Set at the end of Season 2; a What If? scenario. What if Dexter had gone to Doakes instead of Deb, and had never been tempted to keep his identity concealed? Had the network decided to cancel the show after just two seasons (and thank God they didn't), this might have been how it played out... I don't own Dexter, and I think I like it a LOT more than I really should, but, hey, who's perfect?

He'd thought it over, played every scenario through his mind a dozen, a hundred times. "Deb, I'm the Bay Harbor Butcher." It never ended well, and in the end, he decided that he couldn't face it. He couldn't tell Deb. He couldn't. The thought of watching her as his secret destroyed her faith in him was too much for even his stunted heart to bear.

So, he did the next best thing.

He called Deb and canceled their steak-and-beer night, knowing that she and she alone could stop him from admitting his culpability. And he really didn't want to. It may have been the lack of sleep, as one part of his mind kept insisting, but the greater part of him was just too exhausted to care. The mask was too heavy, and he just wanted it off. And if anyone could help him get rid of it, it was the man who had always seen through the fakery, hated him for it, the one who had forced his mask off, and who had finally been able to talk to Dexter as if he were human. He'd never felt as genuine as he had then, sitting with his captive and talking about truth. He drove out to meet that man once again, and as he walked through the cabin door in the late afternoon, he could feel the weight drifting off his shoulders, like smoke. He met Doakes' eyes and took a deep breath.

"Take me in, James. I'm ready to go."

He undid the padlock and unwound the chain from the chain link storage container he'd kept the big man in for the last five-or-so days. His big captive looked antsy, more than ready to be out of the cage, though he had the good grace to wait for Dexter to open the door and didn't shove it out of the way himself. Dexter thought that was rather decent of him, under the circumstances.

As the sergeant stepped out, both men tensed, unsure of what the other would do. Doakes finally reached out and rested his hand on the analyst's shoulder. "You're doin' the right thing, Morgan," he said with a slight, reassuring nod. "Now let's get this over with, shall we?" For once, the predator was gone from the staff sergeant's eyes when he looked at his colleague, as if he were seeing Dexter only, and not the freak from the lab, nor the Bay Harbor Butcher.

Taking a deep breath, Dexter nodded and picked up the handcuffs from where they'd been sitting on the cabin's table, locking them around his wrists. His heart fluttered wildly at the loud click, but only for a moment. "Guess you'd better drive," he said with a deprecating half-smile, digging awkwardly in his pants pocket and tossing the keys to his captive/captor. Doakes helped him into the car, and they started the drive back to Miami.

It wasn't the thrill of driving to a kill. No, this was much more intense. Dexter was glad he wasn't driving, distracted as he was by the outside world. His last drive in freedom. Or, well, he thought, shifting his hands in his lap and hearing the chain rattle, semi-freedom. The colors seemed brighter, edges sharper. His senses were on high, sharpened to a keen edge. He felt like he could see everything. At one point, a car with a pale woman behind the wheel passed them in the oncoming lane, and Dexter slid further down in his seat, deliberately not making eye contact with her. Lila was part of his past, and he refused to let her be part of his future. At least she's leaving town, he thought, his heart lightening. One more piece of clutter dropping off the board, leaving behind only: Dexter. The sensation was marvelously freeing.

Curiously, he didn't feel the need to gorge on it. Let's just get this over and done with, he thought. The drive was pleasure, but like a kill, nothing would happen until the end of the journey. The destination is all that matters. Doakes was singularly silent, and Dexter was grateful.

Out of sheer habit, or so Dexter surmised, Doakes pulled up to the gate leading to Receiving and suffered his first check. "Shit. I ain't got my ID." The automated control arm wouldn't go up to admit them without being buzzed by a legitimate police ID badge, and Doakes' probably wouldn't work even if he did have it.

Dexter leaned forward, letting his laminate swing free from his chest. "Use mine," he offered, and had to stifle the urge to laugh at the absurdity of the situation: a police officer needing a prisoner's identification to gain access to the police station.

