Twisted

Summary: A time traveling (slight) AU, wherein much is fixed and much is left alone and much is resolved. Barney/Robin.

The problem with being a secret agent is that he can't tell anyone. This is only a problem because it would make (and has made) an excellent pick-up line. A tongue in cheek jest, a personal joke.

The problem with being a time traveling secret agent is that you have a strict rules to follow.

He is there to make sure that events happen according to the future. It's not that he has to be there to ensure there aren't any massive disruptions of the timelines, it doesn't work that way.

No, he's there because years from now they will discover that Barney Stinson was integral in Ted Mosby's life. There will be several blurry photos of a blond man who bears a strikingly identical appearance to one Barnabus Stinz and an investigation into the similarity will follow.

The mystery will reveal that the Barney Stinson of the past, has no past. He simply sprang, fully formed, into Ted Mosby's life one day. Created a backstory, fudged legal records, and held down a regular job with the company that would employ him as a time traveling agent in the future.

You go back in time to kill your grandfather, ensuring you are never born. You're never born, so you can't go back in time to kill your grandfather. Which means you are born, so you can go back in time (technology permitting) to kill him… He worries that the answer is that he is his own grandfather. Paradoxes are nasty things, and he's pretty sure he slept through most of the lectures on them.

Otherwise he'd probably know the answer. Most of the time he doesn't worry about it, he knows that the past is already written and you can't change it (until you begin to look into the formation of alternate universes and screwy stuff like that, and he's no theoretical physicist…).

So it isn't so much that he's there to make things go according to a specific plan, it's just that his presence is already written into the fabric of history. They couldn't figure out what he did that was so important, only that he was there. As a result he drifts in the past with no clear purpose.

He works out, sometimes. He works, sometimes. He hooks up with a lot of girls who mean nothing to him, and will mean nothing to him. He hangs out with friends. He tries to develop friendships. As much as he can when he's simply a fabrication.

He doesn't think terribly well of the people who think the image he presents is truly him. The personality he developed is such a caricature that he's caught off guard by their willingness to accept his eccentricities. He thinks they are a little clueless and self-centered. So 21st Century. But whatever works.

She thinks she sees more than what he presents to the world in him. She doesn't buy his man-whoriness (not completely). There's something a little off about the amazing amount of free time he has to devote to pointless things. His excessive amount of money. His spartan apartment. All these things ring tiny bells in her head.

She sees a little flicker of intelligence, well hidden.

He enjoys that now he needs to work hard to keep his cover secret (why?), because she's just a little too clever for her own good. Reporters are nosy.

When he meets Robin he gets this sick feeling in his gut. Because he can't remember anything in the future that said he ended up with her. And somehow he knows he should.

He develops an elaborate scheme to woo her, date her, fool her, and break her. Once she believes that he really is that shallow, she'll stop poking around. He trusts her, thinks he could tell her the truth. It's not her reaction that he worries about, it's his employers. If he breaks his silence about who he is, hundreds of long term, time sensitive cases around the world are then in potential jeopardy. He would lose his job. In a fatal way. She would too.

He can't do it. He enjoys the time they spend together, a tantalizing taste of what could have been will have to be enough (but it leaves him wanting more, more). He throws her off his scent with his actions, and her disappointment in their failed relationship clouds her intelligence. All she sees is the shallow simulacrum, and it's enough.

Around this time he finds a piece of technology planted in his apartment. It's a message and a mission from the future, signed B.S. His initials are and always have been ironic.

His friends sit at McLaren's and wonder at his absences, assume it has to do with Robin and Don, and they don't worry overmuch. He stops by with tall tales of girls and pick-up lines and crazy adventures. Most of them (like so much of what he is) lies.

He can leave soon, and he knows it. Back to a world where there is no Robin and Don, no Ted and his new bride, no Lily and Marshall, no Robin.

It's not that he was the inventor, but it turns out he was the one that made time travel possible. There are other things too, and he knows that when he goes back to his time he will sit down with the influential 'Leader of the Free People Mosby', and look for a resemblance to his 21st Century friend. He's ensured a future for Earth by helping Ted meet the right girl. Go figure.

