be a trick, she'd been leaning against him at their wedding and he'd —
He pushes it down.
He pushes it away.
When he's finally able to open the magazine up again, he pulls out the photo, the one he'd found in Lily's album and taken because of Robin's cleavage in it. It had made her laugh when he'd pointed it out. He had forgotten about it after that. She'd found it again, found it and put it in a magazine and scrawled on the back: my boobs are way better lol, LOL, like it's a text message, left it there for him to find but he never had until now.
He throws it in the trash in the kitchen, turns away, turns back and pulls it out. No.
He can't.
He'll shred it, he decides — put it through the garbage disposal, turn these feelings into anger into scraps of paper.
But he can't.
He sticks it behind a magnet on the fridge and tries to forget about it, but whenever he sees it he feels sick and coiled and unhappy.
June 4th, 2016
He pushes through. Ted helps, his friends help: it's easier to not think of the bad things, the dark things, the waves and oceans of it, when he's around them, distracting himself with them. He can tell they're worried, but they don't push it: when Lily tries, he avoids her, hangs with Ted instead.
For a while, it's he and Ted, closing down MacLaren's like the old days — it's good, it helps, it's like all the years in between never happened, but then Ted ruins it every night with "I have to go back, Tracy's expecting me."
But it's okay. It's cool. It's fine. Ted still answers his calls, and Barney pushes it a little, calling him at times he knows Ted will be busy, just to check, to make sure. You still care, right? You still will answer, right?, translated as let's go to MacLaren's or let's go mini golfing! Ted always answers, even if he keeps leaving for his house in the suburbs.
But eventually, he loses that, too.
"Dude, come on," Ted is saying, over the phone. "I've gone out with you twice a week for the past month."
"Exactly," says Barney, sitting on the edge of his bed. He'd been trying to decide between three different tie options when he'd had the idea to call. "Today's Saturday, and we haven't been out at all this week. We're under quota!"
"Seriously, bro. I can't keep leaving Tracy to take care of Penny by herself," Ted says. "Plus I'm teaching summer classes starting next week — what am I supposed to do, just totally abandon my family to hang out with you?"
"But hanging out with me is awesome!" Barney says, his voice getting a little whinier than he'd been planning for.
Ted sighs loudly. "No, Barney. I can't just hang out with you anymore."
Something clenches in his chest, but he doesn't know what. "You don't want to be friends anymore?" he asks weakly, feeling gut punched.
"What? No!" That doesn't help. "I mean, no, of course we're still friends! We're still brothers. But I have a family. Come on, even you get that."
Barney feels a little better, but not much. Because he doesn't get that. He doesn't have that. He's never going to have that and he never wants it and it sucked when he had it anyway and he doesn't believe in things like — he grips his duvet. "What, so you'd rather be a lame and boring middle-aged loser instead of awesomeing with me?"
"Barney," Ted says, making his name into an annoyed whine.
"Whatever, dude," Barney says, heated. "Go live your life. I don't care."
"Hey," Ted says, his voice desperate to be liked. "I'm going to be in the city next week for my classes. Why don't you tag along? It's like a whole week of field trips! Maybe we can even do some pollstering, what do you say?"
Barney knows it's a mollification, but he doesn't have it in him to refuse. "Okay, see you Monday," he says. He hangs up, feeling better but also weirdly worse.
His apartment is silent around him.
June 6th, 2016
It turns out to be a pretty lame field trip.
"Now, any of you with any knowledge of astrology will notice that the constellations on this famous ceiling," Ted is saying, his voice booming in the din of Grand Central Station's main hall, "is in fact, backwards. Were you to look into a clear night sky, you would see the stars aligned in a mirror image of these painted imitations. Is this a mistake, or a deliberate design choice?"
