Title: Break Me

Fandom: Dexter

Rating: M for language and explicit content

Disclaimer: I do not own Dexter or any of its characters. I have been merely playing with Showtime's toys. I promised to put them back in the toybox when I was done with them, and now I am.

Author's notes: HAPPY NEW YEAR! We're here at last! The very very proper final absolutely last ever ever chapter of Break Me Every Time. Regardless of whether you have followed from the beginning of the journey or hopped on at one of our many stops along the way, if you have reviewed or interacted with me in regards to this story you have helped me to shape it and given me the drive to continue with it, and I am deeply grateful to you and your contribution to bettering me as a writer. Thankyou in advance to those who read and review in the future; I hope that you will enjoy it like we have!

It's time for me to bow out once again from the world of epic fanfiction writing but I won't be far away. Keep in touch via the PM feature here on FanFiction, by joining the chat on reddit dot com slash r slash breakme, or by following me on tumblr: solia1 dot tumblr dot com. Or you can exercise a little bit of stalkerism and easily find the Facebook page for my original works if you are interested and a reader of YA urban fantasy. I have struck a bargain with a few wonderful people on here to exchange some words for some words – fanfiction oneshot requests in exchange for book reviews. Keep me on your Author Alert so you know when I put those up.

ROSEY cheeks, my dear, make an account so we can stay in touch! I think you will really like this chapter for the way things come together. Thankyou for sticking with the story and with me x harsh realm, my theory about your theory out-theoried itself. I think you will like the way the story handled our theorising. You just reminded me about cheeseburgers! I'd forgotten that so I went through and slipped it in :) Ta! But more importantly, thanks for your amazing support and enthusiasm towards this story and my other works, and me in general. You are a wonderful human being of the internet. AngryHellFish, what I wouldn't do for a bit of your snow and just a little bit of your -5 degrees right now! Even if we mixed our ambient temperatures together I think it'd still be 27 or 28, which isn't disgusting, but could still be improved. Still, consider my heart melted! I too love Justice Quinn and kind of wish I could keep going with this fic to give her more life through further storytelling. Deb's not just Dexter's hero, she's ours, too, and she won't let that future eventuate if there's something she can do to stop it. Thanks for all the support and encouragement, and for the in-depth analysis you bestow on me at the end of each chapter. I love it! Enjoy! ganglingfreak, I will send you that link once I upload this :) Thankyou very much for your support – I have been very grateful to have you following me and this fic and encouraging me all the way along. I cannot wait to hear your thoughts on this ending! I desperately hope you love it! shadow, we've been in this together for a long time, and every time I see your identical review I think to myself, 'One day… One day I will get a different review from shadow' and I think that time's finally come. I won't be updating so please update soon isn't going to fit. Please please write something different! I don't know why it's so important to me – just a random personal desire akin to waving at strangers from the car and fist pumping and muttering "Yessssss!" when they blankly wave back. In any case, thanks for following along no matter where I drove the bus. BrianaBree, honey, you are so one of the cool kids :) Now that I've driven the bus to its destination I can chuck on cruise control, abandon the wheel and saunter down the aisle to come sit with you and be cool kids together, and the bus can go careening off a cliff or run out of fuel and we'll be fine because we have seatbelts and we're invincible in this story, because we have way too much fun Dexter stuff to talk about to be able to die in a metaphorical bus crash. In response to the unasked question that stuck out most in your review, I don't know whether Justice is Dexter's. I don't think so but Deb is not her old self and has been living in denial, making her an unreliable narrator. Things she sees and hears may not necessarily be counted on as fact; only her interpretation of fact. Stay in touch, sweet! BAM, bellart! Another update! Very true, this is not the Deb we met in the Pilot. She's evolved and become more like her brother than anyone ever wanted to see, least of all Dexter himself. She's living the life he wanted for her but she's not 100 percent in it. Sorry to kill your happy dance. What was the theory? I hope this chapter patches some wounds.

For the 'hunt' part of this chapter, I imagine it taking place against the Daniel Licht track 'The Icetruck Killer' from the Dexter soundtrack. The main song of the soundtrack for this part of the epilogue, though, is something very special, something I've been saving for the past year: 'Here With Me' by Dido. I wouldn't leave you guys on anything less than my all-time favourite song :) Enjoy, and know that the inspiration you have all provided remains here with me, always. Much virtual love.

P.S. If the ending feels ambiguous… it is to me, too. I know what you'll ask and my answer will be 'I don't know'. This is how the story wanted to end. Break Me Every Time is how I envision the show should have ended... not necessarily how Deb and Dexter's story should have ended, if it should ever end at all.

Epilogue Part Three

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Things turn dark eventually, as I think I always knew they would, although I pretended for a long time to believe I'd avoided it. We're at Tom Matthews' new place for Fourth of July and it's a big family-and-friends barbeque on his sprawling lawn. I was never girly but my daughter is everything I'm not, and she's wearing her favourite dress, a pink-and-white cupcake print dress made for her by Grandma Doakes, with bows and ribbons on the waist and the sleeves. It's sickeningly cute. I unload her from the car and she joins the other children, with Harrison trailing after her, helping her over puddles to protect her glossy Mary-Janes.

"No flannelette overalls for your little princess?" Tom asks innocently, and Joey smirks and I roll my eyes.

"Not unless it's pink and studded with diamantes," I lament. I tried. I really did. But you can't change who someone is, and my Justice is a fucking girly-girl to the core.

Angel Batista and Joey laugh and drink beer and burn the sausages. There's special low-allergen food for my delicate little princess so I prepare hers separately. The other kids come with their paper plates to get their lunch and I'm in charge of handing out cutlery. I run out of plastic knives and forks, so I let Harrison, the eldest child present, have real ones. He carries them carefully. I know because I watch him. He takes his plate and his cutlery and his cousin over to the picnic blanket and the other children and he cuts up her sausage for her and butters her bread for her. Justice sits back and lets him, happy to stay clear of food preparation, especially where ketchup is involved and could stain her lovely dress. Whipped, Harrison. She's got you all figured out.

Angel and Tom join me at the long outdoor table. It's a beautiful sunny day and I enjoy the way the sun melts the ice in my water and the wind blows my hair across my face. There's kids' laughter and the clink of cutlery on plates and the excited yapping of Angelique's fluffy lap dog and the friendly chatter of people who enjoy one another's company.

Angel tells me he's planning to step down as Lieutenant at the end of the year. "For real, this time," he confirms when I exclaim "Fuck off!" He almost left this life behind years ago but found himself unable to when Maria La Guerta was killed. He stayed on, worked out the 'truth' behind her murder – or the truth my brother and I fed to him – and has been publically credited as the main man behind the arrest of the Real Bay Harbour Butcher. A title he hates, but which I don't blame him for. You can't help what people want to see in you. He's given so much of himself to this job and now he has his soulmate in Angelique and they want to buy a caravan and travel the country.

"Would you like your old job back, Lieutenant?" Tom asks, producing the shiny badge I turned in after I murdered my captain. Joey looks over at me with a smile, and I know he was in on this surprise. Doubtless Tom and Angel approached him first and asked how I would take the proposition. With both of my kids in school and with Harrison beginning to improve now that he knows the school will send Justice into the room if he flips out (something that embarrasses him deeply, because he hates to risk how she views him), I suppose I can start thinking about my career again. It's not for another six months so there's plenty of time to think about how I can manage my family and my life around the career move. I can try to go back to who I was before I was this. I smile.

"You've got a fucking deal," I agree, and shake Tom's hand. We talk about the Batistas' travel plans. We discuss the pros and cons of places we've been. We're laughing about some shitty caravan park Tom remembers visiting as a college student with a bunch of friends when Angelique's stupid yappy dog manages to get loose of its collar. Angel tries to catch it as it slips underneath his chair but it wriggles free of him, too, and races towards the picnic blanket and the children.

