Author's note: What follows is a strange future-tense version of how Barney finds out Robin can't have children. Very minimal and not-completely-in-character dialogue, but I'm doing National Novel Writing Month and running out of steam on original fiction towards the end, so it is what it is.
A silent night in central park
There will be a day, very nearly a year after, where she will go back to that park bench.
The ground will be covered in a thin layer of snow and festive music will play from inside stores and commuters will walk their familiar paths with pink ears and noses.
Lily will be the first to notice her missing from a pre-Christmas gathering. Ted will remember the lights show from the year before and the way she cried in his arms without explaining why. Marshall will be the one, after an hour of her absence and lots of speculation, to connect the news she gave them in February to the metaphor of pole vaulting. Barney, off course, will have questions, never having heard the whole story of Robin and Kevin's break up. The three present will launch into its explanation but he will hardly listen: thinking, instead, of the mistaken pregnancy, the way she cried at the maple leaf onesie, the comments she had let fall at his feet like little sacrifices. He will grasp at his forehead and hair with open hands and say, "She never told me." He will look at the ground so they do not notice his eyes, but he will be unable to determine if he is reacting for Robin and how alone she must have been with it, or for her never having told him. He will be both distraught and angry.
Lily will pass Marvin to Marshall and put a hand on Barney's back and remind him he was getting over Nora at the time. He will remind himself that he was trying to avoid Robin a year ago.
Marshall will meet Lily and Ted's eyes over his head and though they don't know everything, they will know something and it will pass between the three of them as a current through a live wire. Though Barney will not see it, he will know. It will feel the way it felt when he met his dad for the first time, the sense that his friends know more than they let on, that no matter what, they are on his side.
After a few minutes, he will shake off Lily's arm and stand up.
"I'm going to find her," he will tell them.
None of them will ask how or bring up the reality that New York City is immense, that finding one person in the lights of Manhattan at Christmas is impossible. But Barney will know in a way deeper than he knows himself that Robin has gone to the only place where it is quiet, where she will be alone, where no one will find her, somewhere cold and dark and lonely.
When he stands to leave, Lily will follow him out the door and close it behind her softly.
"Something happened between you two last year," she will say, quietly, so quietly that if Marshall and Ted had pressed their ears against the door, they wouldn't be able to decipher her words above the sound of the heater kicking on in the depths of the building.
Barney will nod and the simple motion will tell Lily everything. "We thought she was…" he will say, and his voice will crack. He will stop without finishing.
Lily will wrap her arms around him and smell of baby powder and jasmine. He will think, this next time, it will be another boy. Though she will not have said anything, her breasts will have begun to swell, only slightly, enough that he will have noticed, but no one else.
"I can't believe she didn't tell me."
Lily will rub the hair at the back of his neck and say something poignant, something that proves she really is Robin's best friend. Her words will give him hope that he still matters in Robin's life, that the reason she didn't tell him was because his response was the one that would matter the most to her. Barney will nod. He will thank Lily and go out into the cold.
On his walk to Central Park, he will see a man selling bouquets of snow-covered roses, and he will stop and pay too much for just one of them. Snow will crunch under his feet and his toes in their leather shoes will become numb. He will find her between naked trees on a snow-covered bench. She will be drinking egg nog and staring off into a snow bank. She will not notice him until he sits down beside her and holds the rose out to her. There will be dried and frozen tear-lines on her cheeks, but she will accept the flower and grasp it tightly between gloved fingertips.
"I'm so sorry," she will say after a while.
Snow will melt into the thin material of his suit pants and his skin will lose feeling like something dead.
"I should have told you."
"Yeah, you should have," he will say with sudden anger, perhaps with more than he really will feel, just to make sure she gets it: this, like the night of the cruise, like seeing her with Kevin, with Nick, without him, hurts. And it isn't a quick hurt like a fist to the face but a slow hurt like freezing, like suffocation, like longing.
She will look away, eyes glazed as if with the kind of frost that hardens on the outside of windows. He will put an arm around her shoulder to let her know that even for this, he will forgive her. He will always forgive her.
She will let her head droop to his chest.
He will be thinking of Christmas, of all things. But not the last-minute shoppers or the holiday wreaths or the poinsettias or the presents he has wrapped back at Lily and Marshall's, but of something more complicated: of love, and also of sacrifice, and how at times, especially like these, they seem to go hand in hand, weaved together in an impossible-to-separate web. Love, he will think, is sadder than most people think. It comes with a lot of terrible things, things that can wrench you apart from the inside and make everything hurt. Because the people you love don't always love you back in the right way. They don't always know how to or have the capacity to. They are broken. They are mangled. They don't always want to be saved from it. They want to wallow in their own mistakes and failings. They don't want to be forgiven.
"It's okay," he will tell her because the words "I forgive you" will sound too formal. He will hope she understands that it doesn't scare him like it used to. Loving her. Loving. He will say it then, because it's Christmas, because he is cold and she feels warm against him, because they have wasted years they could have been together. He will say it again, before she has time to answer, say it or not say it, so she understands he means it. "There is nothing you could do that would make it not true," he will say and mean it.
Though she will be crying again, she will kiss him and it will be unlike any of their other kisses. They will end it with foreheads pressed together, sighing. On his cheeks will be a cold trail of wet that will freeze when they separate to look at each other.
"Okay," she will say. "Okay," she will repeat it. She will take in a big rattling breath. Then she will apologize again, she will take all the blame, she will assure herself that she doesn't deserve him.
"Stop," he will say. "Just stop it."
At this point, it will begin to snow. Or maybe it will have been snowing all along, but this will be the silence where they realize it.
"Can we just start from where we are now?" he will ask. "Because we keep letting all the things we did wrong stop us from doing anything right."
She will want to say something to lighten the mood. He will see it forming on her lips and stare at her until she thinks better of it.
"Yeah," she will agree.
"Good."
"Could we stay here for a while?" she will ask in the pause that follows. She won't be able to meet his eyes as she says it because she will be thinking of the previous year and that sitting here in the cold is her way of penitence, of mourning the loss of something she will never have and didn't know she wanted.
Though his legs and toes will be numb, he will tell her, "Of course." He will touch the strands of hair that slide out into her eyes.
After a few moments, she will ask him how he feels about it. His response will be that it doesn't change how he feels about her. She will allow a small smile to cross her face momentarily. It will then fog over with doubt and disappear.
"But, you said, didn't you want—"
"I am going to be Legendary Uncle Barney to Marvin and whoever the Tedlings turn out to be." Then he says in a much quieter voice that if she lets him, next year, he will bring the egg nog.
She will nod and stare off into the trees again. He will follow her eyes and they will both sit there thinking of the sort of future they will never have, how even the idea of it is coupled with a hollow sort of loss that slinks across their shoulders and settles there. Neither of them will say anything about the things that are and aren't meant to be, or express anger that the choice was never theirs to make at all.
After a while, she will remove her gloves and squeeze his cold fingers between her own.
Then they will both stand and follow Barney's path back to Marshall and Lily's, where they will spend the night sitting near the oven for warmth, bumping knees accidentally, holding hands when their friends aren't looking, letting love, with its equal parts of sadness and happiness, mend them.