Warnings: Major character death, ghosts, light swearing, frank mentions of sex (no smut), Destiel…

I do not own Supernatural or any characters therein. And the title of the story is from a Black Sabbeth song, "Changes"

Dean saw his father fly through the air and through a window with enough force to kill him, and then Uriel advanced on him.

Cas appeared, and though he was so weak he could hardly stand, he performed a spell that made both Anna and Uriel stagger, then promptly passed out.

"Stop," Anna said to Uriel. "There's no point in killing them. They'll only exist for a few moments more. Their father is dead. And Castiel will have to live with choosing the wrong side."

"Don't you ever just do things for the fun of it?" Uriel asked her.

"Leave," she commanded, and Uriel disappeared.

"I'm sorry. I wish it didn't have to be this way," she said. Then she disappeared. Dean hoped he never saw the bitch again.

Dean looked at Sam in disbelief. "Dad's dead? That means…"

"Dean, she said we had a minute. Just…Mom, Dean…no demon deals, okay? Just let me fade away. I know you have to lose me and you have to lose Dad, but think about the big picture. Remember what you said, Dean. There's a big difference between dying and never being born at all," Sam said.

"This isn't fair," Dean said. "I didn't mean it if it meant you died and I lived…"

His vision was fogged with tears and he brushed them aside impatiently, knowing this could be the last moment he'd ever see Sam. He'd never even have a picture…would he even remember his brother a few moments from now?

"Please Mom, promise me you won't make any deals to bring John back. You'll have Dean to remember him by; you'll have your normal life. If you make a deal you won't live for long and you'll burn in hell," Sam said harshly. "Ask Dean what that's like if you think you can bear it."

Dean looked at Mary. She was sitting awkwardly on the floor, her body wracked with tears for her husband. "I promise," she whispered.

Sam looked at Dean, a kind of rueful smile on his face. "We did it. We really stopped the apocalypse. I mean, it was kind of an accident, but we still did it. Promise me you won't start it up again just for me."

"I love you Sammy. I won't forget you, but I won't try to change this or bring you back. I promise," Dean said.

"You never let me down, Dean. Remember that," Sam said. They hugged, and then Sam just…faded…

…the memory of Sam Winchester never faded, though, as Dean had worried it might. Dean was grateful he had his memories, although even he knew it would have been easier if he had been able to forget.

Dean went to Cas and saw he was breathing shallowly and had blood dripping from his nose, mouth and ears. It must have been some bad mojo he had worked to stagger the two of them.

Dean took Cas to the hotel, and then stayed with his mom as long as he could bear it. He made sure one of her friends was there to take care of her, and returned to the hotel.

When he opened the door, Dean saw Cas sitting on the edge of the bed, staring at the wall. Somehow Dean knew that Cas was aware of everything that had happened while he was unconscious.

He wanted to run up to the angel and demand that he set this right. He wanted to go back on his word and make Sam be alive again. He wanted to find the nearest crossroads. But he knew what Sammy wanted, so he only leaned against the wall and sighed, looking at his friend.

"I told you not to come here," Cas growled.

For a moment Dean thought he was angry about Dean walking into the hotel room, then he realized Cas was referring to when he told Dean it was too dangerous for them all to go back in time. Sam's fate was on Dean, and he knew that. He didn't need a self-righteous angel pouring salt in his wounds.

"You think you could lay off a little? My brother just ceased to exist," Dean said softly.

"Dean, I'm sorry. I'm sorry for what happened to Sam. He was my friend, and I never wanted this for him," Cas said.

"I know. I don't—I don't want to talk about it. Think about it. I just—what now? I mean, can we go back? Will I fade away once I'm born or something? How can two different versions of me exist at the same time?"

"I don't think…I think you can stay here and live out your life, starting now. I think if I found an angel to take us back to our time and the two divergent timelines come together, you would simply fade into yourself."

"Are you that far gone? You couldn't take us back yourself?" Dean asked.

"I don't think so," Cas said.

"If I forgot Sam, he would really be gone," Dean said softly.

