Notes: This is a side story in continuity with "Struggling Against Gravity", though it can also be read as a standalone. It takes place about half a year before the beginning of the main fic, but it meant to be read in conjunction with the second or third chapter.

This basically revolves completely around major GS3 spoilers, so steer clear if you'd rather avoid them!

1000 Cranes

Iris had long thought, since the night she had first arrived here, fingers tangled amidst her sister's, that twilight was when Hazakura was at its most beautiful.

She couldn't begin to account for the countless changes that had come into her life since the conclusion of her trial, over a year ago. But Hazakura and the bitter cold of its winter was everlasting; the Inner Temple was as creaky and fragile as ever; Heavenly Hall remained something of a battered, private joke between she and Bikini. And she still waited quietly by the Dusky Bridge each evening as the last traces of sunlight began to fade, painting a vast canvas of vivid color across the sky and against the crests of Eagle Mountain.

"It's beautiful," Pearl gasped, both hands wrapped tightly around Iris's arm, standing on her tiptoes to get a better view. She came dangerously close to the edge of the ravine; Iris pulled her back, gently, to where she knew they were safe.

"It is," she agreed.

It was the first time she had been able to show anyone.

Evening had just begun to set in; the air was cooling, and they had just returned inside and lit the hibachi, waiting for Bikini to call them to start preparing supper. Pearl's hair still had clumps of snow in it; even pulling the strands free from their twin loops had not shaken all of them loose. Iris began to fold the squares of paper laid in front of them, smiling. It was difficult not to be distracted by the eager, fascinated eyes shining just inches away from her moving hands.

Pearl had arrived yesterday, oversized bags clutched in both hands, stuffed with spare clothes and presents for her hosts. The first time she had come, not long after Iris had been released from prison, it had been without warning; Iris had stepped to the front gate to attend to her usual chores, and dropped her broom in astonishment at the squeal when she prodded it behind the snowmobile to sweep. The smaller girl looked torn between mulishness and embarrassment as she crawled out, snow and ice flecked across her medium's robes and shivering badly from the cold as she tried to stammer out an apology for intruding.

Bikini had scolded her heavily. She was welcome at any time; all the silly girl had to do was call. Iris remembered keenly how her eyes had shone nervously as they exchanged cell phone numbers; but her patience had finally rewarded her with a smile on her younger sister's—it had still seemed surreal to think of her that way—face.

She was still not sure how to describe the feel of it against her mind—sister had always been a word reserved for a single person in her life, constantly in and amidst her shadow, suffocating and eternal. But it was impossible that the concept of shadow could ever be applied to Pearl, her cheeks flushed, still breathless from the remaining traces of cold, damp hair clinging to the sides of her face, framing her glowing smile.

As they set about warming themselves, Pearl—my sister—was watching her, eyes spellbound, as she carefully folded the small square of colored paper in her hands, one corner over the other, molding it into a particular shape. Finally, she pulled the wings apart in one last, easy motion, and the tiny paper crane sat completed on the table before them.

"Wow," Pearl marvelled, clapping her small hands together. "That's amazing! I could never do that!"

"I'm sure you could." Iris smiled. "Why don't I teach you?"

"Oh, could you?" Her eyes lit up. "Could you? You don't mind?"

"Of course not." She laid the next slip of paper into Pearl's hands—an orange one this time—and curled her fingers around her knuckles, guiding them. "Here. Just fold the paper like this, and..."

By the time they were through, a dozen of the decorative birds were staring back at them from the table. They seemed to form a rainbow of color amidst the neutral scrolls that covered the walls of the main hall.

"Where did you learn how to do this, Miss Iris?" Pearl asked, when she was done circling the table to inspect them from every angle. "Can you make other things, too?"

"Just a few," Iris admitted. "Flowers, boxes... simple things like that."

"I'm so envious..." Pearl settled down back next to her, expression contemplative, before echoing her question from before. "Did Sister Bikini teach you?'

