Sandor Clegane had always been an outcast. Someone hated by everyone, especially himself. He had no idea how much worse it could be until he is cursed to be the monster he thinks he is.
When you stumble into his life, his world is turned on its head once again.
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Sandor Clegane x Reader, alternate universe, werewolf!Sandor, fem!Reader, angst, blood and gore, magic, self-loathing.
This is gonna get extra freaky in the next part hehe.
Sandor Clegane Masterlist
A storm was nigh. Sandor could feel it. He felt it in his bones and he felt it in his soul the way wild animals do. He hastened his movements as he prepared his hut for the incoming deluge, working as fast as possible to avoid getting soaked. He covered his windows, put away his laundry, and checked his snares. A rabbit—fresh and warm, still—had run into the snare furthest from his hut. His lips twitched as a low growl pushed through bared teeth at the scent of warm blood. It wouldn't be much, but it would have to do; the rest of the wildlife had fled to whatever nests or burrows they'd come from to wait out the storm. It was time for Sandor to do the same. He extricated the rabbit from the snare with his calloused fingers and began the short trek back to his hut.
The rain would be here soon. No more than half-an-hour, he estimated as he peered at the sky. It was just after midday, but it felt as if the sun was setting with how the clouds obscured the sun, further darkened by the cover of the broad trees. Now, if only the branches could properly shield him from the rain. He was about twenty paces from his front door when the skies opened up and began their downpour. Sandor scowled as he jogged the rest of the way to his door. His old wounds throbbed and the scar on his face tingled uncomfortably; they always did when the weather turned.
Once he reached the inside of his hut, he felt like a wet, mangy, mutt. He had to scoff at just how accurate those words were.
With a sigh of exhaustion, he set about stripping out of his wet clothes and laying them out by the fire to dry. He applied salves to his scars—noting how he needed to make some more—and then sat by the fire to work on skinning and cleaning the rabbit he'd caught. There was once a time, years ago, when he would have put on clothes for this. Even alone, he had hated to be bare. Now, though, clothes felt like a constriction, a barrier. Life was easier without them. Besides, the blood from the rabbit was getting on his figure, and he hated scrubbing blood from fabric.
Blood.
The smell of it was thick and cloying, as if he'd stuck his nose into a vat of the stuff. He licked his chops and couldn't stop himself from trailing his fingers over the blood on his body and bringing them up to his mouth to lap clean. His chest rumbled in delight from the taste of it but it morphed into an agitated snarl just as quickly. Damn these urges. Damn them! Damn him, too. He'd always been a freak, always hated himself. It was just so much more violent, now. The wrongness of his body made him bitter, desperate to claw his way out of his own skin.
Whatever.
Sandor brought the now-skinned rabbit to his face and sunk his fangs into the juiciest part he could find. He tore into the meat with savage hunger, near-rabid with it. Any sense of self-control he'd hoped to sequester by skinning and cleaning the animal, first, was lost with the first bite. His instincts screamed at him. More, more, more! His eyes rolled back, fluttering shut as he fell into his instincts. He imagined something else between his jaws, something which fought against him, clawed back at him, screamed at him.
When the rabbit was nothing but a mess of bones and sinew, Sandor stared down at it and his blood-soaked form. The disgust hit him so viscerally that he heaved and nearly lost all that he'd just eaten. His fingers dug into the dirt floor of his hut, sharp nails digging tracks into it as he began to tremble.
As lightning flickered outside and the hut shook in the wind, The Hound felt tears run down his cheeks. Here he was. Blood-soaked, monstrous, forever alone. Just as he had been even before he'd been cursed.
Sandor thought back to when it happened, just over a year ago, now. The memories clear and sharp, as if it had all just happened.
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It had only been a matter of time before he killed the wrong person and gotten in trouble. Never had he imagined that the man would lay a curse upon him with his dying breath. There had been no lead-in, either. As soon as the man had drawn his final breath, Sandor fell to the bloodied ground as he howled and writhed. His first ever transformation was upon him and it had been the most horrifying ordeal of his life. No battle or close encounter with his brother had ever felt as horrifying as feeling his body shift, feeling his instincts change, feeling his senses sharpen.
His men found him in his grotesque wolflike form and had run for the hills. Sandor had scurried off, too. He'd ran until he found a river and jumped in it without a second thought to clean the blood from the fur that now covered his form. He froze when he saw his face reflected in the water's surface.
A brown-furred wolf stared back at him. He looked at the rest of his body in bewilderment. Nearly six feet tall on all-fours, an ungodly height when he stood on his hind legs. His scars were there, too. In his wolf form, they showed up as patches of missing fur, a mottled and jagged line across his pink skin. The burn on his face was the most horrendous. The fur in the area was completely gone, and the skin a sickening red color. He was a hideous beast, to be sure.
Sandor ran. He ran until he couldn't anymore. He ran until he was far from any village or castle, deep in a forest. He spent a month just wallowing in a hollow under a tree, only leaving to eat when he absolutely had to. Eventually, the wolf part of him had subsumed enough of his instincts that his mind was beginning to become blissfully empty and he began to wander. A lone wolf. Something his instincts told him was wrong, but his self-loathing was strong enough to keep him from seeking the company of anyone else, or any other creature.
