Farhampton
In the nursery, watching little Marvin in his crib, Robin knows it's wrong but she can't help feeling a little jaded and discontented by it all. Marshall and Lily are so happy with their baby. Barney is snuggled up to his new fiancée. And then there's her, standing alone in the back of the room. The whole thing kind of makes her want to scream. She honestly can't take another moment of this beautiful scene, so in an effort to burst the bubble of this tender moment and snap them all out of it, Robin begins noticeably, loudly picking her teeth.
The action draws Barney's attention and he glances over at her for the first time. Up until now, ever since he accepted Robin's happiness with a somber nod and then walked into the nursery to join the others, he's been attempting to focus on Quinn alone. He held her tight and kissed her hair and tried so hard to just feel happy the way he should at a moment like this, but he can't stop his eyes from following Robin as she walks up to the baby's crib. She wipes her finger on Marvin's blankets, announcing "Robin 1, Poppy Seed 0", and he can't keep the smile from his lips.
But that's just it; he shouldn't be looking at Robin, smiling at Robin, even as his arms are around his fiancée. Robin just broke his heart all over again not five minutes ago. She made it crystal clear once more that she has no romantic feelings left for him whatsoever. He shouldn't be watching her, or thinking about her, or feeling anything for her at all. He knows it; he does. So when Marshall suggests this occasion calls for champagne, Barney grabs Quinn's hand and heads for the kitchen – making sure to first announce to the entire room, Robin included, that they are off to have we-just-got-engaged sex, one of the very best kinds – because if anything can make him focus on Quinn having sex with her certainly should.
Robin immediately turns away from Barney's announcement. She does her best to think about the baby only and not Barney out having sex in the next room, but as she sees Quinn pull the door shut tight to give them privacy for all their wild mind-blowing sex, Robin finds it just isn't working and all she really wants to do is escape this whole nightmare. She wants it so badly that as soon as they're left alone in the nursery she jumps on the excuse of her friends' exhaustion as the perfect reason for why they should all just call it a night and then she won't have to be subjected to any more of this.
But then Lily calls her on "feeling weird" because Barney is engaged. Robin is determined not to even allow herself to face that fact let alone have others going around thinking it, so she hurries to dispel Lily of the notion that there are any feelings on her part, weird or otherwise. "What? No, of course not," she exclaims. It's an obvious lie – five minutes ago she'd started to cry and only just now she'd tried to get everyone to go home – said in what's dangerously close to her truth voice, but she does her best to sell it all the same.
Still, Lily doesn't seem to be buying it, so Robin goes with her surefire ace in the hole. "I have no desire to get Barney back," Robin argues. She realizes halfway through that Lily only accused her of "feeling weird" not wanting to get back together with Barney; that last part came from her alone. But she soldiers on all the same. "Because I'm with Nick now."
That's right; Robin Scherbatsky went out and got herself some man candy so she can have "mind-blowing" sex too. She's heard for weeks now about Barney's hot stripper girlfriend. Well, she can have that too, the female fantasy counterpart anyway: a hot, chef boyfriend. And it's true that Nick does make her feel better about it all. He tells her she's beautiful, cooks her private dinners at home, and most of all he proves that she can move on exactly like Barney did. That's why she won't let herself feel weird about this at all. Not one bit. Barney has Quinn, and she has Nick. So it's okay. This is how it's supposed to be.
Because of Nick she's able to make it through the awkward questioning, just able to make it through the whole unfolding scene…..and then Quinn comes back from her sexcapades in the kitchen, still pulling on her shirt. But it's okay; Robin's handling it. She's handling it all – right up until Quinn asks her to be a bridesmaid in the wedding, and then she can't handle it anymore.
She can't do this because, Nick or no Nick, now it's weird. She could lie to herself before, try to distance herself before, manage to just survive the evening without breaking down before, but she can't bear the thought of being in Barney's wedding, standing up at the altar with him but not as his bride, instead shoved off to the side like she doesn't matter, like she's old news, while she watches him marry another woman. She absolutely cannot do that and see that and live that. She doesn't even plan to be there at all.
Yet she has no choice but to agree, to smile and lie and hug Quinn like they're best friends. However, the very minute Quinn leaves the room again, Robin turns to Marshall and Lily for their help, for some way out of this, but they're both so exhausted it's worse than dealing with stoners. Since the only two people she could count on are of no help at all, Robin's forced to play along, swallowing her emotions for the umpteenth time that night. But while she's sitting there listening to Barney and Quinn talk about their wedding, Robin knows she can't make it through this over the next months, helping Quinn happily plan a wedding to the man she – to Barney. So when Quinn goes into the other room to make a phone call, Robin does the one thing she hoped she wouldn't have to do – appeal directly to Barney herself.
