Warning/s: Character death, angst, suicide, mentions of drinking and drug abuse

Barney Stinson will die in exactly 28 days, 16 hours, 14 minutes and 2 seconds.

Day 1 (27 days, 15 hours, 13 minutes and 1 second)

He watches himself fall apart with the cold detachment preserved only for complete sociopaths and careless suiciders. He continues doing his work an he continues offering shelter to lonely girls, who share his self-destructing impulse. Some people were built for… whoring; built for being broken and dragged under again and again and again; all for the small addictive pain that the pleasure delivered.

He, for instance, was built for it. He could use his body to touch the emotions – briefly – that everyone else lived through. He'd hoped it could be different, wanted it to be different.

Those people, his friends – they could've taught him and he could've learned. He doesn't need anyone anymore.

Day 20 (8 days, 16 hours, 14 minutes and 2 seconds)

The gravestone is smooth polished black marble and Barney's tanned calloused fingers trace the golden curvy inscription on it aimlessly.

Robin Scherbatsky

She almost made him believe he could change. He almost did – for better or worse, he couldn't tell.

And now he missed her because she made him feel real. He never felt real before. Like some flawed creature balancing the life-line between Lily's Front Porch ad the fortress of Barnitude. Robin could make him feel real. Like a person. A person with dreams and desires and hopes. He'd never hope again, ever.

Day 3 (25 days, 13 hours and 1 minute)

Barney disappears from the face of earth after the funeral. No one hears from him for precisely five days but nobody seems to care either, except for Marshall, who asks daily for news.

He's having his third glass of scotch and watching Donnie Darco on HBO when the call comes. He stares at the screen of his phone for three seconds before he leaves for Lily's room, scotch glass still in hand.

Lily is lying on the bed on her side facing the bare wall. Marshall presses answer and puts the phone to her ear. There's a small "hello" and Lily makes a sound at the back of her throat that he doesn't know if it's out of displeasure or not but she takes the phone from him anyway and listens to Barney talk for exactly two hours.

She doesn't utter a single word.

Day 22 (6 days, 4 hours and 2 minutes)

Ted dies of an overdose on sleeping pills one night. Barney hears the news from a distraught Lily who calls him precisely three days after the incident.

He's eating dinner out at a swanky Italian restaurant, him in an Armani suit and the nameless girl with him in a red v-neck dress that distracts him a little too much. He's on his second glass of wine when he gets the call.

He takes the nameless girl to his place that night. Nothing can stop the Barnacle. Except… he cries while he's with her.

Day 5 (23 days and 1 hour)

Barney cries for Robin only once. It never really gets to sink in because he always keeps himself busy with taking care of himself, drinking, himself, smoking, himself...

He does everything to delay the impact of the realization because his favorite person, his girlfriend, the woman he loved, is gone and she's never coming back.

He's in Lily's room when it happens, Lily is crying silently on the bed, as usual as these days, and he's mindlessly riffling through the data on his phone. There's a light tapping sound across the room and he looks up to see a small bird on the windowsill. He expects to see Robin laughing at its stupidity and remarking on the size of its brain.

Then he realizes she won't.

It's one of the saddest truths there is. That realization when we see that we can only live in denial for so long until reality finally catches up and ruins us, destroying our foundations, turning everything wretched because there's nothing left but rubble and disappointments.

He goes into a fit of rage, throwing things around, shouting, crying because Robin's dead and it's unfair. So unfair because she didn't do anything wrong and the universe has to fuck up everything and with everyone

Day 28

Lily goes to Barney's apartment one night, just to make sure he's all right. He's lying on the bed, suit wrinkled, skin ashen. There are prescription vials and a glass of scotch and it all blurs together because this is too much.

The Front Porch image shatters. She feels guilty because suddenly she realizes that Barney was never there in the first place. When she thinks about it, neither was Robin. And Ted always for some reason or another didn't fir in the picture.

There was never a Front Porch, Lily realizes. Absent mindedly she wonders if Barney had some sort of a dream like that. Or Robin. Or Ted.

She feels guilty because she never tried to find out.