Archive of Our Own ^beta

Most people don’t see themselves the way they really are. They don’t think of themselves in the present tense. They get set on a specific version, probably by accident, and from that point on, they have to do a little math to remember their age, they have to take a second, when they catch their face in the mirror at an unexpected angle. You might be 27, but when someone asks you how old you are, for some reason 24 is on the tip of your tongue. It isn’t a big deal, just part of aging, part of having a body, part of being something that exists as more than a body alone.

As a shifter, he can relate – really, he can. He doesn’t have much empathy for the experience, but he can certainly relate. It’s been years since he remembered the first face, the first one he saw on his own body. It wasn’t even his face – he’d been alive for years by then, had changed faces plenty of times, without even understanding yet what that meant. He’d been born with a face of his own, he was sure of it – intellectually sure, emotionally sure. But he wasn’t materially sure of it, and that kept him up at night. He would never get that back, whatever it had been. He grieved his own countenance, the idea of it, more than the shape itself.

It was unfair, in a way, to have such a clear sense of self, with no consistent body to contain that self. Sometimes it was easier to conceive of himself as a body alone, a self that drifted from shape to shape, nameless and formless, blood and viscera and bone and bile alone. Sometimes it was impossible to feel any connection to his body at all, and he felt like an interloper, a guest in his own skin, a cloud of consciousness, haunting a corpse. No matter how he saw himself on a given day, the throughline that defined him, that grounded him, that reified his reality, was the crush of loneliness.

He knows that there were probably others like him, but he’d never met one. Well, he assumes that at least one of his parents were like him, but he can’t remember either of them. Sometimes it’s comforting to imagine them out there, looking for him. Most of the time, he finds it sad, to think of them out there somewhere, missing him. Maybe they’re out there, but completely indifferent. Maybe they abandoned him in the first place. Or maybe they got murdered. Or maybe – and this, this is the worst thought – maybe he’s the only person on Earth like this. Maybe his parents were normal people, whose faces stay the same, and they were so horrified by him that they left him for dead. What he can remember of his childhood is a blur of hushed disgusted tones and pokes and prods, anonymous strangers shuffling him from place to place – and wherever he ended up, he was always alone.

The more people whose faces he wore, the more minds he delved into, the more he lost hope of there being anyone alive who could relate to him. He stopped spending time on the thoughts of his victims, at a certain point. He would fish around at the surface of their mind for anything that might be useful in imitating them, but he stopped bothering with the more detailed work of looking through memories. For one thing, it was physically strenuous, but more than that, it made him so angry, knowing what kinds of lives people lived, blissfully unaware of his suffering. He punished them for their intimacy, their easy lives. He punished them for loving each other, complacently, recklessly, ungratefully. He took whatever tenderness he could eke out of their partners, and when he got bored or disgusted, he’d take them apart, piece by piece.

+++

The names of the bodies he wore didn’t matter, and he didn’t bother learning or remembering them. He’d surrendered to this routine for years now, wandering the country, shedding old skin and taking on new faces as a matter of course, occasionally giving in to his need for companionship, for intimacy, and then going in for the kill. He wasn’t surprised when the two hunters caught on to him, but it did complicate things a little. It wasn’t his usual style, to take on the skin of someone who he wasn’t jealous of, but needs must. He was lucky to catch the hunter in the alley, and he worked with brutal efficiency to complete the transformation and get the man’s body hidden. It felt wrong, to kill him. He killed people whose lives were idyllic, not people like…whoever this man was.

So he tied him up and stowed him in the sewer. Even as he felt his own body writhing and twitching with the transformation, he found it hard to look away from the unconscious man’s face. He tended to choose attractive men to wear, so the man’s beauty wasn’t the thing that had him captivated. No, there was something else about him, something achingly familiar. He felt his new features slot into place, and shook off the strange warm feeling, off to capture the man’s companion. As he skimmed the man’s memories, he learned his name (Dean) and that the other hunter was his younger brother (Sam). A headache formed, sharp and hot, behind his eyes as he took in just these surface thoughts. There wasn’t a single thing in this man’s brain that wasn’t steeped in unimaginable pain.

