POST SEASON 1, EPISODE 18

Mara hated the color red. She hated it with a cavernous, burning, raging passion - a passion that her benign nature was not familiar with.

She wasn't sure exactly when her fiery hatred for the color first began to develop. As she was being summoned to an unknown place by a demon she didn't want to know, she couldn't help but wonder if it was due to how often she saw crimson blood while carrying out her duties as a reaper. Or, perhaps, the warm color was a prevalent object in a distant memory that had more of an impact on her than she'd thought. But, once her whimsical form evolved into a physical one, her eyes landing on the shimmering ring that decorated Meg's dainty hand, she knew for certain where her hatred sprouted from. The bright red gem in the center of the ring was the manifestation of it.

"Mara," Meg spoke, her lips curved in a malicious smile. "Long time, no see."

Mara let out a huff, her own lips curling in an uncharacteristic snarl. "Not long enough."

The reaper peered at the walls that surrounded her, her brows furrowed in confusion at the lack of embellishment they possessed. In every place Mara had been, even in the hospitals in the poorest towns in America, there was always something adorning the walls. Even if it was nothing more than a simple welcome sign, the walls were never bare. But wherever she was - whatever ramshackle building it was that Meg had chosen to summon her to - the only thing on the room's walls was ash and dust.

"Where are we?" Mara asked, not bothering to spare Meg so much as a glance as she continued to survey the room they were in. The only piece of furniture was a rotting wooden chair, the only sign of life being a red smear on the north wall. Red. A shiver crawled down Mara's spine.

"Azazel doesn't usually bother with finding John, you know," Meg hummed. Her eyes flicked behind her, toward the only door in the compact room, as if she was nervous. "That's our job."

Mara nodded. "I know. That's what I was doing before you dragged me to this...this closet of a room. Did you have a reason for that or were you just bored and looking for someone to bother?"

If Mara had been speaking to anyone else, she might have winced at the white lies that were spilling from her pale lips. She had been searching for John Winchester as she'd just claimed, but at the same time that she'd been duteously following her orders, she'd been thrusting a gleaming sword in Azazel's back. The yellow-eyed demon would surely assign her a tortuous retribution if he discovered she'd been helping the Winchesters. He'd made it painfully obvious that she should always be prepared to do just the opposite. After all, the ruin of the Winchesters did have a part, if only a small one, in Azazel's grand scheme.

Meg shot Mara a glare in an effort to display her vexation regarding the reaper's derisive tone. "He found John. Or, he thinks he did, at least."

A ray of hope shot up Mara's body, but the expression she wore remained placid as she tried to hide the shimmering emotion that shone from the core of her chest.. If Azazel found John, then that meant Mara's work for him was over. He'd always said he only needed her until he found John, and then she would be free to transport souls of all kinds to their existential destination. She wouldn't have to be a servant to demons anymore. She could go back to serving death, like she was always meant to.

Yet, even as she thought sanguine sentiments about the freedom that would be returned to her, she felt something in the deepest corners of her stomach that whispered a different future for her. A more likely one, if that was even plausible, in which she returned to the Winchesters for the sole purpose of watching over them. Not because a demon told her to, but because she wanted to.

Mara wasted no time in shoving that feeling back to the inky, indistinct corners of her consciousness from where it arose.

"Where is he?" Mara spoke, not fully knowing if she was referring to Azazel or his prey.

"On the other side of that door," Meg quipped, and suddenly Mara understood why the demon had acted so fidgety when she'd looked at the door earlier. Just a few inches away from the two supernatural beings lied the endgame of what had been their sole mission for months, with nothing but a few planks of wood separating them. The anticipation that accompanied an event like that would make anyone anxious.

The milky brown eyes of Meg's vessel shifted to look at the door as she added, "John has Azazel in a devil's trap. Granted, it's not a very good one. It's like a one-size-fits-all trap; it wasn't meant for a top-tier demon like Azazel. Yellow Eyes still had enough mojo to contact me and tell me where he was."

"I assume he wants us to help him?"

"Not exactly."

Mara let out a huff of frustration. For months, she'd been forced away from her life's purpose to help a demon find a surprisingly inconspicuous man, and it wasn't even Mara who'd uncovered his location. John had revealed it himself. After all of that, after all of the ways Mara had entangled herself in the Winchesters and her feelings about them, the search was finally at an end and all she got was a "not exactly". She couldn't help but let colors of exasperation leak into her tone of voice when she snapped, "Then what does he need us here for?"

Meg chuckled. "Azazel could handle getting out of the trap on his own, no problem. The trap is weak enough. The problem is, getting out of the trap would weaken him too much and he wouldn't be able to take care of John. That's what he needs us for."

"Well," Mara mumbled. In all the time she'd spent imagining how this moment would go down, she'd never once thought she would be so unenthusiastic about it all, as if she just wanted to get it over with instead of revel in the savory end of her quest. She was finally about to have her freedom returned to her, but there was something about sending an innocent man to hell that sent a wave of uneasiness through her. "What are we waiting for?"

A raspy voice sounded from the other side of the uninviting, warped wooden door, saying, "Meg? Mara? You can come in, darlings."

"That," Meg said.

Her short, unequivocal answer to Mara's question was accompanied by a venomous grin, coaxing a frown from the reaper. Meg seemed to be excessively excited about destroying John Winchester and, consequently, the hopeful spirits of his children, but Mara shouldn't have been surprised. Meg was a demon.

