SEASON 1, EPISODE 22

Wherever the Winchesters were, they weren't in any motel Mara knew. Every time Meg had sent her to them in the past, they'd been in a hotel or on a case, but now...Mara had no idea where they were.

Mara was standing outside of a two-story house. It was old-looking, its windows shuttered and its pipes falling apart, and as the harsh wind blew against the edges of Mara's face, the hubcaps that decorated the outside of the house began to wiggle. It was amusing, in its own distorted sort of way. The way the hubcaps were blowing in submission to the wind's force - it was almost as if they were waving at her.

Mara scoffed. What a warm welcome.

She walked up to the front door, her footsteps light as they ventured across the leaf-stridden yard beneath her feet. She passed a rusted, blue pick-up truck, a big dog lounging atop its hood, and she patted its head when it whined at her. As she drew closer to the house's porch, she could hear faint fragments of the words the Winchesters were speaking.

"I'll tell you something else, too," an unfamiliar, but not unkind, voice grunted. "This is some serious crap you boys stepped in."

"Oh yeah? How's that?" another, gentler voice answered. An uneasy feeling wormed through the bottom of Mara's stomach. She recognized that voice - it belonged to Sam.

She raised her hand to knock on the front door, and when she brought her knuckles down on the peeling paint, the Winchesters' mumbling quieted. She heard a click like the cocking of a shotgun, and suddenly a crack of space appeared between the door and the doorframe.

The door swung wide open. Dean, Sam, Kat, and a man Mara didn't know were standing side by side, Kat with her hand still on the doorknob. Her eyes lit up and, without a moment's hesitation, she leapt forward and wrapped her arms around Mara.

"Mara!" she gasped.

Mara smiled, relishing in the hug she was receiving. Alas, nothing good lasted too long, and Dean's brusque words broke the two's embrace as he grumbled, "Where have you been?"

The reaper's lips remained shut. She simply stared back at Dean, unsure what to say. She stared at the stray pieces of hair on his head that refused to obey the gel he wore. Her eyes were locked on the plump lips that decorated his face, the sort of lips that no man should be allowed to have. His emerald irises were unmoving as they stared back at her, eyebrows knitted together at the tips and wavering between his fondness for Mara and the suspicions he had about her.

"You disappear out of nowhere all the time. You pop up randomly, and you always refuse to tell us why," Dean ranted with an obstinate shake of his head. "And for some reason, despite claiming to be a reaper, you never seem to have to actually reap anyone. So are you gonna tell us what's going on?"

Sam whipped his hand out to nudge his brother's shoulder, his voice tight and strained as he snapped, "Right now? Really?"

Dean threw his hands in the air just to let them fall back down to his sides. "Yes, really. How do we know she's not a demon?"

"She's Mara," Kat spoke up, gesturing for Mara to enter Bobby's house and stepping aside so she could do so. "She's not a demon."

Dean let out a sigh tinged with frustration. "Whatever. We don't have time for this."

The oldest Winchester stormed away and to a desk in the corner of the room, and Mara tried to ignore the wrenching of her heart as he turned his back to her. What had she really expected? That he would admire her forever?

Sam took a moment to introduce her to the other man - "Bobby Singer, a family friend" - before joining Dean where he sat at the table. They began poring over the books that lied in front of them. Page after page, they read about ways to ensare and torture demons, and page after page they began to forget Mara was there. She began to blend into the wallpaper of the cluttered room, unseen despite being visible to anyone who cared to look.

She tried to speak. Tried to warn them about the demon that was coming to harm them, about the danger that was speeding their way. Even if it meant they would hate her, it was worth it to give them a chance. What was that phrase she'd heard on a television show Dean watched, back before he even knew her name - '"desperate times call for desperate measures"? But they wouldn't listen. Every time she so much as uttered a syllable, one of the Winchesters spoke over her in their rush to communicate with each other about how they might kill Meg.

