The law school party was a pandemonium smelling of cheap beer and ambition when Barney made his triumphant entrance with Anna on his arm, introducing himself left and right as "Ted Mosby, the architect." Marshall was more surprised by the name he was using.
"Barney? What the hell...?" he tried, but a drunken classmate interrupted him, pointing at Barney/Ted. "Hey, it's the architect! What an interesting guy! Says he's going to design a cathedral tonight!"
Anna looked at Barney/Ted with admiration, and he dropped pearls of fake architectural wisdom: "Awards are nice, but they don't compare to the joy of seeing the sunrise over your first building."
"Wow," Anna sighed dreamily. "I'd love to see a sunrise like that."
"I know," Barney/Ted replied with obscene confidence.
Then there was Robin's own spiral of jealousy and insecurity. Accompanied by Lily, she found out that "Ted Mosby the architect" was flirting left and right, and that he had gone to Marshall's law school party after lying about working from home. She and Lily went to the party to find him.
But it was too late. To demonstrate his free and architectural spirit, Barney/Ted announced they were going to a techno club. "I love clubs!" declared the man designing a cathedral in his head, and he left with Anna, leaving a trail of future lawyers impressed with the "so interesting Ted Mosby."
Later, with Alyx
While chaos was brewing, Alyx's present received an unexpected visit.
There was a knock on her door. It wasn't Marshall or Lily, but Robin, her face pale, her eyes shining with a mix of cold fury and confusion. She seemed to have walked miles, full of conflicting emotions.
"I need a place with no men pretending to be other men," she announced without preamble.
Surprised, Alyx let her in. Robin collapsed into the only armchair (a nice sofa bed Alyx had bought that morning to have something in the living room besides her small stool) and fixed her gaze on the canvas with the scaffolding of lines. "What is that?" she asked without her usual filter.
"A work in progress," Alyx said simply. "What happened?"
"Ted. Or someone who says he's Ted." Robin let out the story in sharp bursts: from their first fight, the word "boring," the call to Marshall and his evasiveness that "Ted was working on something," and then the bartender's testimony at MacLaren's: "'Ted Mosby the architect'? He left with a pretty girl."
"So I was going to go to his apartment, but Lily and I went to Marshall's law school party first. After bribing the doorman with my bag to get in, we found out Ted had left with that woman to her place, and we got the address from the doorman," Robin continued, her voice cracking at the edges. "Ready for the final confrontation, and you know what I find? Barney with some Anna, and Barney... Barney tells me he is the architect, that he used Ted's name because his own has 'bad press on the web.'" She let out a dry, bitter laugh. "You see? I'm so crazy over this that I can't even hate the right person. But I became the jealous, paranoid girlfriend over one of Barney's stupidities."
Alyx listened with the cold logic of connecting dots. "Barney used Ted's identity to validate a stupid theory, and Ted, I'm sure, was somewhere drowning in misery. But you reacted like anyone who loves someone and thinks they're losing them would." She approached and offered her the cup of tea she had prepared. "It's not madness, you know. It's more like fear doing its job."
Robin took the cup, her hands trembling slightly. "It hurts," she admitted in a whisper. "It hurts to think I could lose him. And it's strange to feel so caught up in something that I can go a little crazy. It's repulsive and... real."
Alyx nodded. She understood it on a molecular level, with her own pain as a certificate of authenticity. "Ted is an idiot, but he's not disloyal. Barney is a tornado with a tie. And you... you're learning to walk the tightrope of something real. That's just supposed to be dizzying."
For the first time, Robin really looked at her, beyond her own drama. She saw Alyx's weary peace, the small changes in the apartment, the absence of the cigarette smell that used to envelop her. "And you?" she asked, her voice softer. "How do you walk the tightrope after you've already fallen?"
Alyx looked at her sketchbook. "One step at a time. Sometimes holding onto the wire very tightly, and other times finding a new balance. And today, my balance is tea and not being anyone's pilot for one night."
Ted's Perspective
While the women talked of pain and balance, the real Ted, in his apartment, received a call from Lily, who filled him in on the situation, how Robin had left without her, and that she didn't know what she would do but was worried about her.
"I have to go," Ted said, pale as the wall. "I have to find Robin, and I have to... tell her the whole truth." He quickly grabbed his jacket and keys while hanging up the phone and left the apartment, running into Marshall, who had just arrived.
Ted went straight to Alyx's apartment—the only place that smelled like sanity. When he opened the door, he found the two women. Robin saw him, and in her expression, fresh pain mixed with weary recognition.
"Robin, I can explain..." Ted began, out of breath.
"I already know," Robin said, her voice calm but with a tremor of residual fury. "Alyx helped me piece it together. Barney, the theory, your name... I know."
The relief that flooded Ted was so violent it almost buckled him. "So... you don't hate me?"
"Of course I hate you!" Robin exploded, but it was no longer the icy shout from before; it was something liberating. "I hate you because they used your name! I hate you because I thought the worst! I hate you because I called you boring and triggered this Barney-esque nightmare! I'm furious!" And then she could only approach him and hug him, to know he was real.
"I'm sorry," she murmured into his hair. "I'm sorry for being a broken record, and I'm sorry for not listening to you. You are... the most interesting event in my life."
Alyx and Marshall exchanged a glance and, without a word, slipped into the kitchen, granting them space. From there, they heard the broken murmurs, the apologies, and the choked laughter.
Marshall looked at Alyx. "One day at a time, huh?" he whispered with an exhausted but genuine smile.
Alyx nodded, observing the profile of Ted and Robin reconstructing word by word. "Sometimes the day brings Barney hurricanes. But sometimes, afterward, the air is left clean." The silver earring in her pocket had weight, but it no longer dragged her down. It was now just a witness that even the most perfect misunderstandings, if worked through, could end in a hug in the eye of the hurricane. And in her new survival lexicon, that counted as a victory.
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