To say that I was good at my last job would have been a lie. And to say that I was proficient would have still amounted to an abomination in one sense of the term or another. I had always been something of a disappointment in the eyes of my brothers and sisters. I was the one who fell behind; the little brother that everyone looked out for.

I became one of the last angels to visit the Earth after its violent transformation. Too fearful to take my first steps out into the great world that our Father had made for us, it had been my older brother Gabriel who forced me out of the clouds. It was Gabriel who had been right beside me when the very first fish fell onto the shore. He had guided me from the very beginning of Creation and my admiration for him was second only to one. That was when our Father decided that the Earth was not complete as it was. That there was another destined to rival him for our affections. He breathed life into the dust and in doing so created humankind.

Mankind grew up alongside us as an adopted brother might. Loved as well as the others but more distantly. Various plans were laid out and unraveled in front of my brothers and sisters. Some very clearly destined to fail and some deserving of souls with more potential. Through their eyes we saw the second birth of the wheel and witnessed the failures of the old gods.

A few of the angels, very few it seemed, became so jealous of mankind that they resented our Father for loving them. They did not find happiness easily, even in the path that they had chosen for themselves. Heaven itself, in time, was threatened by the Hell that had been formed by their discontent. So the most duty-bound of all angels were granted the strength to strike back at their forsaken brothers. They became the most righteous warriors that Creation had seen. And they faced a great many foes. During a time that beasts that roamed the Earth, dark things that remained from the old Creation, our Father foresaw that mankind could not possibly defeat them alone. He chose several of my brothers to be as guardians of mankind. They were protectors, muses and, as time progressed, inspirational newspaper columnists for the masses.

I remained behind; too afraid to fight, too weak to protect and clearly too uncertain to strike out at those I had grown up alongside. It would have been kind to say that I was cautious, but centuries of hesitation made it clear that I was more fearful and cowardly than anything else. The other angels naturally became aware of this. As the millennia passed it seemed that no one in the garrison had the patience for me anymore. I imagine after a while that even Gabriel, one of the oldest of us all, had grown quite tired of holding my hand.

So after a few thousand years my demotion had become somewhat expected. I had been deemed unreliable and therefore unfit to deal directly in the affairs of the Heavenly Host. My brothers decided that I would be better suited to dealing in the affairs of man. Never had I imagined that my title would have been so literal. I fell from the glorious ranks of the garrison to that of the cherub.

My time as an observer allowed me to become something of a Godsend in every way. What had at first been a chore, I slowly found redemption in. I fixed those broken souls that had once been in love by guiding them back into each other arms. A broken heart was far too painful and stressing to the soul. It left scars that were quite visible to any angel or demon that came upon them. In some cases, these blemishes on the soul allowed a demon to take over easily; the possessions that followed the sinking of the Titanic were, in and of themselves, a calamity. While so many had gone through their lives feeling empty and broken so many others found that death was preferable to falling out of love.

Finally I had found a duty that would not eat away at my conscience. Over the years I had delivered a great number of souls from rather unfortunate fates and I had become prideful. Too prideful, it became clear, in the eyes of my brothers. I must admit now that setting up Monica and Bill was not one of my best assignments. Though the fact that they had been happy, even for a short time, was something that I had marveled over.

How could fate choose for so many to suffer at my hands? I came to wonder. So in the smallest of ways I began to rebel, believing that happiness above all else was more important than the inspired suffering of the few. After several ill-matched souls, and the subsequent disasters that became of them, I was given an assignment that would decide my worth once and for all.

This was how I became aware of Dean Winchester.