Author's Note: Sorry about updating. Life happens.

If you're a Star Trek fan, check out my Isara Jones series for another cool female OC.

I like to think I left you all speechless with my last chapter, but I really do appreciate reviews!

Chapter 11: In Which The Oracle Gains Information

About a week after the first flashback, we didn't know much more. Reincarnation was my top guess, though Walker was still skeptical. I decided that I was really ready for answers.

I sat on my blue-quilted bed, secure in the knowledge that Walker was out grocery shopping. Obviously we didn't need to eat, but it was important to keep up appearances for our few neighbors.

I shifted around a bit, then got down on the floor and knelt, hands clasped on the mattress, like I had seen my cousins do when I was little. Then I felt silly and stood again, settling for closing my eyes respectfully.

"Cas," I murmured, unaware that I had started calling him by the Winchesters' nickname. Casper twitched his tail somewhere on the floor to my right, but I ignored him. "Castiel. Listen, I need you to help me out. I don't have any idea what to do now that I'm Pythia. You seemed scared before, but I promise not to hurt you. I don't even know how!" There was still no response to my pleas. "Please, Cas! I don't understand. There's nothing in the books."

There was a silence so deep that I could hear the creaking of the trees in the forest behind the house as they cooled down in the late afternoon. I was determined to wait him out, so I kept my eyes squeezed shut and kept praying like I never had before.

"What do you need?" My eyes flew open at the brusque answer to see a disgruntled-looking Castiel standing before me.

"You didn't make the noise," I complained, wondering how long he had been standing there.

He nodded solemnly. "Stealth has been important lately."

I blinked, unsure how to continue our strange exchange. "Right. Well."

"You want to know about the Oracle, about your past lives." Uninvited, the angel plopped himself down on my bed. I nodded and sat down next to him. "You must understand that you are part of a larger, more complex issue, but here is the basic story."

I remained silent, worried that I would somehow do something wrong and make him leave, as he pulled a faded photograph from the pocket of his long coat. He handed it to me and I examined it; it was hard to make out at first, but I eventually distinguished several figures. A tall, dark-haired man sat on a staircase which stretched up and into the background. His face was kind but set solemnly for the photograph. Next to him, leaning against the handrail, was another man. This one had slightly lighter hair and strong features, but he was smiling.

Behind them both stood a woman wearing a collared, button-down dress which ended just below her knees. Her meticulously-curled hair hovered a few inches above her shoulders and one high-heeled foot was turned to show off the shape of her leg. She was pulling a face: her dark lips were pursed and one shapely eyebrow was raised. She was pretty in the style of the time (which I estimated at about 1955), and her pose showed a lot about her personality. The light-haired man's left hand was held by his ear by her left hand. Matching engagement rings adorned their fingers.

When I couldn't glean any more information from the picture, I turned expectantly to Castiel, who launched into his story. "I was wrong before: you were associated with the Men of Letters because of your powers, not the other way around." He paused, as if to gather his thoughts, and continued.

"In 1943, the Men of Letters located a huge well of supernatural occurrences just outside of Paris, France. They used their connections to investigate, and several months of work resulted in the procurement of a 16-year-old girl who had been terrorizing her neighbors.

"When she was brought back to America, they were unable to determine the source of her powers. All they knew was that she had witnessed the death of her family during the war, and this seemed to have triggered them."

I had a sneaking suspicion that I knew where this was going, but I kept listening.

"Eventually, using their vast resources, they discovered that the girl, Celeste, was the reincarnation of Pythia. They took her in, sheltered her, and trained her. Eventually, her powers, which sprang from the oldest of magic, grew to be equal to that of any angel. She married one of her teachers and allies in 1956 but continued to lead her life of training.

"Eventually, the angels became aware of her. Some felt threatened by her old magic, which was strong beyond anything which we had expected to find in a human. Others suspected that the Men of Letters could only maintain their power for so long, and that she would fall with them. So we waited.

"Unbeknownst to me, Zachariah hatched a plan to capture Celeste's spirit when she died a natural death, as even the Oracle must. Keeping her soul in heaven would prevent her memory from resetting and therefore from the next Oracle being born. However, eh… unforeseen circumstances arose. The demon Abbadon was summoned by the Men of Letters in 1958. She murdered everyone, including Celeste and her husband, and the society fell. Her soul slipped through the cracks in the ensuing chaos and the next Oracle was born.

