#I've listened to this too many times today

[auxmodi]

hiiii! I love your stories and have enjoyed myself binge reading them. was wondering if you could do a super angsty fic with sandor? I've been craving it lmao. thank youuu mwah! <3

thankyou SO MUCH. YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEES i am so glad you asked this O HMYGOODDDD i love love love angsty shit this is gonna hurt so good.

summary: you’re a healer, tending to the wounded in the chaos of war, always close to sandor clegane, but you don’t listen when he tells you to stay behind. you’re taken, captured by the enemy, tortured, and broken. sandor, consumed by a mix of fury and guilt, tracks you for days, desperate to find you.

word count: 2.1k (sorry)

my masterlist

#warnings: heavy violence, SA, rape, physical abuse, angst, emotional distress, swearing, war, disturbing themes, blood, kidnapping.

the battle had been endless. you couldn't remember how many hours had passed, how many bodies had fallen, how many lives had been taken. the clash of swords, the screams, the blood splattered across the snow… it was all too much to process. you weren't built for this. you were supposed to be helping, healing. you were supposed to be where the wounded were, not in the thick of it, not caught up in the violence.

sandor had warned you. so many times. “stay fucking close. don’t wander off. these men aren’t here to play nice.” but you hadn’t listened. you thought you knew better. you thought that you could handle it, that you could save the wounded and not get caught up in the chaos. that the brutality of war wouldn’t touch you.

but you were wrong.

you were so wrong.

it all happened too fast, one minute you were kneeling beside a wounded man, trying to stop the bleeding from his side, and the next, a rough hand was pulling you from the ground. the sound of clashing steel and dying cries seemed to fade as a wave of panic washed over you. you tried to scream, but a heavy hand clamped over your mouth, dragging you backward, away from the chaos of the battlefield.

no. no, no. not like this. not now.

you kept fighting, but the grip on your arm tightened painfully as they dragged you deeper, farther from the fight. your eyes darted wildly. 

sandor. where was sandor?

your throat burned as you tried to scream his name. but the voice of the man holding you was loud and unforgiving.

"shut up," he spat, slamming your head against a broken wall. your vision swam, your thoughts hazy. you tried to keep your focus, to stay awake, but everything was going black. the sharp pain in your skull was overwhelming.

this was the kind of thing that only happened to other people, to those who wandered too far from safety. but you weren’t supposed to be that person.

today you were and there was nothing you could do about it.

you were pulled through the woods, the sounds of the battle gradually fading into the distance. fear curled in your gut, the panic rising as you realized no one was coming. the men were speaking in low, guttural tones, and though you couldn’t understand all of their words, the sneers and chuckles were unmistakable. they were taking you somewhere. somewhere far away.

they shoved you into a small shack, a foul-smelling place that felt more like a tomb than a hiding spot. you stumbled as you were thrown to the floor, landing hard on your knees. your palms scraped against the cold, rough wood as you gasped for air, panic flooding your chest. you tried to crawl, tried to run, but before you could, one of the men grabbed you by the hair, yanking you back.

“you’re a pretty little thing,” the man sneered, his breath rancid. his hands roamed over your body with a violence that made your stomach churn, his fingers digging into your skin as though you were a prize to be claimed.

you tried to fight back, kicking, scratching, but the other men were closing in, pinning you down, taking away the little strength you had. the terror in your chest was all-consuming, suffocating, but it didn’t matter. they were too strong. and you? you were just a helpless girl in their hands.

please, sandor. you thought. where are you?

but he wasn’t there.

they took turns with you, each moment worse than the last, each touch more brutal. your mind screamed for escape, but there was no place to go. no one was coming to save you. no one would.

the world turned hazy, the pain numbing as you tried to retreat into yourself. but you couldn’t. you couldn’t forget the words they whispered, the laughter that followed each brutal touch. you couldn’t forget the way they made you feel, worthless, broken, an object to be used.

and then, mercifully, you passed out. you weren’t sure if it was from the pain, from the exhaustion, or just the sheer overwhelming weight of everything that had happened to you, but the world went black. thank god, you thought. thank god for the darkness.

you woke up hours later or was it days? in a cold room. your body ached, the bruises on your skin swollen and painful, your head spinning. the scent of blood and filth clung to the air, and the silence was deafening.

you could barely move. your limbs were stiff, your hands bound tightly to the bedposts. the very thought of the rope around your wrists made you sick. 

was this it? was this how it ended?

you tried to shift, but even the smallest movement shot pain through your chest and limbs. you were covered in cuts, bruises, your skin too sore to even touch. you could feel the weight of everything, the terror, the helplessness, the rage building up inside you.

but mostly, you felt broken.

the door creaked open, and you froze. the sound of footsteps echoed in the small room, and you knew immediately who it was. one of them.. you couldn’t even bring yourself to look, too terrified to meet their gaze.

