History: A Touch of Colour in Grey

Book 1: Shading the black.

Date: 25 september 2019, corrected March 2022

Beta: Absolutely none

Fandom: D Gray Man

Disclaimer: No, I don't own D Gray Man and I'm not making any money on this story.

Summary: After landing in the 19th century, Estelle, taking the name Eve, becomes Tricia Kamelott's lady-in-waiting. Eve quickly becomes aware of the social and gender differences of the time and begins to fear for her future, especially when Road, the twins, Tyki and even Allen arrive. As she got to know them, Eve became more or less friends with them, which made her feel the wrath of the other employees of the manor. This is compounded when Tyki discovers that a maid was stealing Allen's mail from Eve and decides to send her away. As a backlash, Eve gets harassed even more and one employee ends up falling down the stairs (more or less because of Road)

Chapter Trigger: Depression

Koneko had too much work and couldn't beta this chapter. If someone want to help us betaing this fic, this would be great !

Enjoy your reading!

Shading the Black 24: Depressives changes

Tuesday 15 September 1885

With my head pressed against the glass, I watched listlessly as the world lived its life through the window.

Merlin I was bored...

The last few days had been... horribly... terribly... slow.

The departure of the twins had already taken a heavy toll on the atmosphere in the manor. I could say that when they made too much noise at an ungodly hour of the night or when they insisted on pulling me out of my drawings during my breaks, I would like to see them disappear, but when it really happened... well, it wasn't so nice, actually.

The twins had been wonderful for keeping my mind occupied, but even with them gone, you'd have thought the other inhabitants of the manor would have had no problem keeping me occupied. Road and Tricia had taken care of them very well on their own my first few months at the manor after all.

But noooo, Tricia had fallen ill just a week after her birthday. It wasn't too serious, thankfully, but it was the kind of vicious, long-lasting illness that took hold of your gut and made it impossible to get out of bed for too long. She was tired all the time and it was difficult for us to even go for the walks she loved so much. In fact, the doctor had even forbidden them unless the lady of the house was suffocating under twelve tons of clothes. Which, of course, made her even more tired and thus bedridden faster than you could say "sickness".

And so, for more than two weeks now, Tricia had fallen into the same rhythm she had briefly adopted last February: sleep, sleep again, eat and sleep some more.

But it was okay, wasn't it? I still had Road and Tyki and even Sheryl.

Yes, but no.

Road, at about the same time as the twins, had gone back to school (or what was close to school for girls from good families...) and so was only home for a few hours at night. Sheryl, on the other hand, had plunged his heart and soul into his political campaign and if I saw him once every three days, that was already incredible.

And Tyki?

Tyki was a traitor.

Well, I say that, but if I had the chance, I would have done it too, so... I was just annoyed because I didn't have anyone else and I couldn't stand being alone in the long run. I mean, there were still my employee friends but it was... complicated lately. With all the harassment problems and the employees fired just a few weeks ago, I tried to disturb them as little as possible. I didn't want to taint their relationship with their other colleagues any more than they already had. I would barely go down to the kitchens to see Berthe and Louise and only in the middle of the afternoon when I knew there was little chance of running into anyone else. As I no longer came in the evening, it was impossible to see Jean and Clarisse for more than five minutes and I only managed to spend a little time with them on the weekend. It wasn't enough. So, yes, Tyki, when he sensed that Sheryl was busy enough with his business, took off into the sunset so quickly that we didn't notice he disappeared until the evening. At least Sheryl hadn't noticed him. The Noah had been kind enough to warn me of his departure and that's why I didn't throw him under the bus (named Sheryl) when his brother went berserk when he noticed he was missing.

Fortunately, however, the master of the house's crisis did not last that long. The Earl came to lunch the next day and, I don't know what he said to him, but Sheryl had calmed down considerably by the evening and had not spoken of Tyki again other than to reassure his wife that he had gone to see some of the Duke's contacts to consider setting up a business.

Yeah, right.