It wasn't moments later that Bobby's front door burst open again. This time, however, the visitor who walked through wasn't welcome, and the door was broken open with a swift kick instead of the turning of a doorknob.

Meg walked through the doorway.

Dean's hand shot to the flask of holy water at his waist, everyone else too shocked to make a move. When Meg spoke up with a smug comment, saying, "No more crap this time, okay?" Dean charged at her. He unscrewed the bottle in his hand, his steps broad as he strode towards the demon that was holding his father captive. Suddenly, with a single twitch of Meg's hand, he was thrown across the room and into a pile of books.

"I want the colt, Sam," Meg purred, her humming voice sounding more like a threat than a song. Sam reached out to push Kat behind him. "The real colt. Right now."

Sam began backing away from Meg, his outstretched arm guiding Kat and Bobby to follow. "We don't have it on us. We buried it."

"Didn't I say no more crap?" Meg hissed. "I swear - after everything I heard about you Winchesters, I'm a little underwhelmed. Gosh, sweet little Mara over there couldn't even get the colt from you guys because she cared about you too much."

Mara froze, as did every other human-like body in the room. All eyes turned to her - some with horror, some with a mixture of shock and disappointment, and some with amusement - but she would not waver under their gaze. Her whole world was being put on the line. Her world had been put on risk with the single sentence Mara had uttered, but she wouldn't break. Rather, she would do her best to hold her fortress in the face of the overwhelming emotions that threatened to tear it down.

"What are you talking about?" Dean's gruff voice sounded. He'd stood up and stepped away from the pile of books, and now he stood next to his brother and sister, a look of betrayal in his eyes as he looked upon the reaper he'd once called his friend.

A laugh bubbled from Meg's tongue. "You don't know? Why, she's been my very own Pinnochio for months, doing everything I ask her to do and lying to you guys to cover it up. Sweetheart, why else did you think a reaper would hang out with you?"

"I..." Dean began, his voice breaking off and crumbling into a million pieces. Mara tried to look at him, but she couldn't - the anguish in his eyes was too much for her gentle heart to bear. "I thought maybe..."

"Oh," Meg taunted. "Oh, don't tell me you...you do, don't you? You care for her?"

Every living soul in the room fell silent. Only the faint sounds of breathing remained, the fluctuations of air as everyone's chests inflated and deflated in staggered movements. The look in Dean's eyes was hard to distinguish - Mara couldn't tell if he wanted to kill her or participate in something more intimate with her, and she doubted he could tell, either. He took a step forward, to Meg's amusement, but his refusal to meet Mara's gaze told her that Meg's words must not have been true.

The reaper had to admit that some part of her wished they had been. That maybe, just maybe, Dean would be able to look past the brutality of her nature to feel for her the way she was beginning to feel about him. But now that Meg revealed where her compelled loyalties lied, she doubted he would ever think of her again without feeling a pang of spite strike his heart.

"I'm sorry," Mara began, her voice sounding strangled as she tried to fight the sobs that were crawling up her throat. "I...I didn't want to. I stopped doing what she said after a while. Once I talked to you guys, I just couldn't make myself listen to her anymore."

"But you did," Meg interrupted. Mara clenched her fists. Would she ever shut up?

Meg cocked her head to one side. "She was real good at her job at first, finding John and everything. I'll admit, she slacked off a little bit, but in the end she pulled through. She's been a wonderful executioner for the past few days."

Mara tried to ignore the Winchester's jumbled remarks - Dean's "So that's why you've been disappearing" and Sam's "Executioner?" - but it was hard. Especially since she couldn't say anything that would make them forgive her. What could she say? There were pounds of evidence stacked up against her, and no one to advocate for her but herself.

"Lock her up," Dean suddenly announced. His fingers grazed the hilt of the knife at his waist, his line of sight drifting to meet Bobby's. "Do you know how to make a reaper's trap?"

