Chapter 2: Rebirth

Castiel was sitting on his favorite bench, long worn from use, ignored by the humans who played in front of the park it overlooked. The humans moved around him, going on with their lives, mistaking him for one of them. But although he'd been torn from his grace and was not angelic at the moment, he'd never truly been human.

In this place where he had once confessed to the Righteous Man of one of his many sins, he came to accept that he was tired. The Song of his brethren that had once been a comforting lull in the background that connected him to their presence was now a vast reminder that, although he may be a part of them, he was certainly not one of them. He had lost his grace but not the Song. He could still hear angels but not the prayers. It was enough to drive one mad.

A small chill travelled up his spine, and an unnatural gust of wind and a thousand small whispers heralded the arrival of one of the agents of death. It was funny that as a mortal, he could still perceive the supernatural. It was true, what they said: once you saw it you could not simply un-see it.

Castiel and the reaper locked gazes as only immortals could with each other: patiently, endlessly, and without the need to blink. And because he had nothing to lose, Castiel asked in a voice that was filled with courage that he did not have: "Are you here to kill me?"

"Castiel." The voice was one of soft welcome and of coercion. Hearing that voice, Castiel could believe that it had lured a million souls to their final resting place. Castiel didn't even want to know how she had found him in the middle of the Midwest, but she was here, and the last time a reaper had found him, he had died. "We need your help."

Had he been what he once was, he would have gone without question. It was in his nature to help. But as Dean had taught him, it was his want to help that had landed him in this mess in the first place. She sensed his reluctance and moved forward to reach for his arm, but he instinctively pulled it away.

"I'm Tessa," she introduced herself, and once, it wouldn't have mattered to Castiel. Names were things that had power and most immortals never exchanged them with lesser beings. It was the humans and their constant want to describe things, in their need to be individuals, who had needed names.

"Dean's reaper," Castiel said slowly, recognizing her, remembering her now that she had introduced herself. He had been present in Dean's time of dying, after all, and he was well-versed in Dean Winchester.

She hummed in assent and took a seat beside him. Castiel shifted uneasily, because he had been looking forward to spending time alone, and this bench was a personal favorite, partly because he'd spent time here with the Righteous Man, but more so because it reminded him of his favorite heaven. "I'm unsure how I can help an agent of death. I am… currently without my grace."

"Oh, I knew that from the get go," she assured him, "I want to show you something."

With one last look at this moment of respite, aching to unfurl wings he did not have anymore, Castiel closed his eyes and nodded his assent. The former angel did not want to experience moving across space with eyes wide open as a human. He missed flight, and Castiel had learned that the ache of being empty was less felt when he was not reminded.

He opened his eyes in the middle of a hospital. He was familiar with hospitals because his charges were so often there. He noted the white letters announcing the nursery and the large viewing window allowing relatives to visit the newborns in their cribs.

However, there was a pall here, something that he Castiel did not expect in an area where there was usually much to rejoice about. He leaned against the glass and noted the empty nursery, which he supposed was what kept the wing lifeless. There was no wail of a newly born child, there was no cooing of relatives getting to know the newest addition of the family. In fact, the wing felt like it was in mourning.

Tessa leaned against the window, mimicking him. Castiel startled, and it was one of the things that he still had not grown accustomed to, that he could be startled now, that the unnatural stillness of a reaper could surprise him as it had not before.

"There is a soul, waiting to be born, Castiel."

There were in fact thousands of souls, millions of souls waiting to be born in this moment. A single cry in the middle of the long hallway was heard, and a nurse whipped her head to listen to the loud scream, a smile touching her face. As if it was a miracle that the halls produced a sound that should have been background noise. Castiel followed the nurse through the glass as she received the baby from the delivery room and placed it in the nursery. A small tear was in the corner of her eye. Miraculous, as if this birth was rare.

Castiel peered at the protesting baby and noted the flash of the newborn's soul. Shiny and bright it may be, but it held the tinge of experience. "An old soul."

But when he looked around, the reaper was already gone, leaving him in the middle of the nursery ward from the outside looking in. He was already starting to understand the disconcerting feeling humans had when one of their kind left without warning. Although Castiel understood how it felt to leave like that, it was another matter to be the one abandoned and waiting.

Another woman joined him at the viewing hall, peering in as the baby was bathed and clothed before being deposited to her crib. The nurse had wrongly assumed that he was an eager relative and had brought the baby over for viewing. The woman beside him clenched her hands at her sides her forehead pressed against the glass. The nurse gave the woman a small nod of acknowledgement, as if she was a regular at the viewing deck, before she put the baby down in her warmer.

