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whitevesper · 2 years ago
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my favorite ship dynamic is from strangers to lovers, two gay idiots, he kissed the wrong boy, healing from traumas together, and he met his father™, telling his appearance to tailor who is changing him back, blushing and staring, sharpshooter and runaway, grisha and merchling.
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whitevesper · 2 years ago
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kaz: show me my human part
jesper: *holds inej straight to him*
kaz: f
with Wesper already being canon in the show, I'd love to see a scene in the Crows spin off where Jesper risks the whole mission to keep Wylan safe and Kaz yells at him something along the lines of "we can't work as a team if you're being distracted by love!" and Jesper would just look him in the face, calm, asking "really? you're the one lecturing me about how love clouds my judgement?".
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a-literal-supernova · 2 years ago
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shadow and bone shitposts 2/?
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barrel-crow-n · 8 months ago
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inejs-knife · 2 years ago
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whitevesper · 2 years ago
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«jesper felt the pounding of his heart— or was it wylan’s? — like a stampede in his chest, and the only thought in his head was a happy, startled, oh ».
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JACK WOLFE for Schön! Magazine
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five-of-cr · 4 months ago
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hauntedbythenarrative · 2 years ago
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gordonstanheight · 3 months ago
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thinking about this TikTok that was like “haha Kaz Brekker is a 17 year old virgin” and they laughed unironically at the idea like... that is perfectly okay? (also he has trauma??) that video is so weird to me I can’t stand y’alls takes on him
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thstarsofsilver · 2 years ago
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i'm reading crooked kingdom and kaz brekker is genuinely a comedy king
"i suspect you and your fjerdan might want something more to subsist on than patriotism and longing glances"
[about a literal child] "it was that or snap her neck and make it look like she fell down the stairs, wylan. i think i showed remarkable restraint. move."
HUMOUR
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disregardcanon · 2 months ago
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amc iwtv soc au 
the quick pitch with ROUGH narrative roles
Louis as Kaz
Claudia as Nina
Madeline as Matthias
Armand as Inej
Daniel as Jesper
read more for in depth version
Louis as Kaz: the middle child of the late Florence and the even later Maurice de Pointe du Lac. Their late father sent Paul, the eldest child, off to a sanatorium near Ketterdam. After Maurice dies, Paul gets to return home and Louis is ecstatic to have his brother back, even though he now has to act as the “man of the house” despite being the second youngest person in it. At this point Louis is 11, Paul is 15, and Grace is 8. Their mother passes away within the next year and Paul talks Louis into selling their family home to make their way into the city. 
Paul thinks that he’s been divinely inspired to become some minister in the church of barter. Things are going fairly well in Ketterdam until Paul gets swindled by Pekka Rollins into “investing” his money rather than going immediately to the seminary because what better way to honor Ghezen than making money before coming to serve him? 
Afterwards the three Zemeni-Kerch children are ages 15, 12, and 8 and living on the streets. Paul is sinking into a depression and Louis and Grace are doing their best to provide for the three of them. But Grace comes down with the plague and dies of it. Louis has a freakout trying to figure out how to handle and take care of her body. Paul’s basically catatonic with grief and Louis is fighting with the coroner not to toss her body in the fucking harbor and Paul is growing more and more erratic, getting to the point where he’s hurting himself. Louis decides to deal with that issue and try to talk Paul down and remind him that he’s all that Louis has right now. Then they climb back up the fifth floor roof they’ve been squatting on and Paul throws himself off the roof. 
After that, Louis is… bad. He’s bad mentally. Like BAD bad. He claws his way into the Dregs, makes up a new backstory and name for himself, and fights his way from tiniest and youngest henchman to the leader of the younger half of the gang. The Bastard of the Barrel is born. 
The newly donned Louis Brekker is in charge of the younger members of the Dregs by the time he’s 15. He’s looking for subordinates that he can trust and people with talent. 
Armand as Inej: Come ON of course Armand was going to be Inej. He has a canonical history of forced prostitution. He’s deeply loyal in his own gremlin way and is also religious. He’s even South East Asian! Armand is from Gothic Horror though instead of the darker end of YA, so his similar trauma and circumstances with a love interest is processed in a way that’s A LOT messier. 
