A/N: WOW, this took a long time. I've tried on this, I swear! But generally, after work I'm too tired to write. Working 8-5 will do that to you. Good news, though! Not only is this chapter done (as in finished!) but I have a good outline for the next few. Also, I know how this is going to end. VOTE anyway, though! Poll's in the profile for new readers.

Also, just so everyone knows, every time someone reads without reviewing, an adorable woodland creature dies. Just dies, right on the spot. Help keep the population of fuzzy animals alive, people.

Chapter 11: One Less Bell To Answer

I did my best, it wasn't much. I couldn't feel, so I tried to touch. I told the truth, I didn't come to fool you. And even though it all went wrong, I'll stand before the Lord of Song, with nothing on my tongue but hallelujah...

Leonard Cohen

Robin ran anyway.

She knew Ted was right. Theoretically, in her mind, she knew Ted was right. Running now wasn't going to make losing Barney hurt any less. She still lov... He was still an idiot. She still couldn't picture her life without him. But she couldn't just sit beside his hospital bed and watch him waste away. Couldn't watch everything that was Barney Stinson wither away to nothing. So she ran.

It was every bit as easy as she remembered. Run to the subway station. Take that to the Grand Central Station. Use her credit card to get her a ticket to anywhere but here, fast. The next train leaving was heading for Niagara Falls, which had a border, and she could get back into Canada, and leave Barney Stinson and his Cancer, Ted Mosby and his guilt trip, and New York City and the land of dead dreams behind.

She went through the motions robotically. Paid for the cab, purchased the train ticket, bought the trash magazine to pretend to read on the train, and boarded, without actually putting any thought into it.

Which in retrospect, was a bad idea, because now she was half way to Canada, and just now thinking what a shit idea this was.

"What the hell am I doing?" she asked aloud, looking around the train in a shock. Her seat mate, a teenaged kid looking like he was giving being "punk" a particularly pathetic go, gave her a startled look.

"Where are we?" She asked, knowing she looked crazed, and for once not caring.

"On a train," he responded, looking at her as if she were a particularly slow fourth grader.

"What the hell am I doing here? I can't be on a train! My boyfriend's in the hospital, in New York City! I have to be with him. Why am I on a train to Canada?"

"Well," The nineteen year old said slowly. "This is just a guess, but I'd say you bought a ticket to Canada, then loaded the train headed for Canada, and gave them your ticket marked Canada, and therefore, you are on a train to Canada. Huh."

Now, under circumstances, Robin would have had a sarcastic retort at the ready, would have flung it at the idiot kid without a second thought, making him regret ever talking to Robin like she was a four-year old. But at the moment, she was little preoccupied, so she settled for simply giving the kid a long glare and stepping over him in the most uncomfortable way possible.

She spotted the conductor three or four feet away and her feet moved of their own accord.

"You have to turn the train around!" Robin shouted, running up to the conductor. He jumped a little, turning to look at her in shock. "I have to go back! I made a mistake," Robin rushed on, ignoring his reaction in favour of babbling incoherently. "I should never have left; I should have stayed with Barney! He has cancer, he could die, of course I have to be with him, but I got scared, and I ran because I always run, and Ted tried to stop me, but...Anyway, I ignored him, and I didn't mean to actually run...you have to turn the train around!"

"Lady," the conductor said, once again in that dim-witted-fourth-grader voice. "This isn't a car. We can't pull a u-turn. It's a train."

"But I have to get back to Barney."

"Barney, Elmo and Big Bird will still be there when you get back."

"What? Dammit...!" Robin turned away from the useless man in disgust, dragging out her phone and misdialing Lily's phone number four times before realizing it was on speed dial.

"Lily, they won't turn the train around!" She shouted as soon as it was picked up. "They won't turn the train around. I've tried to explain that I have to go back, that I made a mistake, but they won't listen, and they all look at me like I'm nuts or PMSing or something, but I'm not, it's not for another two weeks, and now I'm on a train to Canada they won't turn around, with people who think I've lost it, and I can't get back!"

