Wanted Dead or Alive | 𝐃𝐄𝐀𝐍 𝐖𝐈𝐍𝐂𝐇𝐄𝐒𝐓𝐄𝐑

21 - BAD BLOOD

SEASON 2, EPISODE 1

When she entered the room and saw the events that were developing before her, she knew she had no choice. If she wanted to save Dean, she had to act immediately. She couldn't comfort Sam and Kat. She couldn't waste a moment on wiping away their tears, wrapping her arms around their shoulders as they clung to a doorframe, hardly able to stay on their feet while their knees shook at the sight of their brother.

Dean's life force was waning. It was tingling at the tip of his skin, searching for ways to escape through his pores, nostrils, ear canals - any opening that would allow it to elude the jail cell that was the human body. It fulfilled its sentence, received as a penalty for giving life and obligated by chains - lungs and other organs - to bestow the curse of living for years, and now it had its freedom. It was their time to go. It was Dean's time to go.

She couldn't spare a second to debate what method of stopping Dean's reaper would allow her to live. If she even could live. Dean was too close to death, and she was too far from him. Too far to sit idle and promote the forthcoming guillotine that had the eldest Winchester's name engraved on it.

Doctors were pressing the handles of a defibrillator to Dean's bare chest, sounding out the word 'clear' repeatedly, hoping the electric shocks from the machine would revive Dean's heart. Mara knew better. She could see the reaper that hovered over Dean's limp body, its translucent form reaching out to touch his sternum. The reaper had orders saying it was Dean's time to go. To move on.

Mara wouldn't let that happen.

She leapt forward, clawing at the gaunt figure that was stealing Dean's life essence. Its hair dangled in mangy knots around its face, its lack of skin revealing its warped bone structure, making the cavernous eyes that much more haunting. But the reaper didn't need a face for Mara to gather fragments of its identity. It was in its true form - not a rarity to a reaper like herself, and not so much of an enigma that Mara would have to peer to realize the reaper was a woman.

Unfortunately, in order to make substantial contact with the creature, Mara would have to get on its level. She would have to resort to her true form, too.

She looked back at Dean. He was glaring at the other reaper, his fear now replaced with fury. And, when he met Mara's gaze, she hesitated. Despite all the hours she'd spent by his side, all the time she'd spent doting on him, she was still resistant to showing him her true form. To peel off her layer of false skin, to strip away her guise and show her who she truly was. She didn't want to frighten him.

She only hesitated for a moment, but it was long enough. He stepped forward and wrapped his hands - both of them - around one of the reaper's arms, and it flung him across the room. He slammed into the wall with a jarring impact, his head ricocheting against the plaster and propelling the lids of his eyes upward, so that he was gaping wide-eyed when Mara finally found the resolve to do what she had to.