Hope you enjoyed our little journey!

(A/N)* = POV change here...don't freak :'D

xoxo,
Spoons

Crybaby!

…Chapter Seven…

Once upon Goodbye

Once upon a time, I would never have walked into that ballroom.

Everything was filmy with light, and heavy with flowers and the whole room buzzed with excitement. The campus was filled with seniors of every walk, all gathered for one last dance, one final hurrah.

Ouran held us there, cradled us in her hallways, holding on, silently, sweetly, sadly, afraid to let us go out amongst the world where we are adult and frightened and vulnerable.

I am the smallest of all of them, the most inconspicuous; the gown does not stand out here but blurs at the edges, and I cannot help but wonder where I begin and all of these feelings that I hold in my heart end.

I should never have looked for Haruhi-kun then, but I wanted to apologize so badly, so sorely. I felt terrible for my behaviors for being so dishonest. I am so tired of lies and of facades and smoke and mirrors. I want to strip myself of the lead that lines me, the tangled webs I have woven, that snake there way across my neck and cut off my air and make me dizzy with fatigue.

I should never have gone straight there. I should never have crept silently into the dim hallways to the third music room. I should never have, but fate had so many different ideas.

Mai Yuzumari was a formidable woman; as formidable as Takashi could ever have remembered. The first time they had met was at the Champions Dinner, where older and newer Kendo champions gathered each year to welcome the ranks and pass down wisdom and generally be solemn and stoic. She was accompanied by her then former champion fiancée and his family. Takashi had been with his Father, his Mother staying behind to tend to his sick brother and Mistukuni had never allowed himself to attend, always stressing the importance of a Morinozuka tradition.

Takashi was growing exceptionally tired of all the festivities. He'd forgotten his contacts that morning and his eyes ached from the lighting and the flashing pearly smiles of a million hopeful daughters and his bones ached from competitions earlier that week.

Mai Yuzumari had been standing in the back corner of the room, and when he had edged beside her as his Father downed champagne and the girls fluttered with their confident dance partners she had immediately looked at him from the corner of her eye. He'd stiffened slightly under her gaze and she'd surveyed him thoroughly before letting a tiny smile creep into the very edge of her mouth.

Her smile was very much like the shy one of a girl in his class, a girl he watched patiently as she stumbled through her days and laughed with friends that did not see the troublesome tenseness in her shoulders. A small girl (very small for her age he'd always noted) who'd shared her crayons with him once and even her lunch and in return had been offered service when she could not reach high places.

It was a smile that tried very hard.

"So you're the new one they talk about. These old men are very impressed with your success at such a young age. They think you'll be the next prodigy." Takashi had only looked at her and she'd stared into him, through his eyes and into him in a way he'd never really experienced before. Her smile deepened. It tried harder.

"My name is Mai…my fiancée over there was the Champion a good number of years ago. He was also young…you must be in what? Your third year of Middle School?"

Takashi had nodded, mesmerized by the gleam of her red nailpolish and the glint of her glossy tortoise-shell hair. She'd nodded in return, contemplating silently, moving a bit closer with the click of her stilettos on the marble floor.

"They said you went to Ouran Academy?" A pause as he responded and her eyes hooded, smoky lashes brushing her cheeks as she sighed, "My younger sister is probably in your class. Her name is Hoshiko. Do you know her?"

Hoshiko. Hoshiko. He knew her name very well. He heard it often. Hoshiko-sama when she was served lunch, Shiko-chan by her best friend, a peppy, loud, giggling girl named Nao. Hoshiko-chan for Mitsukuni, who thought she was very cute and soft and shy. Hoshiko when he asked her for her crayons, when he opened a door for her, when he asked for her paper to pass up.

Mai's eyes sifted over him once more and her mouth twitched.

"That girl is very alone, and you know it, don't you."

For the life of him, Takashi couldn't remember nodding at all. Just her face close to his, lips bent to whisper into his ear, the sweetness of her breath as she'd delivered her orders.

"…when you see that child, I want you to protect her from the truth. Let her revel in your heroic deeds…she needs something like that, a hero."

The rest of that conversation was history, a long way off, but now, with Mai Yuzumari standing in front of him again, Takashi can't help but feel as though he's failed her.

"You must be Hoshiko's Sister, Mai! We're delighted – …" Mori notes the way Mai pays no attention to Tamaki, pushing past him, her icy glare settling on him only. Tamaki falters, Kyoya's glasses glitter and even the twins look hesitant as she approaches him. Her eyes narrow.

