Castiel is in love with Jana, feelings he wasn't even aware he was capable of, but he doesn't want her caught in the crossfire of his battles. Cutting her off feels like the hardest thing he's ever done, maybe even harder than rebelling heaven, especially when Jana returns his feelings. Someday, when all of this is over, Castiel thinks, he'll do right by her.

"You see her when you close your eyes,

maybe one day you'll understand why

everything you touch surely dies"

Jana is a hunter who's partnered with the Winchesters numbers of times. She's been there for ghosts, vampires, The Roadhouse, and werewolves. She's seen hell break loose and helped slam the door on it. She's been along for rabbit's feet and missing shoes, pagan gods, and men who just wouldn't die. Jana is a part of it all, long before Dean crawls out of the ground and a righteous blue eyed angel claims to have work for them.

Somewhere along the lines of vengeful spirits, demons, and fallen angels Jana finds herself becoming fond of the socially inept tree topper. He's strong, he's brave, he tries his best to do what he believes is right. A path that leads him to doubt. To deceit, and punishment, and being ripped out of his skin and reducated.

Jana has this deep seeded fondness for Jimmy Novak. He's nothing like Castiel, not in mannerisms at least. It's surreal seeing him, the angel she likes to watch from the corner of her eye. Who's face ranges mostly in stages of stoic or serene, occasionally confused, even less frequently angry. Except this isn't Castiel, it was never Castiel. Jimmy Novak is the equivalent of his sunday's best, a suit that Castiel has to don. His true visage would burn her eyes out. Jana's heart bleeds for Jimmy Novak. He's a good man, was a good man, if he even exists any longer. She can never quite look at Castiel the same after that, because in the back of her mind she sees Jimmy Novak's desperation, his sacrifice. Castiel wears it every day.

That goes forgotten quickly enough. There are more pressing matters, with Ruby's trickery, Lilith's death, and Lucifer Rising. She'd seen this coming or she likes to believe that. Sam is a good man. Always the right intentions, never the right timing, or something like that. They don't have the luxury to worry about lies or demon blood or Castiel wearing a human being as a fucking skin suit because the whole world is going to hell and the angels are in on it. They lose so much along the way that each and everyone of them wonder if any of it is worth it, if they're making mistakes, if they could change destiny even though Dean had seen in, had lived it, had walked in it.

They learn that not even God is on their side. Her angel- when had he become hers?- takes that hard. He tries not to let them see it, but his consumption of an entire liqour store makes it clear enough. Jana sits next to him, shoulders touching, and gives him a bottle of aspirin. She doesn't say much of anything, but she let's him lean ever so lightly against her and she notes the weight of the world that he carries on his shoulders. He used to be so proud, so sure of everything. Watching him bend under the weight of their looming future is difficult, she wishes she could lighten the load. But all she can do is place her hand on his arm and will him to feel what she feels, wills to ease his heavy heart.

She doesn't know it then, but that touch is comforting. Castiel revels in it, long after her fingertips leave his sleeve and she's no longer sitting beside him. Much later he wakes up in agonizing pain, shockingly mortal, in a hospital and he longs for Jana. The strikingly emotion is stronger than anything he's ever felt and he wonders if it's because he's human in that moment. During his bus ride he thinks of her endlessly, preparing once again to possibly give his life. Regret strikes him in that moment, that he should have given more of his time to her, that if they live through this, he'll tell her everything. Even if he isn't exactly sure what there was to tell, he's new to this whole human emotion thing. Castiel doesn't have the opportunity to ever say it though, between Pestilence, Death, and Lucifer they're all hands on deck. But when they ride into Detroit she sits beside him in the backseat, fingers tangled with his and fear bleeding from her every pore. He wants to tell her then, but what are the words?

Lucifer rips him from existence in that battle field, snaps Bobby and Jana's necks. And, someone puts Castiel back together again. He stands over her lifeless form and in that moment he knows he will never tell her those words. That it will never be over, that they can never be together. Not in the way normal humans can.

This is her chance, he tells himself. That she and Dean will find average, mortal lives and live on outside the constant war of angels. That the future Dean had seen was gone. Where Sam is The Devil, where Castiel is only an echo of his former self, where he and Jana are lovers, where Croats rip her from him, and he buries her in the cold ground. All of it is rewritten. She will live now, even if it will never be with him at her side.

