Robin Scherbatsky (robinsparkled) wrote in witchinghour, @ 2014-06-22 19:54:00 |
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Entry tags: | character: robin scherbatsky, character: ted mosby |
Who: Robin Scherbatsky and Ted Mosby
Where: Robin's room at the Sleepy Hollow
When: Backdated slightly to June 18
What: Robin almost spills the beans about why they break up in Barney, Lily, and Tracy's timeline but decides to not. Yet.
Status: Complete!
Warnings: None, except for classic Schmosby saccharine sweetness
Somehow, Robin and Ted had managed to keep their secret relationship just that -- a secret. It was unlike her to not be forthcoming about whether she was seeing someone, but it was obvious from Barney and Lily’s memories that a relationship between her and Ted would ultimately not end well. Barney had even told her why they’d broken up: because their differing life goals got in the way.
If this had happened in New York, with any other guy Robin would have taken it as an excuse to call it off. But this was Marrowood, and it was Ted, and even though she loved Barney and Lily, she didn’t know them as well as she knew Ted. And if Robin was being entirely honest with herself, a part of her wanted to prove that despite everything in the future, she and Ted could make it work.
“I can’t believe this place is starting to feel almost like home.” Robin pushed herself up onto one elbow and looked down at Ted on her bedsheets. “I’ve been here for a month. Almost two.”
Ted was in a committed relationship with Robin in NYC and now he was dating Robin in Marrowood, but it wasn't the same Robin. Was it possible to cheat on someone with a different version of themself? And what about this revelation that not only had Barney and Robin slept together, not only had they dated, but they were getting married? That was years in their future, but did knowing about it give him the responsibility of not doing anything to change it, no matter how much he might want to? With their actions in Marrowood, were they unwriting the future or rewriting the past?
God, but that was a lot of questions, and Ted did his best not to think about any of them now, as he looked at Robin. He loved her. Didn't that count for anything? Reaching up, Ted brushed his fingers through her hair.
"I don't know if I would call it home yet." Home didn't usually kill and then resurrect you, for one. "But after three weeks -- and now that I have a job -- I guess I'm kind of settling in."
Robin smiled and reached up to take his hand in hers, marveling at how entirely comfortable and domestic it all was. How that was even possible, to feel so comfortable in a place like Marrowood, was beyond her. But it felt like time was standing still for a little while, something she sorely needed after all that’d happened to her there.
“How is slinging coffee going for you, anyway?” She settled back down next to him and let go of his hand so she could trace patterns on his chest. One good thing about dying and being reborn was that she’d woken up in better shape than when she’d died. No scar or healing wound remained from the blackout, even. Robin silently gave herself a pat on the back for her ability to stay positive.
See, this? This felt right. Lying with Robin, talking about work, no life or death situations hanging over them. If Ted closed his eyes, he could sort of pretend the eerie howling of the wind was a police siren and it was almost like being back in New York.
"Oh, no, it's great," Ted replied, falsely cheerful. With his hand free, he resumed playing with Robin's hair while he talked. "There's a paycheck, for one thing, and most of the customers are human, which I appreciate. And during a lull yesterday I built a tower out of paper to-go cups, so I'm still keeping those architecture skills sharp." He smiled, so Robin wouldn't think his words anything more than a jest. No, it wasn't what he wanted to be doing, but it wasn't really that bad.
"What about you? How's the general store?" Automatically, Ted raised his hand to his brow in a salute and repeated, "General Store."
Robin stared at him for a moment, trying to figure out why the fuck he’d just saluted, before she realized what exactly he’d done and burst into uncontrollable laughter. “General store!” she echoed, mimicking him and saluting the invisible General Store. It was important to pay her respects, after all. “Where did that come from? Did you just think of that now? Because it is seriously brilliant.”
It took her a while to get over the concept, because General Store, but she had to calm down eventually. “Has Barney been avoiding the shop? He probably just doesn’t want to get Swarley’d. God, I hope that still happens when I get back.”
And what would she do once she did? Robin didn’t want to think about the complications her returning to New York could bring, because what if she changed something that had happened for Barney and Lily and they ceased to exist? She hoped the sudden soberness in her demeanor didn’t seem too obvious to Ted.