Castiel noted that his companion wore a hospital gown and had a hospital tag around her wrist, a barcode and "29/F – Maternity Ward" printed in bold letters on it. Her small gasps fogged the glass in front of her. He could feel her quiet mourning, and his non-existent grace wanted to reach out.

Had he still been in possession of his wings, they would have curved out in comfort, and the muscles in his back strained to do just that. It was one of those things he missed about being a guardian, the little comforts that he offered. At least then, had he been impotent, he could still offer to carry this woman's pain.

She closed her eyes, as if bracing for the world of hurt before she said, "Is she yours?" Castiel looked around, but there was no one else in the lobby. So that could only mean the woman was addressing him. He frowned in consternation until she opened her eyes, looking straight at him. "The baby, is she yours?"

Castiel shook his head slowly. The woman visibly calmed herself and sat back down on the wheelchair that Castiel hadn't noticed she arrived in. "Did you lose a baby too?" she asked after a time.

"No, ma'am." The frown was still on his face because he did not understand what this woman was truly asking him. He did not see what the reaper had wanted him to see in this empty ward.

"Oh." There was a palpable ache that Castiel could not fail to respond to. Had the reaper wanted him to feel this much more devastated about his lost grace and more alien in his human skin that he could not ease a soul who was in so much pain?

Castiel stood there awkwardly. "Did you—" he paused, because tact was not something he had known as an angel and was something he was still learning. Humans got so offended and hurt by many things, and he as an angel had been poorly equipped to understand them. He changed his question mid-sentence and began again, "What did you name yours?"

"Holly." She smiled in remembrance, and although there was pain there, there was also an amazing capacity for strength. "I wasn't able to hold her in my arms. I—"

"Mrs. Cooper! There you are!" A harried nurse in pale, pink scrubs was briskly walking towards them, a clipboard tucked under her arm, her face tinged with concern. "What has Dr. Wright told you about visiting the nursery alone?"

"I heard there was going to be a delivery. I thought I'd want to be here to show support," Mrs. Cooper answered a little defensively as a man appeared in the nurse's wake, hair mussed, with dark circles under his eyes. He looked like he had not changed out of his clothes in days.

"Erin," he murmured as he dropped down to his knees and gave her a back-breaking hug. "I was so worried."

"I—" she looked lost, as if she hadn't thought her husband would look for her in the middle of her grief. Her husband shook his head, silencing her. He placed a small hand on her arm before getting up to push her back to her room. She turned back to Castiel and raised a hand in farewell.

Castiel gave her an almost imperceptible nod in acknowledgement, then turned back to the nurse who was already walking away to return to her duties in the ward. "Excuse me, Nurse—" he read the nametag when she turned around, "Hernandez, I am sorry. I was under the impression that September was usually the peak season of births. There seems to be a lot of empty beds here."

"There just haven't been enough live births to fill the beds," the nurse said, a little curt, and if Castiel could read this human right, then it seemed like she was also a little guarded. "I'm sorry, do you want to talk to my clinical manager or your wife's attending physician?"

"We could walk while talking, Nurse Hernandez," Castiel allowed as he began walking after the Coopers. Castiel was deciding which badge to flash, the Center for Disease Control or the Health Office, when Ms. Hernandez sighed and started walking beside him.

"It would still be better for you to talk to your wife's attending about any concerns, Mr.—?"

"Oddbody," Castiel replied. "Has there anything out of the ordinary of note lately?"

"Out of the ordinary?" The nurse was starting to get suspicious, and she was less likely to give him anything useful.

Castiel decided then that it was in his better interest to pretend to be a CDC agent. The Health Office could mean their bosses were up for an audit; the CDC could scare her enough to think it was an epidemic. Ms. Hernandez tensed when he flashed his ID badge. "I need to talk to the Chief of Clinics, but I wanted to understand the scope problem by seeing the wards first."

She dropped her voice to a small whisper, her eyes never leaving the Coopers in front of her. "There's a new virus or bacteria out there threatening our babies—that's why we're getting all of these still births, isn't it?"

Castiel started to doubt his decision in mentioning the CDC. Panic was something that was never good to introduce to small towns, and epidemics caused anarchy just as fast as any natural disaster. "Ma'am, we are doing preliminary investigations on the perinatal mortality rate. We have no indicator saying that we have an epidemic at our hands."