My daughter, it turns out, is afraid of dogs. It takes her by surprise when it leaps on her and knocks her plate from her hand. She screams and falls back, flailing with her hands desperately; the other children scatter. Bright red appears on Justice's chest and arm. Harrison reacts automatically. He grabs his knife and shoves the animal off his cousin. He holds it down to the grass by its head and stabs his knife into its chest. Repeatedly. And then some.

There's a horrifying silence as everybody watches my nephew come to his senses. He pulls the knife free of the bloodied dog carcass and looks, actually looks, at what he's done. The little pet is dead. Its blood is all over his nice shirt and shorts, and flecked over his arms and face. He looks back at Justice. She's totally quiet, wide-eyed, uninjured. Staring at him. The red on her chest and arm is only ketchup, but the red on her legs and skirt is the blood of the dog, spread onto her by the backlash motion of Harrison's attack on the dog. Harrison drops the knife and stands.

I don't remember standing up but I'm suddenly beside him. He looks up at me and I see his clueless dad in his big clear eyes.

"I thought…" He can't finish. He knows it's bad. Angelique Batista is the first one to react to the horrible scene. She wails something in distressed French and runs over to look at what remains of her little dog. Angel comes to hold her back and he looks at me with deep concern. He knows his wife is upset but more than that he knows what this could mean for my family.

The other parents gather their children and hushed whispers start up amongst the other guests. Bad parenting... You know who his father was, don't you?... No discipline… Could have killed that little girl if he wasn't careful… Going to turn out the same… You know what they say about kids that hurt animals… Always going to happen… Another one; poor Morgan… She knew what she was taking on… Runs in the family… Fuck yeah, it runs in the family, but that's due to circumstance, not blood.

"Debra," Tom murmurs, coming to stand beside me and laying a hand on my arm. I shake him off.

"Harrison, clean yourself up," I instruct robotically, kneeling and grabbing a handful of napkins from beside Justice. I pass some to my nephew and use the rest to wipe the blood from his face. Obediently he wipes down his arms, hyperaware of the stares of his audience. I reach for Justice and she reaches back to me, silent, and she allows me to get her onto her feet. Pieces of sausage and bread fall from her lap and I quickly clean the sauce from her arm. Harrison stands in front of me, desperately ashamed and terrified. He knows he's fucked up. He knows it can't be taken back and he doesn't know what comes next.

Neither do I. I just know I was wrong before. I can take the badge, I can take the office, I can make the school lunches and I can talk mommy shit at soccer games and I can smile and do all the right things but I can't go back. I can't go back and be the person I was before I saw behind Dexter's mask. I'm never going to be able to unsee what I saw in the church. I see it everywhere; and right now I see it in my nephew.

"I'm sorry, Aunt Deb," he breathes, petrified. Like my own brother once did, Harrison looks to me for moral and social guidance, and he's lost. I hear the jingle of keys behind me and know that Joey has cottoned on to the best course of action.

"Take your sister to the car," I tell my nephew. He hesitantly looks down at her in her ruined cupcake dress. She stares back up at him. She's seen him angry before but she must recognise the significance of what just happened. "Now. We're leaving."

Harrison takes Justice's hand and she follows him without thought of protest. She would go anywhere with him. I see in her eyes the same shell-shocked expression I must have worn when Dexter walked me across the beach back to Angel's party after I walked into that storage container and shot Maria. My poor baby; is this only the first taste of trauma she'll experience for her love of Harrison?

Joey unlocks the car and loads the kids in. I turn to Angel Batista with apologies on my tongue but he squeezes my shoulder. He glances at his distraught wife and says, "Take care of your kids. I'll handle things here." So I leave. I feel the fearful and pitying gazes on my back as I retreat. I know I should feel ashamed or disgraced but I'm not the woman I was once. I don't feel anything I expect to feel. I just feel… nothing.

On the car ride home everyone is silent. When we pull up at our house Harrison jumps out and flees to his room. My daughter miserably watches him go and asks me if he's angry with her. Joey takes Justice for a bath and I take the cupcake dress and try to wash the stains out. The allergen-free pseudo-ketchup comes out. The dog blood is more difficult. I should pay more attention to those domestic goddesses at the soccer game. They would know what to do. I leave the dress to soak. I go to Harrison.

"I didn't mean to get blood on her," he says as soon as I open his door. He's sitting in the corner with a haunted expression. "I didn't want to scare her."

"You thought the dog was hurting her," I say, because I saw what he saw and that's what it looked like. He nods and wipes tears away. I so rarely see him cry.

"I don't know what happened. I thought she was bleeding. I… Then the dog was…" He gestures at the floor in front of him to explain that then the dog was just there, a big bleeding heap. His eyes tell me he's traumatised himself about as much as he has my daughter. "I was just trying to help her, but I made everything worse."

Where have I heard that before? I sit on the floor beside my nephew. It's a difficult lesson to learn. Sometimes we want so badly to help someone that we ruin them in the process. I can see exactly how this must appear to Harrison – he saw his worst nightmare realised, again: blood on one of his people, and then in trying to protect Justice he only succeeded in spraying real blood on her. Staining her. What's he thinking? That his love is more poisonous than her fears? That he's bad for her? Dexter thought the same thing about me and he was right, but it killed me whenever he tried to act on it and pull away. Harrison's afraid Justice is afraid of him, but I don't think she is. I think she's more afraid of him being upset with her.

Déjà fucking vu.

"No one important's mad at you, baby," I promise Harrison. I open my arms to him and he leans into me in relief. I feel his tears through my shirt.

"Why do I do this?" he asks miserably. "Why do I get so angry and do these bad things?"

Oh, God. It's starting. The questions. He doesn't remember what he saw, I'm convinced, but maybe shit's starting to surface. Or maybe it's not, and he's finally working out that his reactions to ordinary events are totally abnormal and wondering whether there's some answer. There is one, but I don't know whether I can break it to him yet. I kiss his hair and hug him close.

"I don't know, baby," I lie, and I look away when he sits up and looks into my eyes for the truth. "Can you do me a favour?" He nods without asking what, because he's my Harrison, Dexter's sweetheart, and he will do anything I ask regardless. "Can you get Justice's pyjamas ready and then make some chocolate icing with her?"

He stares at me. "Really?"

"You remember how, don't you?"

"Yeah. But are you sure?"

"Why wouldn't I be?"

Harrison flashes a grateful smile at me and leaves to fulfil his task. The door shuts behind him and my brother's standing there.

"Coward," he accuses. I stand and walk to the door. I lean into his face to snap back at him, "Deserter." We wouldn't be in this fucking situation if he hadn't gone and died in front of his son and left me with the aftermath.

I sit in the living room with Joey while the kids make a mess of the kitchen. Justice is greatly calmed by her cousin's return to her presence. She doesn't understand exactly what happened today but she was scared it was her fault that he went weird and she just wanted him back.

"I'll ring Dr Summers in the morning and see if we can move our next appointment forward," Joey murmurs to me. I nod gratefully. "Did you talk to him?"

"More of the same," I tell him. I don't mention Dexter. It sounds insane even in my own head to admit that my dead brother occasionally enters my field of vision and speaks to me.

When I go back to work Tom Matthews calls me into his office. He tells his receptionist not to bother him with anything. He shuts the door and sits opposite me.

"Debra," he says, "there's a lot I haven't told you." And he proceeds to tell me a summarised version of a number of things he thinks I don't already know. About Harry, about Vogel, about Dexter's Code, about the beast born in blood in the storage container where Laura Moser died. The only thing I honestly didn't know was that Tom knew about it, because none of this shit was in the F.B.I. investigation. He kept all this to himself.

So I'm not the only liar.