I knew for a fact that the man had gone off to Ireland in his ratty pants and hideous glasses that I had given him.

But anyway: I was alone.

In the beginning I made the most of my impromptu days off. I spent just one hour in the morning with Tricia and two more in the late afternoon with her and Road and all the rest of the time was mine! I had spent the first few days devouring Hugo's notes left over from the too many times someone from the manor (Road, the twins or more recently, the manor staff and Merlin I was glad they hadn't found the notes...) had waltzed into my room without any shame. But after three days of doing nothing but deciphering that damn cursive writing (it was pretty, but Merlin it was illegible) I was getting a hell of a headache and a deep demotivation. So I limited my research to what I had left in the morning (since I was eating with Tricia at 11 o'clock, as she didn't even make it to lunch) and spent the afternoon drawing and my evening reading.

But...

The more those break days were piling up, the more I began to draw things from my old life without paying attention. Don't get me wrong, I had always done it. I would take an object, for example, and make a kind of research sheet out of it. Like a telephone, for example. I would draw the version we had at the mansion and then explore future designs I remembered or imagined with annotations about its social and technological qualities and flaws. Maybe that was a bit weird, but you have to remember that I hadn't had any new artistic stimulation from manga, movies, museums... for months. The only things I had were novels, classics of course, but mostly novels that, in general, didn't support my convictions at all, whether about women or society in general. So, obviously, after the 27th drawing of Detective Conan, which itself followed an impressive series on all the pop culture I remembered, I had to look for something else to do with my pencils: hence the object studies.

Wow, I've digressed a lot.

Anyway, the point is that my "drawings of the future" were taking on more and more disturbing forms as the days went by. Here, my old treasure box, there, a doodle of my father's on the living room couch, there, my mother's wobbly balcony chair, and then, my brother and sister's paper deer head... in the lot, there were even the little deformed sculpture I had made for Azy and Kira's necklace.

To try and stop the process, armed with my savings, I'd even taken a trip to London for a treat (something I hadn't done since boys' clothes to explore London without... fear) I'd bought a nice case of watercolour paints, something with a certain cachet that far outshone 21st century plastic boxes. But sadly, I'd only spent two days testing the paint mixes and techniques I could remember before I caught myself doodling Fred (our big potted tree at my mother's place). This was not only due to too much free time on my hands but also surely to the fact that my birthday was dangerously approaching.

My real birthday, not that April 1st bullshit that Road got me into. No, the real day I was born in the good old 21st century.

It's strange though. And a bit funny too. In the twenty-first century, my birthday, when I was younger, was just a way to get something I'd wanted all year. And then, around middle school, it had become just a date from which I had to remember to answer something different to the question "how old are you?". And then a good time with the family too. I had stopped asking for something in particular. If I liked the gift, so much the better, if not, it was just as well, it joined my gift bag and would please (or not) someone else one day.

What's more, I wasn't particularly attached to my age. I'd never wanted to grow up faster like teenagers always seemed to in the movies and I didn't want to go back in time either (younger, I'm not saying, I was a bit nostalgic of my elementary years) just the thought of having to redo my whole secondary school with the memories of now... brrr, the return of evil dictations and demonic geometry classes.

So, yes, the date didn't matter too much to me.

But now... suddenly it had a special meaning.

Now every day leading up to my birthday brought with it another lump in my stomach. I felt so heavy and tired just from the memories that assaulted me with every step. Here, the smell of raspberry sauce would remind me of my sister. And here, the pencil would remind me of my friends. An empty packet of Road's sweets? My brother. A walk in the fields would remind me of my father and then a nap in the sun would remind me of my mother. Here, this or that cousin, there, my village and then the public library where I had spent so many hours of my adolescence. Too many, really, since librarians still knew my name years after I ended coming regularly.

It was stupid, little things that you hardly noticed in everyday life that suddenly took on significant importance.

