Please Read and Enjoy!

Note: Abarai Renji

While He Was Sleeping:
You Don't Love Me

I think I understand that you don't love me. You don't love me. Grappling with that fact for over decades, it never got to me, till I see how you watch him night after night, as he lays sleeping in that bed. I see the look you would never use on me. I see the tears you would never shed for me. I see the love that you would never give to me. You give it all to him.

I love you in ways you never knew. And I've told you that I love you a million times. A million times that you have never heard.

I said "I love you" when we joined the shinigami academy. I said "I love you" when I told you to join the Kuchiki family. I said "I love you" when I took you back to Soul Society. I said "I love you" when I watched you wait for death. I said "I love you" when I held you in my arms and protected you. I am saying "I love you", even while I stand here and watch you sit quietly by his bedside, punishing yourself for the sins that you've never made. And I'm still saying that I love you, though you've never heard me once.

All these years, you have never heard me once.

Yet you hear him.

I think I understand that you don't love me. You don't love me at all. I want to give you everything, your happiness is all I want you to have, but sometimes, it hurts. It hurts to know that you do not see my pain. It hurts too much.

And you never knew how cruel you could be. You showed me the bits and pieces of joy that I never knew, but because you showed them to me, you took away my everything. Because you were my everything. And you can no longer be.

But I still love the cruel woman that you are.

And so I am a broken man. Because bit by bit, I realize that I am not worthy of you. Not before, not now, not ever, no matter what I do. I give you all, but you see none of the effort, none of the struggle, none of the anguish that I've put myself through, just so that one day, I may be worthy of you. All you see is him. You choose him, a boy you barely know, over me, the man who have waited for you for over a century.

And so I remain a broken man.

I understand that you don't love me. Yes, you don't love me. But it's all right. I'm learning to give you up. Or I'm learning to pretend that I can give you up. Because no matter how much I think I can give to you, I will never be able to give you enough. So you can never love me.

I'm not worthy of you. So you can never love me.

I'll howl at the moon.

And he'll be the only who can reach you.

The "you" that I will never be able to attain.

I understand that. So I'm learning to give you up. Or pretending to.

Because I know that you don't love me. You really don't love me. And you never will.

Fate never meant to let you be mine.

I love you.

I'm still saying that I love you. Because I really do.

But you don't need to know. And you never will.

And you never will.

- YL -

Post-Chapter Notes:
I love torturing Renji. + Evil Cackle +

And I need sleep...

And pls pretend that while Ichigo was recuperating in that one week in SS, he sleeps quietly in a hospital bed at night. Patients need their rest. : )