"still alive, huh?" he mocked, voice thick with contempt. his boots scraped against the wooden floor as he stepped closer to you.

“thought you’d be begging by now. but guess you’re just a quiet little cunt after all.”

you barely registered the words. please, no more. you wanted to scream, but your throat was too raw, your body too shattered. you couldn’t do anything but lie there, too tired to fight, too numb to care.

and then, it happened.

the door slammed open with such force that the hinges screamed in protest. the men froze, their laughter dying in their throats.

you didn’t know what was happening at first, everything happened so fast. but then you heard it. the sickening thud of bodies hitting the floor, the strangled gasps for breath. who was it?

and then you saw him.

sandor.

blood on his hands, fury in his eyes. he was a fucking beast, hacking through men like they were nothing but flies to be swatted away. his sword was a blur of steel, slicing through flesh with a speed and precision that could only come from years of living in blood-soaked shadows. the sickening squelch of metal meeting bone, the gurgling of the men who couldn’t even scream before they were cut down, filled the room.

one by one, they fell, their pathetic whimpers swallowed by sandor’s rage. he didn’t even look at them. didn’t waste a single breath on the bastards who had dared to lay a finger on you. it was the way he moved, cold, methodical, violent, that made your heart race.

he wasn’t talking to them. no insults, no threats. just death. he was cutting them down with no mercy, no hesitation, as if their lives were nothing. nothing compared to the rage inside him, compared to the fury that burned like wildfire in his chest.

you could barely see through the blood and sweat, but you knew this:

sandor wasn’t going to stop. not until every last one of those sons of bitches was dead.

sandor had been hunting for days.

the trail had been cold for a while, but his gut never lied to him. he could feel it in his bones, in the air, the weight of your absence pressing down on him. the fact that you had vanished, taken from him while he had been off fighting with the enemy, gnawed at his insides in ways that felt like a constant, sharp ache.

he had promised to protect you, hadn’t he? but he had failed.

and now, after days of searching, after killing his way through every bastard who had dared to even look like they were lying, he had finally tracked you down to this godforsaken shack in the middle of nowhere. he had seen the marks on their bodies, the bloodied, mangled corpses and he hadn’t even felt satisfaction when the last of them fell. no, the rage was still there. still bubbling, an unrelenting fire in his chest.

when he forced open the door, the sight that greeted him nearly shattered his mind.

there you were, broken. gods, you were broken.

your eyes were half-lidded, your face pale, and there was a dullness to them that made something inside of him crack open. you were lying on a bed, but your wrists were bound to the posts, and your clothes, what was left of them, hung in tatters. your body was battered, bruised, marked in ways that made his chest tighten with a violent, unbearable pain.

"no," he rasped, the word coming out in a harsh breath. he couldn’t even control the tremor in his voice. everything about this was wrong. this was his fault. he failed you.

your head turned slightly, and for a brief moment, your eyes met. the sight of you, so broken, so fucking vulnerable made his heart pound harder in his chest. anger twisted in his gut, his hands shaking as they hovered over the sword at his side, desperate to end the lives of those who had dared to lay a hand on you.

he moved toward you slowly, cautiously, as if you might vanish if he made the wrong move. you barely seemed aware of his presence, your gaze distant, your breath shallow. and when he reached your side, when he finally let his hand rest against your cheek, his whole body stiffened at the coldness of your skin.

"hey," he muttered, his voice low, strained. he didn’t know if you could even hear him, but he had to say it. "stay with me, damn it."

your eyes flickered, but you didn’t speak, didn’t respond. nothing. you were so empty, so broken, that sandor wanted to scream.

sandor’s jaw clenched so hard it hurt. he gripped your arm and pulled it toward him, the ropes still cutting into your flesh. “we’re getting you out of here,” he said, but it was empty, hollow, a promise that meant nothing in the face of what had already been done, what had already been taken.

he didn’t waste time untying you gently. he didn’t care if he hurt you. he just needed you free. needed to get you out of this hell. his hands were rough, unyielding as he cut through the ropes, his fingers slipping slightly with the blood that had stained his palms.

when you finally fell into his arms, the weight of your body felt like an unbearable burden. you were too light, too fragile, too fucking broken.

the air felt too thick to breathe, and for a moment, he couldn’t bring himself to say anything. he was angry. so fucking angry. not just at you, no, never at you, but at the whole fucking world. the fact that he hadn’t been there, that he hadn’t been able to stop it from happening.

