SEASON 1, EPISODE 20

"Hold on a second," Dean announced, his mouth half full of food as he waved his hand in the air. "Sam, stop whatever boring research you're doing and pay attention. We have more important things to deal with."

Sam's eyes drifted up from his laptop to land on Dean, and Mara couldn't help but think that if eyes could contain the blazing fires of hell, Sam's glare would do just that. His brows fell into a flat, unamused expression as he said, "What could possibly be more important than finding a case?"

"Mara has never had a bacon cheeseburger."

Dean spared a glance in Mara's direction, causing a bubbly grin to inch its way onto the reaper's lips. Dean offered a grin in return, and he only broke their unofficial mockery of a staring contest when Sam groaned.

"Yeah, I'm still not getting how that's more important than saving someone's life," Sam noted.

When Dean responded with a simple "Getting her a cheeseburger is saving her life,'' Sam's shoulders deflated, the lines of his face morphing into a disgruntled expression. Mara didn't understand why he'd even thought he could win an argument against Dean - an argument about food, nonetheless - in the first place, and her assumption that Dean had won was proven true when he got up to order a cheeseburger.

Mara had been travelling with the Winchesters for a week, and at diner after diner, she refused to order any food. She was a reaper - she didn't need to eat to survive, and she didn't want the Winchesters to waste their money on something that would only be for her pleasure and not her necessity. Kat had already spent money on Mara's clothing, and Mara already felt indebted to the young girl for that. She didn't need to add anything else to the list of things she needed to repay the Winchesters for. Even though she felt a surge of anticipation coursing through her veins at the thought of the bacon cheeseburger, it would be impossible to ignore the feeling of trepidation that lied in the pit of her stomach. The well-renowned burger would only add to her list of debt, no matter how minuscule and unimportant it may be, and she didn't know if she could afford that;.

She already owed her life to them for letting her accompany them on their hunts which had, in turn, granted her with the most joyful week of her decades-long life. What more could she really ask them for?

"Guys," Kat spoke up. Mara let out a hushed laughed at the sight of a half-eaten cheeseburger in her mouth. It seemed that she had more in common with her older brother than she usually liked to admit but, at least, she had the decency to cover her mouth with her hand while she spoke. "I can't find anything in the local newspapers that screams 'ghost' or 'vengeful spirit' or anything. Does anything interesting happen in this town?"

"Same here," Dean muttered as he leaned forward and rested his elbows on the table. "Not a decent lead in all of Nebraska. What do you got?"

Sam, whose gaze had returned to the screen of his silver laptop, didn't bother to look up as he recited, "Well, I've been scanning Wyoming, Colorado, South Dakota...here." His voice grew louder as he presumably read part of an article he'd found. "A woman in Iowa fell 10,000 feet from an airplane and survived."

"Sounds more like 'that's incredible' than 'The Twilight Zone'," Dean said. The tone of his voice lifted in an attempt to sound more convincing as he added, "Hey, you know, we uh...we could just keep heading East...New York, upstate. We could stop by and see Sarah again. Huh?"

The oldest Winchester's cheeks beamed with a goofy grin, a grin that only grew as a timid smirk crawled onto Sam's face. When Mara and the Winchesters had left the Telesca case behind, Sam had left Sarah Blake behind, bidding farewell to her bravery-lined soul for what Mara could only assume was forever.

The more Mara lived side-by-side with the Winchesters, the more she realized that, despite the exhilaration and thrill of their job, they lost too many people to be truly happy. All of a sudden, she felt a pang of guilt blossom in her chest as she remembered her job as Mara the reaper. Mara the hunter had been gifted with the ability to forget her associations and loyalties, but as she began to drift into the tangled web that was her thoughts, she regretted not killing Meg at their first meeting, before she'd been forced under a contract with the demon. Now, she was going to have to kill John Winchester and steal yet another person from the already wounded Winchesters.

When silence settled over the quartet of hunters, Dean spoke up again to continue his previous sentiment. "She's a cool chick, man. Smokin'."

At that last word, Mara could've sworn his gaze flickered over to land on her, but the moment was too fleeting to fully grasp. She could only assume it was a figmented hope of her imagination. After all, why would Dean Winchester - Dean Winchester - look at her while he was breathing adorations of another woman's beauty? The simple answer was: he wouldn't. Mara scolded herself. She would have to learn to ignore the unsettling and unfamiliar arousals in her chest, or else she would surely see negative repercussions because of them.

"Mara!" Kat Winchester exclaimed from her seat across from the reaper. The curves of her face radiated an excitement that she hadn't seen the youngest Winchester possess for a while, and that in itself brought a smile to Mara's lips. "They have a jukebox! Come on!"

Kat leapt up from her rickety chair and fled to the corner of the diner where an oddly-shaped box sat, and Mara stood from her own chair to follow. Her stride was only halted by a tingling sensation in her lower wrist. When she looked down to see where the sensation had come from, her heart seemed to pound against the walls of her chest. Dean's fingers were wrapped gently around her arm, his eyes twinkling with a mischievousness that matched his lopsided grin, and even with all the powers she had Mara couldn't fight the dizziness that was overcoming her.

It was an uncanny sensation, almost as if a vapor-like form of euphoria was slowly filling every inch of her mind. She felt numb. The spot on her wrist, the exact spot that Dean had touched to grab her attention, was no longer igniting as the fireworks of his touch were let loose into her nerves. It had been replaced with a dizzying numbness, a numbness that wasn't merciful enough to fade even as Dean said, "I'll let you know when your burger gets here."

