Here's chapter 10! Man, I've been getting a lot of chapters out lately.

Thanks to Kuramasredrose for replying! Hopefully this chapter answers some of your questions.

No, I don't own Ouran.

"No."

"Japan is too dangerous for you right now darling."

Emi stood up, "And you think leaving the country will solve that?" she yelled at her mother, "He'll just follow us there, then come back here and terrorize the rest of the family! There is no difference between here and there!"

"Emiko." her mother said sharply, "Calm down. There's no need to yell at me. I know that you don't want to go but there is another reason you need to come home with me." She sat down and listened silently to her mother's reason. When she was done talking, Emi sat there without moving for a long time, "Are you okay honey?"

"You're right, I'll go with you." she said the words made a pit in her stomach as she thought of Takashi.

"I know you don't want to do this because of him."

"You're right." she stood up, "I'm going to bed."

Her mother frowned, "It's almost time for supper."

"I'm not hungry."

"Okay then." she kissed her daughter on the head, "Try to be nice to your father."

The door to the sitting room opened, "Carissa, what are you doing?" her father demanded as he walked in.

"Talking to our daughter, is there something wrong with that?"

"What did you tell her? What did she tell you?" Her father looked between them angrily, "You remember our agreement that we weren't supposed to tell her until she was seventeen? How could you break that agreement?"

"You see Hiroshi, that's why we fell out of love. You always assume everything, then you get angry. You always assumed wrong, then never apologized for what you did wrong."

"What about what you didn't do for us Carissa? You were always a flighty person and your drinking-"

"I quit drinking when I le-"

"Stop it!" Emi yelled over them. This was how it had been in the few months before her mother left, all they did was argue about each others faults, "You're divorced already! Do you really need to reiterate why you two got divorced?"

The two of them looked at each other a little guilty, "No." her mother said.

"Now what are you talking about dad?" she asked.

His eyes widened a little, "You mean, you didn't tell her?"

Her mother shook her head, "No." she said with a very teenage like tone.

"Oh."

Emi put her hands on her hips, "Is there something else you want to tell me?"

They exchanged glances, "No."

"Do you want to know the real reason that our family fell apart? Yes, our whole family fell apart." Emi said when her parents looked shocked, "Why do you think Ryou moved out of the house as soon as he could? Why Kanaye never spends time here anymore? You broke us apart when you got divorced. And the reason? Because we lie to each other. We keep secrets from each other. That's what this whole family is built on, lies and secrets. Maybe that's why our family is in theatre, because acting is just one big, intricate lie. That's what this family is. You not telling me whatever this is just proves my point." and she stormed out of the room, past Kanaye who was leaning in the doorway listening to their whole conversation.

"Well, it looks like you two really blew it."

"Kanaye, is what she said true?" their father asked.

He shrugged, "Well, maybe if you two had stopped being angry at each other, you might have seen the damage you caused your children. Emi was hit the hardest with it. She was a just a little girl."

-Flashback-

Kanaye crept down the hallway toward the stairs. He was eleven years old, and growing at a rapid rate, so he was hungry all the time. He hadn't eaten enough at supper and he was going to steal some food from the kitchen. The door second closest to the stairs opened into his older brothers room. Fifteen-year-old Ryou looked at him with a raised eyebrow, "Going to the kitchen?" he asked. Kanaye nodded mutely, "I'll come with you." Ryou said.

"I wanna come too." Emi said, opening her door too.

Ryou looked down at her, "You were watching out your door again."

"Yes. Please can I come? Please please please please please-"

"Okay, okay." Kanaye said, knowing she would go on if he didn't say yes, and follow them anyway.

Ryou picked her up, knowing she wasn't a quiet child. "Ugh." he said, "You're getting big." he told her.

She giggled a little, but they shushed her.

As they came to the stairs, they heard raised voices from the entrance hall.

"What about our children Carissa?"

"They're asleep!"

"That's not what I meant!"

"What are they talking about?" Emi whispered. They looked around the corner to see their parents standing across from each other, fists clenched.

"Why would you do this to us?" Hiroshi asked.

"Me? I'm doing this? What about what you've done, what you always do?" Carissa yelled, "What happened to us is because of you." she picked up a vase and threw it at him, barley missing and breaking against the wall.

