It freaks her out.

She shoots guns. She's hunted. But when she looks at him, when she kisses him, it freaks her out more than it should. This is Barney, for fuck's sake. But it's just - sometimes she catches him with this vulnerability that shocks the hell out of her. It's not that she didn't think Barney was capable of human emotion, but - it's those times that remind her that he's flawed. Just as broken as she is.

(Scary Point No. 1: They could fix each other.)

But the what-ifs freak her out even more. What if they did fix each other? What if they tried and it didn't work? And then she would lose him. Forever. The one person who was truly able to understand her, down to her every last bad habit and weird fear and childish thought. Losing him would devastate her (she doesn't know what she would do - the person who helped her pick up the pieces would be the one to break her in the first place).

(Scary Point No. 2: He could drop out of her life if anything went bad.)

She chain-smokes in the tub sometimes (Ted hates it but she props the bathroom window open and lets herself go), just thinking about the possibilities. The water goes cold too quickly and she is still damp with confusion, indecisiveness. When he looks at her sometimes with one of those sideways glances that she reads too much (read: too little) into, she feels open, feels like maybe she could - they could - and then it is all gone down the drain, spiraling and tumbling down a massive system of pipes, cold and coppery, that remind her of his flaws, her flaws, of why this could never ever work in a universe quite so uniquely fucked up.

(Scary Point No. 3: They would either be tremendously happy or fuck each other up worse.)

The options scare her. But if she's honest with herself (and she's never honest with herself, learned to block that part of her brain off after Metro News 1 started making her do those godawful puns), what he says, does, how he looks at her, for Christ's sake, makes her body tingle. God, just the way he smiles - she has to hold herself back from pulling him by his tie and yanking him towards her bedroom.

So when she finds herself in the apartment facing a year's supply of milk and enough stamps to write letters every day to the entire armed forces for thirty years, she knows. And it makes her heart beat a little bit faster. But when she looks up into his face, it's there again, the gripping fear, the panic, beyond the pounding heart and the promise of "I love you" and "We could make this work." Because she already went through this, already tried to date a guy who just showed up and told her he loved her. And that didn't work well (the first or second time) and she's not sure if it would work here.

"Tacos?"

"Yeah."

"There's this great place over in the West Village that I love. Come on."

"Well," he says, forcing a smile, "I love tacos."

They throw the word around hard and fast, and she feels like she's in grade six all over again, dodging big red connotations and chucking them out just as fast. But it's not a game they're playing here - she knows that but she still can't stop engaging, can't stop, can't can't can't.

And when they're walking down University, she does something stupid (it was bound to happen). "You have a cigarette?"

He fishes in his jacket pocket, takes one, hands the pack to her. She lights it, takes a long drag and exhales (the baggage, she hopes - the weight) the smoke. "God," she whispers. "I love you."

His smile is tight and her heart makes her head hurt but it's all for the best (really, it is, she thinks, or maybe it's just the smoke clouding her judgment - no, no, she did the right thing).

They flick their cigarettes into the street when they get there. He holds the door open for her.

The embers burn out in the street.