Mara jumped towards Dean, a desperate "No!" escaping her lips, but he shook her hand off as nonchalantly as he would slap at a fly. She felt her chin begin to quiver, but she set her jaw in an effort to avoid crying. Now, when she was witnessing firsthand the end of everything she'd ever held dear, was not the time to let her humanity control her. She'd been controlled for long enough - by demons, by Death, by her duties as a reaper - and she would be controlled no longer.

Bobby gave one quick, brutish nod. "I do."

"Good. Then show Kat how to do it, because we don't have time to deal with Mara right now. Me and Sam will need your help with Goldilocks here," Dean snapped.

Meg chuckled louder than was necessary, her forced intensity leading Mara to believe that she was looking for attention. Yet, no matter the pandemonium she was about to inflict on the Winchesters, Mara could not afford to be concerned with Meg's behavior. It was time that she looked out for herself. And, when being faced with the infamous reaper's trap, there was no lack of danger for her to confront.

As Bobby and Kat stepped towards Mara, Kat more hesitant in her movements than Bobby, Mara pondered at the ambiguities of the human soul. Reapers weren't supposed to be able to feel. They weren't supposed to be able to recognize what pain was, much less experience it firsthand. Even so, after having long ago let in the sliver of humanity that grew like a parasite, Mara was feeling pain wash over her like a wave. It was like she was standing beneath a waterfall, letting anguish and agony soak into the pores of her skin, never once daring to open her eyes and look for a way out of the waterfall's downpour. For all she knew, one step in the wrong direction would lead her off a cliff's edge. She would fall too far to be able to climb back up the mountain's edge.

Bobby slid a folded piece of paper into Kat's hand, offering her a can of red spray paint to go along with it. Kat shook her head.

"Katarina," Bobby scolded. "Take it."

If the circumstances had been different, Mara might have enjoyed seeing a man as goofy-looking as Bobby try to reprimand someone. But the circumstances weren't different, and Kat became someone timid under Bobby's stern gaze, so Mara because timid under his unforgiving glare, as well.

"Please don't do this, Kat," Mara begged as Kat shook the can. She didn't pause to gawk at the sight - a reaper begging at the feet of a human - she didn't have the time. "Please. Let me explain."

Kat didn't respond. She didn't even look at Mara. She just plucked the cap off of the can, her eyes downcast and watery, and began spraying circles on the cement around Mara's feet. Mara tried to run. She tried jumping out of the way of Kat's can before she'd drawn a full reaper's trap, but Bobby wouldn't let her. And, by the time she wriggled out of Bobby's grip, it was too late. The trap had been drawn, complete with layers of squares and ancient runes to match. Kat opened a book and began reciting an incantation.

"No," Mara mumbled under her fading breath. She felt her heartbeat slowing, her body preparing itself to enter the comatose state that came with being put in a reaper's trap. The breaths that passed through her lips were so shallow that she could hardly detect them.

She fell to her knees, and a jarring pain traveled up her legs as her kneecaps hit the floor. She would've yelped in pain if she'd had enough energy to do so. But, as it was, she could hardly muster up the energy to watch as the Winchesters faced the child of their archenemy: Meg Masters.

"Lackluster, men," Meg teased, but the words became distorted by the time they reached Mara's ailed ears, the reaper's oncoming comatose beginning to affect her hearing. "I mean, did you really think I wouldn't find you?"

All of a sudden, Dean appeared behind Meg. He'd stepped out of the shadows, knife and holy water in each hand, reminding Mara of a vigilante from one of his television shows. "Actually, we were counting on it."

Dean's emerald stare drifted up to the ceiling, the muscles in his neck straining as his neck craned upwards. Mara followed suit, and as she was staring at the old, dusty ceiling of the house they were in, her almond-shaped eyes glinted with amusement. There was a devil's trap painted above Meg. Finally, after all the fighting, the Winchesters had the upper hand. Mara's eyes rolled back into her head, and the last thing she saw before she was submerged in the reaper's trap was the glorious look of shock on Meg's face. And with that one, last, desperate glance at the demon she hated so deeply, she knew: the Winchesters were going to win.