Sorry it took me a while to get this written. Well, here it is. There will be another chapter or two after this one, but the end is near.

We all gathered around the table in the temporary base. It was a large building hidden among the mountains in the Land of Rain, used on the rare occasions Pein required our physical presence. After waking up he had beamed the summons and we had hurried, Sasori-no-Danna and I, to the location. We traveled by bird, and the whole day it took us to get there I thought about that dream. Because there was no way it was anything else but a dream, even though it felt as though I had really been there. Sasori brooded inside Hiruko, refusing to come out, and that was fine because I didn't feel like talking to him anyway. I kept thinking about the girl. Even though everything else seemed so real, inside my memories she was fading, so that I couldn't remember her face or her voice anymore. I spent the trip trying to recall, but it didn't do any good. By the time we touched down in front of the secret entrance and performed the hand seal, she was a ghostly shape of black and white with blue stars for eyes.

We took our seats, Pein at the head and Konan by his side. Everyone was looking at her, silently asking for answers. The atmosphere was heavy; nobody said anything. Outside, I heard thunder rumble, the beginning of a storm. The room was dark despite the torches placed at intervals along the wall. Pein placed his elbows on the table, and intertwined his fingers. Rain began to pour as he spoke.

"The reason why I have called you all here today needs not be reiterated. I at first believed it to be a dream, but Konan has convinced me otherwise. She has met the being that was the cause for our . . . trip . . . and knows the story behind it. She had informed me of it, and has requested to inform you all as well." He sat back, and Konan stepped forward. Her eyes were dark with sadness but when she spoke, her voice was soft and neutral, as it always was on the rare occasions she would speak at all.

We listened intently as she told us the sad story of Amano Chizuru.

In a completely white hospital room that smelled of anesthetic despite the fresh flowers on the windowsill, a young girl meticulously colored in a picture book with a set of assorted crayons. She was perhaps three of four years old, her black hair in braids and her big blue eyes furrowed in concentration as she made sure to stay within the lines. However, she looked up very quickly when the door opened.

"Mama!" she said. "What did he say? Can I go home now?"

The woman took a seat and smiled, patting her head. "Not yet, Chizu-chan. You need to stay here a little while longer, alright?"

"Okay! Look, I'm almost done!" Amano Chizuru said, holding up her drawing.

"That's very nice, dear."

"Is Papa coming?"

"Yes, he's bringing Chika-chan."

Sometime later, she was permanently admitted and moved to a dormitory of children her age. That is where she met a boy named Takahashi Tsubasa. He was tall for his nine years, with dark blond hair that always seemed to stick out in every direction, green eyes, and a constant smile. He and Chizu-chan got along very well together, and having been admitted at the same time, were soon inseparable. She took to calling him 'Oniichan' and they always played together. One of their favorite games was Kemari, at which Tsubasa excelled. He could juggle, too, and frequently delighted her with intricate displays of dexterity. They also liked to play tag or hide and seek with the other children, hiding all around the hospital and getting scolded for it later.

Tsubasa told Chizu-chan that he was here because of a heart condition; and that he might need to get a new heart if his treatment didn't work. However, she couldn't tell him why she was here. She was the one taken away for tests the most often out of all the children, and her medication varied often; but she was never told why she was here. When her mother visited, Chizu-chan would always ask the same question,

"Can I go home now?" And her mother would answer.

"Just a little longer. Be a good girl and bear with it, alright?"

Chizu-chan didn't mind, at first. She had a wonderful time with Tsubasa and the other children, and only had lessons once a week, administered by a teacher from her kindergarten. She got to play, and she was very happy for a while. She seemed to grow a bit weaker each day, and tests revealed a growing numbness in her legs. She started to cough up blood and had fits where her heart almost stopped, but her varied panoply of medication kept the worst at bay. She was able to live rather happily. The change came a little while after her sixth birthday, an occasion on which she had gone on a trip to the zoo with the other children. She had had a wonderful time.

The change came while she was playing tag with Tsubasa. He had grown, and had been moved to a dormitory with older children, but they still played together all the time. Chizu-chan had raced down the hall as fast as her legs could carry her, calling after him that it wasn't fair because his legs were longer than hers and she couldn't keep up. She skidded around a corner, Tsubasa turned around to taunt her, and she suddenly seemed to over in the air, eyes wide with shock. The next instant, she went sprawling with a cry of pain over the cold white floor. When Tsubasa hurried to her side, laughing at her clumsiness, teasing her about having tripped on her own feet, his voice faltered because he saw that something was horribly wrong. Chizuru had pushed herself up, her legs spread out in front of her, completely limp. Her eyes, glazed over with shock and so wide the blue in them seemed lost, wandered up to him.

"I can't feel my legs."