Iris tensed. The last crane that she had reached to perch on the table nearly toppled over onto the floor.

"No," she murmured, straightening. "I already knew when I came here."

"Really?"

She nodded.

Pearl stared; the last bits of ice were finally beginning to melt, and water dripped from the ends of her hair. It gave her the impression of being very small. Iris reached over to pluck a blanket from the corner of the room, draping it around Pearl's shoulders to keep her from getting her robes too wet, gently pulling the ends of her hair free from beneath it.

"So..." Pearl swayed back and forth for a moment. "Then... did Mother teach you?"

Iris's hands went still. She was still something of a coward, after all.

"My sister taught me," she said, quietly.

She waited for Pearl to recoil, or quickly change the subject, but the younger girl only blinked, before cupping her chin in her hand—it was a habit she must have picked up from Phoenix and Maya—and looked thoughtful. "Your sister... oh. You mean Miss Dahlia?"

"Yes," Iris murmured, pulling back. "That's right."

Pearl frowned, her brow furrowed in thought. "Where did she learn, then?"

"I don't know, really." It had seemed natural, growing up, that Dahlia had the answer for everything; no matter how Mother screamed, or how stony Father's silence, or what they faced both together and apart—Dahlia always held the key, was always cunning, always had a dozen plans brewing at once to ensure their security. She was a person who had arrived at Hazakura with a photograph of a diamond and an exact plan as to how to pull it from the clutches of their father, clever and ruthless enough to leave Iris speechless; given that, the fact that she seemed to be born knowing such small things as how to fold origami seemed strange to question.

"Did you play together with her a lot?" Pearl wondered. Iris hesitated.

"My sister..." To call Dahlia our sister, even now after nearly a year had passed, didn't quite seem right. She wondered if it ever would. "Before we left Kurain, we made origami quite often." It was difficult to convince herself that the soft curl of nostalgia against her chest wasn't warm. "We used to make entire strings of cranes and hang them across the guest rooms, in case anyone came." A thought struck her. "Did you ever see them there, Pearl?"

"Huh? Me?" Pearl's eyes widened. "Paper cranes, right? On a string...? Umm..." Her eyes flitted to the side; she raised her right thumb to her mouth, visibly nervous. After a few minutes, glancing back at Iris's curious expression—she had tried to keep it restrained at curious without quite treading on hopeful—she broke into a sudden, forced smile.

"Y-yes, I remember now!" She nodded vigorously. "They were... really cute!"

So Mother took them down after all.

A high-pitched wailing sound from the kitchen interrupted them.

"Oh, the tea must be ready," Pearl said, pushing herself onto her feet. "Wait here, I'll get it!"

"It's all right, Pearl," Iris said. "I can..."

"No, no!" Pearl exclaimed. "I'm the one imposing, Miss Iris, so it's the least I can do!"

Another smile touched on Iris's face as she watched her disappear around the corner into the kitchen, loose hair bouncing off her shoulders, humming still audible. She re-entered a few minutes later, ceramic tray heavy and oversized between her tiny wrists, trying not to wobble the kettle or the cups too much before she finally set them down with a sigh of relief.

After Iris had poured, Pearl carefully turned her cup around on the palm of her hand, making sure to keep her shoulders properly straight as she sipped primly. Iris watched her fondly.

"It always tastes better when I'm up here," Pearl noted, a thoughtful chime in her voice. She began to raise her sleeve to wipe her mouth, then caught herself and looked thoroughly embarrassed at her close brush with such bad manners.

"Does it really?" Iris tilted her head. "Maybe it's the cold."

She blew softly over the surface of the steaming liquid, before raising the cup to her own lips. It burned down her throat, soothingly, giving way to a rush of warmth just beneath her skin.

"Hmm," she said, thoughtfully, staring down into it. "It tastes better to me, too, so that can't be it. You must just be very good at brewing tea, Pearl. Certainly better than I am."

