It was Marshall who gradually began to feel the void more acutely. One night, after Barney had stood him up with another "law student" who turned out to be an actress, Marshall returned to the apartment—an apartment now strangely quiet even with Ted and Robin there—and stopped in front of the sofa Alyx had used as a bed for months. Even though it was still in the same spot and he passed by it or sat on it to watch TV every day, he now stood still, staring intently, seeing how Alyx was missing, no longer sitting there as she had on so many afternoons.
Ted found him there, standing motionless like a statue.
"Marshall?"
"It's weird," Marshall murmured. "When Lily left, the apartment felt like a prison, full of her memories on every oppressive wall, but... it was never this closed off and lonely. The bars were always open, and there was life in it because Alyx was always moving, cleaning, organizing, making coffee. Now that she's gone... it feels more like a cemetery full of buried memories, where remembering those happy moments just digs a deeper hole in your heart."
For the first time, Ted didn't know what to say. He saw that Marshall didn't just miss Lily—he noticed Alyx's absence as a separate, equally loved person.
Ted's Narration, 2030
"Kids, even though I never understood their three-way relationship at the time, I always thought it was more about Lily and Marshall's love, and Alyx was more of an addition because of her love for Lily. This was reinforced when I saw that after Lily left, they 'ended' without actually ending."
He paused, seeing his children's confused faces.
"I know it sounds confusing because these types of relationships are more visible nowadays, but back in my youth, they weren't as common or understood. What I'm getting at is that even though I had shared with Lily and Marshall for over nine years—I was even there when they started dating—seeing Alyx join their relationship three years later wasn't something I thought would last. I saw it as a youthful experiment that lasted six years with them." "Of course, that might also be because I always saw myself forming a family with just one woman and having you guys."
"Dad, you're rambling. What does this have to do with them 'ending without ending'?" his daughter asked, exasperated.
"Well, even though they never said it in words, the 'ending' happened as soon as Lily left. They no longer shared a bedroom, Alyx relegated herself to the background in the living room, and her way of showing her love for Marshall was by taking care of him without trying to fill the space Lily left for both of them, being a couple with just the two of them."
Back to 2006
Robin was the first to attempt a connection. She went to the gym where Alyx had mentioned she trained, but to her great surprise, it wasn't a normal commercial gym—it was a Muay Thai gym.
There, she found Alyx in the sparring ring, sweaty, fists high, moving with an aggressive grace Robin had never seen in her. Coupled with her height, she looked imposing, lethal, and dangerous.
She watched from a distance, impressed and a little scared. This wasn't the Alyx she had met when she joined the group—Marshall and Lily's partner, who sat quietly at the bar, who sometimes made dry or sarcastic but measured comments about Barney's lurid stories, who always analyzed with seriousness whether it was Barney's conquest plans or Ted's vivid imaginations of finding his dream woman. Instead, she saw a woman who had turned her silence into punches and strength, whose eyes held a fire mixed with pain that she converted into attacking power.
After the training, Robin approached.
"Geez, Alyx. You could knock out Barney with one kick."
Alyx, though surprised to see her there after days of not seeing her, wiped the sweat from her face with a towel and, with heavy breath, said, "That's not my goal, but it's a good Plan B for when he gets out of control." Her tone, though friendly, felt distant, as if she were seeing a high school acquaintance.
"We miss you at the bar," said Robin, always direct.
Alyx drank water from a bottle and avoided her gaze. "I needed... space. To breathe."
"To breathe away from us?" asked Robin without malice but with a touch of hurt, as she considered Alyx a friend—not as close as Lily, but spending time with her in the group and hearing Lily's stories about her had made her feel closer.
Alyx looked at her then, and Robin saw her fatigue, the worrisome shadows under her eyes, the tension in her jaw as she said:
"I needed to breathe away from being 'Marshall and Lily's other girlfriend,' 'the one who takes care of Marshall.' I need to discover who I am when no one is looking at me through the lens of... of them."
Robin understood the general idea—finding herself without being defined by her shared relationship with Marshall and Lily, though it wasn't everything Alyx meant. Robin understood. Maybe not completely, but enough. She nodded. "Okay. But... when you want to breathe near someone, you know where we are. And not just as 'Ted's girlfriend.'"
It was a small but meaningful offer. Alyx gave her a small, genuine smile, the first in weeks. "Thanks, Robin."
But even after that visit, she didn't go to the bar with the group that night. Instead, she returned to her empty, silent apartment. She just made coffee and lit a cigarette.
She took one of the blank canvases she had bought for her painting class and, propped up on a newly purchased easel, with hands still trembling from physical exertion and nicotine, began to paint for the first time in her apartment—not in a sketchbook, and not the emptiness she now painted there.
This time, she painted the silhouette of a person from behind. It wasn't Lily, Marshall, or any anonymous model from her classes. It was just a silhouette, from behind, looking toward a window full of light. She didn't know who that figure was. But for the first time, she had hope that if she kept painting, maybe she could discover it.
Meanwhile, at MacLaren's, Barney was toasting with the group as the spokesperson for new beginnings and adventures with his new wingman, Marshall. Although Marshall joined the toast, he felt it wasn't the right moment—as if he were toasting to the life that had ended with Alyx, almost celebrating the void that remained, a new one just as painful as when Lily left, but this time with a bitter aftertaste from not knowing how to react earlier to care for that other piece of their love that remained.
Robin, for her part, also toasted, thinking that the toast was also for Alyx—for her to find her own person outside the pieces of her relationship—though worried about whether she would face it with good decisions and take care of herself, just as she had cared for Marshall during the breakup.
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