Author's Note: This is my first HIMYM fanfic, and I'm not sure where it's going to go. I just had this idea, and hopefully someone will like it. Enjoy!

She knew everything he would do the minute before he did it. The whisper in her ear, the hand against the small of her back. How he would bring her closer and the sparks would supposedly fly (in her case).

Anima knew what she wanted out of this. This one night; nothing more. She was too broken to look for anything else, or too lost somehow... For a moment she was distracted by his nimble fingers and luxurious mouth on her neck, but then the moment passed and her thoughts took hold once again.

He was too drunk to realize exactly what made her so different, or even unique, from the innumerable women he had been with if it was possible to be found: her unusual name, her proclivity towards any number of activities or interests, her dreadful past. More simply, it was the fact that she wasn't the one women he truly wanted in his embrace, Robin Scherbatsky. However, he had also made sure he wasn't too intoxicated so he might imagine that it could be Ms. Scherbatsky, that he might feel and whisper and explore in the heightened delusion when one knows the truth but pretends differently just to keep the feelings that might swallow one up at bay.

She closed her eyes as his hands went lower; the air she was breathing was too thick for her: the smell of him, his desperation and her own weak indifference became too painful to bear, and she simply wished to go back to the time when she could ignore such emotions and not drown in them. But that time had passed when much of the goodness in life had decided to spur her for the rest of her existence...

Suddenly, the noise of the bustling MacLaren's rushed into Anima's ears along with every other sense to bring her back to her reality, and she began to take deeper breaths to calm herself and let go of what her imagination had just put her in. As a former psychologist, she was used to flowing into possible situations that way, but in the last few years it had become much more infrequent that she actually had felt shocked with her "daydream" of sorts.

There, sitting a bit away from the bar at a booth was Mr. Barney Stinson, the visitor in her imaginative journey, and all his friends, including the woman he was secretly still enamored with. He was very, very attractive, as Nora had told her extensively... not that she had listened thoroughly, but she knew all the silent meaning behind her words, and she couldn't help herself. She went to MacLaren's to watch him, to understand why Nora gave Anima furtive glances as she went on about her boyfriend and his friends... especially the single Robin. And now she knew. Nora felt that somehow Anima would relate to Robin, supposedly looking over at a man... and praying that his commitment to someone else would not ruin

However, all Anima could see was Barney's attentions, not Robin's. Barney was a friendly sort of person, but the way he looked at her and the way he made her important... Robin Scherbatsky was unlike anyone else to him, and that is what Nora saw every time she joined this group but tried to ignore.

Quietly and more calmly, Anima walked out of the bar and into the night. It would be nice to have friends like that; they actually seem like people I could actually like and trust, she noted to herself. Not that she would ever be allowed to join them...

She stopped in the middle of the busy sidewalk, her mind racing into an idea that left her feeling more buoyant than she had felt in a long time.

If only she could start talking to Barney, to prevent another wreckage of life that she knew all too well from occurring. As long as they never knew, she could make everyone very happy... and perhaps give her some of the peace she had craved for so long.