SEASON 1, EPISODE 22

Reapers were creatures of legend.

In medieval times, when crusaders and heroes alike still roamed the streets in broad daylight, parents told their children tales about reapers to scare them. They told of their innumerable ranks, of the race that never stopped reproducing - for death was never really extinct, though gods and goddesses liked to think it was - and the children shivered beneath their burlap sheets. They begged their parents to bar their doors and windows because if they didn't, a reaper might come and steal their souls.

No reaper enjoyed hearing the stories that were told about them. They weren't heartless, domineering monsters that fed on human souls - they were simply servants carrying out their job.

But Mara...Mara was living up to the legends of old. With every sin she committed, with every soul she stole on Meg's command, she was becoming the very demon that humans were afraid of. She was transforming humanity's misconceptions into something true.

Nevertheless, despite all the innocent people she'd killed and all the trust she'd betrayed, no sin could measure up to the atrocity she was about to commit now. Meg wanted her to steal the colt from the Winchesters, and she was going to have to do it. Whether she liked it or not, she was going to have to steal the one thing that would enable them to complete their life's goal.

As Mara sat in the backseat of the Impala, her hands gripping the edges of her seat so she wouldn't fall over as a result of Dean's driving, she could only think one thing: I could've grabbed the colt.

And she could have. Back at the hotel room where she'd appeared to the Winchesters, she'd watched, stagnant, as Dean slipped the colt into his waistband. She hadn't done anything but stare, her emotions and her duty trading blows, as the oldest Winchester wrapped his fingers around the coal-black gun he valued so highly. She should have done something - she was wasting time.

But she just couldn't do it. She couldn't help but feel that, if she did carry through with Meg's orders, she would be acting treasonously against her own heart.

"I'm telling you, Dean, we could've taken him," Sam spat through his teeth, his jaw tight and his eyes staring straight ahead.

'No,' Mara thought. 'No, you couldn't have.'

Dean's eyes were boring through the windshield and into the road ahead of him. "What we need is a plan. Now, they're probably keeping Dad alive, we just need to figure out where. They're gonna want to trade him for the gun."

'Or they'll kill you and pry the gun from your cold, dead hands.'

Mara winced at the harsh sentiments that were running through her mind. She couldn't stop them. They were coming, violent thought after violent thought, and no barrier she put up could stop them from penetrating her stream of consciousness.

Mara's stomach wrenched. It tumbled in her gut, intestines wrapping around each other, as she fought whatever was dancing in circles in her chest. It was back - the stirring that meant Meg was calling her. She hardly had ten minutes with the Winchesters. Did the short-haired demon really expect her to work that fast?

"Mara?" Kat spoke up from the other side of the backseat. She was gripping the edge of her seat as well, and pieces of her hair fell from behind her shoulder as she leaned forward. "Are you okay? You don't look so good."

"I-"

She was about to claim that she was perfectly fine, but just as the words were about to escape from between her lips, she leaned over and retched. Her stomach flipped over itself in a perverse sort of gymnastics routine, and it didn't stop until everything she'd ever eaten was laid out on the floor in front of her.

"Wh...I..." Dean stuttered, glancing in his rearview mirror at the reaper in his backseat. "Seriously? In my car?"

Mara wiped the back of her hand on her mouth. "Sorry."

She was sorry. She would've never known it before, because she'd never experienced so much raw emotion in her life, but it seemed as if being anxious upset her stomach. And, when added to her resistance against getting summoned by Meg, her stomach grew so weak that it emptied itself through her mouth. She hadn't even known that was possible.

"Here," Dean grunted, his features twisted into an expression of displeasure and disgust. He extended his arm behind him, a pile of napkins in hand. "Wipe it up, at least."

Mara reached out to take the paper from him but, just as the tips of her fingers grazed the napkins' callous surface, her hand faded into empty nothingness. The tiny, obscure, infinitude of atoms that made up her fingers were already miles away from the rest of her body, beginning to lace themselves together in the place where Meg resided. Her presence was both transient and completely out of her hands.

"Hey! Where are you going?" Dean snapped. His eyes were ablaze with a sizzling rage, but a slight flicker in the flames told Mara that if she could scrape the top layer of his gaze away, she would see worry and uneasiness rather than vexation and fury.