The abandoned hut was like a gift from the gods, if he'd believed in them. He wasn't one to look a gift horse in the mouth, and he readily claimed it as his own when no one came to the hut after a week. The inside was dusty and cobweb-wrought, and Sandor sneezed ceaselessly as he cleaned the place.
It wasn't much, but it would do.
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Sandor shook his head to clear the memories from his mind. He was filthy and needed to clean up. Oh, and dispose of the rabbit remains sitting pathetically on the floor in front of him. He listened carefully to the storm outside, judging the strength of the wind and rain with his enhanced sense. Deciding it was probably safe enough, he picked up the bones and stepped outside. The wind whipped his hair into his face and the rain soaked him instantly, but it worked to wash the muck from his body as he tossed the bones onto the ground.
The wind moved through the trees with a wail, the sound grating on Sandor's sensitive ears. He turned to go back inside, but as his hand touched the door handle, the sound came again.
That was a person wailing.
A litany of instincts warred within Sandor as the realization hit. The wolf in him urged him to hunt, to get a meal more suitable than the rabbit had been. The man in him urged him to seek the person out and bring them to safety. The coward in him told him to sit his ass back down inside and mind his business.
Another wail.
Sandor was sprinting through the storm before he could stop himself.
The rain made it hard to use his sense of smell to navigate, so he followed the sounds of distress as best as he could. As he got closer, he could make sense of it more. It was a woman. She was crying out for help. It was the wailing of someone who knew their time was limited.
Sandor ran faster.
(Later, he would be embarrassed to have run through the storm in the nude, but his mind had been far more focused helping the woman.)
He caught sight of her and his heart lurched. She was tucked in the same hollow under a tree that Sandor had hid in when he'd first fled his past life. She was shivering something fierce, face sunken with fatigue and hunger. Her eyes went wide when she saw him and she froze and went silent. Sandor got to his knees and reached toward her.
"I have a hut. A fire," he rasped, voice rough from disuse, "Come."
The woman blinked owlishly at him and it was a little disconcerting how unafraid she seemed at the sight of him.
"I… can't walk," she said, almost unintelligible over the storm.
She pointed down at her leg and Sandor huffed at the sight of her swollen ankle. He yanked her from the hollow as gently as he could and hefted her into his arms. He felt her bony figure against his and realized she had probably been wandering alone for awhile with how malnourished she was. The wolf in him noted she would not make good food like that. The human in him told him he'd need to be careful feeding her, remembering that too much could shock a starving body. The coward in him was flabbergasted at the way she relaxed in his hold.
Only foolish women would not be afraid of random men, especially a man as unsightly and monstrous as him.
Once they were in the safety and warmth of his hut, Sandor set the woman on his bed and hastily tossed on his nearly-dried trousers. He set about getting what he would need to treat a sprained ankle before he knelt at the woman's feet and gingerly salved and wrapped it. Once that was done, he raked his gaze over her shuddering form. She needed food and she needed out of her soaked clothes.
"You need to change," he rumbled, "Put on something dry."
Finally, she looked wary, but she nodded nonetheless. Sandor found her a larger shirt of his to wear before he turned around to look through his food stores for something for the woman to eat. He heard her shuffling as she changed and it shocked him just how difficult it was to not turn around and watch her. It was worse when her smell hit him. It had been muted in the rain, but now he could smell her clearly. Fresh and warm and oh-so tempting. His stupid wolf brain noted that she smelled ready to breed and his human mind floundered.
Gods be good, he was in for a mess, wasn't he?
Ok ok, this ended up being almost 2,000 words and I realized it was getting away from me. One or two more parts to go. Please let me know what you think! Continue? Yea or nay? Next part will have more feral werewolf stuff <3
If you happen to be aro and ace, you may have seen a new ace flag floating around:
This was made by Instagram Black ace activist _aceingrace_ (see their profile here). The yellow stripe specifically stands for intersectionality and multiculturalism (plus joy), something that I think would be a nice addition to the aromantic flag (or any flag that doesn't have that, for that matter).
If you're wondering what was wrong with the original flag, it's the white stripe, which stood for "allosexual partners and allies", something that didn't sit right with many aces for obvious reasons.
Something similar is going on with the white stripe in the aro flag: it's defined as such:
the ‘platonic’ stripe - friendship/platonic and aesthetic attraction/queerplatonic relationships/family, the importance and validity of all non-romantic relationships and feelings and non-romantic forms of love etc.
That doesn't sit right with me as, without any shoutout specifying it's not a universal aro value and experience, it leaves aplatonic and loveless aroa estranged from their own flag.
So I've made an attempt at a new aro flag. Here it is:
I wanted it to match the new ace flag so we finally have the same amount of stripes!
It is not meant to replace the original aro flag, but rather be displayed alongside it for those who find it meaningful.
I just need the community's feedback on what meanings to assign to each stripe! Please, if you're aro-spec, take a couple minutes to fill in the form.
If you're an ally please please please spread this around!
Hello, thank you for checking out this form!
This is a survey to assign meanings to a new aromantic flag inspired by Instagram Black ace ac
Tagging some blogs for reach, please ask if you'd like to be removed!
Bestie this is great and all, personally won’t be participating tho
Use whatever flags y’all want to, don’t use the ones you don’t want too. I like the sunset and OG aroace flags personally so I’ll be sticking to those, if y’all wanna use these new ones, good for you.
No pressure either way
Also the white stood for community or togetherness from memory back in the day. I think I got some old posts about it
