Chapter 15- Epilogue

"Wake up sleepyhead!" Robin shouts at Barney.

"Hey! I was sleeping!" He retorts groggily. He feels like he slept well for the first time in weeks.

"I know. I've been up, fed her, changed her, got her dressed and here you are still lying in bed. Geeze, Barney. It's a Saturday." All he can do is stare at her. Is she back? "Come on! Get up! We've got stuff to do!"

"Robin?" he questions slowly.

"It's not Saturday is it?" she asks, slowly coming to the realization of what happened.

He shakes his head in reply.

She did indeed miss the past two days. It just seemed like a peaceful night's sleep. No dreams, no visions, just sleep.

"What year is it?" he questions, testing her.

"2015."

"Ted's wife's name?"

"Tracy."

"Name of the song you walked down the aisle to?"

"Sandcastles in the Sand."

"The gift I gave you to tell you you were pregnant?"

"The maple leaf onesie."

His features soften, and admire her lovingly. He can tell that this is his Robin.

"You're back," he murmurs, overcome with emotion.

"Yes, I am," she says. "I told you not to worry."

"I'm always going to worry about you, Scherbatsky," he replies sweetly, before his tone turns a bit accusatory. "And yet, you knew things weren't going to be right. You knew what was going to happen."

"No, I didn't."

"Yes, you did. How?"

"I just knew ok?" she tries to defend.

"Sounds suspicious to me," he teases. Yet, he really does want to know what she meant by the warning. He kept telling her she was crazy at the time, but then it happened. Yet throughout the whole ordeal, he really didn't have time to think about it.

"Fine I will tell you," she concedes, "just promise me you won't laugh at me?"

"I promise I won't laugh," he agrees.

"I really don't remember what happened in the last few days, but I know. I remember it."

"What do you mean you remember it?" he asks, confused. She can only remember it or not. Not both.

"This is going to sound completely crazy, but I had a dream about 7 years ago," she begins to explain. "I thought at the time it was absolutely ridiculous. And at the time, it was absolutely ridiculous." He watches her intently as she starts to tell the story. "I was having trouble getting to sleep. I fell asleep for a few minutes, and then when I woke up, I was in here. It scared the crap out of me. And you were looking at me really weird, like I was crazy and you were worried about me. And there was a baby crying. You were in and out. I didn't realize it until later, but you were trying to keep the baby quiet, and you insisted I needed to go to the hospital. I think maybe you blackmailed me with a Sparkles video of some sort. And it was there that you told me everything. I tried to make sense of it all, but even when you told me everything and I finally held Bri, I still thought you were absolutely insane. Even seeing pictures, I still always thought it was this big practical joke, or this huge dream. Right before I woke up, I started to see flashes of all of these memories you told me about, like I was 2015 Robin getting my memory back. So I knew when we drove home from Ted and Tracy's that night exactly what was going to happen for the next few days. I wanted you to know that I was going to be ok and come back to you."

He couldn't do anything but stare at her, his mouth agape. Her story seems almost too incredible to be true, and yet, he knows that she would have no reason to make it up. "So you knew about all of this before we even slept together the first time?"

"Yes," she sighs, remembering it all again. "Although I thought it was just the world's craziest dream. The whole thing felt really real, but I never had a reason to question it, not at the time."

"When did you realize?" he asks, stunned.

"I don't really know. I think sometime around the time we got married, but I never really knew for sure," she explains. "You never told me the bad stuff that happened, so I kept getting thrown off. Every time something happened that was good, like Lily getting pregnant at the right time, I would be thrown off by something like finding out I couldn't have children." She pauses before continuing, just letting herself have the moment to appreciate what she really does have. "That's the one that confused me the most. It's why I was so upset about it. By that point, I had imagined my future with you, and it was just gone."

"So you're telling me that you knew everything?"

"Not everything. And I really didn't believe it for a long time, even though I wanted to."

"Why didn't you believe it?"

"Come on, Barney. It was 2008," she chortles. "Would you have believed it?"

"Not at all," he agrees quickly.

"I don't think I really, truly believed it until she was here."

"Wow," he mutters. He's still stunned by her revelation.

"And I probably left it affect me way more than I should have," she adds.

"What do you mean?"

"Do you remember the first time we dated, and I slept over for the first time?"

"I do. How could I forget that? It was the first time I ever left a woman in the suit room."

"Do you know why I was at the door to the suit room?"

"You were admiring the fine tailoring?"

"No, I was so out of it, I was going to check on Brianna. I woke up here, and I snapped into mom mode, long before I ever needed to have a mom mode, and I wanted to give you a chance to sleep in."