In this canon, Armand was taken from his Suli caravan earlier than Inej was, to the point where he can only remember his life there in fragments. He remembers that he IS Suli and he knows that he was an acrobat before they brought him to Ketterdam and made him sign those hideous papers he couldn’t even understand. 
They make sure he keeps up those particular skills at the Menagerie, along with a… choice selection of Suli. Dirty talk, sweet nothings, pet names, titles and protests and anything the fetishists might find appealing. 
They’ve beaten most of his fight out of him by the time that Marius comes perusing and is so taken with him that he buys up Armand’s indenture right out from under them. The boy about to be dubbed “Amadeo” is fourteen and thinks that this must be love. It seems that way for a while, too. A beautiful boarding school for artists downtown. The students are a mix of other “rescues” and the sons and occasional daughter of wealthy merchers from Kerch and abroad who want to give their children a leg up. 
It feels like a fairy tale, right? An attractive older man spirits him away from the hideous life he’d been living and treats him like a prince. Amadeo. Amadeo. Amadeo. He learns art and keeps up with his acrobatics with his new friends and spends nights in his master’s bed. The fact that Marius still owns him is, if anything, an inside joke. A tool for flirtation. A reminder that Marius isn’t getting rid of him. 
Then, one of the visiting merchers who patronizes the school visits and tries to force him to fellate him and Amadeo tries to bite his dick off. Amadeo gets dragged off to Marius where he gets a beating first and then a soft “this is just the way things are, I’m so sorry Amadeo, you just can’t hurt patrons, this is the only way to keep the doors open. I know it’s not pleasant but you must sleep with him and others. For The Cause.” And he wants to believe him, really, he does! So he tries to confirm it with the other boys. 
All of the rescues feel they have to. A few of the richer children still feel they should. A few kids who are clearly loved at home are shocked to hear that’s even being asked of some of them.
And then Amadeo brings his findings and says that if Marius really loves him, he won’t ask him to keep doing this. The work that he does for the school and the love he holds for his master should be enough, right? 
That… does not go over well. Marius tries beatings and guilt trips and isolation and denial of all forms of affection and attention. 
How does Amadeo respond to this? He breaks down the door with an ax. 
Amadeo is far more athletic than most of the other kids. This athleticism combined with his… tendency towards violence means that the chances of Marius actually keeping him under control are growing fainter and fainter every day. He’s seventeen now and growing like a weed! Truly getting facial hair and filling out and looking less like a boy and more like a man. Keeping him just does not seem worth it to Marius anymore. Amadeo is such a hassle and he’s certainly not bringing in any money. He’s just ensuring that the other kids don’t fall in line. 
The Menagerie has even been inquiring about bringing him back. They’ve had a real dip in sales without a Suli boy, after all. And while Marius can’t bring himself to harm his Amadeo enough to ensure the compliance the brothel had from Arun… he’s becoming less and less opposed to preventing it. 
Enter the Bastard of the Barrel. Louis finds Marius’s operation because he’s been scouting for rich students to entice into his gambling dens. Amadeo catches him sneaking in and is able to scare the shit out of him because he’s so deadly silent and efficient in stopping him. Louis is a good fighter at this point, and some kid that does MODELING being able to not only sneak up on his but physically subdue him? 
That’s… impressive. Very, very impressive. Louis scouts some information from him and realizes that he’s indentured and having troubles with his owner. 
Louis seeks out Marius to speak to him about the issue because holy shit that preternaturally beautiful boy is also preternaturally agile and silent. He could completely sway the balance of power in the Barrel if Louis got him to work for the Dregs. 
Louis makes a meeting happen with Marius whether he likes it or not. 
“You’re from the Barrel.” Marius says this like the word leaves a foul taste in his mouth. 
“Yeah.” 
“Leave my boys alone. They don’t need anyone leading them toward vice.” 
“What about… Amadeo?” Louis ventures. That’s the only one he’s truly interested in, now. He’ll leave all those pigeons alone if he can snag the true prize in this hall.
Marius smiles sadly. “Amadeo… I don’t think he’ll be here much longer. I have been speaking to his previous employer. I believe a move back might be in his best interest.” 
Louis hears Amadeo shift then for the first time. It’s so quiet that there’s no way that Marius hears it, but it’s shocking to hear even the slightest sound from him. It shows that the admission unsettled him. 
Marius, of course, doesn’t notice. People in power don’t have to notice things like that. 