And yet... it went on and on, getting worse and worse, to the point where I was even losing myself in my thoughts while eating with Tricia or playing with Road. I eventually realised this, of course, after the third time Road called me in the same card game but I couldn't help it. And, maybe I was also hoping that the girls would understand that something was wrong with me and take action.

I guess my wishes were heard.

Friday 2 October 1885

The following weekend, the twins returned to the manor for the first time since they had left for school. The transformation was... far from what I had expected despite myself. I must admit, I had imagined that the twins would come back as we saw them in the manga. With Jasdero as a blond and Devit in make-up. But no. Not at all. At worst, they both had longer hair, but that was it.

Another thing I was terribly wrong about was that I thought they wouldn't enjoy their experience at the academy. All that overload of rules and duties... and yet! Terribly excited, they came back to the manor with a lot of stories, more or less extravagant. They had made a selection, you see. To Tricia, they had talked about their course, their friends (their friends! I was so proud :') ... ) about the functioning of the academy, the teachers and some inconsequential anecdotes...

To Road and me, however, it was a different story. Curled up on Road's bed (She had the biggest one) lit by a solitary candle, a few minutes after Tricia had fallen asleep, they whispered to us with big sly smiles about their various exploits. If everything they said was really true, I was impressed by the way they had mingled with the school like fish in water. They certainly weren't the best students, but they seemed to enjoy pretending to follow the rules before finding a way to destroy them in little pieces from behind. They had taken the lesson about pranks a little too much to heart...

It was then, really, that I realised how much influence I had here. Of course, there was still time before the canon took place, but were the twins sneaky in the manga for you? We were talking about the guys who were being led around by Cross! Well, obviously Cross wasn't the easiest of opponents, and they had their moments with the keys and mask thing for example, but still... they'd always seemed... silly to me in the manga but now that I knew them in real life... it was totally wrong. They may not have been the best at academic things, but their understanding of human mechanics should not be underestimated. They had lived on the streets for years after all, it should have been obvious to me that they weren't as dumb as they seemed to be.

That evening I returned to my room with a smile on my face before lying down in my bed. And then... a deep melancholy gradually settled in my bones and I simply lay on the mattress, my eyes empty and my hands trembling.

I hated being like that. That sort of in-between state, on the edge of a precipice that you hold on to while looking down. I knew that if I let myself go for even a second, I would fall into this emotional void that left me indifferent to everything. Practically mute, my face smoothed into something neutral and I couldn't seem to have an emotion whether it was negative or positive.

But the alternative was to hang on to the top, faking a smile as my heart screamed inside me. Panicked, it was then the opposite, I felt too much, far too much and above all a worry that seemed to make no sense but stuck to my insides without me being able to discover its source. It was like swinging from the edge and knowing that you could fall at any moment. Surely it wouldn't kill, but it would hurt a lot, for a long time, maybe even for life.

So that intimate moment with the twins and Road, filled with laughter and smiles so similar to what I had with my siblings or friends, was the push I needed to fall.

The next day I was running on automatic.

Repeating gestures done a thousand times with a neutral and lifeless face, I could not even be able to tell you what I had accomplished that day. I might as well have been told that I had slept all day, or danced the lyndi hop on the dining room table with the Earl, and I could not have contradicted it (though it seemed highly improbable... the quadrille would have had the benefit of the doubt, but the lyndy hop had not even been invented yet...sooo...) I was such a zombie that I was almost surprised when I came to my senses in the bedroom and discovered that I still had all my limbs. It wasn't by chance though. I must have been lying on my bed for two hours staring at the ceiling, moping, when a particularly violent flash of lightning broke the sky. Jumping up, I blinked and sat up hurriedly. Wow, I had actually managed to put on a nightgown in my brain-dead state, I was impressed.

