SEASON 1, EPISODE 20

Mara should have been relieved. She made it out of the Impala without a scratch, and John actually seemed to be warming up to her. Well...he didn't glower at her every time she spoke, at least, and he hadn't tried to kill her when Dean had playfully shoved her shoulder.

Alas, despite the astonishing amount of luck she seemed to have, she couldn't even pretend to be happy. She supposed that was a good thing, because she was supposed to be acting depressed at the death of her "father", but it didn't excuse the weight that was pressing on her shoulders. Mere seconds after they'd explained Mara's pretend alias to John, he'd updated them on the situation with Azazel.

Mara knew it hadn't been likely, but she'd hoped that maybe, just maybe, John had killed Azazel and Meg. She'd hoped that he'd ended her contract by way of killing the demon that held it, but after listening in on a conversation between John and his children, she learned that Azazel had escaped. John hadn't been able to shove a knife through his heart.

Just like that, Mara was returned to her cracked form. She was no longer a stained glass window, the colors of her soul blown into a beautiful portrait that told a story of gratitude and acceptance, of the unsettling yet intoxicating way Dean made her feel. Now, her glass portrait had been shattered, and she knew without a doubt that Azazel and Meg would soon work their way through the cracks. And when they did, Mara would have to obey them. Even as they thrust waves of punishment upon her for her abandonment.

"Mara," Dean hissed, tearing her out of her twisted reverie. "Were you gonna tell us about being with Yellow Eyes, or were you planning on keeping that piece of information to yourself?"

Mara took a deep, slow breath, the insistent gazes of each of the Winchester children making her nervous. They'd stopped at a restaurant for food, and when John finally excused himself to use the restroom, the Winchesters had pounced on her like she was their prey. And of course they had. The news of her association with Azazel had been the equivalent of a bomb and, judging by their knotted expressions and wavering stares of anger, it had caused their trust in her to waver.

She considered telling them the truth, if only for a fleeting moment. How long could she really keep lying to them? She was already lying to John, and she was new to that sort of dishonest behavior. She was sure to slip up if she kept lying to every one of the Winchesters. Then, she looked at each of their faces. Sam, whose gentle smile had been the first to welcome her into their group of hunters. Kat, the kind-hearted girl who'd introduced the concept of friendship to Mara. And Dean...there were no words to describe what Dean was to her. What if telling them about her contract lessened their opinions of her? How could she even risk that?

She couldn't. It didn't matter that, if she told them the truth, they might have been willing to help her avoid Azazel. It didn't even matter that they would've made sure she didn't have to kill John. She wouldn't risk losing them, even if the chances that she would were slim. So instead, she opted to tell them a half-truth. To tell them about the contract, but pretend the holder of the contract was Meg instead of Azazel. They believed Meg to be dead, after they'd witnessed her fall from a building. Who would be the wiser if she told them that, after Meg's death, the contract had been terminated? The timeline for her lie was a little off, but she prayed they wouldn't notice.

"That was the mission I was talking about a few weeks ago, when I returned your father's journal to you. You know about A..." Mara paused. She'd almost said 'Azazel', the name of the demon who insisted on controlling her, but had stopped when she realized that the Winchesters didn't know his true name. They only knew him as "Yellow Eyes", and it didn't seem right for Mara to be the one to tell them his name.

"A demon named Meg," she mended. "You know she worked for Yellow Eyes, and you know Yellow Eyes wants John dead. Which means Meg does too."

Kat nodded, which prompted Mara to continue. She took a deep breath, her voice wavering as she continued recounting the altered version of how her contract had begun, saying, "Yellow Eyes tasked Meg with the mission of killing John, but she couldn't do it on her own. So she performed a spell. It bound me to a ring, and as long as she wore the ring, I had to do whatever she asked. Unfortunately, that...that included killing John."

Silence washed over the group of hunters, and a wave of panic surged through Mara's veins. She wished they would say something - anything - to let her know what they were thinking. Were they angry with her? Were they going to hold a knife to her throat like their father had?

