It took a full day before Dean saw the doctor to examine his heart. Mae spent her time in the waiting room, mindlessly leafing through an old magazine, unsure as to why she was having issues untangling herself from him this time. He was okay and even if something was wrong with this situation, she was willing to take it as a win because he wasn't dying anymore. Maybe she just had to be certain he was okay, that he had that medical stamp of approval. But she couldn't shake that strange feeling that came over her when Dean was healed. Or why she felt it. Maybe it was just fear or concern for the man. That was the only thing that made her think Dean was right about something being off about it.

When he and Sam came through the waiting room, things weren't exactly sunshine and roses between the two. Dean was pissed and Sam looked shamefaced. Dean breezed by her without so much as a word which had her springing to her feet.

"Hey, wait a second! C'mon, someone wanna to fill me in here?"

Sam paused only as long as it took her to meet him. She was tall enough to keep up with the ground eating strides the boys were laying down. "Dean thinks this healing wasn't legit."

"But he's...okay."

Sam nodded, letting her see the relief he felt for just a moment.

"Good. Well, his not liking this isn't new."

"Yeah well… he says he felt cold, and it felt wrong. And then the doctor told us

that someone else, some 27-year-old guy died of a heart attack yesterday."

Her brow furrowed but as she linked it together the furrows deepened. She wondered if that's what she felt too but couldn't answer why she felt it. "That could be a coincidence." She didn't believe it, but it would have been a nice reprieve.

"Tell that to him. He's going to the Reverend's and I'm checking into this guy who died. You can come with."

"No," She shook her head, "I'm going with Sunshine Mary over there."

"Oh, that's gonna go well." Sam muttered as Mae jogged up to Dean's side.

Mae joined Dean even after he told her he could handle it on his own. With a rarely used move she turned on her very own sad puppy dog look. It was one of those looks that took full advantage of her large blue eyes and delicate features. He almost growled when he said, "Oh for fuck's sake."

It wasn't a yes but when he got in and started the Impala, he waited for her. In the car he filled her in on the exact details, what he had told Sam and, for some reason, more. He told her that he felt like something had changed, something that shouldn't have been touched to begin with. Once again, he reiterated that he though it really was his time to die.

"Dean-"

"Don't tell me how to feel."

"I wasn't going to."

"I can't believe you two did this!"

"In my defense Sam was really the one who was so gung-ho about it." She said, trying to kid around with him, "but joking aside, you woulda done the same damn thing. If it was Sam, you would have shoved aside all your disbelief because there was a chance."

He frowned. For a moment he was going to refute her statement, but it was true. He might be willing to admit, given the same situation, he would have done the same thing, even knowing that someone else might die if it saved Sam. Because it was his brother. "I'm not Sam."

"So, your brother's life is worth more than yours?"

Dean kept quiet which was as good as a yes.

"That's messed up." She said.

"Yeah well… tell me different."

"You know, you didn't get to decide when you were growing up about this life, but you accepted the responsibility dumped on you. When you had more of a choice, obviously you didn't really think you had one, so you just accepted the work as something you were meant to do. There's something important about that. You decided not to close your eyes and pretend all this wasn't out here. You help people."

"That doesn't mean I'm not a lying, cheating, stealing bastard."

"Sure, but you're...just doing the job. Besides Sam does it too. So, does your Dad, me… that doesn't mean we're worthless human beings."

"Mae…"

"Dean." She reached over to place a hand on his arm, "You're a good man and you don't...you haven't done anything that means you deserve to die."

"What have I done that says I deserve to live? Especially if it means someone else being taken out."

Mae shook her head. "It's not like you picked the guy out and if we knew that's what would happen... but you know, desperate times and all that."

"You think that makes it okay?"

"I don't know. You know, I've been on the other end of some of those lies and that cheating, and I still don't think you should be dead."

