In honor of the crisis in Japan and Sadako. (This story was edited 4/19/11 - at the bottom)

"This is our cry. This is our prayer. Peace in the world." –Sadako Statue Plaque

A Thousand Cranes

Hotch didn't know shit about origami.

The intricate little folds, specific to the Japanese culture, were said to illustrate animals and objects of significance. Stars, turtles, various birds, and many other things that could be crafted delicately out of tiny squares of paper. Not that Hotch ever paid much attention to the fragile little things of art and a distinct beauty, not until now.

Right now a little girl with jet black hair cascading down her shoulders was holding out a small square of floral origami paper. She wasn't that old, no more than six, but yet she was looking at him with such an energy that couldn't be replicated. Her small, petite face smiled back at him with a naïve hope that only childhood could have. He desperately wished he could share in this everlasting faith that the world was good, and that they could destroy anything if they put their minds to it.

"Do it, mister. You'll help her. You'll see," she urged, holding out the paper to him in her tiny palm. "Do you know how? I'll show you. You need to make a thousand of them, though. I'll help. Your team, too."

Hotch rubbed his temples, exasperated. It wasn't that he was impatient with the young girl, who placed such a strong belief in small paper beings that could do no more than sit there and look pretty according to him. Being who she was, she didn't see the bad, only the good.

"Just like the story," she prompted, and then her voice lowered to a whisper and her smile faded. "That girl had luh-keem-uh, too."

Hotch let his hand drop and allowed his dark eyes to properly study the Japanese girl sitting in front of him, her hands returned to her lap. She was studying him in return, the only blotch of color against a colorless wall. Truth be told, he didn't even know why she was here. She had wanted to be, and she couldn't even remember his name, nor him hers. Yet she had insisted on coming. So that they could make origami. Specifically, a thousand origami cranes.

Hotch thought this notion was ridiculous, to say the least. Despite the fact that it was a child's flawless optimism, it just seemed a waste of time. It was frustrating, though, because he knew very well that there was nothing he could do. This wasn't an UnSub that was prowling around, that they could lock her up from and protect her no matter what. This was from within, a fatal diagnosis from a doctor they barely knew that was currently winning, and would triumph. The team had known this for a while, especially Hotch, and all they could have done was wait. Medications, treatments, nothing had worked, only assisted in further weakening her. Eventually they stopped delaying the inevitable and ended her added and unneeded sufferings. They chose to allow her to live the remainder of her life, no matter how long, as pleasantly as possible, without the hindrance of treatments that had tolling side effects.

Leave it to her to have chosen spending the last three months in the field.

The team had objected at first, as a whole, but she had her mind set and there was nothing anybody could do to change that, not that there ever had been. Now, sitting in a waiting room, he felt helpless, but not guilty. She had worked in the field and profiling UnSubs very efficiently in spite of the fate constantly looming over her head, reminding her in the form of differing symptoms, none of which were any easier to endure than the last. It was an agonizing waiting game—they woke up every day and begged for another. One day… one fateful day those pleas failed to work anymore, and she had… oh God…

Hotch took a sharp intake of breath without realizing it, and the next thing he knew a small warmth was bringing him back to earth. He realized he had been on the verge of crying, his head bent between his elbows. When he glanced to the side he acknowledged that the small patch of heat was body heat from the girl's hand, resting in what could only be a supportive manner on his large shoulder.

"It'll be okay."

Apparently the girl was perceptive. Her age was very deceiving, he noted. After all, age was just a number. A number that's still too small, he thought, referring to the number of years she had been alive for, being abruptly cut short by a force she couldn't resist. The girl gave him a comforting smile and spoke her mind as children tended to do. "I don't know what it's like, mister, but she was nice. She had hair like mine. I don't know if she'll be okay. But if she can't be, then at least you should be, 'cause it doesn't do anybody any good if you're both hurt."

Hotch couldn't resist cracking a minuscule, if sad, smile at the child. Pleased by his reaction she permitted her smile to widen, and once more held out the beautifully designed paper.

"This is how you make the crane, mister. This will be the first one, and I'll show you how to make the rest. You need to show your team, and once you have a thousand, she gets one wish."