"we’re going back to the others," he said finally, his voice hard, but there was something else there, something darker.

“no one’s ever gonna lay a fucking hand on you again,” he growled, teeth clenched tight. the words spilled out like poison, dark and deadly. “i’ll burn every last one of those bastards to the ground. i swear it."

you didn’t answer. didn’t say a damn word, you just stared, hollow-eyed, distant, as if his words had no weight at all.

it ate at him, gnawed at his insides like a wound that wouldn’t close, and the rage swelled up in his chest until he could barely breathe, it hurt more than anything he’d ever felt.

the quiet between you was unbearable, a suffocating weight in the air. sandor’s jaw clenched, his knuckles white as he brushed your hair away from your face. he touched you, needed to touch you, but you didn’t feel real anymore.

“rest,” he muttered, his voice quieter now, almost unsure. “you’re safe.”

but even as you closed your eyes, the tired, broken part of you retreating into unconsciousness, he knew that safety was an illusion. you would never be the same and neither would he.

carrying you, every step felt like a cruel reminder of how much he had failed, how much he couldn’t undo.

the battle had already been won, but in this moment, sandor knew: the war for you was far from over and no matter how many men he killed, how many bodies he left in his wake, there would always be this, this piece of himself that he had lost.

and it would never come back.

[lunarriviera]

What are your thoughts on the last ep of under the skin...that cant be shen yi right...im seeing a lot of twin theories but thats a weird plot twist honestly 😅

to answer this question i guess i have to get up off the floor first, where i have been lying facedown and motionless since uts2 ended over a week ago. two weeks ago? yesterday? today? i don't know anymore i've lost all track of time, who are you? where are we?

oh right—the s2 ending. you must mean this scene, right? what a great way to end things! du cheng, happy, walking to meet a group of friends at his birthday party! truly wrapped up the whole drama, and left us in such a heartwarming place with our favorite characters!

...oh you didn't mean that ending? you mean there's another one?

[mindless screaming behind the cut AS WELL AS SPOILERS]

[and this winds up being about all of s2 as well as the final tag, OOPS]

so okay listen before i can even address this without the mindless screaming, i have to level with y'all here: s2 was rough on me. there are only like three du cheng stans in all of anglophone cdrama fandom and i'm probably two of them ( @wannings-wontons is the other one, thank god for her). i've written eleventyleven fics from his pov so i am ferally protective of my big stupid hot cop son. this season put him through the goddamn wringer and for my taste there were just a few too many scenes of du cheng looking like he was about to burst into tears while shen yi was smiling winsomely, for all the world as if he were not the one personally causing his captain to experience devastating mortal agony. allow me to demonstrate.

in the driver's seat: unspeakable anguish. literally can't talk.

in the passenger seat: hey nice air conditioner! guess what i have a new friend! i spent the night at his place, talking about infinity and human potential! in a few more episodes he'll be a murder suspect!

(i'm getting to the cliffhanger, believe me i'm getting there, no really i am, we just have to spend a minute dealing with the divorce arc first)

because, while i absolutely adore angst bambi (as @whomst-art-thou-whomst-whomst has immortalized him), and thanks to @elenothar have firmly adopted him as a most beloved emotional support twink (not least because i suspect tan jianci is himself kind of a genius; no triple threat should be this good of an actor), i also honestly not infrequently this season wanted to drag shen yi into the men's room by his pretty hair and flush his pretty little head down the [redacted] until he came to his pretty little senses. because while later in the arc he clearly is, you know, attempting that deep-cover thing, and has to reject du cheng to his face, right in front of Evil Eugenicist Art Critic Weasel Man, in order to gain Weasel Moriarty's trust, etc.—

