Story Notes:

Timelines? What timelines? I've butchered the SPN timeline to make Weechesters! fit. I offer no excuse other than because I wanted to.

IMPORTANT: This takes place sometime in the middle of Season 1 of Hannibal.

This fic is complete! But it's about 110k of words and I'm still editing. Updates should happen every one to two weeks.

Warning: Gore and (sort of) self harm.

Tags: Weechesters!; AU; Timeline? What Timeline?; Staunton, Virginia; Virginia is for Lovers (actual tourism slogan); Wolf Trap is not as rural as they want you to believe; Will isn't the only one to see things; Dean is a Good Brother; Hannibal is a Good Therapist; Hannibal is a Bad Therapist; Monsters are Real; Someone help Will; Dean to the Rescue; Strays; Beverly Rocks; Hallucinations; Hannibal and Children; Heads will Roll; Hannibal is a Manipulative Bastard; Trust Nothing; No one Suspects Hannibal; limit POV; Secrets; It's not paranoia if they really are out to get you; Gore; Self-Harm; Questionable Narrator; No Smut;

Three bodies. Three heads. Three bullets.

And yet, something here was not what it seemed.

There had been four cases like this, exact same MO, moving slowly but steadily from Arkansas to Missouri to Nebraska till finally Tennessee, like some kind of bizarre bloody road trip. It was enough to have Jack called in, which was enough for him to have Will on the first plane out to Sparta, Tennessee. The trip had been long, with two planes and another four hours by car. Sparta was not a place easy to reach as it sprawled through the Tennessee countryside with little clear denotation of where it ended and another county began. Just trees, low mountains and the occasional river.

It was the kind of place Will could see himself retiring to. Even this ramshackle of a house, with its collapsed front porch, moldy walls and "antique" furniture, still had an acre and a half of land that back onto a healthy looking river. He had been reassured that such a combination was not unusual. Land was cheap here by comparison to the barely preserved green space of Wolf Trap. The privacy of Will's house was mostly an illusion as the sprawl of northern Virginia gobbled up what little rural land was left, but out here a man could stand in his front yard and scream at the top of his lungs and no one would hear.

These three men had not screamed.

Will stood in the doorway between the kitchen and living room and wondered why.

Jack had been good enough to clear the room before leading Will in through the back door. The house was old with small rooms and tight entrances and exits. But with the warm bodies all removed and nothing but Will, and the three cold bodies with their three detached heads, there was space enough to think.

There was plenty to take in. Will tilted his head to the side and took in the house first, looking past the blood and bodies. Poor Price and Zeller could spend a week in this house and still be collecting samples. The three men had been living in the house for a while, either squatting or renting, it was hard to tell. The outdated furniture was scratched and dented, little of it matching. Most likely inherited with the house. The one light in the ceiling didn't even have a bulb in it and the one large window was covered over with what looked like a thick blanket nailed into the wall the way a broke college student might think was clever.

Old magazines, empty cigarette packs and dirty laundry were scattered across every flat surface and piled up along the sides. There was an old TV with a VHS player plugged in front of it and a stack of tapes knocked over beside it. No sign of any computer or any other form of entertainment. No suspicious spot where one might have been and then stolen. Three obvious "clean" areas that must have been used frequently by their John Does, as if the men had spent every free moment within these four walls. Hard to keep three men entertained with only a few old tapes and each other's company.

This was not a space for outsiders. They had entertained no company here. The house was at the end of a long dirt driveway with an acre of thick underbrush and ditches and sharp inclines between it and any neighbor.

So how had two killers entered through the kitchen and still caught them unaware?

Three adult men as the victims. The one by the door was a little pudgier than strictly health, and the one on the couch had the gaunt look of drugs. Hard to tell without the head's attached. Amazing how much one judged by the relationship of body to head. But each was of average height at least. And while the house was a mess of trash and rickety furniture, nothing had been used as a weapon. Not even as cover.

The closest one, the overweight one by the door, had died first. Not a single mark on him except for the fact that his head had been detached and had rolled into the corner. A quick clean cut, the blood was easy to read, as was the smear mark as one of the killers stepped farther into the room.

The gaunt one never made it off of the couch. He likely tried. The coffee table was bumped into an awkward position, the blood splatter from the first victim disturbed. But that was as far as he had made it before collapsing backwards, neatly draped over the couch like a tableau of a fainting lady. No clear sign as to why. His head had been removed last, making the most mess as it had been sawed off there on the couch. It had rolled under the coffee table, coming to rest lying sideways on one cheek.