Chizuru was moved to a private room. Tests revealed complete loss of sensation from above her knee to her toes. She couldn't walk anymore.

It was around the same time that her father and sister stopped visiting. She overheard the nurses talking about a confrontation between her parents, during which her father had told her mother to 'give up.' Her father had left, taking her sister Chikako with him. She never saw him again. During her visits, her mother was always cheerful, and would always answer the inevitable question by "Just a little longer."

Tsubasa spent nearly all his free time with her. If she wasn't allowed to leave her room because of her treatment, he would visit and delight her with new tricks. He once attempted to put on a puppet show, but gave up with an embarrassed grin when he realized that was a bit too hard for him. He took her out in a wheelchair whenever she could, and got very creative in adapting the games so that she could play. During the spring, he got special permission to take her to see the cherry blossoms in the courtyard, which she couldn't see from her window. The cherry blossoms falling in a soft pink rain were one of her most treasured memories.

One day, a little bit after she turned seven, she said,

"You know, Oniichan, there are a lot of things I want to do when I get to leave."

"Like what?" he said, juggling a couple of temari balls. She grinned mischievously.

"Like seeing a real puppet show!"

His face flushed and he missed. Picking up the colorful balls, he said, "You promised not to mention that again!"

"Sorry, sorry!" she laughed, and coughed.

"But that gives me an idea. I have stuff I want to do too. Say, why don't we make a list?"

"A list? Of what?"

"Of things we can do together once we both get to leave! Give me a sec'." He rushed out for a minute or two, and came back with a notepad and a pen. He wrote down, 'see a puppet show' on it. "What next? Oh, I want to go camping." He added that.

"I went camping, once, before I got here. I want to see the forest again, I remember, the smell . . ."

"We'll do that. What else?"

Chizu-chan wanted to go to an amusement park. Tsubasa wanted to go scuba diving, and she wanted to ride a dolphin, and insisted it get put on the list even though he said it wasn't really feasible. He regaled her with tales of what they would do on the beach.

"You have to destroy the sand castle, before the sea gets to it. And if you put a shell next to your ear, you'll hear the waves."

She said she wanted to fly. He indulged her. He wanted to visit the hot springs. She wanted to see a prince defeat the dragon, and she wanted to see a princess. He wrote that down. They would make it work, somehow. He wanted to play poker, and had to explain it as something only grownups could do, like drinking alcohol, and act which was also added to the list at Chizu-chan's insistence. She wanted to roll down a grassy hill. He wanted to ride a horse. And so their wish list was written. She pinned it up on her wall, so she could look at it and think of all the things she would get to do with her Oniichan once she got better.

By the time she turned seven, the times Tsubasa could come grew less and less frequent. He was getting sicker, couldn't run anymore, and his complexion grew deathly pale, but he walked in one day with a great smile on his face, and said,

"Guess what? I'm getting a new heart!"

She wished him good luck. She herself was growing weaker, but she didn't want to show it in front of him. He was practically bouncing with excitement, and she felt a little sad. She would miss him once he left.

The surgery was a success, and Tsubasa was discharged. He came to say goodbye to her, and gave her a hug, promising to visit. He told her jokingly that she had better hurry up and get better; else he would get started on that wish list without her. She did her best to laugh and wave him goodbye through the window.

She could hardly leave her room anymore. Her mother came infrequently, and when she did, she almost couldn't bear to be in the same room as her daughter. Tsubasa made good on his promise, though, and visited her often with gifts. One of them was a pink stuffed bunny with an eye missing.

"He used to be mine," Tsubasa said, turning red with embarrassment. "His name's Usagi-san. I . . . I figured you'd need him more than me."

She hugged the bunny tightly, hiding her burning face. She was also a little embarrassed, and a bit sad that he still considered her such a child. But she kept Usagi-san at her side at all times.

Another time he visited her, he brought her paper and declared he was going to teach her how to make origami cranes. When she asked why, he said,

"Your name means 'one thousand cranes,' and you don't know? There's a legend that says, if you fold one thousand origami cranes you'll get your wish granted."

"One thousand? But that's way too many!"

"Dummy, I'm not saying we'll make a thousand, I just want to teach you how to make them. I can teach you others, but we can start with these."

So Tsubasa taught her to fold origami cranes. She was very taken with it, and he left her with a large supply of paper. That image of him leaving, his school bag hoisted over his shoulder, grinning with his hair stuck up in every direction like always, would be the last one she ever saw of him. It was sketched in her mind, ephemeral, glowing in the sunset streaming through the window so that everything was dyed red and gold and fuzzy around the edges like a hazy dream. She had a dream the next night, where she stretched out her hand through the golden air to keep him from leaving, to make him stay here before it was too late, but her limbs were heavy and her voice caught in her throat before soft golden light killed all sound and the door closed without a shudder.

