Number Sixty Six (2/?)
It's raining - right, left -
It’s pouring - left, right -
She is focused and determined and her brain goes through its mantra.
Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall - hook, right, left, right -
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall…
Right hook. Right hook. Right hook…
Right.
Breathe.
She knows the taste of blood - pewter, thick liquid iron, unsweetened pomegranate dripping out from beneath her skin. She knows the sound of popping bones - snapping like twigs stuck between concrete, like kernels on the stove, heating and opening up until they’re light and vulnerable and something completely different than what they’d been before. She knows the hazy swimming of vision, purple seeping in behind eyelids and drifting back and forth like the contents of a lava lamp, strangely soothing, floating amoebas creeping in and out of sight.
She knows get up.
She knows don’t cry.
She knows plenty of things that she hasn’t let on and lately she’s uncomfortable with the way the air is shifting around her, tightening and coiling like any second the situation and the life she’s created for herself will snap.
Pop.
Open up until she’s light and vulnerable and something completely different than what she’s been before.
She waits at ready - always - just in case. Because Robin Scherbatsky knows plenty of things, and it’s been years since she’s felt this particular feeling, this sense of something about to strike.
She’s glad she’s been training - she’s gotten herself ready.
Anybody can have an umbrella once it’s raining, she thinks while throwing a left jab at the bag, it takes intelligence to have one when it starts.
It’s raining - right, right, left…
It’s pouring -right, right, left…
Jack, be nimble.
Jack, be slick.
**
On Wednesday night her date ends badly.
The guy’s a jerk and she’d known it from the second he’d sidled up to her and pick-up-lined her into giving him her number. She hadn’t ever thought he was the one, as Ted would say, but she’s a cynic at heart. The one seems like a foolish notion to her, and waiting around for Cinderella scenarios, like waiting around, hoping she’ll turn into Lily or Victoria or some other sugar coated ingénue is a ridiculous waste of Robin Scherbatsky’s time and patience. She knows herself better than that. She knows men better than that.
In life she goes back and forth between two things, mostly. Sometimes she thinks she’s got some kind of Carmen mystique about her, somehow raising the adrenaline and testosterone level of any man within reaching distance so they constantly see red when she’s around and everything’s destined to go sour from the start. And then other times she thinks she’s just a guy’s girl, and her tom-boy upbringing has spoiled her forever by effectively eliminating the possibility for any Disney soundtracks or well-groomed white horses to show up anywhere on her horizon.
Then sometimes she thinks her problem in the romance department is probably the numerous heavy-duty weapons she totes around.
But mostly she blames the other stuff.
The guy she goes out with on Wednesday is definitely a far cry from Prince Charming, and the whole time she hears Lily’s chastising voice in her ear so that by 9:30 she ends up sliding into the booth at MacLaren’s next to Barney, sighing her disinterest in the world and clenching her jaw to keep the disinterest from turning into bitter resentment.
She feels Barney watching her and she bites down harder to keep from telling him to look at something else for a change.
“Well that must’ve been a bust,” Lily assesses, glancing at her watch in a silent comment on the early hour. Robin nods and tucks an errant strand of hair behind her ear, ignoring the way Barney watches the muscles of her bicep - no doubt remembering the many right hooks he’d witnessed her throwing that afternoon.
“Another loser in the ’09 string of bad decisions,” she declares unhappily. Marshall sweetly seems distressed by this while Lily and Barney just kind of sit there and say nothing. “He told me my ass is fat,” she confesses.
This pulls a reaction from Barney Stinson like nothing else could as he loudly guffaws and slams his glass down on the table.
“Clearly he wasn't looking closely,” he comments.
There’s an awkward silence.
Robin rolls her eyes. She sighs, trying not to think about the things she always thinks about as the air in the room seems to swim around her, teasing her somehow and tickling her nerve endings, pressing into her, annoying her, mocking her until her knee starts to bounce under the table. She wishes her gym was open twenty four hours.
She could stand to throw a few punches right now.
She imagines taping up her hands and shuffling her feet and feeling the unforgiving weight of a punching bag beneath her knuckles, and then she remembers some other kinds of things.