Doakes removed the badge, pulling the chain over Dexter's head so that he could wave it out the window at the ID pad. The sudden absence of the weight around his neck, against his chest, left a cold patch over the analyst's heart. Doakes tucked the badge in the cup holder; he didn't give it back.

All of a sudden, it became real for Dexter. The parking lot bar was nothing, no barrier, really, but in that moment it became so intensely real, solid, and irrevocable, that he began to panic.

"You know, maybe this isn't such a great idea," he said, pulling at the seat belt across his chest. "I mean, it's not like I killed anyone innocent. Cleaning up the streets, you know?"

Doakes looked at him sharply, then looked again. Dexter's eyes were wide, his breathing faster. "Hang in there, Morgan," he soothed. "This is the right thing to do. You know it. And I know you know it. I'm gonna be with you the whole time; it won't be so bad. You finally get to tell the truth. No more hiding."

Truth. No hiding. The words were the right ones, and Dexter's shoulders relaxed fractionally, his eyes losing their panicked glaze. "...right. Right. No hiding. God, that's frightening."

"But liberating," stressed Doakes, and he edged the car forwards. Dexter's heart didn't stop hammering until after the bar had descended behind them, locking them in the lot.

And now the hardest part had come. Because now, the Bay Harbor Butcher was about to be arrested.

There was a stir in the bullpen, and Angel Batista looked up sharply at the anonymous announcement, "Doakes is in the parking lot. Sergeant Doakes is in the parking lot!"

"Oh, God!" came another cry. "He's gonna kill us all!"

"Don't be an idiot," Batista replied to the unknown fatalist.

LaGuerta rushed from her office. "He's here to turn himself in!" she announced, as though it were fact rather than surmise, and it was she who led the rush to the elevators, followed closely behind by Frank Lundy, who despite his age and general decorum, was faster than many of the young officers; he was still carrying a bottle of water, forgotten in his hand in the excitement. His only regret was that he'd sent Debra off on another matter, and she would miss the big arrest.

The rush stopped abruptly when the first wave caught sight of Doakes, holding a handcuffed Dexter Morgan in front of him; not quite a human shield, but very nearly so.

"I've got your Bay Harbor Butcher right here!" Doakes yelled as the wave surged towards them. Dexter looked at him, surprised by the angry note in the cop's voice. Makes sense, I suppose. He's been under a lot of stress for the last few weeks, after all. What with the suspension and manhunt and all. Oh, and being held captive in a tiny cage in the Florida heat in the Everglades for five days, smelling my last two victims gradually getting ranker and ranker, not to mention witnessing my killing one of them in front of him. I suppose that would fray anybody's nerves a bit.

"I see that," Lundy replied. "Let Morgan go, and keep your hands where I can see them."

"Yeah, down on the ground!" Batista ordered.

Dexter looked around at the semi-circle of shining metal rings that were the muzzles of the guns pointed at him and Doakes. It would be easy, so, so easy, to just go along with it; to play the captive, to claim he'd been kidnapped by the renegade murderer. There was so much documented history between the homicidal ex-cop and the unassuming, rather timorous analyst that no one would think twice about believing it. By the time they'd sorted out the evidence, listened to enough of Doakes' story and seen it corroborated in his flesh, and thought to question Dexter, he could be gone. He didn't need anything, really. Oh, it would be a wrench to leave behind his kill tools, and even harder to abandon his blood slides, but those were gone anyway, destroyed in the police department's search for the identities locked in the remaining DNA. He could do it. All he had to do was stay quiet.

Doakes was yelling. "It's not me! This is your Butcher, right here!" He shook Dexter's shoulder. "Tell 'em, Morgan." Something in his face must have tipped Doakes off as to what Dexter was thinking, because his eyes filled with alarm, alarm that not even a ring of angry and unpredictable armed cops could evoke. "Don't do this to me, Morgan," he hissed. "Dexter, don't you do this to me. Tell 'em!" And in an undertone so low even Dexter could barely hear, "Please."