Louis nods as though this is a reasonable business proposition and not something that disgusts him. “Let me take him off your hands. Sell the Dregs his indenture and I’ll leave the rest of your boys alone.” 
“Hm,” Marius says, “that sounds like a fair enough trade. You have a deal, Mr. Brekker.”
Technically, Louis doesn’t own the indenture. It belongs to Dregs and it has been written in a way that doesn’t accumulate interest the way that his original did, a contract of perpetual penny pinching that might keep him in bondage for the rest of his life despite the practice of outright slavery technically being outlawed. 
Amadeo wants Louis to rename him. Symbolic gesture, passing of the torch, ensuring that Louis will keep him. Louis has no interest in this and makes it very, very clear to him. 
So he renames himself Armand after one of the saints. Despite Louis making it very clear that Armand’s indenture is owned by the gang and will be over soon, it was Louis who came for him. Louis who wrote the contract. Louis is his savior and his saint and he doesn’t even consider how to pay off the indenture sooner and likes to think of Louis as his master, even though Louis refuses to have anything to do with that. 
The opportunity to be of service to Louis is all Armand wants, save for Louis to return his affections and use him. 
He’s never been so frustrated in his life. Why won’t Louis just let him be of use? How else is he supposed to know that his savior will keep him? 
Claudia as Nina: she comes to the Crow Club about three months after Armand does and he hates her. She’s resentful that she’s ended up indentured and almost never just does what Louis tells her and refuses to use her skills for tasks that she doesn’t like. She talks about how much she misses Ravka and her druskelle chaser and anything and everything constantly. She is thirteen and Louis dotes on her, but not in a way that makes sense to Armand.
The backstory for how she got to Ketterdam is as follows. She, a Second Army spy working to help Grisha escape from Fjerda, was captured by a druskelle ship and accidentally befriended the young lover of one of them. This forbidden friendship ends with Madeline thrown in the brig right along with her. They escape a shipwreck together and make their way to Ketterdam, where Madeline is thrown into Hellgate for her association with the druskelle and Claudia wanders the streets and eventually finds Louis, who takes her in immediately. 
Louis sees someone little sister shaped and asks “is anyone going to project the loss of their baby sister onto this child?” and doesn’t wait for an answer. 
Daniel as Jesper: he’s a student that’s racked up such a high tab at the club that the only reasonable way to pay it off is working for Louis. Louis likes to call him “boy” because he likes the weird power play stuff, even though Daniel’s only like a year younger than him. 
Daniel trusts Louis with his life and knows the guy is skilled and he’s his friend, but it’s hard to get him to open up AT ALL! Which is fine, really. It’s not like Daniel’s opening up about his shitty home life on the Wandering Isle or how his dad found out he was a Grisha, which his mom had known about his entire life, and immediately wanted to drink his blood. 
His mom didn’t do much to help him through that situation despite being the exact same type of magic that he is. Like oh yeah your dad wants to kill you now? Well that’s… unfortunate. We’ll talk him into shipping you off instead. 
He knows he could be mad at his mom, but it’s not worth it. She taught him how to manage and hide his powers until it didn’t work anymore. At least she got his dad to ship him off to Ketterdam with enough money to get him through a year at the university in bookkeeping instead of draining his blood to drink and sell at the market and burying him in the backyard. 
Small fucking mercies. When he gets to Ketterdam, the money lasts two months, and by the time he’s run his tab up that high and hasn’t attended classes for three weeks… becoming Louis’s sharp shooter and nose on the ground for information makes a lot more sense than any other option. He’s not about to let anyone know he’s GRISHA though. He likes his blood in his body, thanks. 
Madeline as Matthias: she’s a dressmaker who dates a druskelle rather than a druskelle herself. While slightly scandalous since she’s so openly flirtatious and they have gotten up to… shenanigans in the Ice Court and are now getting up to shenanigans on the druskelle ship, it’s not enough to get her or her beau in much trouble. A talking to every once in a while from a superior officer isn’t the end of the world. 
Madeline isn’t in love with the boy, but she does find something enticing about a man in uniform. The hate in his heart isn’t too concerning since it hasn’t, yet, been directed at her. It becomes an issue for her once she realizes that the Grisha they have under the hull are… people. One of which is a very cool person that she’s actively falling in love with.
