SEASON 1, EPISODE 17

For a reaper, time was an exceptionally relative matter. Most reapers measured time by catastrophic events, such as a world war or a particularly devastating earthquake, rather than by a watch or a calendar. Times such as those were their busiest seasons and, consequently, the most memorable.

Mara was an exception to the unspoken rule of death's timing. As opposed to counting the days by the number of souls she ferried to the afterlife, she chose to measure time in accordance with her search for John Winchester.

Ever since Meg's trap for John failed and Sam Winchester shoved her out the window of a building, the intensity surrounding the search had heightened. Azazel was growing anxious. He claimed he needed Sam for reasons he always refused to share, and with John working day and night to find the only weapon that could kill Azazel, it was obvious to anyone that the yellow-eyed demon was running out of time. If John managed to get his hands on the colt before Azazel could finish his so-called business with Sam, Azazel's mission would be over.

Mara had to admit, she wouldn't mind if his mission was terminated sooner than planned. He and his witty blonde-haired servant were forcing her to disrupt the natural order by searching for John. If she had to go through with sending him to hell ahead of schedule...she could only imagine the punishment Death would have waiting for her.

Azazel's growing impatience was why he decided to send Mara out on her own. Her abilities as a reaper allowed her to follow the Winchester children much closer than Meg could, and there was no danger of Mara fleeing her orders as soon as she could. Her freedom was being kept under lock and key until she finished her job.

Having long ago given up all hope of escaping her dreadful sentence, Mara had no choice but to give in to Azazel's orders and trail the Winchesters until they contacted their father. While Meg had simply told her to keep an eye on the hunters, Mara, after a few days of consideration, took it upon herself to search through the Winchesters' piles of crumpled-up papers and bags of weapons for any sign of contact with John. If she was successful in sifting through their belongings, she could track John down herself and be released from Meg's control considerably sooner.

"I thought the legend said Mordecai only goes after chicks," a gruff voice suddenly spoke.

Mara turned her gaze to where Dean Winchester lounged on a queen-size bed, drawing on a complimentary motel notepad. The motel room had been eerily quiet for the past hour, with each of the Winchesters trying to solve the case of Mordecai Murdoch in their own way. Dean was sketching a symbol they'd discovered in the haunted house while Katarina sat at the room's coffee table, hunched over history books she'd picked up while at the local library. Sam, the most technologically inclined of the three siblings, sat across from Kat with his back turned toward Dean, constantly scrolling through webpages on his laptop. Even if they hadn't been so enveloped in their research, not one of them would have noticed the invisible reaper that sat on the chair in the corner of the room.

"It does," Sam huffed in response. The frown on his face seemed to deepen as his bewilderment grew.

"All right." Dean scratched the back of his head, his facial expression showing he was just as perplexed as Sam was. "Well, I mean, that explains why he went after you, but why me?"

Kat chuckled and looked up from her book to share a look with Dean, who shot her a toothy grin in return. Mara even allowed herself a small smile. The only person in the room who didn't appear to be amused was Sam, who shot each of his siblings a glare before saying, "Hilarious."

Mara rose to her feet as they continued discussing the oddity of the spirit they were hunting. She glided over to where Sam and Kat sat, her swift moments going unnoticed as she made sure to maintain her invisibility. The only way any of the mortals in the room would be able to sense her presence was if Mara allowed it, and she did not intend on doing that. She didn't plan on touching anything while they were around, either, to ensure that neither the ruffling of papers didn't catch the eye of a watchful hunter.

Mara looked over Kat's shoulder, keeping her breaths as shallow as possible so there was no chance her breathing could move a single strand of the young girl's dark brown hair. She hardly noticed Sam and Dean's comments about Mordecai's ever-shifting lore when Kat pulled out her phone, a mischievous grin plastered on her face. As she flipped the phone open and began flipping through the contacts, Mara's eyes widened, a realization materializing in the front of her mind.

The cursor on the miniature screen flipped past a contact named 'Dad'. A few drifting thoughts began to click together in Mara's head, like stray puzzle pieces finally fitting where they're supposed to, revealing a bigger picture that Mara could only partly see before. If she could get her hands on Kat's phone, she could get John's number and find a way to trace it to wherever he was. She would be able to find John much sooner than she'd anticipated. A grin crawled onto Mara's pale face.

Suddenly, a ringing sound resonated from across the room. Mara's eyes flicked between the screen on Kat's phone - which displayed a number labeled 'Dean' - and the confused look on Dean's face as he looked at the caller I.D. on his own flip phone.