there are also a bunch of times when du cheng is visibly upset and miserable and in genuine pain, and shen yi just laughs. literally laughs at him. like tan jianci what are you doing, do you want the audience to dislike you? how are you trying to play this?? are we supposed to think, wow shen yi sure knows what he's doing? are we supposed to think he suddenly has the world's worst taste in men? because long before Weasel Man smashes a vase and snaps at his lab assistant and possibly kills someone and has assorted tantrums which start to tip off shen yi that maybe his new bestie is kind of a bag of dicks—long before that starts happening? shen yi just likes that guy. he LIKES him. enough to quote whitman to him (fang kaiyi you take his queer name out your mouth); enough to stay up all night painting the stars with him and we don't know what all else. enough to hang out in his lab for days on end, listening to junk science and pretending to understand the human genome and just what. shen yi. WHAT. he's literally a Bond villain styled like an asymmetric reptile—all this, just because he's tall? and he's gone to the symphony a few times? what, because he negged your painting, and that turned you on? i shouldn't have said any of that, but i did; and now i refuse to take it back. because inside me are two wolves, and they sound like this:

one wolf has been extremely online for many years, and thinks she's very hip and chill and jaded. this wolf talks in memes and laughs at herself, and she's like: “haha fun drama! Solving Crimes Through Art! lol i can't believe this turgid love song playing over a romantic montage, wow it's so stupid.” and also: “lmao divorce arc so hilarious, WELCOME HOME CHEATER lol get it, good joke right?” and: “oh my god why is there another pointless cliffhanger, they will NEVER GET a s3 what are they thinking. this scene is therefore not canon and can be safely ignored, just like the s1 tag turned out to be a ~~~dream."

but the other wolf is lying motionless in her barrow in the darkness flat on her stomach in mouldering leaves and mud head resting on crossed paws staring into the night with her old yellow eyes and she says they stabbed my son and left him alone in his blood and the last thing he saw was a cruel face worn by the boy he has come to love a boy standing at the end of the alley looking down at his phone who then moves past him and keeps on walking

and then, you know. then i lie on the floor for a week! which is fine, i'm an extremely psychologically healthy person who has certainly not at all outsourced her entire emotional well-being to an imaginary public safety bureau criminal investigator on the coast of southeast china.

so what do i think about the cliffhanger? here is what i think about it; and again, sorry for the hatchet job on shen yi but it was relevant:

1. i do think it's a dream, yes. they've already played that game with us—we waited two years to find out who was carving up shen yi's creepy murder-red self-portrait and whomst should it be but…nobody! just shen yi having nightmares about his future fling, apparently. (notice, too, how fang kaiyi GRABBED that craft knife, which shen yi had deliberately left on the easel, and didn't even ask why it was there. he might be tall and elegant and have good taste but he's nowhere near as smart as you are, shen yi. do better.)

2. whose nightmare is it, though: shen yi's, or du cheng's? remember that the first time du cheng meets fang kaiyi, he tells shen yi, "he reminds me of someone: the old you." (and shen yi laughs merrily, even though nothing about that is funny, either the observation or du cheng's immediate mistrust and jealousy. TAN JIANCI WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING). then, later, on the precinct rooftop, after the case is all over, shen yi confesses yet again that there's something in him that's not altogether good, that he has quote "demons," and that if he hadn't met du cheng, he might have gone down some vague unspecified dark path. not quite sure how a portrait artist was gonna become a mass murderer or whatever, but okay i guess. there was something off about shen yi 1.0, and du cheng could see it even a decade ago and he didn't like it then any more than he does now.

given all that, then, the nightmare is probably shen yi's. he's prone to them anyway, and he knows now how badly he's hurt du cheng, and that he came dangerously close to, well, getting into bed with the enemy. i don't think it's even until fang kaiyi is so limpidly nonchalant about zhou shanshan's death that shen yi's inner moral compass comes shrieking back into play (and then it really does; shen yi who never raises his voice out there just shouting that man down).

there's one argument to be made for the case that it's du cheng's nightmare, though, which is the way that he looks up at the camera at the very end of the shot, and laughs. shen yi 1.0 is standing too far away for that to be his point-of-view. so who's standing over du cheng? and who would he laugh at, in recognition, like that? shen yi 2.0, presumably (or 3.5? not sure what version we're on anymore).

