Insides

Sometimes Robin really hated Ted.

There was this one time, when Ted was sitting back in the booth, holding court (yeah, like he was king and she, Marshall and Lily his loyal subjects) and he was waxing lyrical again about how he'd "out grown" Barney. Like any of them didn't see through his crap. Like they all didn't know that this entire thing was due to some out-moded macho freakin' posturing, because Barney had broken some unwritten rule, had been expelled from Camelot, for sleeping with Ted's ex.

For sleeping with her.

Like she was Ted property!

And sometimes the feminist inside of her would rear it's head and she would scream inside her mind - "Ted will you just shut the hell up! I can have sex with who I like! What's it with you. Barney's been your friend for years. You've done way more stupid things that this. Shit, what about Victoria? What about the butterfly tramp stamp? And suddenly Ted Mosby is all grown up? Well I've got news for you, Teddy boy! You haven't! You're just sulking like a kid who's found another kid playing with his toys… well I'm not your toy!"

Of course, she never said any of this.

She'd look over at Marshall and Lily for guidance and they'd be watching Ted in amusement, like this was all a big joke. Because they were inside the castle walls, they were still accepted here at court and it was way too scary to even think about those that had been banished.

Robin didn't have many friends in New York. She found it hard to make close friends anywhere. And so she kept her mouth shut and she kept her place at the king's table.

But she felt an aching, horrible sense of guilt the entire time.

Outsides

Barney never hated Ted. He'd never been able to summon up the strength to really hate Ted. After all, it was him that was in the wrong.

One day he tried to explain it to Robin, after she'd given him a diatribe on how Ted had no right to do what he'd done.

"You had to go and mention Ted!" He'd said, as he did every time, because she kept on mentioning his ex-best-friend as if talking about him would make Barney feel more involved.

But that fact is, he was already an outsider.

The people who he'd seen every day for seven years, the people who meant more to him than anyone alive, save for his Mom and brother, those people had rejected him.

This was one of those things he just couldn't think about right now, because thinking about it opened up a huge well of pain so intense that it paralysed him, cut him to the core, stopped him from functioning in the world.

So he ignored it, laughed it off, fell over himself in his attempts at distraction.

The last thing he needed was Robin's sympathy.

"I- I just wanted to thank you," she mumbled.

"Er, why?" He asked her.

"For… you know. That night?"

He laughed. It was too easy. "You know, I often find that chicks thank me after a night in the sack. It goes with the territory of being an awesome lay! What up!" He raised his hand for a high five.

This time, she didn't bite. Not even reluctantly.

"I'm sorry," She said, biting her lip.

He spluttered and grinned but he didn't want apologies. He didn't want her trying to defend herself, for leaving him out in the cold. No, he didn't want Marshall or Lily to tell him they were sorry for abandoning him as easily as they would a used washcloth.

He didn't need anyone.

(But he did)

She leaned across the bar and wrapped her arms around him. For a moment, he stiffened in her embrace. But then she did that thing, that motherly thing (Scherbatsky? Who knew?) of drawing circles over the small of his back with her palm and something eased inside him.

"Stop being a guy and just…" She said, with a hitch in her voice.

And a few weeks later, when the bus hit him, and his life flashed before his eyes, that was one of the starring moments in the showreel.