"Look, I don't know what you're doing back at the CDC, but I do know that I am looking at nine mothers out of ten grieving in my ward. I talked to one of my old classmates the next county over and she has the same problem on her hands." She stopped following the Coopers and took a good look at him. "Either we're incompetent, which I assure you, we're not, or there's an epidemic in our hands, in which case you're incompetent and are either too blind or too stupid to see it. So, sir, as I said, would you like to talk to our clinical manager or the chief of clinics? The COC will probably need an appointment, but seeing as you're a big-wig and all, it can be arranged."

oOo

It had taken Castiel the better part of the entire day, getting the interview with the COC and talking to the various medical personnel, but one thing was certain: there was indeed a high perinatal mortality rate in the wards. It was an unprecedented mortality rate, higher than even the times when there had been no antibiotics, no hospitals, and midwives had no concept washing hands before delivery.

He closed his eyes and sighed at the amount of open books in front of him. He was sure that it was a case. A reaper wouldn't have brought it to his attention otherwise. And she had done so before the local authorities started to take interest in the fact that they were rapidly losing their population to death. It had taken him another two hours to hitch a ride to Lebanon from Nebraska.

It was going to be difficult to go back to Nebraska without a car. He needed to appropriate one of the cars in the bunker, possibly Dean's Impala, if he could ask Sam's permission for that. And he needed to find the Coopers. Maybe find the rest of the patient admissions within the past week in the obstetrics ward, which meant breaking into the hospital, and if that wasn't a headache, he didn't know what was. He hated breaking into hospitals and places with twenty-four hour services because even though the daytime staff was decreased at night, they were still there.

He started frowning when a tub of ice cream was unceremoniously dropped in front of him. He looked at the big container with a puzzled expression, noting that the condensation was going to mar the antique wood if it remained too long on top of the table.

"I learned from one of the greatest men that walked this earth that you should get ice cream and then prostitutes if you were going to end up with a frown that heralds the Apocalypse," Kevin Tran said with a mock scowl while holding out a spoon for Castiel to take.

Castiel was always in awe of the prophet, whose name he'd known since he was created. He wished that Kevin had been protected more from the leviathans and the demons, even the angel possessing Sam that had tried to kill the prophet. Castiel had been thankful of the fact that the sigil Kevin had come up with for Sam to resurface had worked in suppressing 'Ezekiel' when he found out about it.

Once touched by the divine, it was always difficult to return to a normal life. In the end, hunting had given Kevin solace, and though he mainly researched and acted as support, Castiel was always grateful for the prophet's decision not to leave him alone in the bunker. Especially after Sam left to rebuild his life in Lawrence.

Castiel gave him a smile in thanks before accepting the offering, watching as Kevin opened the tub to share between the two of them. A small corner of Castiel's mind which he had long since relegated as Dean's terrible, terrible influence whispered: a prophet, a fallen angel, and an ice cream tub—sounds like the beginning of a bad joke.

After decimating more than half of the ice cream and realizing that he probably spoiled himself for dinner, Castiel noticed that Kevin was giving him a worried look. One he'd often associated with people and pity. "Cas, you do realize that there are people you could ask for help, right?"

Asking for help had not been Castiel's style in the garrison because he had been so different from everybody else. The entire notion of asking for help was a bit foreign, a garrison worked instinctively with each other without having to worry about the mundane things like 'asking' in the first place. "I am grateful, Kevin, I am just unused to not having… what would you call it? A collective mind."

"Cas, you angels don't have a collective mind, you just have telepathy," Kevin corrected as he slid the book that Castiel had been reading closer so he could see. Most of the books were open to pages about witches, and several showed a couple of graphic and disturbing images of fetuses being eaten, so Castiel could understand the upset look that passed over Kevin's features. "I thought you knew mostly what monsters there were out in the world."

"I am unsure of this monster and I need to ask more of the victims to understand what is happening," Castiel answered as he leaned back against his chair, his mind going over the possibilities. While he was visiting his mental monster menagerie, he summarized most of what he learned from the memorial hospital for Kevin's benefit.

Kevin listened in and then opened his laptop, hacked a couple of hospital databases, and presented Castiel with a list. "It's not just happening in Hastings, Nebraska, Cas. It's happening everywhere. This is a list in Smith County alone. Is it someone like Pestilence with a new killer virus?"

