2.

"What the hell-?"

Both women stopped dead in their tracks.

"This... is a police station."

They turned a complete 360°, staring open-mouthed. The single wooden door they had just walked through had transformed into two sets of green-edged, glass-panelled swing doors, and when they went back out through it, they were on a city sidewalk. The shabby warehouse's sagging walls were now a spotless brick and stone facade, with flags either side of the doors and the number '1854' above it.

Tara was instantly furious, more so when she realised their stakes were gone.

"What did I say about her pulling this kind of shit?"

"Where are we?" Alex was trying to get her bearings. "This looks familiar... have we been here before?"

"Well, it's not the station we were in before." Tara was still seething. "Can Tricksters teleport people?"

"I have no idea. Maybe. But why would she send us here? There has to be a reason why she picked here, right? I mean, if this whole thing was an ambush, she must have some particular plan."

Tara turned to the wall, banging her forehead against it in frustration.

"I can't do this again. I can't. We are killing her, Lexie. She is dead."

Alex was still staring at the front of the police station, frowning.

"Hey," she called out to a passer-by. "What is this place?"

He gave her an odd look.

"Boston Police Station."

"Boston?"

The sisters looked around again, then went back in.

"Is this real? Or did she put us in some made-up fantasy world?" Alex asked.

Tara didn't reply, too busy glowering and slamming doors.

"Detective!"

Both Winchesters ignored the uniformed cop who was trying to get their attention; Alex was looking around, trying to pick up a clue, Tara was looking for something to break, to relieve her frustration.

"Detective! They need you upstairs!"

The cop ran over to them, out of breath.

"Sorry Detective – excuse me Doctor – but I've been sent to find you. He's here, in the Interview room, like you asked?"

"What? Who is?" Tara snapped, irritable.

"Your prisoner. They're ready for you. You too, Doctor."

"Doctor?"

As the sisters turned to each other, they saw their clothes had subtly changed; they were still in their 'FBI' suits, but now Tara has a badge, a gun and handcuffs on her belt, and Alex's heels were higher, her skirt shorter and her hair longer, more styled.

"What in the name of all that's good and holy is going on?"

"She thinks this is funny?" Tara demanded. "Screwing with us, I get, but this? Does she really have nothing better to do?"

"Tara – your hands."

Alex had noticed another change, grabbing her sister's hands and turning them over – both sides were scarred, as if pierced right through.

"Well, that answers that question."

"What?"

"This isn't reality. We're in Rizzoli and Isles, and it looks like you're Jane Rizzoli."

Tara's brow furrowed even more.

"The cop show? On TV? Are you saying the Trickster put us in a TV show?"

Alex shrugged.

"Is it any more weird than a time loop? At least here we have some idea of what's going on, right?"

"I don't know, I never really saw it."

"Liar. I know you do – and don't just say it's cos you think the young detective guy in it's hot."

"Well, he is," Tara muttered as they made their way over to the elevator.

Tara was still pissed, even as they got to the interview room.

"I still don't get it. Why make some kind of alternative reality where a TV show is real, just to put us in it? What's the point?"

She rubbed at the scars on her hands – they felt real, and lord knows she had enough scars already.

"And who are you supposed to be?"

"The cop called me 'Doctor.' So I guess if you're Rizzoli, then I'm Isles."

"Fantastic."

The uniformed cop standing outside the room nodded at them both, opening the door. There were several other cops guarding the room, all heavily armed, and Alex got a twinge of doubt.

"I don't like the look of this..."

But by then, they were inside, and the prisoner smiled as he saw them.

"Ah... lavender and fear. I can always tell when it's you, Janey."

"Shit." That was Alex.

"Why, Doctor Isles, I never did. And I thought you were a lady."

"After what you did to my sis – my friend? You deserve a lot worse."

"You wanna cue me in?" Tara murmured to her sister, in an aside.

"That's Charles Hoyt," Alex whispered back. "Serial killer known as 'the Surgeon'. He gave you those scars."

Tara looked down at her hands again.

"Shit."

Her eyes narrowed.

"I think I got what this is now."

She turned back to the prisoner, who was watching them both very closely, an arrogant smile playing across his face.

"So, what do you want from me this time, girlies?"

"Well, you could try dropping dead. Save us the trouble of having to shove a stake through you."

"Uh, Tara-"

Alex unease was growing stronger, but Tara ignored her, lunging across the table to grab Hoyt by the throat. The suddenness of her unexpected move caught everyone by surprise.

"Rizzoli, what the hell are you doing?" This was the other detective, an older, grey-haired man in a suit.

Guns were drawn by the uniformed cops but Tara acted as if they weren't even there.

"So you got tired of killing me over and over, thought you'd try something new?"