When Robin comes and sits down next to him – telling him, "We've got to talk" – Barney doesn't know what to think. To be honest, it's hard for him to focus on anything she's saying when she's sitting so close. She's turned facing him, leaning slightly into him, and by its own volition his arm moves up to drape over the back of the sofa along beside her, his thumb hovering just inches from her shoulder. He wants to touch her so badly and that in itself is a problem. But he can see she's oblivious to it all, just going on about bridesmaids and wondering if Quinn is the least bit weirded out that they used to date. So he tries to make light of it too, tries to clean it up and pretty the entire situation the way he's been trying to do in his mind from the moment he decided to propose to Quinn. Robin easily sees through him, though, and figures out that he has in fact been lying to Quinn, omitting the truth that will surely send her packing: she'll never be anything more than a second choice after the real love of his life didn't want him.
When Barney confirms her suspicions, Robin sits up bone straight, running a hand through her hair and moving away from him at his disturbing admission that Quinn doesn't have a clue they ever were a couple. She doesn't want to be kept a secret, like she had no significance in his life, like their time together didn't count. She had Barney first. He wanted her once. That can't just be forgotten and dismissed like it's nothing, so for the second time in as many minutes she reminds him that "we used to date". When that fails to get a proper reaction, she closes her eyes and sighs heavily, about to try another, far more painful tactic. "Okay, Barney, think this through." She can't even look at him when she names Quinn as his future life partner, but she gets out the words nonetheless. "Do you really want to spend the rest of your life with Quinn – "
A horrified look overtakes Barney's face, and now he's the one to sit up bone straight. "Oh, god. You have a point," he exclaims, his voice a mixture of panic and dread. Robin asked him to think this through and he truly did. That's why her point is so upsetting. In fact, he's finding it hard to breathe.
What was he thinking? He didn't want to be single and alone again; that's what it was. He didn't want to be left by yet another woman. When he decided to propose he thought Quinn was still working at the Lusty Leopard, and she swore the only way she would ever quit stripping was if she got married. He was so fixated on that, getting her away from other men so she wouldn't cheat and end up leaving him, that he saw no other way but to propose to her. Then when he learned she'd already quit – that she'd actually chosen him – it made him feel so loved for a change and he got caught up in that feeling. But it never really hit him until now just what he's agreed to. In the week before he actually popped the question all the way up until this moment now, he'd tried to push away the reality of what this means – which is why he's been focusing on ostentatious, grand, showy things not at all grounded in realism, like the elaborate magic proposal or riding down the aisle on the back of a grizzly bear, rather than thinking about what marrying Quinn really entails. He doesn't want to think about actually being with her forever, spending the rest of his life with her. Oh, god. He's going to have to spend the rest of his life with her. He doesn't want that. He knows he doesn't want that. No more hope of Robin, ever. He'd be forever closing that door. No more 'what if, someday she changes her mind'. It would all just be gone with nothing but Quinn in his future. What has he gotten himself into?
But at the same time, through the shock of all this dismaying clarity over what a huge mistake he made a few hours back at the airport, there's a small part of Barney that wonders why Robin is asking. Sitting here squeezed next to her, their legs pressed together, with him not so much as moving an inch backward towards the plentiful space left on the rest of the sofa, something dangerously close to hope tingles through him. Because maybe if she's asking, maybe if she's trying to get him to change his mind, that might mean she is upset about his engagement after all…..
Then she tells him he misunderstood her point; that's not what she was saying at all. And of course it wasn't. Of course she doesn't care. She's made that clear over and over again. She told him she's happy for him. She smiled and congratulated him along with everyone else. She even agreed to be a bridesmaid. Of course she doesn't care; she doesn't love him. So Barney looks over at Robin and laughs. He tries to play off his slipup, sitting back casually as if he didn't just reveal that this whole thing with Quinn is a facade, that given the chance with just one word from Robin he'd be ready to back out of it all and come running to her if even the smallest part of her might want him back too.
Robin, however, doesn't notice. She's too fixated on Barney pretending like the two of them never happened. If she can't get through to him any other way, surely the fact that it will upset his precious Quinn once she finds out he lied to her ought to do the trick. But that's not an issue for him either because, as he so proudly tells her, "I destroyed every piece of evidence that you and I were ever a couple".
And that hurts Robin to her very core. It shouldn't, but it does. He's with another woman – he has been for three months – and she has someone now too, but still there's something tragically symbolic in him discarding every last vestige of their relationship for Quinn's benefit. She has literally been replaced. The knowledge makes her want to lash out. It makes her want to fight and rally against the truth of it. Which she does. "That's ridiculous," she derides. "You couldn't have gotten rid of all of it."
But he shrugs, so nonchalant and careless about throwing away their memories like garbage. And just to prove how little it all means to him, he shows her absurdly photoshopped pictures of the moments they shared together where he's cut her right out of the picture as if it never happened. They never happened. He's completely erased her from the photos, from his mind, from his heart.
She means nothing more to Barney than an inconsequential stop in the road on the way to his final destination, Quinn. She's so insignificant to him that she's not even worth keeping a single souvenir. And that hurts worst of all. "You replaced me with a tiger," she says, suddenly feeling a little like throwing up. "Well, I'm glad that deleting our entire time together was so easy for you."