Barney really couldn't care less. Ted continues to drone on and on to his students, about half of them looking like they actually care. By force of habit, Barney kills time the rest of the lecture playing how would I bang? with random female passerby: Blonde with book, pretend to have read it. Dyed red-head with ironic Star Wars bag, act like he cares about her interests (and don't actually mention Star Wars). Black haired chick looking anxious is new to the city, offer to show her around. Blonde with glasses and a ponytail, just give her attention, she's clearly never had a dude hit on her before.
So far, it's just a game. Barney's aware that at some point it won't be, he'll reach some point and pick up a woman, but he doesn't know when that point will be. He'd like it to be more than just because he hasn't gotten any in a while — maybe he'll meet someone, or maybe there'll be a woman who needs to get some or she'll die of some rare illness, so that he's busting his slump on a good cause. He doesn't like it that the last woman he's fucked is Robin. It's like some badge, some mark on his skin, but it's one he's strangely reluctant to get rid of. But if it were for a good cause…
A blonde with too much makeup and too obviously wearing an 'outfit' stomps by (tourist who has never been to New York before and is trying to hard to act like she belongs; he just has to promise to show her Brooklyn and SoHo and let her disparage of tourist attraction and he's got her, but her name is probably Ashleigh or Becky and she's no one, she doesn't matter) — and suddenly he's angry with himself, a wave of broiling heat in his belly and throat. Barney Stinson? Holding himself back because he wants it to be special? He wants it to matter, like he's a fifteen year old girl going to prom? Like having fucked Robin is something to hold on to, some accomplishment or prize, instead of — instead of something that ruined him, destroyed his life, broke him and tricked him into thinking he'd been…
What is wrong with him?
Ted calls the class to follow to the next boring part of Grand Central Station, and Barney almost up and leaves, almost turns and follows Ashleigh or looks for a strip club or vomits until these feelings are gone, until he forgets again, but Ted happens to catch his eye while he's standing there, smiles at him, and he closes his eyes tight and takes a breath and follows. He walks with his eyes closed for a couple of steps — not long, but long enough to bump into someone. "Sorry," he mutters, not really meaning it.
"Oh, it's okay," one of Ted's students says to him, smiling shyly up at him. Mousy brown hair, actually interested in what Ted is talking about, knee-length skirt. Naive and easy pickings.
Her name turns out to be Louisa.
July 15th
He wakes up on the 15th a little hungover, with the idea of a Perfect Month fully formed in his mind. And why not? It's the best idea he's had in years, the perfect way to celebrate Not A Father's Day, the perfect way to get his mind off of things. He'd been right all along to think getting back in the game would ease his mind: he's never felt better. He can open his fridge no problem.
His friends aren't as supportive, but they've never been able to really understand awesome; the appeal of a challenge: picking up one chick is easy, but it has to be the right one. Picking up thirty in a row? It's something to focus on, something to think about, something to put all his energies and thoughts into, corralling even his less awesome parts into the task.
And it's going amazingly so far.
As he dresses and checks his phone, he's thinking about going all in on the thing, maybe printing up banners or tee-shirts. Throwing a party on the last day, inviting all his friends to be there in his happiest moment.
He has a voicemail from Ross. Meeting, urgent, be at my office at ten. He checks the time — it's eight thirty. Not even that can bring down his good mood. Besides, he's never nailed an FBI agent. Maybe some girl there will be lucky number eight.
Barney's practically humming when he makes it into the FBI building — through all the security checkpoints, then upstairs to Ross's office, where Ross is already at his desk. "What up?" Barney asks, taking a seat opposite him.
"We just got the witness lists from the defense," Ross says.
"Okay," Barney says. Ross looks at some papers in a manila folder — Barney supposes the list in question — but doesn't say anything for a second. He smirks, leans back in his chair. "What, time for my special skillz-with-a-z? Want me to seduce a hot witness?"
"Absolutely not!" Ross says, with such heat that Barney flinches back, frowns.
"What's going on?" he asks warily.
Ross clenches his jaw and hands the folder across his desk to Barney. "Most of the witnesses are exactly who we'd expect. We're obviously planning to challenge the inclusion of his third wife and Mr. Blauman, but…"
The rest of whatever he's saying turns into static in the back of Barney's attention: the name is halfway down the list. Shannon Lowe.
