Number Sixty Six (9/?)
Title: Number Sixty Six
Author: Stablergirl
Rating: MA
Pairing: Barney/Robin
Disclaimers: Don't own em.
Author's Notes: A little introspection for Robin. Working on chapter ten right now, so hopefully I'll have an update soon. Thanks to roland for the beta work!
::WARNING:: This story contains violence and abuse. Please use your discretion.
Chapter Nine: Denial and Introspection
She goes to a twenty four hour diner and orders a greasy cup of coffee, pouring cream in, watching it swirl through the thick blackness like mist through some tormented ocean.
She’s going to shake this off.
This is some kind of revertigo and she’s going to shake it from her shoulders like rain from an umbrella.
She’s going to remember charm and confidence and how she can fight back if she wants to. How if she wants to she can stand up and make a solid case for every choice she’s ever made. How she has nothing to be afraid of because she’s survived this far, somehow. Somehow she’s made it here on her own and she’s become this woman, this heart-breaking high-heel-wearing news anchor in the big apple, kicking ass. Taking names.
Charles Scherbatsky hasn’t succeeded in holding her back yet.
He’s not going to start now.
Robin just has to remember.
She has to shake this off.
She takes a sip of the coffee and swallows, letting the bitter taste of it remind her of the sour fierceness in her bones, of the survivor hiding somewhere inside of her lungs.
People like her. She’s drop dead gorgeous. Men propose to her after like an hour of conversation. She can knock a woman out after just five minutes in a ring. She’s a former pop sensation. Even Barney Stinson ignores bimbos to worship the ground that she walks on.
This last, particularly, makes her feel a little more grounded as she takes another sip of her coffee.
It tastes terrible and she’s glad.
She doesn’t flinch.
**
The north wind doth blow
And we shall have snow…
**
It’s easy, she thinks to herself, to hide away in New York City. There’s an understanding in the paved roads and dirt-covered sidewalks, residual fear from the days when even well lit boulevards were the backdrop for crime and punishment. There’s no eye contact and no questioning and no venturing into personal space.
It’s easy to hide away, to think, to escape.
Things are fast and frantic. Robin is one in a sea of thousands and it’s easy to ride the wave of it, to duck into a cab and disappear from the scene.
It’s easy.
**
The north wind doth blow
And we shall have snow.
And what will the robin do then?
**
In Canada, at home with him, it had been harder to hide. Harder to pick herself up and harder to shake off the fear of him.
It had taken her years to find a way, to figure out confidence and charm, to realize that the only person she could rely on to save her from this was herself.
She’d retaliated in a terribly brave kind of way when she was fourteen and filled with hating him, fourteen and finished with taking hits, fourteen and tired of being constantly afraid.
She’d been brave when she was fourteen - she’d kissed a boy and her eyes had opened up, she’d started to realize the other kind of person who was buried somewhere inside of her. Grossly stereotypical, she knows, to have such realizations because of a simple brush of lips, but it was how it had happened…or at least how it had started. She’d kissed a boy and her father had caught them, and so she’d taken the usual punishment but she’d also realized that maybe, in some small way, she had some kind of power hidden away somewhere.
She’d realized she could win some people over.
She’d started to wonder if she could maybe escape things.
She’d thought of the movies she’d seen on cable TV.
At fourteen Robin had been brave. Robin had been bold, and she had come up with a plan because she’d learned that sometimes you could run from things. She’d figured out that bus tickets only cost twenty eight dollars, and she had fifty dollars in the shoebox in her closet.
She’d been saving up, she guessed, for something exactly like this.
Robin had gathered up all the courage she owned and she had called her mother from the school office on the last day before summer vacation. She’d asked her mother if it would be ok…if she could maybe come stay there for a while. She had charmed her mother, offered a smile she didn’t feel, and her voice had only shaken for a second. She’d asked if it would be ok.
She’d packed her bags.
She hadn’t left a note behind.
She’d started to escape things, to rebuild things, to start again.
She’d gotten on a bus and she had been very grown up, then, Robin thinks now. She’d been very calm and very brave and she had escaped him.
