A couple of people have asked me if I planned to 'convert' every episode, and while the day job doesn't quite allow for that, this one escaped, mostly because it gave me the chance to play around with my versions of the characters.

For anyone who didn't read the pilot reboot I posted – Tara is the female Dean and Alex/Lexie is Sam. There are a few differences, but the characters and situation are essentially the same.

What Is And What Should Never Be

I

"Oh man, I need a vacation," Tara groaned, turning the Impala off the highway onto yet another dark back road.

"I cannot remember the last time I got enough sleep. Maybe I should just run away and join the circus."

Alex glanced up from their father's diary in her lap long enough to give her big sister a weary look.

"It's a sign how crappy your job is when you think lion taming would be the quiet life."

"Lion taming? Hell, I'd be up on the trapeze!"

"You suck at heights," Alex pointed out. "And you told me if I ever saw you wearing spandex or glitter, I was to shoot you in the head."

Tara shrugged, cheerfully.

"Still, I'd give it a shot. How 'bout you, Lexie?"

"Uh, no, thanks. My life is enough of a freak show already. I get the chance for a quiet life, I'm going back to Stanford."

Tara pulled a face, turning her head so Alex wouldn't see. But Alex knew her sister too well.

"What?" Alex demanded. "You got something to say to me?"

"No, not at all," was Tara's reply, sounding utterly unconvincing.

"I can't believe you're still holding onto the idea of college. Not exactly compatible with hunting, is it?"

"No real reason why not," Alex shot back. "It was you and Dad that had the problem, not me. You're the ones who saw it as me running away, deserting you."

"I never said that."

"No, but Dad did. And you made it pretty clear whose side you were on."

"It wasn't about sides!" Tara protested, but Alex wasn't done.

"And it's not like you never ran off either," Alex pointed out.

"Who was that guy, the metaller… you went off with him for, like, a week. You must have been about, what, nineteen?"

"Who, Slipknot Jerry?"

Tara laughed out loud, her mood switching rapidly at the memory.

"Oh my god, I'd forgotten all about that!"

Alex hadn't. That had been a long week for her. A very long week. Until Tara came back, it had just been her and Dad, and he'd made no attempts to hide his anger at Tara's hopping on the back of some guy's motorbike and disappearing with him.

"God, he was boring. I mean, he was hot and it was fun at first, just riding around drinking and going to watch bands and stuff, just hanging out, you know. Like a regular girl. Not to mention the sex…"

"Tara!"

Alex pulled a face.

"TMI."

"What? That was pretty much what made up my mind to go with him, you know. I didn't just want a vacation."

"So, why did you come back?" Alex asked, curious. Tara had refused to talk about it at the time – hardly surprising, seeing the dressing down she'd gotten from John about it.

"Like I said, boring. Boy couldn't talk about anything that wasn't engines and music."

"Huh. Sound like anyone you know?" Alex snarked.

"Shut up."

But Tara was laughing.

"There were other things he could do with his tongue that more than made up for a lack in conversational skills."

Her eyes went a little unfocussed for a second and Alex gagged.

"T! I really don't want to know! Keep your eyes on the goddamn road, would you?"

"Lighten up, Lexie. Just cos you have no sex life to speak off, doesn't mean the rest of us feel the same way."

Alex's expression closed right up, her face blank but her voice tight with anger.

"Yeah, well, I used to have a sex life, and it was great, but then some demon thought it'd be fun to set my boyfriend on fire and now I don't have one anymore."

Silence fell in the car.

Tara glanced over at her sister, but Alex had turned her head away, staring out into the night so she couldn't see her expression.

It wasn't that she'd thought Alex was 'over' Dylan, knew it wasn't as simple as that. She'd sat by her sister's side in enough darkened motel rooms when Alex was having nightmares, calling out his name in her sleep, to know that. But she'd hoped that maybe Lex had started to, maybe, put his death behind her a little. After all, there had been that cute art guy, Sean. That had made Tara hopeful.

"We will get him."

"What?"

"Yellow Eyes," Tara insisted. "We'll get him, I promise you that."

"Yeah, well, Dad made that same promise for more than twenty years, so

you'll understand if I don't have your confidence. And even if we do, so what?"

A cold sensation began to grow in Tara's stomach at her sister's words.

"What do you mean, so what? It'll be dead! It won't hurt anyone else. That's what we do, isn't it?"

Alex resumed staring out the window.

"It's what we try to do. But we're too late, more often than not."

"What the hell's that supposed to mean?"

"We can't save everyone, can we? All those people who get killed, how many of them do you think leave family behind? Family who might, oh I don't know, spent the rest of their lives hunting down things like the one that killed their mom, or their dad or brother or sister, because we didn't get there fast enough? We try, but it's not enough. It's never enough."

"Hold up," Tara cut in. "We still talking about hunting, or Dylan?"