Shannon. She's not married. She hasn't changed her name. Shannon Lowe. Her long blonde hair, shining as she tucked it over her shoulder. Shannon. Witness for the defense. For the…
"This isn't right," he says, pushing the folder back onto the table. "There is no way Shannon is going to testify for — for that douchebag." For Greg. Greg. He's standing in the coffeeshop again, and they're laughing, they're both laughing. He feels that old sick wave of humiliation and shuts it down. "Nope. Not happening."
"We're going to try and challenge her use as a character witness, but frankly it's going to be an uphill fight," Ross says.
"Why? Who cares? Kick her out! Call her a — a lying liar and get rid of her!" She laughed. She laughed, and he showed her, didn't he? So why would she… why is she on this list? It doesn't make sense.
"Mr Fisher's legal team is making this about you," says Ross, leaning forward, his hands folded on his desk. "By bringing your ex-girlfriend into this, they're clearly going to tell that story; say that you were angry at being cheated on, dumped, and framed Mr. Fisher over the course of many years."
"But that is what happened!" Barney protests, standing up because he can't sit still. He touches his jacket, smooths it out, feels it under his palms. He's not like that, he's not that person, he's awesome, he's amazing, he's not that guy anymore. "Except I didn't frame him, I didn't even have to!"
"Yes, Barney, I'm aware," Ross says impatiently, watching Barney pace the length of his small office.
Barney presses his fist to his mouth, turns back to Ross. "I have to talk to her."
"You absolutely will not," Ross says firmly.
"No, no, I gotta talk to Shannon," Barney says, not listening. "I can change her mind on this. She won't defend Greg."
"Witness tampering is a federal crime!" Ross snaps, loudly, because Barney can barely hear him. "This is why I called you here; you need to understand what's going on."
"She's not a witness, she's Shannon," Barney snaps back, pointing at the manila folder. "I can change this."
"Don't think I won't arrest and charge you!" Ross says, rising to his feet, which shuts Barney up. He stares at him with widened eyes. "This case isn't about your ego or your ex-girlfriend. This is about a corporation that has been sending money and guns to this country's enemies! Mr Fisher is trying to make it about you, you want it to be about you, but this has nothing to do with you, Stinson, and if I have to throw you in jail to make my case I will."
His mouth open, Barney sits back down. "But…" he says in a little voice.
"No." Ross sits back down, too. "I understand this isn't easy for you. I understand this must be painful. But you aren't going to have any contact with Ms Lowe. We're instead going to focus on the case."
"Why did she agree to be a witness?" Barney asks; he can't stop himself, it just comes out.
Ross looks angry for a moment, but answers. "The defense doesn't need to inform us of this. Does she have a grudge against you?"
She laughed at him. He's standing there and she's laughing. Barney's not sure if that's a yes or a no — he's about to say no, but then he remembers.
Almost ten years ago.
Game Night.
They'd talked and he can't remember anymore if he'd intended on it, gone there to do that, but there'd been a moment, they'd been chuckling about something and she'd looked up at him and there'd been an opening… and he'd gone for it, and it hadn't felt like love at last or a relief or triumphant like he used to imagine when he first started out; he'd been instantly angry again, angry at the things she did (but would never do then), her eagerness (she had never wanted to, waiting until marriage had been her idea, he'd been happy to go along with it, he'd been in love), and he'd decided he was going to fuck her, he was going to fuck her and lie to her and make her think he cared about her… give her a fraction of that heartache…
Barney winces. Sucks in a breath through his teeth. "Does she… have a grudge against me…" he says slowly, squinting up at the ceiling. "Wow, what a tough question… I'm… I'm wracking my brain here…"
"Okay," Ross says. "We'll assume yes." Barney resists the urge to slouch. "Our next step will be finding character witnesses for you. I don't want to divert too much focus onto you, but reviewing the information, your friend Ted Mosby is a natural choice."