"Oh! I'm s-sure that's not true!" Pearl exclaimed, her own cup nearly jumping from her hands. "I-I really like your tea! You... always put in just the right amount of sugar, and you mix it so well!"

"That's very sweet of you," Iris said, "But I still think there's a lot I could learn from you."

The smaller girl blushed, and reached up to nervously tuck her head under the damp towel, covering her eyes. She made a tiny sound that Iris supposed was meant to be thank you. Iris reached out to slide the edge of the cloth back from Pearl's forehead, so that her bangs came loose.

"Where did you learn?" Iris asked, gently. Pearl's eyes widened.

"U-um, you know..." She bit her lip, staring down at the floor. Her fingers danced around the edge of the towel, playing out an internal battle to hide her face once again.

Iris nodded, encouraging her on.

"My... my mother taught me." Her hands curled into tiny fists in her lap as her eyes darted quickly to the side.

She had expected it, but it fell like a weight between them all the same.

Mother.

Mother and Father were more shadows than people to Iris's recollection—she could remember that they had fought often, voices resounding off each others' through the walls and the floors trembling with the force of their rage at one another—though Morgan Fey had always seemed caught between fury and despair no matter who the target and what the cause. Looking back, no longer having to cower in fear as a periphreal target of her anger, a part of her found her mother almost pitiable instead, wailing and wretched for the irreplaceable things she had lost through clenched fingers.

Father's face was lost to her entirely—there was the vague outline of his back, cold and distant, as she had watched him walk away from her for the last time through the gates of Hazakura Temple. Pearl had never known him, but Iris supposed her understanding of her own father, leaving behind his own daughter in the wake of a power-hungry wife and his own lack thereof—the same tragedy, spun with different players every time—probably wasn't very different.

Her memories of the village of Kurain itself were blurry and faint. Try as she might to remember the look of the traditional buildings, the feel of the cool dirt paths beneath her toes when she and Dahlia had snuck out of their room, the one solid image she had to cling to from that time was the image of her sister's profile, staring defiantly up at anything that dared try bear down upon either of them. The other details were extraneous, bleeding into the framework of her present life at Hazakura, irrelevant.

Stupid, Dahlia scowled, knocking the ruined paper cranes from her sister's hands. You're so stupid you can't even do something as easy as that.

Iris stared down at her hands.

Dahlia.

"She was a good teacher, wasn't she?" she asked, suddenly, as gently as she could. Pearl raised her head, eyes wide. "Mother was."

"Yes... she was." She bit her lip; as she spoke, the words came out haltingly, as though they were painful to say—something like shame wound into each syllable. "Mother was so good at so many things. Cooking, and making tea, and painting, and reading Japanese characters..."

"Yes," Iris agreed, quietly. "She was a very strong woman."

"Y-yes," Pearl said.

"I'm sure you miss her very much."

Pearl had opened her mouth, eyes focused on the far wall, to give another reply—automatic, distracted—when Iris's words seemed to register and she swallowed whatever response she had intended, momentarily stunned. "I..."

Iris waited. Pearl stared downwards as her teeth bore down on her thumbnail, cup of tea cooling and forgotten on the table adjacent.

"I'm... okay."

Iris stared. "Pearl..."

"After all," she said, and there was a high strain to her voice, threatening to break, "there are so many people I have that take care of me n-now, and Mother isn't... I mean, a few years ago, she... so, I..."

The cold shock that had torn through her felt as though she had been plunged into ice water—paralyzing, and making the world around her dim and flicker in and out of focus, when Diego Armando had pursed his lips together only for a moment before telling her that her sister's execution had finally been carried out. Dahlia Hawthorne was dead.

Pull yourself together, he said roughly, averting his gaze to the wall next to her.

Her head had snapped upwards, as she tried to steady her breathing. She had not noticed she had stumbled backwards, her back against the wall.