With expertise she pulled back and set to making the precise folds necessary to bring the crane to life. His interest peaked, he lifted his head and straightened his aching back to better observe her. Her small fingers were working to make the creases in just the right places with a practiced accuracy that Hotch could never hope to compare to. Once again, the question came to mind of how she had even gotten involved. Truth was, she wasn't; she just chose to be. Wrong place at the wrong time, he supposed. Or, perhaps, the right place at the right time.

"There." She held out the paper turned origami crane, its wings spread and it's head held high. She took Hotch's larger hand in her own small one and placed the bird in his palm, small compared to the mass of his hand. Curiously he inspected it, every crinkle made so faultlessly that the bird stood as still and proud as a real crane. A gorgeous bird, downsized to a piece of paper bent in just the right way to present its elegance.

"You make it fly like this."

She reached forward and pulled the crane's tail, causing the wings to flex and pull inwards. When she released the fold, the tail moved forward and the wings unfurled once more, imitating the bird in flight. Hotch developed a strange fondness for the unimportant object in his hand and the girl next to him. At this moment, he decided to give in, since there was nothing else to do. Nothing he could do to alter the path that had previously been laid out for his co-worker, friend, and perhaps even more. That would never happen now, though, and there was a multitude of regrets lying heavily on his shoulders. Not that this girl saw any of what he did, though. She saw light, happiness, and a world where Santa brought her presents every Christmas morning and the Tooth Fairy left dollar bills under her pillow for every time one of her teeth fell out. He saw a world where Santa was an impossibility and the Tooth Fairy was really just him, slipping into Jack's room quietly.

He stopped this train of thought when an image of him in a mint green one piece, crown, wand, and wings prancing noiselessly into Jack's darkened room slipped into his head.

"What's the story?" he asked, noting the defeated tone his voice had taken on. His voice, displaying an unusual quality for him, attracted the attentions of Morgan, Reid, JJ, Rossi, and Garcia, who moved from their small cluster of chairs to situate themselves around Hotch and the girl. The girl, enticed by the large amount of attention she had accumulated, complied eagerly almost instantly.

"A long time ago, there was a girl named Sadako Sasaki," she began. It occurred to Hotch that no wonder he couldn't recall her name, if it even scarcely resembled one like the name she had just mentioned, astonishingly without any difficulty. "There was a really big fight, my mama says it was called a war. There was bad stuff in the air that made her really sick with what your friend has. Luh-keem-a." Leukemia, Hotch mentally corrected, dismayed at the grimness lacing even his most intimate thoughts. "She tried to make a thousand of these cranes," she gingerly held up Hotch's hand with both of her own, "and only made it to six hundred and forty four before she got too sick and passed away." She didn't notice the collective wince that passed through the group in a ripple at just the idea of her… dying, even though they knew it was impending and approaching faster than they liked.

"Her friends finished the cranes for her. They hung them all up by her… her… um, what's it called? The stone with a person's name on it and everything? When they pass away, and they're buri—"

"A gravestone?" JJ quickly interrupted before unpleasant pictures of her friend's funeral could manifest themselves, forever imprinted on her brain.

The girl nodded. "Because they say that when you make a thousand origami cranes, the person who the cranes were made for gets one wish."

The team was intrigued, but Reid was confused. He opened his mouth to point out that technically this was unfeasible; because wishes were only imaginary things conjured up by the creative human mind. A stern look from Rossi, Morgan, and Hotch silenced him, however, and Hotch resolved to explain to him later on.

There was a lull in conversation and movement for a little while, during which the team took to digest the story. Hotch was reminded of that time on the plane, when she had been playing with a star puzzle that had grabbed Reid's focus. While he toyed with it she retold the story that accompanied the riddle, and by the time she finished the extremely brief fantasy tale of romances, Reid was placing the completed three dimensional star in front of her much to her amazement.

"How do you make them?" Startled by the interruption Hotch's gaze shot up and immediately locked with that of Morgan's. His eyes mirrored Hotch's feelings exactly, not that he could put a name to the majority of them. They were too many and too complicated, even for him, a seasoned profiler. Overwhelmed, anxious, hopelessness, these were just the beginnings of a string of emotions that ran far deeper than the human mind could properly comprehend. Yet each mind was touched by this complication in its lifetime, and each person struggled to overcome it, and ultimately failed. He who would eventually learn every emotion, its origins and its meanings to its very core, would be a very depressed man indeed, Hotch decided. Feelings weren't meant to be dissected, only experienced.