Ah, hell. Doakes was a good man. Life on the run wouldn't be worth it. Harry's Code wouldn't work so well without access to police resources, anyway. The Code would be shot to hell if he let Doakes take the blame.

Rule one: Don't get caught.

Shove off, Dad. I'm already caught. The least I can do is honor the rest of it.

"He's right," Dexter said, then cleared his throat, raising his voice so it could be heard over the charged adrenaline sweeping through the crowd, voices raised and roaring. "He's right! He's not the Bay Harbor Butcher, I am. It's me!"

They were ignoring him, intensely focused on Doakes. Dexter had a dizzying moment of unreality: here he was, confessing to being the monster he'd always hidden, and no one was listening. It was just too bizarre, and he began to laugh, huge, hiccupping guffaws, at the absurdity of it all.

If he'd yelled, if he'd screamed, if he'd tried to demonstrate that he was, in fact, a monster, it likely wouldn't have worked; cops are too accustomed to violence. But laughing in the middle of a tense arrest? Even LaGuerta's gun lowered.

But not for long. Batista took advantage of Doakes' distraction to jump him, and he and two uni's managed to wrestle the unarmed former cop to the ground. For his part, Doakes didn't put up much of a fight, probably sensing that it was better to not argue. For once in his life.

LaGuerta fished around and found a cuff key in her pocket. She was watching James being arrested even as she moved to Dexter's side to release him. She was so distracted she didn't even hear him talking to her until he'd gently pulled his wrist out of her hands, holding his cuffs out of her reach. "Given that it took Doakes several weeks to catch me and five days to talk me into these, I really think it ought to be him taking them off me," he told her.

The lieutenant blinked, finally fully focused on him. "...what?"

Dexter held up both hands, bound as they were by the cuffs, and pointed one over at Doakes. "He's not the monster. He's the one that caught the monster. I'm the real Bay Harbor Butcher."

LaGuerta's mouth hung open for a full second. Dexter was half-enjoying her perplexity when out of nowhere came a full-face slap, rocking him sideways on his feet, nearly making him lose his balance. The sound of flesh on flesh rang across the parking lot, arresting the attention of half the crowd. The other half tuned in when the LT's voice, an octave and a half higher than her usual tone, shrilled, "What the hell do you mean, you're the real Bay Harbor Butcher?!"

Batista stopped mid-arrest, and Doakes shook himself out of the sergeant's half-hearted grip. "Exactly what he said. I been after this guy for weeks. I always knew there was something wrong with 'im." Doakes was blustering, indignant, a cat with an arched back and a territorial gleam in his eyes. He was in his Dangerous mode, and even his longtime partner stepped away, cowed.

It's easy to see why they wanted to pin this on him. It's so much easier to see the monster in him than in me. This was Dexter, after all, a man who had trained his entire life to be - to seem - unassuming, average. Normal. He could only ever let his true self out with his victims, who would carry his secret to the afterlife within moments. He wasn't sure he knew how to be himself with other people around. Habits were too damn ingrained. But, to be honest, it would be a relief to not have to pretend to feel. He was looking forward to that. Emotions were overrated.

Batista looked hurt. "Really, bro? Really?" Dexter met his eyes, then looked away. Though he didn't feel shame, he didn't like seeing the betrayal on his friend's face.

It was Lundy who asked the obvious question. "Morgan. Damn it, man, what about all that evidence?"

Dexter's reply was instant. "Faked. Well, most of it. Doakes, here, broke into my apartment and stole my box. Those were my blood slides, by the way. I about had a heart attack when you asked me to identify them," he said with a nod to Lundy. "After you'd pinned those on the Sergeant, it was easy to make the rest of the evidence fit him." Absurdly easy, but he wasn't going to brag. It wasn't his style.

"James, why didn't you come to me with this?" LaGuerta asked, a hurt look in her eyes, and Dexter knew that she would never have accepted Doakes as his surrogate. Huh. I wonder what those two were doing after hours?