"I didn't want to kill him!" Mara cried out, not even trying to talk quietly anymore as fear struck her heart. She didn't want the Winchesters to hate her for what was out of her control. "You have to believe me, I didn't want to do it! She was making me, and I...she's dead now, so I don't have to, but..."

Mara's gaze tilted downwards, her head hung in shame. A tear slipped down her face and onto her jeans. Another tear fell. And then another. Tears washed down her cheeks like a river, soiling her skin and jeans until Dean, who was seated next to her, pulled her into his arms.

"It's okay," he assured her, his arms tightening around her narrow shoulders. Mara's body curved into his embrace, her face buried in the crook between his neck and shoulder, tears still slipping from her eyes.

She'd never cried before. She'd only seen people cry from afar, but she never would've guessed, not even from the anguish she'd on those people's faces, that crying would hurt so much. She'd never been hugged before, either. It was a human tradition, and not one that reapers practiced, but being hugged by Dean made her wonder why reapers didn't hug each other. It was Dean's hug that made her realize he must be the personification of solace, because how else could he make Mara feel the way she did? She'd just been sobbing, left to revel in anguish for her actions, and a simple embrace made her feel like she was forgiven.

Mara's hands began to shake. Despite her newfound consolation, she was terrified - she knew what her crying meant, and what it meant that Dean's hug was so comforting to her. She was letting in little pieces of humanity, and if she wasn't careful, those fragments would consume her. She'd never known a reaper to adopt humanity before. It seemed like a dangerous thing, for a monster to welcome human emotion with open arms.

"Well, obviously we can't tell Dad any of this," Dean spoke, his voice louder than usual because of how close his mouth was to Mara's ear. "If he finds out we've been hunting with a reaper all this time...a reaper who was supposed to kill him, for heaven's sake...he'll kill her and then he'll kill us."

"So we don't tell him. What he doesn't know won't hurt him," Kat agreed. Mara peered at her from between Dean's arms, and as the young girl reached out to lay her hand on Mara's shoulder, she smiled.

Her smile didn't last long. She felt it - a stirring in her chest that she'd hoped to never feel again. A tornado whose winds were strong enough to whisk her away, away from Dean's arms and toward the evilest creature she'd ever known. It started in her fingers. Her hands were next, and then her forearms, all disappearing in a whirl, the pieces of her being dissolving into invisibility. The feeling in her chest kept tugging, no matter how hard she tried to fight against it.

"Dean," she cried out, her voice wavering as her tears threatened to return.

"What is it, Mara?" he asked his eyes searching her face, searching her twisted features for the cause of her pain. Mara held up her hands that were now invisible, and Dean's eyes widened.

"Dean, help me," Mara pleaded. "Help me, please."

She knew he couldn't help her. She, with all her powers, couldn't even help herself. Meg was back. She was back and she was beckoning Mara, requesting her presence where Mara didn't want to go. The reaper's stomach flipped and her hands clenched, her fingers curling tightly around whatever she could grab of Dean's jacket, the leather one he always wore.

'Transportation isn't supposed to be this painful,' Mara thought spitefully.

And it wouldn't be, she realized, if she wasn't fighting against it so violently. She yelped in anguish, and she felt Dean's shaking hands against the sides of her face. He turned her head so that she was facing him. She tried to look away - she hated seeing his eyes so panicked and fearful - but he wouldn't let her.

"Mara, I can't help you if you don't tell me what's going on," Dean explained, his words tumbling over one another as he rushed to get them past his lips.

Her chest wrenched, and she let out another cry of pain, wailing, "It won't stop!"

Tears began falling down her face once more, a stream of fear and agony, and Kat and Sam's worried comments were hushed before they reached her eardrums. She couldn't hear. Her ears were already gone, having surrendered to the transportation process that was underway. She was fading away into oblivion, and even the Winchesters couldn't save her from the demons that controlled her.

Dean's hands slipped from her cheeks as her face began to disappear, too, and his eyes widened, his gaze flitting over what was left of Mara. His hands reached out in an attempt to touch her again, but she was already too far gone. Every piece of her had disappeared into the passageways of the In-Between, and she was stuck in transit, unable to reach out to Dean, stuck with nothing but the memory of his reaching hands and the fear of what was to come.