"Unfortunately, this Pythia was unprotected and unknown. She boarded an airplane in Japan which crashed into Mount Osutaka in 1985 and killed her before she reached the age of thirty. Finally, you, Andrea Fosters, were born. The angels were determined not to let you escape this time. When you died, Zachariah tasked Tessa with bringing you directly to him. He suspected that you held some secret which could help turn the tide in the current crisis. Each time he tortured you, your memory would eventually reset. Then he would gain your trust again and try, over and over, to pry some useful information from you."

Cas stopped for a moment, but it wasn't because he had noticed that I was close to tears. It was because he was doing some math in his head. "You must have been tortured over a hundred times in the month which you spent in heaven."

I ducked my head, trembling and flickering uncontrollably. The photograph fluttered to the floor so that I could read the slanted script on the back:

Henry Winchester with Celeste Desjardins and Anthony Nelson

"That's why it didn't seem like a month," I murmured, "and why Zachariah seemed so annoyed with me." I prodded at the piece of paper again and was suddenly struck with something. "Winchester?"

"The father of the father of Sam and Dean," Cas explained.

I nodded, wondering how much of my life was really mine and how much belonged to Celeste and the Japanese woman who had died in 1985, and to all of the rest of my selves. My love of French? My affinity for funny pictures? The fact that I always, always made time to walk down main street when the cherry blossoms were in bloom? And then the inconsequential fact that it was my love of mythology which had drawn me into the English department; journalism had been a tangent from that original path of study.

"Why were you afraid of me?" Even after hearing as much of the story as Castiel had known, I still didn't understand what great threat I posed to heaven.

"Your power," Cas said patiently, "stems from something much older than angels and demons. It grows from the Earth, it flourishes as much from nature as it does from the strength of human civilization itself. Your gods are petty, vengeful creatures now, with barely more power than the average warlock." I glossed over the derision in the last words, feeling that it would be pointless to call an angel out on religious bias. "But you, you still have great potential. You are still strong. You could probably kill me if you knew how to utilize your abilities."

I looked down at my shaking hands and sincerely doubted it. In my memory, I had only had one dream which foretold the future, and that was under extenuating circumstances. I hadn't been able to hold off repeated angelic torture, or save my own life, for that matter. Then another problem came to mind.

"So, now that I'm trapped as a spirit…" I began.

"You are unable to be reincarnated," Cas finished. "Your memories will continue to accumulate, thus making you more powerful than you have ever been before. If you were to somehow release yourself from your current predicament, however, you would be born again as an infant. There is no way of telling where you would begin again. This would restore a certain balance to the world which has been upset by your continued death."

It was so weird to think that I had been a normal person a few months ago. "Where are Sam and Dean?" I asked in a lame attempt to move the subject away from myself.

"Dead."

"What?" I yelled, jumping to my feet. Please, not now, not like this, not when I had just found out so much.

Castiel seemed unconcerned. "It's the fourth time in as many months. They will be fine. I have given them as much guidance as I can." He leaned around me to check my clock. "They should be back soon. I must go." And with that, he disappeared.

I groaned and leaned back on my bed, mind swirling. So I really was just the latest in a long line of Oracles, each with her own life, and each one, at her core, me. I sat up again and bent to pick up the image on the floor, which Cas had left behind. I looked into the eyes of the woman. I hoped to find some sort of answer, make some sort of connection and suddenly come to terms with the fact that she was me, but her eyes were just blurred smears and no such realization came.

Celeste Desjardins. "Celeste," I murmured to myself. The name meant celestial or otherworldly. "Heavenly of the gardens." It was certainly a name fit for an Oracle. Then there was Anthony Nelson, to whom I had been married from 1954 to 1958. Almost thirty years before I was born. It was all beginning to hurt my brain.

"Andrea?" Walker stepped into my room holding a bulging paper bag of groceries. My panic was soothed a little at the normal sight. He must have spotted the alarm on my face because he practically dropped the food on the floor, scattering apples and dinner rolls across the my room. He sat down on the bed next to me, eyeing the photo that I was clasping in my shaking fingers. "I heard voices. What happened?"

I explained everything that Cas had told me, haltingly at first, and then gushing. I added my own details about the traits which I suspected that I had inherited from my past selves and filled in some more about my flashback. When I finished, there was a long silence.

Eventually, Walker took the picture from me and examined it, a look of resignation on his face. "All right then. I guess it's time we took this seriously."

"How do you mean?"

He turned and looked at me. "Let's go find Anthony Nelson."