SEASON 2, EPISODE 1

Mara wasn't sure if she had a brain. She knew she had thoughts, of course - how could she not? They were always there, always pestering her and raking their fingernails across her scalp. They spent all their time scrounging for her attention. There were thoughts burrowed in her conscience even then, while she pondered their existence.

But a brain. A brain was something wholly other. She supposed thoughts and brains might belong to each other, pinky fingers locked as if they were children promising to always remain friends. And yet, a friend could still endure alone. Thus, if she had no human lungs, no stomach, and no intestines and yet still spoke and moved, then her thoughts could very well survive apart from a brain. She'd been banned from it anyway, from the very moment her skin of soot was woven into creation.

She would have no individual thoughts. No will. And certainly not a life of her own. Why would the universe ever equip her with the tools necessary to grasp these things?

It wouldn't. She was a reaper. She would never live and she would never die.

Still, she would find a way. Even if it was as a puppet of the humans she was never meant to serve, she would find a way. It was her silent scream of defiance. Every time she spoke to the Winchesters, a yelp emanated from the boiling, desolate silhouette of her soul, even from beneath the chains her creator had given her. It writhed in its fury, channeling every tension-strung shout into helping the do-gooder Winchesters. And her curled-up hands that had clawed at the other reaper - this was the shrillest scream of all.

This other reaper had been her. The soot-eyed minion of death and Mara were one and the same, for all purposes that mattered to anyone but the Winchesters. They both were created and given no other choice but to follow their duties and serve Death. But since Mara had not been given another choice, she made one: abandon the service that comprised her very own essence. With her strikes against the other reaper, she had carved this betrayal in stone.

In the Winchesters, she would live. In the Winchesters, she would be willing to die. Both were much better than the fate she had left behind.

So, if Death would not give her a brain or thoughts of her own, she would create them. At the top of this list of her newfound thoughts sat a grim memory of John Winchester.

The memory wasn't old by any means. In fact, it had occurred mere minutes ago, when John had called out her name. She'd been in the In-Between with Dean when she'd first heard the call. They'd been sitting on the cold linoleum, backs pressed against the wall behind them, when Dean's head slipped to rest on her shoulder. After looking over to see that he'd fallen asleep there, she'd been so intently focused on the flitting of her insides that she was surprised her brain even registered John's voice at all.

Yet, there it was. "Mara."

She jolted, and then cringed when Dean shifted. Go back to sleep, she urged inwardly. Don't let this end.

"Mara, where are you?" It was John's voice again. The gravelly tones were wispy and far-off - not as close to death as they'd been before. It meant John was getting better. Earlier, when he'd first landed like a wounded bird on the hospital bed, she could hear him clearly, even in the In-Between. Now, his wings remained clipped, but he'd grown distant.

Dean, on the other hand...

"Mara?" John called out. His words were woven with impatience.

Mara sighed. She could feel tufts of Dean's hair tickling her neck where his head lay. She turned her head slightly, eyes flicking towards the edge of her vision. Her shoulder and hand traded places, her graying fingers easing Dean away from her shoulder. When the creases in his forehead dissipated, like streaks of rain on a windshield fleeing at the sight of sun, she set his head against the wall behind him.

Seeing him like this, unable to throw up concrete smirks and remarks to protect himself, she remembered how young he was. No age-induced scars lined his face. The weariness of his gait wasn't generated by age - it was molded, year after year, hunt after hunt, by the duties he could not run from.

The skin on her shoulder was writhing from having to leave the touch of an angel for the voice of a devil. Yet, it would have to endure. Dean Winchester was a ghost sleeping beside his own body, and Mara was traveling towards the man that put him there.

"What do you want?" she said.

She expected her voice to be a knife, and it was. It was the kind that twisted with every syllable.

Mara was in John's room now, his eyes landing on her the moment she stepped through his door and exited the In-Between. His mouth fell open, and then closed again. His brow was furrowed so deeply that the hairs on each side almost braided themselves together.

Finally, he spoke. "Mara."