Alex realised what Tara already had, even before everyone else in the room froze like the pause button had been pressed. Hoyt stopped choking and morphed before their eyes, shifting from a middle-aged man in an orange prison jumpsuit to a rather dumpy, dark-haired forty-something woman in an outrageous frock, an enormous grin on her heavily made-up face.

"You're getting smarter, darling."

She pronounced it 'dahling', using an affected, pseudo-European accent.

"I was hoping this little play of mine would run longer. I had such plans."

"Sorry to disappoint – oh, wait. Really not."

Tara's face showed how little amusement she was getting from the situation.

"Get us out of this – whatever the hell 'this' is."

The Trickster was not intimidated.

"Or what? You'll stab me with those big wooden stakes you don't have anymore?"

Tara released her, face still like thunder.

"I'm willing to improvise. Wouldn't be the first time."

The grin on the Trickster's face got impossibly wider.

"That's my girl! Now you're getting it!"

"What?"

Tara was digging her nails into the new scars on her palms and Alex thought she'd better intervene – violence was unlikely to solve this, unfortunately.

"What is all this?" Alex looked around at the still frozen room.

"You've stuck us in a made-up cop show ?"

"You like?"

The Trickster got up, strolling around the room in shoes that would provoke Lady Gaga into a fatal fit of envy. She stroked her hand down the immobile face of Vince Korsak.

"I made everything myself. Down to the last detail."

"Um, why?"

She spun back around, flinging out her hands over-expressively.

"How could I resist? I find out my girls are in town... I got to work right away!"

"So... the call on the police scanner. That was you, too?"

"Of course. Have to lay bait for the trap. You two just love to throw yourself into those, don't you?"

"And how do we get out of here?" Tara's jaw was clenched tight, trying to resist lamping the Trickster in the face, knowing it wouldn't do much good. Not in here.

"That, my darling girl, is the sixty-four million dollar question, isn't it?

"Before anyone incites an unrepentant act of wanton violence-" Alex stepped in.

"We need to talk."

The Trickster's grin dropped a few notches.

"Oh, don't be a party pooper. I know what you want to talk about."

"If you know what I'm going to say," Alex gritted her teeth. "Then why don't you tell me what you think?"

"What I think? Well, let me see. You two dimwits managed to kickstart the end of the world, and you thought 'I know who'll help us fix it!' Guess you really were dropped on your heads a lot when you were children."

There was a tense, angry silence.

"Is that a no...?"

"It's a 'you've either got a far better sense of humour, or significantly less brains in that pretty head of yours than you let on.' But not exactly a no."

The grin came back.

"Tell you what. Survive the next twenty-four hours and we'll talk."

Neither sister liked the sound of that.

"Survive what?"

"The game!"

The Trickster made another grand theatrical gesture, taking in the room and station beyond.

"You caught on fast enough. Let's see how you fare now."

"Wait, what game? How do we-?"

But she was already gone.

"Oh for the love of-"

Tara kicked over the chair in front of her, turning away and slamming the heels of her hands into her temples.

"Uh, Tara-"

Alex had noticed what her sister hadn't - Charles Hoyt had reappeared, and then the room sprang back into life.

"So, what do you want from me this time, girlies?"

The scene had reset, as if the Trickster's unmasking had never happened.

This time, however, what tiny shred of patience Tara had left had vanished. In one swift movement, she span back around, her fist landing square on Hoyt's jaw, knocking him over backwards.

"You can drop dead and stop screwing with me!" she bellowed, vaulting over the table to pin the stunned man down, grabbing his shirtfront and shaking him.

Once again, the uniformed guards went for their guns, but Alex was quicker. She grabbed hold of Tara, yanking her off Hoyt and pulling her back.

"Rizzoli, what the hell?" Korsak was staring at them, open-mouthed.

"It's okay, I got this," Alex called, dragging her furious sister out of the interview room.

The door slammed behind them and Alex let Tara go. She immediately started stalking up and down the corridor, seething.

"Nice plan, Lexie. Talking with monsters? Nothing at all that could go wrong with that."

"We had to try. And she still might help us. Or... something."

"If we play along. Are you seriously suggesting we let her use us in this crazy-ass puppet theatre?"

"What else can we do? I don't think we can just walk out."

"That doesn't mean we have to do what she wants us to do."

Tara stopped pacing, leaning against the wall and slowing her breathing.

"It might not be as bad as last time," Alex risked.

"You mean I might not die constantly, over and over?" Tara snarked, her tone sour.

"You're not the one who actually remembers that," Alex pointed out, tersely.

"But I am the one it happened to. I'm not letting that bitch pull the strings again, not this time."

