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The rain is some of the loudest Robin has ever heard. And that’s saying something, considering the countless nights in Canada where hail hammered down like bullets on the roof of her house. Inside the shrouded darkness of Barney’s apartment and looking out, it falls down in sheets, a misty spray that hazes everything and completely obscures most objects past a foot in front of her. Looking out of the window, it slightly scares Robin. Not being able to see anything creates a fixed perimeter around her. And a dark one. She feels trapped.
Determined to ignore the feeling that had been unearthed by that sight, Robin turns from the window to survey the living room. The last wax of the candles around the room flicker low. Ted sleeps on the sofa facing the large plasma screen TV, his pink boots poking over the edge of the arm. Over in the spare bedroom, Lily and Marshall sleep as well. Barney is in his room. Everyone is asleep. But Robin is awake.
Something about the gravity of a natural disaster, now that it has been realised, will not let her sleep. She blames the Canadian inside her, but sleeping now would be like laying down in a nest of bees. It’s just asking for trouble. Even if it is house painting weather. This rain could knock the house clean down. And so she stays awake, the rhythmic pounding of raindrops at odds with the unsteady rhythm of her heart, producing a discordant tune of torment. She clutches the long empty beer bottle to her, an anchor in her trembling world. So much is unbalanced, unreliable. And not just because of the storm. The precariousness of her current life sits like a weight on her shoulders. She sees it in the way Barney still looks at her when they sit at the bar. Robin thinks that if the air between them was tangible, you would be able to see it sag under the weight of the words not said. The ‘Do Not Touch’ signs they blatantly ignored at the museum blare in her mind, and she can’t stop thinking of it as a metaphor for how she can never have Barney. She can always look but never touch. And yet she does. Furtively, like a child toeing the line of authority with their parents. She holds his hand just a little bit longer when she laughs. Picks out loose hairs from his shoulder pads that never existed. Straightens his tie when they both know it never needs straightening. She just likes the way he looks down at her when she does it, both smiling like it’s a shared secret, something intimate and sacred. The reverence in his eyes as they skim down her body. She was never worshipped like she was when she was with him. Yes, precariousness is the word. The line her and Barney are treading, the circle, closed off to the world, that they find themselves in, it feels like Robin being in this quiet room right now, while the rain patters down outside, blurring the reality seen through it. Barney blurs her reality, and now she can’t see anything else. She’s lost, trapped.
And outside, the rain falls.
In his room, Barney is awake. The rain doesn’t bother him in particular, but his thoughts do. Like most nights, he sits in the centre of his overly large bed, the vastness of his empty room enveloping him. The inside of his mind buzzes, like a hive of bees refusing to settle, bouncing off the walls of his skull. Then he can’t stand it for another moment longer. He moves from the bed, reaches for the navy robe he keeps in his wardrobe, and slings it around him. He hopes to find the others asleep in the living room.
However, as he pads quietly down the hallway and into the living room and kitchen space, the first thing to catch his eyes is a familiar silhouette cast against the pale window.
Her name leaves his lips in a murmur before he realises. “Robin?”
Only as she turns to face him does Barney notice the change in the weather outside. The deluge has diminished to a steady drizzle, and the misty haze is lifting, beginning to let the light leak through. He glances towards the clock on the wall. It’s early morning. He hasn’t slept a wink. And so it appears, neither has Robin.
“Barney?” Robin whispers warily, as if she doesn’t recognise him for a second. He suspects she forgot where she was. Lost in thought.
Barney steps cautiously towards her, taking in her tired eyes and tidy hair. She definitely hasn’t slept a wink.
“What’s wrong?” he asks.
He doesn’t give her the opportunity to tell himshe is okay. He knows she isn’t. Robin looks at him through the dark, seeing his concerned eyes, his hand that extends slightly towards her own. She smiles.
“Everything is dark.”
The phrase is quiet. Simple. But Barney understands what she means. His head tilts as she says this, his heart sinking as a film of tears covers Robin’s eyes. The hand that had been extending slowly towards hers advances, and grasps her free hand in his, and squeezes tight.
Barney then uses the hand he now holds in his to turn Robin back towards the window, where the previous haze is clearing. The rain is slowing. A new day is on its way.
Here, he stands behind her, his hand still loosely around her wrist. Robin can feel the slight smile his face makes next to her shoulder. His next line is whispered, but it feels like it rings out over the entire city.
“It won’t be forever.”
He points a hand over Robin’s shoulder, out of the window towards the grey sun bleeding through the lightening clouds.
“It’s always the darkest right before the dawn.”
In another world, on another day, at another time where it didn’t feel like the weight on Robin’s shoulders would crush her at any moment, she would laugh. She would push him away and make fun of his clichés. But now she doesn’t. Because now she knows. Just as he had known to not to joke on seeing her awake, to instead be gentle and kind. To be the Barney it seems that only she really knows. Robin doesn’t consciously feel the tears spill over, or how the side of his head presses against hers in an expression of comfort.
Because he is right. The longer they stand there, Barney’s arms loose around her, the invisible lines between them blurring, the haze outside lifts, the city revealing itself as the sun rises. The light is not orange or pink or yellow. It is a simple white grey. And yet it is the brightest Robin has ever seen.
And so when the others gradually begin to wake and encroach on the pocket of time they had found themselves in, Barney lets Robin go, and she feels the imprint of him against her for minutes after it is gone, like a physical loss. But the new day glows on her skin, and as they all get their coats on to venture outside again, nothing has ever been brighter for Robin. Because the sun did rise again. It was dark. Darker than anything. Insecurity drowned her in her longing. But it was right before the dawn. And with the dawn came Barney. And he was all the light she needed.
Disaster averted.