And so Barney marries Quinn, in a big, beautiful Church wedding with over a hundred guests. All the flowers are shades of pink. Sam presides over the ceremony, his voice booming over the sound of Barney's own thundering heartbeat. He loosens his tie a little bit, smiles at his bride, and most of all, most of allI, he he resists looking behind Quinn, at her bridesmaids, at one particular bridesmaid wearing pink and looking as beautiful as ever, is she smiling, he thinks, because she has moved on with a new guy and he's moving on too, isn't he, and he's getting married and he has to focus on the vows.
He wavers for a second. I do, he says. He breaks down and lets his focus shift without moving his head. She is smiling, but it is a distant smile. She sees him look and meets his eye briefly. I do, he repeats.
XXX
She is digging nails into her skin beneath the pink boquet, nothing can be done now. She was too much of a coward, too proud. I do, he says. And for a moment he looks at her, and her heart lurches. But he shifts back to his bride and affirms his promise.
Beside her, Lily is crying and holding back sobs of joy (and so is Marshall across them).
And then Robin realizes that the tears on her hand are not Lily's, but her own.
XXX
They have their first dance amid a shower of petals and confetti, a dance they practiced (which took them only one afternoon to perfect), every step and gesture perfectly executed. He has only danced like this at one other wedding. It was pitch perfect then too, though wholly spontanous.
Then other couples start coming into view, the songs shift and Quinn rests her head on his shoulder. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Quinn's brother approach Robin with a drink in his hand. Her expression is unreadable from where he is. He watches, as Robin accepts the drink and they make small talk, he can't read what it is, but Quinn's brother motions to the dance floor and she shakes her head, sorry.
XXX
She could have brought a guy with her, this guy she's been seeing for a few days, but she didn't feel like it. What she feels like doing is to drink and be invisible, be alone. Robin isn't over her mourning period. Maybe it's a pathetic plan, but she's just not in the mood to celebrate tonight.
Marshall and Lily are having fun, taking a break from being parents for the night, dancing and drinking and it makes her wish she could have their kind of happiness. Maybe she could have had, with Barney. And Ted has met another girl, a pretty girl from Barney's guest list, deep into conversation probably about books or architecture.
Robin looks at her watch. She just has to survive this, she thinks. Quietly, she slips out with a bottle of wine from the bar, longing for the cigar in her purse and the air outside.
Outside, she smokes circles above her head. Blurring the stars. It has to end, sometime, right? Barney has finally severed his end of whatever they had, call it a connection, a relationship. Tethered to nothing at his end, it has to fade soon enough.
XXX
He and Quinn settle into their life quite easily. With each day, with each argument he lets her win (because the past has taught him there is no other way to win but to lose), he feels less like his old self. Maybe it's a good thing. He looks back at his life, at all the things he did to sleep with women he didn't know, all those nights he spent trying to grasp at something he couldn't understand, and he is happy with where he is now. Quinn has brought balance to his life.
And yet, he is unfaithful to her. With each day he is more sure of his love for Robin, he is conscious of it in his every thought and feeling, in every part of his body. He loves her, and will always love her, and he has accepted that. He has hidden this all away—years of experience have made him a pro—and it feels so natural to him, so completely different from his early turmoil and confusion over his feelings for her.
It is, he has discovered, possible to love two people at the same time. Not equally, not the same way, but it is possible.
Sometimes he imagines life with Robin instead, and how it would be full of life and energy, each day a whole new adventure—and then he has to stop himself because he is scared he'll fall in love with this imaginary life.
XXX
Out of all the continents, her favorite has to be Antartica, where she met the most adorable penguins, lived in an igloo for two days and witnessed the majesty of the enormous glaciers. All kinds of food have passed her lips. Exotic, strange, exciting—she held the tastes of countries and islands within her. And the memory of every person she has ever met, from humble fisherman, farmers and vendors to presidents and queens has been preserved perfectly.
And yet, despite the hundreds of countries she has been to, the thousands of people she has met and worked with, the various kinds of music, food, art, adventure she has experienced, she has never been able to fill the void at the core of her heart. She has never stopped missing him.
Sometimes when she is reporting, she thinks about him back in New York, in his apartment, perhaps he watches her segments, remembers that he once loved her, maybe still does.
She estimates that she spends only half the year, maybe even less, back home in Manhattan. And every time she goes home, the kids seem to grow a foot taller. Three from Marshall and Lily, two from Ted and Nadine. She never fails to buy them souveneirs. They still spend every major holiday together, a bigger gang, noiser, crazier than ever. She is cool Aunt Robin with the best stories, eclipsing even Barney's exaggerated re-tellings of their younger selves.
Once in awhile, she still feels it. The years have not diminished what they had. When he smiles at her, it is still the boyish grin he has only ever shown to her, never to anyone else, not even to Quinn.
In her dreams, she revisits that November night over and over, and in every one of them she chooses Barney. But she is happy, for the most part. She knows that if she had chosen Barney that night, they never would have come apart again. She would never wanted to travel around the world, do everything she has achieved in her life, because she would never have wanted to leave him.
XXX
Perhaps one day, when they are both old and gray and hunched, they will sit at the bar alone drinking juice and she will tell him. I still love you. I've been holding those four words for decades. And he will stay still, not knowing whether it would be right for him to tell her that it is exactly the same for him. But he will anyway. He is old, no longer in the business of denying truths. He will reach for her hand with moist eyes, wrinkles over wrinkles, his gold ring cold on her bare skin, and it will speak volumes of the four decades they could have spent with each other and which they spent apart, instead, living half of their lives dreaming of a world in which they could old together.