When she starts to plot an escape for the two of them, they’re both caught and Madeline is thrown under along with her after being brutalized. Claudia is so angry when Madeline is thrown down with her sobbing and brutalized that she kills the captain of the ship at the wheel, sending the ship careening into a boulder. 
Stranded and the sole survivors of the crash, the two of them have to make their way to Ketterdam together, falling even deeper in love before Madeline is discovered as a “colluder” and arrested for association with the druskelle in Ketterdam. 
Claudia would be locked up as a Ravkan deserter, but she’s able to play off her youth, penchant for languages and good old fashioned racism to convince them that she’s a civilian captured from Novyi Zem and not a soldier from the Second Army.
She promises to help Madeline escape before she eventually returns to Ravka. Because that’s what she has to do, right? Return to Ravka. Madeline has no interest in returning to Fjerda when Claudia manages to break her out. 
Maybe Claudia will convince her Second Army to allow Madeline to accompany her. Maybe she’ll stay here in Ketterdam. Anything is better than returning home with all the new stigmas attached to her. 
In Hellgate she ends up making costumes for the fighting ring in Hellgate and getting suckered into competing so that she can keep some of the materials for herself. 
Lestat as Wylan: he was the youngest of three sons, so his father eventually just gave up on his education for everything but music. Dyslexia is hard enough for educators and students to work with in modern times. He’s never supposed to become the heir, right? He has two older brothers. 
These two brothers each die of plague. Then his father is left with a useless son that he hates, a useless wife he hates, and nowhere worthy to hoist his legacy. So he ships Gabrielle off to a sanatorium and then pretends to ship Lestat off to music school but actually tries to have him killed. Lestat ends up working in a clothing factory. He’s not that great at demolitions, but since he had to sell his violin to get a spot in a hideous little hostile he needs SOMETHING to do. 
Louis finds him and helps him assure that he’ll have a spot in the hostel as long as he needs it in exchange for some brief demolitions work. Lestat falls head over heels. Louis has plans that involve The Lioncourt Name. He refuses to admit that he might just also like the guy. 
Scene 1 
Wow, this must be a big deal if Louis’s gathered all three of his inner circle together at once. Sure, Daniel might be paired with either the heartrender or the assassin… but Louis’s never put the two of them together before, even with Daniel as a buffer. That’s how much Armand and Claudia can’t stand each other. 
Daniel’s still not sure what the issue between the two of them is, honestly. They’re two of his favorite people, so he’s not sure why they want to kill each other on sight. 
They DO, though! Every single time they’re in the same room it feels like the place might explode. 
So why in every saints’ name is Louis putting them together today? Their esteemed leader doesn’t seem… forthcoming about this. 
“So,” Daniel says, “you brought us all here, what’s the occasion?” 
Louis brings his hands together. “A job.” 
“There’s always a job, man. Why’s this one call for the whole gang?” 
“It’s big.” 
“How big?” 
“Eight million kruge.” 
“Holy shit!” Daniel exclaims. He’s sure that his face is bursting at the seams of his smile. Armand looks as expressionless as he tends to, but Claudia seems… skeptical. 
“Where the hell are we gettin’ eight million kruge, Louis?” she demands. 
He smiles slightly. “The Ice Court.” 
Claudia’s skepticism turns to hope. “You said we were bringin’ on someone else. Is that-” 
“Not the person you’re thinking,” Louis tells her. 
Claudia’s tentative smile falls off her face. “Alright. You can count me out, then.” 
This finally shifts the somber shadow out of silence. “Count you out?” Armand demands. 
Claudia ignores him. “Yeah. Count me out. If you’re not gonna get the one person who’s lived there on this job… it ain’t worth risking. Without her we’d have no chance.” 
Armand is still drawn taut, ready to snap at her with the slightest bit of permission from Louis. 
The boss just smiles. “Well then. I guess we’ll be staging a prison break.” 
Armand sits in silence and seethes. 
Scene 2
Armand is steaming mad. This is impressive because Armand almost never displays an emotional reaction at all. 
“Claudia bats her eyelashes and POOF! We’re breaking into Hellgate.” 
Daniel doesn’t want to argue with Armand, especially when he’s like this, but it seems stupid not to point out the flaws in that logic. “Look, I get it, but I think we need this girlfriend of hers. Madeline knows the Ice Court, right?” 