"He'll do it," Barney says.
"He designed the new GNB building, and you've been friends for a decade," Ross continues.
"Try best friends," Barney says.
"We'll be in touch with him." Ross kind of hesitates for a second — pulls the manila folder towards him and shuts it. "If the defense is trying to use your romantic history against you, we could use a strong statement from…"
"No," Barney says, the word slipping out of his mouth before Ross even completes his sentence, before Ross can say her name.
"Barney," Ross says, like a statement.
"She's not — she's not gonna want to," he says. He's done a good job, a great job, of not thinking about her, not letting her cross his mind, not here, not at home, not at night, never. He won't let that change now.
"If we can quickly prove that you haven't been working all these years out of thwarted love for your college girlfriend, we won't have to bother with refuting the rest of the defense."
"Nope, no, no, not happening, bro," Barney says, his head shaking no as extra punctuation, his heart clenched with panic.
"Have the divorce papers been filed yet?"
He takes a minute to try and calm down. "No." Runs his tongue over his molars. "You gotta be separated for six months. She's coming back in October so we can … do that." That wasn't too bad, but he feels himself continuing: "And then she's taking off again and I will never see or speak to her ever again and that's awesome, that's great, so she isn't going to speak in my defense because she hates me and also I… Wow, it's really hot in here," he says, pulling at his collar and standing up. "Well, nice talk! See you!"
"Barney," Ross says again, and he stops in his tracks. Ross sighs. "When your ex-wife does come back to town, at least ask, for your own sake. Do not contact Ms Lowe. I'll see you on Tuesday."
"Bye," Barney manages, and the way out of the building, the way back home, is all a blur.
Later that night, Ted calls him, yells at him. He's still riled up, still rattled and jangly and angry and worked up, Ted yells at him about the GNB building and all Barney can think is shut up, shut up, who cares; an under current of forget, don't think about it, don't think about it until he's talking about the Perfect Month and forgetting.
It's important to have goals for the future.
August 3rd
Lily grips onto his arm as they walk up the courthouse steps.
"Jeez, Lil," Barney grumbles, "I wouldn't have invited you if I knew I was going to get my arm ripped out."
"Listen, buddy, I am six months pregnant with, I swear, the biggest Eriksen baby to date, and you're just gonna have to suck it up."
Barney makes a face. As they stand in line for the metal detectors, he says, "I've always wondered."
"Wondered what?" Lily asks with her eyes narrowed.
"How Marshall got you pregnant three times. Surely after the first gigantic-headed baby, your vag…"
"I'm gonna stop you right there, tiger," Lily says, and Barney barks out a laugh at her expression as he takes his wallet, phone, and watch, and puts them in the tray for the x-ray.
"I love hanging out with you, Lily," he says gravely when they're through the scanners. "You make me grateful every day that I'm not stuck with that." He nods at Lily's baby bump. He means it mostly as a joke — 83% a joke — but Lily's eyes go all big and sad and he can tell he messed up; he wasn't thinking about it, but now she is, and now he is.
Standing and smoking on the balcony. Ice melting on the kitchen counter. His hand on Robin's stomach in the bathroom…
Possible multiple miscarriages, the doctor tells them.
He moves his jaw. "Cut it out."
"I didn't say anything," Lily says, which is only technically the truth because her eyes are all big and sad.
"Whatever." His good mood is gone.
Normally, Lily would press it, bug him until he talked about his feelings, but this is new Lily, pity Lily, and she's stopped doing that. He knows it's just that she feels sorry for him, thinks he's pathetic, thinks he's pathetic and a loser and looks down on him and hates him a little — but he's missed hanging out with her, missed hanging out with any of his friends, without them looking at him with disgust. If she wants to pity him but pretend she still likes him, he doesn't care.
"So, what's on the schedule for today?" she says in a perky voice she probably used to use when she was a kindergarten teacher.