Or, well, perfectly imaginable pain, as it turned out. He felt like this when he looked too hard at his own memories, too. Every thought was a different way of remembering how lonely he was, how no one would ever stay with him, given any choice in the matter. How he was a burden, how he felt that he was being punished on some cosmic level for wanting even the smallest bit of companionship. How he deserved that punishment, because he just might be broken in some fundamental shameful way. Dean’s brain was a kaleidoscope of self-loathing, and in every glittering refraction, he glimpsed himself in technicolor clarity. In all of his years of shapeshifting, he’d never spent time in a brain that was so much like his own. The blistering headache felt like friendship, like being seen, right down to his mottled core. It felt like someone holding tightly to his hand.

It was hard to pay attention to what Sam was saying by the car, with how mired he felt in Dean’s thoughts and memories. Looking at Sam made the headache worse. Looking at the car made him think of an older man (Dad, Dean’s brain supplied weakly), and something about that man’s face in his memories made his stomach twist. This man hates me, he thought, after everything I’ve done for him. He was struck by the sudden unaccountable urge to run back to where he’d left the real Dean, bound in the sewer, to kneel down in front of him, to touch his face. It was an irrational impulse, and he stuffed it down deep – he had a real situation on his hands, this was no time to get sentimental.

Of course, Sam got wise to him, and as much as he wished he didn’t have to incapacitate the man, he didn’t have much choice in the matter now. So he knocked him out and dragged him down to be in the same corridor as Dean. As he finished binding him, Sam began to stir into consciousness.

“Where is he? Where’s Dean?” Sam demanded. It was almost funny, how close he was to his brother’s unconscious body. Hearing that tone of voice, though, it shook something loose inside of him. How dare he ask after Dean? He was one of the reasons Dean’s brain hurt, one of the people who’d made Dean feel the way he did. Rage overtook him, and he slapped Sam. It felt better than it should have. It felt fucking personal.

“I wouldn’t worry about him. I’d worry about you,” he said, in Dean’s voice, with Dean’s mouth.

“Where is he?” Sam asked again.

“You really don’t wanna know,” he laughed, the irony getting to him again. It had been a long time since he’d talked to anyone as himself. It was uncomfortable, but in a good way, like stretching your leg after it falls asleep. “I swear, the more I learn about you and your family…I thought I came from a bad background,” he marveled.

“What do you mean, learn?” Sam sounded more scared now, and it would have made him smile, if he hadn’t been plunged deeper into Dean’s mind at that moment, spurred on by the very thought of doing so. Dozens of memories rushed past him, and his headache spiked. Memories of Sam shouting at him, of him leaving, abandoning him. Memories further back, of taking care of Sam, comforting him. Memories of what he gave up, to take care of him. It was too much, and he covered his head with his hand, as if he could muffle the memories somehow. The agony ebbed to a dull throb, and he returned to the conversation.

“He’s sure got issues with you. You got to go to college. He had to stay home. I mean, I had to stay home. With Dad. You don’t think I had dreams of my own? But Dad needed me.” He felt viscerally angry. He wanted to shake Sam. He wanted to go grab Dean, untie him, drag him in here and make Sam beg for forgiveness. “Where the hell were you?” He sneered.

“Where is my brother?” Sam asked again, and that was just the last fucking thing he wanted to hear right now. Because Sam just wasn’t listening. This wasn’t about Dean’s physical safety right now. Dean was fine, sleeping it off down the hall. This was about what would happen when Dean woke up. This was about how Sam would keep hurting Dean, and would keep on thinking that Dean couldn’t fucking feel it.

“I am your brother,” he fumed, slamming his hands down on either side of Sam. “See, deep down, I’m just jealous. You’ve got friends, you could have a life. Me? I know I’m a freak.” His throat caught a little, the words Dean’s own, kept like a secret knife inside his heart, one that he twisted on himself whenever he forgot his place. They could just as easily have been his own words, for how often he’d thought the same things. “And sooner or later, everybody’s gonna leave me.” He put some distance between himself and Sam, his blood pumping loudly in his ears.

“What’re you talkin’ about?” Sam stared at him, visibly shaken.

