SEASON 1, EPISODE 21

On Mara's hands lied the blood of a demon.

Not because she killed a demon, like she'd wanted to when she'd seen Meg's lustrous black eyes, or because she sent a demon back to the pit of raging, blistering fire it came from. Rather, the lines of her palm were painted with the blood of a demon because she was becoming one.

She wasn't literally transforming into a demon, of course. The white of her eyes hadn't been tarnished with the inky black hue of demon eyes, and the purity of her soul hadn't been corrupted with a seed of iniquity, the same seed that grew in the hearts of the citizens of hell, causing their teeth to sharpen and their hearts to harden as they adopted a devilish desire to kill and destroy. But what was happening to Mara's heart - the passageways of her very soul hardening with every misdeed Meg forced her to carry out - was not much better than becoming a demon.

She was learning the ways of sin, and that plucked a string of terror in her heart that she'd thought was too deep to be touched by an object. And yet, as she looked over Meg's shoulder at the red ring that dictated the purity of her soul, she felt a sort of horror that shouldn't have been allowed to pollute the chest of any being.

Despite the transgressions Meg was forcing her to commit, Mara realized she couldn't blame the demoness for every stain on her heart. The black blood that was oozing over her fingertips, too opaque to see through and too heavy to wipe off, was dripping on the floor wherever she went because of her. She was the one who'd lied to the Winchesters. Of course, she could blame her lies on Meg and Azazel. They were the ones who had her under contract, after all. But Mara had more than one chance to tell the Winchesters the truth. They would've helped her - offered her a way out and helped her find a loophole in Azazel's unspoken contract - but she'd chosen to lie to them.

And now, her sins had led her to kill a priest.

Candlelight flickered all around the room as Meg entered the sanctuary. She swung the door open wide, a gesture that suggested a large person would be walking through, only to slither under the archway like the snake she was.

A grand altar stood at the front of the room, its intricate designs adding decoration to the platform it rested on. A priest stood behind the altar. His features, old and wrinkled in their appearance, beamed with benevolent reception as he called "Good morning" out to Meg, unaware of the stench of imminent death that wafted from his skin.

Mara could smell it, though. Even as she stood yards away from the poor man, trapped in the foggy air of the In-Between, she could smell his future. It was close. Too close. So close, in fact, that Mara assumed he would enter his afterlife within the next few minutes. And if Meg hadn't decided to change her killing tactics, Mara would be the one to kill him.

That's why Mara's soul was tainted. Ever since Meg had summoned her last, she'd been forced to follow her around everywhere, unable to do anything but watch as she tortured John Winchester's closest friends. It was her last resort. Though Meg hadn't discovered that Mara had been communicating with the Winchester children, she'd been clever enough to assume that the reaper had failed her mission, so she decided to find John herself. And if his friends didn't tell her where he was, she would force Mara to send them to hell as punishment for her failure.

The illegal visits to hell were starting to take a toll on Mara. She found that smiling was harder than it had once been, and she definitely didn't feel the joy she'd felt with the Winchesters. She felt like she was sinking - like there was a weight on her heart with Meg's name on it.

"Can I help you?" the priest asked Meg, his footsteps heavy as he walked out from behind the altar.

"I kinda..." Meg started, her words coming out short and breathy. Mara scowled. She was not as feeble as she was making herself seem - she was fooling the priest. "I need to talk."

The priest walked up to Meg, leaving the rows of candles on the altar behind, and Mara felt a jolt in her chest. He was entering the presence of his executioner, and she could do nothing to help. The ring prevented her from so much as speaking out of turn. She simply had to observe the man in robes as he welcomed death with open arms, mistaking his demise for the innocent, wounded eyes of a girl with choppy hair.

"Well, that's what I'm here for," the priest consoled, the corners of his eyes turning up in a way that made Mara's heart somersault. His eyes - the way they bunched up in the corners when he smiled - were a striking imitation of Dean's eyes. Dean, the human who'd taught her to feel. The human whose feelings she was going to tear apart when Meg made her kill his father.

Meg glanced down, pausing before she spoke in an attempt to seem nervous. Unsure and afraid. What a liar she was. She took a deep breath before she confessed, "I've done some things...not good things."

"There's always forgiveness for us if we seek it."

Meg's eyes flashed with a malicious gleam, and Mara winced. The priest was a good man. He didn't deserve the fate he was about to receive. Meg opened her mouth again, and the pungent stench of death grew stronger.

Meg and the priest exchanged some more comments, Meg's disguise of repentance growing stronger with each word until she avowed, "Well, I've lied. A lot. I've stolen. I've lusted. And the other day, I met this man -" Meg's words got caught in her throat, and Mara couldn't help but think how good an actor she was, to appear so remorseful for her sins. "A nice guy, you know? And we had a really good chat...sort of like this."