I keep silent and I display surprise and shock at the notion that my father was involved in creating my brother. That his life's mission was planned. I keep up the pretence of ignorant little sister, victim, righteous one. Fucking lies. But I'm so fucking good at it by now that it comes naturally. I express disbelief that Dexter went wrong as early as Tom claims. He takes my hands.

"I wanted to protect you from this," he admits, "but now it's coming out in Harrison and I know you wouldn't want to let him down. Him, or your brother or your father. Harry and I saw the beginnings of the monster in Dexter at around the same age. We went to Dr Vogel. Together we agreed on a course of action to contain him. Because, Deb, this darkness in your nephew – it's unavoidable. There's a killer inside all of us, if the situation is bleak enough, but this stain doesn't need desperation to flourish. It only needs opportunity. He'll grow into his father. If Harry and I hadn't done what we did in training Dexter he would have killed innocents. He would have killed you, and Harry couldn't live with that. Harrison almost hurt Justice. Next time he might. One day it could get out of control. Debra," he levels with me, "we can do something about this now. You and I. We can save those kids."

"How?" I ask, voice shaking for real. Tom sits back.

"Let me handle it," he says. "I know what to do."

He might know what to do but I don't. I walk into what used to be Dexter's lab and shut myself inside and slide down the door onto the floor, breathing hard into constricted lungs. The new blood guy is away for the week and everything is neatly put away and the lights are off. I cover my mouth with my hands and try not to sob. This darkness in your nephew is unavoidable. I thought I'd beaten it. I thought I'd done everything, everything in my power, to avoid it, yet it still isn't enough? I want to slap myself – if Harry Morgan couldn't stamp it out of Dexter, why did I think I was any better, any more qualified? He wasn't a saint but I'm worse, less worthy. There's a killer inside all of us. There's one in me, that much I know, but I have managed to contain it. I am in control. I choose to hide it and not feed it, not even indulge in the thought of it. Dexter hid his, too, but he chose not to control it. He gave it free rein and let it ruin him. He felt he had no option. Will Harrison feel the same compulsion? Is that what Tom's saying? Harry and I saw the beginnings of the monster in Dexter at around the same age. Dexter saved himself in the end but not before taking dozens of lives and plunging those around him into constant risk and peril. I hate to remember him as a monster but I know there was one in him, a monster of guilt and self-gratification and angry urges. My brother couldn't be stopped until he was ready to be stopped. Now it's coming out in Harrison. I can't condone training him in the Code. Dexter wouldn't want it. But if the alternative is certain self-destruction, what choice do I have? Dexter would have killed you. Vogel said the same and I told her to get fucked but maybe they're all correct. Maybe the Code kept my brother in line and maybe it's all that will keep his son in one piece. I don't know. I just don't know and this shouldn't be my decision to make. Fuck you, Dexter – you should be here, you should be managing your kid and helping me protect mine. Next time he might hurt Justice. One day it could get out of control. The Code says 'Don't get caught' and 'Never kill an innocent'. Aren't they good rules to live by, if it comes down to it? Don't they protect the people around a killer?

Didn't my father implement these same rules in my brother to protect me?

"Didn't he also try to pull the plug on this whole project to protect us both?" Dexter's ghost asks rhetorically. He sits on the floor nearby, back against one of the cabinets, legs out in front of him, exactly where he sat five years ago after I tranquilised him and he drowsily woke up.

"Shut up," I mutter, annoyed with his timing and unhelpful advice. I kick out at his foot and he retracts it quickly to avoid being struck. "You're dead."

"Doesn't mean I'm not right," he shoots back. He gets to his feet and glares down at me. "Who the fuck are you?"

I match his glare and refuse to move. "I'm who you made me, fuckhole."

"No. My Deb wouldn't need to think about it. She would know."

He leaves me and I sit and stew. I mustn't be the sister he remembers because I don't know. I don't know what's righter. If Harrison is truly destined to become the killer his father was then he needs rules. He needs to understand the consequences of his actions and recognise that his urges can be channelled in a wrong direction or a worse one. But if it's as I used to believe and his future is not determined, then giving him a green light and saying "Go kill" is a betrayal of him and my job as his guardian.

But also there's the added element of Tom Matthews. He knows. He doesn't know about me, it seems, but he knows what my dad did, he knows what Dexter was, he knows what Vogel planned… but he never said anything to the investigators. Possibly to save himself, I guess, but I recognise that if Agent Reid had known about Harry, my medical diagnoses wouldn't have stood for shit. If Harry trained Dexter, how could I not ever know? Tom protected me. He protected my dad's reputation. Tom risked his job and his future to keep this to himself, and not to mention all that he did in the weeks after Dex died to help me. He's been so good to me. He's family. I can't ignore all he's done. It's hard to assume he means anything but the best for my children and me. He wouldn't recommend this unless he honestly believed it was the best thing to do.

I am not equipped to manage this task. It's too big, and I feel small and helpless. My nephew was my golden child once. I thought I'd saved him from this. I did everything – loved him, gave him the sister he wanted, gave him boundaries and security, kept him in therapy, surrounded him with family. But the result seems to be the same. Harrison will be another Dexter.

I take too long to decide. I come home one afternoon to find Justice and Joey sitting at the coffee table playing tea parties. I can't possibly describe how satisfying it is to see Joey Quinn playing tea parties with a four-year-old princess and her legion of stuffed toys. I ask, "Where's Harrison?"

"Grandad Tom is talking to him," Justice informs me, unconcerned. She pours more imaginary tea for her dad. Joey shoots me a 'save me' look but I smile sweetly. Daddy-daughter time is good for him. He'll live. I go instead to Harrison's room. Tom is just leaving. He closes the door behind him.

"What did you tell him?" I ask in a low voice. I don't like the doors shut on the kids' rooms, but I am glad my nephew can't hear us. Tom straightens his jacket.

"Why he does what he does," he answers just as quietly. "Why he wants to hurt things. Why he gets angry and can't control himself. But I told him I can help him control it." He smiles and touches my shoulder affectionately. "Debra, you don't need to worry. I'll manage it. I wish I hadn't even told you; you don't need the stress." His eyes flick unintentionally up to my temple. I see my labels flash across his eyes. Victim. Fragile. "It'll be alright."

He goes out to the living room and enjoys Justice's adorable presence for a few minutes. I smile and stand back and let him, and then wave goodbye when he leaves. Joey tries to sequester me into the tea party but I escape to Harrison's room. I knock and slip inside. My nephew is sitting cross-legged in the centre of his bed. His eyes are hollow and blank. I don't like it.

"Why didn't you tell me?" he asks me coldly. He looks up with accusation in his eyes. My stomach flips over inside me and I wonder what he's just learnt. "You didn't say he was coming over."

Harrison's teachers say he doesn't like changes to routine and it has sparked many a meltdown in the classroom, but I'm yet to see it at home. I wonder whether the unexpected visit of my dad's friend has triggered an emotional disturbance. But Harrison doesn't move. He just glares at me and waits.

"I didn't know," I admit honestly. "I didn't know he was coming to talk to you." And I'm actually kind of annoyed about it, because I didn't agree to anything, and to go ahead and start laying the groundwork for Project Serial Killer without my permission and presence feels underhanded. Harrison is my boy. Dexter left him with me, and it's my problem to work out how to help him. "What did he want to talk to you about?"

Harrison looks away. "This is because of the dog, isn't it? You're mad about the dog. I said I was sorry."

"I don't give a fuck about Angel's wife's stupid dog," I respond irritably, and that brings my nephew's attention back. "I just want to know what Grandad Tom said."

"You hardly ever swear anymore, you know."

"Well, we don't want Justice growing up with my mouth, do we?" I respond sensibly. I hadn't noticed but I guess I have learnt to filter my mouth since becoming a mother. "Grandad Tom-"

"He's not my grandfather."