"Robin..." The thought of that kills him. She was looking for their daughter. Of course, she never found what she was looking for.

"No, it's okay." She sighs audibly, and he can see for the first time that she is on the verge of tears. He drapes his arm around her and pulls her close. "You have to hear these." She pauses before she lets the last admission pass her lips. "The reason that I brought Kevin to the bar that night, well, it was because I knew that moment wasn't supposed to be the start. I knew that we weren't going to date before we got engaged, so I didn't want to mess up the future."

"Robin, I'm so sorry," he mutters, and he can't help but let a tear fall with her.

"It's not your fault."

"But I told you all these things..."

"No, Barney, it's okay. I think you honesty saved us. Brianna is the reason I didn't take the foreign corresponded job."

He looks at her questioningly. "But you weren't..."

"I know, but I knew that if I took the job, I wouldn't be the lead anchor at WWN anymore, and it wouldn't match. And worse, it would have matched this other horrible dream I had."

"Geeze, Robin. How many prophetic dreams did you have?" he jokes. It makes her chuckle, and lightens the mood.

"Just the two. But the second one... I had taken the job... I don't... I don't know that I even want to say it out loud."

"Come on, you can tell me."

"I took the correspondent job, and we traveled all over the world, but we couldn't make it work. We ended up divorcing, you knocked up some bimbo who left you alone with a daughter, Tracy died of cancer when the kids were young, and Ted ended up going after me again." He can't help but stare. "Yeah. Exactly," she continues, reading his expression that he is just as weirded out as she was the first time. "It didn't matter how much I wanted that job. There was no way I was taking it. The two of you are much more important. But at the time, even just you were more important to me."

"I...I just don't even know what to say."

"You don't have to say anything."

They sit in silence for a moment, holding each other and admiring Brianna, before he continues.

"Actually, I have a question."

"Hmmm?"

"You were pretty quick to come on to me."

"And?"

"Why?" She turns her head in embarrassment. "You wanted me before the dream, didn't you?"

"I may have," she admits. "Okay, I may have had a lot of dreams about you back then."

"You are so..."

"Barney. Baby," she reminds him, nodding down at Brianna.

"She's just fine," he brushes off. "So tell me about these dreams."

"Well, they certainly didn't live up to reality, that's for sure."

"God, you're hot," he mumbles, planting a kiss on her lips.

"Maybe later, when she takes her nap, we can make some use of this new information."

"You've got yourself a deal," he agrees wholeheartedly. "Oh, and Scherbatsky?"

"Yeah?"

"Does this make me the time traveler's husband?"

"Shut up."

2020

Sometimes I wonder what it would be like, what path my life would have taken if I had not had that dream all those years ago. As I watch Brianna skip ahead of me on the weathered wood boards of the dune crossing, I try not to dwell on it.

The gang decided that we haven't seen each other in too long, all of us busy with our own lives, our own children. So Lily and Tracy picked out a large beach house on a fairly private stretch of beach in North Carolina. They thought it would be the kind of getaway we all needed. And it is. There is no arguing that. We are finally getting some time to catch up, and for the kids to get reacquainted. It's quiet, peaceful, in a way that the city, or even the suburbs that the rest of the gang lives in, is not.

But right now, I'm missing girl time, missing admiring Barney in the ocean playing with Brianna, watching the way his muscles move as he helps her jump the waves. Instead, she has to go to the bathroom, leaving me to take her. I silently curse under my breath, that somehow, Lily must have passed along her constant need to pee somehow. Yet she's happy. She's the happiest little girl I have ever seen.

For some reason, I can't stop thinking about how close I came to not having her beautiful smile in my life. I can't stop thinking about that other dream, and that we wouldn't be here. I'd be alone, traveling, and coming back for Ted and Tracy's wedding. It seems ridiculous to even think that Ted wouldn't be married by now. The joy I find every day in the laughter and tears, it wouldn't be there. As I yell ahead for her to wait, since she's always a bit impatient like her father, all I can do is thank my lucky stars that somehow, I got to see early how it would all turn out, that I could make my life have the things I never knew I needed. That I could have this moment, the wind in my hair, sun on my back, watching this mop of adorable curly brown hair jumping up and down, waiting for me like I make the whole world spin. So for the first time, I'll admit it. Universe, thank you. Thank you for giving me this.

A/N: Well, this is it. I want to thank you all for sticking with me through my first finished story that was originally meant to be a one shot. I never expected when I started this, that I would take me a year to finish. But it wouldn't have been near what it was without your motivation and reviews. I still can't quite believe that this one is over, but I have plenty more stories that I am looking forward to posting, and I am looking forward to getting back to the canon story for this one, You Don't See It? So thank you all so much!