"You're repeating yourself." Her singsong knife turned a few more notches, in one direction and then the other. "If you need some new vocabulary, I'll ask the hospital staff if they have a dictionary somewhere."

John chuckled lowly. "I can tell you've been hanging out with Dean."

The reaper had to fight a snarl that was surfacing in the back of her throat. He could guiltlessly joke about Dean's mannerisms, all the while letting him slip down the cliff that led to a lifeless rockfall. Her face must have advertised this, because John's eyes widened. He cleared his throat in one curt rumble.

"Mara. I need your-"

Mara snapped. "You better not ask for my help."

"-help."

She raised her head and turned it to the side, hoping her teeth would not crack in their clenching. She did not know much about how John had raised the Winchester children. But she did know where they'd ended up, and that might as well have been written proof of their subliminal torment in itself.

"I know we have not been fond of one another," the older man's voice tiptoed. "But I need you to give me the keys to the Impala. Dean seems to trust you, he'll tell you where they are."

Mara faltered. Among all the thorns John had hand-placed into the sides of his own children, this one had to be the largest. Dipped in poison, it would splinter across Dean's flesh as it surveyed its way across human anatomy and towards the heart. Metaphorically leaving his firstborn to die wasn't enough. John was going to run tires against the pavement as he left.

"I'm leaving." Mara turned to the door, the soles of her worn-out boots screeching in protest.

"No! Mara, wait!"

She did not wait. One foot stomped in front of the other, only stopping when she heard Dean's name, proud and unashamed in its departure from John's mouth.

"What did you say?" Her voice came out in a breathy gasp.

There was a rustling noise, and she assumed he was getting out of his bed. When he spoke, his voice was quiet. Graven. "Dean is going to die. There's no use in denying it, the doctors have all but said he will. But I'm going to save him."

There was a pause, and then, "I need to get into the Impala to do it."

There was a churning beneath her skin. Her heart was split down the middle, one half tugging her towards John, willing her to believe the words he spoke. The other half reeled at the very sound of his voice, twitching with every sentence. Her scar throbbed with the stress she was under, making it difficult to focus enough to decipher the best - the safest - option. Mara lifted her hand to the insistent throb, the padding of her fingertips brushing the leftover bubble from her burn. Seconds passed until slowly, she shook her head. She grew more assured with every swivel, with every swish of her hair as it brushed along her cheeks.

"Dean will be saved," she promised, as determined as if she were begging for forgiveness in the confines of a confessional. "But it will not be by you."

It will not be by the very individual who damned him in the first place.

And with that, Mara left, letting the door click shut behind her.

◈◈◈

Dean was gone.

After her conversation with John, Mara had rushed back to Dean's room. She hated to admit it to herself, but some deep, buried part of her was hoping he'd still be asleep. Maybe then, she could hold his head in her hands once more.

Alas, when she phased through the peeling paint and the sagging wood of his door, Dean was nowhere to be found. The only remnant of him was his physical body, still and lying on the hauntingly white bed sheets. Her heart slammed against the bottom of her chest as she realized: it looked like he was dead already.

She turned back to the door. She would kill John. Her hands were going to be the ones to deliver him, and for this - the death of his own son, the cause of his own negligence - it was almost certain he would not have a peaceful landing. She delighted in it. Just for a moment, she delighted, because the moment her thoughts traveled back to Dean...

He couldn't be gone.

The threads that made up her delicate insides were being plucked. One by one, some with a twang and some with a twick, they snapped and fell from the other parts of her heat. Just as her heart started to sag, she heard it.

"Dean," she gasped.

She squeezed her eyes shut. If she blocked out one of her senses, maybe she could focus on the one that had given her hope.

"I should've known." The voice was accusatory. It faltered for a moment, causing Mara's breath to curl up in her throat because she was so desperate for it. So desperate for Dean to be okay.

"I know this other reaper," the voice continued. "Much prettier than you by the way, even with all her...uh...superhuman features. She told me about how you guys can alter human perception."

A lighter voice spoke next, slipping smoothly across the soundwaves that were home to spoken words. "I was wondering when you would figure it out."