Sigh. "Harrison. Please." I want to reach out to him but I get this aura of bad attitude I'm not used to in him. Astor's brother and my nephew you most certainly are, child. "Harrison?" He tenses up and shakes with barely restrained emotion and glares hard at the bedspread and his mouth goes into a thin white line. "Baby?"

"He said I'm going to keep getting worse," he explodes, grabbing his pillow and flinging it across the room. I cover my head automatically but I force myself to stay where I am, even as he claws at his bedsheets beneath him, furious with the world. "He said I'm going to turn into Daddy. He said I'm going to kill people, not just dumb dogs, and I might hurt Justice, or you. He said I won't be able to help it. He said Daddy killed his own brother, before I was even born. Is that true? Did you and Daddy have a brother?"

Brian Moser. Memories of misplaced love, incredible sex, a huge diamond, unexpected betrayal, terror in the dark and waking up naked and bound in plastic to see Dexter stopping a knife plunging into my chest whip through me. Fuck you, Rudy, shitting up my life ten years after Dexter slit your worthless motherfucking throat.

"Dexter did."

Harrison has frozen, fists tight around handfuls of bedding.

"Did you know him? Daddy's brother?"

Yes. No. Don't worry about it. I thought I was going to marry him. Actually, who? I made a mistake, I don't know who you're talking about. Yeah, I knew him, and he's blood to you. Nope. Uh, yeah, he was a doctor; nice guy. I'm not sure which lie is best to give here. "I knew who he pretended to be," I confess. Telling the truth about my past with Dexter feels weird. But Harrison and I have a love that goes back through the curtain between my old life and my current one, and he's the person I can be cleanest and truest with. "I thought I loved him. I thought he loved me. He didn't."

"Did Daddy love his brother?"

I swallow. "I think so."

"Grandad Tom said Daddy and his brother were like me," Harrison says tightly. "Bad. Like the other kids say."

"Fuck what other people say, Harrison! You are not bad," I insist desperately, "and neither was your dad." Though the fact that Harrison is starting to think so kills me.

"He killed people!" Harrison shouts at me. "He killed his brother! He killed somebody he loved. Grandad Tom said he couldn't help it, and I won't be able to help it, either. I'll hurt people. I'll get angry at Justice one day and cut her with a knife instead of a dog. Or you. He said Daddy might have hurt you if your dad and Grandad Tom hadn't helped him. He said that's what Daddy was going to do next anyway before he died. But he doesn't know anything, he's a liar, I hate him!" He ends with a scream and jumps off the bed to tear his lamp from his nightstand and throws it at the floor. It shatters and I can't help jumping back, startled. He keeps destroying his bedroom around me, still screaming, still ranting. "He said I can't stop it. I'm evil on the inside, aren't I? Aren't I, Aunt Deb? That's why I do bad things and why everyone always looks at me. Everyone's scared. Even you." I get a nasty accusatory look over his shoulder. I hurriedly wipe my tears.

"I'm not scared of you, baby," I lie, but it's weak and he knows it. He knocks everything off his desk and tips his pencil case out.

"You're a liar!" he screams at me, and that hurts more than anything else he's said because it's the first thing that's true. "You hate me. You hated what Daddy did and you don't want me to do it. Neither do I! Tom said I will anyway but I don't want to! I don't want to make people bleed and tie them up in plastic. I don't want to! I'll die, I'll die like Daddy did and there'll be blood everywhere. Grandad Tom will find- I know he… He…" Harrison forcibly stops himself and seems to choke on words he wants to say but can't. He screams in frustration and screws his fists into his own hair. I hope he doesn't pull it out. I stand there in the middle of his ruin, helpless. He loosens his fists and points at me. "Daddy said you would take care of me. You weren't supposed to let him come here. I never want to see him again. I hate him."

"Okay, baby," I manage, and find I am crying. "I'm sorry. I didn't know he was coming over. I'll tell him, no-"

Harrison pulls a drawer out and flings it across the room. Clothes fall out everywhere. I hadn't realised how strong he'd gotten, how big. He screams at me, "No! You can't! You can't. Or I'll never see you again." And he bursts into angry, desperate tears and collapses onto the floor. His whole body heaves with deep sobs. I can't breathe. I can't believe this is my nephew. I hurry out of the room and close the door behind me. Joey has Justice on his hip and is halfway down the hall to check on me; we share a nod of acknowledgement when he sees me shaky and upset, and my nod tells him I'm okay, so he takes our daughter outside to play on the swings. No need for her to have to hear all this.

"Is this your grand plan?" my brother asks me sarcastically from the shadows. "Look away and hope the problem just… disappears? When has that ever worked?" I can't answer. I cover my face with my hands, hopeless and lost. And ashamed. "Get back in there and face some fucking truths." The door opens – maybe I'm the one who opens it – and Dexter grabs my arm and wrenches me through it. I'm flung into my nephew's room. He's where I left him. Some of his words don't sit right with me. I pick my way over the mess and settle beside him. I pull him out of the destruction and against me with some difficulty. He's tense and deliberately stiff, difficult to move. I swallow and it hurts but I make myself speak.

"You don't scare me," I promise, "and I will never, ever hate you, no matter what you do. If Grandad Tom told you what your dad did," and I'm fucking pissed that he did, because it's so not his fucking place, "then you'll know some of it was pretty bad – and I never hated Dexter, either. I loved him. And I love you." I lean closer to make sure he hears me. "I love you, Harrison." I hold him for what feels like hours but it really isn't. His body softens and he starts to relax in my grip and quieten down. His fists loosen and his fingers twist in my clothing, anchoring him to me. He's my boy. In his palm I feel something small and solid. Dexter's watch. Dexter's watch! I didn't even know he still had that! I slowly touch it, feeling the cool of the glass face. Dexter… All these years, Harrison's hidden this from me. What else has he been hiding? "How do you know about the plastic?" I ask softly, and he turns his face into my stomach to hide. "I thought you didn't remember anything." He insists he doesn't, it was a lucky guess, but it seems there are many liars in this family. I push harder. "You've never liked Grandad Tom. He's the one who saved you from the blood, isn't he? You think of the blood when you see him."

Harrison's voice is so small that I almost don't hear it. He clings to me and murmurs, "He didn't save me. Uncle Joey saved me." I stroke his hair and think. Joey carried him out of Dexter's apartment after I told him to come out for nobody but me or the police. Maybe that's the last thing he remembers? But the plastic…

"Baby, I want you to tell me the truth," I plead. "You don't lie to me."

He is so shaky, and he doesn't feel so big and grown now. He sits up slightly and I see his puffy red face. "What if it was a nice lie? To keep you safe?"

"You don't need to worry about me."

"You're tough; I know. But Daddy told me to look after you." And Harrison has tried to fulfil that expectation ever since.

I kiss him. "You don't have to keep me safe. I keep you safe. And I promise I will. I promise." I hold his face and make him look at me. I make him believe me. "Harrison. What do you remember?"

It breaks him to tell me after so, so long. "I remember everything." And he tells me. And it breaks me, too. Tom?! The man Justice calls Grandad? Harry's best friend, who protected and encouraged my career from way back, who kept the F.B.I. and the media and the other vultures at bay when I was at my weakest? My protector is also my brother's killer. And he was just here, in my nephew's bedroom, traumatising my boy; in my living room, cuddling my daughter. I can't believe it. I can't believe it. When I can speak I ask Harrison why he never told me before. He says Matthews took him to the car after they left Dexter dying and made him stop crying by saying he would bring the boy to me, but that he couldn't tell me what he'd seen, that if I knew too much I might go to prison and Harrison would have to go and live somewhere else.

What a secret to live with, and what a horrible threat to burden a child with. Didn't dear clueless Dexter do the same once, use me as a bargaining chip to keep him from talking about Hannah? It was wrong then and it's wrong now. I hug him tighter.