either way here's my final observation, and then i swear to god i'll shut up, before the shen yi stans come for me like maenads. i was chatting with @wannings-wontons and she said something that absolutely blindsided me, which is that the cliffhanger literalizes the arc of the series: shen yi did, in fact, metaphorically stab du cheng in s2. why else would either of them dream that? du cheng being badly, even fatally wounded by arrogant young artist shen yi is precisely what happened during the divorce arc. and their reconciliation was so heavily censored as to be, to some of us anyway, unpersuasive. (two cops, talking on a rooftop all night! five feet apart cause they're not gay!) as @wannings-wontons said: "the last scene just reflects how badly hurt he was. and we're left to decide whether he'll recover."

so which is worse, dreaming that your lover stabs you? or dreaming that something twisted inside you stabs the man you love?

tldr, shen yi doesn't need a soap opera evil twin: he's his own evil twin, and he knows this. and what is more, du cheng knows it now too. if there's ever a third season, which seems completely impossible to me, the writers have to know that they have NOT fixed this.

fortunately, we have something censored production companies don't have, and it's called fanfiction. so bring on the episode codas, my friends. bring on the long painful conversations and the shouted arguments (du cheng never even got to yell, except once in a parking lot because he was frantic). bring on the tender reconciliations that can only come after those blowout knock-down-drag-out fights, and are therefore real and grounded, not stilted, wooden, woefully inadequate mockeries of reunion. let people throw furniture and cry and try to explain and plead and confess and even, sure, why not, grab the other person and kiss him breathless, and say I don't want to do this without you, say don't put me through that ever again, say but this isn't enough and I need something different, say okay then let's figure that out together, say i'm sorry i hurt you, you're the most important person to me and that's the last thing i ever want to do.

it's up to us, not to leave them there in the alley like that. but the good news is if it's work, it's only work. and it's our work to do.

[arvandus]

Guys. GUYS.  This song.  THIS FUCKING SONG....

https://open.spotify.com/track/5eXnC2B5RU5fAhfwvV2ABD?si=28871c4782154d7c

Nothing sums up the pining between Dabi and Reader more than this song right now... 

I want you Yeah I want you And nothing comes close To the way that I need you I wish I could feel your skin And I want you From somewhere within

It feels like there's oceans Between me and you once again We hide our emotions Under the surface and try to pretend But it feels like there's oceans Between you and me

I want you And I always will I wish I was worth you But I know what you deserve...

UUUUUUGGGGHHHH.

[crabussy]

I cried so hard while writing all of that. headache now. worth it. I'm so glad other people care about this just as much as I do. let's never give up hope ever

[charliethomascoxuniverse]

💕 Charlie Cox as Ishmael 💕

Moby Dick (2011) Pt XXIV ~

“There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes this whole universe for a vast practical joke, though the wit thereof he but dimly discerns, and more than suspects that the joke is at nobody's expense but his own.” (MD, Ch 49)

[swan2swan]

Gonna just listen to this one and reflect.

28 years old is far too young. Far, far too young. Talented or not. And this ending really, really made the show. The gorgeous, upbeat song kicking in at the most suspenseful moments, or the lowest points of despair, always kicked the show right back up into a "Hang on! Something else is gonna happen! We're gonna take another swing!" mood.

Then they did what so many other shows should do, and ran credits that used clips from the episode you just watched...reminding what you had seen, what the characters had done, what had been accomplished. And the moments they featured were so often intimate, emotional bonding moments, because the whole darn show was a reflection on youth, hope, and mortality, and the point was that you bond with others as you grow.

[exoexid]

slowly but surely surviving the horrors 🫡

[heffrondriving]

soooo. that new big time rush album huh

[sysig]

Everything day

[seaofreverie]

Wanted to start working on projects for my part-time school this weekend but instead all I have the energy to do is lay in bed and play mario kart or lay in bed and listen to music

[vilevampire]

I loaf technology

[softshuji]

y'know it's a night when hal sits and eats cereal in the dark room at 1.30am.

[hummingbirdswords]

.

[lilacthebooklover]

me when it's nearly 4am and i try to sleep but then the Doubts creep in

[sisterdivinium]

Just came across a newsletter thing for another fandom I am absolutely not a part of but I must say that I'm envious. Organised links to various fandom contributions in the form of short fic, long fic, images/videos/audio AND fandom discussions -- and there's a big handful of each and it's updated regularly and it's all recent stuff that covers different aspects of their fannish experience in different platforms.

Why can't we have that

[cassmouse]

the scott pilgrim takes off hyperfixation has hit me like a brick wall wtf do I do