Castiel looked at the numbers and became saddened. He had not seen such a large-scale death toll since the plagues of Egypt, when he and his brothers had been called upon to slaughter all firstborn children. No wonder the nurse had called him incompetent. "Let us talk to the people nearest here, Kevin."

"Okay. I'll call Sam on the way, all right?" Kevin said as he stood up to get his coat. "He'll worry if he drops by and we're not in the bunker… especially if he finds out we have a case and we didn't tell him."

oOo

Talking to relatives of the dead was one of the things that discomfited Castiel and made him out as a poor detective. Although he had attained emotion in his fall, it still felt like he was aping the humans in their anguish and their compassion. It was one of the reasons why he always had a partner when interviewing these people; he almost always caused a mishap with the way that he misread body language.

In a way, it felt like he was a child unleashed in society without knowing its rules, with the Winchesters as his only guide. At least Heaven was structured and ordered. Here, it was utter chaos.

He had chosen a suit, and he still had difficulty with his tie. They had gone with the cover of FBI instead of anything related to the Department of Health and Human Services, because a couple of health officers visiting after a death of a baby seemed like it would raise paranoia, and they didn't want to face that right now. Local police would be better, but then the local police would weed them out as false even before they could even get to the second family.

They were sitting in the living room, eating tea and biscuits, when Castiel tried to start on the line of questioning that he wanted. They were already visiting their fifth family, and mostly the stories were the same. Castiel had managed by trial and error to get most of the questioning right by that time, and now he faced Mrs. Henderson, a mother of two in her early thirties, who had delivered a stillborn baby last week. "We were concerned about a few reports around here, Mrs. Henderson, and we wanted to make sure that everything was all right."

"Reports?" Mrs. Henderson asked, confused. "Reports of what?"

"There was a woman who was robbed a few blocks over, and we're just checking the area," Kevin said smoothly. After a few years with the Winchesters, Kevin looked like a fresh graduate of criminology. Sometimes, they made excuses that his being Asian was the reason why he looked young when his age was questioned.

"Oh, old Mrs. Kelly's robbery! That's very… thorough of you." She put down her cup of tea and shrugged. "Everything is fine, really. We haven't had anyone acting suspicious that I know of."

"Anything, Mrs. Henderson, anything at all. It could have happened within this last month, someone following you, or anything that does not feel right," Castiel prompted, "A lot of the victims of robberies don't know it, but they're actually being observed carefully from afar, even for months to get to know their habits."

She shrugged again. "I'm sure that the robbery was actually more of a delinquent trying to prove themselves. Mrs. Kelly's place has that type of draw more than anything else. But I assure you, Agent Landon, I have noticed nothing in the past weeks or months."

This was where the questioning usually became tricky, as there was really no connection between the robbery that they were using for their line of questioning and the stillbirths. "Mrs. Henderson, did you notice anything unusual about your pregnancy?"

She frowned, her hand tightening around her cup, disturbed. "I don't understand. Why would you need to know something like that? I assure you, my pregnancy is—was not a matter for the bureau."

"I'm sorry, ma'am. It's just that we noticed that a good deal of the women targeted in the next county over were pregnant and experiencing difficulties with their pregnancies," Kevin apologized. The excuse was flimsy, and they didn't even know if that save was better than if they'd pretended to be from the HHS in the first place, but Mrs. Henderson relaxed fractionally, so at least that was all right.

"No," she said softly, closing her eyes to breathe in a couple of times before looking up at Kevin. "It should be fine, then. I had a smooth pregnancy; the prenatal visits were fine. The baby had a heartbeat and everything. He wasn't really that active, but he was fine. He was just delivered dead, that's all. I'm sorry, agents, will that be all? I feel like I have to lie down for a while."

"I am sorry for your loss," Castiel offered as he stood up, Kevin following close behind. Castiel brought out a calling card made for such cases and folded it into her hands. "If you have anything to tell us, please don't hesitate to call."

She nodded numbly before leading them out of the house. As soon as they were out of earshot and eyesight, Kevin loosened his tie and sighed. "There's nothing here—no one suspicious lurking around, no one felt anything wrong with the pregnancies. We're not finding anything."

Castiel felt Kevin's frustration mounting as Kevin took the driver's seat of the car they had appropriated from the Men of Letters. "On the contrary, we do know a couple of things. It's massive enough that there are more than two cities affected, meaning it can't be a single person." Castiel got into the car, dropping onto the seat and pulling his seatbelt on before continuing his observations, "They didn't have someone looking in on these women, so it couldn't have been a witch's spell, or say, someone from an obscure cult, who needed their children as ingredients or some sort of sacrifice."

