hey guys! i didn't forget about this trainwreck, i promise!

Ted stares at his phone for a moment. "He hung up on me," he says, bemused, putting the phone on the tabletop. He shrugs. "I guess the date's going well?"

"So is Barney coming or not?" Robin asks. Even though it's only the four of them, she's grabbed the entire right side of the booth for herself, leaving Ted to the chair and Marshall and Lily nursing their drinks in the other bench with grim 'we have only half an hour until we have to check on Marvin' determination.

"No idea," Ted admits.

"Okay, what is going on?" Lily pleads, leaning towards Robin across the table, who is abruptly very engrossed in her onion rings.

"Don't know, don't care," she says.

"But you met her!" Lily insists.

"For like, two seconds, on my way out the door. Whatever."

Ted keeps his gaze focused straight at Robin — well, at the side of her head — but she resists all his telepathy and attempts to use to the force to make eye contact.

"And 'Bill Pepper?'" he asks pointedly.

"Cancelled. Oh, no," Robin says, trying to fake some sadness over her clearly fake boyfriend. Ted rolls his eyes and takes a drink from his glass, trying to ignore the churning feeling in his stomach — it doesn't take much detective work to see what Robin is doing here, after showing up at his office this afternoon, but he hasn't worked out how he feels about it yet. From her scowl, Ted guesses Lily has a hunch, too.

"Lily," Marshall says gently. "Who cares about Robin's compulsive lying and Barney's compulsive… Barney? Let's just enjoy the fifteen remaining minutes of our night on the town."

"Fine," Lily grumbles, leaning back against the booth.

They all sit in gloomy silence for a few seconds, until Ted thinks of a good subject change: "So anyway, this girl I met on the A train…"

"Dammit!" Lily interrupts, shooting forward again, reaching with both hands desperately towards Robin. "I gotsta know!"

"Why?" Robin demands. "Marshall's right! Let's just enjoy our fun night out and not talk about some hobag Barney is tricking into sleeping with him! Didn't we just get rid of Quinn?"

"I liked Quinn," Lily says, frowning. "I thought you did, too."

"She…" Robin looks up at the ceiling; wincing with the effort of admitting it, "was… not… the worst person… in the universe. But who cares? She's gone now!"

Ted would rather be talking about A Train Ashley, but he can't resist. Tries for a minute, but he has to. "Lily does have a point," he says. "I don't think I've ever seen Barney willingly spend more than an hour with any woman who wasn't you two, his mom, or Quinn. Or Nora." He ticks them all off on his hand. "Or that girl from a few years ago he was trying to bang to win our bet." He lifts one finger on his other hand.

Lily nods eagerly. "Exactly! Barney is a creepy misogynist!" Ted wonders if she should really put it so… bluntly, and glances at Robin to see how she reacts. She's still pointedly looking at her food. Lily continues: "but on the phone just now he said he was still out on his date!"

"Seriously, guys, do we have to go into this?" Marshall sighs.

Lily looks over at him in surprise. "Of course we have to!"

"Not really," Robin mutters. If it comes to a vote, Ted isn't sure where he'd land. Barney's romantic life usually interests him about as much as… as… well, it doesn't. And Robin's bitchy jealousy is making him all sorts of uncomfortable. On the other hand, it is weird. And it's hard to resist a good mystery.

"Why?" Lily continues, still addressing Marshall, her tone less over-eager. "What's wrong?"

"It's just… doesn't it get depressing, after a while?" Marshall shrugs. "Barney will bang this perfectly nice girl, break up with her, and two days later he'll bang…" Marshall waves at a random woman at the bar, "that one. And we'll all sigh and make fun of him, but he'll just do it again."

"To be fair, that is why we're talking about the weird fact that he's on a six hour date," Ted says.

"It's not that weird." Ted's used to Lily defending Barney — they all know she has a soft spot for him — but it's Robin who speaks. She glares down at her onion rings, ignoring everyone's stares; then suddenly Robin breaks. "I mean, come on! It's not, okay?" She rolls her eyes. "I didn't just date Ted, I dated Barney too."

"I mean, are those two situations really the same?" Ted can't help but ask. "We were together for a year, we almost moved in together…"

" — And in the past year or so," Robin says, barreling over Ted's input, "he's gone from Nora to me…any. Many! Many other girls, including Quinn, who he was engaged to, which we all agree was terrible." She's flustered, clears her throat. "So, like, Barney can date people if he feels like it. He knows how to."

"I agree with Robin," Lily says, frowning at Robin. "If Barney is moving on to his third serious relationship in a year, it's important gang information."

"Exactly!" Robin says. "That's why we need to make sure this hobag isn't tricking him and taking advantage of his feelings and stuff." She pauses a beat. "The poor guy barely has a heart, so we gotta protect it. Make sure he doesn't get hurt. By this ho."

"And maybe they'll get married! And she'll be a new member of the gang!" Lily says, sitting upright in excitement.

"Or we break them up!" Robin says, just as enthusiastically.

Marshall sighs. "It would be nice to see more love in this world," he says reluctantly. "Still with us, Ted?"

"Huh?" Ted's only been listening with half an ear for the last few minutes, thinking about the past. "Uh. If Barney is happy, that's fine." He shrugs. He feels weirdly let-down, still doesn't really want to think about why, besides that it's Robin.