Mara's spine straightened. Her mind went to the fury lesion on her cheek, and it tingled, as if it knew it held the attention of its victim. How did that reaper get to Dean? She thought she'd dealt with her.

But the voice...it was so familiar. Her consciousness wormed through the coding of her brain, reading between the limitless ones and zeros until she could place her suspicion to a memory. Eventually, she did.

The kiss. Or, rather, the almost-kiss. Or whatever had been interrupted between her and Dean. This voice was the same one that had stolen that moment from her. She bristled. It only took a second for her to locate the location of the voice as it continued to speak, and within moments, she appeared in the room with its owner.

There she was: sitting next to Dean, rubbing his shoulder, her surprised eyes jerking to face the new arrival. Mara wished she would move away from Dean.

Dean. The liquids in Mara's mouth suddenly disappeared. There he was. She'd only thought him to be gone for a minute, and yet, standing a mere few feet away from him, a minute swelled to the size of eternity.

His downcast expression only grew more confused at the sight of Mara. "Mara." His voice held a slight tremble, one Mara chose to ignore for his sake. "Mara. Tell her I can't go. Tell her there's still things I need to do here."

Mara did not open her mouth to speak, despite the invisible bulge in her gut that was begging her to. It pleaded with her to fulfill Dean's every wish, but she knew better: reapers could not be begged with.

"You," the other reaper snarled. "The infamous rogue reaper."

Dean cleared his throat. "Mara. Meet Tessa."

"Hi, Tessa," Mara greeted, but her voice was not welcoming. It glowered, settling over the pair of otherworldly beings like a rainstorm over a restless ocean.

Tessa rose from her seat beside Dean, a chunk of her ebony hair falling from behind her ear. Her eyes narrowed as she took a step forward. "You're already on Death's watchlist, you know. If you interfere, I'm sure he will not be so quick to ignore your defiance as he has been."

Mara shook her head. Once, and then twice. It was a fear that had been lurking in the backwaters of her mind for quite some time. Since she'd first begun to stray from the confines of her employment, she'd felt it lodged there, in between the vines holding her forgotten memories and the roots grown over the regrets she chose to forget. The darkest thoughts of her mind crawled there together, but they still whispered.

Mara, he will find you.

She took a deep breath, steadying her hands.

One more wrong move, and you'll have to face Purgatory.

Another deep breath, and roots had begun to curl over this fear once more.

Just in time for new life to be breathed into another fear. She was going to lose Dean if she didn't act quickly - Tessa was seated next to him again, her hand cupping his cheek.

"It's your time to go." The words flowed out of her mouth gently, eyes boring into his, but Dean's eyes were elsewhere. The culmination of his own demise was inches away, yet his eyes were slanted sideways. His eyes were on Mara.

Mara's feet tumbled over one another in their rush to stand next to Dean. She squeezed into the space between Tessa and Dean and found her hand back, gripping the spot on Dean's arm where it landed. She huffed. "You will not take him. He's saved so many people, he...he deserves more time."

Tessa's lips curled up at each end, and though Mara knew the look behind the other reaper's eyes was one of pity, her grin still seemed cruel. Tessa shook her head and said, "You're a reaper, Mara. You should know better than most that even heroes have to answer to Death."

Mara gave a fervent shake of her head. "No, you-"

"Stage 3," the black-haired creature quipped. "Bargaining."

"No!"

The outburst flew from Mara's mouth before she could clamp her lips shut. Her skin was itching, its particles crawling over one another in an attempt to escape the anxious nerves that lived beneath them. Her face was red-hot, her teeth sliding against one another as she tried to hold back from leaping at Tessa as she'd done before.

"No, you can't take him," she rambled. "If you take him, you're leaving so many people to die. All of the people that he will have lived to save will be dead because of you."

"Mara-"

Mara's lips were quivering, her brain so blurry with a furious fog that she didn't even notice Dean's hand on her shoulder. Instead, she continued to lecture, "If you try to take him, I will end you. I don't care if I will owe Death my life for it. Dean wasn't supposed to be hit by that truck, it's not fair."