Mara looked down at her fading waist, at her leather jacket that doubled as a welcoming gesture into the Winchesters' clique. Her voice was hushed and trembling as it came out of her lips, almost as if she was treading carefully on a lake of thin ice as she whimpered, "I don't know."

◈◈◈

"Mara," a voice jilted from across the room, not quite attaining the effervescent tone it was aiming for. "Nice of you to join us. I was really starting to miss you, you know."

Mara's upper lip curled in an instinctual snarl. "Well, I guess the feeling isn't mutual, then."

"Oh, come now-"

"Where is Kat's mom?"

Meg's jaunting monologue ceased at Mara's interruption. The reaper had never interrupted Meg before - she'd always been mild-mannered when given access to her free will, and no matter what was done to her, she never snapped back. But it seemed that had changed.

"Excuse me?" Meg scoffed. A laugh hung from the ends of her words, but it wouldn't take a genius to decipher that her laughter was pretend. She was furious.

Mara's shoulders stiffened. If she was going to be forced to work against the Winchesters, then she would find a way to make it up to them. Judging by the absence of Kat's mother in the WInchesters' lives, and by the adoration that lingered in John's eyes whenever he spoke of her, they didn't know where the woman was. Or, more likely, they presumed she was dead. It was the least Mara could do to find out where she'd gone.

The moldy smell of the abandoned warehouse wafted into Mara's nostrils, causing her nose to squinch in disgust as she repeated, more slowly this time, "Where is Kat's mother?"

An unspoken tension washed over the room like a blanket over a child. Meg glanced behind her shoulder, and it was the first time Mara realized they were not alone in the warehouse. John Winchester was still here. Mara's brow furrowed, and while Meg began to explain the whereabouts of Kat's mom, her eyes remained on the man who most wanted to hear what the demon had to say.

"She's in hell," Meg began, her tone detached and careless. "With Azazel. He escorted her there himself, in fact." The demon chuckled lazily. "It's a regular 'Beauty and the Beast' story, Stockholm syndrome and all."

Mara's eyes widened. She didn't know what 'Beauty and the Beast' was, but she knew the nature of the Stockholm syndrome better than she knew most things. It was the cause of death for many of the humans she'd reaped. It was a perverted sort of romance, where the captive fell in love with their captor. And now, for a reason psychologists could hardly even grasp, Kat's mother had fallen in love with a prince of hell.

Mara looked over at John, and her features contorted into a puzzle of confusion and scepticism. There was something off about John - something hazy and unnatural. He was too content, his expression too disengaged to have heard what he just did. Even if he didn't still harbor love for the woman he claimed was Kat's mother - which, presumably, he did - it was only natural for him to feel some sort of pain. To feel at least a little anguish in knowing the fate of the woman whose heart he once held close to his own.

"Where's the colt?" Meg suddenly spoke up, and Mara felt her cheeks grow warm with indignation.

Her jaw clenched. "I don't have it."

"Well, then," Meg snapped through gritted teeth, a mask of a smile painting itself onto her face. "I guess I'll have to get it myself."

Mara felt her blood begin to race, and she could hear her heartbeat in her ear like an ensemble of pounding drums. "No," she uttered, her lips peeling open to repeat the word over and over. "No, no, no."

Red flooded the reaper's vision, and suddenly she was springing forward, like an abused dog finally being let off its chain. Her arms thrashed in every direction, her hair flying around her like the tendrils of Medusa's snakes. She did whatever she could to claw at Meg's face. To pound at her stomach like it was the last thing she would ever do, like it was the only thing she knew how to do.

"Enough!" Meg finally shrieked, and with one flashing movement of a ruby ring, Mara was rendered dormant. Her arms snapped to their sides as if she'd never lashed out at Meg in the first place.

Mara glowered at the demon. "You can't get it from them."

A deep, throaty chuckle escaped Meg's throat. The blonde reached a frail hand to her left eye, and when she brought it down, there was a streak of red staining it from where she'd touched her cut. Mara had to fight a grin from working its way onto her face. She'd finally been able to make Meg bleed.

"You didn't get it," Meg growled. "So now I have to."

Silence washed over the trio, each individual at odds with the other for various reasons, and the quietude was only broken when Meg trilled, "Now. Why don't you go back to your little friends and let them know that their time is running out?"