Well?

Armando's mouth was drawn in a hard line, as though daring her to mourn.

Her lips had been numb as she forced herself to speak. I'm...

Pearl stood again to refill Iris's cup. The kettle wobbled in her hands, unsteadily, as she poured, and her gaze was intense as she stared hard at it, as though daring it to break.

It's all right.

"It must be hard," Iris murmured.

Pearl's head shot up, as though a gunshot had gone off—a splash of tea skewed sideways from the cup and fell against the floor, but she didn't seem to notice. She was still for a long moment before she finally gave a loud sniff—her head inclining again, as though trying to curl in on herself, the kettle settling back onto the table with a clunk. Her lips moved a few times before her voice was actually audible.

"Mr. Nick and Mystic Maya... they're so kind to me." The hem of her channelling robe bunched painfully in her hands. Iris's heart ached watching her. "I love them so much. But I..."

She had wept in silence, the door locked behind her. She had known it was coming, had known for years, tried to steel herself for it—but could not help feeling blindsided, as though half of herself had been torn away and been lost.

It's all right.

"Sometimes, I... I still feel so lonely without her... she always took such good of me... she was always looking out for me... even when I had to talk to her when she was in j-jail, she always smiled when she saw me..."

Iris reached out, laying her hand over Pearl's. Her shoulders relaxed, visibly, and when she spoke again, her voice didn't shake quite so much.

"She did care about me... didn't she?" There was genuine pleading in her voice.

"Yes," Iris said, softly. "I think she did."

Pearl stared; her eyes were suddenly overbright.

"...thank you."

The towel fell from her shoulders as she raised her hands to wipe at her eyes.

"I—I've never told anyone that until now. My chest, um, kind of feels funny..."

"If it's hurting, you should let the people close to you know." A different face rose abruptly in her memory; faded grey bangs shadowing narrowed eyes, an attorney's badge not belonging to him glinting on his chest. You're still running. It's not too late. "I'm sure that Mystic Maya would want to know if you're feeling sad. She only wants you to be happy, too—she and Phoenix both."

"I know." Pearl twisted a knot into her sash, wretched. "I know, but..."

But.

"I can't tell them." The words were so soft as to be barely audible; Iris had to incline her head forward to be sure of them at all.

"Pearl," Iris began, but it was as though a dam had broken; Pearl continued speaking, the words tumbling over one another.

"After all, Mother tried... she tried to do that terrible thing to Mystic Maya. I shouldn't... I shouldn't still feel like this. I can't ever talk to her again. But I... shouldn't be sad about it... right?" She wiped her eyes, sniffling loudly, and braced the palm of her hands against her cheekbones in a vain attempt to stifle any further tears. "I'm... I'm an awful person, aren't I?"

Her arms moved as though they had a will of her own, enveloping her little sister, and pulling her forward against her. Pearl gave a soft squeak in surprise, and Iris could feel warm moisture blotting her own robes.

"You're not an awful person," Iris said, softly. "You're a wonderful person. I'm so happy to be able to know you."

"But I..." Pearl hiccuped. "Mother..."

"Listen to me."

Iris's grip tightened around her; a part of her wishing desperately it could be as easy as crushing the sadness and guilt out of her. She raised one hand to stroke her hair. Pearl fell quiet.

But.

"My sister... Dahlia. You know about her now, right? All of the terrible things that she did and all of the people that she hurt..."

"Y-yes," Pearl mumbled. "I remember her picture. She was very pretty." She added, suddenly, "Like you."

"I loved her." Iris stared down at the floor below them. "I still do."

The air around them went very still.

"What was she like?" Pearl asked. Her voice was quiet. "Mother never talked about her."

"She was..."

She could hear the echoes of the people surrounding her within her life. Cruel and selfish, a person who would cut down everyone and anything to get what she wanted. A person so filled with hate even death couldn't stop her. Demoness.

