N.B.: How have I never written a story with Jody in it? So here it is.

1 - The Hope That House Built

Jody knew immediately it was going to be one of those days.

"I'm telling you there were headless guys eating them," their one witness said. The fact that he was clearly high as hell on some kind of bathtub meth made him twitch and fidget like he was under assault by a swarm of invisible wasps. Now, she knew the supernatural existed, but she'd missed out on the section about invisible insects.

What a mess. She actually did hope it was some monster or something, so she could pretend those really awful drugs hadn't finally traveled to Sioux Falls.

There were two bodies in the abandoned house these three kids - well, men in their early to mid twenties - had been squatting in, and by the looks of it, doing drugs that ranged from the delightfully antiquated huffing paint, to the more modern drugs that smelled like a chemical fire in high school science room. The fact that two of the men clearly had bites taken out of them, which had probably led to their deaths, reminded her of that hideous story out of Florida about the man who was high out of his mind on some new meth variation, and eating another man's face off. Nothing supernatural there; just pure misery. Who needed monsters when humans were happy enough to rip others to pieces for little to no reason?

Their witness was also their only suspect at this point, but even Jody had to admit, that was kind of shaky. Whatever took bites out of the two men had good sets of teeth, and this man - who identified himself as "Hazy J" - had meth teeth. Meaning more than half were missing, and the ones left behind were in sad shape. She bet he'd lose most of them if he bit into a hot dog. But take big chunks out of a human? No fucking way. He'd have been spitting ivory.

Officer Kaset was taking the man's statement, and doing his best not to smirk. "How could headless guys chomp on them?"

"Yeah, I know, right?" Hazy J replied. "I didn't really understand it at first either. But they had ... things in their chest."

"Things? What kind of things?"

He made vague hand gestures that Jody thought were a signal to the pitcher that someone was trying to steal home, and then shrugged with his hands wide apart. "I dunno. Somethin'. I couldn't see it real clear from where I was."

"Where were you?" Kaset asked.

Hazy J pointed towards a corner where there was a stack of garbage, as well as a sleeping bag that had probably seen better years. Jody wandered over, to see how much of the bodies of the two men she could see from there. It was an odd angle, and when she crouched down, she found the garbage pile did block her view a little. It was possible that the man or men who did this didn't see Hazy J either. But it all begged the question, who would do this and why? And there were the bites out of the men. They looked human, or at least humanish, but still ...

She really didn't want to call the Winchesters. She had a loose email chain with Sam, and the last one she got from him, he sounded very depressed. Jody didn't know much about the whole Mark of Cain thing, but from what little she was let in on, Dean had all but given up on trying to get rid of it, and more or less resigned himself to his fate. Which was what exactly? Well, he was a demon for a little while, and maybe it was that. Or something worse. It felt like death, and it made her cringe to think about it. It was also weird for Dean to give up, as he seemed like the type who never did, but everybody had a breaking point. Dean was only human ... wasn't he? Or did the Mark make him kind of not anymore? She didn't know. She felt bad for them both, but she felt a bit more bad for Sam, who seemed stressed and desperate. Not that Dean sounded like he was doing all that great himself. Would they be the Winchesters if they weren't tormented in some fashion?

Her radio crackled, and Lavinia at dispatch said, "Sheriff, do you copy?"

"I copy," she replied, turning and walking back to the front door.

"Uh, Harris from the M.E.'s office just called in. He said there was a report by several people of two headless bodies by Canton Creek, just a couple miles from your location."

"West side or South side?" she asked, quickly getting into her truck. Headless bodies? Too much of a coincidence.

"West. Near O'Bannon's."

"Got it." She hadn't even finished replying before she was on the road. Kaset and Moore had the scene, and Hazy J might have been twitchy, but he didn't seem violent. Besides, the day two cops couldn't handle a tweaked out suspect was the day those cops should retire.

