SEASON 1, EPISODE 19

Mara appeared to the Winchesters in a whirlwind of panic and commotion. Her heart was thumping in her chest so violently that Mara feared it would leap out of her throat, and her thoughts were racing too quickly to comprehend, even as Sam, Dean, and Kat stared at her with wide and curious eyes.

"Mara?" Dean's gruff voice asked. "You alright there?"

If Mara hadn't been caught up in a dizzying spiral of incongruous and frightening emotions, she might have smiled at the fact that Dean actually remembered her name. And yet, she could focus on nothing but her own harried breaths, her chest fluctuating at a rapid pace as she did her best to regain control of her own body. She'd never had trouble with transportation through the In-Between before. It was a tremendously perplexing matter - how a simple jump from one place to another sent her emotions into a tornado of uncontrollable mass - but she figured it had something to do with the fact that she'd left Meg's presence without receiving her permission to do so. That unsettling brought up another question: how had she done that?

Stepping out of the premises a binding spell was no easy feat, and she hadn't even attempted to do it. The only thought on her mind when she'd fled the devil's trap had been to run. It seemed that tearing something as strong as a reaper's bond would take more thought, or at least deliberate action, and Mara had provided neither.

Mara, having finally found the ability to take control of her own lungs, took a deep breath and managed to focus her thoughts. She would have to figure out the intricacies of what she'd done later, when she didn't have a trio of apprehensive hunters staring at her.

"Have you guys defeated the shtriga yet?" Mara asked, her gaze flicking from one Winchester to another. The hunters exchanged glances with each other, and Mara found that her own brow was furrowed in a coincidental reflection of theirs. She hadn't been gone for longer than an hour. Had they really forgotten their mission that quickly?

Dean cleared his throat. "Uh, yeah, like a week ago."

A week? Mara shook her head, her hands reaching up to rub in circles on the temples of her head. She knew her body was out of control, but she didn't think a brief moment of confusion and pelting of unfamiliar feelings would also damage her awareness of time. The reaper couldn't help but wonder - no, hope - that this was one of their pranks.

"Is something wrong? What happened?" Sam spoke, taking a hesitant step towards Mara. Mara winced as she noticed the telltale signs of worry in Sam's face - a wrinkled brow, wide eyes, hands wringing in a nervous tic - this was no prank. She really had been gone for a week. But how?

Mara looked around the room in hopes that something would help her understand the chunk of time she didn't remember having passed, but all she gained from observing her surroundings was more confusion. The Winchesters were in a different motel room than they'd been in while discussing the shtriga, this room's walls carrying scents of flowering mold and cigarette smoke. As far as Mara knew, none of the Winchesters smoked, so they must've moved into this room recently, meaning they probably hadn't had the time to get rid of the repulsive odor.

"Nothing happened," Mara muttered, assuming it was best not to tell the Winchesters that for her, it had only been an hour since she'd seen them last. "I just wanted to make sure you guys were doing well."

In the silence that followed her suspicious statement, Mara turned away from the Winchesters, opting instead to concentrate on the discarded papers that laid on the wooden table next to her. One of her eyebrows rose as she read the title of the paper on top: Collected Provenances Regarding the Telesca Estate. A humming noise emanated from the deepest part of Mara's throat, a sign that she was deep in thought about something.

She began to flip through the stack of papers. There were provenances and records for just about every item she could imagine - vases, chairs, paintings, and even silverware. Why would the Winchesters have a pile of provenances laying on a table in their motel room? Unless...

"Are you working on a case?" Mara perked up. Before she spoke her next sentence, she peered once more at the titling on the provenances, and then clarified, "About the Telesca Estate?"

Katarina, who'd been silent ever since Mara's arrival, nodded, prompting Mara to say, "Let me help you. Whatever you're hunting, I'm bound to know something about it."

"No way."

Sam and Kat both shot their brother, the person who'd just denied Mara's request, a look that suggested chiding and disapproval. Dean's eyebrows shot up, as if to say he couldn't believe his siblings were questioning his refusal.