All Barney can think is she has no idea how wrong she is. The very fact that he feels compelled to hide his relationship with her from Quinn at all should speak volumes. Quinn knows about Nora. She even knows that, years ago, he once had another real girlfriend named Shannon. But he couldn't bring himself to tell her about Robin. Not only does he omit the information, but he goes to great lengths to purposefully hide it and keep their relationship a secret – removing everything from his home, his phone, his computer, anywhere she might find it. Because he doesn't want to have to explain why he still has all of these little mementos, why he still keeps them like cherished treasures, why he won't get rid of them for her or anyone else. No, it's much easier to simply lie to Quinn, to never let her know the truth that Robin isn't just a friend and a bro but an ex-girlfriend he very much still has feelings for and he knows it. That knowledge would lead to World War III. Quinn would try to actually make him get rid of all of his Robin keepsakes. She might even try to forbid him from seeing Robin if she knew the truth –and that would NOT be acceptable. So he has no other options but to keep it all a secret.
Robin, however, is entirely unaware of Barney's thoughts or his real motivation for all of this secrecy. She only wants – needs – to make him see that regardless of his creative photoshopping skills, Quinn will eventually find out about them. He can't simply imagine their relationship away no matter how much he wants to – and the very fact that he wants to is something that continues to tear her heart apart. But rather than seeing the wisdom in her reasoning, Barney simply adds insult to injury by asking her to actually help him pretend that they never happened at all.
But before they can all get their stories straight, Quinn comes back in the room, and then Ted calls asking Barney to seduce some woman over the phone. Marshall and Lily distract Quinn by taking her back into the nursery and Robin, in an effort to distract herself, reaches for the nearest book she can find.
While Robin is politely trying to look at least like she's not listening in, Barney still feels strange and oddly….guilty doing this in front of her, so he disappears into the other bedroom to flirt and seduce and have some fairly decent phone sex with a woman who is mostly decidedly not his fiancée. Yet, when he walks back into the nursery only just ending the call, he's grinning widely because maybe there is a part of him that still misses doing things like this. Maybe it gives him a thrill he's not getting at home. And, equally oddly enough, he doesn't feel the slightest bit guilty talking about how dirty it was right to Quinn's face or telling her how much this other nameless woman was "begging for it".
He's feeling pretty good at the moment actually until it all goes to hell at the revelation that Quinn's found out he and Robin were once a couple. He curses in German because this is exactly what he's been dreading and trying to avoid. He doesn't want to talk about this. He doesn't want to tell Quinn the truth about him and Robin because what is he going to say? She was the first woman to make me feel anything in over a decade. I've been in love with her for years. Finally convincing her to give our relationship a try was like a dream come true. The months I spent with her with the happiest, most incredible times of my life. Even after the breakup, she's been the only woman truly on my mind and in my heart. Making love to her again last November was like taking a breath for the first time in two years. Only a few short months ago I was blissfully ready to raise our child together. And even now, even after everything, I would give ten years off my life if she could only love me back, if she would only want to be with me even half as much as I still yearn for her every night.
He can't tell Quinn any of that, which meant the best thing to do is tell Quinn nothing. But it's too late for that now. He knows there's no way out of this, so he apologizes and promises – falsely – to tell her everything now, the whole story – which he will severely downplay, omitting the most crucial parts.
As a form of punishment, he supposes, Quinn gives him exactly one minute to tell her the truth before she leaves him, which is ridiculous because he can't even begin to scratch the surface of the story of him and Robin in a minute's time, nor does he particularly want to do so with Robin right in the next room, potentially able to overhear it all. But, at his waffling, Quinn changes it to only fifty seconds and Barney decides it's even better this way. It will be all the easier to gloss over the cold, hard truth when he's telling the story like an auctioneer on speed.
His plan is to focus on Ted as much as possible and rush over the parts that deal with him and Robin connecting, falling in love, and being unable to keep their hands off each other whenever left alone. For the most part he succeeds. He manages to spend only three seconds actually talking about him and Robin – mentioning only the bad parts and making it seem as if it wasn't a big deal at all when it's been the biggest deal of his life – but he also unintentionally divulges some revealing truths.
"And I said, 'You just know she likes it dirty', but Ted really liked her", he lets slip, accidentally confirming the truth he's kept hidden for years, that he wanted Robin for himself from the very start and only deferred to Ted because of his total Ted-ing out that ended up forcing him to sit through the entire Ted/Robin relationship – which he also does his best to belittle in his speech – waiting for his chance to be with her like he wanted from the very beginning.
In addition, Barney blurts out his and Robin's cheating scandal from the fall, the very last thing he should be telling Quinn at a time like this, but Robin wanted him to be honest with Quinn and she could very well be listening. Plus he's already having severe doubts about this whole marriage idea anyway, so maybe it doesn't really matter how Quinn receives the news. And besides, all he reveals is the cheating part, not the part where he begged Robin to take him back but she broke his heart instead, causing him to runaway, wounded, to the first woman who would have him.
His final slipup happens when, in lingering pain and jealousy, he also belittles Robin's relationship with Kevin, referring to him as someone Robin dated "but only for a little while" when her relationship with Kevin was actually longer than his has been with Quinn.