"It's just a stupid witness thing," he says. That's not true. Today is the day Ross is getting rid of Shannon, kicking her out as a witness because obviously it's ridiculous that she'd even be a part of this. Ross phrased it like she has no bearing on the case of the US vs AltruCell, which amounts to the same thing. Barney has no idea how he's going to spin it to Lily if she asks questions; he's hoping her pity or pregnancy brain will keep her from trying. "We just have to sit there for a little bit." Ross hadn't wanted him to come, Ross had very much not wanted him to come, but Barney said he was going to show up no matter what and he'd caved.
"This court stuff is actually pretty boring, huh?" Lily remarks. "It's not like Law & Order at all. Poor Marshall hates it when he has to go to trial."
"That's because Marshall is from Minnesota and has all the courtroom ferocity of a turtle," Barney says, leading the way into the courtroom. It's pretty empty; almost no one besides the lawyers. He makes pointed eye contact with Ross and Marini as he and Lily take a seat in the middle of the room. "Not like a snapping turtle or a badass ocean turtle, but one of those little pathetic guys dudes in flip flops have to gently carry to the ocean."
"Those are the ones that grow up into badass ocean turtles," Lily points out.
The topic keeps them going until the judge comes in and they have to shut up; Barney is tense at first, but it's not too bad. For one, they're calling Shannon by her last name, so when Lily elbows him to ask who they're talking about he can just shrug. He pays close attention but pretends that he isn't: the defense uses a lot of big words about how Shannon is crucial to the origins of the prosecution's conspiracy to frame Greg; Marini is mostly just like who cares, this is about arming North Korea.
Lily starts playing a game on her phone, and Barney even starts to get a little bored, when the whole thing suddenly turns: the defense offers to let Ms Lowe testify for herself.
Barney sits up fast enough that he startles Lily.
Marini says that sounds more than acceptable.
He whips his head towards the door, then back towards Ross, and then the clerk goes towards the door and he's on his feet, headed up towards Ross. "Why is it acceptable if she talks? We don't want to hear what she's saying!" Barney says, quietly, because Lily is trotting up behind them.
"We're trying to prove a case here, not soothe your ego," Marini hisses, heading up to the bench to discuss with the other lawyer and the judge.
The doors open again and Barney can't help but spin around.
She looks the same.
He'd forgotten until this moment what she looked like — the exact shape of her face, her eyes, her mouth, but he sees Shannon and she looks the same, exactly the same, her long blonde hair falling over her shoulders, the way she walks, the look in her eyes as she walks down the aisle, towards him.
He can't help it, he's not even thinking — he takes a couple of steps towards her. "Hi," he says, his voice coming out soft.
"…Barney," she says carefully. "Hi."
"It's been a while," he says — Shannon looks past him, and a second later Ross has him by the elbow.
"Out," Ross says.
His weird feeling, his soft light and cloudy feeling, evaporates as Ross frog marches him out of the courtroom, condenses into anger. "Dude, lay off!" he protests as Ross pushes them towards the doors.
Ted's waiting outside for them, for some reason; Barney barely notices. He has to get back in there, has to talk to Shannon — but Ross won't let him, and then Lily is there too, and it's all too much; he breaks away from the group, runs his hand over his face, tries to stop this feeling, stop everything, stop this anger, this boiling anger, he has to go in there and talk to Shannon and make her see, make her understand — he doesn't know what, but he can do it, he can make her — he has to fix this, he has to find her and fix this, he has to tell her that she can't pick Greg over him, he has to tell her that she cannot, she isn't allowed, that this can't keep happening, over and over, people he thought he loved, believed he loved, believed he was happy with, people just turning and leaving, laughing in his face, pushing him away, turning around and leaving, laughing, looking at him, looking at him in the hotel room the way she'd looked at him in the hospital, when all their friends had surrounded her, everyone but him, and she'd looked up and at the foot of the bed and it had been like she didn't recognize him, didn't know him, that he'd fucked up and been wrong and been pathetic and been stupid and now she didn't know him, didn't want him, had never meant the things she'd said, would never testify in his defense, would never defend him, would never look at him, would never think of him, and all he had was a single photo.