Barney shows up at the bar a few minutes later, just as Marshall and Lily are leaving, running into them at the stairs. Lily immediately seizes him by the forearms and starts asking questions Ted can hear over the din of evening crowd: "Where is she? Do you have pictures?"

Marshall pries her off with a final yell of, "We'll talk about this later, Stinson!" and Barney adjusts his suit and walks backwards to the booth after placing a quick order. He slides into the bench Marshall and Lily just left. Robin frowns. Ted notices.

"Do pregnancy hormones last a long time after popping the kid out?" Barney asks, adjusting his sleeves. "'cause the lady is craa-zy."

"I think she's interested in this whole girlfriend thing you have going," Ted says.

"Why?" Barney asks.

"Yeah, why?" Robin says, her voice heavy with annoyance. They both look at her, and she rolls her eyes. "Do we even talk about anything else anymore?"

"Not recently," Ted admits. At Barney's look, he shrugs. "Anyway, weren't you bringing her?"

"Nah, she had to go. Dinner with her grandma. We did talk about me meeting Nona, but it might be a little too soon," Barney says, so blithe that Ted has no idea if he's lying or not. "But it's cool. Robin, you hanging around?"

"I guess, why?" she asks warily. Ted tries not to roll his eyes, feeling kind of annoyed at her again. For all her complaining, you'd think she'd be happy.

"Beeeecause of your new boyfriend?" Barney prompts, eyes narrowed.

"Oh. He, uh, he cancelled. He has open heart surgery — I mean, he's doing one, because he's a doctor," Robin says, biting her lip and lying so obviously that Ted is shocked that Barney doesn't immediately laugh in her face.

"Really? That sucks," Barney says cheerfully. He leans back against the bench as a waitress brings over his scotch. "Ted, Robin, you two have the privilege of proving, right now, which of you loves me more. I know, I know," he says patronizingly, "neither of you can bear to lose this fight. But only one of you can be my wingman this evening —"

"Yeeaaah, I'm not doing that," Robin interrupts.

"What?" Barney looks thrown.

"Dude!" Ted says, stuck playing the role of common sense. "What happened to the new girlfriend?"

"Exactly!" Barney says, taking a sip of his drink, looking puzzled. "I'm not going to be getting laid for a little while, so one last hit to keep me going — it's like loading up the tank before a long trip. Except I'm going to be the one unloading —"

"Have fun with him," Robin says, standing up abruptly and patting Ted on the shoulder on her way out of the booth.

"I thought you were sticking around?" Ted asks.

"Yeah!" Barney says. "Come on, Robin! You love helping me get laid!" Ted can't help but sigh. Robin looks stormy. Barney's eyebrow slowly lifts. "Or," he says.

"Knock it off, Barney." Ted surprises even himself when he says it; Barney and Robin both look taken aback. He drains his beer. "I mean, dude, seriously?"

"What's the big deal? We went on one date, it's not serious yet, and Tracy," Barney says, his voice dropping from indignant to something similar to thoughtful, "is the kind of girl you gotta put some effort into." He then ruins it: "Not that I totally couldn't have gotten on that tonight."

"Right, which is why you showed up here alone," Robin says. She's still standing by Ted's shoulder, her hand on the back of his chair.

"Exactly!" Barney says peevishly. "Could I have gotten in her pants tonight? Of course. Look at me. But maybe I like this girl. Maybe it's not always about just getting laid the first time I'm at a girl's place. Maybe I want to wait until the moment is right."

"Huh," Ted says. "Maybe Lily was right about you."

"Doubt it, bro," Barney says, spinning a finger around his ear. "The girl's cuckoo."

"What are you playing here?" Robin demands: she sits back down in the seat she'd just vacated. "I mean," she adds, then clears her throat and leans over the table. "I'm worried about you. We all are. You've been acting weird lately. Are you sure this isn't a rebound?"

"What are you talking about?" Barney asks suspiciously. Ted looks back and forth between the two of them, both with oddly similar wary expressions.

"From Quinn," Robin says. She leans back again.

There's some subtext flying around here; Ted can sense it in the way Robin leans forward and back, the way Barney's expression is unusually subdued. And then Barney shrugs. "Nope, I just think Tracy is cool. Ted, blonde at the bar." Ted doesn't exactly mean to look, but he does.

"One last bang for the road! Pretend to choke in five!" With that, Barney is on his feet headed towards the blonde. Ted glances at his watch, and then at Robin.

"Hey," he says. She's looking stormy again. "Are you doing okay?" Conscious he's repeating her, he adds, "you've been acting weird."

He's completely expecting her to deny it. "I know," Robin says in a quiet voice. Ted feels his eyebrows go up. "I don't know, things have just been kind of weird lately, and I…" Robin trails off, scratching at the tabletop with her nail. "If Barney is settling down, where does that leave me?" She doesn't pause long enough for Ted to react, to the question or to the pang he feels. "Nick was hot, but I wasn't exactly in love with the guy."

"I know what you mean," Ted admits. "Not about Nick being hot, since honestly he was only a six —" Robin coughs, "— but, yeah. If even he can find someone…" Ted looks over at Barney, talking closely to the blonde woman at the bar, and then at his watch. Two minutes to go.

He looks back at Robin, who is still watching Barney's progress at the bar. "I guess we just have to keep looking," Ted says, because it's the kind of thing he says, used to really believe. "Keep trying to figure out what we're looking for. Who we're looking for."

Her gaze shifts from the bar to Ted. "Do you want to go out sometime?"