Kevin hit the steering wheel in sheer impotence at the situation before drumming his fingertips on the wheel. "Do you want to interview more, or have you heard enough?"

Castiel shook his head. The women were consistent in their tales, and he didn't want to hear more heartache. It was already difficult to know that before, he had only to touch two fingers to their foreheads to relieve their pain. "I'm content with the ones we have. If we're dealing with a monster, then there are probably more than one, and they'll likely be indigenous to these parts, going by the sheer amount of deaths we've seen."

"Penanggalan, mananangal, matruculan and aswang are all out. Why is it that most of these monsters in your list are Asian in origin?" Kevin asked as he skimmed the list that he'd copied and taped to the dashboard, before he started the car and shifted gears.

"They're the only cultures I know of that speak of monsters eating babies before they're born. But seeing as they're stillborn and not really—eaten, then they're probably not the culprits," Castiel explained. They had been a long shot, but he had included them in the list to be thorough. "Baba Yaga is busy in Europe, so it's unlikely that it's her. And she is one person, unable to cause this magnitude of brephophagy."

"Cas, what have we taught you? Say baby-eating monster instead of brephophagist, okay?" Kevin reminded him. He looked down the list, which was rapidly dwindling in size, before turning his eyes back to the road. "The Pale Man?"

"Still in Pan's Labyrinth," Castiel answered; he had checked these by some of the angels who had formed enough of a network and somehow still believed in him and his cause. "Grox'lar beasts just eat heads, and again, they eat babies, not fetuses."

"Eldritch Abomination?" Kevin offered up.

Castiel lips curled upward in a small smile. "He is not real."

Kevin let out a sound of disappointment, which made Castiel laugh. "Death Eclipse fits! He eats all newborn life in the planet every three hundred years, when the stars are right!" Kevin protested.

"Maybe I should just say the pigs ate them," Castiel said as he stared out the window. Due to the urbanization, people sometimes forgot that pigs eat babies if they were left unattended in farms.

There was a weighted silence after that pronouncement, broken when Kevin said, "Cas, whoever taught you your brand of humor should be shot in the head."

Castiel huffed in amusement. Kevin continued to drive them towards the bunker, but he glanced sideways at Cas. "Do you want to stop by the usual place before going home?"

Cas shifted uncomfortably in his seat, still not looking at Kevin directly. He pressed his cheek against the window and closed his eyes. "Yes, please."

oOo

Because Castiel was raised in an angel garrison, order gave him comfort, and rituals gave him structure. He hadn't stepped foot in his Father's house in ages, but he did find comfort in the fact that in this bench, in this field, he found the peace that he could not receive with his Father's blessing.

He sat on the bench alone; Kevin was respectfully waiting inside the car. Castiel watched mothers dust their children off, brushing away the soil they'd picked up after a day of playing, and packing their things for home. He watched silently, composing his thoughts, before bowing his head.

"Dean," Castiel whispered—although he did still try to talk to his Father, because faith was also resilient in a way, he had discovered that there was a different kind of comfort in talking to the Righteous Man. "I found another case. It is a bit disconcerting, and… we are either up against something really powerful, or something…" Castiel trailed off and looked up, losing his words.

He then voiced the conclusions that he had been afraid to tell Kevin, "We are facing either a monster horde or simply the embodiment of a Power. Powerful enough to rival Pestilence at least. Unless… this is a massive spell, in which case, I imagine it would cause a backlash that surely would have been felt by the other angels by now, and the Song is silent on this."

"Dean… I don't know how you managed to do this for years, but I will strive to continue as you have done." Dean had been dead for over a year, and Castiel still didn't know if he was doing the right thing by continuing hunting. Ever since Metatron's Spell, Dean had become Cas' moral compass. Because of Dean's death, the former angel had been forced to rely on his own judgment—something that has proven to be lacking. He looked up again, even though he knew that Heaven wasn't in the clouds or the darkening orange of the dusky sky. "The strength that it takes to overcome a roadblock… I am … lost right now."

There was no answer, but then Castiel never expected one. He himself hadn't answered prayers addressed to him immediately. His Father had encouraged answering a prayer by making use of the own human's abilities and encouraging their self-worth rather than doling out in miracles. It was enough that he believed his words would reach the Righteous Man somehow.