Hi everyone! It's been forever I know! So, for those who didn't know, I'm actually in college and I have such little time to write anymore. I'm actually on break now for a couple of weeks, though, so I'm hoping I can at least get a few chapters out soon! This one is a bit shorter, but gives a good wrap up to Skin. I'm hoping you all like how this episode helped play into Dean/Ari's relationship problems! As always, I hope you enjoy! Xoxo-NickyLynn
Dean knew that going after the shifter on his own was risky. He knew that going down into the sewers alone was dangerous. The anger fueling him as he moved through the damp tunnels, however, was enough to drive him head-first into a war. He wasn't just angry…he was pissed. This hunt had become personal, and he was ready to bring it to an end.
He crept through the dark tunnels as silently as he could, gun raised as he swept a flashlight around to help guide him. He had been searching for a while with no luck, but after coming across a glob of flesh on the ground, he knew he had to have been getting close. He came across a small alcove next, which had various candles and other small items cast around it, looking as if someone had been living there. He heightened his defenses as he began searching through it, straining his eyes and ears for signs of the thing. As he began snooping through the belongings, he felt movement behind him.
He spun around in one swift movement with his gun raised, the barrel centering on the forehead of Ariella. "Hiya, Dean." She chirped with a growing smirk before raising her foot and striking at him before he could react. Her leg quickly snapped out, sending him flying backwards with a grunt. Dean's back slammed into the concrete wall, driving the air from his lungs with the impact as a course of pain flared through him. He lost grip on the gun, it scattering somewhere out of sight as he dropped to the floor in a heap.
Dean struggled up onto his hands and knees as he fought to fill his lungs again, head snapping up to find Ariella looming over him, his own gun now in her grip and trained on him. "I wouldn't move if I were you." She warned. "We both know I've always been a better shot than you." She told him sickly-sweet.
Dean glared up at the shifter now impersonating Ariella, anger boiling under his skin so hot he wondered if it would melt off his flesh like the shifter's had. "You're not my friend." He seethed lowly.
The shifter, hiding behind Ariella's face, rolled his eyes at the assertion. "Of course I'm not your friend, Dean." he said, head tilting to the side. "We're so much more than that."
"I'm going to kill you for what you've done to Ari." Dean threatened, refusing to let the shifter get under his skin.
"What I did to her?" the shifter asked, lifting his free hand up against his chest. "What about what you did to her, Dean?" he countered, bringing his hand up to the side of his temple then. "The trauma in here wasn't left by me. I was merely…" he said, eye drifting to the side in thought for a moment before they snapped back onto Dean, smile pulling even wider. "The messenger." He finished, hand dropping back down to his side. "Tell me something…" he said then, taking a step closer. "All that anger burning behind your eyes…is it really because of what I did to poor, sweet Ari? Or is it because of what I could have said to her?" he asked, brow arching in question.
Dean kept his jaw fused shut as he continued glaring across the small distance separating them. "You want to know what I told her." The shifter pressed knowingly. "About all those feelings you keep bottled up deep inside—or, maybe you want to know about hers?"
"I don't want hear anything you have to say." Dean maintained with a sneer.
"That's a lie." The shifter told him with a bubble of laughter. "I was in that broken head of yours, Dean. You can't lie to me." He said, dropping down on his haunches to be eye level with him. "And the truth is…" he said, smile pulling to the side as Ariella's voice dropped down to a whisper. "You were right….she's hiding something from you." He said, letting his eye slip closed momentarily as he drew in a long breath through his nose. "So many….secrets."
Dean didn't waste his chance. He lunged at the shifter while his eyes were closed, knocking the gun from his hand as he slammed against him. The two of them fell backwards in a tangled heap, Dean quickly pulling a blade from his waistband as he tried overpowering the shifter. He had the blade pressed into the soft flesh of Ariella's throat as he got himself poised over the shifter, using his body to keep him held in place.
Ariella's wide, gray eyes stared up at Dean as he pressed the blade into her throat. "Please don't hurt me Dean!" her trembling voice begged. The likeness to Ariella in that moment was enough to give Dean the slightest pause, and the shifter used it to his advantage. In the next moment, he had his legs wrapped around Dean's torso, using them to flip the two of them around until the shifter was poised over Dean, pressing the blade in Dean's hold into his own throat. "What's the matter Dean?" the shifter cooed as he straddled Dean, keeping him held into place by the blade which had begun to draw blood. "Don't you want to know she's been keeping from you? About what really happened to her mom? And yours? No? What about the secret she's been keeping from everyone…even herself?"
"The hell you talking about?" Dean spit out, watching as the shifter's mouth stretched into a wicked grin.