One the last syllable, Mara's voice had cracked, and she swallowed. It felt like there was a golf ball in her throat that she couldn't dislodge. Sometimes, she felt like she hardly knew Dean. He'd cursed her name more times than she could count on both hands. For days, he'd hardly looked in her direction. But in moments like this, when her heart spoke louder than her mind, she wanted nothing more than to know him more. It was not a chance she would get if he left her now.

Tessa glared at Mara and moved to step around her, enticing a harsh shove from the guardian reaper. Within a moment, there was a hand pulling Mara back, and then an alien form of pressure squeezed on her forehead. She willed herself to focus on the pressure and realized it was Dean. He had his hands on either side of her neck and his forehead was pressed against her own, the green of his irises reflecting against her eyes. Her breath caught in her throat at the sudden intimacy, and a soft whimper escaped her throat at the look in his eyes. He'd made his decision. And it was not one she could ever learn to live with. How had he changed his mind so quickly?

"It's the natural order." His voice cracked, too, when he spoke. "Don't...don't dig your hole deeper because I'm refusing to lie in mine."

She wanted nothing more in that moment than to dig her hole. She would dig her own grave and lie in it, take a knife to her own stomach, even turn herself in to Death if it meant Dean could live. Kat and Sam had already recovered substantially. If only Dean could make it through this moment, if he could just make it past Tessa, then he could be alongside them, and her heart would not have to suffer a million fractures at the hand of a human.

But it was not her choice. Minutes passed, and she pleaded with him. She reasoned. She did everything she could aside from falling to her knees and begging him to stay. It wasn't to say that she wouldn't have done that, though. If she'd thought it would've changed his mind, she would've pressed her knees in the tile until it cracked. Yet, his choice was certain.

Dean would die. And Mara would have to let it happen.

"Let me take you," Mara pleaded. "Let me be the one to take you to your resting place instead of Tessa."

If she could not save him from his death, she would give him comfort on the ill-fated walk there. Tessa didn't seem like she liked the idea, but Dean nodded, and Mara would not have it any other way. She took Dean's hand. She closed her eyes, and a spark appeared in the corner of the room. The spark grew every second until, eventually, there was a fiery white orb. A portal. Mara's one-way trip to losing the person who had taught her how to be human.

Her eyes drifted downward to the hand she held. There were white spots on her hand from where Dean was squeezing, and an uneven grip arose from the calluses that littered the surface of his palm.

"I have to admit," Mara began, but she faltered. It should've been easy to speak to Dean. It was the last time she would be able to - she should be jumping at the opportunity.

She breathed in slowly, and started again. "I have to admit, I was hoping I would hold hands with you under different circumstances."

Dean laughed, and a single tear crept to the crease at the corner of his eye. He opened his mouth to speak.

Mara's eyes suddenly widened, causing Dean's words to dissipate in his throat. There was black vapor rising behind Dean, twirling through a vent in the floor. Her body became rigid.

"You can't do this!" Tessa yelled, and her voice quavered. "Get away!"

It took Mara a second to realize what was going on, but when she did, her eyes shot back to Dean. John had done it. He'd saved Dean. She wasn't sure how he'd gotten the Impala keys, but he must have found a way, because a demon was stirring in front of her now, leaking inside Tessa's nostrils until her eyes turned yellow.

"Today's your lucky day, kid," Tessa told Dean. Only, it wasn't Tessa. The voice was deep and guttural, emanating from whatever deity had nested inside of her.

The demon's snow-white hand slapped onto Dean's forehead, and the Winchester's eyes shot back in his head. Mara should've been frightened at the sight, but she knew she would find Dean in his physical body once more, because there had been demon-summoning ingredients in the Winchesters' Impala. John had asked her for access to the car because it allowed him access to the ingredients.

And now, Dean was no longer two steps away from entering Mara's portal, because John had chosen to save his son by making a deal with a yellow-eyed devil.

AUTHOR'S NOTE:

Okay, take a deep breath everyone.

The next chapter is going to be ridiculously painful.

That is all. Have fun :)