On a grander scale he's ensured the future by coming back with the plans for a crude time machine. He's also given himself a way home.

Barney Stinson pops into McLaren's one last time, acts to expectations, and then buys a round of drinks for the three happy married couples. He goes off with a blonde chick, leaving them to their domesticity.

He ditches her outside the pub, throws away Barney Stinson, an Barnabus Stinz makes his way home.

As the first test subject for the crude time travel device, he knows it will work. It's still painful and glitchy.

He wakes up in a private hospital staffed with hovering robots, and they have good food. He knows he's home and he feels good and a bit melancholy.

It's been four weeks since he appeared back in 2146, he's been sleeping most of that time. His supervisor comes and commends him, gives him a two month break from work after such a long term position. Readjustment time they call it. He misses his friends and their lives. They aren't allowed to keep souvenirs from the past.

He hides his small picture of the gang at McLaren's well, and pulls it out frequently. He stares at Robin's face before Don and loves the light in her eyes. It also shows a fair amount of cleavage and it's been a long time since he'd been with a woman.

6 weeks. 7 Weeks. 6 months. Two years.

He comes back from assignment to his building complex and nearly stumbles over a shabby homeless woman (the future isn't perfect, by they try) curled up his doorway. He's about to send a message to the police when she wakes up and his hands lose feeling.

Tingling is often indicative of a heart attack he remembers.

"Invite me in. Please." Her eyes are so large and nervous looking, she's been on the streets a long time.

Robin gingerly sits in a chair, terrified to get the spotless apartment dirty. It feels a little like an interrogation at his stainless table. Simulated caffeine cooling in a porcelain bowl in front of her.

Her story is unexpected and breaks a lot of very important rules. He sits in silence with shrewd eyes and she's unnerved by this silent man who looks like Barney but acts like someone else.

She pulls out a piece of paper, but it's made of wafer thin plastic and obviously from his time. The writing on it is hers and the message is explicit and long and clear. So unlike his own cryptic technique, she's no Time Agent. She slides it across the table and their fingers touch. At the brush of calloused fingers she pulls her hand back suddenly.

His eyes blink as he reads the note and the implications become clear. She'd sent it back to herself next week. On his stationary. Using a device that she and he will build in his closet.

She'll receive it right after she finds out Don is cheating on her, and in a fit of pique, read it and believe it. She thinks it's just wild enough to be one of Barney's crazy play-book schemes. Robin expects to meet him and have a one-night stand to make herself feel better after the crappy marriage.

She ends up really far in the future with no identity and no access to the equipment or people that could help her find him.

It's a bit of a disaster and she doesn't like to mention the couple months she spent in horror of this new world, trying to survive in the under levels of the city.

She doesn't know this man who sits across from her with a familiar face with unfamiliar expressions of solemnity and seriousness.

He thinks furiously fast and bends his cleverness to this problem. A lightning grin lights up his face and he is gratified to see the woman of his dreams relax at the friendly sight. "I have a solution."

She raises eyebrows at him and he sees a glimmer of the old her: curious and impatient and feisty.

They don't ride off into the sunset, or never have any problems. They don't get married, they don't have children. He gives her a new identity for her next birthday, and introduces her to the changes wrought in the world. She goes with him when he meets the Mosby progeny. She spends her spare time catching up to the rest of the world and she learns enough to get a job. She find a little niche where she fits with someone else.

They explore a relationship like a two strangers who know each other intimately and it's kind of backwards, but it works. He leaves on missions to other places and times, but it's nice to come home to an apartment filled with reds and yellows and Robin.

It isn't perfect, but it's fun and it's life and it's fulfilling. And it makes sense why there is no happy ending for Barney and Robin in the past when they had to travel years and years and years to get it.

AN: Yeah, I pounded this out during the break between school and work so I apologize for the roughness. I do this for kicks and giggles and stress relief so I'm not too caught up in editing overmuch. If my grammar or errors have bothered you, I'm sorry? I'm a very busy person, so I probably won't edit it again unless I get really really really ambitious and bored simultaneously. I've never dabbled here in HIMYM fanfic, but I do thoroughly enjoy the show. Except for Don. He's not my favourite. Clearly. I hope you enjoyed it, let me know that you think!