Disclaimer:I don't own anyone or anything from Artemis Fowl.

Holly hesitated before she entered the fairy hospital room to wipe away her hopeless tears. She hadn't been the one to find him, near the shuttle port at Tara, but she'd heard almost right away and had hurried to the hospital.

She knocked twice then entered the room, not surprised that nobody else was in there. Hardly anyone knew, and the LEP had advised the hospital to not spread the word. She drifted to the bedside where he was sitting up, folding something in his hands.

"How are you?" she asked softly, afraid that if she spoke normally her mask would break.

"Quite well," he smiled up at her. That was a first; he was so much taller than she was. "I have been assured that I have two weeks left, give or take a few days, so I haven't hit the roughest part yet."

"Oh..." she was at a loss of what to say and so asked the obvious question. "What are you making?"

He glanced at his hands, then the pile of colored paper on the bedside table. "Paper cranes. A thousand of them, to be exact, which will take a while. I have only just learned, but I'm sure that I'll finish in time."

After staying only a short time more, she squeezed his hand, gave him a watery smile, and left. She was able to visit him every day, but each time she found herself at the same loss of words, so her visits were short.

When he lapsed into the final stage of Spelltropy, she was the first at his side, watching him struggle with making the cranes. Her offers of help were politely refused, but refused all the same.

Then the final day came, all too soon. She was immediately summoned, because he had requested her, and she watched him fight for his last gasps of breath. In his hands lay a nearly finished crane, the last of the thousand. Aching so badly to help him, she reached forward to fold it for him, but he gasped a word so laced with pain that she cringed involuntarily.

"Wait."

Now helpless, she watched, tears blurring her vision so severely that she could barely see. She dashed them away angrily and continued watching as he painstakingly made the second to last fold. Then his hands dropped away, too weak to continue. With sudden inspiration, she grasped both his hands, guiding them back to the paper. She gazed into his eyes and uttered a few words.

"Together. Let's finish it together."

Mere seconds later, the last crane was held tenderly in both of their cupped hands, showing its colors of green and blue brightly.

Then his hands slipped, leaving hers holding the crane.

"What did you wish for?" she asked him as he closes his eyes, finally ready to go.

"Just one last chance to hold your hands and tell you I love you best."

He sighed, a long sigh of fulfillment, and just as he went, the smallest hint of a smile twitched at the corner of his mouth. The same smile that the Mona Lisa carried eternally, the same smile that she would remember for years to come, and the same smile that she responded to with another smile whenever she pulled the memory to the surface of her mind.

"I love you best too..."

Aww...I cried while writing this. *sniffs* It actually started out as a drabble, and grew too long, so...here it is. I hope you all enjoy, and if anyone doesn't get the thousand cranes thing, just look it up on Wikipedia. :)