Raise your hand if you've missed Kat and all them crazy characters! *Mine shoots straight up!* Yup. I've missed Kat more than I'd thought. I think that unexpected hiatus was what I needed. Anyway, I'm back, and the creative juices (tehe. Juices) are flowing. And, don't quote me on this, but I might be continuing Kat's story a little longer than I expected. IT'S NOT WRITTEN IN STONE YET! I've just been thinking. Well, without further interuptions by me, here's a very short chapter that reviels a missed character... CASTIEL!

The steady beat of the heart-monitor kept Kat's mind in a trance as she counted the tiles of the hospital's room for the fifth time. "Yup," she sighed to herself as she leaned her head deeper into the soft pillow. "Still only 250 of them."

It only took about an hour to count all the tiles five times. Dean had left Kat's side to go and grab some lunch since she was stable, and it would be another half hour until Lily and everyone else was supposed to show up. Till then, Kat was stuck pretty much motionless in a very boring, very white, very sterile hospital room. Even the television wasn't working.

Kat was just about to go and break a "rule" and stretch to grab her cellphone when a surprising voice interrupted her. "I don't believe that movement will help you heal any faster." Standing at the foot of the bed and looking as much as an insurance advisor as before, Castiel stood straight at the end of Kat's bed, his gaze freezing Kat in mid reach.

"Well, if it isn't the angel who can't ever call anyone back," Kat huffed as she gingerly adjusted herself so that her back's stitches didn't pull. "What are you doing down here? Thought you were too good for us lowly humans."

"I don't think of you as 'lowly,'" Cas replied as he mad his way to Dean's abandoned chair and sat down, "and I was… occupied."

Occupied. There was a word that Kat was familiar with, but usually it was she who had a hundred things on her mind. "You still didn't answer my question. What's up, or… er… down?"

"You're the reason why I a here," Castiel replied as he reached over and lightly touched Kat's forehead. The skin on her back began to prickle, and then she could actually feel the pieces of her skin coming together and the muscle grow back almost instantly.

Kat stretched a hand behind her back, and felt the area where the wendigo dug its claws deep into her back. There wasn't even so much as a raised scar on her back. "Wow," she whispered as she sat up in the bed and actually moved her back for what felt like forever. "Its like nothing happened."

"I need you to not see Dean," Cas stated as though it was a common thing to say.

It caught Kat completely off guard, and all the air rushed out of her lungs. How could he say something like that to her, especially not showing his face to anyone in months? And right at the point where Kat was starting to admit that she could live with out him, but that she didn't want to live without him?

"What… But… Castiel! How can you be such a-"

"Dean needs to pay attention to what is going to happen, Kat," Castiel said, cutting Kat off. "If there was any other way, I would have liked to have left you having the life you want, but my hands are tied, as you'd say." The whole time Castiel told this to Kat, his eyes stared down at his hands, as though they were literally tied.

The angel who sat beside the young woman was the one she recognized as an old friend, but different. He was tired and worn, and he was not nearly as easy as he was when she'd last seen him. "What's going on, Cas?" she asked, her voice soft and hiding the hurt she really felt. "What are you not telling me?" But he never replied to Kat. He just stared at her as though he was doing the hardest thing he had ever done, and disappeared just as Dean walked through the door.

Dean's eyes glanced around the room before they finally landed on Kat's. "Was that Cas?" Kat wanted to tell Dean everything Castiel told her, but she couldn't. Katherine knew that Dean would do whatever it took to talk to the angel and find out why he was needed, and Kat was going to be selfish and try to hold onto Dean as long as she could. Or maybe just long enough to tell him that she loved him.