Armand scoffs. “Need her? She’s a dressmaker who fucked a druskelle. She’s hardly an expert. How could she be worth a prison break?” 
“The floor plan of that complex is a fuckin’ state secret,” Daniel says, “literally anyone who’s been inside knows more than us.” 
“This is not worth our effort,” Armand mutters, “the heartrender should have kept her mouth shut.” 
Daniel laughs. “When has Claudia ever done that?” Unsurprisingly, saying that does not endear her in Armand’s eyes. To be completely fair, though, there’s nothing Claudia or anyone else could do to endear her to Armand. As long as Daniel’s known them they’ve hated each other’s guts. 
Again, it beats him why. 
Scene 3
Claudia is an independent girl. She doesn’t take orders well, but she believes in communities and she puts her all into them. That community has always been the Grisha. Grisha in the second army and Grisha abroad, and then an allegiance to Ravka for giving them a space safe from persecution. 
She shouldn’t care about a druskelle hanger-on, but the druskelle hanger-on also shouldn’t have saved her life. So many of things she thought were true are proving to be… complicated. 
Claudia doesn’t like complicated. (No one seems to care for her opinion, though.) The closest that she’s going to come is by paying her debts: both to the girl who loved her enough to save her from death and the boy who stepped forward to buy her indenture to prevent it from going to a brothel. 
After she pays her debts, she can return to Ravka with a clear conscience. Her mentors will rip her a new one for getting caught, but at least she’ll be home. 
(She’s never been wanted there, really, but she had a right to her spot. There is nothing she is entitled to here in Ketterdam, just debt upon debt.) 
She needs to pay her debts and vacate the country. That’s a clear enough itinerary even the stupid child that her supervisors thought she was could follow. 
Scene 4
Daniel is called to go get Claudia and send her Louis’s way. 
“What am I, your errand boy?” Daniel asks. 
Louis grins. “Yes, Daniel. You are. Quite literally, I might add.” 
“Okay, yeah, I was asking for that.” Daniel’s just a weird little guy with a drug problem. Claudia’s probably a better choice for this anyway. Anyone’s a better choice than him. 
Louis asks Claudia to go speak to the last piece of this con puzzle: Lestat. 
Scene 5
“What are you,” the blond boy says, “12?” 
Claudia glares. “What are you, 15?” 
“I am 17, infant.” 
“I’m 14,” Claudia tells him, “so I’m not much younger.” She’s a soldier and a spy, too. She’s certainly not a baby just because some blond boy a little older than her is being a jerk. He’s not “an adult” either, but he thinks he can look down on her? 
Absurd. 
“Look,” Claudia tells him, “if you want the protection of the Dregs-” 
“I do not care for the Dregs.” 
She feels her blood boil. “Fine. I guess I’ll tell Louis he can shove his kruge up his-” 
The clouds part and reveal Lestat’s bright smile. “This is for Louis?” 
“Yes. Every job is for Louis?” He’s the boss, after all, no matter what he tells Per Haskell to keep the man off his back. 
He frowns. “Then Louis will not be there?” 
“I never said that.” 
He smiles again, coming to engulf her in a hug. “Thank you, strange infant! I will come with you once I’ve gathered my things.” 
“Your things?” Does this guy think he needs to bring his facial creams to a heist? 
“My demo gear,” Lestat says skeptically, “Louis would like to make things go BOOM, would he not?” 
“Uh… yeah.” If explosives are why this pretty boy’s on the payroll, then Claudia assumes the boss wants them. Saints, she wishes he’d just told her that to start with. 
Scene 6
“For real, man,” Daniel asks, “What’s your problem with Claudia?” 
Armand smiles tightly. “I do not have a problem with Claudia.” 
The pencil snaps. 
Scene 7
It’s hard not to love Lestat, but it’s also hard not to hate him. That’s the biggest problem that Armand is bumping up against. Louis clearly adores him despite his lack of skill. He is boisterous and bold and so sure of himself. 
He should not be sure of himself because he’s not good at much of anything. All of the skills that Armand has worked so hard to cultivate either come naturally to him or he completely disregards. 
Lestat waltzes into Louis’s admiration and does nothing to deserve his favor. Armand would do anything to deserve that. He wishes that Louis would let him prove it rather than brush off his attempts. 