The unit chief zoned out as the girl attempted to demonstrate how to create the frail paper animal. She distantly reminded him of the woman currently lying in a hospital bed, living out hours that were once expendable, and were now precious and few. Perhaps not even—possibly even minutes, or seconds, there was no way to tell. How come this had happened today, of all days? Not that it was an abnormal or irregular day in any sense—it was just like any other one. It began with a morning, consisted of a rather full day of working, and was bound to end with a night. Only, during this regular pattern something had shifted. It was subtle at first, unnoticeable, and in fact, nobody could have even predicted it.

Hotch had paired himself with her for interrogations more and more of late. The team agreed on this as a whole, although without her actual knowledge. Out of all of them, Hotch was best suited to be able to emotionally stand being in her presence and to protect her should something happen, which it had. Just not in the kind of way that he would have been able to shield her from, no matter how much he wished he could.

If he did make these thousand cranes, would his wish come true?

He inwardly sighed, evoking the series of events in the day that had led up to now, sitting in a plastic chair in an all white room waiting for the words of confirmation, those that would send him into a downward spiral, or those that would assure him that the inevitable could be stalled for just a bit longer. Both likelihoods had the same outcome in the end; however, he still yearned for the latter.

Everything had been routine and standard. She had come into work, her team accustomed to her lateness. Within minutes she had been groaning, practically slamming her fist into her forehead as a grueling migraine came on. Morgan, Reid, and Garcia had done their best to try to distract her and keep her mind off of it, but it passed after a while, and, relieved, the four of them had gone back to their usual banter. It was calming, soothing somehow, pretending that what was happening behind that increasingly pallor face wasn't, that they hadn't already lost to it.

The next hour had progressed, comprising of a mixture of on and off paperwork and mindless chatter and joking. Then JJ had disrupted with an urgent case file clutched in her hands, and a briefing had been set to take place. It had, the team had learned what they could of the case so far, made a few initial ponderings and musings, and then they had taken off in the plane. During the flight she had gotten up to get a bottle of water and her knees had given out and she collapsed, just like that. Luckily Hotch and Morgan had been sitting on either side of her at the time and had reached out and caught her from under her frail arms before she hit the floor of the plane. The team had all looked at them, concern etched on their faces, and she had simply shook her head, unable to retain enough strength to move from their strong grasps.

It had broken his heart, to be quite honest, seeing her in that state. Acting on a compassionate impulse, he had abandoned the case file lying open in front of him and opted instead to assist a very weak colleague, who was beginning to tremble in her effort to hold herself in a sitting position at the very least. Seeing as how she was unable to do so, Hotch felt compelled to kneel next to her and support her back, effectively propping her up when she couldn't. Morgan had released her, then, in pursuit of a glass of water to hopefully help her regain an ounce of the strength that had ebbed away recently, frighteningly fast, stolen by the leukemia infecting her.

Only Hotch could have felt it, but she relaxed into his touch. He longed to bend down and whisper soothing words in her ear, relieve her of the fear that was taking over and adding to the violence of her shaking. With the team watching, however, he wasn't able to do this, and instead sat beside her and held her up as she shook like a leaf in winter. She was loath to admit it, but she was terribly afraid, and Hotch wasn't the only one aware of this. He surveyed her, reluctant to profile her since the cancer had been the final blow that had broken down her walls and left her emotionally vulnerable and as easy to read as an open book. Her shuddering failed to cease, so he did the reasonable thing to do and spoke to her, willing his voice to remain steady for her even though he felt far from it.

"You're going to be fine. It's alright." They both shared in the sullen knowledge that these words were, in fact, untrue to the full extent. It wasn't even like she had a one in a million chance. All of her rates of survival had continued to lower until they passed the point of feasibility and her fate had been sealed in all of her medical records. For a while the team had been in denial, refusing to accept words written on a sheet of paper. But then her condition worsened to the point where headaches, fevers, shivering, all of it was frequent and expected, and they understood that it was real and it was happening before their eyes, and reluctantly came to accept it.