It was only when he muttered something about a girl named Laura from "a few towns back" that Mara realized what was going on. From the moment the trio had arrived in Richardson, Texas, they'd begun a ruthless battle she'd heard Dean describe as a "prank war". Mara had no idea what that meant until she'd begun following the Winchesters around, but after witnessing firsthand what it ensued, she had no desire to participate in one and, frankly, was confused as to why John's children found it so amusing.

"Hey, sweetheart, what's up?" Dean greeted as he held his phone to his ear, a wide grin on his face. Apparently, he didn't receive a response, because he continued talking into the phone's receiver, asking, "Laura? Hello?"

Kat rubbed a hand over her mouth as Dean's words sounded from the speakers on her phone. Sam, after realizing what was going on, did the same, his body shaking with the laughter he was trying to contain.

"What the-" Dean's gaze shot over to where his siblings sat, and when he threw his phone down on the bed in frustration, the two burst into laughter. Dean rolled his eyes, huffed, and rolled to his feet before grabbing his jacket.

"Very funny," he mused sarcastically, his movements quick and jolting as he pulled the brown leather over his arms. "What did you guys do, snatch her phone when she wasn't looking or something?"

Kat shook her head, the remnants of her laughter still visible on her face as a smile. "No. I just changed my contact name on your phone when you were in the bathroom, so it would say 'Laura' when I called you."

"Dude, I thought you said you didn't like her enough to get her number," Sam teased.

Dean shrugged. "They always give you their number."

Kat scooted back in her wooden chair, and Mara watched as the three Winchesters began to gather the things they would need for when they hunted the spirit of Mordecai Murdoch. While Kat had been setting up her prank, Sam and Dean had figured out a possible way to kill the spirit, and they were currently readying themselves to take care of the poor, tortured soul once and for all. Despite the redness in Dean's cheeks being long gone, he was still grumbling his complaints regarding the counterfeit call he'd received.

"Oh, don't be so grumpy, Dean. It's not our fault you were stupid enough to fall for it," Kat goaded, carelessly setting her phone down on top of a stack of papers. Mara grinned eagerly.

Dean picked a gun up off of the table and clicked the barrel into place, shooting Kat a piqued look as he tossed it to her. "Just shut up and get in the Impala."

Mara remained still in her place next to the wooden coffee table. She was itching to reach out and grab the abandoned cell phone, but the Winchesters' presence was a nagging reminder that any contact with a physical object would alert them of her existence, and she was not willing to sabotage her entire mission on account of her lack of patience. Her freedom was worth more than that.

She had to restrain herself from breathing a sigh of relief when they finally left the motel room and shut the door behind them. As soon as the lock slid into place, Mara wasted no time in searching through Kat's phone for John's contact. Halfway through the list of various numbers, all of which presumably belonged to other hunters, Mara found herself staring at the name she'd been so eagerly trying to find.

"Thank you, Katarina," she mumbled under her breath.

Mara's flimsy white dress and honey-colored hair slowly shimmered into view as she searched for a stray pen among the mess that lay before her. Instead of a pen, beneath the many pieces of scrap paper and discarded food wrappers, she stumbled across an old, leather-bound book that looked oddly familiar. Her curiosity quickly overpowering her self-control, she brushed the ood crumbs off of the book's cover and flipped it open.

Her eyes widened in realization. Of course the book was familiar to her - it was John Winchester's journal. After a week of following his children around and observing how they followed his journal as if it was a bible, she would have been a fool not to realize how connected the old book must be to John.

She ran her finger along the leather clasp that held the book's pages together. If she was lucky, John's phone number would lead her to him. However, seeing as how none of his children were having any luck communicating with him, she doubted that was likely. His journal, on the other hand, could give her a better chance of tracking the old man down. She tucked the book under her arm and continued looking for a pen. She would be sure to look for hidden messages amidst his scribblings at a later time.

A few seconds later, Mara found a pen beside Sam's laptop and began writing down John's number as quickly as she could. She was so engrossed in trying to write quickly that she was oblivious to the sound of footsteps outside the motel room door.

"Hold on, guys," a muffled voice said. "I forgot my phone. I'm just gonna grab it really quick and I'll be right back."

There were two grunts of approval and Mara froze. Her eyes drifted down to the cell phone in her hand and the partial phone number that she hadn't finished writing yet. She bent over and scratched a few more numbers down. Her heart pounded in her chest, adrenaline rushing through her veins with newfound purpose. She knew she should render herself invisible so Kat wouldn't see her when she walked in looking for the phone she left behind, but having John's number seemed more important than being discovered. She considered simply taking the phone with her when she fled in search of John, but she was almost certain the younger Winchesters had a way to track it.

A resounding 'click' jerked Mara out of her adrenaline-induced reverie. The reaper's line of sight whipped up to meet the barrel of a cocked gun, the muzzle pointed at the center of her forehead.