He's standing in front of Lily and Ted, but can barely see them. "I'm taking off," he says, because he's about to die, explode, go crazy.
"You can't just take off," Ted says. He looks at Lily.
Lily gives him a serious look. "Hey, how are you feeling?" she asks, like she had the other day in the park, the new code word, I pity you and look down on you and none of us like you anyway, which a tiny part of him knows makes no sense but right now… He doesn't know what to say, how to answer that, his brain and body are buzzing, vibrating with things he can't think about.
"Yeah. I gotta go," he says helplessly, already brushing past them towards the door.
August 4th
He doesn't go home that night. He stays out, in a cloud, a buzzy cloud, everything he's been feeling and trying not to feel and all his anger and emotions shook loose by seeing Shannon, seeing her in the flesh, not just a name on a piece of paper but a woman looking at him warily, warily, as if he ever — okay, okay, he did fuck her that one time, but when else had he ever —
He wanders the streets, burning off energy; ends up at a strip club. Not the Lusty Leopard; somewhere worse and anonymous and ugly, but he buys a couple of dances and drinks water and rests against the velvet plush seats, listens to the pounding bass and feels better. More like himself, more like Barney, the buzzing drowned out in smoke and glitter. He's in a dangerous mood, a jump in the Hudson mood, an act and go and move mood, but he has no outlet, no one to take it out on. He's angry, angry and restless, and he doesn't want to call Ted or Lily; he almost calls Robin twice but throws his phone away after close call number two, then sits at a bus stop, head buzzing, until he knows what he needs to do.
He fishes his phone out of the trash and calls a guy.
Twenty minutes later he's in an elevator; two minutes later he's knocking on a door.
Shannon opens it. She's left the chain on; in the light from the hallway he sees her face fall. He holds up his hands. "I just wanna talk."
"I'm not supposed to talk to you," she says.
"I know," he says, smiling a little, a gentle smile, wry; "don't worry. I'm not here to mess things up." She stares at him through the gap in the door. "C'mon, Shannon. Please."
She closes the door, undoes the chain, opens it again. He feels calm, level, smoothed out even; has since the minute his contact gave him her address, since he got in the cab. Shannon is wearing a cardigan; she pulls it around herself and steps out of her apartment. "There's a little deck on the roof," she says. "My son's asleep; we can talk up there."
"Your son…" he remembers that, remembers she has a kid, but the details escape him.
"Max."
"He's what, twelve?"
"Just turned thirteen," Shannon says. Her voice is cautious, wary, but Barney stays gentle, stays smiling and friendly. He doesn't have a plan, he doesn't know what he's going to do, if he's going to talk to her or want to push her off the roof. He needed to see her. He needed to explain.
"That's a good age," he says.
"Yeah, I guess so."
They take the elevator up to the top floor, climb the stairs up to the roof. It's dark, the night still warm, a cool breeze up here. There are a couple of plastic chairs and a plastic table, some plants that look half-dead in the dim city light. The sounds of traffic surround them. "This place is nice," Barney lies.
"Yeah," Shannon says. "I like to come up here and just think, you know? Clear my head." She's just standing there, so he's the one to move across the tar roof, towards the edge. There's a taller building across the street on two sides, but a good view downtown from the third, similar rooftops looking out towards the East River. Barney can pick out the lights of the GNB tower, the edge of the WWN skyscraper. He runs his palm over the bricks of the low wall. "So," Shannon says, coming over to join him. "What is it that you were willing to risk a mistrial to talk about?"
He scratches his nails lightly over the bricks. "Why are you testifying against me?"
Shannon looks up at him for what feels like forever, her expression serious, her arms crossed over her stomach. She shakes her head. "Are you kidding me?"
"No. No, I'm not kidding. I want to know. Why would you do that?" He's been faking his sincerity until now, using it to mask other things, but when he speaks he means it, means it with an intensity he hasn't felt in a long while.