"Uh...Robin?" Marshall's voice said hesitantly. "Lily went for a nap. Um..." He seemed to run out of words there. The most disturbing part was he was probably most upset about the PMS thing, and not the crazy lady trying to get the train to pull a u-turn while having a panic attack in the aisle.

"Marshall?" Robin asked. Of course it was Marshall. Why wouldn't it be Marshall? Next he was going to tell her that her seventh grade math teacher was there to pick up her homework from fifteen years ago that she forgot to hand in. This day...SUCKED!

"Robin," Marshall tried again. "Just calm down. You haven't made it out of the land of the living yet. When the train stops, get off the train, and get a ticket home. I'll pick you up at the station when you get here. It will be okay."

"Right," She replied breathlessly. "Get off the train. After it stops, get off. I can do that."

"Right."

"Okay." Robin hung up, nodding to herself in a relieved way, sitting back down calmly, and opening the magazine.

****himym****

She had run anyway. Ted knew he shouldn't be surprised. It was Robin's go-to move when she got scared, right back to when she thought he was proposing to her. No mind for anyone else's feelings, no stopping to think about the mess she was causing, no concept of how little running away would help in the long run. She just got up and left. And by the looks of it, she hadn't even taken the suitcase she had hastily packed earlier, just her purse and key and some cash.

Anger flooded Ted, white-hot. If ever there was a time to stick with them, it was this time. And Robin knew this. Ted had told her this, and she had still run. He had failed, and now he had to tell Barney that the one person he wanted to see more than anyone else had abandoned him.

Heaving a great sigh, Ted steeled himself. If he didn't go now, he wouldn't be able to force himself to do it.

He was surely not walking in there with bad news and nothing else, though. What could he bring that would make Barney happy, besides Robin?

All the cliché Barney-items flashed across his mind. Suits, alcohol, magazines. Ted ran for the bag of Barney's things the hospital had given him. He fished through Barney's wallet and retrieved a number of what seemed to be a suit tailor, though the address appeared to be in a warehouse in a very sketchy area of town. Nevertheless, Ted called and informed them he needed a high quality pair of suit-jamas immediately. On the way to pick it up, he swung by the magazine stand and bought five issues of Bro's Life magazine, then bought a MacLaren's shot glass (even if Barney couldn't have alcohol, at least he could have his liquids in a shot glass.

Ted rounded up all the items he could possibly imagine making Barney happy, yet still he was unable to shake the knot in the pit of his stomach. Barney was not stupid, he knew. It was very likely that he would guess what had happened before Ted told him. But Ted didn't honestly know what else he could do. He resolved not to abandon Barney, not to make him think that them finding out about the leukemia meant that the entire group would abandon him.

****himym****

"Hey, Ted. Couldn't stay away from your best friend for long, huh?" Barney grinned as Ted struggled into the room, arms full of bags.

"Marshall's still my best friend, Barney." Ted groaned. Barney winked, traces of his old spirit showing through. The knot in Ted's stomach tightened even more, as he watched Barney in better spirits than he had been in a long time, knowing that he was about to shoot them back down.

"So what's in the bags?" Barney asked.

Snapping back to attention, Ted went about laying the suit-jamas beside Barney's thin frame (although he stressed "you're on your own getting those on"), slapping the magazines on the bedside table and lining up the glass on the table.

And out of the corner of his eye, he watched Barney's face. With every item Ted took out of the bag, his smile slipped a little lower. His eyes scanned Ted's pinched face carefully. His expression became, instead of happy and light, resigned and sad. Ted tried his hardest not to notice, finally grabbing the shot glass and babbling something about getting Barney some water, and how he could pretend it was alcohol, when Barney grabbed his arm in a fierce grip.

Reluctantly, Ted turned and met Barney's shaky gaze. For a moment, neither man spoke, until Barney softly whispered,

"She's gone, isn't she?"