Stumbling to my feet, I walked awkwardly to the window, startled when another bolt of lightning tore through the sky. Watching for a second the veritable deluge outside, I shivered when I noticed how cold it was inside. No wonder, the fireplace was not lit. Grimacing slightly, I looked at the fireplace with sad eyes: there was no way I was going to light it by myself. Not only did I not have the tools, but even with them, I'm not sure I could have done it with my fear of fire. I was ready to run away under the covers and go back to my existential crisis, but there was a soft knock at the door. Glancing at the little mechanical clock on the desk Tricia had lent me when I was late once, I discovered it was far too late for a visitor. Frowning, my thoughts vaguely occupied with the manor's employees, I cautiously approached the door to ask who it was.

"Road" my interlocutor quickly whispered back and I immediately opened the door with a still puzzled look on my face. The girl had never bothered me at such a late hour in the last few months... I was a bit worried.

I really didn't need to. With the door open, I could watch in surprise as the young Noah held a pillow in her arms before she suddenly slipped under my arm and entered my room.

"Road!" I whispered annoyed as I turned back to her while closing the door. I doubted I was going to get the little monster out any time soon and even if I did, there was no need to wake everyone in the mansion. Luckily I didn't have enough personal belongings to mess up my room, I thought for at least the fiftieth time. Merlin knew that the children of the manor had no awareness of personal boundaries.

"There's a storm." She said simply as she dropped onto my bed as if that explained everything. Crossing her arms and raising an eyebrow, she put on an innocent face before explaining. "And you're afraid of storms, so I thought I'd come and sleep with you! It's less scary when there's more of us." She said.

"I'm not afraid of thunderstorms" I said, rolling my eyes, but all I got in response was a flat look and I blushed a little. It really wasn't the storms I was afraid of, but it was a bit difficult to tell her it was her. Without expecting reprisals of course.

Shuffling my feet, I dropped onto the bed and looked at her blankly, waiting for her to speak and decide what to do. For my part, I was too mentally tired to do anything but follow.

"Soooo," she crooned, shaking her feet back and forth. "I was thinking maybe we could play a game. Like hide and seek? It's too noisy to sleep and we had fun last time." She smiled.

Pale-faced as I remembered the last time she talked about, I dug into my brain to think of something else to do urgently. "I'm a bit too tired for hide and seek, Road, and besides we wouldn't want to wake your parents." I said with an apologetic smile as I desperately searched for something else to offer her. Road pouted and hugged her pillow a little tighter, looking disappointed. "Oh, I have an idea." I blurted out suddenly, catching her eye. "How about we make a pillow fort?" I offered with a big smile.

"A pillow fort? Is this a game?" Road asked, intrigued, leaning towards me.

"You could say that" I replied, thinking. "I read that in a book. During a thunderstorm, the children in the story built a secret hiding place filled with all the cushions and blankets from around the house and told stories to each other until dawn." I explained. "I always wanted to try it, but I never had anyone to do it with and it wasn't really fun on my own" I confessed shyly biting my lip, my cheeks red with genes. It was strange, I'd done much more shameful things in front of her before, but confessing a childhood dream suddenly seemed much more personal and I couldn't help but squirm under her gaze.

"Stop it, you'll end up with scars." Road sighed exasperatedly as he dug his bony little finger into my cheek, causing me to loosen my teeth and let go of my lip. "I like stories, but I don't see why we can't just tell them in bed... well why not, it's been a long time since I built hideouts." Smile Road and she jumped out of my bed and headed for the door.

"What are you doing?" I asked curiously as I also stood up.

"Well you said the kids took all the blankets from the house, right?" Road asked with a big smile.

"Yes, but we don't need it, we're not as much as they are and it's not a house, it's a mansion." I remarked, practically rolling my eyes. Hadn't she just said she wasn't very motivated?

"Let's at least get you blankets and pillows back to my room then." Bouda Road shuffled over to the bed to start ripping off my sheets. I wasn't looking forward to putting them back on in the morning.

"And why would we do it in your room?" I asked, amused as I helped her pull back the sheets.