It didn't take her long to get there, as traffic was pretty light at this time in the morning, and she saw the meat wagon pulled off on the side of the road. She didn't recognizes the man, but the woman was Shah, a woman who had been at other death scenes before. Fun job.

Anila Shah was fairly young, early thirties at best, and very pretty, probably a little too pretty for this town, as she had joked at the Christmas party. But was it a joke if it was honestly true? Dark hair, big dark eyes, dark skin, and what Jody appreciated the most about her, a no-nonsense work ethic. You didn't have to ask if she got squeamish. She wasn't the type. She handled everything with a sangfroid her male colleagues tried and failed to copy.

Shah approached her truck, and as Jody got out, she said, "Pranking us is a crime, right?"

That was a good question. "Maybe, Why?"

Shah gestured to her male partner, who was talking to a woman in what looked like jogging clothes, an earbud still nestled in one of her ears. As Jody approached, she heard her side of the story. "- crazy, but I swear I saw the two headless bodies get up and walk away. Could they have been, I dunno, two colleges kids doing a prank or something?"

Well, unless soccer mom here was huffing the same stuff as Hazy J, something weird was going on.

Goddamn it, she was going to have to call the Winchesters after all.

The Mark of Cain seemed like an endless catch 22. Funny Cain didn't bother to mention that.

Dean was finding it harder and harder to sleep. Oh, physically he could do it, but then he was treated to hellacious nightmares, ones worse than he'd had when he was a kid. It didn't help that he could feel the Mark in the back of his mind like a drum beat, urging him to go, do, kill. Drinking himself into a near coma didn't help. Taking over the counter sleep meds - and stuff that totally wasn't over the counter sleep meds - didn't help. The Mark could counter anything he put in his system, which was a total fucking bummer.

But staying up didn't help either. Cas was pretty adamant he stick to his human routines as much as possible, and Dean didn't know why. Except, no, that wasn't true. He could stay up all night and be fine. Except that voice in the back of his head was a little louder now, the impulses sharper and more insistent. The Mark took a bigger foothold in him somehow.

He'd tried to sleep, but after a few hours, he woke himself up screaming, and decided he was done. He took a long shower, where he tried to tell himself he was all right, he could get through another day of fighting this dark tide in him ... but holy fuck, he wanted to stop. The temptation to just stop fighting and let it wash him away was so tempting. He'd been fighting all his life, one thing or another. Couldn't he rest now? Even just for one day?

No. Because he knew what would happen, what he'd become. And even if it was inevitable, Dean could carve out one more day when the Mark on his arm didn't completely beat him.

But god, was he tired. Maybe not even physically. Soul weary.

The bunker had a gym. Actually, it had several, but some of the equipment was so old and weird, Dean had no idea what the hell they were supposed to be. He preferred the one that looked like an old boxing gym, because he could recognize that equipment, but it was dangerous.

Case in point. He was restless and needed to burn off some energy, so he decided to work the heavy bag for a bit. Big mistake, one he should have seen coming. Dean was throwing body blows, nothing too heavy, getting a nice rhythm of rights and lefts going. It was almost autonomic, so he could switch off his brain for a little while and just be a machine. It was a mini-vacation of sorts.

Except this noise brought him back. It was a sort of creaking noise, one he hadn't heard before, and he stopped and settled the bag until he figured it out.

His right arm was burning, except ... no, not the entire arm, like he'd pulled a muscle or something. Only the Mark, nearly incandescent with fury. It was then that Dean realized he'd been putting a lot more strength into the hits than he had intended.

The creaking was the chain. He was starting to break it.

Which was beyond crazy. Cas could do that, sure, but he was an angel. This chain could take a stupid amount of punishment. He shouldn't have been able to damage it.

But Dean saw it. He saw the deformed link - sorry, links - and knew the Mark had been helping him take out some aggression. Good thing he wasn't sparring with a partner. He'd have killed them.

Shit shit shit. Dean would have killed himself if he thought it would have done any good, but he already knew that made things ten thousand times worse. He couldn't really die, only come back in an even worse form.