She’d arrived at her mother’s house, explained she’d like to stay, said very little, really, but had still somehow, she guessed, gotten her point across.
She thinks now that maybe it was that her mother had finally understood. She thinks that maybe her mother had figured it out. She thinks that maybe her mother had been wracked, then, with guilt.
Her mother had let her stay.
And of course a few days later her father had shown up, predictably angry and intimidating and intending to retrieve her, but it was her mother’s new husband Rick who had answered the door and he was a burly sort of man from the deep north whose towering build and hard-set frown discouraged Charlie from actually setting foot into the house, leaving him awkward and impatient on the front porch.
Rick had glanced over his shoulder at Robin, who’d been frozen and fearful on the stairs, and he had asked if she’d wanted to go back with Charlie.
He had asked her as if she was a grown up, as if she made decisions and as if she could choose things for herself. He had asked her, given her a choice, waited expectantly for a decision, but Robin couldn’t speak because fear had grabbed hard at her throat with the sight of Charlie in the doorway and the air had left her lungs.
Robin couldn’t speak. But she still had this power Rick had given her, she still had some hint of her bravery.
Rick had asked if she’d wanted to go back with Charlie, and Robin had managed somehow to give her head a firm shake - no.
That had been all Rick had needed. The door had slammed in Charles Scherbatsky’s face.
To this day she sends Rick a card on father’s day, just because she thinks he deserves it.
Once Robin had adjusted and started at her new school, once she’d warmed up to her two year old sister, once she’d gotten comfortable with eating at fast food restaurants and riding around in Rick’s oversized pickup truck, she’d figured maybe she was going to be ok.
Once she’d figured out how to push memories and impulses and fears and soulful things down deep into some shadowed corner in the back of her mind she’d figured maybe she could smile and keep going.
She’d figured she could pretend it had never happened and she could be normal and she could move on.
She would “go visit dad” on weekends (her mother always suggested it carefully, obsessed with rebuilding burned bridges, healing open wounds) but instead of visiting Charlie, Robin would take the bus to other places like Montreal, like Niagra Falls, like New York City.
She’d learned how to charm people, how to look good and how to fit in and how to flirt with boys.
She’d given up hockey because she’d known that that would make Charlie angry.
She’d given up hockey and she’d taken up dance, music, girlish things that would’ve made him cringe in aggravation, and she’d been pleased with that. She’d felt the power in that. She’d started to rebuild herself and stand up a little taller.
She’d learned how to do the worm and the running man and the robot, how to sing like Madonna and Tiffany and The Bangles, and eventually she had begged her mother to let her record a demo.
She’d become an overnight pop star.
She’d searched for the approval of strangers.
To this day, she’s not really sure how she survived it.
**
The north wind doth blow
And we shall have snow.
And what will the robin do then?
**
Eventually she was sixteen and travelling to malls around Canada, singing her one semi-hit and bingeing on Icees and Wetzels Pretzels, blindly ignoring the way she instinctively flinched whenever anybody got too close. Bowing at the end of a set. Accepting applause and smiling and waving.
She’d been having a fine time.
She’d been fine.
It had been okay and she’d learned not to worry. She’d learned control.
Her mother sometimes brought Katie to the malls - if Robin’s tour was close enough to home - and Robin had always liked that, liked the way her little sister beamed up at her and clapped her five year old hands and waved when Robin so much as glanced in their direction. Her mother and Rick and Katie sometimes came to see her sing and Robin liked the way it was like she’d always had this family, these people who liked her, smiled at her, felt proud when she accomplished something. Robin liked it.
Charlie had been wrong about plenty of things he’d told her and Charlie would hate this music and these clothes, and Robin liked that, too.
Something inside of her was trying to rebuild itself. Trying to stand up tall.
One Saturday she’d been mid-performance - mid running man and mid giggle - and she’d been searching for Katie and her mom because they had told her they would be there. She’d scanned the crowd, but she hadn’t noticed them yet.