"We hardly know her!" Dean explained. "And she keeps showing up and disappearing out of nowhere. She keeps dodging our questions about why she wants to help us, and she still hasn't told us why she even stole Dad's book in the first place!"

"I can't tell you what my mission was," Mara pressed, not quite understanding why that was such a problem for Dean but understanding enough to know that it should have been obvious to her. "But I can be of use to you. If I hadn't helped you with the shtriga case, dozens of children would have perished."

Mara watched the expressions shift on each of the Winchester's faces as she argued her case. She wasn't sure why she wanted to hunt with them so badly. In fact, she wasn't even sure why she enjoyed being in their presence so much. She'd heard sayings about how humans sometimes rebelled against their very nature for the sake of the rebellion, but something told her that wasn't the reason for her resistance against her reaper nature. She was wary of the very thought of it but, for some reason, she assumed she liked associating with the Winchesters so much because it made her feel human.

Sam sat on the corner of a bed, shrugging as he said, "She has a point."

Dean threw his hands up in the air only to let them fall back to his sides. "Sam!"

"What, Dean?" Sam snapped back. "She's a reaper, I'm pretty sure we can trust her! Reapers don't work for anyone but death. It's not like she's gonna kill us just for the fun of it."

She tried not to think of the fact that she wasn't exactly working for death. It led her to thoughts of Meg and Azazel, and of the punishments she was bound to receive for abandoning them in what very well might have been their final moments, but it was hard not to. Too many questions accompanied the uncertainty of her recent actions, questions that seemed to riddle her every action even as she disobeyed Meg's wishes by working with the Winchesters on a case.

Regardless, if she was caught working side by side with people who weren't even supposed to know she existed, the aftermath would be detrimental. But she had an excuse. What better way to get the hunters to share information with her than by gaining their trust? Hunting with them would doubtless earn her respect in their eyes.

"Which is exactly why we can't trust her!" Dean argued back against his brother, his shoulders growing tense in time with his voice. "She works for death, Sam. She could kill us with one touch."

Sam gave another shrug, his eyes fierce as they bore into the his brother's figure. "Well, if it's our time to go, then we go."

An uncomfortable feeling crawled up Mara's spine. She frowned, unable to place the feeling right away but knowing it wasn't a good one, given its source. She hated that Sam and Dean were arguing about her while she stood in the same room as them, and even though it wasn't the first time they'd done so, it still made Mara uneasy enough to know it was the cause of her shivering spine.

"What has she done that gives us any reason not to trust her?" Sam objected after letting out a huff.

"She stole Dad's journal," Kat announced. Her voice, having remained unheard and stagnant through her brothers' argument, startled everyone else in the room when she spoke.

"I told you, that was for a mission," Mara said, the awkwardness she'd felt before disappearing as she inputted herself into the Winchesters' conversation. When she remembered how suspicious her so-called mission had made Dean at the start of her appearance, she decided to stretch the truth of her next words by saying, "I've abandoned that mission."

In truth, she had abandoned the mission. She'd managed to evade her orders when she fled John's trap, and until Meg summoned her again, she wouldn't have to send John to hell. However, that didn't mean Meg couldn't summon her again.

Dean ran a hand through his hair, the strands of brown hair falling into soft waves atop his head. His round lips were pressed together as he stared at the floor panels beneath him, leading Mara to believe that he was considering the argument that had just died as quickly as it had erupted. Finally, after long moments of stillness in the resolute man's face, Dean grumbled, "Fine."

His lips remained slightly parted as he paused his speech to eye Mara's clothing. The reaper's cheeks flushed red as she realized what he was looking at, and she crossed her arms over her chest to cover the see-through material of her dress.

"You can come with us," Dean proclaimed, his eyes still cloudy even as they drifted away from Mara's body and to her own vivacious, lively brown irises. "But you can't come with us dressed like that."