Wanted Dead or Alive | 𝐃𝐄𝐀𝐍 𝐖𝐈𝐍𝐂𝐇𝐄𝐒𝐓𝐄𝐑

20 - CATCH-22

SEASON 2, EPISODE 1

The aroma of the In-Between made Mara's skin writhe in vehement desire. The gray tincture it embedded in each figure was unnecessarily cruel, depriving the world of its color with a placid look on its face all the while. It was almost as if the hidden land flourished in making creatures of its kingdom believe that its stark apparitions were normal, devout in convincing reapers that reality had been stripped of its luminescent soul. That the lustrous beings that dwelled on Earth were unworthy of admiration.

But Mara knew better. Though the methods had been rather unorthodox, she'd been granted the gift of crossing the translucent barrier into the human world. The taste of human ambience had spoiled her, because now she craved to breathe in the oxygen they did, regardless of the fact that it was not required of her to live. She wanted to bask in the sun's rays, free of the barriers of the In-Between. She needed to know the taste of human flesh. To experience life in the same courageous, reckless way they did.

She was trapped in a fatal romance with humanity, but befitting its toxicity, it wasn't always pleasant.

"Did you think I wouldn't find out?" Sam sneered at John, and Mara winced at the contempt that had been hastily woven in with his words.

It had only been a few minutes since John and Sam had churned up their explosive bickering, Sam snapping out offhand comments and John reprimanding him from the squat hospital bed, but it had felt like hours. Mara and Dean, having been confined of the recesses of the In-Between, were forced to watch regretfully from a distance, and Kat has resigned herself to fidgeting silently every time one of her relatives spoke.

John didn't waste a moment before he lashed out with a comment of his own. This time, Mara noted with some amount of intrigue, his words were riddled with sympathy, but his tone remained quite the opposite. "What are you talking about?"

A hint of disbelief danced in Sam's eyes, a scoff begging to slither out of his throat, but Mara's thoughts drifted away from his and John's thunderous outburst too soon to take note of what John said next.

In fact, she'd been distracted for a while. Never fully focused on the tumultuous events that played out in front of her, her attention diverted by the stinging plucks of her heartstrings as they reverberated songs of her consternation. And she knew exactly why her soul had begun to moan sorrowful melodies - she'd been fretting over Dean ever since the car accident, and she still hadn't mustered up so much as a sliver of a plan about how to draw him out of his coma. About how to save him. The miseries of her predicament only worsened because she knew, from her years of slaving at Death's whim, exactly what would happen if she didn't devise a plan soon.

Many reapers would claim - with a snarl on their lips, no less - that she'd spent too much time in the human world. It had caused her to think like them, to feel like them, to reek like them. To an extent, she agreed with their accusations. She had spent too much time on the other side of the barrier. So much, in fact, that it frightened her to imagine what she'd become. She was no longer a reaper, that was for sure. Not if simply existing in the air of her home realm made her stomach churn. Rather, her blood had begun to mingle with the blood she desired to have, transforming her into an abomination, a mutated deformity among her species: a cyborg. She wasn't sure if she belonged anywhere anymore. What sort of reaper sobbed at the forthcoming death of a human?