"You're the mother of three children! You can't drink like this!"

Carissa broke into tears, "Don't say that!" she took the matching vase and threw it at him too, "Don't say that!" she yelled louder and fell to the floor.

"Why is mom doing that?" Emi whispered.

"Come on." Ryou said, and tugged on Kanaye's shirt. He had known something was going on with his parents, but he didn't realize that it was this bad. He had never wanted his younger siblings to see this.

"Ryou, what's wrong?" Emi said, "Why were they yelling?"

He looked into the face of his recently turned eight-year-old sister, she was too young to understand what was going on, "Nothing Emi."

"I'm scared." she whispered, "For mom and dad."

"I am too."

They stopped at Emi's room to put her back in bed, but she hung onto Ryou's neck, "I wanna stay with you."

Ryou looked at Kanaye, "Me too." he admitted.

So they spent the night in Ryou's room. Emi fell asleep on his bed within ten minutes, but Kanaye stayed up a while longer.

"You should go to sleep."

"I don't want to." he said, "How long have you known that mom drinks?"

"It started last year. The fighting started four months ago."

"Do you think they'll get a divorce?"

"I don't know."

"What will happen to us?"

Ryou put a hand on his siblings shoulders, "We'll stick together, the three of us."

"Ryou, the way it sounded, mom didn't want to admit that we were her children."

"She's our mom, and she's drunk. She didn't mean it."

"If you say so."

A little while later, he fell asleep too. Ryou stayed up reading and watching his siblings sleep. Both of them talked so it was interesting to hear what they had to say. But after awhile he fell asleep in his chair too.

When he woke up in the morning he went down the stairs to get some breakfast.

The exact same vases were sitting on the table in the same places they had been before last night.

-End Flashback-

Emi sat on her bed with her knees curled up to her chin. She wanted to go back to that time when things were simple and she could spend a night with her brothers and feel safe. Nothing was safe about her life now. She used to have the best big brothers in the world, but something had come between them after the divorce. By the time the custody agreement was signed, Ryou had turned sixteen and had just a little over a year before he could choose where to go, and Kanaye had been twelve so he only had six years then he had chosen Japan. Emi had been left alone to travel between the two parents.

Someone knocked on her door, and Kanaye came in before she had time to hide. "Hey sis." and he sat next to her on her bed.

"Hey."

"So I heard what you told them."

"Really?"

"Yes, they're still in the sitting room talking about what you said."

"Good. Kanaye, I miss the old days."

He slung his arm around her shoulders, "I know. Things were easier then."

"Do you remember why mom started drinking and left?"

"I never knew, neither did Ryou. If he did, he never told me."

"Great, more lies and secrets."

"Emi." he said, "I know don't like how things are between our family is either, but this is how things have been for so long, that I don't know how we can change."

She stood up and paced around, "Well I'm going to try. Today, I promised someone that I wouldn't keep anymore secrets, and I wouldn't lie. I'm going to keep to that."

"So that's what brought your rant on."

"Pretty much. If I can change, I'd like to think everyone else could too."

He stood up, "That's a nice thought, but you can't teach an old dog new tricks."

"No, I just have to reteach old ones."

He grinned, "Have fun with that." and he left her. He was in the process of closing her door when their father came down the hallway, "She's not in her room, I just checked."

"Thanks, I'll have to look elsewhere for her.

"So dad, what were you not going to tell her until she was seventeen?"

"Carissa and I made plans, when she was younger."

"What kind of plans?"

"Marriage plans."

Kanaye raised an eyebrow, "You promised Emi's hand in marriage, when she was younger? She'll hate you now."

"She already hates me now, but then it seemed inevitable that they would fall in love anyway, so we took care of it then to save them the trouble later."

"You don't mean. . . Ootori Kyouya?"

". . .Yes."

Emi covered her mouth in shock, Kanaye had left the door opened a crack, just like she had used to do when she was kid, so she could hear everything.

"But don't tell her, we're not supposed to until she's seventeen."

"She's going to hate this. Do you want to give her a reason to run?"

"No, but it's not something I can help."

"Well congratulations, dad." Kanaye said, "You just managed to lose your only daughter."

Haha, well there's chapter 10!

Please review!

~Cloudy