"...so strong and beautiful. I've never known anyone else like her." Her eyes fell shut. "It's because of her that I'm still here."

Soft weight fell over her hand; when she looked again, Pearl had leaned forward, fingers tight around her own. "So... she took care of you, too, Miss Iris?"

"Yes, she did." Iris hesitated; that wasn't quite right. "Well, yes, but... it was a little different from that. She looked out for us both when we were at Kurain." She reached out to brush a strand of brown hair behind Pearl's ear. "But more than that..."

"Yes...?"

It was the first time she had ever told anyone.

"...it's because of her that I didn't have to hate, no matter how much we suffered. Because she took that on terrible burden for both of us." The words came out in a rush; low and garbled. In the back of her thoughts, she was a little bit surprised. She had never realized before that she had been waiting, too. "And I can never... I can never repay her or her memory enough for that. Even knowing what she did and what she was. That won't ever change."

Pearl's eyes were transfixed on her; they seemed to be reflecting something other than the room around them. "She was strong for you, wasn't she?"

"Yes." Her throat was tight. "That's... what I choose to believe."

Pearl stared at her, eyes boring into hers, reflecting strength she had inherited from her mother. She stood, abruptly, and moved to the far wall, inspecting the lesser magatama closely, hands folded behind her back.

"Can I tell you something, Miss Iris?"

"Anything."

A moment passed before Pearl actually spoke. "I always thought... why wasn't Mystic Maya sad after... after what happened to her mother?" Her voice carried more weight than any ten year old's should ever have to, Iris thought. "When they took my mother away, I cried all night. I was so sad for so long."

"Of course you were," Iris said, soft.

"But, that night, after everything, I felt so awful..." Pearl swallowed. "I don't know what I would have done if Mystic Maya hadn't smiled at me when I saw her again. I didn't really understand it back then, but... she was being strong for me, too, wasn't she?"

"I think so," Iris said. "Because she loves you very much."

Pearl shook her head. Her arms fell back to her sides, fingers curling slowly against her palms.

"I don't want that. I don't want her to have to be strong for me anymore. I want... I want to be there for her, from now on. Miss Iris," Pearl said, suddenly, turning back around to face her. The faint light from the altar candles struck her face in such a way that she looked older, somehow; her features a little more defined, a little steadier, a little stronger. "I think you're a wonderful person, too."

Iris stared. She could not manage more than a whisper.

"...thank you."

The sound of footsteps against wooden floorboards sounded abruptly in the distance.

"Iris! Pearly!" Bikini's voice called out. "It's about time to get supper started, girls!"

Both of them jumped as the spell around them cracked and shattered; Iris quickly dabbed her moist eyes with her sleeve before turning around to call back. "Coming, Sister!"

Iris pushed herself to her feet; Pearl drew away from the altar to approach her, shyly.

"Let's be careful," Iris said, smiling anew. "We made a bit too much last time..."

"Oh, yes..." Pearl said, vaguely. Iris cast another look at the rows of paper birds they had made together. Pearl's eyes followed her line of sight.

"After we've eaten," she said suddenly. "Let's get some string for them to hang them from."

Iris blinked; for a moment, she was sure she had mishead. "You want to?"

"Y-yes!" Pearl looked up her, and Iris felt her surprise giving way to infectious enthusiasm. "And we can put them up in your room, or... I could take them home... w-whatever you'd like, Miss Iris."

"Why not both?" Iris suggested. "We can each have one, so our rooms can match."

"Really? Can we?" Pearl's face lit up into a smile again, and despite the growing darkness outside, the last snatches of light finally fading in the crevace between the two mountaintops, the main hall suddenly seemed brighter and more lucid than as far back as Iris could remember. "I'd really like that!"

"We'll do it, then."

Iris held out her hand; Pearl took it, fingers entwining hers. Sharing a secret giggle between sisters, they moved together to the kitchen to begin preparing their evening meal.