Warning: Too much sad.

Enjoy!

She thinks about them all the time. The place they met, the place they used to work, the place their pasts stopped mattering. She still thinks about them, that small boy with the hot temper and the impossibly perfect butler.

She looks up at the manor, swinging her rifle over her shoulder, and slides her glasses over her violet bangs. Next to her, Finnian, who hasn't lost any of his childish humor even at twenty-two and working out of a Prussian mob boss's inner circles, sighs. Bardroy pops a cigarette into his mouth and chews on it slowly.

Mey Rin takes a moment to remember the Phantomhive manor, when it was dreadfully void of smiles, shadows writhing in the corners, and the boy and his butler that filled the place with warmth. She hesitantly reaches a gloved hand out to trace the gate, overgrown with dead rose vines, and can simply imagine the scolding look on the butler's face if he were to see what a mess the yard has grown in to.

"Sebastian'd be angry 'bout this," Bard says from around his smoke, eyes downcast and arms crossed.

"Yeah," Finni agrees distantly. "Think we should clean it up one day?"

"Course," Mey Rin says, withdrawing her hand. "We'll clean it up when they come back." On impulse, Mey Rin slips through the crack between the gate and starts up the drive, her long violet pigtails swinging behind her.

"Mey Rin, where're you going!" Finni calls, following her anyway.

"I just wanna look," Mey Rin sighs. "I won't be long."

She refuses to hesitate on the now mossy stone steps, or when he shoves the heavy oak door open with a loud creak. Inside, dust rules the house now, coating the windows and the furniture. The silver candlestick holders are dusty and not smiling like they used to, the flowers in the vases left dry, little brown carcases of petals strewn in circles around them. Her shoes clack on the watermarked tile and her keen eyes quickly adjust to the darkness.

"It's the 'zact same," Bard mumbles. Finni sneezes, sniffles, and blinks furiously.

Her eyes alight on the portrait hanging over the first landing on the grand staircase. It's hard to make out, faded, blanketed in shadow, and growing a putrid mold on one corner, but she knows what the subject is. Her master, Ciel Phantomhive, sitting in a chair, his loyal butler standing smiling gently behind him, a hand pressed to his sternum. She can see the blue in his eye, as vibrant as it is even in the picture, and the hesitant smile on his lips.

"It's so... dirty," Finni sniffles quietly, rubbing his eyes with one hand and balling the hem of his shirt in another. "Mister Sebastian'd be angry with us."

"We'll clean it up when Mister Sebastian and the Young Master get back, we will," Mey Rin says with surety.

"Well, when'll they be back?" Finni asks, his blithe voice still heavy with sadness.

"Don't know, Finni," Bard says reassuringly. "But they'll be back."

Of course the Young Lord and Mister Sebastian will be back. It's only a matter of time. She misses them terribly, everything from the Young Master's cold, cruel attitude to Sebastian's disapproving stare. She takes another look at the painting, and crouched down to brush away the dust on one of the tiles with her glove.

Oh yes, they'll be back.

Someday.