She was dying. Plain and simple, but extremely complicated at the same time. Needless to say, Reid was as befuddled as ever before by all these conflicting statements and feelings, but as time progressed he had come to adapt as best he could—by letting things come about instead of predicting them. He never could have foreseen them sitting in a waiting room, though.

Morgan had returned with the water just as she had mustered up enough strength to still her body, gratefully sip the water and balance herself. She had resigned to sitting beside Hotch, seeing as how she wasn't capable of moving very far, and was asleep within moments. Hotch confessed to himself that he had been stealing the occasional glance at her, but for what reason, he wasn't exactly sure anymore. The excuse that he was concerned for her welfare didn't seem plausible anymore to convey how he really felt. Not that he was about to dwell on matters of the heart now.

The rest of the ride went smoothly and they set right to work on investigating their UnSub, of whom Hotch couldn't even be concerned with currently. Later on in the day, they had uncovered the identity of one of their UnSub's former classmates, a Japanese woman—the mother of the child who was instructing a surprisingly patient Morgan on how to construct a bird out of merely paper. She and Hotch had gone to interview her, glean any information on their bad guy that might be relevant to the murders he was committing. Once there, the little girl had happily greeted them and offered them some steaming dumplings her and her mother had just finished making together. The mother, once enlightened on the reasoning behind a visit from two FBI agents, had cooperated fully and welcomed them into her home.

As soon as the door had swung shut behind them, his fellow agent had begun to show signs of an oncoming headache, accompanied by a dizzy spell. Automatically Hotch reacted and made to help her onto the small family's couch. He hadn't noticed until later that the young girl had watched with an inquiring eye while the mother preoccupied herself with returning the plate of dumplings to the kitchen to wait until later. A minute passed and she wasn't showing any signs of improving, and the girl had even joined them on the couch on her other side, asking Hotch if she was okay, and then went on to tell him that whenever her aunt had been like this, her mother had ushered her out of the room. Her mother had preserved the girl's innocence very well, Hotch realized, and didn't bother asking if she still saw said aunt anymore.

When the mother returned to the quaint living room, she had gasped at the feeble agent. Her daughter paid no mind and instead stayed silent, studying the woman as her strength departed. Before the mother could escort her child back to her room to defend her from the horrors of the world taking place before them, she had fainted. Suddenly her body slid from next to Hotch's, right onto the ground, crumpling in an unceremonious heap, ending up in a position where she was lying on her side. That had never happened before, where she had just outright lost consciousness, and perhaps it was in that fleeting second that Hotch realized this was her last day. The rest of the visit was a blur, not that he especially wanted to remember all of the unpleasant details, filled with angst and dread. The calls to the team had been the most painful, telling them to meet the pair at the hospital. When they inquired as to why, even though they probably knew, Hotch recognized that they wanted a confirmation.

"To say your goodbyes," was all he had told them before hanging up, unable to endure their varying responses.

The team had dropped what they were doing and rushed to the hospital while Hotch pushed his way into a seat next to her stretcher, where she was resting. Had he known better, he would have presumed her dead. The Japanese girl had insisted on being an adjunct to them, and with the mother incapable of swaying her child's decision, the adults had agreed. The girl rode with them in the screeching ambulance all the way there, sitting on her knees on the agent's other side and, curiously enough, without uttering so much as a peep.

Now here they were, learning how to make origami cranes so that they could acquire a last wish that would never come true.

Brought back to the present, Morgan was finishing a shabbily assembled origami crane, but nonetheless it was a sculpture made of paper, and that alone fit the bill. The girl smiled and praised him and Hotch observed as a smile in return found its way onto Morgan's bleak and dismal expression.

"She's awake."

Startled out of the shared anti-reverie, the team plus the girl glanced up to see a doctor, dressed in white and gaze averted, standing in the back of the waiting room, in front of the doors leading to the patient's rooms. As a united whole the team, with the girl in their midst, stood at full attention and followed the doctor down the white hallways to her room, where she lay in her deathbed.