"I saw what Daddy did," Harrison finishes. His eyes are swollen and his face is wet, and so is mine. Dexter… "I don't want to ever do that. Is that what I'll do one day?"

"No." I am determined. I kiss him again. "You'll only do what you want to do. And your dad, he did some bad stuff, but he also did loads of good stuff, too. Just like you remember."

And we sit and talk about Dexter, properly, for the first time since he died. It's wonderful, a distraction from Tom and a beautiful bonding experience with my nephew. I share everything good about my brother – the time he jumped the fence for my ball and got himself impaled, the time he helped me escape our dad's wrath when he came home that Thanksgiving, the way he looked after me when I was shot – and I'm reminded of the beautiful gesture of 'giving me back to myself' through the bathroom door the week before he died. I do the same now, but I give Dexter's good points to his son. We talk for so long that Joey and Justice come back, and though my partner looks at me like what the fuck, Deb? when he walks in and sees the destruction, Justice lopes over all the broken stuff to snuggle into her cousin's side like a cat, unconcerned, and Joey sits with us, too, and we give Harrison the whole night. It's Joey who changes the subject.

"You're not your dad," he says, a little bluntly, which after so much positive talk about Dexter feels more insulting than encouraging to Harrison, whose face falls a little. "You're someone else. You're part of our family and we love everything about you. You're Deb's nephew and you're my buddy and you're Justice's big cousin and we know you're going to make mistakes sometimes, just like everybody does. But we'll all still be here and we'll all love you."

"You saw what my daddy did," Harrison states to Joey, the voice of someone much older than nine. "What if I do that?"

Joey doesn't know what Tom came here for but he lets his gaze slide worriedly to me. He gathers his wits and says, carefully, "We'd have to deal with it. But… you won't."

"How do you know?"

"Just do."

Harrison looks at me for confirmation. I touch his face. He looks like Dex at the same age but they're not the same.

"I'd never let anything happen to you," I promise. "Not this; not anything."

His eyes fill with tears once more. "I love you, Aunt Deb."

I'm lying awake late that night after working with the whole family to put Harrison's bedroom back together as best we could. I'm thinking lots of things. I'm thinking of my brother, of his brother, and something darkly appealing in them both that I managed to fall in love with not once but twice despite it being a terrible idea. I'm thinking of Tom and the numb betrayal in my gut. How could you kill someone's someone and still look that someone in the eye? Let alone integrate yourself into that someone's family? Fucking hell, how, Tom? But I'm thinking, am I any better? Didn't I kill Maria, Angel's someone, and don't I still love Dexter, who killed many someones and never batted an eyelash? Didn't Dexter kill my first fiancé and then move me into his place for months? Those thoughts go in circles I can't get on top of, so I'm also thinking about how Harrison is different from Dexter. He feels everything; he remembers; he demonstrates and offers his affection freely, whereas Dexter never told me he loved me, not until the last year of his life.

I fall into a fitful sleep and I dream a dream I've dreamed once before. Of a skinny teenage girl and her older sandy-haired brother and a love too big and too bright that burns them out. I dream of woodlands and a waterfall and a song I haven't heard in way too long. I dream of an interpretation of Harry's Code taught purely academically, outside of the context of a family, a black and white Code without exceptions, and of Harry Morgan's grandchildren falling victim to it. I dream of my daughter dead at Harrison's hands. I wake up in sweats and struggle out of my blankets to rush to the toilet bowl to be sick. Joey wakes and mumbles a question, offering help. I tell him to go back to sleep.

Harrison is not Dexter. Teaching him the Code does not guarantee a repeat of his father – the result could be totally different, especially if it's taught like a rule book instead of a lifestyle. Telling Harrison that sometimes it's okay to kill, as long as he can justify it to a Code written for someone else by people who never understood Dexter and clearly do not understand Harrison, is an unthinkable risk. What happens when Joey next takes down an armed suspect in the line of duty? What happens when Justice breaks her first heart? What happens when Harrison learns what I've done? Isn't it conceivable that Harrison could turn on us? Harry screwed up when he took Dexter to Vogel and Matthews – Dexter could easily, easily have grown into something else and killed me anyway. It was Dexter's own innate goodness that protected me, that and the family values Harry built into him, not the fucking stupid Code. Harry screwed up but at least I can defend his memory with the knowledge that he didn't know any better. He didn't know another way. I know better. I don't know another way either but I have to find one. Dexter hated Dad and Vogel for what they did to his life and he must hate me right now for considering the same treatment for his son. Here I am kidding myself into thinking that doing what my father and Dr Vogel and fucking Matthews did could have any positive influence on my nephew's life. Dad didn't do right by Dex. Vogel didn't give a fuck about Dex. Matthews fucking murdered Dex. None of these fuckers have any right, any moral qualification to determine Harrison's fate. I was the best motherfucking thing to happen to Dexter – I am the only one who can decide this. If Harrison's going to learn the Code, it can only be from me, inside this family, exactly as Dexter was taught.

And I decide no.

"Oh, so you are my sister," Dexter comments with mild sarcasm as I sit up from the toilet bowl, shakily wiping my mouth. He reaches over me to flush. I look up at him and know he's not really here but I'm still always comforted to see him, even if he only comes to challenge and annoy me. He wears that tight tan shirt with the buttons at the neck and those olive cargo pants with clever tools in his pockets for getting up to no good. Yet he looks good. He carries no scars, no injuries, in this incarnation. He looks young, younger than he would be if he'd survived, maybe about the age he was when he married Rita. Before shit started to get really bad. He crouches elegantly beside me and says, knowledgeably, "You know what you have to do."

I know immediately what he's suggesting. I shake my head quickly, afraid. He nods in response.

"It's a terrible fucking idea," I say in a hushed whisper. I look at the doorway but Joey has fallen back asleep and isn't listening. Dexter doesn't agree. I lean closer and he leans in to hear me. "It's wrong."

"Deb, he killed me," he reminds me fiercely. "He murdered me in front of my son and ruined Harrison's life. Now he wants to take what's left of Harrison's future away. You want to talk about wrong? We're past fucking wrong."

"I won't let Matthews near him. I'll put a stop to it, I won't-"

"There's only one way to ensure it stops here," Dexter says flatly. "You have to stop it." He grabs the front of my nightshirt and I give a start at his aggression, but I don't pull away. "Harrison can never believe that murder's an option. He'll love it like I did. It's an addiction, Deb. Would you give Justice a packet of coke? Don't give it to Harrison." I try to remind him I already agree with him, I already promised not to train his kid in the Code, but it isn't enough. He tightens his hands. "Tom is part of your family. He's always going to be on the sideline, whispering into Harrison's ear about what he's going to be, about the nature of right and wrong. Do you know how the Code reads, Deb? Rule number one?"

"Don't get caught," I murmur. The words are burnt into my memory even though I wasn't the Morgan child ingrained with it.

"Rule number two: Never kill an innocent. That's it. Be selfish, worry about yourself, do whatever you like but don't kill innocent people… but innocent doesn't come with a definition. Could you live with yourself if his moral compass pointed him differently from where mine pointed me and you had allowed him the opportunity to follow where it led?"

I have to look away. I think of the dream, so clear and sharp in my mind. Justice, almost all grown and beautiful, and Harrison's hands taking her precious life away to satisfy the Code. Dexter knew a right and a wrong that was similar to mine but not the same, and not the same as Dad's either, but influenced by both because we had our say in his choices. If I step back and refuse to teach my nephew the Code, but don't absolutely ensure Tom stays the fuck out of it, I run the risk of a future worse than if I were to teach it myself: a Harrison with secrets from me, and with Tom's sense of right from wrong instead of mine, and no knowing where that will lead.

