AN: And it happened again. I think when I really have to work and get things going I listen to music and sometimes romance gets in the air, inspires me and makes me get in the writing mode when there's absolutely other more productive things I have to do.


It happened one of those times - those amazing, drawn out of heaven or hell times – when Robin made her way back into his life. Barney didn't know if it was a goodbye, or a hello, o r an "I'm horny and you are the next thing available".

"Stay" she whispered, locking a leg around his calf, when she felt Barney make an attempt to leave her bed

Barney pulls his legs to a side of the bed, sits down. Silence. His fingers make way into his neck, pressing muscles. He feels Robin sit down behind him.

Silence, and there's something warm along his back. It's her hand. She isn't touching him but he's learned the shape of her warmth, and that's her hand trying to touch him. Barney wants to turn around, kiss her senseless, kiss her until everything is right in their lives, until there is world peace and there's no more hunger, and she is his.

She was his. This hell-of-a-year taught him that.

"Stay, Barney"

Robin's face is now on his shoulder, her breath is tingling the little hairs behind his neck awake.

Her alcohol breath.

"Why?"

Her body freezes. She sits straight up. Her warmth is gone.

Barney turns around, becomes the most courageous man on the earth and looks at his wife straight in the eye, without blinking, without crying, without sinking inside her.

"What?" she shudders

"You want me to stay" Barney answers. Strong, deep voice. "Why?"

Tell me you love me, tell me you love me, tell me you love me.

Robin faces away from him. Her fingers dig on the forgotten blanket, rolled to a side of the bed. He can feel her rough breaths. He can feel her break.

"What –" she says between sobs, as she presses her hands against her face "What happened to us?"

She is drunk, Barney remembers.

"You want to talk now" Barney raises his voice a bit. Robin is crying on the other side of her bed.

He goes around, stands in front of her.

"I've tried. I've tried to talk to you, to reason with you for the past year, Robin". There is desperation on his voice. He isn't afraid to show her that he is broken too. "I've tried and tried, tried to reach you, tried to make you feel, make you understand but you've been too far gone, Robin, and I don't know if maybe it's too late to chase you back to me"

His voice isn't strong anymore. He is broken. She is broken. They know it.

Barney kneels in front of her. He pulls her head against his chest and she is happy to bury her tears on his skin, marking him.

"You have to tell me, God" he cries into her hair "Is it too late?"

Her arms envelope him for a moment but she soon pulls away, climbs the bed, hides in the bathroom.

Barney leaves.

He gets his answer the following day, when he is going to leave her bed one more – one final – time and she presents to him the divorce papers.

She signed them.

Yes.

Robin gets her answer a few weeks down the road, when she's puking her guts out with another wave of morning sickness and she's realizing that all that puking can't be related to the quesadilla she had with Lily earlier that week.

This, this tiny piece of them, growing inside her womb. This is her answer.

Is it too late?

No.


"Mrs. Stinson, there's some lab results we have to discuss with you. How soon can you come and have an appointment with me?"

Whenever your own doctor calls you, in the middle of lunch, and tells you there's something wrong with your baby or with you, everything in your world collapses.

Robin's dropped the fork onto her plate and then onto the ground.

"What's wrong?"

She is entered a trance, and it's Barney's hand on her arm that wakes her from it, asking. She came to have coffe/lunch with him in order to tell him he's going to be a father.

Because… he is going to be a father, no? Everything is ok with her baby and she is going to be a mother, and she's going to find a way to make everything right in her life and have the perfect little family idea she had once when she was a child and she didn't know she wasn't supposed to have kids.

Robin pulls her arm away from him.

"How soon can you see me?"

To be continued.

AN: Thanks for reading. I have a lot, a BIG LOT, of ideas for this little piece and I'm trying to work my mind around them. Thank you for your reviews.

Have a nice night and week. Tada!