Ted was stricken by Robin's reaction to their ancient private joke. He'd completely forgotten that, of course, she wouldn't be familiar with it. The stupid saluting thing was just second nature now!
So the question was, did he tell her the truth or pretend he'd just made up the joke? Ted didn't like to lie to Robin (again -- but let's not get into that), but the timeline! If he told Robin about the private joke now, would she laugh at it later, in her future and his past? Or would the butterfly effect kick in and change the future?
But, god, it was all moot, wasn't it? He'd already made the joke and already mucked up the evolution of it.
"It's a private joke -- something we do a lot actually," he admitted, releasing a breath he didn't realize he'd been holding. "I'm sorry, Robin. I fucked up and told you something from your future. Yeah, it's a small thing, but I'll try to be more careful."
The rest of her reply, the part about Swarley as well as the troubled silence that followed, Ted completely missed in his concern about General Store.
Robin hadn’t realized that Ted was so concerned about not ruining the future for her. It was sort of something that was inevitable in her opinion; she already knew so much just by hanging around the rest of the group (and that bitch, Tracy), what was the point in pretending she didn’t?
“It’s okay, Ted,” she said, trying to calm him down. He seemed tense just now, just as she had for a moment, and she reached out to smooth his forehead. “I think in the long run, it’s going to be okay. I mean, the me that you know doesn’t know about Marrowood. Maybe it’s a different version of me, and then Barney knows different versions of us and so on and so forth.”
That didn’t exactly make it sound any better, but at least this way Robin thought they could both stop worrying about messing up the future. And this way there was still hope, that they would be able to avoid the mistakes they’d made in those versions of themselves.
Ted wasn't sure that the idea that he was here with an alternate Robin, a different one than he knew at home, was really that much more comforting. All the same, he recognized and appreciated what she was trying to do with that explanation. Catching her hand, he pulled it down to his mouth, kissing her fingers to show his gratitude.
"Well, you don't have a goatee, so if you're a different version of Robin, at least I know you're not an evil one." As long as Ted could make nerdy Star Trek jokes, he was okay. Right?
"I know you're right, though. I can't obsess over every little glimpse of the future slipping through. It's going to happen whether we want it to or not." God, even the big things weren't off limits. Just when he'd made it clear to everyone that he didn't want to know any more about Stella, or being left at the altar, or any other enormous events that still lay ahead of him -- Tracy showed up with the biggest bombshell of all.
Groaning, Ted rolled onto his side, tugging Robin closer. "Let's not think about this anymore. What do you say?"
“Maybe for all you know, I just shave it pretty regularly. It could be a trick.” Robin didn’t really understand the Star Trek jokes, but she appreciated his attempt to lighten the mood.
She was also glad that he’d come to see sense. There wasn’t anything they could do about her not finding out bits and pieces from the future, given how behind she was compared to everyone else. But similarly, the big things were weighing on her mind too. She still couldn’t wrap her mind around the fact that out of all the people to marry, she’d chosen Barney instead of Ted. Barney wasn’t the marrying type, they’d both agreed on that, but Robin knew Ted was. Maybe their breakup had been more serious than Barney had made it sound.
“I can promise to try,” she said honestly, moving a hand onto his neck. “Maybe I need a distraction.”
Rubbing the pad of his thumb along Robin’s cheek, Ted said, “Naaaah. No stubble. That I would notice. And since I don’t have a goatee either, I think we can rest easy on the evil doppelganger front for now.”
If anything was going to make Ted forget -- at least temporarily -- about all the things that troubled him about Marrowood, it was being with Robin. He’d felt magnetized, pulled toward her, from the moment that he saw her at McLarens, and it was no different now, over a year later. Well, over a year for him, anyway, but that was one of the things he wasn’t thinking about right now. If it was dumb to be with her here, he didn’t care. It felt right. The only thing that felt right.
“I’ve been told that I can be very distracting.” With a slight smirk, Ted closed the gap between them, pressing his lips against Robin’s. His hand slid into her hair as he pulled her even closer and, finally, everything else but her faded away.
Robin nodded, smiling against his lips as they kissed. Yes, this was much better than thinking about the future. She could do this, she’d distracted herself from other things often enough once before. She pulled him in closer, her eyes closing, and tried to lose herself in the feeling of kissing Ted.