The third body provided the most clues however, and Will focused in on him. He'd been farthest from the kitchen, the one most likely to try to run, to try to escape through the doorway behind him and into the hall. Instead, he had stepped forward. The poor coffee table once more being knocked out of place, making a furrow in the junk piles around it. The man had taken two small caliber rounds to the shoulder and chest for his trouble, managed another two steps towards the door before suddenly losing his head. If Will was willing to step through the room he could find it back behind the armchair. It had gone over, not under, detaching from its body with enough force that it flew a good six feet in the air before plopping down on the other side.

The blood splatter made the worn paisley fabric of the arm chair look bright and modern again. Apparently blood red went with cigarette-stain yellow. Who knew.

Will stayed in the doorway and took it all in, the house, the victims and most importantly the killers.

There were two of them. One stayed in the doorway just where Will was standing. The other had moved about the room with the kind of ease and deliberation that was both quick and unhurried. Experienced. They had come through the kitchen, just as Will had. Just as the police had. Just as the three men had every time when they had lived here. The killers had known how to get in, and more importantly, were able to do so with little reaction from their victims.

Difficult, but still possible. Will could picture how the first killer would have moved swiftly through the kitchen and into the living room, long, sharp knife already out and swinging for the first victim before there was time to react. The trail of blood and disturbed trash left a clear path that the man had taken, moving from one body to the next. That part was easy to picture. There was a grace and simplicity to it that was so professional it was almost hard not to see. That wasn't what bothered Will.

There were three things that had Will standing frozen, waiting for his mind, his gift, to come up with something that explained what was in front him so that they could stop it from happening again.

The first was the heads.

Not because of the gore involved. Will was familiar enough with that. Some days it felt like he had seen more body parts detached than he did anything else. Limbs and organs and, yes, even the occasional head. Granted, heads were one of the worse. Harder to ignore. Harder to disregard by focusing on the clinical aspects. People survive losing a limb or even an organ. They never survive losing a head. And a primal part in the back of everyone's brain still trembles at the sight no matter how many other horrors a person is subjected to. So yes, beheadings were always gruesome, but that wasn't what caught and held Will's attention.

In fact, it was the lack of gore. For a beheading, these had been relatively neat. A clean, efficient cut had been used, made in one powerful stroke which had limited the amount of spray. Two had been beheaded while still on their feet. Alive and moving, capable of running, capable of fighting back, capable of simply dodging. And yet someone had taken their heads off with an ease that only came from practice. Lots of practice.

Any one of those things was reason enough for concern. Certainly enough to get the FBI called in.

It wasn't what troubled Will Graham.

The first part of this bloody violent puzzle that just did not fit was the placement of the severed heads.

Two victims had been standing and had fallen when they had lost their heads. The third was draped over the couch but there was just enough contrasting awkwardness and naturalness to the limbs that it would have been difficult to fake. No, the bodies had been left where they lay. And so had the heads.

What kind of serial killer went to the trouble of removing a victim's head and merely left it where it fell?

There was no art here. No attempt at communication. Seemingly even no ritual. Just a task that needed to be done and was accomplished with the kind of efficiency and control that spoke of years of practice and remarkable confidence.

It was almost enough to see this killer. The heads were still a mystery, a blind spot that he would have to probe and discover the answer to, but the method, the skill was enough to give him some idea of this killer. Middle aged man, skilled with his hands, most likely retired military, comfortable with unarmed combat, unimpressed with but equipped with at least one gun, likely more, rough appearance, used to working alone.

Except he wasn't alone this time. He'd brought someone with him, their mystery second killer. Who hadn't stepped foot into the room. Who had stayed in the door and fired only two rounds from a handgun, each finding their mark with a clear trajectory. Who had scuffed the lino when flinching backwards at some point, maybe when the beheadings had started or maybe when the one victim to act had moved in a threatening manner towards the kitchen and not towards the first killer. Someone else had stood here, someone who was scared but had still stayed.

Someone who was firing up at a grown man. Significantly up. He would have to wait for the others to confirm it, but Will had seen enough examples to trust his own judgment. It could have been a woman. A short woman. In flat combat boots. That were a bit too big for someone that short. Like the rest of the body was still trying to catch up after a growth spurt.

And that was the second piece of this puzzle that left Will feeling off balance and suddenly very afraid.

Will opened his eyes slowly, pulling himself back. He inhaled carefully and reached up to rub at his eyes. "Jack?" he called softly, knowing the other man was not far away. "We have a problem."

There was still one more piece of this puzzle that didn't fit, but that didn't matter right now. Will had a much more important priority.