This time, Marshall didn't take a taxi or anything else. He simply walked to Alyx's apartment. He needed that time to think about how to talk to her as best as he could, and the cold night air as he walked through the streets of New York helped calm and clear his mind. The minutes of walking blurred together, but his mind became perfectly clear by the time he reached Alyx's building and looked up. The living room light was on. He didn't think; he just acted.
In the mailbox next to Alyx's name, there was a small, folded note. He looked at it—it clearly wasn't Alyx's handwriting, nor was it a bill or something similar. He recognized whose it was instantly: the roundness of the letters, of course, was Lily's.
It said: "Alyx, please, talk to me. I'm leaving this for you. It's yours. It always was. – L"
Next to the note, carefully wrapped in a tissue, was one of Lily's silver earrings—probably the one he remembered seeing her wear often after last New Year's Eve.
Marshall picked it up, the cold metal resting in his palm. It was a symbol, though he wasn't sure exactly of what, apart from being a reminder of everything that had been lost and all the secrets now poisoning the air between them.
With his heart pounding, he pressed the doorbell.
Inside, the sound seemed to cross a universe of silence. Then came slow footsteps, and the door opened.
Alyx stood there, in sweatpants and an oversized t-shirt, her hair down, her eyes free of the sunglasses (which Robin had told them she wore almost the entire time during their afternoon encounter). Now he could see what Robin had observed that afternoon: her eyes, wide and deeply tired. Beyond that, she didn't seem surprised to see him.
"Marshall," she said with a sigh.
He didn't say anything, just looked at her and extended his hand to show the earring resting in his palm. What he didn't expect was the visceral effect such a small piece of jewelry would have on her. In an instant, the color drained from her face, her breath caught, and for a second, Marshall saw more than exhaustion. He saw panic—pure, raw panic.
"Where did…?" she began, taking a step back.
"It was in your mailbox, with a note from Lily," Marshall explained, stepping inside and closing the door behind him. The apartment smelled of coffee and paint, but otherwise, there was nothing else. No furniture apart from the desk with a plastic chair. Everything was the same—no decoration, nothing to make it feel like a home. Just emptiness.
"Why is she returning this, Alyx? What's going on?" And yet, with the little he saw, his first question was the most important one.
Alyx stared at the earring as if it were a serpent. Her whole body was tense, coiled in on itself, so much so that she didn't notice her tremors—the ones she usually hid—but Marshall did. He saw what Robin had described, now visible in her hands as they clutched the edges of her t-shirt.
"It's nothing," she lied, but the lie was as visible as her trembling. "A… misunderstanding."
"No," Marshall said, stepping closer. His voice was soft but firm for this conversation. "Robin's worried, Barney's playing spy, Ted's overthinking what went wrong and how he missed it, and I… I miss you every damn day. But this isn't just missing you, Alyx. And it's not just about us. I can see that for you, it's not just the breakup. It's fear. But what are you so afraid of?"
Alyx closed her eyes. An internal struggle was visible in every muscle of her face. The secret, the weight of impossible knowledge, the guilt over feelings she couldn't control, the image of her own hand storing the mate to that earring while part of her remembered a different future… everything seemed to boil beneath the surface, ready to overflow.
"You can't understand, Marshall," she whispered, and her voice held a trace of truth, cracked and raw. "There are things… about me… about all of this… that I can't explain… and… and if I say them, everything will change forever. That's what I'm afraid of—that the change will be worse."
Marshall looked at her—the woman who had been his anchor, his confidant, the third vertex of his world. He saw her tremble, saw her hiding bruises, saw her clinging to the edge of an abyss. And in that moment, he didn't care about the secret. He only cared about her.
"Then don't say it," he said with a calm he didn't feel. He placed the earring on the desk, the only piece of furniture, and slowly, as if approaching a frightened animal, extended his large hands and placed them with infinite gentleness on her trembling arms.
"You don't have to explain yourself. You just have to stay, okay? With us. Just let us help you carry whatever it is. Who cleans the cleaner, Alyx? Who takes care of the caretaker?"
The contact, the simple warmth of his hands, and the question—though it might not seem like a real catalyst in another situation—resonated with her as a fundamental truth from the last six years and the months of the breakup. For her, at least, it was the drop that made the cup overflow.
A dry, rough sob escaped Alyx's lips, followed by another, and then another. It wasn't a dramatic, heart-wrenching cry like in the movies, but a quieter one, just as painful because it was a silent, total surrender from someone who had been holding her breath for months—from someone who had kept her feelings bottled up for so long that expressing them was both a liberation and a white flag in her self-imposed war with her emotions.
So, she let go. Her whole body gave way; the slight tremor became an uncontrollable shake, and she collapsed forward.
Marshall caught her, wrapping her in a firm, secure embrace—the kind only he could give. He held her as she cried, as months of coffee, insomnia, punches, and silence poured out onto his shirt.
"It's okay," he murmured against her hair, his own eyes filling with tears. "It's okay. You're not alone. Not anymore."
Outside, watching from a dark corner of the parking lot, was Lily. She had been watching the apartment that night, not daring to go beyond leaving the note with her earring in the mailbox. She saw Marshall arrive, saw the light turn on in the living room, and now saw the silhouette of Marshall holding Alyx, undoubtedly.
A sharp pain, but also a strange pang of hope, pierced her chest. The broken, twisted triangle wasn't dead after all. It was just asleep. And the first step to waking it wasn't desire, but this surrender—this heart-to-heart talk with the truth.
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