To see her in this state was not unfamiliar, after having been there while she went through differing surgeries and treatments (all of which ended up in being unsuccessful), but to see her now and know that this was her deathbed hit Hotch full force. Winded, he sank into the chair nearest her bed and watched as the team, one by one, did the same, with the exception of the girl who crawled onto JJ's lap.

Silence reigned for a few minutes; minutes that stretched out painfully. The hush was only broken by the voice of the still unnamed girl. "Hi, miss."

Somehow, even with all of the seemingly endless tubes and wires hooked up to her weakened frame, she turned her head to look at the source of the voice. Recognition dawned on her after a few seconds and she presented her, in return, with a soft smile. How she managed to do such an act in the face of death, Hotch didn't know and would never fully understand.

"Me and, um, him," she gestured to Morgan, "made you cranes." Before the woman lying in the bed could really query, she proffered the two cranes, the difference between the two blatantly obvious. "They say if you make a thousand of them, the person who they were made for gets a wish. We're gonna make you a thousand of them so that you can get a wish, too."

The woman in the bed put on a full smile—though the sincerity of it could be questioned—as she attempted to push herself into a sitting position. Lacking the ounces of strength necessary to complete the action, the team reached out to help her, raising the bed and in the case of Hotch, holding her up. Her gaze swept over the team and Hotch could have sworn, although it might have just been his imagination showing him what he wanted to see, that she allowed her dark, contemplative eyes to hesitate on him, studying him just a tad longer than anybody else.

"Even if we worked from now through the night, we wouldn't be finished until morning," Reid notified them glumly, dragging them back into a displeasing reality; that wishes didn't come true, and a thousand paper cranes wouldn't magically manifest themselves in their hands.

"Well then, let's get to it," Rossi prompted, carefully lifting a piece of origami paper, boasting an abstractedly drawn brook as its chosen decoration. Having studied the art of origami years ago, and fueled by a determination that could only be brought about by such a circumstance, he transformed an adorned piece of paper to a shimmering and graceful crane in flight in a matter of moments. He held the bird out and placed it in her lap, covered by a thin white sheet that she was currently plucking at nervously. Once the paper touched her, though, she halted and opted to view the creature instead, a thing that was once lifeless now converted to something much more.

Following his lead the remainder of the team retrieved their own uniquely embellished papers from a stack the girl carried with her of over two thousand pieces. While they toiled in stillness, the dying woman summoned up the motivation to do what she otherwise might not have been able to; to survive through the night until every last crane was finished. Time went by, hours, and the sky outside the large windows darkened, casting shadows across the white room. A nurse stopped by to check on her, but quickly cataloged the audience she had in her company and simply flicked a light switch on and departed. Everyone knew that visiting hours were over, but not even the most disciplinary person could tear them apart while her life dwindled away, measured in first hours, then proceeding to minutes.

The night came and went and she stayed aware, desperately clinging to thoughts of her supportive team at her bedside, creating art out of paper for the futile hope of a child, and, she contemplated, her own hope, whatever was left of it. Morning did eventually come and darkness tugged at all of her senses, dulling them from what they would normally be. Gravity seemed to be a larger force all of a sudden and she found that she couldn't move any part of her, save her head. The initial trio of cranes had multiplied and accumulated another nine hundred and ninety six overnight. The team was tired, but frequent coffee breaks had been made and they had kept going throughout the night until the cranes covered her blankets, night tables, and really any nearby surfaces they could scavenge up. It was unauthentic, yes, but they were sure it served the same purpose and held the same meaning, and made for quite the distinct display. A white hospital bed, covered entirely in extraordinary colors and designs, fit to give an extra something to the individually handcrafted cranes.

It was a struggle to keep her eyes open and clutch to what remnants of life still stirred in her, for the most part lifeless, body. Discarded papers of cranes that were never meant to be were tossed to the side in heat of another with no time to waste—every passing minute could have been her last. The sun did peek through, giving natural light to the room. The clouds broke aside and withered until the sky was as clear a blue as a summer day, the kind of day that she had come to appreciate as this one impended.

