You Say It Best
Summary: When Robin tells each of her friends that she can't have children, they all have different reactions. But his alone is exactly what she needs.
Marshall and Lily are wonderfully supportive and sympathetic but that's just the problem – the sympathy. Because Marshall and Lily have always been the type to have a family, like it was ingrained somewhere in their DNA. Robin knows that even Lily, who sometimes struggles with the idea of putting her own dreams on hold for this new little life, would always feel unfulfilled and shattered if she somehow lost the ability to have children.
Robin's never been like that. She's never liked kids, even when she was one. Some people call it selfish, others call it independent, but to her, that's just the way she is. She never wanted kids, not with Ted and certainly not with Don and not with Kevin. She doesn't need the sympathy of people who will never understand, and unfortunately, Marshall and Lily just can't.
Ted tries. Ted tries so hard it scares her, because just hours after Kevin retracts his proposal, Ted slips himself into place and tells her that he can be the one to love her, no kids necessary. The thought comforts her because he cares and he loves her so much that he'd be willing to change his entire life plan for her. For that night and a small portion of the next day, she wills herself to believe it. Not only that he can love her enough, but that she can love him enough. But it takes just the plane ride to Russia for work to know that it will never be true. Not having kids has never been a compromise that Ted can make, not even for her. It would leave him bitter and hurting and she thinks of Ted's now happily divorced parents, who so mirrored their own situation back when they were dating. Ted's been holding a place in his heart and in his home for two kids, a boy and a girl, for as long as any of them have known him. And she's not in love with him.
Some voice in her mind that sounds both annoyingly and ironically close to Ted tells her that as messed up as she is, she still deserves something honest and real – she deserves not to settle.
So she lets it all go, holds herself up once again, invests her time in her work and eventually in Nick. A future with him is off the table almost right away, but at this time in her life when everything is changing around her (little Marvin's cuter than she thought possible and Barney Stinson is getting married), she needs something to hold onto just to weather the storm.
Barney.
She holds off telling Barney as long as possible because of all people, she knows that exchange will be the most painful. He's the only person in the world that could make her even consider having children; the smile on his face when she had told him she thought she was pregnant had very nearly been enough to wash away her own doubts. And the two kids, the girl with her hair and the blond boy in a suit, they linger in her mind long after that winter night they first appear. She doesn't want to see Barney's face fall into disappointment, see the sympathy, any of it. So she waits.
It's not quite a year after she found out when it happens. At this point, she's mostly come to terms with the fact that she will never have kids. In retrospect, she can believe her reaction had less to do with a desire to have them than it had to do with the same feelings that lead to the lobster situation. Being told she can't have something or can't do something has always made Robin unreasonably inclined to do it anyway. She's far enough away from the issue now to recognize that being upset that some of her choices had been stripped away doesn't mean she really wanted kids or that she ever has.
Still, when Barney mentions the possibility of her having kids as they walk down the street together, she knows it's time to rip the band-aid off of her own heart. She's resigned herself to the fact that Barney and herself just aren't meant to be, so it won't matter to him. Maybe he'll even celebrate the fact that he'll never lose this friend to children that would take away their time together. Maybe, maybe, this will be okay.
"Actually, I uh—I can't have kids so that's not an issue," she says quickly, and he stops her in her tracks, and any hope of just blowing through this news is gone.
"Really?" he asks.
"Yeah."
And she waits, waits for any reaction at all. He looks at her for a moment and then throws his arms around her, and it's the way he hugs her that speaks volumes of everything between them. So quick and comforting and real, and she knows he understands her like no one else does. When she's lying to herself, she likes to believe their past relationship was built on sex, but she can't lie to herself when he's hugging her like this. He's not sympathetic like Marshall and Lily – he knows this hasn't changed her in some fundamental way, but also knows that she can still use the support. And he's not Ted, trying to be her solution to things he just can't fix. He's just Barney, and as he holds her, she thinks of him as her Barney.
She thinks she never wants him to stop, even as the rain comes down.
Robin didn't know back then, that in less than another year's time, his ring would be on her finger and they'd never have to let go of each other again.