Everything but Dean's smile and the outline of his figure had faded to a blurry nothingness, and Mara could barely feel the cool metal of American currency as he dropped a few coins into her curved hand.

"For the jukebox," he clarified. "Kat will show you what to do with it."

Mara knew it was silly, but she was sure that the way she felt as she walked towards Kat - the feeling like the whole world had lead up to her meeting the Winchesters and, in particular, Dean - was how it would feel to dance on top of the fluffiest clouds in the sky. And, as Kat and her wavy strands of billowing hair filled Mara's view, she closed her eyes and imagined for just a moment what it would be like if she could live with the Winchesters forever.

◈◈◈

When Mara heard that Sam had discovered a case, she couldn't help but breathe a sigh of relief. For a few days at least, she would be free of the ever-growing tension that rested in the space between her and Dean Winchester. From her bit of experience with interacting with Dean, she'd ascertained that the growth in the tension spiked when they didn't have a case to distract themselves with. That wasn't to say the tension didn't continue to dig its way deeper into her heart when they were on a hunt because, of course, it did, but the digging wasn't as extreme when Dean was focused on a case.

And that was just the way Mara liked it. She hadn't asked to hunt with the Winchesters to feel so awkward around one of them. In fact, she'd asked to join them for herself - so she could learn to get in touch with the humanity possessed. The leaps her heart made around Dean was something she'd never intended, and it would only lead to disappointment. She would still have to kill John Winchester in the end. If John hadn't killed Meg and Azazel, of course.

"I don't think this is a good idea," Mara whispered, uneasiness and discontentment tumbling from her lips as she followed the Winchesters deeper into the halls of a post office.

As soon as Sam had announced the death of Daniel Elkins, it had set Dean and Kat on edge, and they'd rushed to his cabin to find the remnants of an attack. Furniture and books were strewn everywhere, lamps were broken and shattered into dozens of pieces atop a leather sofa, and a discarded journal lied on the floor with nothing but blood stains to adorn the cover. From what Mara gathered, Elkins had been a close friend of the Winchesters, and if a hunter had died in such a violent way, then there was more to the cause of his death than a simple heart attack or alcoholic rage.

When they stumbled across a message in Elkins' office, a message that had been written with scratches in Elkins' hardwood floor, it only confirmed that there was more to be learned about the hunter's death. However, it seemed rather risky to Mara for them to obey the message and break into a locker in a post office, but that was exactly what the Winchesters had proceeded to do.

Dean's fingers twitched as he twisted the combination - Daniel Elkins' message - into a lock. Mara had thought he'd been moving quickly, but apparently Kat hadn't, because she hissed under her breath, "Hurry up, Dean!"

Rather than answering with a verbal response, Dean simply opened the locker and pulled out the contents, shooting a brief glare at Kat that acted as a counter to her fidgety glances around the room. Kat didn't seem to mind, though. Not unlike everyone else in the room, her attention was solely focused on the letter Dean had pulled out from the locker.

It was a plain white envelope, and it wasn't until they'd rushed back to the Impala that Mara was able to read what it said. On the front of the envelope, it twisted, black handwriting, were the letters "J.W.".

"J.W.?" Sam read aloud. "You think...John Winchester?"

Dean shrugged his shoulders, and the broad arches of his brow knit themselves together as he said, "I don't know."

"Open it," Kat suggested. "Dad isn't here, and it's probably really important. Elkins did spend his last breath carving that combination into his floor."

A knock sounded from the driver's window, and Dean jumped in his seat. He whipped his gaze up from the letter to land on whoever was outside the window, and when Mara peered from her spot in the backseat at the knocking man, she suddenly understood why a wave of paleness had washed over Dean's face. If Mara's face wasn't already as pale as snow on a cold winter's day, she was certain her face would have paled as well.

John Winchester, the man Mara was supposed to send to hell, was standing right outside Dean's door.

And she wasn't doing anything about it. Mara, whose sole purpose had been to find and kill John WInchester only a few weeks before, was simply staring with her mouth wide open as her bounty smiled a mere three feet away from her. The only thing that was stopping her from wrapping her cold fingers of death around his throat - the only thing that was stopping her from ending the contract with Azazel and regaining her freedom - was a flimsy car door. And yet, she watched silently as John Winchester opened the Impala door and slid into the seat next to her as if it were the most normal thing in the world to be sitting next to a reaper(which, she supposed, he didn't know he was doing).

But, she hastily realized, it wasn't the car that stood as a barrier between her and John's death. It was Dean. And Kat and Sam. How would she look in their eyes, her eyes glowing white and her fingers wrapped around John's neck, if she dragged their father down the stairway to hell?

As Dean introduced her to his dad as 'Mara Elkins', she couldn't help but wonder, 'When did the Winchesters' happiness become more important than my freedom?'

AUTHOR'S NOTE:

We're getting super close to the end of season 1 and I just...pray for Mara you guys, it's gonna get rough. I'll put a meme right here that should sum it up pretty well(from Mara's POV)

Also...I think we're getting to the point where a ship name for Dean and Mara would be appropriate? I mean, not to be blunt or anything but that whole "dancing on clouds" thing wasn't that subtle, Mara.