So. What did that leave exactly? Find another sucker to give this curse to? Even if he could find someone, he wouldn't. This was too dangerous.

In the back of his mind, he could hear his Dad asking, "What now, genius?" He hated that, because whenever he heard it, it reminded him of all his fuck ups. From childhood on, a nearly unbroken line of fuck ups. He'd done some good for the world, but he was fairly certainly it didn't outweigh the bad he'd done.

Oh, he needed to stop thinking. He needed to stop fighting. He needed to stop. Too bad he couldn't.

By the time Dean got out of his second super long shower, Sam was up. Dean went to the kitchen and got some coffee, and hoped Sam wouldn't give him that look again. That concerned, pitying look. He didn't want it, he didn't need it, and he was afraid it would set off a sense of irritation that the Mark always confused for anger. He needed to hold it together.

Luckily, by the time he joined him at the main table, Sam was looking at his laptop. "Get any sleep at all?" he asked, without looking up.

Which had Sam heard - the screaming, or him almost beating their one ton heavy bag right into the ground? The gym was way too far away from his room, and the noise of the chain starting to give way had not been that loud. "A little," Dean said. Not technically a lie. He'd gotten a couple hours. "Found something interesting?"

"Not yet. Looks like a lot of maybes." Sam had many alerts set up with just about every legitimate news service you could think of. Then it was just a matter of sifting through them to find the monster cases. It worked, but it could take a while.

It occurred to Dean he hadn't had breakfast, and he wasn't hungry. That was a horrible sign, and pretty much never happened. He got up to go get something, when Sam's phone rang. Sam looked at the screen to see who was calling, then answered it and put it on speaker. "Hey Jody."

"Hey Sam, Dean. Sorry to bother you guys, but I have something that might be a case. Or a really bad joke that got out of hand. Take your pick."

He and Sam shared a look. Jody was not the kind to panic or call in if there was something she could handle. This had to be something serious. "Hey Jody," Sam replied. "What's up?"

"Well, we got a report of a double homicide this morning, and the one witness - who admittedly, is high off his tits - claimed they were killed by headless corpses that partially ate the dead men."

Dean had to suppress a smile at the phrase "high off his tits". Jody was the best. "How does that make any sense? How does a headless corpse eat anyone?"

"We're on the same page. I was ready to write it off as some weird drug induced hallucination, except a couple of miles away, there were reports of two headless corpses that seemingly got up and walked away, according to a different, very sober witness."

"Um," Sam said, jumping back on his laptop. "Have you found any of them?"

"Headless corpses? Not yet. I've asked my officers to keep their eyes open, but I can't really say keep a look out for headless corpses walking around without being checked for mental competency and drug abuse."

Sam frowned at whatever he was looking at on his laptop. Alive but headless as a search probably didn't bring up a lot, besides the movie Reanimator. "I get you."

"This couldn't be zombies again, could it?" she asked. Considering her negative personal history with zombies, that wasn't a surprise.

"As far as I know, removing a zombie's head kills the zombie," Dean told her. "I've never heard of one that walked it off."

"Yeah, I thought so, but I had to ask."

"I'll be there soon, Jody. Thanks." Sam said, hanging up.

Only when he had, did Dean say, "I'm not benched for this one."

"Dean-"

"If I stay here I will go crazy, and that isn't hyperbole. I have to get out of here."

Sam stared at him, as if judging his veracity. "Dean, what if-"

"I am in control. I've got this." He wasn't lying. He was in control. For how much longer he had no idea, which is why he wanted to go now.

This might also be his last chance to see Jody before whatever happened to him happened. Not that he was going to tell Sam that, because he might lock him in one of the dungeon rooms and go.

But as the pulse of heat from the Mark reminded him, he could probably break down the door if he wanted to. And he really didn't want to. Because he knew the moment he gave into that, the Mark took over and he was gone.

Dean didn't know how much time he had left. Might as well make the best of it while he could.