"Who are you?" the girl behind the gun snapped. The blazing fire in her eyes was almost enough to send a chill through Mara's bones.

Mara took a step back, but a shout from Kat brought her movement to a screeching halt. She was the one with a gun, after all. Despite Mara's abilities, she wouldn't dare test her strengths against a Winchester with a pistol.

Instead of fighting back or trying to maneuver her way out of her current situation, she cordially announced, "I truly am sorry."

With those final words, Mara faded into a semblance of invisibility, and watched as Kat's eyebrows drew together in a frown. Her head whipped around as she looked for where Mara might have gone, but when her frantic searching yielded no result, she gave up and opted to call for Sam and Dean instead.

Her two brothers practically fell over one another as they rushed into the room. They'd pulled their guns out from their belt loop prior to entering their room, as they were expecting a threat of some sort, so a mask of uncertainty crept onto their faces when they found no one in the room other than Kat. Their hands fell to their sides.

"Kat?" Dean questioned, waiting for his sister to put her gun down before he moved closer to her. "What's going on?"

Kat's breaths were heavy and panicked, and Mara pondered over how difficult it must have been for her to utter, "There was a, uh, a spirit or something." The frightened girl, struggling to maintain her rising hysteria, gestured to where Mara stood a few feet away from them, physically present but out of sight. "She had Dad's journal and she just disappeared when I pulled a gun on her."

When neither of the boys said anything and exchanged glances with each other instead, Kat shouted, "Grab some salt or something! We can't let her get away with Dad's journal, we need that!"

Dean glanced back at Sam, who just shrugged his shoulders. Tentatively, Dean turned back to face Kat and took the gun out of her hands, setting it down on the table beside her. He laid his hands on her shoulders, his voice more gentle than Mara had ever heard it as he cooed, "Calm down, Kat, it's okay. You're just freaked because of everything that's been going on, and the spirit you saw was probably just a hallucination. Spirits don't just disappear like that without attacking."

Kat wrenched her shoulders away from Dean's grasp. "Cut it out, Dean! I'm not seeing things. There was a spirit standing here with Dad's book, and she got scared and disappeared with it when I came in. Look." Kat pushed the food wrappers and scrap paper around on the table. "Dad's book isn't here. She took it."

"I..." Dean's words died on his lips as he realized his father's journal really was absent from the wooden coffee table.

Almost immediately, a search commenced for the journal in question. Sam and Dean tore through every corner of the room, tearing bedsheets off mattresses and emptying travel bags in hopes that the journal they treasured would be found. Kat simply watched, her arms crossed, patiently waiting for her older brothers to realize she was telling the truth about the phantom thief and her stealing habits.

Mara hadn't been lying when she'd told Kat she was sorry. In reality, the guilt that weighed upon her heart was an abundance of emotion greater than she'd felt in a while. She hated seeing them run in pointless circles in search of what she held in her hands, but there was nothing she could do about it. If she didn't take the journal to sift through and dissect, her chances of finding John Winchester would greatly diminish, and she would be stuck on Azazel's chain much longer than she wished to be.

"There was really a spirit here?" Dean wondered aloud, now back at the table where he'd first started searching for the bound group of pages that held so many secrets about his father's adventures.

Kat groaned, and when she next spoke, her tone was more sardonic than Mara was used to. "Well, yeah, Dean. It's not like I've been trying to tell you that for the past ten minutes or anything. The spirit's probably long gone by now, and Dad's journal is with her."

Mara let out a brief laugh, and she was grateful that her invisibility prevented mortals from hearing her in addition to incapacitating their sight. Contrary to what Kat seemed to believe, Mara was far from being long gone. In fact, she was quite the opposite.

Mara's laughter came to an abrupt stop when Dean stepped closer to her. He was only a few inches away, his emerald eyes searching the space around her. She knew he couldn't see her. She knew he was probably looking out the window behind her, his impotent stare boring straight through her in disbelief of what had just happened. And yet, her consciousness didn't stop butterflies from soaring through her chest when his oblivious gaze met hers.

She wasn't sure why she found herself watching the movement of his lips or the harried fluctuation of his chest as it rose and fell, over and over again while Mara's chest remained motionless. His hands, she noticed, often remained balled up in a fist at his side, contrastingly greatly with how Mara's fingers were persistently spread apart as if she were getting ready to play a piano.

She couldn't say for sure why she, a reaper who could hardly be considered a living being, was noticing the intricacies of a human she was supposed to be ready to kill at any given moment. The only thing Mara knew for sure was that, if she remained too close to the Winchester family for too long, she would be putting herself in danger of feeling something that was so deeply against every essence of her being.

( opening gif at the top of the chapter is by lookingforlucy )