"Your room is very small and the fire isn't even lit, it's cold. Besides, you're right next to the parents, and if we're going to spend our night talking, it's no fun to do it in whispers. My room is between Tyki's and the twins', so there won't be any problem with noise." She explained logically before adding the pillow she'd brought to her pile of sheets and keeping quiet so she could quietly walk into the hallway. She wasn't wrong on this one, the rooms were usually quite well soundproofed but still, this was an old mansion. So the masters of the houses could hear me if I was talking a bit too loudly but that also meant I could hear them when they were having... couples' activities. Did I tell you before I spent a lot of time in the library? It's a beautiful room, really, it would be a shame not to make the most of it... especially around 8pm, it's a perfect time to read novels in peace while Tricia goes to bed with Sheryl. And it was less awkward that way in the morning.

Grabbing my quilt, I calmly followed Road down the hallway, making sure to close the door behind me. I'm not sure it was very proper for an employee to spend the night in the room of the child of the hosts of the house, but then, I wasn't a very typical employee and you couldn't really say that Kamelott were typical employers either...

"Can you open the door?" Road whispered as she looked at me, her hands laden with the two cousins and the sheet.

"Wait a second..." I muttered as I pushed the blanket under my arm so I could press the handle. Unfortunately, I hadn't noticed that because of its size, its new placement had caused the blanket to drag on the floor and as I approached the door I tripped over it and caught the door in my face with a thud.

Of course, Road started laughing before she realised the noise she was making and tried to muffle her giggles with her pillows. Meanwhile, rubbing my chin and swearing into my imaginary beard, I was startled when a "What are you doing, now?" suddenly rang out to our left. Turning around with concern, I sighed with relief as I recognised Jasdero's head sticking out of his room with Devit.

"We're building a Pillow Fort!" Road chirped before realising she was still talking too loudly and wincing.

"What is this? A game?" Jasdero whispered as he left the safety of his room and approached us.

"Almost," Road replied, echoing our conversation just two minutes earlier. "We build a secret hideout of blankets and cushions and then tell stories. Eve said some kids do that during thunderstorms so since she's afraid of them, we thought..."

"I'm not afraid of storms!" I whispered in annoyance, but none of them seemed to take note, as Jasdero turned to me with a shy look on his face.

"I didn't know you were afraid of storms, Eve." He whispered and before I could reply again, 'No, I'm not.' He went on directly. "Don't tell him I told you this, but Devit is afraid of storms too...maybe you could help each other!" He said with so much hope in his voice that I could do nothing but look at him and sigh mentally. Never mind, I'll be known as the girl who's afraid of thunderstorms, then. Maybe I'll get a few extra hugs out of it? It was so hard to get them in those days...

"If you want, you can join us!" Road suddenly offered with a smile. It was true that they were getting along much better now, but Road was still not the type to invite the twins to her games on her own. She usually let me extend the invitation. "You have to bring your blankets and pillows and then Eve said she was going to tell us a story!"

"Hey, don't twist my words, I said we usually tell stories to each other, not that it would be me who..." I muttered in response feeling like I was being dragged along against my will.

"Great! I'll go get Devit!" Jasdero exclaimed softly before running excitedly to his room.

"Roaaaaaad" I groaned receiving only a small innocent smile in response. Damnit. I'd read stories to children before... but then I'd read them, not made them up on the spot. We'd done it a few times in theatre class and let me tell you, whether alone or in a group, it was awfully hard to make something flow well.

Grumbling, I followed the girl into her room, laying the sheets on Road's bed before leaving this...er...story aside to concentrate on creating the hut. In The unfortunate adventure of the Beaudelaire children, they created it near a fire so they could make shadow puppets. Shadows were fun, weren't they? The children always liked that... letting my gaze sweep the room, I spotted two massive looking armchairs by the fireplace and a simpler chair at the desk by the window. If we were going to make a hut big enough for four people, we'd better have some extra furniture to hold it, and the chairs were the most practical.

"Go get a chair from the twins' room, Road, I'll get one from my room too." I said to young Noah who nodded before darting back down the hallway. Wow, I had given her an order and she had listened to it without question... if that wasn't amazing...