"I would remember him," Cas said. "But you would not. All of your memories would be erased. Your life as a hunter, being raised by your father…none of these things would be, anymore. You would be the you you would have become if your mother raised you. You would not remember hell. You would not remember me."

Dean was surprised to find this tempting. Forgetting hell…knowing a mother's love for his whole life…But he couldn't just forget about his brother. And he couldn't just throw away who he was for the chance to hear his mom sing him "hey Jude" a few more times. He'd always thought he'd do anything to know what it was like to be raised by his mother, but now he knew what he wasn't willing to give up. Sammy. The person Dean was because of his brother. He would never be a hunter. He wouldn't even have Cas or Bobby, because he'd never have any reason to meet them. He supposed he'd never see Bobby again, and if he did, they'd never mean the same things to each other. Bobby'd never be like a father to him; hell, he might even be older than Bobby, now.

"But why don't I disappear now, like Sam did?" Dean asked.

"There really isn't a butterfly effect," Cas said obscurely. "Changing one thing in the past won't alter the future immeasurably. The fates can adjust to altered circumstance. If all this had happened when Sam was born or conceived, he'd be here too. You can exist in two timelines, even at the same time, but you can't rejoin your own timeline without one being destroyed, and you can't exist if you were never born."

Dean tried to make sense of that convoluted logic, than gave up. If Cas said he wouldn't disappear, he guessed he wouldn't.

"We should stay here," Dean whispered.

"In this hotel room?" Cas asked.

Dean snorted with abrupt and involuntary laughter at Cas's literalness. "In this time. I mean—I should stay here. You—you have no reason to stay with me, I know. Like Sammy said before he faded away, we did it. We stopped the apocalypse. I suppose you can go back to heaven or whatever."

"Dean, I'm still cut off from heaven. There is no other version of me. I'm…almost human. I don't want to be a burden, but I was hoping you could teach me how to be human," Cas said.

The relief Dean felt at this almost knocked his knees and he was grateful he was leaning against the wall. He'd never been alone, not really. He'd always had Sam or Dad to look out for, take care of…If Cas would let him take care of him, maybe he'd get through this. Maybe he'd be able to find a way.

"Do you want…should we be hunters?" Dean asked, almost timidly.

"I'm game, if that's what you want to do," Cas said, his voice sounding as awkward as it ever did when he tried to use human vernacular.

"Okay," Dean said shakily. "Okay. I guess we just have to bury my father, and then we can hit the road."

"Dean, I can wipe your mother's memories, so she doesn't know about all that other stuff. I can make her think John died in a freak accident," Cas said.

"I wish that was an option, but I bet she'd make a deal to get him back, if she didn't know it could start the apocalypse," Dean said.

"You're really doing it. I never thought…I wouldn't have thought you were capable," Cas said, tilting his head and staring at Dean as though he were an particularly interesting insect.

Dean didn't ask what Cas meant. He only nodded. "I'm going to do it. I'm going to let Sam go. I think I can…if you'll help me."

Cas nodded, then rose from his seat on the bed and patted Dean on the back awkwardly. "I will help in any way that I can."

Dean nodded, and suddenly he was close to tears again. He turned away and walked over to the other bed, lying down abruptly. "I'll see you in the morning," he said.

And he was surprised that he fell asleep right away.

Two weeks later they were on the road, in the impala.

Both mother and son had tried to give the car to the other, both saying that they couldn't stand the memories. In the end Dean had bought the car from her, promising to pay her when he found out how to scam the system 70s style.

Dean looked over at Cas, sitting up too straight in the passenger's seat. "I'll have to teach you to drive. Or do you already know how?"

"Jimmy knew how. I can access the remnants of his knowledge," Cas said.

"Is that a yes?"

"Yes, I can drive."

"Speaking of Jimmy…is he in there with you?" Dean asked.

"I haven't felt him since he offered to take his daughter's place. I suspect his soul went to heaven then, but the body still remains…his. It still remembers his fondness for burgers and how to walk and talk and drive," Cas said.