There weren't a lot of incidences she could be referring to on that claim, not that she knew about anyway. After he and Mae started sleeping together, he stopped even kissing other girls, something that in his mind was proof of his commitment to her. Of course, prior to that when his family was on the road and at a new school, he might flirt or make out with some girl when they were technically dating. He didn't think he was exactly unfaithful but, he supposed, if he had to qualify it, he wasn't being faithful. "That doesn't count. We weren't together 'together' then." He interrupted

Mae rolled her eyes. Her point had not been to bring up old wounds and she wasn't sure what he was talking about either. At the end of the day, she knew that if they had been together, he would have been painfully loyal. "I'm going to ignore the underlying irony of that particular argument, given our past, for now and tell you that the point is; I know you, I know who you are. And knowing who you are, I know that there's a lot more good than bad in who you are."

He was surprised to hear her say it. Mae kept her emotions buried deeply and because their relationship was so strained recently, he found it odd that she would tell him this sort of thing. His voice was softer when he spoke now. "How exactly do you know that?"

"I don't know. You just are. If you weren't at least a little good...well, for one you wouldn't have doubts about this. You worry that someone died to save you and you worry that you won't live up to that. That's just something that… unselfish people do. You know, you weren't worried just about yourself. You worry about others all the time."

Dean looked over at her, touched and confused by her statements at the same time. "So that makes up for all the rest?"

"I don't know Dean. I'm not in any place to judge you, judge what's right or wrong. I just know that for all your faults, you put yourself on the line for not just the people you care about but for total strangers. You know, all the bad breaks we've—you've had, you could have turned out a lot worse. You're just a good guy, okay?"

"Wow, to hear you talk, you might actually think you like me."

"Who said I liked you?" She said with a teasing smile, "C'mon, I wouldn't be here if I didn't."

"Would you have come if I called you? I mean, I would have had to leave a message but when you eventually got it, would you have come?"

"Would you have told me you were dying?"

"That's the only reason you'd come?"

"Yes."

Dean scoffed, "You're a piece of work, Mavis."

They sat in the reverend's house, awkwardly. There might have been a case where they were comfortable in that situation, but Mae couldn't think of any. handling this like any other case was difficult, if not impossible. The reverend told them about his cancer, Sue Anne, his wife beamed at the miracle of her husband, his gift. He seemed… normal, for a faith healer who could really heal. Or believed he could. Mae didn't get the bad voodoo vibe from him. She'd say it again; she kind of liked him.

Then Dean asked a question, not as a hunter but as… well, as Dean Winchester-perpetual skeptic might ask. "Why? Why me? Out of all the sick people, why save me?"

That was a question Mae could have answered but of course, that wasn't what Dean was looking for her thoughts on the topic.

"Well, like I said before, the Lord guides me. I looked into your heart and you just… stood out from all the rest."

It should have been enough, Mae thought. It was enough reason for her, but it made Dean paused, balk. "What did you see in my heart?"

"A young man with an important purpose, a job to do. And it isn't finished."

They didn't leave the Reverend's house with a sense of completion at all. At least Dean didn't.

Mae spoke first. "Listen-"

"Do we have to talk right now? I could-I just need to… think."

Mae nodded. She didn't push him because she understood Dean's conflict. The reverend's answers left Dean feeling uncomfortable since he believed none of those things about himself. It didn't help matters when they ran into Layla and her mother on the way out.

True believers in Roy's miracles it seemed. And they hit Dean with an impossibly low blow when the mother told him of her brain tumor and asking him the same thing, he had been asking himself. "Why do you deserve to live more than my daughter?"

"Dean-"

"There's nothin' you can say so don't."

The awkward silences with Dean were getting on her nerves. Dean cut her off and shut her down every time she attempted to broach any subject. She supposed she didn't have a solid foundation to push the issue of opening up to talk about what was going on. She understood the inclination. She didn't like it, but she understood. At least this time she reached over to turn on the stereo without him stopping her or turning it off. Not that either of them was listening to whatever was on, so it didn't matter much.

With a sigh, she turned to look out the window. Nebraska didn't offer much in the way of scenery but was oddly fitting for the way the car felt, bleak and pointless. He looked over at her for a moment. As much of a pain in the ass as she could be sometimes, she hadn't hesitated when it came to this case.

"Hey." He finally said softly.

"What?"

He gave her a small but significant smile. "Thanks."

"For what?"

"Thinking I'm worth...something."

Mae returned the smile. "That lady doesn't know you. She had no right to ask that."

"Of course, she did. That's what mom's do, right?"

