SEASON 2, EPISODE 1

She could hear the panic clearly.

The hospital had been mostly silent. Before the deal, before the smoke, before Dean disappearing - there had been that eerie calm settling over the gaping holes that made up the inside of the building. It was the sort that settled into your skin. There was little benefit to the television sets and piles of sheer blankets on nearby chairs, both meant to comfort and distract, because this aching shroud would make you remember.

In the silence, your brain would begin to throb. It was trying to tell you, scream at you, there was someone dying in the very same building as you, you knew it. Someone almost dying. Someone not dead that probably should have been, if not for the hands of doctors, wrapped in rubber to disguise the fact that these weren't God's hands. They were only pretending.

Or was it the opposite? Was changing someone's condemned fate a miracle even if you twisted the plans of heaven to make it happen?

Mara wasn't sure. All she'd ever known - all she'd ever been taught - was that you should not try to be near God if you considered your power near His. Especially if you were a reaper.

But she'd also seen Dean close to death. So, now, it made her reconsider.

Of course, anything would be worth it to stop the screaming. The panicked screaming that had burst through the resolved quiet. Her physical body began to reform near Sam, and she realized: the screaming belonged to Sam.

He was screaming for someone to help Dean, whose vital sign monitor had begun to beep. Help came quickly, of course, because the hands of God were attached to feet that never knew leisure.

Mara kept her distance while they worked. Her distance was exactly 6 squares of tile - the distance between Dean's bed and the door to the hallway - and she only knew this because she couldn't bear the thought of watching him right then, so she counted tiles instead. She knew he was okay. She knew what deal had been made. But Dean laying there, with the monitor beeping and men and women in blue scrubs hovering over him, was too close to what had almost been.

Finally, the dark blue silhouettes faded, squirming past her to exit the room. In times like this, when her mind was too occupied with drifting, she forgot she could be seen in her physical form, so she hadn't known to move out of their way.

She wasn't sure that she would have moved even if she had remembered. All she could think about was getting to Dean.

He was back.

All she could think was that he was back and he was here and he would be happy and he would tell Sam and Kat that it was okay to trust her. And they could all have each other again.

In a second, Mara was there beside Dean's hospital bed. In another second, her hands were gripping his arms, his shoulders, and whatever else she could manage to grasp. In this moment, he was her life vest. Though she'd been his in the hours he'd wavered in the uncertainty of the In-Between, but she knew. Because of the gaping cavern that had almost been punctured in her by a loss she'd never imagined, she knew: in every breath she'd spent among humans, he'd been the fortitude to keep her afloat. If she could keep him close to her heart and secure him around her core, she could swim.

An additional moment passed, and she could hear Sam shouting at her to leave.

She ignored him. Her vision was tunneled, clouding out Sam's figure until the colors of his clothes, skin, and hair blended into the curtains behind him.

Dean wasn't shouting. Mara smiled, and then choked on a sob that pounded through her trachea. Her once-fallen shoulders began to tighten. There had been a relief in her chest, sliding over every pore in her body like aloe slid across a cut that still threatened to open back up. Now, it had gone, and the cut made good on its threat. Bled began to seep from the line, thin at first but growing to reach the core of her heart, because Dean wasn't shouting. She kept telling herself that, hoping it would help her forget. Hoping it could cover the despair of her circumstance with the sunny sky meant for daycare walls.

At least he didn't shout at you.

But she could never forget, because if heartbreak aged a person, then in that moment she was two days away from a tear-shrouded burial. She could no longer rest her heart in the shelter of a child's room.

Dean didn't shout, but he flinched. He looked at her eyes, at the white rings that still remained, and he flinched.

And then, the calm in him beginning to leak from his posture: "Why are you here?"

Of course. She should've known. Mara had been a reaper for a number of years that would be insurmountable to count, but she had still forgotten that, when humans escaped the In-Between, they forgot it even existed. Meaning Dean forgot that they had existed, together, heartbeats racing to get in sync.