He plants himself firmly at his saint’s feet: devoted supplicant awaiting recognition. But he doesn’t get it! He never gets it. It goes to the skilless former rich boy, the hot headed heartrender, even the addict sharpshooter who won’t shut his damn mouth and leave Armand to fester in his disappointment. With Louis there is nothing left for Armand but empty platitudes and boundaries. 
Scene 8 
Stealing from the Ice Court is difficult, but they manage. They get out with the secrets of Jurda Parem and the secret holder, but they leave a lot behind. 
Claudia has to take Jurda Parem to save them, for one. This increases her power a hundredfold…. And then rips it away, twisting it from control over life to control over death. 
A confrontation with their patron, Lestat’s father, ends disastrously. And they are left stumbling as they figure out how to handle the conflict going into the next book. 
Louis and Lestat have some quiet moments where Lestat reminds Louis of how to take a moment for himself and enjoy things. That he's allowed to think about things other than holding onto the club by his teeth. Things like art and music and love!
I am not going to write all of that, though. Just know that things are Happening and The Kingdoms are Getting Crooked. Louis is the one that gets kidnapped. 
Scene 9 
Two boys huddled in an empty office after its occupant has been snatched away from them. A gang left without its head. 
Someone has to save Louis. Someone has to get them all together, figure out how to move the pieces, and then get the job done. Judging by what Daniel's seen from him... he thinks Armand's the best bet. It's certainly not HIM.
“Come on, man,” Daniel says, “we have to do something. You’re Louis’s second in command, right? There has to be a plan for this.” The guy had contingencies for contingencies. Being snatched by another gang is probably just, like, a biannual vacation for him. 
Armand doesn’t even look up from his lap. “Without Louis I am nothing.”
Daniel just stares. “Dude, that’s fucking crazy.” 
Armand runs his nails over the ridges of his other hand. “I assure you it’s completely sane. If it weren’t for him… saving me from my own stupidity-” Yes, Daniel saw where Armand would be, same as everyone else in their gang at the Ice Court. The cruel owner of the brothel, the crueller owner of the brothel posing as an art school… posing as mentor and lover and savior-
But Armand would not be nothing. That’s fucking insane. 
“You’d still be stuck there, sure,” Daniel says, “but it wouldn’t be your fault.”
Armand laughs. “It wouldn’t? I remember putting my name on those papers a lifetime ago.” Written in a language he couldn’t speak, but what does that matter? If he’d stayed with his caravan like his mother told him the slavers never would have gotten him. 
If he’d behaved better for Marius then he would not have considered sending him back, and if he was better for Louis then Louis would still be here, not falling for another boy and certainly not kidnapped by a different gang. 
“I didn’t even make it worth the investment for Louis."
"You wanna make yourself worth the investment?" Daniel demands, "talk to the others. Tell us what to do so we can save the boss."
Armand starts to tug at his own hair. "You think they'll listen? The others?" Daniel puts his ear to the door and hears Claudia pacing, just the way he expected.
“Well,” Daniel says, “if you don’t peak you head out of here soon, Claudia’s gonna burst through the door herself."
Armand seems shocked for a second before he gains his cool composure. “The petulant child will do whatever she likes. I have no control over her.” 
Daniel rolls his eyes. “The fact that she’s even gonna talk to you about this means she wants your opinion. If she wanted to do it alone then she’d just do it.” 
Armand moves a casual hand. “Is she truly incapable of that? She was a child soldier, not a child whore.” Claudia’s bitter insult echoes back at them.
“That was uncalled for,” Daniel agrees, “but we all want the same thing, right?” 
“Fine,” Armand concedes, “I will see her.” He pushes himself off the floor, tries to compose himself as he stands. He won’t sit in Louis’s chair (doesn’t feel worthy of it) but he needs some reminder that he’s more senior than both of these two. 
He decides to lean halfway against the desk, trying to look as put-together as possible. He must look like someone who can put together a team, give orders, keep things together and save Louis the way that they all need.
“Open the door, Daniel,” Armand orders. Armand half expects Daniel to laugh at his audacity, but that’s not the look on his face at all. It’s more like… attraction. 
“Uh, yeah,” Daniel says, looking dazed. 
“Now."
Daniel moves quickly, then, adding “Yes sir!” The moment the door opens Claudia comes tramping in. 