"I guess. I wouldn't know on that count. But-"

He knew what she was going to say, and he didn't want to hear it from her right then. "So, you're telling me I deserve to live more than that girl?"

"I don't know. I don't know her. No one deserves to live more than anyone else. All I know is... I just… no one is as hard on you as you are. It's not like if we hadn't brought you, that the reverend would have picked her. There were lots of sick people there. Maybe he always picks the one making smart ass comments. We don't know how this works."

He didn't have anything to say to that. It was a little too deep for the moment, for what he wanted to think about then, but her words were more meaningful. Maybe it was because after the way they left things, he thought Mae just didn't have the backbone to tell him she didn't love him. A part of him was even beginning to believe his feelings were thoroughly unrequited. While she hadn't shared those three words he had, she did genuinely seem to care about him.

Dean looked over at her again. He realized he didn't entirely understand her. It would have been easy to write her off as a bitch or needlessly cruel, but she wasn't just that alone. The tough as nails hunter was more worried about how he felt about himself. She kept trying to reassure him that he was worth saving. He was sure if she didn't care, she wouldn't keep trying to reassure him. And she hadn't hesitated to come here to help him out. That had to mean something.

The two of them continued to the motel in a more amiable silence. He couldn't say he was happy or really at peace. But a small part of him was trying to believe what Mae said about him. That was until they got to the motel. She didn't like the look on Sam's face. It wasn't good news.

"What'd you find out?" Dean asked.

"I'm sorry. "

Mae hated the way he said it. He was so effectively confirming Dean's worst fears. But the older hunter wasn't so pessimistic. "Sorry about what?"

"Marshall Hall died at 4:17."

"The exact time I was healed."

"Are you sure?" Mae asked

Both brothers gave her an 'are you serious?' look and she nodded her agreement that it was probably a stupid question. "Right."

"Yeah. So," Sam continued, "I put together a list of everyone Roy's healed, six people over the past year, and I cross-checked them with the local obits." He handed Dean what he had found. "Every time someone was healed, someone else died. And each time, the victim died of the same symptom LeGrange was healing at the time."

"That could be…" She cleared her throat because she couldn't come up with a believable excuse. She couldn't even call it a coincidence because it sure as hell didn't feel like one. Then she gave a deflated sigh, sitting on the edge of one of the beds, "hell, this is…"

"Bad?" Dean answered sharply. He pinned her with a sharp glance before he continued, "So someone's healed of cancer, someone else dies of cancer?"

"Somehow. LeGrange—he's trading a life for another." Sam said.

Bad was a light word for what they had stumbled into. It was the sort of thing she had been worried about when Sam called. It was what Dean was worried about too and he was going to be mad. But it had seemed like their only decent choice, at the time. Surely, Dean would understand that. Mae thought she might have been able to talk him down if this had been an honest to goodness miracle. Being saved was a big enough issue for Dean to deal with but this was far worse.

"Wait, wait, wait. So, Marshall Hall died to save me?"

Mae and Sam looked at each other, each hoping the other would have the right answer. But they both knew the real one wasn't a good one. "Dean, the guy probably would've died anyway. And someone else would've been healed."

"You never should've brought me here."

"It's not like that." Mae started but she couldn't figure out what else to say.

Sam had her back though. "Dean, we were just trying to save your life."

"But, now, some guy is dead now because of me."

Mae and Sam looked away from Dean, back to each other before they both looked down. "We didn't know." Sam said for both of them.

"Neither of you tried to find out. You both just... you should have let me die."

Mae shook her head. "You know we couldn't."

Her statement left Mae and Dean in a silent standoff, neither exactly certain what the other one was challenging them to until Sam spoke up. "The thing I don't understand is how is Roy doing it? How's he trading a life for a life?"

"I don't know that he could. Not—not through any conventional means." She said, conventional means for them being quite unusual.

"Oh, he's not doing it." Dean filled in that piece for them, "Something else is doing it for him."

"What do you mean?" Sam asked.

Dean was agitated, mad with his brother and Mae both but realizing they had bigger issues to deal with. Roy LeGrange was still healing people which meant more people were going to die. "The old man I saw on stage. I didn't wanna believe it, but deep down I knew it."

