The next day, with the rain still falling—rain that Ted Mosby would swear until his dying day he had summoned with a rain dance to prove his love to Robin Scherbatsky, and with which he had finally, this first time, made Robin his girlfriend.
After spending that first night with her at her apartment, that morning as Ted left Robin's building, the very witness to his success after an entire season of pursuing her—from plans to steal blue French horns, to filling her living room with roses and a string quartet, chocolates, heartfelt talks, and more—he hailed a cab to go back to his own place, reminiscing about the incredible moments he'd experienced thanks to that rain.
Ted, with a euphoria so deep it felt akin to his water-soaked clothes, was eager to tell Marshall and anyone else his fantastic love story of how he had conquered the love of his life. What he didn't expect was that, as he got out of the cab in that downpour, drenched on the steps of his building, Marshall was there, illuminated by the weak daylight, his figure hunched on the steps.
The smile on Ted's face faded, for there sat his best friend with water dripping from his hair onto his wet clothes. What provoked even greater worry in Ted was seeing his expression, which used to be joyful, naive, or fun, now a mere vestige of pain with empty, lost eyes, clutching in his hands the only object anchoring him. There, Ted watched as Marshall raised between the fingers of his left hand a ring—clearly not just any ring, but Lily's.
No words were needed in that long silence, only Ted assimilating the situation. The only form of support he could offer Marshall was to approach him, sit on the same steps, and drape his right arm over Marshall's shoulders as a show of companionship for a while in a silence heavy with scattered emotions.
The only comparison that existed was this: while that rain for Ted was an idyllic beginning of everything he believed he needed for his happy life, for Marshall it was the hardest blow he could have felt up to that moment. As if his life, once a perfect building, had stumbled head-on into the strongest, most destructive hammer, cracking its foundations and leaving a disaster on the once pristine facade, disordering and destroying its interior.
Several minutes passed before Ted could no longer ignore the cold of the street and the water soaking his clothes. "Come on, Marshall. You have to go inside. You'll get sick in this weather," said Ted, standing up on the steps and giving Marshall a soft pat on the shoulder.
With difficulty, Marshall managed to get to his feet and followed Ted into the building lobby and then down the hall to their apartment, all in silence and without energy.
Upon opening the door, the scene Ted found was an image similar to Marshall just moments before, only the center of this misery wasn't in the street rain but in a setting both familiar and foreign: their living room. There, on that sofa, without his work laptop, with the TV off and the curtains closed, the only light was the living room lamp bathing the space in a faint glow.
And there, in the armchair, in complete silence and with barely any movement like a statue, was Alyx. She wasn't one to stay still; she liked to be working, playing, or watching some show when at home, but now she was so still it was unsettling for Ted.
As Ted moved closer, he saw that Alyx wasn't asleep, she just wasn't moving. She sat with her back straight, her hands firmly planted on her thighs, as if anchoring herself to reality. She wore a loose sweatshirt of Marshall's. Her face, normally lit by a confident smile or a spark of mischievous fun, was pale, carved in marble. Her gaze, usually sharp and analytical as if deciphering a theory, was fixed on the opposite wall, seeing beyond the peeling paint, analyzing the variables of the catastrophe.
Before Ted could utter a word, he heard, "Ted," she said, without her gaze shifting from the wall. Her voice was devoid of emotion, flat, without her usual confident or playful air she sometimes used with them.
"Alyx? What happened?" asked Ted with a slight hesitation in his voice, though he already had an inkling from his last conversation with Lily.
Slowly, at that moment, Alyx turned her head towards them. With her eyes, she slowly took in their state, especially Marshall's tall, drenched, and shattered figure, and focused on his left hand, clenched in a fist. There, Alyx intuited what was hidden, what he was holding onto so tightly: the ring.
The moment Alyx had that certainty was when Ted observed a brief change in her expression—so brief yet so pained he hoped it was his imagination. But of course, it wasn't. The spasm of complete pain that crossed her face was so quick and intense it surprised Ted how she could control it to return to an impassive mask.
"Lily left," Alyx declared, with a coldness as if giving a report. But Ted, after seeing that small moment when her mask fell and was put back in place, and with years of friendship with the three of them, recognized a glimpse of emotions—a giant whirlwind she hid beneath the surface: protectiveness, rage, helplessness, immense love, and pain.
"She took a flight to San Francisco for an art program." She paused, and her voice cracked slightly. "I couldn't… We couldn't… she…" Alyx couldn't finish what she wanted to say.
But Ted understood, of course: the helplessness of not being able to make her stay, with her, with them, and what was worse, that Alyx didn't know how to keep their triangle—her Marshall, her Lily, and herself—together, away from this pain. So, the only thing she could do was guide Marshall to the armchair beside her, making space for him.
Ted witnessed, for the first time, how neither Alyx nor Marshall were capable of speaking or leaning on each other as before. They couldn't. He could see that the complicity and love between the two were fractured in a way he didn't understand. So, after taking off his wet jacket, he sat in the right corner of the sofa, with Marshall in the other corner near the door and Alyx in the center.