About ten minutes later, the four of us were in Road's room trying to figure out how to make the sheets fit properly. We had tied the sheets over the fireplace at first, and that worked fine, but I was afraid they would catch fire. Devit rolled his eyes the whole time and Road made some not-so-pleasant remarks, but they finally agreed to move the hut a little further and we set up the chairs in a loose circle stuck to one of the cupboards. Thanks to the handles on the cupboard, our hut was still high enough and not too far from the fire to enjoy the heat.

Finally, after dumping the multitude of pillows on the floor and covering everything with soft blankets, the four of us settled quietly into the fluffy nest.

"That's weird..." muttered Devit before jumping at a particularly loud flash.

"It's not very comfortable. Move your elbow Jasdero." Road muttered as he rolled slightly over me instead.

"And it's a bit scary..." I muttered, staring at the dancing shadows of the flames.

"Ilike it" smiled Jasdero causing the other three to turn their heads at odd angles to look at him strangely.

"I guess..." muttered Road doubtfully before suddenly sitting up, startling me. "Right! The story now!"

"What if we took turns telling short stories? Like an anecdote or a mysterious rumour." I suggested as I sat down in turn, leaning against the cupboard so I could see the three Noahs.

"No." Devit immediately grumbled. "I don't feel like talking."

"I don't really know what to say either... but you could do it, Eve! You read a lot, I'm sure you know plenty of cool stories!" replied Jasdero shyly as Road just stared at me, having already given me her point of view earlier.

"Well..." I sighed, pulling a blanket behind my back to make myself more comfortable. Seeing as how it had started, it was better to get comfortable...

"Any ideas for a theme?"

"Knight and princess!" Road immediately shouted. Luckily we had no neighbours and the thunder was rumbling, otherwise she would have woken up the whole manor.

"What? No!" Devit immediately groaned as he raised himself on one elbow. "I don't want a love story, it sucks" Jasdero seemed torn between them, not seeming to know what to say.

"I didn't say I necessarily wanted a love story, you're the one jumping to conclusions!" Road pouted. Feeling the headache coming on, I hurried to intervene.

"Okay, I remember one that might fit. We have princesses, a knight of sorts and there's not really a love story or at least not mainly between the knight and the princess, does that suit everyone?" I asked calmly receiving an excited nod from Jasdero in return and sullen responses from the other two who were still looking at each other with fired eyes.

"Well then... A long time ago, in the kingdom of Arendel, there lived a king, a queen and their two daughters. The eldest daughter had a special gift, you see, she could create ice..." I began slowly.

At first it was difficult. The children seemed apathetic and I was searching for words in every sentence. But eventually they got into the game and so did I. They asked questions, spoke for the characters and turned the story on its head, forcing me to find new ways to get back on track.

But... it was great fun and soon one story became two, then three and it was only by the fourth, in the middle of the morning that we all succumbed to sleep, exhausted.

The next day, when I woke up half crushed by Jasdero, Devit clutching my arm and Road on the other side, I lay there for a while looking at Road's pink sheet over our heads. I had thought, after everything that had happened in April, that I had come to terms with my situation but... maybe I had really internalised it, but I needed a wake-up call. With the nagging of the last few months and the "abandonment" of the last few weeks coupled with the strict behaviour rules, the blatant lack of cuddling, the bottling up of all my emotions and secrets and the memorable date... maybe it had been too much for me.

Anyway, bathed in the attention of the children, I let my mind wander to my... old world. And I could tell it now: old, ancient, ex... I had a new world, a new life, a new place... and, maybe... one day, I could just look back on my old memories with happy nostalgia. It wasn't time yet, but I was on the right track and... my new life wasn't so bad, was it?

Depression. Sometimes your brain plays tricks on you and everything seems to take too much effort and sucks up your energy, being well surrounded can help.

Think of letting a review and see you on the 25th of next month!