Still, all and all, Barney's rather proud of himself. Nevertheless, Quinn doesn't see it that way and storms out. But he can't bring himself to rush after her. Part of him is annoyed at her attitude. Giving him fifty seconds to explain years of his life – and why is he expected to explaining his life before he even met her? Saying goodbye, she's leaving him, without so much as a discussion. The way he's constantly jumping through hoops for her, first with her stripping and now with this. Then there's the fact that there's an ever larger part of him that knows he doesn't really want to marry her anyway.
And that's the part of him that's still lingering over the look on Robin's face when she said how easy it was for him to delete her.
Standing in the room where he used to spend every night with Robin, Barney is torn over what to do. It's only Marshall's insistence that he go after Quinn and sort this out that gets his feet moving at all. And when he does, it's a worst case scenario that he sees. Barney walks out of the nursery to find Quinn attacking Robin over the two of them and their past, and he closes his eyes in defeat, almost wishing the ground would open up and swallow him. It's so embarrassing because Robin doesn't want him and the two of them both know it quite well, the way that he desperately wanted to get back together and make a life with her – a life and a future she never wanted in the first place – the way that she turned him down with a shake of her head and chose Kevin instead.
He shouldn't have to do this. He shouldn't have to face this all over again, the pathetic one-sidedness of his longing for Robin, but he has to speak up before Quinn makes this any worse. "Look, there is nothing going on between me and Robin," he tells her, and within his tone is the unspoken addition, can we please not do this here and now.
But Quinn turns accusingly to Robin anyway, demanding, "And why should I believe that?"
Robin has no idea how this whole thing began other than she strongly suspects Barney's lies just blew up in his face like she warned him they would. Now she has to just stand here as Quinn berates her for secretly wanting Barney, an allegation that hits strikingly close to home. Even as she's about to do what she's about to do, Robin wonders how she keeps getting into these positions where she's forced to save Barney's relationships with other women – first Nora at Punchy's wedding and now this with Quinn. It's not getting any easier or any less painful. But Barney asked her for her help then and now, and she can't deny him. So she tells Quinn about her new serious boyfriend, which may be a bit of an exaggeration but in this case it helps both Quinn, and therefore Barney, as well as herself feel better.
Barney, for his part, is touched by Robin's efforts to help him, but he doesn't want her to have to lie – and his heart refuses to let his mind believe this is anything other than a lie – for the benefit of his relationship. She of all people isn't going to jump through hoops for Quinn. She hasn't done anything to warrant being questioned or attacked; she doesn't have to falsely justify herself at all. But then Robin insists she's not lying and even calls upon Marshall and Lily to corroborate her statement. It's in her reminding of their exhausted-to-the-point-of-stupefaction friends that the whole truth comes out. Robin really does have a boyfriend – and she wants to "spend all day licking his abs". With that knowledge, Barney's world comes to a screeching halt.
But Robin's so busying trying to convince a still doubtful Quinn, she doesn't even notice any odd reaction on Barney's part. Instead, she determines to end this entire far-too-close-for-comfort discussion by summoning Nick in the flesh, because Quinn will surely drop the whole thing when presented with such evidence firsthand.
Twenty minutes later at MacLaren's, Robin lifts Nick's shirt and shows Quinn that glorious six pack that makes it okay that Barney's dating – and now engaged to –someone else. She really does feel a bit better now that Nick's here. Just focus on those abs, she keeps telling herself. Focus on all the pleasure he can bring you that's so much better than the empty, painful nothingness you were feeling before.
While Robin's giving herself a mental pep talk, Barney's busying fighting an inner battle of his own. Quinn seems to have calmed down and accepted Robin's reasoning but he can hardly spare her a second thought, not when he's watching Robin rub on this guy. Seeing her sigh and drool all over this Nick – and what kind of a dumb name is that? – is not something he will easily forget.
Barney takes in the whole scene with barely concealed disdain, asking himself how many more times he's going to be a fool for this woman. There's been this sad little part of him that, even after everything, held out hope that Robin might care about his engagement, that the idea of him marrying someone else might change her mind and make her reconsider the two of them together again, but here she'd been worshiping Nick and his abs all along. He vaguely wonders how long it's been going on, how much time yet another man has spent living the life he so desperately wants yet can never be his. But then he shakes off the thought, takes a slug of scotch, and tries not to look at all.
He'd only been kidding himself once again. Robin could care less if he went so far as to have sex right in front of her; he even announced he was going to do just that earlier in the evening and got no reaction whatsoever. And why should she care? Nick is like something straight out of Robin's every hockey fantasy. He's just perfect for her – a thought that makes Barney feel all the more sick inside. His reaction is so strong in fact that he has to avert his eyes when Nick leans in to kiss Robin. Despite years' worth of being awesome instead beneath a perfected mask of indifference, with this he is truly struggling to hide how upsetting it is, how envious he feels, how crazy it makes him whenever he sees another man touching Robin, especially when Robin shows any hint of affection back.