She’d been searching for Katie, she’d been mid-dance break, scanning the crowd, and then instead of Katie or Mom or Rick there was Charlie standing in the back, arms crossed, frown set hard upon his weathered face.
And the part of her that had been trying to rebuild itself came crashing to the ground.
Just like that.
Quick and painful and horribly easy.
She remembered not being able to breathe.
Charlie Scherbatsky had been standing in the back of the crowd, and their eyes locked, and he shook his head at her, disapproving, displeased.
And she’d fainted on stage that day.
The performance had become legendary, tabloids reporting that she was pregnant, record sales doubling, Let’s Go to the Mall rocketing up to number one on the charts for a full two weeks. It was a short-lived, scandal-coated fluke, fifteen minutes of fame, and her second release (Sandcastles in the Sand) had been a flop. But by then Robin hadn’t really cared.
The point of Robin Sparkles, she guesses now, had been to be somebody new.
She’d been trying to replace the person she’d been with somebody else. She’d been reinventing herself the way that desperate teenagers tended to do, but Charlie had found her out, revealed her, pulled that frightened version of her to the surface, and so then for Robin Scherbatsky it was time to move on, to do something else, to find another way to escape this, to distract herself, to rebuild the things he’d broken.
She’d been seventeen and she had started sleeping around.
She’d searched for the approval of strangers.
She’d decided, eventually, to go to college and try to become a news reporter because she’d heard they had to travel to places like Israel and South Africa and she’d figured she could drown in that, she could learn new things, she could meet new people, she could forget.
She’d figured if she was always somewhere else, maybe Charlie Scherbatsky would stop following her.
**
What will the robin do then, poor thing?
She will sit in a barn
And, to keep herself warm,
Will hide her head under her wing…
**
She’s going to get over this.
She’s going to shake this off.
It’s just hard with these fears of hers.
It’s hard with these fears and memories of hers that she’s pushed to the side and forgotten for so long - ignoring them deliberately until now when they’re staring her in the face.
It’s hard when life holds a mirror up without any warning.
It’s hard when she has these bruises on her skin, when she’s so used to burying it, when she’d really rather turn around and run the way she’d done when she was thirteen, the way she’s always done.
It’s hard when this situation has reached down into the soul of her and pulled out her honesty without her permission, marking her, dirtying her surface just because it can.
She’s learned to keep things light and easy and only skin deep, to shake things off, to smile and keep moving. She’s learned to look in the mirror and see an older, better, newer version of herself, to see the clean skin of her that covers up the ten year old bruises hiding underneath. She’s learned to keep her composure, to keep control over every situation. She’s learned survival, but now…
Now she’s just…
She pushes up her sleeves and stares down at the bruises there.
She stares down hard at her forearms, searching for something, looking for some kind of answer in the arcs of black and blue.
She thinks there must be some way to balance something here, to find an equal footing between these hidden parts of her and these parts she shows to the world. She thinks there must be some way to be all of her, all at once, to feel things and to stand still and to live in this skin.
She came close earlier with Barney.
She’s always close with Barney.
Control, though, is a hard thing to maintain in a life like hers once she lets it go. Control is evasive and impossible and practically imaginary and she hates the idea of losing it. Or of losing the idea of it.
She doesn’t want the stronger parts of her to disappear into this other thing. She doesn’t want to give in and give up and become that little girl who she’s not anymore.
She pushes her sleeves down, determined, and she swallows a mouthful of bitter tasting coffee.
She clenches her jaw.
She ignores the bruises like she ignores the tears that are maybe still lingering at the back of her throat and she gestures to the waiter for a refill. As he pours she smiles. She watches that look, that hazy, lust-filled look slide onto his face that she’s seen cover so many other men’s expressions - charmed, smitten, flirty and casual and interested, and Robin offers him a subtle sort of wink.
She pours cream into her coffee.
She’s Robin Scherbatsky, she thinks.
She’s ok.
She can do this.
She can shake this off.
**
The north wind doth blow
And we shall have snow
And what will the robin do then, poor thing?
She will sit in a barn
And to keep herself warm
She will hide her head under her wing, poor thing.
