It was Marshall who gradually began to feel the void more sharply. One night after Barney stood him up with another "law student" who turned out to be an actress, Marshall returned to the apartment—now strangely silent even with Ted and Robin there—and stopped in front of the sofa Alyx had used as a bed for those months. Although it was still in the same spot and he passed by it every day or sat there watching TV, now he stood still, staring at it, seeing how Alyx was missing there, sitting as she had so many afternoons when he saw her.
Ted found him standing there, still as a statue.
"Marshall?"
"It's weird," murmured Marshall. "When Lily left, the apartment felt like a prison full of her memories on every oppressive wall but... Even then, it was never so closed and lonely. The bars were always open, and there was life here with Alyx—she was always moving, cleaning, organizing, making coffee. Now that she's gone... it feels more like a cemetery full of buried memories, where recalling those happy moments just digs a deeper hole in your heart."
Ted didn't know what to say for the first time. He saw that Marshall not only missed Lily, but noticed Alyx's absence as a person separate yet equally loved.
Ted's Narration, 2030
"Kids, although at the time I never understood the three's relationship, I always thought it was more about Lily and Marshall's love, and Alyx was more of a union due to her love for Lily. This was reinforced when I saw that after Lily left, they ended without really ending."
He paused, seeing his children's confused faces.
"I know it sounds confusing since nowadays you see more of these kinds of couples, but years ago in my youth, it wasn't like that—even if you saw them, we didn't understand them like now. What I mean is, although I had shared over nine years with Lily and Marshall—I was even present when they started dating—seeing three years later that they met Alyx and she joined their relationship wasn't something I thought would last, but a youthful experiment that lasted six years with them." "Of course, that could also be because I always saw myself forming a family with only one woman and having you."
"Dad, you're beating around the bush. What does that have to do with them ending without ending?" asked his exasperated daughter.
"Well, although they never said it in words, when Lily left, they stopped sharing a room, 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 but without trying to fill the space Lily left for both of them, being a couple only 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 went, but upon arriving, her surprise was great to find it wasn't a normal commercial gym but a Muay Thai gym.
There she found Alyx in the sparring ring, sweaty, fists up, moving with an aggressive grace Robin didn't know she had. Added to her height, she seemed very imposing, lethal, and dangerous.
She watched from a distance, impressed and a bit scared. This wasn't the Alyx she 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 lustful stories, who always analyzed with seriousness whether Barney's conquest plans or Ted's vivid imaginations to find the woman of his dreams.
Instead, she saw a woman who turned her silence into punches and strength, whose eyes held a fire mixed with pain that she converted into attack 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, breathing heavily, 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 speaking to 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 some hurt, since she considered her a friend—not as close as Lily, but spending time with her in the group plus Lily's stories about her made her feel closer.
Alyx looked at her then, and Robin saw her fatigue, the worrying shadows under her eyes, the tension in her jaw as she said:
"I needed to breathe away from being the other girlfriend of Marshall and Lily, 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 having to be defined by her shared relationship with Marshall and Lily, though it wasn't everything Alyx meant. But Robin understood. Maybe not entirely, but enough. She nodded. "Alright. 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 return to the bar with the group that night. Instead, she went back 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, leaning it against an easel she recently bought, with hands still trembling from physical exertion and nicotine, she began to paint for the first time in her apartment—not in a notebook, and not the emptiness she painted in it now.
This time, she painted the silhouette of a person from behind—not Lily, not Marshall, nor 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 toasted with the group as spokesperson for new beginnings and adventures with his new wingman Marshall. Although Marshall toasted, he felt it wasn't the right moment—as if he were toasting to the life that ended with Alyx, celebrating the void left behind, a new and equally painful one as when Lily left, but this time with a bitter aftertaste for not knowing how to react earlier to protect that other remaining piece of their love.
For her part, Robin also toasted, thinking that this toast was also for Alyx—for her to find herself outside the pieces of her relationship, though worried whether she would face it with good decisions and take care of herself as she did when taking care of Marshall during the breakup.
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A huge thank you to sleepyPanda00 for the 6 Power Stones and for that review that made me smile from ear to ear! Also thanks to bear_ice, sunsora, adiavts, and Sunduz_Karacaoglan for your steady support. Every stone and every word from you gives life to this story. You're the best! ❤️📖