AN: I started this back over the summer, because I just needed to vent after the Circus arc. It turned into this little thing, and I'm confident enough to finally post it. It's pretty choppy and all over the place, but it works in it's own odd way.

Colorless Roses

For a while, everything was good. She had her brothers and sisters, and really, that was all she wanted and needed. The attention of the crowds they performed for didn't really matter, the white silk and blooming flowers and lace of her performing clothes didn't fancy her, and the orders Father gave them were just another thing the makeshift family did together, treated no different than another encore performance. She spent her long days lounging around camp and playing with the other performers and even though her life in the past had been anything but, Doll was happy.

She was beautiful then - like a little porcelain doll wrapped in flowers and lace.

Freckles was the opposite. Dirty and grimy, the boy image of herself lived and worked and bonded with the others, sharing meals and tent-space and stories It was fun though, getting to pretend to be someone she wasn't. And much to Beast's chagrin (She was always telling her to act more like a proper lady) she pulled off being male almost too well.

Doll didn't mind being the smaller sister, the childish one. It fit her well - all it really implied, she thought at first, was her mischievous antics and impish tricks. It wasn't until after he came that she learned what her family had really meant when they called her little sister.

Smile.

She hadn't expected someone like him, at first, when she heard that Black (the butler who could face sister's tiger without getting a scratch) would be bringing someone else with him to the circus. She had expected him to show up with the lady of the house he served, because with looks like that, one can't just be a simple servant. (She – despite some people's questions- was a girl, and girls tended to think about that sort of stupid romance stuff sometimes.)

The second turned out to be another waitperson, a boy a couple years younger than her with a tendency to give off auroras of doom, gloom, and 'get the hell away from me, Freckles.' She liked him when she first saw him because of that attitude, liked him enough to ignore the fact that he was probably too mysterious, his speech a little too well-versed for being a simple servant, his attitude nothing like anyone else's. To her, he was a challenge, a mystery, but that only made him all the more endearing.

Smile was totally clueless when it came to the simple everyday occurrences in their family. He couldn't peel potatoes, couldn't use the communal baths, and couldn't even button his shirt correctly – and yet, she found herself stuck to him like glue.

Something in the back of her mind told her over and over and over again that this isn't a good idea, he shouldn't be here, something is wrong about him. But all of that went away when the boy lived up to his name and smiled. There was something honest and almost painful about Smile's smiles, something that could probably make anyone sway to his orders. So she'd let him go that one performance night, helped him sneak past the others, because they'd shared a tent and sweets and smiles. The voice in her head had returned stronger still, but Doll sill couldn't bring herself to pull herself away from him.

Because Smile was a child, just like her.

And when Smile became Earl of Phantomhive with not an ounce of childhood in him anymore, she'd stood before him - knees shaking and heart pounding, memories from the happier smile-filled times passing through her brain – and tried to keep the smile from forming on her face.

Because she'd been right all along, and the voice in her head was telling her it was all going to end here, because her brothers and sisters were dead and gone, and here she was staring down death – that ethereal black-clad butler – in its perfect face.

It hurt and Doll could feel blood pooling around her and soaking through the thick fabric of her vest and pants, (ironic she was again the boy she was when she first met him) but when it was all over and done she closed her eyes only to see his face one more time. Not the face of the expressionless doll that had ordered her death, but the face of the boy who was just like her.

And he was smiling.

"C'mon Smile, smile!"