Fear and Hunger x Shadows House
I'm just spitballing ideas here, please hang in with me.
Cahara enters the dungeons of fear and hunger first, he finds the girl and helps her out of the cage
He later finds Le'guard alive and takes him out of the dungeon, when Le'guard refuses, Cahara knocks him out since he won't be paid if the man doesn't come with him (or if he has significant evidence of his death, but he doesn't want to do that)
He also realized that the amnesia Le'guard claimed to have is fake because of his refusal to leave the dungeon
Cahara drags Le'guard back to Rondon's capital for his reward and gets enough money to get his lover/wife, Celeste, out of slavery.
Cahara questions Le'guard after he wakes up and somehow, Le'guard messes up and reveals that the girl, who has been with Cahara the entire time, was his child.
This pisses off Cahara since Le'guard leaving his daughter inside those dungeons makes him the worst definition of a deadbeat dad.
Cahara WANTS to let Le'guard back into the dungeons of fear and hunger, but word gets out that Le'guard escaped and that the mercenary was the one who freed him, high bounties are placed on both of their heads.
Cahara flees to protect his family and Le'guard follows him to avoid being thrown into a different prison (Rondon has since lost control of the dungeons of fear and hunger because of all the batshit insanity that has occurred there).
They flee to a small island off the coast which is governed by a different country and a noble house with no ties to Rondon, Soot Island ruled by the shadows house.
From here they immigrate and things seem to go back to normal, the girl is sent to school for the first time, Cahara goes back to being a mercenary, Le'guard plans out how to get back to the dungeon without being caught, and Celeste takes care of the girl while trying to encourage Le'guard to be an actual parent.
A bit later however, the girl (who Cahara named Helena in this au) is chosen during a selection and leaves to work in the shadows house.
Cahara is quite a bit upset at that but thinks she will be in good hands.
She becomes a 'living doll' of course and the name 'Helena' was given to her shadow master, who later on names the girl Hel (like the nordic god)
Helena and Hel were actually the original 'fifth pair' before Emilico frauded her way into the selection, which while confusing some of the adult shadows, didn't really change, Emilico and Kate's debut just had an extra member.
Yes, they passed the debut.
On Cahara's end, things start to get worse, the man begins to suffer from hallucinations of the dungeons he had escaped from, eventually he goes completely mad despite Celeste's attempts to save him
Things don't really pick up again until Edward (overseer of the shadows house's children wing for all the fear and hunger fans) preforms his obligation.
Low and behold, Cahara finally fully loses his shit and turns into a crow mauler (based on a fan theory around ending E of fear and hunger), Edward is the unlucky fucker who has to deal with this horse crap.
Le'guard also helps, saving Celeste and getting the creature out of public view so they can fight it.
Edward, his friends (Aileen and Gerald), and Le'guard fight this crow mauler but don't manage to kill it
Edward loses his eyes, Aileen, Le'guard, and Gerald break their bones and the crow mauler goes half-blind (it was Aileen's soot power which can mimic the flock of crows spell)
they flee and while everyone is brought to the 19th century's equivalent of a hospital, where Le'guard is recognized as a fugitive and is arrested.
When the patriarch of the shadows house, great grandfather, hears of the incident, he has Le'guard transferred into the adult's wing and locked up so he couldn't escape.
Great grandfather plans on using Le'guard as a political bargaining chip for Rondon.
Helena and Hel have just been doing their own thing up until now, while Hel is a scared and shy girl with a kind heart (the girl from fear and hunger), Helena is a bit different, as she seems to take after Le'guard in some ways, being called an aspiring Joan of arc (both are also mute).
Rum and Shirley were actually involved in moving Le'guard into the shadows house, Rum had more of a look out role, (Rum and Shirley are the pair that failed Kate's debut, Rum became a veiled doll who are the faceless servants of the shadows house and Shirley turned back into a morph and both are basically spies for Kate and her rebellion, sorry for the interruption, this is for the Funger fans).
Both wonder why a human is being held in the shadows house and Shirley goes to investigate, they manage to get the whole story so far out of Le'guard and Rum shares the info about a human being held inside the shadows house with Kate.
A few more letters back and forth and a deal is made, Kate will help Le'guard out of his cell and he will assist in her goal of destroying the shadows house, once that is done he will leave.
Rum and Shirley help smuggle him out and Le'guard 'disposes of' a veiled doll with a similar body type to him so he can take their place and hide (he did this because the shadows house deliberately disoriented and hid the entrance/exit from him, Rum only helped once he was already inside the shadows house), he also left behind a bunch of fake evidence to throw the shadows house off his tracks.
Helena is also part of the 'gathering of roses' (read: secret meetings that Kate does with her debut class), Le'guard acts as another spy and Helena eventually meets him somehow, leading to a lot of awkward conversations.
Back on the mainland, both D'arce and Ragnvaldr get the news of Le'guard's escape and bounty separately, they also hear of rumors that he moved to Soot Island so both travel there. (For different reasons, D'arce is a knight who worked under Le'guard and also his lover while Ragnvaldr's family was killed by his mercenary group and now he wants revenge)
Both arrive around the same time and are contracted to kill the wounded crow mauler that has since wandered off into the morph forest (the place morphs come from, who are the shadow's original form).
This is when D'arce and Ragnvaldr learn of the other's motivations and become enemies who reluctantly work together to kill Cahara's crow mauler, an adult shadow (shadow who has absorbed their living doll's face, what Edward and all shadows in the adult's wing are) name Thomas joins them, he was punished for breaking a rule of the shadows house by having his arm cut off and now Great grandfather wants him dead covertly since a bunch of adults still follow him.
They do kill the crow mauler this time, D'arce and Ragnvaldr turn on each other while Thomas decides to try and leave while he can, but tells the others of where Le'guard is now.
Both D'arce and Ragnvaldr are now trying to sneak into the shadows house to find and rescue/kill him before the other does.
Things that I am unsure of
Does Helena try to butter up Le'guard?
Celeste and her unborn child.
The end of the arc with Le'guard and Kate
Helena might get her hands on a soul stone and if Edward dies she uses it on his corpse and gets his soot powers, which she uses to speak (in Edward's voice too)
Vinuskha's corpse being located in the chasm under the shadows house
Edward now relies on echolocation after going blind
Helena's clothes have the symbol of the knights of the midnight sun on them
Candy was sent to the dungeons of fear and hunger as a teenager for criticizing a high ranking noble