"After you," Meg declared, holding an arm out towards the door in a gesture that said she wanted Mara to go through it first.

Mara didn't exactly want to go first. She had no trust in either of the demons she was working with, and she still wasn't sure if they knew about how she'd helped the Winchesters kill the shtriga. She doubted they knew, but even so, she was not keen on having her back turned to Meg.

Nevertheless, Mara didn't have a choice. There was no point in refusing to go first - it would only raise suspicion about Mara's uneasiness, and Meg could force her to go first with on touch of her ring, anyway.

Mara took a step forward, her bare feet silent against the carpeted floor. She didn't even notice the moist feel of the gnarled carpet rubbing against her toes as she placed a hand on the doorknob, every inch of her body telling her to run instead of opening the door to reveal the master of her leash. Her hand lingered. Her fingers, shivering with anticipation, hovered centimeters away from the cool brass of the doorknob, hesitant to carry out the action that would set off a devastating chain reaction.

"Mara," Meg snapped, tearing the reaper out of her brief reverie with alarming force. "Open the door."

A brief chill blossomed in Mara's core, a deep, cavernous feeling shortly following it. Mara snarled. She would know that feeling anywhere - Meg was using the ring to compel her.

Mara's fingertips immediately took hold of the doorknob and gave it a turn. She stepped through the doorway to the infamous room beyond, and upon making eye contact with Azazel, realized that she despised the color yellow with as much abhorration as she felt towards red. A grin wormed its way onto Azazel's face, and Mara's shoulders tensed as she sensed Meg stepping through the doorway behind her.

"Well, well," Meg purred, her blond hair just barely tickling the nape of her neck as she smiled the hunter whose back was turned to her. "John Winchester, we meet at last."

John turned to face the two women who'd just entered the room, his lips pressed together. Mara couldn't help but notice how he tightened his grip on the knife he held in his hand once he saw Meg. His burly frame was curled into itself, the stubble on his chin growing at uneven lengths, and his voice was a gruff-sounding instrument as he growled, "I'm pretty sure we've met before. You'll surely remember; you tried to kill me and my kids."

Meg shrugged. "I try to kill a lot of people, sweetheart. Don't take it too personal if I don't recall holding a knife to that pretty little throat of yours."

Mara refrained from rolling her eyes. She knew Meg remembered trying to kill John and his children. It was a pivotal moment in the search for John, and her failure to kill him that night was the sole reason Mara was still under Azazel's thumb. Admittedly, Meg hadn't exactly held a knife to John's throat, but that was only because she was thrown out of a window before she got the chance.

"So, now that you have an audience," Meg began, her eyes dancing around the room. "Do you wanna tell us why you have my friend in a trap over there?"

John's jaw clenched. He was no fool. Meg knew exactly why he'd summoned Azazel only to ensnare him in a devil's trap, and he would be a fool if he didn't realize that. It was no secret that he'd made it his life's goal to mutilate the yellow-eyed demon. John's head turned to face the demon that sat, helpless, in a chair before him. He rose a knife above his head, its silver glinting even in the darkness of the empty room they were in.

"You really think that twig will work on me?" Azazel chuckled.

John gave a haphazard shrug. "I guess we'll find out."

John brought the knife down to pierce Azazel's skin, and just a moment too late, Mara realized why the blade of his knife was giving off a reflection in a room that had no light. It wasn't the blade that was acting as a reflective surface, but rather the thin layer of translucent holy water John must've coated it with. The flesh on Azazel's arm sizzled as the knife dug into it, and Mara' nose crinkled up in disgust as the stench of burning flesh filled her nostrils.

Meg lurched forward. It didn't take Mara long to decipher why - Meg had stated many times that serving Azazel was her life's purpose, and if he was being hurt, then her purpose was in danger - but it took took even less time for Meg to realize that she would not be helping Azazel anytime soon. She lurched forward again, only to be stopped by an invisible forcefield as she had been the first time she'd jumped to Azazel's rescue.

"No," she mumbled. She began to repeat the word over and over, her fists hurling at the imperceptible wall she could not cross, her mutterings gradually morphing into shrieks of anger and revolt. "Let me out of this cage, you filthy pig!"

His time, it was John who chuckled. He yanked his knife out of Azazel's arm and used his free had to lift the corner of the rug Meg and Mara stood on, the absence of the rug revealing a devil trap. At the sight of the spray-painted lines and criss-crosses, Mara mumbled a curse under her breath.

A devil's trap couldn't trap her the way it could trap a demon, but it wouldn't take long for John to figure that out. And when he did, Mara doubted he would allow her to remain unharmed inside the makeshift trap. He, unlike his children, knew how to trap a reaper. Mara was sure of it. And when the inevitable moment came where he called his children and gave them his location, so they could witness the death of the demon that had killed their mother, Mara's position would be revealed to the younger Winchesters.

Sam, Dean, and Kat would know she'd been working for Azazel the whole time, and Dean would look at her in a more heart-wrenching way than he already did. And that - the mere thought of the look of disgust in Dean's eyes, his gaze centered on none other than the reaper who promised her trust to him - was enough to make Mara wish she didn't have to be around to see that vision come true.

So she fled.