Readers, in the Spring of 2009 Barney got into a fight. Not surprisingly, it was over a girl, and also not surprisingly, he lost. Miserably. Or at least he would have, had it not been for Robin.

"Barney, what the hell are you doing here?" Robin asked as she threw her gun back into her purse.

Barney winced from a pain in his side provoked by sitting up. "Apparently saving you from assault. You're welcome, btw."

Robin laughed. "Yea, you were doing a great job of that." She looked over at Barney. "You're bleeding."

Barney had pulled himself up on the couch and looked back at her. "What? No I'm not." He went to adjust his tie and then remembered he wasn't wearing one. Man, he was a mess.

Robin walked over to him. "Yes, you are," she sat down on the couch and touched her finger to his temple to collect a drop of blood as it made its way down towards his ear. She showed it to Barney. "See?"

Barney looked at it and laughed. "Oh, Robin. Dear, naïve, Canadian Robin, that isn't blood."

"No?"

"Of course not. It is obviously excess awesome leaking out of my body."

Robin tried to give Barney a stern look but couldn't stop herself from laughing.

Barney smiled. "You don't believe me, do you? You see whenever I do something excessively awesome, my body has to get rid of the extra awesome that it produces. It's basic science, Sherbatsky."

"Alright, fine, it's awesome, now let's get out of here." Robin stood up and held her hand out to Barney. He attempted to take it and stand up but only made it halfway before screaming in pain and collapsing back on the couch. Robin sighed. "Ok fine, you big baby." She leaned over and put her arm around his back to help him up.

Barney leaned into her shoulder for support. "Hey, be nice to me. I saved you from that jerk."

Robin scoffed. "No, you distracted the jerk. I saved you."

"Well that's your version of the story." Barney retorted as they started shuffling towards the door.

"So what really happened is my version?"

"Call it what you will." Barney tripped and Robin tightened her grip on his side, causing him to emit another yelp.

Robin stopped walking and looked at Barney's face as it twisted in pain. "Wow, he got you pretty good huh?"

Barney simply held his side and nodded. There was a little whimper in there, too.

"Barney?" Barney looked over at Robin and was surprised to realize that she had leaned in to kiss him, and before he could comprehend what was happening it was over. "Thank you," Robin said as Barney reluctantly opened his eyes.

He smiled, nodded, and looked away. "Worth it," he said under his breath.

"What was that?"

"Nothing. Let's get out of here."

----------

Meanwhile, Marshall, Lily, and I were out at MacLaren's, discussing the experience I'd had with Barney earlier that evening.

"How much information did he have?" Lily demanded.

"I don't know, everything. Credit card info, addresses, medical records—"

Marshall stood up. "Ok, I can't hear this, I'm getting the next round." He walked off to the bar.

As Marshall walked off and sighed, Lily stared at the table and shook her head sadly. "He's really got it bad."

I nodded solemnly. "Yea, seriously."

Lily perked up and leaned forward. "Wait… you know?"

"Well, I don't really know, but it's kind of obvious, isn't it? I mean we can't really know, it's not like he's going to talk about it." Lily sat perfectly still and avoided eye contact. "Oh my god, do you know?"

She looked over at me and smiled nervously. "Know? Know what? What are we talking about?"

Marshall started coming back with our drinks. "Ok, I got one for each—"

"You know about Barney and Robin?" I hissed across the booth at Lily.

"—aaaand I think I left my change at the bar." Marshall immediately turned around and retreated.

I looked back at him in disbelief and turned back to Lily. "Marshall knows too?"

Lily dropped her head onto the table.

"Lily! How could you not tell me?"

She raised her head and winced. "I'm sorry! I promised I wouldn't say anything. Barney just needed some advice and he asked me, he was probably too scared about how you'd react to tell you."

"And Marshall?"

Lily waved the question off. "Oh come on Ted, you know you can't tell me anything."

I nodded and opened my mouth to reply when I felt a vibration in my pocket. "Hold on," I dug around for my phone.

"Back left," Marshall shouted from the bar.

I pulled out my phone and saluted. "Every time." I looked at the screen and shot a meaningful look at Lily as I opened it. "Hey Robin, how's the date?"

Lily leaned forward and Marshall ran back to his place in the booth.

"Oh, my god. Yea, of course, we'll be right there." I hung up the phone and looked up at the expectant Lily and Marshall. "Barney got in a fight. They're at the hospital."

----------

It wasn't the first time I'd gotten a call from the hospital on Barney's behalf. Yet it doesn't really matter how many times you get that call; it never loses its impact. And even though we all thought that Barney was asking for whatever happened to him that night, we hated to see something actually happen to him. Anyway, we got to the hospital with enough time to hear the story from Robin. Luckily, Barney wasn't in too bad a shape and we caught a cab back to my apartment.

"I know you've had a rough night, but do you really think you should mix scotch with the pain medication?" Lily counseled a very easy-going Barney as we walked into the apartment.

"After two cracked ribs and 30 stitches, yes, I think I can do, thank you," Barney retorted as he heaved himself onto the couch and then grabbed his side in anticipated pain. However, the scotch and morphine had numbed most of his body, and when the pain didn't come he smiled triumphantly and laid back. "See? No problemo."

"Thirty stitches?" Marshall laughed. "I thought it was only three."