She supposed she could have forgotten because it was a rarity. A popular rarity, nonetheless, for when it happened, humans wrote stories and filmed movies about how they saw their long-gone grandpa in heaven and then came back. Despite this, there was a voice in the pit of her being that desperately wanted to claim the truth. The truth that was otherwise.

Hope had done this to her. It was a hope she never deserved, never imagined, never hoped for even in the loneliest moments spent in the shadowed In-Between. It was a hope for love, and allowing this hope to live in you was equivalent to drinking poison on the chance the other person would know how to save you. It clouded her mind, disabling parts of her that should remember how to function. She should've remembered that Dean would forget, but she hadn't. As it turned out, the position would kill her before she could learn if Dean knew to save her.

Kat wasn't there, or she would've pleaded with her to help. If someone could make Dean understand that yes - she should've told them about the ring, but she never once chose to serve Meg - it was Kat. But she was gone, presumably to obtain some form of edible sustenance to share, because Kat wouldn't leave Dean's side. Not like this, not unless she had to.

Kat was benevolence personified. She tried to hide it beneath her veil of gunpowder and resilience, but Mara knew she was other than. Kat, at least, had forgiven the reaper of her obligatory sins. Sam and Dean would need more time.

This understanding she held didn't guard her heart from shattering.

"I-I'm sorry." The words came out in a rush, burning all the air in her lungs.

Her hands jumped away from Dean's arms, his veins now live wires to her ungloved touch. She turned her head to the side. She could feel water swelling in the corners of her eyes, and she didn't want to risk either of the Winchester boys seeing it. This was supposed to be a happy moment for them - Dean was back.

"I'll go."

Dean and Sam shared a glance, confusion glazed with disorientation. Mara began to walk away, but she still heard the brothers' exchange of words. They said exactly what could be expected from a hunter who'd gotten as close to death as Dean had and still absconded from its reach: "How'd I ditch it?" and "You really don't remember anything?". She only paused when she heard Dean mention a pit in his stomach - hope's wicked claws in her heart again, ripping the wound open as it made her believe that he might be missing her. Just when Mara's feet reached the doorway, she heard a soft yet grating sound.

"Uh...Mara, wait," Sam said when he finished clearing his throat.

Mara didn't get the chance to see exactly what Sam was telling her to wait for. John appeared in the doorway in front of her, head nearing the uppermost ledge of the border.

A whisper of a smile breathed across his face as he greeted Dean. "How you feeling, dude?"

"Fine, I guess." Dean's words were matter-of-fact. Exhausted. "I'm alive."

Mara tucked her head, a facade in itself to show she wasn't paying attention to their private reunion - they wouldn't want her to be a part of it anyway - but her ears were still attuned. As they exchanged both gentle and harsh remarks, questionings of who should have been where and at what time, she listened closely to the beat of every syllable. When John said her name, he didn't have to say it twice for her to look up at him.

"Mara, I want you to hear this, too," John said in his characteristic brusque tone.

Her brows furrowed, and her pointed eyes raced between the two men that remained in front of her. Sam had left at John's request, but John and Dean were still there, the father's gaze intent and the son's questioning.

"Me?" she croaked. Her voice was strained from long minutes of swallowing away the water from before, the water that had clawed desperately at the tips of her eyelids. A few drops remained there now, and she wiped at them before they had the chance to fall.

John only nodded. Mara frowned. Mere hours ago, before the wreck and before the fight, he'd despised her. His mind had warped at the sight of her, segments of it jumping forward in an engrossing hunger for her life to be diminished to another notch on his belt. Now, he wanted to include her.

When he explained, she realized why. It wasn't for her. He was using her as another line of defense for the world. Another line to protect it - from Sam.

John had said it calmly enough that Mara could almost believe the despondence of the matter didn't resonate with him, but she knew otherwise. If he didn't care, he wouldn't have made the request in the first place.

He wouldn't have asked Dean to kill his own brother.

"Don't tell Sam," John rushed to speak the moment shock began to register on Dean's face. "Or Kat. She would never understand, or forgive me for it."