It happened a little before she turned eight. She was being pushed down the hall by a nurse, in route for more tests, when a gurney was wheeled through. It flashed by in a whirlwind of confusion and urgent calling, and she thought it was Tsubasa laying there, an oxygen mask over his face, eyes closed and face devoid of color.

The next day, her mother came. She told her that Tsubasa wouldn't be able to visit for a while, but that he would surely be back. Her smile as she said this was weak, as if she was on the verge of breaking down completely.

Chizuru was left alone. Over the next several weeks, she stared at the wish list, the bunny, the folded cranes, the temari balls he had played with, the pocket watch he had given her, all the colorful things he had left behind. The vivid splashes of color stood out on the dull white of the room, sharp, a myriad of reds and blues and yellows and greens scattered over blank space. The colors were the only things left now.

There's a legend that says, if you fold one thousand origami cranes you'll get your wish granted.

One day, almost without realizing it, her hands tentatively reached to the colors, and she began to fold.

She was so weak by now she could barely sit up, and her hands trembled so badly that it was slow going. She coughed, and blood ran down her lips, and she had moments when she could scarcely breathe. But she kept folding. The colors rearranged themselves into a sea of little paper birds.

The colorful paper given to her by Tsubasa soon ran out. The nurses brought her some more from the gift shop. One by one, a little at a time, the cranes stained the white and covered everything. Like a steady tide, as the seasons passed by and her body wasted away, she continued to fold.

Finally, when she turned ten, she had folded one thousand paper cranes. But when she went to sleep that night, the curtains open so she could see the stars, she did not know what wish to make. Because she knew. She knew she would never leave the hospital. She knew she would never see Tsubasa again. She would never go to an amusement park, play on the beach, smell the forest, and she would never, ever grow up. Fairy tales aren't real. There are no magical cranes to grant wishes.

"A wish . . . that's so stupid . . . It's just a waste of time . . . These things won't bring Oniichan back, and they won't save me either!" In a sudden rage she ripped the cranes off their peg. She cried for the first time in years. Small fists crushed the cranes, her tears running down into the gay strings.

"I don't want to die . . . I don't want to die . . ." The truth her mother had kept from her, the reason why her father had left and why she was so repelled by her daughter's presence . . . Who would have the strength to watch their child die?

"I want to see him . . . I want to see Oniichan . . . we said we'd do them together! When we both got out! IT'S NOT FAIR!" Tsubasa's transplant had been unsuccessful. She had seen him get rushed into emergency surgery, but she had never accepted it till now. In the end, she knew that neither of them would be able to leave. No matter how many colors had been brought into the room, the white loneliness and death would swallow them all.

She cried, hugging the folded cranes to her chest, cried so hard she felt she couldn't breathe and blood dripped down her mouth and her hands trembled with the strain, she cried so hard because this was unfair and she knew that no matter what happened, no matter how much she struggled with her fading strength, she could never change anything. She resented that knowledge. She remembered how nice it had been, in those colorful days when she could still walk, and run, and play, and Oniichan was with her and she didn't know anything about what lay ahead. To be a child again, to be able to run once more . . . she felt that if she could only run one more time, she would never stop.

That night as she slept, a figure floated in through the window, a beautiful woman with no physical form who swept in unperturbed by obstacles. Her white hair flowed down her back, shining silver in the moonlight, her complexion was the white of fresh snow, and her eyes were fringed by thick dark lashes. She wore an elaborate garb, a many-layered kimono in a myriad of colors with a long train and sleeves that covered her hands. She came to stand above the sleeping child and put her hand over her brow.

"I am sorry. I am unable to grant your wish, for I do not have the power to conquer death. Your fate is sealed, little one, and no act of mine may change it." Her impassive face grew sad. "I am truly sorry."

Her eyes fell upon the wish list, the bunny, and the cranes. She smiled. "But . . . I can give you dreams. Wonderful dreams, where you may walk, and play, and forget, until the time comes that you must meet your end. I will give you friends to play with as well, and you will not be lonely." She touched the rabbit, and it sat up sleepily, an ear flopping to the side. "You must have a companion . . . wake, little rabbit. Your role will be to lead the girl through her dream world, see that she comes to no harm, and make sure her happiness is assured. This is, after all, all for the sake of Chizuru's happiness."

And the crane spirit Senbazuru swept away once more with a final, regretful backwards glance at the sleeping child.

The girl that night had her first dream. Running through the corridors of the empty hospital with Usagi-san, she visited strange lands through the doors, until the needles on the pocket watch reached twelve and she had to wake. And so, night after night, she waited until she could embark on that final quest to fulfill the wish the two children shared.

So? What'ja think? Review!