"What's the difference? He was the only guy I could ever see myself with. Forever. I would have married him, had kids with him, anything, but that's never gonna happen because this sonofabitch thought that killing Mom wasn't enough to screw up our lives and it killed Dylan too. So instead of spending the rest of my life with him, I get to ride around in this car, with you, hunting and listening to you tell me about all the guys you've banged. So forgive me if that doesn't do it for me."

"What do you want me to say, Lex? You're right, we can't save everyone. Does that mean we should just sit back and let the bad guys win? Give up and run off to college pretending there isn't a world of shit out there? Nothing we can do so why not just be selfish and who cares?"

Tara knew her words were harsh, but she was getting sick of this. She'd cut Alex plenty of slack on account of her grief, but that only went so far.

Alex had hit a turning point too.

"Stop the car."

"Oh, come on Lexie-"

"I said stop the goddamn car!"

Tara hit the brakes, harder than was necessary, the Impala skidding to a halt at an angle across the darkened road.

Alex reached into the backseat, grabbing her bag, and got out.

"Alex, don't be an idiot-"

"No, Tara, I'm done. I've had it, with all of this. I. Am. Done."

She slammed the door, slinging her bag over her shoulder and stalking back down the road they'd driven along.

Tara let out a frustrated, angry sigh and jammed down on the horn, a long unbroken note that, she hoped, might snap her sister out of it.

Alex didn't even look back, just kept on walking.

"Oh come on!"

For a moment, Tara just sat there, watching Alex disappear in the rearview mirror.

Then she put the car back in gear, and she drove away.

Alex wasn't a kid anymore. She could take care of herself. Maybe it was time Tara let her try, anyway; she had enough on her plate right then.

Switching her mind back to the job, Tara ran back over the info the two of them had collated in her mind – all signs pointed to a djinn, grabbing a bunch of people from an area that was rapidly widening. Well, Tara had an idea or two of how to put a stop to that.

Goddamit, just once she'd like one of the TV shows she'd watched as a kid not to be ruined by the lead character turning out to be real, if a sick and twisted version.

Ok, so Barbara Eden's Jeannie wasn't exactly a feminist role model, but the dress-up value of see-through harem pants and a bra top wasn't to be ignored, and Tara wasn't thinking of Hallowe'en.

After a few hours of what felt like pointless driving around – and a lot of Not Thinking About The Fight She'd Had With Lexie – Tara hit paydirt. Or at least, something a whole lot more promising than anything else so far, in the form of a crumbling, ruined factory building. Clearly abandoned, and just as clearly having been visited by someone – or something – fairly recently, going by the footprints Tara found on the path leading up to it, it may as well have had 'Lair of the Djinn' written above the door.

Unfortunately, finding concrete proof on how to kill this sucker, other than a suggestion of anointing a silver knife in blood (god, what was it about these things that it took such weird-assed ways to kill them?), had proven more difficult than tracking it down, so Tara planned to recce the site before going up against it, especially on her own. But she didn't need her baby sister holding her hand – if anything, it was the other way around, surely. Grabbing the knife, and stashing a few covering-all-bases weapons in her pockets for back-up, Tara crept up to the door, keeping close to the walls. Surprisingly – and unnervingly – there didn't seemed to be anyone there, nor any defences, anything like that. But she had to be sure. So Tara pushed open the door, knife at the ready in one hand, flashlight in the other, casting a beam into the darkness.

Dark… she couldn't see a damn thing. But her instincts told her this was this place. Well, when you'd spent most of your life sneaking into creepy, abandoned, probably haunted sites, you got kind of a sixth sense about these things.

So, what next? She needed to know more about this thing if she was gonna end it. And what about the victims? Swinging the flashlight, Tara went further into the darkness, down a corridor between abandoned offices, sure she could see movement up ahead.

Tara was so intent on following this, she completely missed the whisper of the creature coming up behind her until it was too late. Taken unawares, she was slammed up against the wall by an unbelievably strong pair of hands, the knife spinning away before she could stab the sonofabitch. It was too dark to see anything properly, but the thing… its eyes were glowing, an eerie blue light that made the hairs on the back of Tara's neck stand up and now the glow was spreading. One heavily tattooed hand locked around Tara's throat, pinning her to the wall so she could only watch, disgusted and horrified as the djinn raised its other hand, lit up with an ethereal blue flame and pressed it to her forehead.

For a second, the pain was excruciating, worse than a gunshot wound or electrocution, worse than anything Tara had ever felt before, burning with a cold flame that seared right into her brain.

And then she felt nothing at all.

Tara jolted awake, gasping. Utter confusion rushed through her. What the hell?

Last thing she remembered…she and Lexie were driving, then, oh yeah, the fight. Then… the genie! What had happened? And where was she now?

Felt like she was in bed – back at the motel? Tara struggled to her feet.