When Nick goes to refill their pitcher of beer, Barney makes the mistake of glancing back over at Robin just in time to see her watching Nick leave, coveting every last inch of the view practically in a post-orgasmic haze – and he should know; that look used to be caused by him.
Barney scowls petulantly. "You know he has chicken legs? Little…." He falters because even he can hear how pathetically jealous he sounds. "…tiny chicken legs."
Robin barely hears Barney. She's still smiling, still trying to focus on Nick's abs, when Quinn runs off too. Robin doesn't care – though she knows she should – about the prospect of Nick doing belly shots off Quinn. She's far too busy convincing herself that she doesn't need Barney when she's got perfect, chiseled Nick…..And maybe it's nice to have the tables turned. Maybe Quinn can envy her for a while. But it's hard to distract herself from the truth once she's left alone with Barney, particularly when he smiles gratefully and thanks her for her help smoothing things over with his fiancée.
That's when Robin knows she's not fooling anyone, least of all herself. Even with her sexy new boyfriend, the idea of Barney marrying someone else is devastating. She feels like such an idiot because she knows there had been just a small, delusional part of her that hoped Barney might be slightly jealous of Nick, but she can see now that all he cares about is protecting Quinn's feelings.
Even so, she accepts Barney's thanks. What else can she do? But her forced smile fails her because she can't stop hurting over how Barney completely erased her and every last trace of their relationship. It isn't even just that he fell for someone new. He deleted their entire time together like it never even mattered to him, like she meant so little. It just keeps hitting her how very insignificant she is and ever was to him.
The thought is deeply upsetting to Robin, so much so she suddenly feels like crying. It upsets her so much in fact that she finds the words – the truth – spilling from her mouth unchecked before she can stop them. "Although it, ah…." She fidgets, running a hand through her hair and staring into her beer, embarrassed by her own painfully revealing admission. "...kinda sucked seeing how easy it was for you to throw away everything from our relationship."
She can't fight the urge to look up at him then, to gauge for any kind of reaction however small, just any little sign at all that at least it was slightly bittersweet for him to destroy all of their memories. But he just looks back at her, his face a carefully blank slate. So she laughs awkwardly to fill the silence, to downplay the jealousy and pain and all the other feelings he clearly doesn't share. "I….I could never do that," she tells him, and a poignant sadness she didn't mean to reveal leaks clearly into her voice. She takes a deep breath and reaches for her mostly empty drink, hoping in vain to wash away the pain but mainly just looking for something to do with her hands, grasping for a much needed distraction from this awkward tension.
Barney looks over at Robin curiously. Her statements give him pause – first, that she's bothered by the idea of him throwing away all of their memories, and then the surprising admission that she herself could never do that. He wonders for just a moment if it's possible that she….
But then he buries that silly, tenacious, impossible hope that tells him Robin might care after all because every bit of evidence goes against it, no matter how badly he wants it to be so. She didn't blink an eye after he announced he was engaged. She told him she was happy for him. She even tried to help him out with Quinn. And then she proudly showed off her new boyfriend. What he's seeing now isn't any love for him currently. It's just hurt feelings because she wrongly believes she meant so little to him.
That knowledge sets off a debate between heart and mind that lasts for all of two seconds before his heart wins out. Even though she doesn't love or want him, even though she's forever moved on, he still can't just let Robin think he threw the memories of their relationship away like garbage. It reminds him of the day he found her crying at the shooting range months after they broke up. She didn't love him or want him back then either, but it hurt her to think she was only just another number to him, and her pain tore him apart. He couldn't bear to be the cause of that pain then and he still can't bear to watch her hurting now. So, without a word, he reaches into his pocket for his keys.
Taking a deep breath as the full magnitude of what he's doing truly sets in, he detaches that one special key. He's about to reveal to her his most guarded secret. That day years ago at the shooting range, he'd tried to reassure her that she really had meant everything to him, but he got the impression that she still didn't truly believe him. There will be no mistaking it this time. This is like laying his heart out bare for her. It leaves him completely open and vulnerable, but still he has to do it. She deserves to know.
Barney puts the key down on the table beside Robin's hand. "622 West 14th Street," he says. After giving her the address, he immediately gets up to leave. It's too hard. He can't stay to answer question. He can't explain. He just has to let her see for herself.
As he walks away, he tosses his remaining keys, catching them behind his back, wondering what Robin's reaction will be and thinking maybe….just the tiniest maybe. If his engagement didn't faze her at all, then this is it. His last hope for any change of heart, his ultimate Hail Mary pass before the game is lost for good and he's forced to accept defeat.
After leaving Robin and Nick at MacLaren's a half an hour ago, Barney's been stuck in traffic in the back of a cab for the past twenty of the last thirty minutes. He just got engaged today. He should be anxious to get his fiancée home to celebrate. At the very least they should be talking up a storm, making excited plans for their future. But they aren't and they weren't. They'd spent the entire time just sitting there making halfhearted, idle chitchat until about five minutes ago when Quinn actually fell asleep. He doesn't mind though. Cabs just aren't the same when he's sharing them with anyone else.