The team took in her continually weakening state until she was immobile, imprisoned by her own strength and energy deficiency. All she did was turn her head to watch each of them individually. Under her gaze, eyes would lock and goodbyes were said, each just as heartfelt as the last. The girl had long since fallen asleep, curled up in JJ's lap. Tears were shed, though none from the woman herself. Each goodbye was said, one by one, with Hotch's being last.

He carefully positioned the thousandth and final crane in her open palm, curling her slender fingers to grasp the paper that was still warm from his own hands. It was time for his goodbye.

"What do you wish for?" Hotch asked, his voice low and rumbling yet gentle and soothing. It took about a minute for her to reply, her voice reflecting her condition; broken, cracking, and feeble.

Looking straight at him, and, Hotch felt, staring straight through his brooding gaze deeply into his core, she responded with what would be her last words. "I've already got my wish." Her fingers tightened around the origami in her hand and her body, riddled with the meager effort of speaking, sank down into the bed and was still. Her chest stopped moving, and although she could have passed for simply sleeping, there was a certain energy missing that dissolved into nothingness before their eyes.

Peace remained in her wake as tears continued to leak down onto her bed sheets, staining a few unlucky cranes that were in their path. They were even joined by Hotch's tears, an unseen but not unheard of occurrence. Words weren't enough, so they weren't spoken. The silence between them spoke enough volumes.

The funeral, days later, was short. The team was grateful for this small favor—she would have preferred it this way. She never was one for a great and unnecessary extravagance, a quality she attained from her upbringing among higher ups. The priest gave his speech to the congregation, comprised entirely of the now incomplete BAU team plus the Japanese mother and daughter. Once he had left, along with the Japanese family, the team stood around her headstone, studying it until it was deemed barely suitable for her, which was as good as it was going to get. Had they been able to they would have written a book on her instead of three words, but they were strong, specifically chosen, and they described her adequately enough for them.

The team stood back, reading over and over what had been forever carved into the stone that marked the final resting place of their friend, unfairly cheated of what would have undoubtedly been a long and fulfilling life. They hoped she could hear them as they cried to the skies.

Emily Prentiss 10 / 12 / 70 — 4 / 17 / 11

FIDELITY

BRAVERY

INTEGRITY

Bouquets of flowers to express feelings that couldn't otherwise be communicated were left by the gray stone, gilding and giving color to what would have been a drab and depressing scene. These bursts of color weren't the only addition to enlighten the sight, however. In the days between her passing and the funeral, the Japanese family had kindly strung together the thousand origami cranes. It wasn't traditional, but they had been flexible and an accommodation had been made in order to allow the thousand cranes to bless her grave with their very presence. There were three clean white strings, tied around the gravestone, holding three hundred and thirty three tenderly threaded cranes each. The thousandth crane, crafted by Hotch himself, had its own string, attached to the top of the stone where it was perched, looking out over her resting place with its head held high and its wings spread proudly.

A wind blew by, scattering the cranes and pulling them along with it. All nine hundred and ninety nine cranes had the wind catch under their wings and drag them aloft, causing them to fly in a rippling effect. Their colors shone brilliantly against one another, each distinct and contrasting greatly from the last. Each crane moved in perfect synchronization with one another, in a permanent pact to fulfill their purpose and guard the woman lying underneath them, the woman they were born for, until the strings wore under the influence of the elements and snapped.

The thousandth flew directly upwards, straight towards the blue sky, the soft purples, oranges, reds, and pinks of a painted sunset covering every inch of its small body. Slivers of silver accents among the warmer colors glittered under the sunlight that Emily had so appreciated in her last days, giving the magnificent crane a dazzling, astonishing, and breathtaking appearance as a symbol of an everlasting hope, and even more so, the last statement to represent an unbreakable, unforgettable love from the man who had raised it.

Okay, this was my first oneshot and I know I have a bad habit of whumping Emily, and I really should be working on The Living Dead, but this idea just popped into my head and wouldn't leave me alone. It was inspired by a fundraiser my school decided to do to aid relief efforts for Japan. The tale that the little Japanese girl tells is real, although I'm not sure on the details. You can find it on Wikipedia. Hope you enjoyed, please, R&R!

By the way, did anyone notice that Emily's name wasn't mentioned until the end? NOT easy to do!