“Are we doin somethin or are y’all leavin Louis to rot?” Claudia demands. 
Armand just stares blankly at her. “Ah, accusations. A strong way to start a civil conversation.” 
“Don’t start with me. He’s been gone a day and y’all ain’t done shit to fix it. Lestat's been threatening to try gettin' himself captured to try to save him and I can't keep him leashed much longer. You have a plan, or do I need to make one myself?"
Then Claudia glances over at Daniel, standing firmly on Team Armand. "For three, I take it." Daniel's doesn't correct her. He won't commit until Armand does.
Armand laughs lightly. “You? Take on an entire gang?” 
For once in her life, Claudia responds with a level of restraint. “Yeah, we will if we have to. But it’s not gonna go well. I can’t fight like I used to.” She reaches out the way that she used to in fights, the way that would stop Armand’s heart for a second just to prove she can kill him sure as he can kill her. 
Nothing happens, because of course it doesn’t. The Jurda Parem has wrested away her control over the living. She’s lost her connection to what gave her purpose, forced to learn from scratch with bones and decay. 
Maybe they have more in common than he thought. 
“Fine,” Armand says, “you will not have to take on an entire gang by yourself. I will be planning our attack.”
Claudia looks skeptical. “You?” 
He grinds his fangs into a smile. “Yes, me. Unless you would like to test your corpse strengths without assistance?” 
Daniel glances between the two. “Uh, Claudia, I really think you should-” 
“Fine,” Claudia agrees, “but it’s just for Louis. Once we got him back… you and me are through.” 
Armand laughs lightly. “I would like nothing more than to be rid of you.”
Scene 10 
Once they get Louis back and they pool their collective Understanding of the Situation, they figure out how to con Lestat’s father into a prison cell. 
Lestat gains unrestricted access to his family fortune and mansion. He has the time, income and safety to pursue his music now that his father is locked up for life and his mother freed from the asylum. She doesn’t decide to stay with him, but she’s free. He has stability and Louis. That’s what he really needs here. 
Louis gives up his crime empire and moves in with his boyfriend, devoting his time to reading books, studying law to help cover his loved one’s asses, and learning how to work through his own issues. In a world where Lestat was only on the fringes of most of them, he doesn’t have to decouple himself to start this process. 
Madeline doesn’t die because fuck that. I understand the reason that Matthias had to die in the books but I also understand the reason why CLAUDIA AND MADELINE had to die in their source material. This is an au and we do what we want. 
Claudia is the one that ends up with a pirate ship, with her and Madeline determining that they’ll use it to raid druskelle ships, slaver ships, and generally just… save everyone that they can. They’ll work out the details later. 
Some of them might involve dropping refugees off at Louis and Lestat’s doorstep but like… those two OWE them. They have these cozy little lives now. That means they have to help people in need. Them’s the rules. 
Armand takes over the most lucrative crime ring in the Barrel and works toward helping kids like him. Daniel’s addictive tendencies have gotten better since he’s acknowledged that he’s a Grisha and started using his powers again, but honestly? He doesn’t want any of that “normal life” crap. There’s a very attractive guy who’s worked through his desire to make himself a doormat to be worthy of people’s love and is now very assertive and tells him to do things in a way that is very sexy and also lets him shoot people with guns. 
He’s only human! Like come on! He’s got adrenaline and a hot guy who’s a crime boss telling him what to do and praising the shit out of him. Daniel’s his second. You expect him to give that up for bookkeeping? Fuck no. If he tried to shove himself into a life that fucking boring he might actually get hooked on Jurda Parem, which would be… bad. For everyone involved. 
He’s gonna stay hooked on Armand doming him instead. Happy endings all around! 
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whitevesper · 2 years ago
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the way he always hides his smile 😭
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drowningin-fantasies · 1 year ago
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im borrowing demon in the wood from my local library and following along with the audiobook on libby, and it is an experience. the artwork is lovely, and the audio is so immersive.
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a-literal-supernova · 2 years ago
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shadow and bone shitposts 1/?
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outletcrash · 1 year ago
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mental illness is crazy bc ive just spent 4+ hours trying to find demon in the wood free online and im to the point i might commit identity fraud. the wichita kansas public library system is my #1 enemy
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inejs-knife · 1 year ago
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david my beloved <3
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