“You left,” he spat. It felt cathartic, to say it out loud. “Hell, I did everything Dad asked me to, and he ditched me, too. No explanation, nothin’, just poof.” His chest ached, the abandonment just a more definitive event in a long series of memories where Dad walked out the door without any indication of when or if he’d return. No one owed Dean an explanation, it seemed. No one felt beholden to him, the way he so clearly did to them. He needed to regain control of the conversation, to steer away from the raw suffering that was crushing in on all sides, blending with his own pain, blurring and bleeding into it until there was no way to disentangle the two. “Left me with your sorry ass. But, still, this life? It’s not without its perks,” he laughed, the idea finally hitting him. “I meet the nicest people. Like little Becky. You know, Dean would bang her if he had the chance. Let’s see what happens.” It was harder to lie about Dean than he thought it would be. It felt like dragging the guy’s name through the mud. Sure, he thought Becky was cute. But he hadn’t really thought about anything past that. The girl’s friend was dead, her brother falsely accused of murder. He wasn’t the kind of guy to take advantage of someone like that. Dean was better than that.

The thought made something in his gut clench. Dean’s had as hard a life as he had – perhaps, in some ways, harder – and he hadn’t turned out nearly so violent, so callous. If anyone could love him, maybe it was Dean. On his way out of the sewer, he spared a longing look at the man.

+++

At Becky’s house, things started off about like they usually did. Most people would never suspect that a loved one wasn’t really themselves, and he found that he could usually get quite a lot of enjoyment out of them before they started to close off, aware of enough minute differences between him and whoever he was impersonating that it gave them pause. That’s when he would switch gears, tie them up, get down to the dirty work of making them pay for their ignorance, their bliss.

By the fire, sitting on Becky’s couch, he felt the opportunity to speak almost freely. It was tantalizing, made more so by the fact that he was wearing Dean’s face. It was viscerally intimate, talking about himself in Dean’s voice. It felt more profound, more meaningful than anything he’d ever done before. Inhabiting Dean like this, he didn’t feel like he was wearing a costume, or possessing a body. He felt like he was wrapped in the arms of a lover.

“So this thing, it can make itself look like anybody?” Becky asked, shifting in her seat at the thought.

“That’s right.” And the bitch laughed.

“Well, what is it? Like, A genetic freak?” He laughed right back, her words echoing in his mind – freak.

“Maybe.” He sobered. “Evolution is about mutation, right? So, maybe this thing was born human, but was different.” Quiet gasps, white coats, heart rate monitor on his thumb, pinching, pinching. “Hideous and hated.” Averted eyes, gloved hands, ‘biohazard’, ‘abomination’. “Until he learned to become someone else.” A sliver of skin, enough to get a read on. A familiar painful burn, the squelch of wet skin, shedding in sticky sheets. Sunshine, for the first time in years, on his new face.

He paused, swept up in his own memories, how they started to seep into Dean’s memories. His own craving, for touch, for affection, for acceptance, echoed back at him from Dean. His suffering was the lonesome call of a bird, deep in the woods, and Dean’s presence was the long awaited answering call, the promise of community, however small. A quiet, desperate part of him wondered if maybe they could be that for each other. He would never abandon Dean, would never be afraid to touch him. He wondered if Dean would mind if he kept wearing Dean’s face, if they were together. He wanted that, wanted to be a mirror, if it was Dean he was reflecting.

“It’s funny. I kind of understand him. He’s all alone. Close to no one.” His voice cracked. He couldn’t tell if he was speaking as himself, about himself, or as Dean, about himself. Maybe he was speaking as himself, about Dean. Not knowing which was the truth of the matter made him wish, again, that it was Dean he was talking to, not this ungrateful woman. “All he wants is for someone to love him. He’s like me.” Now, unmistakably, he was speaking about Dean. As himself. The gravity of the realization slammed into him with physical force. He wanted this woman dead, gone. He wouldn’t even enjoy killing her. He wanted to be done with this interaction, so he could go back to Dean.

“You know, everybody needs a little human touch, now and then,” he said, a crude and rushed attempt to segue into what he’d come here for. She took it about as well as he thought she would, and in a matter of minutes, she was bound, her throat trembling beneath his blade.

Of course, the cops showed up, and he found himself fighting his way out, scrambling to get back to the safety of the sewer. It was time for plan B.

+++

He was disappointed that Dean and Sam were no longer where he’d left them, but knowing what he did about Dean’s exceptional combat and stealth prowess, he wasn’t surprised. He tied Becky up and left her covered, and set off back to the house, wearing her boring face, trying to avoid her WASPy thoughts. It was markedly less emotionally intense, inhabiting someone privileged and oblivious, like Becky, but he found himself missing the gritty kinship he’d felt inside of Dean. As soon as he had Sam incapacitated once more, he shed Becky’s simpering shape and settled back into Dean’s skin. He’d never felt so at home in a body before.

