The air between them was thicker than the fog over the Brooklyn Bridge. Marshall felt his heartbeat in his ears like a war drum, marking the start of a battle he wasn't prepared to win. Lily looked at him, her eyes scanning his clothes and rigid posture.
"How are you?" Lily said, breaking the silence. Her voice was tentative.
"What are you doing here?"
"In New York, you mean?" Lily fidgeted with the zipper of her coat. "The program... ended. It was..." She swallowed. The mask of absolute happiness she had shown Ted and Robin was cracking there on the sidewalk in front of him. "It was a mistake. A big mistake."
Marshall didn't feel vindicated or happy to be right, or to see her as he had yearned for during months. Instead, he felt tired. Barney's words echoed: *everyone is out for themselves.* Was that what Lily had done? Sought her own thing, regardless of the cost of destroying him?
"It was the worst summer of my life," Marshall finally declared, with a simplicity that belied the weight of that pain-laden statement.
"Mine too," Lily whispered. "I'm sorry, Marshall. I'm so sorry, it was the hardest thing I've ever had to do." She took a breath, gathering courage. "Can we... please... go back?"
And there it was. The question that had swirled in his mind since she left. The fantasy that kept him afloat in the first days, which he had later learned to drown so as not to go insane. Before Barney's first theft, his answer would have been an immediate yes, followed by an embrace. That was his nature—the Marshall that Alyx cared for.
But this Marshall had spent a night searching for a piece of paper on a dirty street. He had listened to Barney's philosophy of sweets and the post-apocalyptic wasteland, which had finally hardened something deep inside him.
He looked at Lily, her eyes full of hope and remorse. For the first time, he didn't just see the woman he loved. He also saw the person who had abandoned him in the middle of their shared dreams and the life they had planned together. And he saw the truth in Barney's words: to survive was to look out for oneself.
"Lily," he said, his voice sounding surprisingly calm. "That speech you gave me... about how we needed to figure out who we were outside of 'us'... about learning to do things on our own..." He paused, letting the pain of that memory envelop them both. "Three months ago, you broke my heart."
Lily looked down, defeated.
"But you were right," Marshall continued, the words bitter on his tongue as they came out. "All that nonsense was correct. So no. We can't go back. We shouldn't." He paused briefly and added more softly, "At least... not now."
The silence that followed was absolute. The world didn't end. Only the slow, devastating acceptance in Lily's eyes. "Wow," she murmured. "Okay."
"And... will we still see each other?" Lily asked, her voice trembling.
"Yeah, I think we will," said Marshall.
A familiar, sad smile appeared on Lily's lips. "I like your hair," Marshall added more jovially.
"Thanks. You know, I thought... new city... different color," Lily said, feeling the absurdity of the conversation. "And the pizza there... the worst pizza in the world."
"I'm so glad to be back in New York," Lily confessed, and for a moment, it was as if the pain, regret, and sorrow were suspended, giving way to normality, leaving just two people who missed each other.
"Listen," said Lily, taking a step closer, "if there's anything I can do to start making it up to you, anything..."
Marshall looked at her. In her eyes, he saw the door closing forever on an era of his life.
"Actually, there might be something you can do for me," he said, and his tone held a hint of the old Marshall, but with a new firmness. "But you can *never, ever* ask me why."
Lily nodded, a tacit promise.
And so, comically, Lily walked into the bar where Barney and the twins were at the table.
"Lily?" Barney asked, surprised to see her.
"You gave me chlamydia, you asshole!" said an angry Lily, grabbing the drink from the table and throwing it in his face. Then she just left.
Barney, trying to salvage his hookup, wiped his eyes and said, "Where did she go? That was the manager. I can't believe it, I keep saying..." He was cut off mid-sentence when Lily walked in again, now with her hair tied up and a beret on.
"You gave my twin sister chlamydia, you asshole!" she said again, taking the other twin's drink and throwing the liquid in Barney's face once more. And she left without another word.
Again, Barney started to launch into his manager monologue. But the twins weren't having it and left.
"Well played, Eriksen. Well played," Barney finally said, left alone at the table.
Alyx's Perspective
While that scene, laden with past and future, unfolded on the sidewalk, Alyx, in the apartment, wasn't tending to Marshall, nor had she gone to her classes.
She had returned to see the small apartment she had secretly visited, the one with morning sunlight and its own balcony. That day, she met with the superintendent, a man of few words, an older gentleman. With him, she settled and paid the first month's rent and deposit, and signed the initial lease agreement for 3 months.
Returning to the apartment she shared with Marshall and Lily's shadow, now at night, she didn't turn on the light. She just sat on the sofa in the dark, listening to the distant hum of the city traffic.
In that silence, she wasn't waiting for Marshall. She was just existing in her own space, with her decisions. When she heard the key in the lock much later, she saw Marshall pass by towards his room. With barely a brief greeting, she asked no questions and offered no comfort. She simply shut down her computer, lay down on the sofa—which would soon no longer be her bed—and closed her eyes. She drifted off with thoughts of the new changes tomorrow and the strange, painful process of letting someone you love learn to walk on their own, even if it means they get dirty walking the streets or get hurt, but on their own terms.
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