Disclaimer: I don't own Human Target and intend no copyright infringement.

A/N: So this is it – my version of what a fourth season might have been like. What started out at as a coping mechanism after the heartbreaking cancellation of the show has by now become a complex project. I would have never ever come that far without the invaluable help of niagaraweasel, who has kindly taken up the position of being my beta, secretary and soundboard, sacrificing her evenings to make my chapters better. I also wouldn't know what to do without the wonderful veniceit, whose comments both public and private spurred me on when RL became a bit rocky and writing harder. PocketSevens, Minx227 – thank you so much for your regular support and your PMs, you have no idea what feedback means to me and how much it carried me when everything looked bleak. Last but not least I'd like to thank everyone who ever left a review, thank you, thank you so much for taking the time, and hugs to all my silent readers. I can see you in the statistics that FFnet provides (greetings to Ireland and Denmark!) – thank you for staying with me for so long. This has been quite a ride and I enjoyed it thoroughly. I hope you did, too, and that I managed to meet your expectations. So…. I'm going to write another season, my take on what a fifth season might have been like. It will be called "Tsubasa means" and will start next Friday. Interested?

When they got back to the office, a visitor was waiting for them.

Akemi, the Crane's wife.

She had already thanked Winston the evening they had gotten back from Sacramento, but now she wanted to tell all of them in person how grateful she was. In closing, she explicitly addressed Guerrero.

"The new identity you got us… the safe address…you made sure Isu could go to a good school and grow up in a good neighborhood…"

Akemi had asked if she could live in San Francisco and Guerrero had seen to that.

"Jin and you were enemies most of your lives, but still you cared about his son. Thank you." She handed Guerrero a small something, made of paper.

"Isu made it. It's an origami crane."

Guerrero, origami piece in one hand, the ashes of his father in the other, just looked at it for a long moment. "For the amount of money you paid you could expect…", he finally started, but Akemi interrupted him with a soft touch to the hand holding the urn with the ashes.

"Isu doesn't know his father was called the Crane. He chose this symbol because in Japan it stands for good fortune and longevity. According to fables cranes have a lifespan of a thousand years. It also represents fidelity. Japanese cranes mate for life. After the Second World War people began to fold cranes as a form of healing and hope in challenging times. After he saw how much all of you went through to rescue him, he found it appropriate."

Akemi's words almost brought tears to Winston's eyes. Good fortune, longevity, healing and hope… Guerrero would get none of that, once he set his retaliation campaign in motion.

"As a child I learned traditional Japanese ceremonies from my grandmother. There is one that aims at finding peace when darkness seems to have overcome us. Would you like me to perform that ritual for you?" She rested her eyes on the urn.

… … …

It was pretty clear from the very beginning that Guerrero would scatter the ashes, not bury them. He would have never said so, but the thought process behind this decision was not difficult to understand: His father had been locked up in darkness and ice for so long, he deserved freedom, sunshine, fresh air, finally.

Guerrero chose a place in the hills, not far from the plateau where they had worked the Lillian Garnett case and apprehended Warren Mills. The spot he had chosen, however, didn't resemble her eerie supposed-to-be burial site at all. It provided a breathtaking view over a vast valley full of trees, with a dark blue lake shimmering in the middle.

The mother of Guerrero's child had insisted on her and her son attending. "It's his grandfather, for heaven's sake!" Ash had seen the urn in the office and Guerrero had invited him, too. Akemi had brought Isamu. Together with Winston, Ilsa, Chance and Ames they all gathered three days later, on a sunny winter day.

Akemi's ritual lasted about twenty minutes. It was in Japanese and except for Chance and Guerrero nobody understood a word, but it didn't matter. The message was unmistakable: The only place where you can find true peace is in your heart.

When the time came to open the urn, Ash slowly turned and detached himself a little from the others. This was the first funeral he had ever been to. He had seen some on TV, but this was different. The finality of it all…

Isamu, feeling strongly reminded of his father's funeral, drifted off a little, too. He hadn't known the man whose ashes they were scattering and he barely knew Guerrero, but this was heavy stuff. The blond boy who had come with the man who had rescued him was standing on the far side of the plateau, away from the others, too. There was something about him, the way he was standing there… Isu decided to join him.

Both stared at the valley, the trees, the lake for a while in silence. The wind that was going to carry the content of the urn away tugged at their hair.

"I'm Isamu. Isu, if you will. Don't turn it into Sue, though."

"Well, my name's Ashley, so…"

They both laughed.

And then, in a rather odd gesture for such young boys, the two shook hands.

"Do you sometimes have the feeling they're not telling you the truth?", Isu asked, nodding in the direction of the group of adults.

Where had the question come from? Hard to say. He had wanted to ask it for a while now, ever since his kidnapping, and somehow this Ashley seemed the right person to direct it at.

After a moment of hesitation, Ash opened his mouth to answer, but just then he noticed Guerrero's son, probably bored by the grown-ups' strangely solemn behavior, staggering towards them.

"Hey, hombre, you wanna be with us?"

Hombre.

Why did he call him like that? Maybe because he didn't know the boy's real name or because he had just started with Spanish at school and wanted something similar to "Guerrero" but had only limited vocabulary to choose from - or maybe a combination of both and yet another factor. It didn't matter anyway. He picked up the boy and held him, the child's legs wrapped around his waist.

The wind picked up the ashes from the open urn and carried them far into the valley in a fluent, silvery gray stream, that grew more and more translucent as it disappeared in the distance.

When the urn was completely empty, Guerrero nodded and closed it with a resolute snap. Time to take care of business. He looked around for the mother of his son. There were some things he needed to tell her before… where was his son?

Chance tapped against his shoulder and pointed to the three boys on the other side of the plateau: Isamu, Ash and his own kid in Ash's arms.

"Is it only me or do they look like they're up to something?", Winston grumbled, frowning.

"He might need you along the way, you know?", Chance said quietly.

What's the most important thing in the world, dad?

Being a good father.

The mother of Guerrero's son came walking up to them. "You wanted to talk to me?", she asked, her voice clearly worried. She knew Guerrero well and she knew when something was up. Judging from the way he had looked at the ashes, at the empty urn… she braced herself for bad news.

It took Guerrero quite a while to react. Face a stony mask, but his hands balled up into fists so tightly the knuckles turned white, he stared off in the distance for such a long time, she felt the urge to reach out to him and get him back from whatever deep dark paths his thoughts were walking. Chance, however, prevented that with subtle shake of his head.

Suddenly taking a deep, audible breath, Guerrero closed his eyes briefly and when he re-opened them he was back again.

"I'd like to see him more often, if that's okay with you", he said, his eyes never leaving his child.