Yeah, this took me forever to finish because halfway through I decided I hated it. But since I wrote it anyway, I figured I'd still post it.

Prompt: Azalea flower花言葉 (Language of flowers) is to take care of yourself, for me.

Rating: T

Her doctor is talking, but she can't hear any of it. His lips move without sound, so slowly and ridiculously that she laughs, on the edge of hysterical. She sees everything and she sees nothing, everything but the doctor's sad eyes and slowly moving lips a blurred, muted background.

Stage four, he had said, and then nothing else mattered anymore.

Karin laughs and laughs.

~.~.~

He appears at her bedroom window while she's staring unseeingly at her homework, and the world seems to spin again, colors seem to return. Because she had forgotten that this isn't all bad, that he was her fresh start.

She smiles. "Hey. What are you doing here?" As if she doesn't know.

There's a blank look on his face, and something flashes in his blue-green eyes that makes her smile slowly go back into hiding. "Yuzu called." He climbs over the threshold, sitting on her bed. "She was crying."

"Yeah, she's been doing that a lot lately." She shrugs. "Can't really blame her."

"No, you can't." The look in his eyes returns, and Karin's blood suddenly chills, because she has finally recognized that he is furious—with her—and that has never happened before. "Why aren't you fighting it?"

She wants to get angry, to meet his fury head on with her own, because that's just how she is and how she's always been. But lately she's been training herself to feel nothing, so the heat of his words gets swallowed up by the growing void inside her. "Because there's no point."

He stands abruptly, and she can see his control crumble. His shoulders tremble, his hands clench into fists. "You don't know that," he says so raw and so quietly that he may as well have screamed at her.

"Toshiro." She stands and reaches for his hands, mostly to calm her own, and for a second, it looks like he won't let her. But then her palms cover his fists, coaxes them to uncurl. "I do."

His rage evaporates, but Karin immediately misses it because it is quickly replaced with unrestrained sorrow, and she knows that if he can't keep it together, he will break her. His eyes begin to shine, but no tears fall. "How can you ask everyone to just watch you waste away? You're being selfish."

"So are you," she counters gently. She swallows. "I'm dying, whether I fight it or not." Toshiro jolts; Karin soldiers on. "I'm dying, and I've been dying since I was born. This isn't the way I wanted to go out, but life fucks you over sometimes. I see no point in prolonging the inevitable."

I'll go to Soul Society, her heart says, but her mouth doesn't. We can be together.

He doesn't respond, slipping his hands out of hers.

~.~.~

Months pass, and Hitsugaya doesn't come back. Doesn't even contact her.

Karin's health deteriorates, slowly enough that for a while she can pretend everything is life as usual. Against her family's wishes, she goes to school, and even plays on her high school soccer team. Until one day, walking home, she collapses on the sidewalk and is slammed back to reality.

After that, she mostly stays around the house, sometimes too tired to even leave her bed. Ichigo moves back home, and though no one ever says why, it doesn't take a genius to know it's because of her. He and Yuzu act as her nurses, feeding her and cleaning her and medicating her, all with fake smiles on their faces. It makes her sick.

The pain has gotten so much that she often wakes up moaning and sobbing, so along with her pain medication, she's given sleeping pills, ones that knock her out and have her waking in a state of confusion.

Tonight, she swallows a pain pill, and then another, because she is in agony. Movement outside her window catches her eye—but when she realizes it's only fluttering petals from her neighbor's azalea bush, she scoffs, pushing down her sudden disappointment. Take care of yourself. That was rich.

Suddenly tired beyond belief, Karin pops the pill that helps her sleep and forget. She slowly twirls the container between her fingers, almost trancelike, and without thinking, slips another pill onto her tongue. Then another.

And another.

It is Yuzu who finds her, her fake cheerfulness immediately disappearing at the sight of Karin holding a half-empty container. She grabs her. "How many did you take?" she demands roughly. From the bruising hold Yuzu has on her face, Karin can tell that her twin is immensely upset. But her training is running on autopilot; Yuzu looks sharply into her eyes, judging her alertness. "How many?"

"I don't know," she responds quietly, looking away. Not fighting as her sister pries her mouth open and forces her fingers down her throat.

The bile comes quickly, burning the entire way up. Vomit cascades from her lips, splashing at Yuzu's feet and raining tiny white pebbles.

When she finally stops heaving, Yuzu's eyes water and overflow. "How could you?" she asks in a small, shaky voice.

How could you? her mind replies, but she can't put that on her sister, no matter how righteous she feels, so she says nothing.

She had thought she couldn't feel any more empty, but this has proven her wrong.

~.~.~

He comes days later–after Isshin pumps her stomach just in case, an oddly understanding look in his eyes; after Ichigo takes control of her medicine, unable to look at her at all; after Yuzu smiles and laughs and pretends that Karin isn't dying and she didn't just try to kill herself.

He comes with one of her labored breaths—one second she's alone, and then she's not—and he looks at her, long and hard. It's been a long time since someone has done so. Usually her family looks out of the corner of their eyes, or they just look in her general direction. She can't blame them, for she has wasted away—skin pallid and gray and paper thin, looking about to burst because of her sharp bones, hair thin and stringy. But Toshiro looks—really looks—and she feels something for the first time in forever that isn't self-pity or agony.

"I'm sorry," he whispers, and she can hear tears veiling his words. "I should have been here. I wanted to be here. But I…I can't see you like this."

She knows she should be infuriated, but she's long been too tired to feel anything other than cold emptiness.

"It's not you." He swallows. "None of this is you, and I can't take it."

Silence. Karin shifts, just enough that there is room next to her on her bed, and Toshiro takes the hint, sliding in and careful not to jostle her.

He twiddles his thumbs agitatedly. "I love you." It startles Karin a little bit, but he says it so clearly and nonchalantly that he may as well be telling her that he had just gotten a haircut. "I love you, and it's too hard to watch you suffer."

"Then help me," she croaks, voice cracking with misuse. It burns behind her eyes, and the room seems to fill with water, but she just blinks rapidly, refusing to look as pathetic as she feels. "If you love me, then help me."

~.~.~

He opens his mouth and closes it, and for a few moments, they merely stare at each other. But when he reaches behind him for a pillow and she does nothing to stop him, his eyes steel over resolutely.

Ever so gently, he places it over her face, only adding more pressure when her hand snakes around and covers his, encouraging him. After that, he doesn't let up, even when her body panics, all of her weakened muscles rigid and thrashing, her hands clawing at his enough to draw blood, fighting to live even though she doesn't want to anymore.

He's happy that he doesn't have to see her eyes through this, happier still when her body finally gives up, finally stops fighting. Finally sets free her strong, vibrant soul from its pitiful cage.

~.~.~

Outside her window, azalea petals flutter in the wind.

"Thank you," he hears behind him, and they both breathe.