Harrison would kill people – maybe bad people, maybe innocents, maybe a mixture, it doesn't really matter, does it? – and he would get caught or killed, and inevitably, those who love him will be cast into harm's way. A killer's family, if I have learned anything, never fares well. Dexter's ghost releases me, sensing an impending win. He brushes my hair from my eyes, feigning tenderness as he prepares to go in for the kill. Literally.

"You're all Harrison has protecting him from himself, and from Matthews," my brother prompts. "You have to do it."

I've grown. I'm older now than he ever got to be. Does that make me the older sibling? The wiser one? Shouldn't I be able to argue more effectively? Shouldn't I have learnt to say no to him by now, or am I out of practice? Or have I forgotten: I could never say no. He's fucking chocolate icing. There's no saying no. There's only going back for more and more until I make myself sick and regret it. He's going to ruin me. He's going to get me killed. He's going to get me caught.

"I can't," I whisper. I'll get caught and my family will really be alone and defenceless then. I can't do that to them. Not after Dexter. Not after everything. But he takes my chin in his hand firmly and makes me look at him.

"You won't get caught. I'll make sure of it." He offers me the ghost of a smile, a smile I know well even after all this time. "I never get caught."

"You're a liar, Dexter Morgan."

"And you're a killer, Debra Morgan," he replies, without judgement, and the words send an unexpected shudder through me. No one's ever said those words to me before. "That's how I know you can do this. But I won't let you fall any further, I promise. I'll take care of you. I'll take the responsibility and the guilt and you can stay clean." He really does smile this time. "I guess we're still perfect for each other."

Perfectly bad for each other. Dexter, the real Dexter, said that I was his conscience, but he was always the opposite for me. Temptation. Shadow. Selfishness. Impulse. Hidden desires. Dark thoughts. I always wanted to be him, and he's still here, a representation of all the things I want and won't admit to.

"Deb," he appeals, knowing I can't refuse him forever, "trust me. I'll be with you every step of the way. We need to do this. We need to finish it. Our kids need us. We can protect them like no one protected us. I'll protect you, I'll do everything I can, but you have to do what I say. Can you do that?"

I shake my head desperately. "I'm already bad, Dex. I imagine killing annoying fucking soccer moms and feeling the blood of the little shits at school that stir up Harrison on my hands. Something's wrong with me. I'm losing my mind. You're going to make me worse. The kids, they deserve better. I can't kill again, Dexter. Please, please," I beg, when he pulls away in disappointment, "fucking please don't make me."

"I won't make you do anything," he says, slightly coolly. "Harrison hates Matthews already. I'm sure he'll take care of him by himself, given a couple of years."

"You fucking left us!" I hiss at him, careful to keep my voice down so as not to wake my sleeping family. "You left me with all this bullshit! You're Harrison's dad. You know he still calls you Daddy?" I watch for the spasm of emotion across my brother's impassive face. It comes, but only because I expect it, not because it's real. Dexter isn't here. This is me getting mad at myself, because I'm a fucking headcase who talks to her dead brother. "I am doing the best I fucking can. It's an effort every fucking day not to fall a-fucking-part and scream at the sky and fucking shoot something. I never wanted this life – this is what you wanted-"

"Tell me the years without me weren't the best in your life," Dexter interrupts. I glare at him. I want to do just that. But a single thought of Justice makes me close my mouth. Would I have ever had her if Dex hadn't died? Would I have gone back to Joey? Would I have given a thought to my own life and future and career ever again if I'd run away with Dexter as planned, or would my life have become the day-in-day-out routine of hiding in motels and surviving on dishonest cash and pretending that we were doing right by Harrison? In the most stable environment I could manage he has still presented with signs of his father's psychosis. How much better could he have fared in the life of a gypsy? Dex and I were kidding ourselves.

"I only had one wish," I say instead, evenly and angrily. He holds my gaze with the same evenness as my tone.

"I know."

"All I wished was that you'd stay with me for the rest of my life." There. Out. Nothing new, nothing exciting; I just naively thought it meant more because I used the birthday candle at Astor's party and Dexter followed up by initiating the sexiest make-out session ever, which made the wish seem even more feasible. But I kept it to myself and never shared it with him, and he died without knowing. Could things have turned out differently if I'd been open? I don't see how. It was just dumb naivety. "Is it because I died at the hospital? Is that why you left? Saw your loophole and fucking up and ditched me?"

"No."

"I just wanted you to stay with me," I whisper brokenly, feeling tears building in my throat, behind my eyes, in my tight constricted chest.

"Do you think I didn't?" Dexter asks quietly. He looks into me and his eyes are exactly as I remember them. "I've never left you, Deb."

I wipe my eyes with unsteady hands when I realise I'm crying. I hate the truth. Interpreted differently he's right. I've seen him since he died, felt his presence, heard his advice, tasted his dark desires. He's my Dark Passenger, the voice in my head I've tried to ignore for the five years since his death and who knows how long before that? He never left me. He helped me lie my way out of trouble and he's here with me now, offering creative solutions to the problem I currently face. I wonder if Dexter ever gave his darkness a face and a voice and a name like I've given it his?

"I'll be careful with you, Deb," Dexter lies sweetly. "I'll keep you from dropping too far. But it needs to be your hand."

It's early morning now and in the bedroom my alarm goes off and the radio blares. I hear Joey curse vaguely and crawl across the bed to reach the old alarm clock. He turns it off, but not before I hear the song.

And I would do anything for love, anything you've been dreaming of-

Visions of Astor's birthday, of dancing close, of a life that wasn't perfect but was mine and was taken away, it all flashes noisily through my mind. I remember Tom dancing with Justice on his hip at Angel's wedding. It was cute then; now it makes me feel sick. He killed my brother and now he plays grandad to my kids? I remember Harrison's blank little face the first time Tom took Justice out of his arms. I understand now exactly how he felt about giving her up. Trusting her in the hands of a monster.

Harrison is not the problem. What Harrison may or may not grow up to be is not yet decided and I can still play a big part in helping guide him on that path, but what Tom is has already been made clear.

My brother's murderer.

Tom Matthews killed my brother and the dark that coils inside me now says that sin can't be forgiven.

No time has passed. The song is cut short by Joey's hand on the snooze button and all these thoughts fly through my mind.

"But you won't do that?" Dexter guesses quietly, and I narrow my eyes at him, hating the insinuation. Like there's a single thing I wouldn't do for my kids. For him. For family, the thing that matters more than honour or the law or personal desires or what's right.

"Fuck you," I hiss, pulling myself up to my feet. "What do I do?"

I have no fucking idea what to do but Dexter is true to his word and he guides me helpfully through every step. He has me take the day off sick, which Joey accepts readily because he heard me vomiting in the night and adds that I was tossing and turning before that. He drops the kids at school and I go through my drawers with my brother's ghost beside me. I toss Justice's pregnancy test results aside – I've never read those and don't ever intend to; like Joey said, I know everything I need to know about her – and spare a moment to glance at Elway's leverage, the photograph of Dex and I together at my beach house. I find, hidden well at the back, the business card. For anything. I don't know whether this counts but I need the help. I create a new generic email account and send a short message.

My brother was murdered.

I assume she'll know what I want to do. I am not wrong. I get a response three days later.

Can you wait for the weekend?

Yes, yes I can. I surprise myself with my own self-control now that I've made up my mind. I tell Joey nothing. It would be unfair to put him in that position the way Dexter made me accessory to his crimes when he begged me not to turn him in at the church. I go to work and when I see Tom Matthews at a briefing I feel an overwhelming burn of dark black hatred inside me but I still smile and wait when he catches up with me afterwards.

"Harrison was pretty upset," I inform him. I'm pretty fucking upset, too, but I keep that to myself. I'm not here to attack him about overstepping his role in telling Harrison what Dexter was charged with. I can bring that up later. In the kill room; though that thought scares me and makes it all feel very real. Maybe I should just stick to my original plan of keeping Tom and Harrison apart and alive. "I think it's best if you stay away for a while."