The former sergeant's lips twisted. "I was tied up the last few days," he said, and Dexter winced at the double edge in his voice. I don't think he'll be forgiving me any time soon.

Lundy wasn't just going to accept it, however. "Give me proof. Otherwise, it's just your word against his."

Dexter gave him a look that was easy to interpret. "It's my word with his. We're both saying the same thing."

"The evidence says otherwise," the older man said, simply.

With a shrug, Dexter replied, "You'll just have to toss out the faked evidence - the kill tools, mostly."

"The ones that had Doakes' fingerprints all over them," Batista said, half accusingly.

Dexter nodded. "That was a spare set I had sitting around. I got Doakes' prints on them when I knocked him out. I knew where those dive students were going to be and planted the evidence accordingly."

"Wait, you knocked him out?" an incredulous LaGuerta asked.

"Drugged," Doakes put in succinctly, with a glare at Dexter.

"So, wait, you were in the same room long enough for him to drug you? Why didn't you drag his ass in here back then?" Batista turned to Dexter. "If he was drugged, why the hell didn't you run?"

Dexter shrugged. "First set of questions: He tried. Several times. Coincidence just wasn't in his favor, and I had a chain link storage unit at my disposal."

Frowning, Doakes grunted, "Call it what it is, Morgan. You locked me in a bloody cage. In a cabin. For five days."

"In this heat?" Everyone looked a little closer at Doakes, noting the tell-tale signs of dehydration and overheating. It seemed that was enough. Without a word, Lundy passed Doakes a bottle of water, who took it with thanks and drank deeply.

That simple act changed the entire atmosphere of the parking lot. The ambivalence that had reigned since Dexter's outburst shifted. Suddenly, Doakes was once more 'One of Us.' And Dexter Morgan was handcuffed.

LaGuerta took Dexter's arm in a come-along grip. "Dexter Morgan," she said, and her voice only shook a little. "You have the right to remain silent..."

They filed into Miami Metro, led by the killer in chains, the wolf in sheep's clothing, the man that nobody truly ever knew.

Lundy lent a shoulder to James Doakes, who, now that the confrontation was over, was starting to lose the edge that adrenaline had lent him and was beginning to limp. "I'll see to it personally that you get reinstated, with a commendation," the FBI agent promised. Then, curiosity getting the better of him, he asked, "What did you say to him that got him to turn himself in? Hell, what did you say that kept him from killing you?" That was the real question, and probably the one that would keep Lundy up nights after this. What was so special about Doakes...?

Doakes stared after Morgan and LaGuerta as they turned the corner into Processing and were lost from view. The unmitigated disgust that he had felt for Dexter ever since he first met the analyst had transmuted itself into something else, not wholly different, but with a different depth. The puppet-face Dexter showed to the world had slipped, and he'd seen a human side to him. Not a human side he really liked, but then, there were plenty of despicable humans out there. If Doakes didn't know better, he might have called the feeling something akin to 'respect.' Though he'd never have used that term, of course.

"The Bay Harbor Butcher," he said, and then stopped, wincing. "You know, Morgan's right, that's a really lousy name." He sighed, rubbed his right wrist with his left hand, as if he could still feel the handcuffs he'd almost been wearing. "We just talked. A lot. I think he just needed to... to be himself, for once. To lose the mask. He's still a creepy guy - I always said as much, ask anyone - but at least now I know why he's creepy.

"As to why he didn't kill me... Well. He had himself all psyched up to do it, a couple of times. He even chopped up a guy in front of me. At one point, all he'd've had to do was just keep his mouth shut and head down and I'da been gator food. But he didn't. He kept saying, 'You're a killer, you understand,' kept bringing up all the people I shot. I think... he could never convince himself that I deserved it; that I deserved to be dead. The Bay Harbor Butcher has a conscience. A tiny, fucked up conscience, but a conscience nonetheless. I didn't fit the code. So I got to live. And he gets to stop faking. He gets to be himself and not lie anymore. Seems like a good trade - he spares my life, and I help him live his."