Except for some reason, it wasn’t working. Robin instead found herself thinking about why they weren’t together in the future, and how much longer it would be in Ted’s future before they broke up. Had he already seen signs of their impending split? She had to know.
“Ted,” she said, pulling away and taking a deep breath. “In your timeline… We’re happy, right?”
One moment they were kissing and the next Robin was asking him something. It took Ted a moment to resurface, for the words that had come out of her mouth to arrange themselves into a sensible order in his head. “What? Of course we are.”
Ted pulled back a little further, a slight frown on his features as he surveyed Robin’s face. “I mean, no relationship is perfect. We bicker sometimes, but our biggest fight so far was about whether Field of Dreams is the most boring movie in existence or not. Which, for the record, I still believe you would change your mind about if we sat down together to watch the whole thing.”
Of course, the real crux of that argument had been the fact that Robin was tired of hearing him bitch about work and his feelings were hurt and -- well, it had been a mess. But a mess they’d successfully cleared, and he didn’t want to bring up the gory details. That wasn’t the important part.
Ted brushed a lock of hair out of Robin’s face, letting his hand come to rest against her cheek. Maybe he hadn’t been such a good distraction after all, or maybe this was just something that they were each going to wrestle with over and over while they were in this godforsaken place. “Robin -- we’re gonna fight. And we’re gonna be miserable about it and say things we don’t mean and the whole nine yards. But I really believe, regardless of all that, that we’re always going to come back to each other and make things work.”
Her eyes scanned his face, wanting to take his words at face value and accept that it was a natural component about being in a relationship. Robin didn’t have much experience with relationships, though, and she wanted to make things work with Ted but it was terrifying, trying to sort out how to do so when she knew it had an expiration date. Or could have an expiration date.
“But what if we don’t?” she couldn’t help but ask. Taking a deep breath, she just shook her head and bit her lip, wondering if she needed to just tell him what she had found out from Barney. Ted was being so sweet, but she couldn’t allow herself to just focus on the comfort that his closeness did genuinely bring her.
She thought that maybe it would be better to just hint about it, instead of being direct about her source. “Even in my timeline, we’ve already talked over and over again about how we want different things. Are we really going to make it work if we can’t agree about something like that? They’re sort of…. fundamental differences.”
Groaning, Ted rolled onto his back, rubbing at his forehead. Hadn’t they just said they were going to try not to worry about the future? “You really want to talk about this now?” he asked, giving her a sad-eyed look. “Can’t we just rewind to the kissing part?”
But Ted knew Robin well enough to know when she wasn’t going to let something drop. In her own way, Robin was spooked about what they’d learned about the future. What he didn’t know was if she was looking for reassurance, or if she was aiming for something else entirely.
Even though he’d only just rolled over, Ted shifted back to his side, reaching out to cup Robin’s cheek. “Look, I don’t know why we break up, and I don’t want to know why we break up. All I know is that we’re trying. And it’s worth it. And I love you. And even knowing that the possibility -- hell, the probability -- that we’ll break up lies in our future, it doesn’t make me want to give up on us. It just makes me want to believe even more, in defiance of what everyone’s saying.”
It was entirely possible that Robin, neither this Robin nor the one at home, would feel the same way, but Ted … well, he didn’t really know any other way to be.
There it was again, the L word. Ted had a knack for saying that, even on his first date with a girl. Robin had been totally freaked about it then, and it was still pretty weird to hear it directed to her, especially since she’d only been dating Ted for a few days here, but she knew that Ted was coming from a place where they had more time together. Maybe she was even saying it back to him there.
She didn’t here though, she didn’t think her feelings were quite there or would ever be there; Robin had never said that to anyone. Was she even capable of feeling that or saying that? Maybe Lily would know, since she was from so far on in the future.
For now, Robin was content to just nod, wanting to believe that all of the sweet stuff Ted was saying was true and that everything would work out in the meantime. She knew why they broke up, but maybe Ted was right. Maybe they could fight the odds. Robin was never the kind of person to give up, anyway. “All right,” she said, smiling slightly at him, and leaned in for another kiss.