He

It's too easy to let go of Robin.

Barney's surprised at how easy it is. Emotions that have dogged him for more than a year fade quickly away once they break up.

But hey, at least he got to experience them again. He's been running on the memory of emotion for ten years. Now he's got all this fresh material to plunder; the sappy stuff he got away with doing with Robin.

He knows what it's like to want to hold a girl's hand and to really mean an "I love you." He can use that.

But he doesn't feel.

*--*--*

She

She can't let go of the anger.

Robin tells her friends that she isn't ready to date again, but all she's really telling them is that she's stung. She misses being someone's whole world again. Ted gave her that adulation. That same feeling, like he was in orbit around her.

So many years after Robin Sparkles and all she wants is to be the centre of attention, to be worshipped. All she wants is to feel like a star.

Barney gave her that, for a little while. Now she's left out in the cold once more, with only faded glory.

*--*--*

If.

Ted feels nothing but relief when it's over.

For two months, he's had to pretend to support them. For two months, he's had to bite his tongue, not even letting himself try to break them up.

For two months he's had to watch Barney and Robin try to do something that terrifies him. Because if they'd made it, if they'd stayed together, then they might have disproved everything Ted holds most sacred and dear about the power of love.

When their relationship collapses, Ted can go back to daydreaming "what-ifs" about him and Robin instead.

And it doesn't feel so weird.

*--*--*

How?

Lily doesn't know how she got it so wrong.

She's been rooting for Barney all this time, through the slow build up. She's encouraged him and helped him, tried to move him on from the place he's been stagnating for ten years.

But now he's just regressed; gotten worse, even. Because the Barney Stinson she knows, that she loves, would go bring back his friend who ran away, give her a place to stay, help her get hitched and pay for her honeymoon.

This new Barney Stinson, he's not that guy.

Lily wonders how she can get her friend back.

*--*--*

And.

Marshall, more than any of them, understands love.

And he knows that love is not how you treat somebody through the good times, through the happy times.

Love is about loss and pain and heartbreak. Until you experience those thing, you haven't loved at all. He knows that this is something Barney and Robin have to go through, maybe a whole heap of times.

He knows that love is about forgiving.

And most of all he knows that Barney and Robin will be together in the end, out there awesoming, while he waits at home, keeping the porch light on.