He glances down at her and tries to smile, but the truth is things aren't what they should be with Quinn and he knows it. When he decided to propose all he was thinking about was how dissatisfied he was with the endless cycle of nameless women and meaningless sex and how very much he didn't want to have to return to that. Yet he never once thought about the alternative, what the reality of marrying Quinn would actually mean. Now that he has, he knows that whatever he feels for her, it's not enough, and he's already having second and third and fourth thoughts about proposing.
He can't let go of the past. He can't stop remembering what it once felt like when it was so very right. Quinn doesn't even come close to that, and he can't help wishing still that it could be Robin asleep on his shoulder right now.
Sighing, Barney gazes out the window and wonders if Robin's found it yet, his secret box of them. She thought he just threw their entire relationship away, but in truth he's kept it all – every last memory of her, of the two of them together. She'll find the original pictures still in their frames from when they once were on display in places of honor throughout his apartment. Those were his favorite pictures, when it was just the two of them being completely real with each other; he wasn't even in his usual pose. Well, maybe those weren't his absolute favorite images of them, but those DVDs are in there too. He'd packed all the Robin keepsakes into one large box just before Quinn moved in, but he always kept the key on his regular key ring so he could look through their things and relive those memories whenever he wanted. The promise of that was the only way he could bring himself to take the items out of his home. He's already been there twice since he rented out the unit.
Even so, he still couldn't bring himself to entirely delete the copies from his laptop. Instead, the day before Quinn moved in, he spent the entire night and into the next morning photoshopping Robin out of the pictures – not just the three he showed her but many, many more. He kept them all on his computer for the two and half years since he dated Robin. There are even some adorable candids of the two of them after they were no longer an item. He can't stand to part with any of them, and by keeping the rest of the picture he can still relive those memories. And he needs that with him – at work, at home, constantly available day or night. He needs the memory of her with him always.
Barney looks out the cab window and imagines the look on Robin's face when she opens up the box and discovers that their relationship had meant something to him; it still means so much to him now, and so does she.
And when he remembers how Robin said that she could never just throw all their memories away either, Barney smiles to know that their relationship truly meant something to her too.
Ten minutes after Barney left with Quinn, Robin got rid of Nick. She expertly brushed him off under the excuse of it being a long day, because she had to go to Barney's address tonight – right now – and see what's there. After Barney walked away, she'd immediately scooped the key up and hidden it in her purse, but once alone inside the back of the taxi she took it back out and discovered it had numbers written on the tag at the top. For that reason, she suspected early on that it must unlock some kind of storage facility, but when the cab pulls to a stop in front of just that, she feels a little tremor of anticipation at having it confirmed.
Paying the driver and getting out, she walks into the guarded facility – always the best for Barney Stinson – and follows along the rows looking for the proper room. Her heart pounds more and more rapidly as the numbers grow closer, until finally she finds the right unit.
Robin inserts the key inside the lock but pauses before turning it. She has a hope, an imaginary dream she's held onto on the entire ride over, of what Barney might be storing inside this room, but she doesn't dare let herself believe it could ever actually be true. She tells herself that one last time before taking a fortifying breath and lifting the door.
Her eyes immediately alight on the lone, large box in the middle of the room. She walks over to it and stands in front of it, noting that it's not taped but instead has been left open and available for easy viewing, so she does just that. Robin opens up the box and looks inside, and her once racing heart stops and skips a beat in her chest. When she sees it, all of it, her mouth forms a helpless, happy smile and her eyes well up with tears. Barney didn't just throw her – them – away. He didn't just forget like they never mattered. He remembers too.
Robin can't believe it, she simply can't believe it. She blinks rapidly, both to clear her vision and to make sure her eyes aren't playing tricks on her. But it's real and it's them – a whole box full of them, because he couldn't bear to throw her away either.
And suddenly she realizes; she just knows in a way she never has until this very moment that Barney really, truly did love her once. He kept a box full of their things all this time, all these years. That isn't the action of a man who thinks of her as just another number, or even just an old ex. That's the action of a man whose heart she'd touched, whose heart she still holds a special place in all this time later that won't allow him to part with their meaningful things.
And then it hits Robin with a stunning force: Barney really was serious about them getting back together in November. It wasn't a whim or a passing fancy after a night of sex. It was real. He truly, genuinely wanted to be with her. They could be together right now but she ruined that. She threw that away. What had she done?
She kneels down before the box, looking at the mementos inside, looking at what she'd given up. Reaching inside, she picks up the framed picture on top, the carriage ride. Her head is lying against Barney's shoulder and the way he's smiling down at her is full of such open affection. That's when the tears start because she knows now what she could have had. She realizes now what she said no to. She knows how much he really did love her once. Tilting her head, Robin studies the picture and she remembers.