Castiel returns to Heaven a champion, a legend. Only to find a new battle awaits him, one he doesn't think he can win on his own. Siding with Crowley isn't smart and he knows that, goes to Dean to seek out help and he realizes that he can't ask it of him. Sees Dean in his normal, mediocre, mortal life and he's happy. Castiel won't take that from him, Dean's given enough. He sees Jana, just once. She's working at a outdoor/sporting goods store, she has friends, she looks happy. And, so he takes the King of Hell up on his wager. After all, they say the road to hell is paved with good intentions, and at the beginning he thinks he won't be tricked by the likes of Crowley. Castiel is wrong.

Along the way he loses himself. Stops seeing his goals clearly, let's pride and arrogance- possibly even greed- guide him. Sam has no soul, Dean leaves Ben and Lisa, Jana is hunting again. He'd never meant for things to turn out this way, but he's gone too far to turn back now. Sometimes he has these brief moments of clarity in his constant storm and in those moments he thinks of her. Of when he wasn't leading a rebellion, of when she laughed at things he'd said, when she would explain Dean's references, when she wouldn't patiently teach him human tasks. Castiel finds his strength, his motivation, in knowing that no matter what decisions he's made that Sam is not Lucifer and Jana is not a corpse he brings flowers to everyday. He won't let his brothers and sisters start the apocolypse again, no matter the cost.

He tells himself that when he finally gets caught. Believes with all of his being that everything he's done, everything he will do, has been for them. For Jana, and Sam, and Dean. Castiel tells them as much. He tells himself that when he tricks Crowley, when he kills Raphael, when he becomes the new God.

All the souls from Purgatory make him feel renewed, he's no longer an angel, he's God. He will do a much better job than his father did. He will eliminate all that threatens his goals and all that hide behind the name of God to do evil. Castiel truly believes that what he's doing is right, is good. But, there's still the emptiness that not even the millions of souls can fill. He closes his eyes and he sees her, kneeling before him back in that lab. But it isn't out of loyalty, it's out of fear. He sees Jana's face, lost and terrified, looking at him like she doesn't know him anymore. The emptiness grows and even the weight of monsters' souls and leviathans can't fill it.

When he goes to them, pleading for help, that fear is still present in her eyes, but it's for a different reason. "Don't die, you stupid tree topper." She chides, as she steadies him. Her voice holds such raw, tangible emotion that Castiel feels so ashamed. Why can't he ever do anything right? If he doesn't die, he swears he'll do right by them, by her this time. The Leviathans don't let him keep that promise either.

For months Castiel is gone and Jana doesn't know what the hell to do with herself. Every time they save the world, it finds another way to turn itself to shit. She can no longer see the point in any of it. The brothers notice her immediate onset depression after Castiel disintegrates into the water supply leaving nothing but his trenchcoat behind. They keep it, because part of Dean believes that Cas will come back, and Sam knows that if they toss it Jana will lose her damn mind. She doesn't think he's coming back. Castiel is dead, The Old Ones ripped him apart. She feels helpless like there's no point to any of it, but she buckles down when Sam's condition takes a turn for the worst and they take off on another wild goose chase for miracles.

The real miracle though, is Castiel- or Emmanuel, as he's going by- alive. Married and amnesiac, but alive. She swallows the jealousy and the urge to crush him to her, and sits in the backseat awkwardly as he and Dean exchange uncomfortable conversation. Jana doesn't care, about his wife, his memory loss, the souls, the betrayal, any of it. Cas is alive and she would give her soul, a thousand times, to have him there in the Impala with them. Even when he says, "Your friend's name was Cas? That's an odd name."

For a brief moment Jana sees the Castiel from the start. Good, righteous, all-powerful. She loves him more in that moment than she ever has before, even though he's blasting demons left and right. If she'd expected him to say anything moving to her when he regains his memories, she's disappointed. Because he only stares at her intensely, informing her and Dean that he remembers everything. That he's going to make it right. And, he does, but none of them knew that right meant taking on Sam's memories of hell. The Castiel that Sam and Dean leave her with is but a shell of the angel she'd known.

He comes to the same night of a suspicious storm, almost as if something had set him off, but when he speaks to her it's not Castiel, not her Castiel. Though he seems to remember who he is, he's lost in his interest of observing honeybees. He tells her many odd things, an endless supply of random unrelated nature facts. Cute as it may be, something is very, very wrong. Jana calls the Winchesters immediately.

As if they didn't already have enough on their plates with the Leviathans, there comes a prophet, a frightened high school student named Kevin, who doesn't deserve to get tangled up in all this.

Castiel doesn't want to fight, but he sees Sam and Dean, and Jana and realizes that their world hangs in the balance again and this time it's his fault. Even with hell buzzing in his brain like bees, he realizes they need him, cursed or not.