Dean turned his head away as much as he could as the shifter leaned down next to his ear, lips brushing against it as Ariella's voice dropped into a whisper again. "There's something hiding in her blood."
The shifter's mouth dropped open to say something else, but before any more words could come out, a loud bang echoed through the small space. The shifter jerked backwards suddenly, and it wasn't until Dean caught sight of the growing red stain on the front of it's stolen chest that Dean realized he had been shot. Dean scrambled out from under the shifter as it fell off of him, head snapping around to find the real Ariella and Sam standing behind him. Ariella had a gun in her grasp as she stormed closer, eyes glued onto the shifter as it tried scrambling away from her.
The shifter was cradling its chest, gasping for air as Ariella came to a stop over Dean, gun still trained on her doppelgänger. "Wait—" it tried pleading, but it was cut off by the sound of the gun going off again. Ariella fired again and again, frantic eyes never leaving the shifter's form as she unloaded the entire clip into it. She kept pulling the trigger until the gun clicked empty, yet, even then, she stood over the creature impersonating her, refusing to lower the weapon.
"Ari." Sam said after a few beats of silence, reaching out to lay a hand on one of her shoulders heaving up and down. His voice seemed to pull her out of it, for she lowered her arm, eyes dropping down onto Dean.
"You okay?" she asked, eyes sweeping over him in worry.
Dean's wide eyes swept from her over to the identical corpse, bobbing his head up and down. "Yeah." He breathed out, reaching up to slip his hand into Sam's outstretched one. Sam helped haul him back up to his feet, both of their gazes stuck on the now un-moving shifter.
"Can we please get the hell out of here now?" Ariella said, pulling their eyes away and onto her. Her own gaze was now actively glued to the floor under her feet, refusing to look at the shifter, Sam, or Dean. She turned without waiting for a response, stuffing her gun back into the band of her jeans as she walked away.
Dean watched her go for a moment before Sam's voice drew his attention back onto him. "Do we just…leave it?" he asked, motioning towards the dead shifter who still held Ariella's form.
"I ain't moving it." Dean answered with a quirked brow before quickly following after the real Ariella. The truth was, the sight of it left Dean's guts rolling uneasily. He knew it was the shifter, but seeing Ariella's eyes staring back at him lifelessly left him anxious and he wanted nothing more than to get as far away from it as possible. Sam let out a huff as Dean walked away before following after, the two of them trailing several feet behind Ariella back down the tunnels.
After they had made it back to the surface, Ariella drove back to the motel to gather the rest of her things while Sam and Dean went off to meet up with Rebecca and give her a rundown of everything that had transpired. Ariella wanted nothing more than to put St. Louis in the rearview mirror as quickly as she could. She had her belongings gathered within a few minutes before loading up and getting ready to split town. As she tossed her bag into the backseat, however, she caught sight of the Impala rolling into the parking lot of the motel. Her eyebrows dipped together in confusion as Dean pulled into the vacant spot beside her, the passenger seat notably empty. She let her back rest against her car as Dean turned the engine off, pulling her arms up across her chest as he pushed his door open and got out.
"Where's Sammy?" she asked as he shut his door behind him and moved around the car towards her.
"Talking things over with Rebecca." Dean answered with a shrug. "Turns out they're releasing Rebecca's brother after pinning the murder on…well, me."
"Well, don't worry. Being wanted for murder isn't so bad." Ariella told him with a shrug, she herself having been wanted for the death of her own mother since John had taken her in. "The important thing is that we stopped it."
Dean let out an amused huff before leaning against his own car, directly across from Ariella. "You heading back to Bobby's?" he asked.
Ariella gave another shrug in response. "I don't know." She replied honestly, eyes dropping down to the concrete as she began kicking her toe against it. "Probably just drive for a few hours and see where the road takes me. What about you?" she asked then, bringing her eyes back up to meet his. "You guys still heading for Arizona?"
"Yeah, maybe." He responded with his own shrug. The two of them lapsed into silence then, Dean's eyes rolling over the cuts and bruises marring her face. His mouth pulled into a frown as his mind began spiraling into thoughts he had been actively trying to avoid. He dropped it open then to say something, but Ariella spoke first, stopping him.
"I didn't abandon you, you know." She said suddenly, letting her eyes drift to the side as she shook her head at the thought. "I'm sorry if that's how you see things, but that's not what happened." She said, daring to broach the subject.
"Look, whatever that thing said—" he began before she cut him off again.