Alex thought about it. Thought about how watching her sister die repeatedly had been the worst thing she'd ever been through, and how the Trickster had known that. How that whole episode had pretty much been engineered just to labour that point, to teach Alex a lesson.

"Big Sister's your weakness, Alexis darling," the Trickster had said.

"The bad guys know it, too. It'll be the death of you."

But Alex also remembered that she'd had to go through that in order to get out the other side. There wasn't any other way. And knowing all that didn't change the way she felt and thought about her sister, as the Trickster knew it wouldn't.

"I don't think we have a choice, T. We have to at least give it a shot."

"Don't."

Tara turned back, pointing a finger accusingly.

"Don't you dare say 'what's the worst that could happen?' Because she'll hear you!"

"I wasn't-"

But she didn't have to.

The sudden sounds of a fierce scuffle reached them from the interview room, followed by an astonishingly loud gunshot.

Startled, the Winchesters rushed back over to the door, only for it to open before they could reach it, revealing Charles Hoyt. He was no longer cuffed and he had an evil grin on his face and a gun in his hand.

Both sisters froze, Tara's hand on her hip where the holster sat. But even if she'd been able to get to it in time, it wouldn't have mattered; it was empty.

"Looking for this, Janey?"

Hoyt waggled the gun.

"So nice of you to get so close up. I'd never have been able to get this otherwise."

Tara realised he'd grabbed it when she was kneeling over him, trying to punch his lights out. Clearly, she'd underestimated this guy.

"What have you done?"

"I got tired of waiting for you to come back and finish our conversation. So I thought I'd hurry things along a little."

"What do you want?" Alex asked, trying to figure out the best way to distract him so she could get the gun.

"It's not about what I want, Doctor Isles," Hoyt turned his attention to her and Alex was horrified to see his eyes change colour, the blue giving way to an impossible Yellow.

"It's about what you want. You know, if we're gonna make a deal."

"What the hell...?"

The Winchesters stared, horror-struck.

"No, wait, you're dead. I killed you myself-"

Tara took a step forward, and Hoyt shot her.

In the narrow corridor, the sound of the shot was deafening and for a moment, Alex was too stunned to move. But then Tara crumpled to the ground, a bloodstain spreading across the front of her white shirt and Hoyt/Yellow Eyes was forgotten as she rushed to help her sister.

The cops from the interview room burst out, grabbing Hoyt and wrestling him away.

"This – feels pretty real to me," Tara gasped.

"Help me!" Alex screamed, turning Tara over to find the exit wound.

"Oh no." Korsak was at her side. "That bastard. Why can't he leave her alone?"

"We need a doctor!" Alex was frantic and Korsak gave her an odd look.

"Frost put a call in for a bus; it's on its way. But... you're a doctor."

Alex looked down at herself.

"Oh. Shit."

The uniformed cops carried a semi-conscious Tara into the autopsy room, laying her down on the table as Alex grabbed a white coat and started tearing her way through drawers.

"Not again. She's not dying this time, I won't let her. Where the hell is everything?"

"What do you need?"

Korsak had followed and was hovering behind her.

"Uh... scapel I guess. Needle and thread. Something antiseptic. Ah, here we go."

Alex found a drawer of implements, grabbed anything that looked useful and went back to the table, where one of the cops was carefully pulling Tara's bloodsoaked shirt away from the first wound.

"Looks like a clean through and through, which means I don't have to get the bullet out. But she's gonna go into shock soon. Hold her."

"Lexie, what're you doing?"

Tara was hazy, but she could see what was happening.

"This is what the Trickster wants, right? Us to be the characters she's put us in. I've got this."

"You sure?"

Alex hesitated, looking at the bloody wound.

"Yeah, I've got this."

"She couldn't have put us in 'Castle'?" Tara muttered, starting to drift again. "I'd've liked that better. Nathan Fillion's nice and easy on the eye."

"You keep thinking that. Cos... I don't have any anaesthesia."

Alex took a deep breath, and began.

Maybe because it wasn't, strictly speaking, real, Alex managed it. She knew how to patch people up, a bit, but without a hefty dose of antibiotics, this wouldn't be enough, in the real world. There were some times when you had to take a chance and go to hospital.

But Tara seemed okay, once Alex had sewn up the wound.

Korsak came back in.

"How's our patient, Doctor Isles?"

"Almost her usual self," Alex risked a smile.

"What happened to Hoyt?"

"They hauled him back to jail. With any luck, they'll stick another twenty years on for shooting a cop, and never agree to letting him out again, no matter what."

"Let's hope so."

There was a sudden, brief burst of music, seemingly from nowhere, and Alex frowned.

"What was that?"

"I didn't hear anything."

Alex turned around; from the other side of the glass door, an unexpected bright light had appeared, like a spotlight, and when she turned back, everything had changed again.