(To chapter 10)
Author: Stablergirl
Rating: MA
Pairing: Barney/Robin
Disclaimers: Don't own em.
Author's Notes: A little introspection for Robin. Working on chapter ten right now, so hopefully I'll have an update soon. Thanks to roland for the beta work!
::WARNING:: This story contains violence and abuse. Please use your discretion.
Chapter Nine: Denial and Introspection
She goes to a twenty four hour diner and orders a greasy cup of coffee, pouring cream in, watching it swirl through the thick blackness like mist through some tormented ocean.
She’s going to shake this off.
This is some kind of revertigo and she’s going to shake it from her shoulders like rain from an umbrella.
She’s going to remember charm and confidence and how she can fight back if she wants to. How if she wants to she can stand up and make a solid case for every choice she’s ever made. How she has nothing to be afraid of because she’s survived this far, somehow. Somehow she’s made it here on her own and she’s become this woman, this heart-breaking high-heel-wearing news anchor in the big apple, kicking ass. Taking names.
Charles Scherbatsky hasn’t succeeded in holding her back yet.
He’s not going to start now.
Robin just has to remember.
She has to shake this off.
She takes a sip of the coffee and swallows, letting the bitter taste of it remind her of the sour fierceness in her bones, of the survivor hiding somewhere inside of her lungs.
People like her. She’s drop dead gorgeous. Men propose to her after like an hour of conversation. She can knock a woman out after just five minutes in a ring. She’s a former pop sensation. Even Barney Stinson ignores bimbos to worship the ground that she walks on.
This last, particularly, makes her feel a little more grounded as she takes another sip of her coffee.
It tastes terrible and she’s glad.
She doesn’t flinch.
**
The north wind doth blow
And we shall have snow…
**
It’s easy, she thinks to herself, to hide away in New York City. There’s an understanding in the paved roads and dirt-covered sidewalks, residual fear from the days when even well lit boulevards were the backdrop for crime and punishment. There’s no eye contact and no questioning and no venturing into personal space.
It’s easy to hide away, to think, to escape.
Things are fast and frantic. Robin is one in a sea of thousands and it’s easy to ride the wave of it, to duck into a cab and disappear from the scene.
It’s easy.
**
The north wind doth blow
And we shall have snow.
And what will the robin do then?
**
In Canada, at home with him, it had been harder to hide. Harder to pick herself up and harder to shake off the fear of him.
It had taken her years to find a way, to figure out confidence and charm, to realize that the only person she could rely on to save her from this was herself.
She’d retaliated in a terribly brave kind of way when she was fourteen and filled with hating him, fourteen and finished with taking hits, fourteen and tired of being constantly afraid.
She’d been brave when she was fourteen - she’d kissed a boy and her eyes had opened up, she’d started to realize the other kind of person who was buried somewhere inside of her. Grossly stereotypical, she knows, to have such realizations because of a simple brush of lips, but it was how it had happened…or at least how it had started. She’d kissed a boy and her father had caught them, and so she’d taken the usual punishment but she’d also realized that maybe, in some small way, she had some kind of power hidden away somewhere.
She’d realized she could win some people over.
She’d started to wonder if she could maybe escape things.
She’d thought of the movies she’d seen on cable TV.
At fourteen Robin had been brave. Robin had been bold, and she had come up with a plan because she’d learned that sometimes you could run from things. She’d figured out that bus tickets only cost twenty eight dollars, and she had fifty dollars in the shoebox in her closet.
She’d been saving up, she guessed, for something exactly like this.
Robin had gathered up all the courage she owned and she had called her mother from the school office on the last day before summer vacation. She’d asked her mother if it would be ok…if she could maybe come stay there for a while. She had charmed her mother, offered a smile she didn’t feel, and her voice had only shaken for a second. She’d asked if it would be ok.
She’d packed her bags.
She hadn’t left a note behind.
She’d started to escape things, to rebuild things, to start again.
She’d gotten on a bus and she had been very grown up, then, Robin thinks now. She’d been very calm and very brave and she had escaped him.