She feels Barney watching her.
She forces a smile and shakes plenty of things off, deliberately.
“Oh well. What did I miss here while I was there? Anything good?” Robin prompts and Lily and Marshall jump right in, filling her in on things at a rapid fire pace that she can’t really follow. She doesn’t try, letting them talk and choosing instead to focus on the solid, curious, bone-deep heat coming off of Barney Stinson in waves.
“Float like a butterfly,” he mumbles.
She looks over at him, tough and unwavering, refusing to give because it’s not how she plays.
“Sting like a bee,” she confirms.
He grins.
**
There was an old woman - right, hook
Who swallowed a fly - left, hook
I don’t know why - left, right - she swallowed a fly - left, right
Perhaps she’ll die.
**
It’s Friday when Robin realizes which storm brought the electricity to the air.
It’s a twenty-years-ago storm...A thirteen year old girl storm that would have once had her hovering at the window, worried, checking the skies and watching her step and wondering whether or not she might need an umbrella.
It’s a black sky type storm and she should have seen it coming.
She’s ordering a round of drinks at MacLaren’s when she sees Barney out of the corner of her eye stand and swing his arms out to the side in some kind of surprised gesture, stepping past her so fast she loses track of him and nods at Carl when he mutters how much she owes.
She hears Barney say “Jack! What are you doing - following me around town, now?” and she hears ‘Jack’ chuckle in response.
She hears him chuckle.
God, she hears him chuckle and she knows him without even looking, the hand she’d had on her wallet stops moving and the beer she has in her stomach starts bubbling up toward her esophagus, and she can actually feel her face go pale. She thinks her face has gone completely and utterly pale.
She presses a hand to her side to try to remind her lungs what breathing feels like.
It’s ok, she thinks.
It’s ok.
She’s been waiting for this.
She should be shocked, she figures, she should be wondering how he got here, how he figured out where she would be, how he seems to know Barney so well from the sound of things, but instead she's just thinking...she's been waiting.
She's been waiting for this.
She doesn’t understand how this is happening now, but she thinks about exorcising demons and getting rid of ghosts and she knows she’s been waiting. She hears them, Barney and Jack , talking to Marshall and Lily and Ted and she forces her body to turn, she forces herself to turn and look at him, to take him in - the familiar build, the salt and pepper hair, the cocky stance and perfectly shined shoes.
He feels her eyes on him, as always.
He feels her eyes, so he turns his head and he pins her with a stare.
He nods and says “RJ.”
She nods and says “Dad.”
***
Jack, be nimble.
Jack, be slick…
***
“Allow me to introduce myself,” he says to the table once the silence has lingered much too long, “Robin Charles Scherbatsky, Senior.” He holds out a hand and Marshall is the only one to shake it, simply trying to be polite. “My friends call me Charlie.”
It takes the group a solid three minutes to understand that this is Robin’s father, that somehow in a twist of eerie serendipity he has shown up in New York and has already met Barney and is now standing in MacLaren’s at the edge of their booth. It takes the group a solid three minutes to figure out how to react.
Robin doesn’t react.
Robin doesn’t find anything about it serendipitous.
She knows all sorts of things and this man is never accidental. There are never any accidents.
Robin just stands there with Barney’s confused, concerned eyes heavy on one side of her face and her father’s relentless stare heavy on the other.
She has nothing to say.
She bites down hard and hears her jaw tighten in her inner ear and she feels herself go cold, icy, distant and disinterested.
“So,” her father eventually sighs, “RJ, how have you been?” he asks.
Ted and Marshall and Lily glance at each other in confusion.
Robin clenches her jaw just a little bit tighter.
“Great,” her voice comes out airy and carefree and she’s impressed with herself. She doesn’t look at him. “Everything’s great.” Float like a butterfly, she thinks determinedly.
Sting like a bee.
She turns her head just enough and their gazes lock. After an electric charged silence, she spits: “What the hell are you doing here?”
Jack and Jill went up the hill to fetch a pail of water.
He says he’s here to see how she’s doing, to reconnect.
She thinks his choice of words is beyond poetic.
Jack fell down and broke his crown and Jill came tumbling after.
Part 3