Lundy pressed his hand to his face, blowing out hard. "Briefly, in any case," he quipped, guiding Doakes into the bullpen and handing him another bottle of water from his own desk. The sergeant drank deeply, less hurriedly this time, leaning against the desk and letting some of the weight off his legs. He was starting to slump a bit, and Lundy knew that the big man was running on fumes. Lundy would have to arrange for Doakes to be seen by medical personnel. And get the paperwork straightened out so that Doakes wasn't a wanted fugitive anymore. And get Doakes reinstated in his old position. And work up a press release to reassure the public that the Bay Harbor Butcher was behind bars. And get someone out to wherever the hell Dexter had been keeping Doakes to clean up that space, not to mention the extra body that Doakes had seen, and get a warrant for Morgan's apartment, and car, and boat...

And figure out what the hell he was going to say to Debra. Damn. This was going to look spectacular on his report, him having a relationship with the killer's sister. Not to mention what it was going to do to her. Still, she was a strong woman. She would get through this. She had to.

Dexter Morgan. How had he been so blind? How could he have not seen...? He was supposedly the top dog when it came to serial killers, and yet Dexter Morgan had had him completely fooled. Thinking back, he could have kicked himself. He should have known, should have seen. When he'd had Morgan brought in to identify the blood slides... the look on his face when he identified them... Damn. In retrospect, he should have seen that look of recognition, should have followed it up. If he'd asked one, tiny, open-ended question, it could have short-circuited this whole hunt. Lundy wanted to kick himself. Instead, he pulled his phone out of his pocket, took a deep breath, and dialed a number he'd only recently memorized by heart. "Deb? Debra... we have to talk. And you should hear it from me, first, before you get to the station. Meet me for coffee?"

The justice system, normally so slow, was rushed into high gear by the inflated notoriety of the Bay Harbor Butcher case. This was helped by the Bay Harbor Butcher himself pleading guilty to all counts, and providing information on several more cases that Miami Metro hadn't been able to gain solid evidence on. The media, predictably, reviled him when he was first caught, spreading gruesome and gristly tales of his murders, some of which were actually true. And then, with the handsome, winning features of clean-cut Dexter Morgan to grace their front pages, they changed their tune, hailing him as the unsung hero who cleaned up the streets, making the world a little safer for the good folks of Miami, with equally-gruesome tales of the murders committed by the cold-blooded killers that heroic Dexter Morgan had sent to a just and watery grave.

The judge on the case just thanked her lucky stars that Morgan had pled guilty. The chances of finding twelve people in the whole state, never mind the Miami district, who weren't following the case and/or didn't have an opinion on it were virtually nil. Fortunately, pleading guilty means no jury needed, just a judge, a defendant, and a couple of lawyers. And Dexter Morgan was being tremendously helpful, giving names, details of deaths, details of crimes, explaining methodology, and, through it all, outlining the Code. Judge Rosenberg was impressed in spite of herself, and the press fell in love with it, dubbing it the Code of the Vigilante, making of him a modern day, darker version of Robin Hood, with a cleaver instead of a quiver.

James Doakes testified during the sentencing hearings, and to everyone's surprise, including, many suspected, his own, he pled for a lighter sentence. He recounted those five days in hell, when he thought for certain he was going to be killed, and provided independent corroboration of his impression of Dexter's Code. "Do I believe he'd ever hurt an innocent person? Definitely. Would he ever kill an innocent person? No. Unrestrainedly, no. He had five days and every reason to kill me but the one he wanted, and, hell, I ain't the easiest person to love. I made it easy for him to choose to kill me, except in the one way that he wanted 'easy' - I ain't never shot no one who didn't shoot at me first, and never someone who wasn't a killer himself. Morgan's Code kept him from killing me, even when I challenged the very basis of that Code. I won't make a secret of it: I don't like the guy. But the truth is, he never killed an innocent. The world might just be a safer place because of him."