"Of course," he says immediately, and I think, good, he's backing off – maybe I don't need to kill him. "He needs some time to process."

"No, I mean, I don't think any of this is a good idea," I say. He tilts his head aside, thoughtful. "What you and Harry did for Dexter – I don't think it's good for Harrison. He's going to be okay. He's not going to turn out like Dexter."

"I'd love to believe you're right, but I've been doing this for a long time and I've seen this. This darkness, as your dad called it, it gets in too early and it does something to them. Changes them. How many killers have you yourself put away who came from perfectly nice families like yours?" Tom pauses to let me think on that. "This is for the best, Detective. Speaking of, I submitted my recommendation for you to take Lieutenant Batista's-"

"I disagree," I interrupt. I see a flicker of something I've not seen in Tom Matthews often, an irritated tightening of his expression, around his mouth. I'm annoying him. "I can manage Harrison. I don't need my dad's rulebook for unfair and unethical parenting. Fine fucking job he did."

Tom sighs and relaxes. Pushing my argument from the serious relevant information section of his mind to the part labelled poor little Deb. "Listen, Debra," he says with a kind smile, "you're a great parent. No one's disputing that, certainly not me. You don't need to change anything you're doing. With Harrison, I don't want you to stress about it. I'm going to take care of everything. You don't need to be involved at all."

"I am involved," I argue. "He's my kid."

"He isn't your son, Morgan. You've got your little princess to worry about. Trust me, I know what I'm doing."

I make other attempts at talking him out of his plan over the next few days but in all honesty, I don't try that hard. I think I'm just convincing myself that I've done all I can to dissuade Tom and save him from my brother's angry ghost. In truth, though, it's not the ghost he needs to worry about. It's me and my wrath. The fucker killed my brother. There's no forgiving that shit; not when he's spent the last five years pretending it didn't happen.

I don't believe for a second that Harrison could have misremembered, but my brother's ghost still suggests I prove it to myself. I sign myself into Evidence to go through another case and when I know nobody is looking I dig out the box I knew Angel Batista had kept for me. Joey said there was more he wasn't telling me, stuff he couldn't explain and wouldn't guess on without risking his job and our relationship, but once the case wrapped up I tried to put all that behind me. I stopped asking questions. But Joey had Angel make sure the answers were here for me in case I ever backtracked on the Let it go instruction. Everything related to Dexter Moser, Bay Harbour Butcher, was taken by the F.B.I. agents who investigated and eventually closed the case. Everything except one box. Vogel's.

I go through and pore over the evidence. The blood report. The coroner's report on Dr Vogel. The photographs of the scene. Masuka's overall forensic analysis. I understand now why Evelyn's fingerprints were on top of Dexter's. He had her down, stabbed her, killed her. Matthews walked in. Stabbed my brother, who, for some reason I can't explain even with Harrison's witness testimony, didn't fight back. Matthews pressed Vogel's prints neatly onto the weapon. He took my nephew and left my brother there to bleed out and die.

He wanted to be the person to tell me Dexter had died. He cried in front of me. That fucking asshole. He's a killer and so am I but he's worse than me. I killed to protect my family. I can't work out what Tom killed for. I don't give a fuck. He's going to die for this.

"It's not about revenge," the ghost reminds me sternly, and I nod dismissively. Yeah, yeah. "It's about Harrison's future. And Justice."

That's right, it's about justice, although also about my girl and my boy and their lives. I'm finding it all hard to separate. I put the reports away and slowly unpack the rest of the box. I never looked inside Dexter's coffin but this feels like his true final resting place. His bloodstained clothes, darkened with red from himself and from Vogel and from me. His knives. The knife he used to kill Vogel, and which Matthews used to take Dexter's life. The blood slide, with its dot of dried red in the centre, so crisp and perfect. A used syringe. The lock picks. The black leather gloves. The torn photograph with the promise written on the back. The photo Dexter tacked to the mirror of he and I together, much younger, much happier.

I break the rules and unpack everything from the plastic bags. I touch the stiff leather of the old gloves, years of dried blood deep in the cracks of the material. I pull them onto my shaky hands. They fit and I like how they feel. I stuff them into my pockets. I wrap the blade of Dex's knife in plastic and hide it under the leg of my jeans, against my calf. I hide the lock picks in my sock. I transfer the two photographs from Vogel's box into my current case and I pack the 'missing' Vogel box away. Nobody notices anything amiss as I leave the Evidence lock-up with a smile and sign out the box I need.

Dexter chooses a place and we drive out to this random-as-fuck, grotty old neighbourhood. The whole street's been marked for demolition and plans for a brand-new, densely packed housing complex have been submitted to the local authorities.

"Uh, why here?" I ask dubiously as I pull up in front of a condemned house with a broken temporary fence erected around it. I look for significance. Dexter chose Vogel's guest room to end Vogel. He chose the church to kill Travis Marshall. He killed Brian Moser in his own freezer. Dexter always chose places of significance for his kills. I don't see the connection here.

"It has absolutely no connection," he assures me smugly. He's got a paper bag of very naughty takeaway on his lap and he hands me a cheeseburger when I reach for it. Fuck, it's good. I haven't eaten anything so bad for me in so fucking long. "It's well away from any place you frequent. It's quiet and not that far from the highway, and from here you could be at my marina in twenty minutes even without speeding. You want a minute alone with that?"

He nods at my burger and I close my eyes and savour the fats and oils and juicy deliciousness. God, was Dexter right about these fucking metaphors or what? It's something I'm not allowed, something that'll definitely end badly, but it's so freaking satisfying and it makes me feel so damn alive and good. Is that why he implied a link between cheeseburgers and me when we talked in food metaphors? Was I something forbidden, something too good to turn down, something that would inevitably end with up-chucking into a toilet?

If he was chocolate icing and I was cheeseburgers and we ultimately had the same effect on each other, I guess we really were perfect for each other. Perfectly bad.

"No, you can stay. Keep going."

"It's going to be knocked down in a fortnight from now and any evidence you happen to drop or overlook will be taken down with it. Look at these houses," he adds, pointing out the rest of the street. All shitholes. Broken windows, overgrown lawns, collapsing roofs, etc. Classy. "If people live here, they're all squatters or drug dealers, right? No one's going to be sober and clean enough to see what you're doing, and if they do, no one around here is going to call the cops. A woman knocking out an old guy and dragging him into an abandoned house? They see worse every day."

Encouraging. I note the address and email it to my internet friend. She asks if I can meet her at Dexter's grave on Saturday afternoon. I agree, but then I need to think of an alibi to explain an absence of so many hours.

I drop into Astor's late on Saturday morning.

"If anyone asks, can you say I was here all day?" I ask, and she's fine with that. "Even if the F.B.I. were to ask? Hypothetically?" She's dubious now, but still agrees, more adamantly when I add, "It's illegal but it's important."

Astor says she won't breathe a word, and I believe her. The solidarity she showed Dexter after his arrest and death is proof enough to me that my secrets are safe with her. She makes me promise to come back in the afternoon when I'm done because she wants to be sure I'm safe, plus her brother is breezing in from Orlando for a visit.

Dexter, the real Dexter, would hate me for using his kid like this. It's something he would have done in the height of his selfishness. But this isn't for me. This is for Harrison and Justice, and Astor and Cody by extension.

Lumen Pierce is sitting on the bonnet of her rented car playing with her phone when I go and meet her. She looks so together, so healthy and normal. Her smile, though, is just like mine. Guarded. Hiding something.

So, the Dark Passenger can be chased out, but its scars can't be erased.

"We're going to need some plastic," she says as greeting, and I leave my car there at the cemetery and climb into hers without question. She takes me through the hardware store and shows me the supplies Dexter taught her were best and I nod and take note like a good student. She's the only person alive to have seen Dexter's whole ritual from start to finish and I treat her words with the reverence appropriate to the valuable resource they are. I watch her hands as she points, gestures. She wears black leather gloves like Dexter's. We buy what we need with cash so we can't be traced with our bank activity.