She’d arrived at her mother’s house, explained she’d like to stay, said very little, really, but had still somehow, she guessed, gotten her point across.
She thinks now that maybe it was that her mother had finally understood. She thinks that maybe her mother had figured it out. She thinks that maybe her mother had been wracked, then, with guilt.
Her mother had let her stay.
And of course a few days later her father had shown up, predictably angry and intimidating and intending to retrieve her, but it was her mother’s new husband Rick who had answered the door and he was a burly sort of man from the deep north whose towering build and hard-set frown discouraged Charlie from actually setting foot into the house, leaving him awkward and impatient on the front porch.
Rick had glanced over his shoulder at Robin, who’d been frozen and fearful on the stairs, and he had asked if she’d wanted to go back with Charlie.
He had asked her as if she was a grown up, as if she made decisions and as if she could choose things for herself. He had asked her, given her a choice, waited expectantly for a decision, but Robin couldn’t speak because fear had grabbed hard at her throat with the sight of Charlie in the doorway and the air had left her lungs.
Robin couldn’t speak. But she still had this power Rick had given her, she still had some hint of her bravery.
Rick had asked if she’d wanted to go back with Charlie, and Robin had managed somehow to give her head a firm shake - no.
That had been all Rick had needed. The door had slammed in Charles Scherbatsky’s face.
To this day she sends Rick a card on father’s day, just because she thinks he deserves it.
Once Robin had adjusted and started at her new school, once she’d warmed up to her two year old sister, once she’d gotten comfortable with eating at fast food restaurants and riding around in Rick’s oversized pickup truck, she’d figured maybe she was going to be ok.
Once she’d figured out how to push memories and impulses and fears and soulful things down deep into some shadowed corner in the back of her mind she’d figured maybe she could smile and keep going.
She’d figured she could pretend it had never happened and she could be normal and she could move on.
She would “go visit dad” on weekends (her mother always suggested it carefully, obsessed with rebuilding burned bridges, healing open wounds) but instead of visiting Charlie, Robin would take the bus to other places like Montreal, like Niagra Falls, like New York City.
She’d learned how to charm people, how to look good and how to fit in and how to flirt with boys.
She’d given up hockey because she’d known that that would make Charlie angry.
She’d given up hockey and she’d taken up dance, music, girlish things that would’ve made him cringe in aggravation, and she’d been pleased with that. She’d felt the power in that. She’d started to rebuild herself and stand up a little taller.
She’d learned how to do the worm and the running man and the robot, how to sing like Madonna and Tiffany and The Bangles, and eventually she had begged her mother to let her record a demo.
She’d become an overnight pop star.
She’d searched for the approval of strangers.
To this day, she’s not really sure how she survived it.
**
The north wind doth blow
And we shall have snow.
And what will the robin do then?
**
Eventually she was sixteen and travelling to malls around Canada, singing her one semi-hit and bingeing on Icees and Wetzels Pretzels, blindly ignoring the way she instinctively flinched whenever anybody got too close. Bowing at the end of a set. Accepting applause and smiling and waving.
She’d been having a fine time.
She’d been fine.
It had been okay and she’d learned not to worry. She’d learned control.
Her mother sometimes brought Katie to the malls - if Robin’s tour was close enough to home - and Robin had always liked that, liked the way her little sister beamed up at her and clapped her five year old hands and waved when Robin so much as glanced in their direction. Her mother and Rick and Katie sometimes came to see her sing and Robin liked the way it was like she’d always had this family, these people who liked her, smiled at her, felt proud when she accomplished something. Robin liked it.
Charlie had been wrong about plenty of things he’d told her and Charlie would hate this music and these clothes, and Robin liked that, too.
Something inside of her was trying to rebuild itself. Trying to stand up tall.
One Saturday she’d been mid-performance - mid running man and mid giggle - and she’d been searching for Katie and her mom because they had told her they would be there. She’d scanned the crowd, but she hadn’t noticed them yet.