"You knew what? What are you talking about?"

"There's only one thing that can give and take life like that."

Sam might have been confused but Mae was running through the short list in her head. There were a lot of creatures, demons and everything in between that might kill a man, drain away his life but few that could trade it.

"You don't mean…" Mae trailed off as she narrowed her eyes at him. Dean just nodded.

"A reaper."

"You really think it's the Grim Reaper? Like, angel of death, collect your soul, the whole deal?" Sam asked, a little confounded by the implications of that.

"No, no, no. Not the Reaper, a reaper. There's reaper lore in pretty much every culture on Earth. Go by a hundred different names. It's possible that there's more than one of 'em."

"Gatekeepers basically. Ranging from all manner of level of authority." Mae added.

"But you said you saw a dude in a suit."

"Well, what, do you think he should've been workin' the whole black robe thing? You said it yourself that the clock stopped, right?" Dean held up a piece of paper with a reaper on it. "Reapers stop time. And you can only see 'em when they're comin' at you, which is why I could see it and you couldn't."

"Maybe. "

"There's nothing else it could be, Sam. The question is how's Roy controllin' the damn thing?"

Mae stood to pace now. "Controlling a reaper, that takes some serious brass. It's like… hell, I've never heard of anyone being able to control a force of nature like that without some serious repercussions. "

"That cross."

Sam said it to Dean, but Mae answered first. "Yeah, it was an old school Coptic cross.

At the time, Dean hadn't been paying much attention to the decorations.

"What?" He asked.

"There was this cross. I noticed it in the church tent; I knew I had seen it before. Here." Sam shuffled through the deck before pulling out the Death card.

Dean looked, skeptical. "A tarot?"

"It makes sense. I mean, tarot dates back to the early Christian era, right? When some priests were still using magic? And a few of them veered into the dark stuff. Necromancy, and how to push death away, how to cause it."

"So, Roy is using black magic to bind the reaper?"

Mae held up her hand as she shook her head no. "Yeah but… the Coptic cross was supposed to represent the everlasting and eternal love of God and the resurrection. It kind of makes sense, you know for a faith healer."

"Why the hell do you know that and why the hell are you on his side?" Dean asked her, not expecting the encyclopedia routine from Mavis.

She smirked. "Catholic school, dude. I've got fancy handwriting and know all kinds of things that only come up in this line of work. And I'm not on anyone's side. If it's dark magic, it's dark magic, and we stop it."

Sam didn't entirely understand why they were picking this time to have a fight over this particular subject, but he was going to try to put a stop to it. "Well, clearly this is something darker. And if it is, he's riding the whirlwind. It's like putting a dog leash on a Great White."

Dean slapped the card down on the table and got up to put his coffee mug in the sink, all the while the wheels were turning in his head. As he leaned against the counter, he sent Mae a brief but withering look before he spoke. "Ok, then we stop Roy."

"How?"

It was written on Dean's face. Sam was still a bit too used to normal life, not quite a 'hunter for life'. Yet. "You know how."

While Mae might have been more of a hunter, she still didn't like where Dean's head was. "No way. I do not get the dark magic vibe from Roy. Churchy but that's not evil."

"We're not basing this off your vibes Mae."

"But yours were good enough? I felt something weird too but-"

"What did you feel?" Dean asked.

"I don't know... something cold then warm but...I mean, it's probably nothing. It was just for a second and it could have been anything."

His brother and Mae might not have been yelling but Sam did. "Will the two of you stop it? What the hell are you talking about, Dean? We can't kill Roy."

"Sam, the guy's playing God, he's deciding who lives and who dies, that's a monster in my book."

"No, we're not gonna kill a human being, Dean. We do that, we're no better than he is."

At least Sam was being rational and making the critical point. And at least Dean listen to him, instead of arguing like he was inclined to do with Mae. "Okay, so we can't kill Roy, we can't kill death. Any bright ideas, college boy?"

Sam's brow quirked a little underneath his pangs. and he had to think fast before Dean changed his mind and went back to the 'Kill Roy' plan. "Okay, uh, if Roy is using some kind of black spell on the reaper, we've gotta figure out what it is. And how to break it."