"Barney…" she says, sighing and looking up at him. "Last time I saw you, you… you showed up at my door out of nowhere and we hooked up."
He's ready for her to throw an accusation at him, but she doesn't. "And?" he prompts.
"Do you know how shitty that felt?" The old Shannon never swore, never used words like hooked up or shitty. "I figured it was some kind of closure for you, getting to do me and run…"
"So you're testifying for Greg because I banged you?" Barney asks. It's what he expected; he's waiting for her to bring up the recording he made at the time.
"No! I figured… god, that was so long ago. It felt shitty but I figured you were mad at me for… back then, that's why I gave that friend of yours the video."
At the word, his guts clench up; the cloud comes back and he turns himself away from the city. "Yeah," he says bitterly. "Yeah, I remember that. You trying to get all my friends to laugh at me, too."
"No!" Shannon lays a hand on his arm, he almost flinches, and she pulls it away. "No, I had just moved and I found it. I thought you'd want it back, instead of… worrying I still had it, or something." She frowns, looks out towards the city. "I was trying to be nice."
Trying to be nice. It's like she said it in French or Cantonese; his brain has to take an extra minute to process and translate. She isn't nice. He's known that all along. Shannon props her elbows up on the wall, rests her head in her hands for a moment. "Look, I know I didn't handle things great when we were kids. At the time I really believed I was letting you down easy, but it never really sat right with me after. I thought about it a lot over the years, especially after you showed up at my apartment that time."
He doesn't know what to say, what to think. It's like his whole body and whole brain are on pause.
Shannon pauses again, gathering her thoughts. "Part of me thought that you… got it. That you somehow understood what I was thinking and that I didn't mean to hurt you when I knew I had. So I spent all those years feeling guilty about it… not all the time, but whenever I thought about you, and it sucked, because you were such a big part of my life back then…"
He wants to say something, but the words are caught in his throat, in his stomach, he's gripping the corner of the wall and trying to think of something to say, how much it had hurt, how he hadn't understood, how he'd never thought she was guilty or sad — but he can't speak, and she sounds like she's not done.
"…And then," Shannon says, her voice flinty, "I find out that actually you've been in the middle of a ten year dick measuring contest with Greg Fisher."
The feeling is gone; the nervous warmth is gone. "It was not a dick measuring contest," he says indignantly, automatically certain he'd win one.
"How many days after our breakup did you start working for him?"
Barney looks up, away, runs his hand roughly through his hair, "Four."
"I dated him for six months! The whole time I was with Greg, you were just lurking at his office, trying to, to what? Discredit him so I'd run back to you?"
Yes. "No! Not … really, not after like the first week…" his brain is shorting out; he can't think of a lie or convincing spin on the truth. "You just said you were sorry for not giving a shit about me!"
"Did he ever mention me?" Shannon asks. "When you were working for him, did he ever —"
"A couple of times," he says, looking up at the sky. "Not by name." But he'd known. He'd known and it had killed him, torn him apart, left him in pieces, left the things he'd broken — a lamp, a chair, his old text books — in shards —
"You're pathetic," Shannon says. "You're absolutely pathetic. I felt so sorry for you. I felt so bad. And then it turned out you spent all these years on some pathetic revenge quest. When you showed up at my place, was that, what, step six of your ten year plan? Because I will never, ever get back together with you, not after all this bull."
"I didn't plan for that!" After the first few months, Shannon had barely been part of it: it had been about Greg, about one upping Greg, but then the chance had come along and all the anger he'd ignored had come back… "I haven't been — I got married!"
Shannon's eyebrows go up. "Not when you came to my place," she says like a question.
"After that." He wishes he hadn't said it, except it had been the only proof he had; he can't say he didn't love her or didn't hate her or didn't want to see her humiliated like she did him. But he wishes he hadn't said that. "But I knew her then. I haven't been obsessing over getting you back. Not after the first week at AltruCell."
He hadn't been obsessing over Shannon. He'd fallen in love with someone else who wasn't worth it in the end. Shannon looks wary, angry, but a little mollified, hugging her cardigan around her once more. "When did you fall in love with her?"