“What’re you gonna do to me?” Sam asked, perhaps having taken his earlier advice, to stop worrying about Dean and start worrying about himself. He wouldn’t hurt Dean. Sam, however…

“Oh, I’m not gonna do anything. Dean will, though.” He grinned, knowing that if Sam didn’t have such a stick up his ass, he might have laughed.

“They’ll never catch him.” Sam said it with such conviction, it actually gave him pause. No matter how much he’d hurt Dean, he clearly trusted him on a level that was borderline incomprehensible. It was like Dean was a superhero to him, capable of outrunning anything, of rescuing him, no matter the odds. He stifled a pang of protective affection for Sam, chalking it up to the entanglement of Dean’s psyche with his own.

“Doesn’t matter. Murder in the first of his own brother? He’ll be hunted the rest of his life.” He turned his blade over in his hand, considering it. He would make sure to frame someone else for all this. Maybe fucking Becky. He wanted to keep wearing Dean’s shape, if nothing else, so it would be inconvenient if the man was on a bunch of watch lists.

“I must say, I will be sorry to lose this skin. Your brother’s got a lot of good qualities.” It was the truth. The idea of going through the rest of his life as someone else, someone who didn’t fit the way Dean did, was unbearable. Like imagining walking across broken glass for the rest of your life. Wearing Dean hurt, but it hurt in a way that made him feel at home in himself, that made him feel lovable. He wanted more than anything to give that feeling back to Dean, to give him that kind of connection right back. How could Sam call himself Dean’s brother, when he didn’t even know how alone he was? “You should appreciate him more than you do.” How can you be so ungrateful, when he’s the one who kept you fed? When he read to you every day, when he fucking potty trained you, when he raised you? Everything he’s ever done, it was for you.

He poured himself a drink, because the bits of him that were Dean wanted him to, but it distracted him from Sam, who wasn’t going to give up without a fight. He tripped him, using his knife to cut through his bindings. They fought for what felt like ages, but which was less than a minute of back and forth grappling. It came second nature to him, in Dean’s body, and he relished the smooth ripple of his own muscles as he pinned Sam beneath him, something Dean had plenty of memories of.

“Not bad, little brother,” he goaded.

“You’re not him,” Sam huffed, and for once, he almost wanted to agree. He was right – he wasn’t Dean. But Sam didn’t mean it the way he did. Sam meant it as a neutral fact, a matter of course – at worst, an accusation of deceit. In his own mind, it was an admission of guilt, falling short of the glory of Dean. Because Dean would not do the things he had done. Dean was out of reach, a beacon of light, blinking on a distant rocky shore, a lighthouse shining through the night to guide his own rickety little ship through the fog. Dean’s loneliness was something he’d carved and pruned and worried into something good, something selfless. His own loneliness was a storm, a curtain of darkness, something that existed to consume, to leave ruin in its wake.

“Even when we were kids, I always kicked your ass.” The fight plowed forward, until at last, Sam was beneath him, choking and gasping under his hands. Sam’s face, beloved and resented in equal measure, contorted in desperation and fear. It felt good. Dean wouldn’t agree, but then, Sam did have a point. He wasn’t Dean, not really, not totally, not yet.

“Hey!” Dean – real Dean – shouted from the doorway. It was the first thing he’d ever said to him. He looked up, heart stuttering in his chest, and jumped away from Sam. Not a great first impression, to be murdering his baby brother on the floor. How to explain, where to begin? How could he help Dean see all there was between them, all the potential for what else could bloom there, between the parallel lines of their isolation?

In the time it took for him to consider what he might say, Dean took the shot. Twice, actually. Straight to his heart. Dean probably would never know how poetic it was, to shoot him in the heart. To shoot him twice – once to kill him, and once to kill the bits of Dean that were growing there. Or maybe, he did know how poetic it was. Dean looked at the shifter’s empty face, his dead eyes, with some unnamable tenderness, before roughly removing his stolen necklace.

When Dean put the necklace back on, the familiar weight of it against his sternum, he couldn’t help but think of the shifter, whose skin had touched this necklace, too. Whose body, which was also Dean’s body, had learned this weight as well. He rubbed the metal between his thumb and his pointer finger, and wondered if the shifter might have done the same thing, might have found some comfort in it, might have known why Dean found it comforting, too. If the shifter knew why it mattered, if it mattered to him, too. He decided to try to stop thinking about it. He didn’t succeed.