The silence at MacLaren's was so thick it seemed to absorb even the bar's usual background murmur. The gang sat around their usual table, looking like a collection of defeated statues or beaten puppies. At the center of the table, like a trophy of their failure, lay Lily's torn banner—barely readable, the words WE LOVE YOU, ALYX still ripped in half. Robin had picked it up from Alyx's apartment floor on her way out in an automatic act.
"Well," Barney began, breaking the silence. "In my defense, the Code Red Protocol had a 0% success rate, so statistically, it was bound to fail."
"Not the time, Barney," Ted murmured, turning his beer between his hands without drinking. In his mind, replaying the damage to his loved ones' relationships from his parents' divorce revelation and the complexity of his relationship with Robin, he found a strange relief in someone else's catastrophe. It was a tangible problem, something he could try to help with, unlike the family ghosts haunting him.
Lily, sitting next to Marshall but at a careful distance, couldn't take her eyes off the drawing she had made for Alyx of the three of them together. She had barely been able to speak to her, let alone show her the drawing, now crumpled in her bag. "We did it wrong," she whispered, her voice laden with the same guilt she had been carrying for months. "We came like a jury to pass sentence, full of evidence, accusations, and a verdict already written. It wasn't the time for such a direct 'You're broken, fix yourself.' It wasn't an offering of help, a friendly hand, but a direct blow."
Marshall, who had been observing the play of light and shadow the bar's interior lights cast on his glass of whiskey, nodded slowly. "She's right," he said, his voice exhausted. "Alyx was always the one who had and used the instruction manual for our crises. I don't know how, but she always knew when Ted needed a motivational speech, when I needed pizza accompanied by a stupid movie, when Barney needed to be reminded he was human... And what did we do when she needed the same? We took her manual and just threw it together, many copies, directly at her head. Through a method from a manual we've barely tried and only seemed to work for us. Apparently, we didn't see that she needed something gentler."
Robin took a long sip of her beer; the bitter taste seemed appropriate for the moment. "Barney, about the trading statistics..." she began, unable to believe she was asking. "Was it... was it just another crazy theory, or... did you see something real?"
Everyone looked at Barney, who had been playing with coasters since they arrived at the bar. Hearing the clear question, he stopped playing with the coasters and straightened up, adopting an unusually thoughtful expression. "The numbers are public, guys. Anyone with basic market knowledge and too much free time, like me, can see it," he said with a dramatic pause.
"Her portfolio is... unnaturally precise, as if she knew which stocks were going to rise before anyone else did. And while it's not illegal unless you have insider information from the future—which is impossible—unless..." He made another pause, doubting whether to continue, his gaze shifting from macabre amusement to genuine perplexity. "Well, it's impossible. But if you saw that panic she showed... that wasn't just because we were meddling in her affairs. There was a fear that we were getting close to something she doesn't want us to know."
"It doesn't matter," Marshall interrupted firmly. "The 'something' she doesn't want us to know isn't relevant now. What matters is why. Why does she feel this way? Why does she believe she deserves punishment? The earring, the trading, the bruises... All of that are symptoms, not the illness. Because the illness she carries is composed of the pain she bears and that won't let us get close to help her heal."
"So, what do we do?" asked Ted. "If direct intervention failed, but if approaching as friends makes her retreat..."
"We don't chase her," said Lily, speaking with sudden clarity. "No more plans, no protocols, no secret missions. We just build a bridge and wait for her to decide to cross it. We show with small actions that we are here and that we don't want to fix her, but that we want to be there when she decides she can't take it anymore and needs our help completely."
"Small actions?" Barney asked skeptically. "Like what? Leave cookies at her door? Send her a spa coupon? Leave little candies on the way to the bar or Ted's apartment?"
"No, Barney, she means reminding her that we exist outside the drama," said Robin, grasping the idea. "You know, like a text without pressure. Something like, 'I saw this article and thought of you,' 'I passed by the old bagel place, I miss your complicated orders,' 'I bought a box of donuts and there's one with chocolate chips and berry filling.' Everyday things, maybe silly, that don't require a response. We just need her to know we remember her as she was, not as she is now, even if it's just to tell her silly things about our day."
Marshall nodded, a spark of hope lighting up in his dull eyes. "And I... can keep going, maybe just to talk about anything, but not to interrogate her. Or just sit on that bench she has, so she knows I'm present, ready to talk, cry, or do nothing, but so she's not alone in that empty room."
"It's a terrible plan," declared Barney, leaning back in his chair. "There are no charts, no clear gain, no 'aha!' moment. It's... waiting. And I'm terrible at waiting."
"We all are," Ted sighed. "But it's all we have left. It's what she did for years for us. She waited and helped us when we needed it. Now it's our turn."
While the group pondered their new plan, Lily, who had fallen silent after giving her idea, thought about her own plan—something she could do for Alyx. Hearing Barney's strange facts, Marshall's story of seeing Alyx break over her earring, and Robin's account of the exhausting exercise, she understood that she needed to do something.
Something that wasn't a grand declaration but an act of restoration. An act that said, "I remember who you were, and that person is worth it."
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