"What do you think you're doing?" The accusation hits him hard, but he only stares at her evenly, Mitsukuni somewhere behind him looking on. She doesn't wait for his reply, simply continuing.

"I trusted you to protect her! And what have you done? Fed her with these ideas? Do honestly think that this will help her? Inviting her to this? Being a part of this? Where she can see you court other girls as easily as anything?"

"I don't understand where you got that idea, Mai-san, but that is not the case of the Host Club. We strive to make young ladies feel just like that: ladies treated courteously and politely by gentlemen. Not courted or manipulated as you may think." Kyoya's eyes narrow as he finally steps forward, his cufflinks gleaming, appearance so polished he almost makes someone's eyes hurt. Mai clenches her jaw.

"Hoshiko is a vulnerable child Kyoya Oohtori, and there is nothing you of all people would be able to do to convince me you haven't taken advantage of her to the fullest." She turned back to Takashi, hawkish expression continuing to remain vivid, "It has nothing to do with any of them. This is only about you. I told you to protect her from the truth, you promised you would watch over Hoshiko in my absence, but you've let it go this far."

"Is it true?"*

Everyone's eyes turn to me, and all of them are shocked, all except my Sister.

"What are you doing Hoshiko, shouldn't you be attending your ball?" She says softly and I feel my jaw tremble in her presence. After all this time and she still looks at me like a child. I stare at Takashi-kun. I can't even believe it's true. I had paused outside the doorway when I heard them talking and I had listened, frozen to what poured from her lips, but even then I couldn't bear to believe it. As she spoke it was like everything inside me was being ripped into two.

"Is it true? She told you to be nice to me? To pity me?" I am not crying, but my voice cracks and Takashi looks at me with nothing but truth in his eyes.

"Ah." He replies and feel my lips quiver, but I refuse to let the tears spill over.

"Hoshiko, I only did it for your own good." When my Sister speaks she holds the same tiredness as my Mother, as if she can't be bothered with me, and I cannot find the means to look at her. My fantasies destroyed, I have nothing to cling to. "You have always been the odd one out Hoshiko, and I was getting far too old to put up these false exteriors. So when I had the opportunity to save you from the truth I took it."

"WHAT TRUTH?!" I don't recognize my voice as I shout at her, fists clenched, "What truth, Mai? The truth that our Mother has hated me for as long as I can remember? That the one person I ever trusted fully would abandon me? That my Father has been such a coward he cannot even look me in the face? What truth Mai? What secret am I so excluded from? Because I have always known that! I have ALWAYS known I was alone!"

Mai purses her lips.

"You have never known why." Time slows; my breathing stops, my eyes dialate. Why? Why…why. Questions I've never asked. I always accepted the emptiness; I always embraced it. So…why…

"Do you want to know Hoshiko, why all those things are? Why you cling to shabby lies, like this boy, why you clung to me because I showed you the only kindness? Do you want to know why everything I have ever done for you has been to protect you?" My fingers are shaking. I am shaking; the room is spinning, and Mai is looking at me in a funny way that speaks of sadness and pain and bitterness.

"I'm n-not a child Mai." I whisper, "I deserve to know…"

The whole room falls silent.

"You're not my Sister, Hoshiko. You're the product of an affair. The only reason my Mother even accepted you into the house was because she was so bereft over the death of her own child that she thought she could make you into something you weren't. Our Father was the one who came up with the bright idea of making you a cover up under a false pretext that he would quit cheating, and to divert the media when my Mother lost her son. It was a win all around Hoshiko."

The girl in the mirror shatters into a thousand slivers; shards of her are littering my bedroom floor. The final crack down the center of her chest, breaking her open and exploding on the carpet, stuck and stabbing into walls. Mai stares at me evenly, but I am numb, despite the beating of my heart through my chest. Here…and now…and why…

"You became my Father's excuse that he wasn't cheating, as long as my Mother went along with it, and in return she got a replacement child."

"Then why? Why did you bother – ?" I whisper, the words fumbling and dumbstruck, even thoughI have suspected this for so long, but never allowed my brain to grasp it fully. I have always denied it. I have always fervently denied this, but now, I have run straight into the tripwire and everything has gone up in flames.

"Because Hoshiko, I thought I could protect you from them. From the accusations and from my Mother's bitterness and the world, but mostly Hoshiko, I thought I was strong enough to protect you from yourself."

"Protect me? You left! YOU LEFT ME ALONE! For so long I wanted you to be with me! I wanted us to be together! All of us! I wanted us to be a family! I wanted us to stay together, even if it was hurting me! I…I just wanted to love you…I just wanted…" I can feel the tears start to curl down my face and I push my hand over my mouth, cutting myself off. Takashi is staring at me now. Takashi-kun, who doesn't look away, who has never looked away, is staring at me.