She’d been searching for Katie, she’d been mid-dance break, scanning the crowd, and then instead of Katie or Mom or Rick there was Charlie standing in the back, arms crossed, frown set hard upon his weathered face.
And the part of her that had been trying to rebuild itself came crashing to the ground.
Just like that.
Quick and painful and horribly easy.
She remembered not being able to breathe.
Charlie Scherbatsky had been standing in the back of the crowd, and their eyes locked, and he shook his head at her, disapproving, displeased.
And she’d fainted on stage that day.
The performance had become legendary, tabloids reporting that she was pregnant, record sales doubling, Let’s Go to the Mall rocketing up to number one on the charts for a full two weeks. It was a short-lived, scandal-coated fluke, fifteen minutes of fame, and her second release (Sandcastles in the Sand) had been a flop. But by then Robin hadn’t really cared.
The point of Robin Sparkles, she guesses now, had been to be somebody new.
She’d been trying to replace the person she’d been with somebody else. She’d been reinventing herself the way that desperate teenagers tended to do, but Charlie had found her out, revealed her, pulled that frightened version of her to the surface, and so then for Robin Scherbatsky it was time to move on, to do something else, to find another way to escape this, to distract herself, to rebuild the things he’d broken.
She’d been seventeen and she had started sleeping around.
She’d searched for the approval of strangers.
She’d decided, eventually, to go to college and try to become a news reporter because she’d heard they had to travel to places like Israel and South Africa and she’d figured she could drown in that, she could learn new things, she could meet new people, she could forget.
She’d figured if she was always somewhere else, maybe Charlie Scherbatsky would stop following her.
**
What will the robin do then, poor thing?
She will sit in a barn
And, to keep herself warm,
Will hide her head under her wing…
**
She’s going to get over this.
She’s going to shake this off.
It’s just hard with these fears of hers.
It’s hard with these fears and memories of hers that she’s pushed to the side and forgotten for so long - ignoring them deliberately until now when they’re staring her in the face.
It’s hard when life holds a mirror up without any warning.
It’s hard when she has these bruises on her skin, when she’s so used to burying it, when she’d really rather turn around and run the way she’d done when she was thirteen, the way she’s always done.
It’s hard when this situation has reached down into the soul of her and pulled out her honesty without her permission, marking her, dirtying her surface just because it can.
She’s learned to keep things light and easy and only skin deep, to shake things off, to smile and keep moving. She’s learned to look in the mirror and see an older, better, newer version of herself, to see the clean skin of her that covers up the ten year old bruises hiding underneath. She’s learned to keep her composure, to keep control over every situation. She’s learned survival, but now…
Now she’s just…
She pushes up her sleeves and stares down at the bruises there.
She stares down hard at her forearms, searching for something, looking for some kind of answer in the arcs of black and blue.
She thinks there must be some way to balance something here, to find an equal footing between these hidden parts of her and these parts she shows to the world. She thinks there must be some way to be all of her, all at once, to feel things and to stand still and to live in this skin.
She came close earlier with Barney.
She’s always close with Barney.
Control, though, is a hard thing to maintain in a life like hers once she lets it go. Control is evasive and impossible and practically imaginary and she hates the idea of losing it. Or of losing the idea of it.
She doesn’t want the stronger parts of her to disappear into this other thing. She doesn’t want to give in and give up and become that little girl who she’s not anymore.
She pushes her sleeves down, determined, and she swallows a mouthful of bitter tasting coffee.
She clenches her jaw.
She ignores the bruises like she ignores the tears that are maybe still lingering at the back of her throat and she gestures to the waiter for a refill. As he pours she smiles. She watches that look, that hazy, lust-filled look slide onto his face that she’s seen cover so many other men’s expressions - charmed, smitten, flirty and casual and interested, and Robin offers him a subtle sort of wink.
She pours cream into her coffee.
She’s Robin Scherbatsky, she thinks.
She’s ok.
She can do this.
She can shake this off.
**
The north wind doth blow
And we shall have snow
And what will the robin do then, poor thing?
She will sit in a barn
And to keep herself warm
She will hide her head under her wing, poor thing.
(To chapter 10)