Something wasn't right. She felt heavy, bulky and her centre of balance was wrong. Maybe she's been hurt in the struggle with the djinn? Her back ached and there was a weird pressure on her bladder as she stumbled into the bathroom to pee. What had the djinn done to her? She'd never felt like this before.

She put her hand on her belly, trying to feel if anything was wrong and, oh god, what the hell was that?

Yanking the cord for the light, Tara rushed to the mirror.

This could not be real. This was not happening.

Tara turned sideways on, one hand on her back, the other on her belly, which was, um, larger than usual. Rounder. Sticking out in a way that really could not be mistaken for anything else.

Tara stared at her impossible reflection.

"How long was I out?"

A sudden noise from the bedroom made her glance back in. The bed she'd just gotten out of was a double, and stretched out on the other side was someone who sure as hell wasn't her sister.

Lexie. She had to call Lexie, find out what had happened.

Her cell phone was sticking out of the pocket of her jeans, sitting in a pile on the bathroom floor, and she pressed the first button on her speed-dial.

The phone rang for a long time, longer than Tara's panicked state could cope with, pacing in the tiny bathroom.

When she finally answered, Alex sounded strange.

"Tara?"

"Oh Lexie, thank god. I swear I have no idea what's going on or where I am. I just woke up – somewhere – there's a guy next to me I don't remember meeting and I think the djinn did something to me."

"Gin? You called me in the middle of the night to tell me you've been drinking gin?"

Alex sounded really pissed off, but Tara didn't have the time to think about that. They'd talk through their fight later.

"No, idiot, the Djinn. The one we were hunting, remember? It got the jump on me and then I woke up and-"

Tara hesitated.

"I think I'm - pregnant."

There was no reply.

"Lexie? You there?"

There was a weird noise, as if Alex was trying her hardest to keep something in, hold back and Tara was an inch away from telling her to just get over it when Alex spoke up.

"You really are something, aren't you? I don't believe you. It's been, what, two years? And you call me up out of the blue to tell me you two are having a baby? What the hell made you think I'd want to know that? What made you think I'd care?"

This time Tara didn't need any of her usual instincts to tell her that whatever was wrong here went way off the scale.

"Lexie, what-?"

"And why are you calling me Lexie? Are we back in elementary school? Don't call me again, Tara. I made it pretty clear last time that I never want to speak to you again. Take a hint."

And she hung up.

Tara stood, staring at the phone, completely at sea.

"What's up, babe?"

Tara turned around at the sound of the voice and everything got that much weirder.

"Dylan?"

If she'd had to guess who would be standing there in the doorway, dressed in boxers and a plain grey t-shirt and looking half-asleep, the last person Tara would have thought of was Alex's dead boyfriend.

"You okay?" Dylan asked

"Who you calling?"

Habit kicked in.

"Oh, no-one. Just… checking."

"Can't sleep, huh? Kid keeping you up?"

Dylan slid an arm around her waist, stroking the baby bump affectionately. It took all of Tara's self control not to pull away and completely freak out.

This could not be real. It couldn't be. So… she had to stay calm and figure this out. And because Lexie wasn't talking to her, she'd have to do it by herself.

"Don't worry, babe. Everything's gonna be fine. The doctor said so."

"Uh-huh."

Tara was glad Dylan couldn't see her face in the mirror.

"And we're seeing your mom tomorrow. That'll make you feel better."

For a second, everything seemed to slow down.

"What did you say?"

"I said, we're gonna see your mom tomorrow. You always seem calmer after you talk with her."

Alex not talking to her, that Tara could cope with. Even the idea that she herself was having a kid with a guy she knew to be dead, that she could deal with. But this?

"My… my Mom?"

"Yeah. You sure you're okay? You seem kinda spooked."

"I – think I must've had a bad dream."

Dylan smiled, planting a kiss on her cheek.

"Coming back to bed?"

"In a minute."

"Ok, honey."

He shuffled away and it took all of Tara's remaining willpower not to slam the door behind him.

Trying to keep it together, she sat down on the closed toilet seat, shock pushing her close to hyperventilating. She tried to put her head between her knees and breathe evenly, but the bump – oh god, she was having a baby, what the hell - got in the way and Tara had to settle for leaning back, closing her eyes and repressing as hard as was humanly possible.

Mom was alive? Really alive? Maybe… just maybe this was real. Alex had said djinn didn't grant wishes, but what if she was wrong? She'd admitted they were powerful. And getting Mom back, well, that was something she'd been wishing for since she was four years old.

Disclaimer: no, not mine, etc,etc,etc.

And again, I used the transcript from twiztv as a basic outline to work from.

It has been pointed out to me that the fight the sisters have is more Season One than Season Two (I think I was channelling 'Scarecrow' at that point), but it worked out as a good way to separate them, and will make sense later on.