I can't breathe. I am suffocating in the room.

So I turn, and I run.

Tamaki's face is dark as he turns to the woman left standing, her face tense with hurt.

"You say she isn't your Sister…but you're both horrible liars when it comes to what you truly want." He says softly from behind her. He looked at Kyoya, running a pale hand against the back of his neck as he did so.

"You told me in the invitation that I should be prepared to talk to her. I never knew you had such information on your clients let alone such an unfrequent visitor like Hoshiko." She replied thickly.

"He didn't ask you. I did." Her eyes flitted to the smaller young boy in the corner, his brown hair shadowing his dark eyes.

"Hoshiko-senpai needed to hear the truth from you. She's about to graduate; she can't keep living with all the weight you've placed on her, and Host Club members take it personally when one of their clients is troubled. It's our duty to help girls." Haruhi steadied her gaze on the woman who was unsuspecting to her own lies, dressed in her suit and tie.

"Hoshiko-senpai deserved to know. It's the only way she'll ever be able to let go. If anyone was truly at fault, it was you Mai-san. Lying to her from the beginning was setting her up for this. And that's why you left and never looked back. You thought you could just break the ties with her and hoped it would compensate; it would give her another focus for her sadness."

Mai smiled wearily, running a hand through her glossy hair.

"You're quite observant…and you're right. I did all that because I always knew it was wrong…but still…I only wanted her to smile…from the time she was little she was always such a crybaby. How did you find all this out anyway?" Haruhi didn't betray her confidence to Kyoya then. To Tamaki either, who was the one who had originally requested the background. She only looked over the woman's shoulder at the empty space where Mori had previously been standing. Honey was smiling sadly.

"Don't worry…" He started with a soft voice, "Takashi went after her."

I trembled then, my back pressed against the nearest wall in a deserted hallway. I don't have any grace as I slide down, my dress pooling awkwardly and my corsage falling to the floor. I haven't even danced. I haven't even danced one time for Kana-san. My loose hair falls into my eyes, and I hastily brush it away, lifting my shaking hands to my cheeks, catching the tears sliding down and dripping off of the edge of my chin. My mouth opens, and closes.

I am a coward. I don't remember how I got here, just running. My shoes have come off of my feet, kicked awkwardly as I went. I tripped over my dress, until I finally got here, in the labyrinth of hallways and pristine classrooms and coral colored paneling. I couldn't stay there, surrounded by so many eyes…but mostly I couldn't be there with him. I couldn't face him. The humiliation, the pain…and I only wanted to tell him thank you.

And this time, I didn't have anything to lose; I had nothing left. Sister had finally made it clear…Mai had finally made it evident. I wasn't even her Sister. I wasn't even…

I can only stiffen as I hear his soft tread enter the hallway; he comes silently, like wind in the nighttime. The moon smiles down on the party that has resumed – music pours from the inside of the grand halls and I am sure they are entertaining to their best abilities. It is a beautiful night, sweet air filters down through pulled-cotton clouds and twinkling, grinning stars poke through deep black curtains of the sky, and I could see it all through the picture windows if I wanted to but I don't. I don't want to. I never want to look at the stars again, I don't want to dream anymore. But those thoughts are so empty.

I will look at the stars again. I will dream again. I am so desperate for this, whatever it ever turned out to be.

As long as someone is seeing me, as long as someone like Takashi-kun can see my tears and stays; even if he looks away, as long as he is there, then it is alright by me. I don't even care if he was told to do it. We both know I am about to lose this…whatever this ever was. It strikes me like a knife. It hurts so badly I cannot help but cry one last time; shameful tears I wish so hard wouldn't fall.

I tried so hard at everything. To make Mother see me, to make Papa say what I always knew…to make Sister stay behind with me.

I tried so hard…and Takashi-kun always knew that.

Takashi-kun stands close to me and then he slides down the wall to sit down too. I don't move, just stare straight ahead, hand still hovering near my face. More tears hit my palms.

I hesitate, trying to breath in a shaky breath, but Takashi-kun does something funny. His hand threads through the hair on my head, and he lets his fingers rest on my scalp.

"It's ok to cry. You're allowed to cry when you've been hurt." He murmurs.

He has come to stand by my quivering weakness one last time. My silent guardian, my precious Takashi-kun, has come again to my rescue one last time. I don't even care if you were told to do it…I will never care…because…because I… I can hear my heart bleed into my ears, the ragged thumping against my chest loud enough for him to hear. I love him. I love him. Thump. Thump.