"It was," Robin said, shaking her head at Barney as he curled up into a ball on the couch. "Hey, it was a bit of a bumpy car ride. I'm going to get some air." She smiled at us and left quietly.

Lily walked over to the couch and knelt down to examine Barney, who was already asleep. She touched the stitching on his temple and he flinched and snorted but didn't wake up. "Well, they did a good job of stitching him up. That guy really put his muscles to work on poor Barney."

"Yea, I hate to be saying this," Marshall started, "but I'm really glad Barney looked that guy up." He then looked at us nervously. "Just, you know, never tell a judge I said that."

I started alternating between looking at Barney and glancing at my feet.

Lily nodded. "It's a shame he got hurt, but I'd hate to think what would've happened if Robin didn't have a chance to reach her gun."

"I should have gone," I said suddenly, causing Lily and Marshall to both turn and look me. "I mean, Barney came by here before he went, asking me to go with him. What if I'd taken him seriously and gone? Barney was right, the guy was a jerk and he had all the evidence to prove it, but I still didn't feel the need to go after Robin the way he did." I sat heavily down in a chair and held my head in my hands. "I would've gone after that guy in a heartbeat a year ago, why not now? I let them both down." With that I dropped into the nearby chair and contented myself with staring at the ceiling.

Lily leaned forward and put her hand on my knee. I looked back down and she was giving me that smile that you just know she gives her kindergarteners when they wet themselves. "You didn't let anyone down, Ted."

Unsatisfied, I scoffed at her and sat up. "Then why didn't I go?"

Lily shrugged. "What Barney did was rash, passionate, and stupid. It's the kind of thing you do when you're in love. You just… don't have those feelings for Robin anymore."

I nodded and looked at Barney on the couch. "I know."

Marshall walked over and sat on the arm of the couch. "You guys have been broken up for awhile now. It's healthy that you're over it."

"Yea, I know, and I've been over her for awhile. I just always thought…" I shook my head. "It's stupid, but I always thought that when I loved someone that much, I'd never be able to stop." Truth be told, Readers, I knew that I didn't feel that way about Robin, but I never really realized it until I saw those feelings stirred up in Barney. I sat in thought for a few more seconds, took a long breath, and stood up. "Well, I'm going to go check on Robin, make sure she's ok."

Lily nodded. "Good idea. We'll get the useless lump here a blanket. It looks like he's not leaving the couch any time soon."

"That's fine, he deserves a good sleep," I said over my shoulder as I closed the door to the apartment behind me.

The roof was cold and I pulled my coat in tighter as the door opened to reveal the dark concrete expanse. I saw Robin standing nearby and I walked over to join her.

"Hey, you've had an exciting night, are you ok?" I put my hand on her back in what I hoped was a comforting gesture.

She turned to look at me and it was obvious that she had a lot on her mind. She nodded and looked back towards the city skyline.

I dropped my hand and watched her crossed arms tighten around her in the cold. "What are you thinking?" I asked, fearing the worst.

She sighed, looked down at her feet, and said nothing for some time. When she was done wandering in thought she looked up at me and asked, "Have you ever realized something about yourself and then felt like you didn't actually realize it but instead always kind of knew?"

I blinked at her and considered the question, opened my mouth a few times to respond but had nothing to say. "Um, well I… I'm sorry, but what?"

Robin laughed a little and nodded. "Yea, that didn't make much sense, did it?"

Relieved to see her smile, I laughed too. "Not even a little bit."

She gave me a fleeting smile and looked back at glowing New York. Another minute of silence passed. "I've just been thinking."

I nodded. "I noticed."

She let out another soft laugh and kicked my foot. "Quiet, jerk. I'm talking."

"I'm sorry, proceed."

"Well, I've been thinking about everything that's happened to me this year, and I realized that I should be much more of a let down than I am right now."

"What?" I looked at her and smiled. "What are you talking about? You're not a let down."

Robin nodded. "Right, but look at my own decisions: I quit my job at Metro News 1, almost went back to Metro News 1, I quit a great job offer I had in Tokyo, I almost got kicked out of the country because of being unemployed, and to top it all off, I went out with that jerk, I even went home with him. I mean, what was I thinking?"

"Hey, come on, you're being hard on yourself. I mean, it all worked out in the end didn't it?"

"Yea, Ted, that's the problem."

She looked at me and I thought about what she could mean. Drawing a blank, I shrugged and shook my head. "Sorry, but you lost me again. Are you sure you didn't get hit in the head or anything?"

"No, I mean, the problem isn't that everything worked out, but that most of the time it wasn't because of me."

"Hey," I smiled and nudged her, "what are you talking about? You're the one who went out and got those jobs, it's not your fault they didn't work out."

Robin shook her head and turned away again. "I wouldn't have achieved half of what I've done here if it hadn't been for him. I may have done the actual work, but he's always been there, pushing me along, pulling strings for me, having me promise him I'll apply for jobs, and then applying for me when I lose my nerve. He's been there all along, ensuring that I would make something of myself, helping me recover from my own bad decisions. I don't know how I've never seen it before now."

There was a long silence and I tried to study her face for some kind of a clue as to what she was thinking, but I got nothing. "Robin, what are you talking about?"

She sighed and looked back at me. "I think I'm in love with Barney."