He understands the underlying question, for once: Shannon wants him to say he wasn't obsessing by proving he was in love with his wife. But she wasn't his wife back then, and he wasn't in love with her. Or was he? He can't remember, has never tried to figure it out; there'd been just one moment where he looked at Robin and knew (and assumed it was a bus-related head trauma). It hadn't gone away after that. He doesn't know when it started. He looks out towards the WWN building. "Before you gave Lily the tape," he says. "But she was dating my best friend, so I couldn't do anything about it. I didn't cheat on her," he can't help saying, rubbing his heel in it a little.
"Congratulations," Shannon says flatly.
He doesn't know why he says it, something about the haze and the buzz in his head, how badly he wants to prove himself, prove something, make Shannon stop looking at him like that, her because Robin is gone, he'd even fuck her again if that's what it took, but he's all spun around and the night air is sticky warm and the city is loud around them. "We're getting divorced," he says.
It had been hot in Argentina, too hot, uncomfortable in suits, the fans barely helping, they'd had a drunken bender the last day but he'd been drinking before that, drinking too much the whole trip, all he can remember is the drinking and the sticky heat and how Robin had looked as she sat down on the bed, the whole scene heavy, playing slow motion.
"Sorry," Shannon says.
"Yeah, uh," he rubs his eyebrow. "She doesn't — I wasn't good at being married? So she got sick of it and left." He'd let her down, he'd let her down in the hospital room and before and after, she'd looked at him standing at the edge of the hospital bed and looked at him again in Argentina and he'd realized no present, no house, nothing will make it go away, he was no good and had never been, he'd promised to make her happy and hadn't and never, ever had. There was something wrong in him, something broken in him, the thing that had chased her off had made Shannon let him down easy a decade before. He leans against the low brick wall.
"I'm sorry," Shannon says again. She doesn't really mean it, she doesn't sound like she does, she sounds like she's being polite but he doesn't really care, doesn't really notice, he's staring across the rooftop, the dim light, the dead plant, the ocean of tar.
"And I don't feel it?" He can't stop himself, can't hear himself. "I don't feel anything. I'm not happy, but I'm not sad. I'm a little angry, but I don't feel it. I thought she was the love of my life and I don't feel it. I don't feel anything. She left and I went numb and I can feel it in my head, in the back of my skull, and everyone's treating me like I should be crying on the floor and I'm not. I don't feel anything. I go out and sleep with a new person every night and I just feel… numb. That's all I feel, and every day I feel it more, and every day I feel everything else less and less. When you and I broke up I cried and I got mad and I wrote poems and songs and now I don't feel anything. She could walk through the door…" He pictures it, sees it, going over to the door and she's there and she smiles, that half smile, knowing smile, first thing in the morning smile, I'm yours smile…
He opens the door and she looks at him like she sees exactly who he is for the first time.
He puts his hand over the spot he thinks his heart is. "I'm empty."
"I don't really know what to say," Shannon says softly.
He looks at her, sharp, abrupt, aware again. "Say you get it."
"I don't get it," she says gently.
He searches for something else; he can't think. "Say you won't testify against me."
"Barney," she says.
"Say you're sorry." She just looks up at him. "Say you're sorry. You're the one who broke me, you're the reason I'm like this. If you hadn't… say it."
She looks up over his shoulder and beyond him. "I was subpoenaed," she says. "I have to testify." She pats his arm as she walks past him. "Take care of yourself, okay?"
August 4th
He goes home. He goes home and he stares at the wall and he stares at the wall and he gets a drink and then another drink and he stares at the wall and he feels nothing, he feels nothing he is nothing he's nothing made up of nothing just empty air just air and nothing nothing nothing there's nothing there's nothing there's nothing
Ted comes over; it's raining. Everything is broken, the picture on the fridge is gone.
October 6th, 2016.
There's a knock on his door. He opens it, and Robin is there.