"It's ok to cry." He repeats.

We both understand that it is over, even though nothing ever really started. Nothing ever would have.

So I do. I cry without abandon or pride.

Because maybe, because he is here, it wasn't all for nothing. And if he says its ok, then maybe it will be.
Maybe. Maybe that was all I ever wanted; to be standing with Takashi-kun when all the walls came tumbling down, when all the statues crumbled, when everything was broken glass.

There is no happy ending at the moment, but someday I know there will be for me, I'm just not ready for the bed of roses yet. I have a lot of pain to take now, but I'll be able to make it this time. I won't bite off more than I can chew. The truth hurts now, but it won't forever.

Will it?

"Thank you! Thank you!" I sob. He doesn't say anything. He doesn't need to say anything. He just listens, and lets me give all that I can give. And then, with all of that, I stutter slowly to a silence.

I have reached my goal. I did what I thought I could never do.
And he knew it all along.

For now there is no white horse, no kiss, no waking princess, no glass slippers. I have been hurt by people I have loved so much. But it will be alright. I'm optimistic of that outcome. The final golden stars that I can see hovering on the horizon now. The storm clouds have parted, the rain has poured buckets.

I was a crybaby, sure, but it's ok.

"The sky is so beautiful…" I whisper, hardly realizing I've said it out loud. He turns to look with me out the windows, side by side, silence and the pale moon illuminating the hallway.

"…when I was little, someone told me I was a star…" I watch the twinkling pools of light; they've never been prettier. My hand involuntarily outstretches to them, praying someday I'll be among them, twinkling and shining. My fingers close around light I can't hold, but know is there. "I've always wanted to be up there, up with the stars…even if it's lonely up there. I can watch all the people I love, and that'll be…that'll be enough." His hand on my head tells me that it will be enough. The empty hallway; the chimes of Ouran's bell tower, the sounds of music and dancing, the click of stilettos on distant marble floors, the way my Sister will look back at the school and back at the picture windows with a sad smile and think of me for one breathless moment.

The past when we were together, the past I will never forget and always cherish, those precious moments I called you mine and I was yours, those tell me it will be enough to love you from the height of the dark sky.

Because Takashi said it was ok to, and I believe him. I've always believed him above the others. It was ok if he was the one I loved most.

The bells in the clock tour of Ouran High School chime softly in the distance, echoing with each of her children that are passing on. The hallway is quiet and Takashi-kun and I sit in silence, staring at the stars and the sudden bursts of fireworks among them that mark the festivities. My hair is messy and my eyes are red, but Takashi-kun stays.

He doesn't think I'm ugly or selfish. To him, I am just Hoshiko.

I want Takashi to always think of me that way. As Hoshiko.

I close my eyes; the bells sing a lullaby, a final goodnight to me. To a little girl that is growing up, and even though pushing through the dirt is hard and painful, I will one day reach the stars. I will be among them. I say goodbye to her too, and it isn't so sad, but merely bittersweet.

I, in a space of time so short it is almost inconceivable, have become lighter. I am no longer so dragged down; I am free, even if I am free because of something that will be very painful. At least I am free.

Long before midnight, Takashi-kun and I part ways.

We graduate.

Time passes.

Mother and Father finalize their divorce; and for the first time, my Mother genuinely smiles at me. Her brow is creased with wrinkles, I notice, as she approaches me with civil grace. She is not as beautiful as I ever remembered. She has aged noticeably, and she hides it under a façade that is almost nonexistent. She is no longer beautiful on the inside to me.

"I can look at you now, and it will be alright." She says softly, but it won't be. The flashes of camera pops are too distracting and her burgundy lips peck my cheek, my hair ribbon sticks to the trail she leaves behind her. I don't really feel it, but I smile all the same.

Snow falls in Tokyo.

I attend college, a prestigious one. I was welcomed instantly. My Father has told me I can do whatever I want; I have no real ties to his company or his status. They are phantoms that trail ghostly fingers over tabloids and news articles. The woman who gave birth to me lies face down at the bottom of my desk drawer, her watery eyes staring at the spare sheets of paper kept there with her. She smiles a weak smile; her long brown hair hangs limply down her shoulders but her face is pretty. Father gave it to me as some poor excuse for compensation.

I look exactly like her.

Life moves on and on and on, and I am alone, but I am surviving.

It's all I'll ever ask of myself. To survive, and to try to be happy, even when the rainclouds trample on my dreams, even when I get clouded by circumstances.