It was a Saturday afternoon in early September, almost the fall but not quite because the leaves hadn't yet begun to turn – and being a Canadian it can't be considered officially autumn until that first pop of color. It was late in the afternoon, almost evening, and they'd just come back from laser tag and then taking a shower together at his place and changing to go to an early dinner before meeting the rest of the unsuspecting gang at MacLaren's for drinks. They were walking past Central Park on the way to the restaurant when she saw the carriage with a handsome looking horse that reminded her of the one she used to have as a child. She went over to see it closer, and after admiring the horse for a few minutes she finally broke down and asked Barney if he wanted to go for a ride. She more than half expected him to say, no, it was too mushy and clichéd and couple-y, but he just smiled and paid the man, then helped her up into the carriage, climbing up beside her and nestling her close against him, his arm around her shoulder and his hand resting across her knee.
Robin looks at that picture now and she knows they were happy once. God, what they had. It was once in a lifetime. She reaches up and grabs the picture with both hands, holding on the way she should have before.
Somewhere out at a train station in Farhampton, Klaus explains to Ted how a person can be almost but not quite enough yet with your lifelong treasure of destiny "it courses through you like the water of a river after a storm, filling you and emptying all at once. You feel it throughout your body, in your hands, in your heart, in your stomach, in your skin….". Back in Manhattan, though Robin cannot hear him, she looks through all of Barney's mementos of the two of them together and she knows exactly what Klaus means. Clutching onto the picture, she cries, remembering what once was, wishing for what might have been instead of what now is. And, unbeknownst to Robin, somewhere stuck in traffic not too far away, Barney gazes out a cab window and thinks only of her too.
Looking through tears that are now streaming unchecked down her face, Robin reaches back into the box, examining each item thoroughly. There's the stuffed beaver from the night she sang The Beaver Song with Jessica at the Hoser Hut and Barney clearly was beside himself. There's the Canadian flag she bought him at the airport while waiting for their flight back home after the time he came to Toronto to find her. And there's a yellow legal pad – he always had a fascination with yellow legal pads; she remembers he once wrote a rigged compatibility quiz for her and Ted on just such a notebook. This one is covered with handwriting she instantly recognizes as Barney's. When she reads a little further she discovers what it is, a hand transcribed copy of a conversation they once had that he must have since deleted off his phone. She still was a reporter for Come On Get Up, New York back then, and in the early mornings she'd have to leave him and his very cozy bed to go to work, but they would text back and forth while she was on her way to the studio. This one wasn't even a particularly earth-shattering conversation, just their usual banter, but it meant enough to him to keep a hard copy.
And she remembers every one of the photos. All three moments had a story behind them and that must be why he's kept them still in their frames all this time. The bathing suit picture was taken during their secret summer. They went away for the weekend, got a room together for the express purpose of having an entire forty-eight hours where they didn't have to pretend they were "just friends". They spent the whole time sunbathing, relaxing in the rooftop Jacuzzi, and making love over every inch of their hotel suite. She laughs through her tears when she remembers how Barney tried to convince her to get an all over tan but every time she was about to accommodate him, only seconds away from untying her bikini top, people kept joining them, until finally he gave up and just talked her into sneaking back up after hours and doing some skinny-dipping with him that quickly lead into hot, raw, incredibly dirty sex in the public Jacuzzi. It was a little too hot and wild actually. They ended up getting caught by security and being banned from the pool area, but they were leaving in the morning anyway so neither one of them cared.
The last picture, the one of the two of them at dinner, that was taken in Little Italy the night after they first made it official, after Lily locked them in her bedroom together until they finally admitted they really were boyfriend and girlfriend. They'd gone out to dinner to celebrate with wine and pasta and a night dripping in romance. Eating the same spaghetti noodle until they kissed was Barney's idea. He'd seen it in a movie and wanted to go all out and recreate it with her. It was silly, but it did feel warm and sweet and lovely when his lips finally touched hers.
Robin spends the next forty-five minutes setting each object tenderly on the ground around her and sifting through the packing peanuts to find more and more layers of mementos beneath. She goes through every item one by one, handling them with the sort of reverence due to that which is sacred. Then she carefully packs them all back away and closes the box.
She wants to go to him. She actually ponders going to see him tomorrow, giving him back the key and pressing him for details about the things he kept of them and what it all means to him, what its significance is now. But then she remembers Quinn will be there. Of course Quinn will be there. They'll likely spend the whole day in bed together; they just got engaged after all. They just got engaged. What was she thinking? This box means nothing. It's just nostalgia, that's all. Barney has clearly moved on with Quinn. They were already planning their wedding just a few hours ago. He's been so concerned about not upsetting Quinn that he tried to hide the fact that the two of them ever dated at all. He even asked her to help him protect Quinn by playing along with the cover up.
And, most of all, he gave her his key to this place. All of these memories and mementos of their time together that he's held onto for years, he gave them back to her now because he doesn't need or want them anymore. Placing his key on the worn table top of their booth at MacLaren's wasn't Barney's way of saying 'I want to be with you' or even 'Let me show you how much you mean to me'. It was his way of saying 'You once meant enough to me that I didn't just erase you and throw you away, but I won't be needing these memories anymore because Quinn and I are going to make a lifetime of memories together once we're happily married with all our little blonde, curly haired, blue eyed, suited-up babies'.
It's too late. It really is over now.