Dean shoved his elbows beneath him, using them as leverage to straighten his posture. "Dad, I-"

"No, Dean. I know you probably don't believe me right now, but you will. If he gets out of line, if Azazel gets to him, it'll be up to you."

John paused here for a moment, glancing at the reaper hovering near them before adding, "Stick with Mara. She knows the ways of death better than anyone."

At this, Dean turned to stare at Mara. That's what it was: a stare. The emerald flecks in his eyes had vanished, leaving nothing but the thoughts that festered behind them because, like most stares, this one wasn't empty. Upon years of being confined to merely observing humans, she found that all of them had their guards and their masks. But when a person stared, the mask crumbled. If just for a moment, others could see beneath and glimpse, with substantial strain, the building blocks that this person fought so desperately to hide.

Mara couldn't discern what Dean was hiding. She thought it might have been something familiar, something belonging to a few scarce moments in their past and to countless moments from their past few hours. Before she could place it, he stopped staring. The mask was in place once more.

"If she's still around to stick with," Dean snapped. It was half-hearted, but still stung. Bullets still wounded when they grazed skin. "You know what she did, Dad."

Mara couldn't remember with exact accuracy, but she thought she might have visibly flinched at his words. When he'd woken up in the In-Between, he hadn't clung to his hateful pretense quite so intensely as he did now. Then again, he'd needed her help then. He didn't need her now, and a lack of necessity surely meant a lack of worth.

John pretended not to hear what Dean had said when he turned to her, speaking, "I know I probably shouldn't trust you, but you're all I have right now. I need you to watch my kids. And if Dean fails, which he shouldn't, I need you to help him-"

John paused here, his words tilting upwards in a croak. He forced a grating rumble in his throat before finishing. "I need you to help him finish it."

Finish Sam, you mean.

But Mara didn't say that. She didn't think to, because the cogs in her mind had started scrambling. She wasn't in the In-Between, so she couldn't see it clearly, but she thought there was a gray, smoky outline lingering on the premise of John's body.

No. Her thoughts tripped over one another in order to piece the puzzle together. No, he couldn't have.

This whole time, she'd been too concerned with pining in the foreign feelings that were stomping all over her heart that she hadn't noticed the smoke sooner. It was filling John's nose now, leaking from his fingertips to circle back through his pores.

She should've known.

Her hands reached out for John, but he was already curling towards the floor.

Azazel wouldn't have settled for the colt alone.

Sam was walking back into the room and Dean was sitting up, but she didn't have the time to explain to them what was happening. She faded into the In-Between.

◈◈◈

It took her seconds to locate Azazel. It was less difficult in the so-called 'space between' to find supernatural deities. Everything was blurred there with the exception of humans who were close to death, demons, reapers, and a multitude of other non-human individuals. Being a powerful demon, Azazel's location showed like a satellite.

She manifested before him. In the past, she might have hesitated. The last time she'd encountered him in her homeland had been much different after all. She'd been submissive to him, and her submission had led to servitude at the hand of a cursed ring. She was still bound to it, but its whereabouts were unknown.

And she had disobeyed him by loving the prey she'd been sent to capture.

His eyes flicked up at her, dim headlights in a shadowy night. He was alone, it appeared, and inspecting the colt that lied before him. The Winchester's colt.

She couldn't ascertain the physical objects that surrounded him. The In-Between blocked it out, coating it with a soot-ridden cloud, but she assumed it was a remote place. He was too guileful to be holding that specific pistol in the presence of any being.

"Mara."

His voice passed his lips like a coo, an attempt to coax her heart into trusting him. She knew better. She'd already scrambled through his bushes, their thorns peeling away layers of her skin, and she still had the hairline scars to remind herself of the mistake.

"Azazel." She wavered for a second. She was hardly accustomed to human eye contact, and staring into the slits of demon eyes required a confidence that was wholly other. "Don't take John."

She wouldn't finish that sentence, wouldn't say, 'take me instead' like she'd said to the reaper that had tried to take Dean. She wasn't human by any means, but she'd been around them long enough to learn that selfishness on the terms of loving someone was customary. It wasn't in her to sacrifice herself and risk never seeing the Winchester children again. Yet, maybe that was just the excuse she made for not offering a solution that would save their broken hearts.