"I didn't abandon you, Dean." She said more firmly, eyes sliding back onto him sharply. "The night Sam left for college you drew a line in the sand and expected me to choose sides. Did you really expect me to just let Sam run off on his own?" she snapped, sick of dealing with the perpetual guilt trip. "You forced an impossible ultimatum on me. How was I supposed to chose between you and Sam?" she scoffed. "I wasn't the one who walked away, Dean….you were."
Dean took in her words with a tense jaw, finding that those defenses he had built around himself were automatically going up in response. "So, what? You want to kiss and make up? Is that it?"
"Of course not." She threw back at him with a frustrated roll of her eyes. "I'm just sick of you treating me like the enemy when all I've ever done was protect Sam when you no one else would!"
Dean felt his anger spike at that dig. "You've got no idea what I've done to protect Sammy!" he bit out angrily.
"Oh please." Ariella scoffed.
"Fine, you want to do this?" Dean asked, pushing away from his car to step closer to her. "What are you hiding about my mom's death? Hmm? Because that shifter seemed to be hinting pretty heavily that you've got secrets coming out of your fucking ass!"
Ariella visibly stilled. "I don't know what you're talking about." She told him lowly.
"Of course you don't." Dean responded with a humorless laugh. "Perfect Ari—never does anything wrong."
"If you want to mad at someone for keeping secrets from you, then maybe you should put a hustle on finding your dad and take it up with him." She threw at him heatedly.
"What's that supposed to mean?" Dean demanded.
"It means—I'm sick of the double standards!" She told him bitterly. "What? John can lie to you at every turn and treat you like garbage yet he's still this perfect fucking figure to you?" she hissed. "Hell, he's the one who drove Sam out of your life in the first place! And Sam is the one who left! Why am I the only one you're holding a grudge over?" she demanded as angry tears began to pool in her eyes. "Why don't you hate them, too?"
"Because they're my fam—" Dean began to say before Ariella exploded on him.
"Stop saying that!" she screamed, giving him a shove in the chest, and causing him to stumble back against his car. "Do you even know why John took me in?" she asked, coming nose to nose with him. "You really think he took in some orphaned kid out of the goodness of his heart? He took me because I was the next piece in solving the puzzle of what killed your mom—because the last thing that monster said to me is that it would be seeing me again! I was bait, Dean! He forced me into this life and when he realized I was more trouble than I was worth he dumped me to be Bobby's problem! I have nothing! I have no home! I have no life…friends…family…I have nothing but you, Sam, and Bobby! And you hate me!" she said, tears beginning to slip down her cheeks unwillingly. "Do you get how awful that feels?"
She watched Dean's throat bobbed up and down for a moment before he shook his head. "What? I'm supposed to believe that you care so much—"
"Yes, Dean!" she told him, throwing her hands up in the air next to her in frustration. "Don't you get it by now? I've always cared! Why do you think I'm here?" she demanded, swinging her arms out to the side.
"So, you want us to pretend that everything that's happened between us is just water under the bridge?" Dean huffed.
Ariella shook her head before reaching up and swiping the tears from her face roughly. "No, Dean. I just want you to stop treating me like I'm some huge hinderance on your life." She bit out before turning around to reach for her door handle. "Look, I think it's best if we just split ways for a while." She said as she pulled the door open, ready to be done with it all. "I've always been better on my own anyways." she said bitterly as she dropped herself down onto the seat and slammed the door behind her. "Good luck finding John, Dean." She said then, rolling her head to the side to toss him one final look through the open window as she started the engine. "I sincerely hope you find him."
She threw the car into reverse then, but, just as she went to pull out, Dean threw his hand onto the window frame, stopping her. She flicked her eyes over to him, not sure if she wanted to hear what he had to say or not.
"I don't hate you, Ari." He told her with a deep sigh.
Ariella felt a surge of tears wanting to come rushing to the surface with that statement, but she swallowed it down and instead pulled her lips up into a sad smile. "You sure about that?" she asked hollowly as the shifter's words echoed through her mind. As warped as his motives had been, there was truth to his words, whether Dean would ever admit it or not.
Dean's jaw twitched in thought for a moment before he let out another sigh. "I don't want to." He decided to say in amendment.
Ariella took in the sincerity echoing through those words and had to pull her eyes away from him as she felt those previous tears push past the wall she was trying to keep them held behind. "And I don't want to keep pretending like I hate you." She said before pushing down on the gas and pulling away before he could say anything more. The tears began to fall as she drove away, causing the road to blur as she fought against the surge of emotions threatening to consume her.
One thing was for sure—the shifter, in a matter of hours, had managed to completely shatter the walls she had kept erected around her and Dean's past….all the pain she never fully dealt with. And now…she was left drowning.