Suddenly, as if she'd flipped a switch, Meg's anguished and fallen expression hardened, and her tone grew harsh. "Then I slit his throat and ripped his heart out through his chest. Does that make me a bad person?"

Meg blinked, and her eyes flickered from being human to being pitch black. Mara's shoulders tightened. She knew what was coming, as she'd known what would come with every man she'd been forced to kill before the priest. It was the next step in Mara's hunt, to squeeze information about John out of her prey. Her speech about her sins, about the yearning for salvation she felt - it had all been a game. She had a revolting habit of playing with her food before she tore it to shreds.

"I know what you are," the priest breathed, leaning back from the demon that sat in front of him. "You can't be here. This is hallowed ground."

Meg scoffed and rose to her feet. "Please. Maybe that works in the minor leagues, but not with me."

'Not with reapers, either,' Mara thought.

The priest turned and fled. His legs shook as he ran to the door furthest from Meg, his onyx robes fluttering behind him and he stumbled past the rows of pews. He ran, down an entire flight of stairs judging by the sound of thundering footsteps, and hoped that his sprinting would save him from Meg's wrath.

It would not. A smug grin crept its way onto Meg's face as she cooed, "Mara. Go fetch."

With those two words, a seed planted itself in the depths of Mara's stomach. A seed of obedience and contempt. A seed that, if left neglected for too long, would grow so large that Mara would have to bow down to its every whim.

She had no choice. She was going to kill the priest, whether she wanted to or not.

So she followed his fading footsteps. She followed the invisible footprints that marked the places his feet had fallen, the direction he'd run in his seizure of fear. She walked stiffly, as if every step was a pain to her, and she didn't stop walking until she was standing in the priest's office and Meg had been left far behind.

His office was no regular office. Guns and knives of every shape and size adorned his walls, and his desk only occupied one corner of the room. Everything that suggested his work as a conventional priest had been swept aside, unconventional objects like rifles and holy water taking precedence in the layout of his room. When Mara passed through the doors to his office(solids were no perturbation to her, as her abilities allowed her to pass through solid objects) the priest's gaze snapped from his wall of guns to her. Mara: the reaper, because that's all she was anymore. A slave to demons, an invisible monster that haunted priests in the night, a wandering soul with no source of humanity to hold on to.

The priest picked up a knife and threw it at her, but Mara simply held up her hand, using her telekinesis abilities to hold the blade in place. She let out a scornful laugh as it twirled in midair. How demented was it, that she'd refused to use her telekinesis while with the Winchesters, but used it readily after spending a few days with a demon?

"What do you want?" the priest growled, though to Mara's ears, his growl sounded more like a whimper.

She almost said 'Nothing'. Or, 'I don't want a single thing from you, but to leave you alone'. But the power of Meg's ring would not let her. Instead, she said, "The Winchesters."

That sentiment wasn't a total lie, at least. She did want the Winchesters, just not in the way Meg did. She wanted to go on more shopping trips with Kat, to fawn over ancient pieces of literature with Sam, to rest in Dean's embrace for a while longer. But Meg wanted them dead.

"I haven't spoken to John Winchester in over a year. You're wasting your time," the priest stuttered. He shivered under Mara's gaze, cold streams of terror running down his spine, and Mara's features twisted into an expression of sorrow. She didn't want to make someone fear her, and she didn't want to kill an innocent person, but the stench of the priest's grave was overwhelming. He was going to die by her hand.

Mara felt like crying out in anguish, even though she wasn't the one who was about to die. The priest was a good man. He'd transformed his life's purpose into one of religion and charity, and he wanted nothing but to love the people around him. And here she was, about to drag him to hell. If anyone deserved to burn for eternity, surrounded by the tortured screams of fellow sinners and wrongdoers, it was Mara. Not the priest.

The man's stuttering ceased as he continued his previous statement, saying, "Even if I did know where they were, I'd never tell you."

Mara winced. An insistent tug in her chest told her that Meg wanted her to smirk, wanted her to boast her power over this man with a smug grin. But Mara felt like crying. She felt like curling into a ball in the corner of the room, her thin limbs a protection to her body as they wrapped around her folded knees, though they couldn't protect her from the tearing of her insides. The excruciating separation of the part of her that was controlled by Meg and the part of her that was truly her, the rip only deepening as Meg's will continued to stray from the reaper's.

"I know," Mara whimpered, and with a deep, shaky breath, she jerked her hand and threw the floating knife at the priest's throat.