With pressure on her from both camps, and under the weight of her own conscience, Judge Rosenberg passed a sentence of death, which was almost immediately commuted by the governor into life without the possibility of parole. The fact that it was an election year probably had a lot to do with it, people grumbled, but most were happy enough that the Dark Defender would be spared the chair, and even happier that he would never walk the streets alongside them again.

Rita was torn. Having so recently decided to trust him again, this betrayal seemed almost too much to bear. In her despair, she turned to the one man who didn't judge her for having slept with the Butcher, a kind man with a good heart, who had known and loved Dexter as much, in his own way, as she did. Rita Batista and her new husband, Angel, occasionally visited Dexter in prison, but not often, and not long. Astor and Cody both missed Dexter in their own ways, and found it hard to resolve the Bay Harbor Butcher with the man their mother had loved, and of whom they had begun to grow very fond. Astor decided to forget all about him, and as far as she was concerned, there had never been a Dexter Morgan in their lives, ever. Cody took to playing cops and robbers, being, alternatively, both the cop and the robber, and the family therapist they saw took it as a very positive sign. Over a decade later, Cody thrilled Angel to no end when he followed his step-father into law enforcement.

It was Debra that was hit the hardest. She shoved everyone away with all the passion that lay within her. Frank Lundy alone saw the truth behind her rages, and at last he decided to take early retirement, flew down to Miami, and kidnapped Deb for a long and prolonged vacation, in another country where they'd never even heard of her brother. The last Miami Metro heard from her, she and Frank were living together in a cabin in the Swiss Alps, and she had learned to swear very effectively in German, French, and Italian, though German was her favorite. Frank no longer made quips about his age, though it must have been very tempting, what with the toddler he was chasing around. Debra made a fine mother, he often said privately, and little Lindsay was his pride and joy. Motherhood suited Debra well, and she eventually learned to laugh again, though every so often a shadow would pass over her face that her husband could do nothing to erase.

As for Dexter...

The inmates at the prison either regarded their resident celebrity with awe, fear, or with the notion that God had presented them with a personal challenge to take out this notorious killer and thus prove who was top dog. Dexter quickly shed his hard-won normalcy - while in the yard, at least - and the retiring, unnoticed analyst gave way to the uncaring, unconcerned, definitely dangerous psychopath. More than one guard felt shivers go down his spine when Dexter Morgan met his gaze, and eventually, the other prisoners quit trying to prove themselves against him, leaving the Bay Harbor Butcher alone as the undisputed master of his corner of the prison. There were several deaths, none of them mysterious, all of them easily explainable with clear and concrete evidence, and every single one of the victims was a murderer who had escaped full justice for his crimes. Dexter was never implicated, never even officially suspected... nevertheless, as the body counts rose, he was quietly shifted from prison to prison. During one of those shifts, a guard who had never actually been convicted of killing his wife was stabbed to death with a prison shank, the van was overturned in a ditch, and the three convicts inside escaped, leaving the driver injured but alive on the side of the road. One of the inmates, who had gotten off on the murder charge but was still convicted for the drugs he'd been using, was later found dangling by the back of his shirt from the top of a ten foot tall chain link fence, apparently strangled to death as he tried to jump over; no evidence to the contrary was ever found. A massive manhunt was underway for more than half a year before law enforcement was forced to give up for lack of evidence, and the Bay Harbor Butcher was left to roam free, to the unease of the populace in general and the criminal element in particular. Several heretofore unsuspected - or at least, unconvicted - murderers in the area of the disappearance voluntarily turned themselves in rather than chance finding themselves wrapped in plastic and facing the Butcher's knife.

Meanwhile, up the coast, a humble fisherman took up lodgings in the seedier side of town. He plied his trade, kept his head down, and moved on every couple of months. And if certain people disappeared in his wake, well, the world was better off without those sorts, now, wasn't it?