Azazel's amusement flickered for a moment, revealing a disgust before returning to its prior guise. "Did John send you?"

"No." Mara shook her head. "Believe it or not, I can make my own decisions."

The demon's amusement shifted from his features once more, and this time, it didn't return. He lifted his jacket to slide the colt beneath it.

"Where is the ring, by the way?" he ventured, words matching his forward-moving feet in their curiosity.

Mara shrugged. She knew she should be terrified. A reaper's life was flippant in the hands of a demon, especially in the hands of a demon with a self-given assignment. And yet, standing there in front of an immortal being who could blink her consciousness into oblivion, she only felt red.

It reminded her of the ring at first, but she dismissed that thought. The ring wasn't hers - it was something that had been used against her, to abuse her, to manipulate the free will that had been an illusion even under Death's rule. This red was her own. It was burning, raging, a seething fire flickering beneath her skin.

Azazel was nearing her, the heels of his shoes scuffing across the floor until he was a foot away. Her jaw tightened and her fingers began to twitch.

When he spoke, she could feel his breath tickle the skin on her face. "I know you hate me."

Mara raised an eyebrow. It was obvious that she despised him, for all he'd done to her. It was not a statement that elicited a response.

"And I know you love them," he added when she didn't answer. "Your closeness to them will make you extra useful to me in the future. I wasn't going to use you anymore once I got the colt, but now..."

The red that lived in her stole the reins of her self-control. She refused to let the sole good thing she'd gotten from this experience be the one that Azazel used against her, and for that matter, she would refuse him until her final days. Like the elderly relived their best moments, she would relive her defiance.

Her knuckles ached when they came into contact with Azazel's nose. She now understood why humans preferred this form of physical contact - it was highly gratifying.

In seconds, she was on her back on the opposite side of the room. Landing the punch had required her to step out of the In-Between, giving Azazel the ability to use his powers against her. He was laughing now, and the rasping noise still reverberated intermittently through his throat when he warned her not to do that again.

"John has to come with me," he announced. "He made the deal. Nothing you can do would stop it."

"I can try," she countered. Her voice still carried an air of strength despite the throbbing that thrummed within her body, plucking her muscles as if they were guitar strings.

"No. You can't."

His eyes grew brighter, their amber glow brightening to a shine. The light stirred when it reached Mara's own eyes, and she squeezed them shut, yellow spots still danced across the backs of her eyelids. When the ballet of illumination ceased, her eyes flicked open again, but Azazel was gone.

"No!" she shouted. "Come back!"

She switched back to a temporary residence in the In-Between, hoping she might find the red blip of his satellite. It was gone, and she feared John was, too.

When she made it back to Dean's room, her heart stung. The words "10:41 am" rang through her skull.

The doctors had announced his time of death just as she'd returned. The pain in her heart was a ghost, a shadowed mimicry of what the Winchester children felt in theirs. They'd gained Dean just to lose their father, tornado after tornado tearing through the very foundation of the things they held dear.

But they were already impoverished. With no mother, no solid home, and no steady parental hand to light the hearths that warmed their souls, their foundations were made of straw.

Mara knew the Winchesters, though. The tornados tore their straw from them, but the winds that stung their cheeks also pelted their toes with seeds. They were cedar, and they would grow with the rains that marched in patterns with their heartbreak, buried beneath the soil of the walls the Winchesters liked to use to cover their past. They would forget about it eventually.

One day, they would return. One day, another tornado would come through and tear their walls down, or carry enough debris to litter holes in between the bricks. And there, beneath it all, the seeds would have grown into a cedar tree. It had twisted in its youth, and now its bark was patterned with striations as it twirled towards what little sunlight it could reach.

But the sunlight had made it stronger. The twists thickened the branches and scattered the leaves, and while it was bare, it was unbendable.

Mara knew this was who the Winchesters would become. She only wished they'd let her stay long enough to see the fruits at the end of the road.