I remember Takashi-kun a lot. I miss him. Kana-san writes from New York, her letters fill my apartment's mailbox fit to bursting. She's working as a maid in a huge hotel, and Kiku-san is working very hard at his new foreign-relations job. They don't have a very big apartment, and it is very hard to live in the city and expensive, but she's taking night classes and trying to become an official American so she can sing at the hotel some day. Kiku-san wants to move them to someplace wide and open, not cramped like the cities here, the ones that Kana-san has lived in all her life.
She is going to have a baby; I smile. I already knew that.

A baby girl. It makes my chest ache as I write back to her frantically.

She wants to name the baby after me.

Days melt into weeks and months and years.

I'm sure I still love him. I know every time I imagine Kana-san's family and Mai's too. I don't really call her Sister anymore. It's grown out of me, like all the parts I had when I was in high school that have grown up and gone away as well. We speak often enough; I have come to terms with her, and I have begun to understand why she acted the way she did, why it should never have been her responsibility to take care of me. What happened to both of us is a sad circumstance, but we are reconciling slowly but surely. But the growing up isn't really that bad. I welcome it now, it isn't so scary anymore.

I can understand why she left so much behind now. It used to baffle me how she could grow up and just leave it all, but now it isn't so hard to get. It's easier to leave those painful things physically where you don't have to touch them, even if they linger in your heart for a long time. The ribbon sits forgotten in my jewelry box. The clothes my Father bought me hang in a lonely closet…Kana-san's hair corsage sits on my night table, a delicate reminder of the last time I was a high school girl and could get away with frivolous fantasies and small ideas.

Nao-chan even grew up, if you can believe it. We all must, in this sophisticated world we live in. There can be no Peter Pan's, and even if there were, the Wendy's always have to return to the window sometime.

The Host Club hasn't closed its doors, and from time to time I receive little things; small invitations to reunions, galas for prospective business arrangements. I never go, but I collect each one.

Someone once told me that invitations were something to be cherished, no matter whom the sender, and that is somewhat like a fairytale perspective but I don't really mind.

I am alright, even if I still remember fairytales from when I was little or sad.
Even if sometimes I remember my Sister stroking my hair and telling me I was a star-baby.

Even if I believe some of it sometimes.

Kana-san never stopped believing she would one day become a Cinderella story, and one day I know she will sing on a stage. I've never heard her sing, so I don't even know if she has a beautiful voice or not. I don't need to; it was all part of the magic. If anyone was my fairy godmother, it was her. I remember once she told me that when you see the person that you want to spend the rest of time with, you'll know.

I knew long, long ago.

But wanting to be with that person and being with them is such a huge chasm of a difference.

But it's alright. I am alright for Takashi-kun, because I've learned that there is so much more to life than tears.

I smile. He taught me that a little.

His eyes always skimmed over top of me, but they acknowledged me when they realized their error. It's nice to look back and think he was only a tall problem I couldn't reach; that it was just something I needed a boost to get to. I can smile now because of Takashi-kun. He gives me happy memories.

Maybe that's all I ever asked for. Happy memories.
There was once a time where we sat quietly side by side and colored, once a time where I made him smile in grade school, once upon a time where he helped me reach tall things, and I shared my lunch shyly when he forgot his.

Once upon a time, Takashi-kun was my Knight in shining armor.
He still is, and once upon a happy-ending I'll tell him without crying at all. It's just another wish to fulfill, another dream to catch.

I'll put my hand in his and look in his eyes.

I'll tell him that I'm grateful he took my Sister so seriously, that he protected me for so long, even if he might have been lying.

Thank you for letting me love you.

Sometimes lying isn't so bad when it helps someone. He let me love him as much as I wanted to, he let me idolize him and hold him up above the rest.

He let me do that for as long as I wanted to.
That is all I ever wanted - to love someone without reason.

Takashi gave me hope, and wishes, and a purpose when I couldn't find any, he gave me distractions from the pain until I was ready to take it for myself.

When the darkness was there, he lifted me above it all, he told me I'd be alright.

He gave me the sky.

He gave me rain, falling endlessly, in Tokyo. This city is just a big crybaby, but then again, it does take one to know one.

I will love him forever; as long as the moon lights the sky, I will be looking down on wherever he is and believing that I can love him from this place, high above the sadness and the earth. I will be up where I have prayed to be. The one place I have ever wished to be, on a thousand paper cranes, on a million twinkling holes in a murky darkness.

It all started with a book, and ended with the sky, and I will be here, amongst the stars.

And they will all live happily ever after.

YOSH! ON TO THE EPILOGUE!