"Boy, you really know how to cut the human experience down to the essentials," Dean joked.

"They were just examples, Dean. I know the human is a complex animal," Cas said.

"So, you think this hotel is haunted?" Dean asked, changing the subject.

"Isn't that why we're going?" Cas asked.

"Are we playing questions?"

"What's questions?"

Dean laughed. Cas smiled in a surprised way at Dean's laughter, and Dean guessed he hadn't laughed in a while.

"Questions is where you only speak in questions for as long as you can while still making sense. The first person to use a statement loses. I was only—yeah—we think the hotel is haunted, that's why we're going. Sometimes people just talk for the sake of talking. To—avoid silence, or something. I was stating the obvious."

"So if we were playing questions, I would have won," Cas asserted.

Dean looked over at Cas, surprised to be on the edge of laughter again. "Yeah. You won this round," he said.

When they arrived in the hotel and checked in, they bought a local paper at the counter. Dean was finding hunting difficult now that he couldn't use the internet to do much of his research—but luckily papers were everywhere. They'd have to hit the library and look at the microfiche tomorrow as soon and they found out more about the ghost. Dean supposed he should have asked the clerk at the desk about the ghost, but he was dead on his feet.

In the morning he and Cas went down to the dinner attached to the hotel and had breakfast. Dean broke out his sunniest, flirtiest smile, and soon had the whole story of the hotel from a middle aged waitress with a passion for local history.

It was almost too easy getting back into the swing of things.

Serena Cole had killed herself in the hotel. She wasn't the only tragic death, but she was one of the only women, and the word was the guests who had died had seen a beautiful, pale woman the night before they died. They looked her up in the paper, found her obit and where she was buried.

Experience had taught Dean to cover all his bases, though, so he looked up the other two women who had been involved in tragedies at the hotel. Jenny Plainer had been with her husband the night he killed a man in the now-closed bar, and had died in a car accident when her husband lost control as he tried to flee the scene. Dean didn't know how she would still be tied to the hotel, but he made note that she was cremated. The other woman, Robin Springer, had choked in the diner and died. It didn't seem like the kind of incident to kill tourists over, but Dean knew that sometimes things weren't what they seemed so he wrote down where she was planted, too.

They headed back to the hotel with burgers that evening.

When they sat at the tiny table in the hotel together and ate, Dean felt an immense gratitude for his friend. He felt like he was stuck treading water, and every second of the day grief for Sam and his Dad threatened to pull him under, but teaching Cas the ropes of being a hunter and being a man was keeping his head above water.

"Look, I'm going to go down to the hardware store and get a shovel. Mary gave us guns and rock salt, but I just remembered we don't have a shovel," Dean said.

"Hard to dig graves without one," Cas said mildly.

"Yeah," Dean said.

When Dean got back it was dark. The hardware store had been five minutes from closing, and the proprietor had made a couple of jokes about what he needed a shovel for at this time of night that would have been funnier if they didn't come so close to the truth.

When he came back to the hotel room, Cas was gone. He'd left a note saying he was out for a walk.

"Hey man, you ready to dig your first grave?" Dean asked when Cas returned.

"Dean, I think we have a problem," Cas said.

"What is it?"

"I saw the ghost. It was Jenny Plainer," Cas said.

"Jenny Plainer was cremated," Dean said faintly.

"We don't need the shovel after all," Cas murmured.

Dean nodded. He didn't want to say what he was thinking. He didn't want to ask if Cas was human enough to get killed by a ghost, and he suspected that Cas didn't know either.

Because everyone who'd been killed at the hotel had seen Jenny Plainer the night before they'd died, and they had no idea what remains could possibly link Jenny to the hotel.

"We have to figure this out, fast," Dean said.

Author's Note: I know most people would argue that Jimmy's soul is still in Cas, but I just find that so creepy, especially in Destiel stories…so in my world Jimmy's soul is gone to heaven. Also, I understand that my version of time travel makes no sense. Oh well. Time travel never makes sense anyway.