But another part of Robin tells her to fight for him. This is her last chance to reveal her feelings to Barney now before he does marry Quinn and it truly is too late, forevermore. Yet Robin silences that thought because what's the point when she already knows what his response will be? It's better this way. This way she doesn't have to live with the memory of hearing Barney tell her that he loves Quinn now and not her, that Quinn is his One, his soul mate. This way she can always still imagine that in another world things would have worked out differently and they could have been together. This way she can at least hold on to the knowledge that she meant something to him once without having him crush her heart by adding 'but you don't anymore'.
It's one a.m. and, back at her apartment, Robin cannot sleep.
After locking up the storage room, she came back home, opened up a bottle of wine, and had a glass or four after climbing into bed and turning on the TV, but it's still no use. She knows she could text Nick, but even lickable abs can't take the edge off this.
She meant what she said to Barney about how she couldn't do it, just throw all their memories away. Before Barney, she'd never been the type of woman to keep old mementos from ex-boyfriends. She understood the idea behind it, the sentimental value of it, which is why she never wanted any boyfriend of hers keeping such souvenirs from his past – be it decorations around the apartment, or a bag full of panties – but she'd never once had anyone mean enough to her that she found she just couldn't part with their photos and other such tokens of their relationship. But like so many things in her life, Barney changed all that. He came along to be the singular exception to all her rules. She certainly broke this one for him.
Beneath her bed, inside a locked miniature hope chest, the items tell the tale that her heart keeps hidden: she's still in love with Barney. And she's kept it all. The handfuls of pictures of the two of them together – some sweet, some funny, some decidedly naughty. The playbill from the time they went to the theater together – one of the remarkably few times since moving to New York that she'd ever been to a Broadway play – to see Rock of Ages, a truly terrible story, but he sang along to all the songs and that made her smile. The lift ticket from their ski trip – because, though they may have fought, in those nights together in their private little ski chalet they certainly did make up. She finally got around to transferring all her Robin Sparkles material over into digital copies, but even though she doesn't own a VCR and therefore can never even watch it, she still keeps the original VHS of her Sandcastles in the Sand video they watched on the first night they slept together. The chest also contains the one stolen memento, Barney's sock from the night they made love last year. She accidentally scooped it up with her clothes. She left so quickly she didn't even bother to put on her coat or scarf, and she only discovered it mixed in with her things on the cab ride back home. But she never told Barney. She kept it instead, folding it up carefully and placing it into the chest the night of their MacLaren's reunion that never was to be.
And her Barney keepsakes aren't limited to the chest alone. She still has all the jewelry he ever bought her carefully stored away, and she has various other items spread here and there throughout the rest of the apartment. Hanging in the back of her closet, sealed in an airtight garment bag, is the white dressing gown with the purple flowers that she was wearing on the morning she and Barney first defined their relationship. She retired it after that for sentimental reasons; she bought it expressly to wear for Barney and it's never been worn for another man since.
Sitting up in bed, Robin leans over and opens up her nightstand drawer, lifting up the drawer liner she cut down to size but purposefully never glued in place. Reaching underneath it, she retrieves the small scrap of paper from that very same special morning that she keeps tucked beneath. Holding it gently in her hand, her fingers trace along Barney's handwritten words – 'Boyfriend & Girlfriend' – and her eyes fill with tears all over again. Because she knows this new reality isn't temporary. Barney and Quinn are never going to just breakup. He's going to marry her. This is for real. This is happening. Quinn is going to be Barney's wife. When Robin wakes up tomorrow it won't be all just a dream, no matter how much she wishes it could be. Instead, it will be the first day of the rest of her life forever without him.
It's one a.m. and Barney cannot sleep.
When he finally got back to his apartment – which alone is telling that he still considers it 'his' and not 'theirs' – he woke Quinn up, she got ready for bed, begged off from sex because she was "too tired" – though she failed to notice that he didn't care and had never even tried anything in the first place – and then promptly fell back asleep.
But sleep evaded Barney. He tossed and turned for awhile before finally giving up, which is how he finds himself now, out in the darkened living room drinking scotch alone and staring at his fist, contemplating the object inside.
Before tip-toeing out of the bedroom so as not to wake Quinn – because he really does just want to be alone – he first snuck in to retrieve it from the inner pocket of the jacket in the very back of his suit room, the one place he knows Quinn would never look.
He thinks about it with his hand still closed, keeping the object hidden, as he pours himself another glass. He thinks about it. He thinks about Robin too, and it doesn't even take the necessary three scotches, as she'd once teased him, before he can no longer deny the truth.
Barney opens up his palm to stare at the spare key cradled inside. And because he knows – he knows beyond a shadow of a doubt – that no one and nothing else can compare, he stands up and walks over to the kitchen counter, grabbing his key ring and hooking the spare key to the storage room alongside the others.
No matter what, he's still going to carry her around with him always. Even if he does marry Quinn, he's still keeping that box, still keeping that room, still keeping this key with him at all times so he can visit those memories of Robin anytime he needs to.
He's not yet ready to let her go. He never will be.