I use Dexter's lock picking kit to break into the house he and I chose. Lumen and I don't say anything much personal until we are done with the room, which is a tedious and painstakingly precise process. There can be no gaps in the plastic sheeting. We tape it together tight. I never knew her well and I didn't particularly like her when I first met her but she's invaluable here. Her knowledge comes straight from my dead brother's mouth and when I'm not looking at her and I can sense someone else in the room with me it's easy to pretend it's Dexter. She holds sheets against the wall while I tear off strips of tape. She stands back and points out bits I've missed. She's a perfect fucking partner in crime and I can imagine that she and Dexter must have worked well together at this same game. I'm slightly jealous.

"I can't believe Dexter used to do this shit by himself," I pant, standing on the plastic-wrapped dining table that will be my kill table so I can reach the ceiling. Lumen stands close beside me, both of us perilous with our balance by looking up, and we hold the plastic up with both palms flat and try to attach it to the light shade. It's kind of a sisterly bonding experience, this set-up ritual with Dexter's ex-girlfriend. Lumen bites off a length of tape and hands it to me. I'm taller – I can reach, so I stick it down with hurried, tired arms and the plastic finally stays, draping away like a mosquito net over a bed. Both of us drop our arms in relief. Lumen lowers herself quite elegantly and hops off the table. I jump. I look around at our handiwork. It's been hard-earned but I'm impressed with our efforts. Go us. Fucking girl power.

"Who killed him?" Lumen asks, folding her arms and looking vulnerable for the first time in my experience. It occurs to me that she probably should have asked this from the outset, along with a stack of other sensible questions that I would have thought to bring up. Like, when she opened my email, a more paranoid person might have asked Who is this? Or, if I'm the only person in the world she's given that address to (which is probable – she's smart, after all, and the compartmentalising type) then shouldn't she have asked How do you know? or Are you sure? But she's never asked me for proof or verification. Maybe she will now but these weren't her first thoughts. She saw my email and she acted on whatever she felt immediately. I said My brother was murdered and her response was, and I paraphrase, So there's a motherfucker we need to take out. 'Who' doesn't matter; how I know , what I think might be the right thing to do about it, why it happened, none of it fucking matters, not to Lumen and not to me. Dexter was murdered and the only obvious retaliation to the feeling of hate that burns in my stomach is to murder someone back.

I decide I like her after all.

"Someone we trusted," I say. I sit on the plastic-coated table. Soon it's going to run with blood. "A man we knew our whole lives. Our dad's best friend, and our boss." I toss the roll of tape in the air and catch it. "One of the fucks who made Dex the way he was in the first place."

"Thomas Matthews," she guesses, and I'm surprised. "I heard evidence of his during the investigation. They read out his account of the kill room where Dexter was found and asked me to explain the ritual. It didn't make sense that Dr Vogel got that strike in before Dexter completed the ritual." Lumen looks away, around the room. She doesn't do eye contact well, I notice. "How are you going to do it?"

"Knife." I'd rather my gun but Dexter's ghost has said it is too risky. A gunshot is too audible and a bullet found later can be traced back to me. A knife is clean. It does the job quietly, he says, and it'll be more satisfying.

"Do you need one?"

"I have one." I swing my legs under the tabletop and wait for her to meet my gaze again so I can tell her, "I have the knife." I jump off the table like a kid jumping from a swing and go to the backpack I brought in from the car. It's got the evidence I stole from the station. I dig through while Lumen trails hesitantly behind me, and I hand the knife back to her. She takes it slowly and looks over it. The weapon that took Dexter from us. I see the sadness in her brown eyes. I stay kneeled before her, feeling absolutely no concern about being alone in a room with an unconvicted killer after having handed her a well-used murder weapon. You know your life's fucked up when you feel safer with a murderer you've just met than with a family friend you've known and trusted your whole life. I ask, though I've got no right to, "Is your kid Dexter's?"

She looks up at me. She hasn't brought her child with her on this trip, I gather; maybe left him with her parents or with her partner if she's got one. I haven't asked or bothered to try to understand her life by starting with small talk. Instead I've jumped straight to the inappropriate Did you by chance fuck my brother and get pregnant before you left him? Good one, Deb.

"He's mine," Lumen says primly, which isn't 'no'. I respect her answer completely. Her baby is hers, just like Justice is mine. Lumen gives me back the knife. "I can stay another day and help you finish this off."

It's tempting, because I rather like Lumen now, and I'm certain she'll be a great help in the clean-up process, but Dexter's voice in my head says no. Lumen is known to the F.B.I., and the fact that she's in Miami for the first time since the funeral probably hasn't gone unnoticed. If someone as significant to Dexter's case and politically prominent as Deputy Chief Matthews goes missing the same weekend as Lumen Pierce happens to be in town I think flags will go up. She has a little boy to look after. She should be at home with him when this goes down.

"I can manage," I assure her. We take our things and leave the place all set up and ready. On the drive back to the cemetery we talk. She wants to know when I found out what Dexter was and how I took it; I want to know how they tracked and killed her abusers. When we arrive back at my car she digs through her handbag.

"You can have this," she says, handing me a small taser. No surprise that she carries this on her person everywhere she goes. "You'll need it to bring him down, if you don't have the M99." Which I don't. It's a difficult substance to get hold of and Dexter's account for buying it is no doubt on the F.B.I. watch list. I can't risk ordering it. "Wear gloves. Stay away from cameras. When you do the deed, be quick about it; you want to be able to get back to wherever you're meant to be to maintain your alibi. When you take down the room…" She goes into detail about how to dismantle what we did today without leaving traces, and she explains how to dispose of the body. Gross. But I can manage. For my family. I open my door and she touches my wrist. She still finds it hard to meet my gaze. "Thankyou for doing this."

"Thankyou for coming out here and helping me with everything," I counter. "I couldn't have done it all without you."

"Your brother wouldn't have wanted you to do this on your own," she says. She pauses. "Don't get caught, alright? Or killed. I didn't sit through days of interrogation so that you could be killed a few years later."

"Then why did you turn witness for the F.B.I.?"

"To set the record straight. To tell everyone Dexter wasn't the monster they were painting him to be. But by the time my lawyer had arranged immunity from prosecution for me it was clear that Dexter had painted himself into that corner, and there had to be a reason for that. Dexter was my guardian angel but he dropped me in a heartbeat when his stepdaughter went missing. His kids and you had survived him and you were mattered most to him. You were why he shot himself in the foot. So I concentrated on sharing the lengths Dexter went to in order to keep you all in the dark. I told them you couldn't have known – Dexter would never have allowed you to see that side of him… But when I saw you at the funeral I knew."

She could see behind the mask. Perhaps once you've been there yourself you see it more easily in others.

"I can never repay you for everything you've done," I say, and she shakes her head.

"We'll never be even," she answers. "The way you followed the Barrel Girls case… my case… That you came to understand me without knowing who I was, and that you had enough compassion to let me go free… We'll always owe each other, Detective."

"Well," I say, accepting her words, "if you're ever in Miami… stop in. My couch folds out."

"If you're ever in Minneapolis," Lumen replies, "bring the kids."

I return to Astor's and she doesn't ask any questions. Cody arrives and we play Scrabble. Astor bakes a pie in the oven and we sit at her table to eat. Cody produces a form and asks me to sign it.

"What is it?" I ask, signing at the bottom automatically. These are Dexter's kids – I trust them with my lies and secrets, I should be able to trust them with my signature. Cody reclines in his chair, watching me for my reaction. He's a good-looking young man of eighteen now, recently finished high school and the proud owner of Dexter's beloved boat. His arms are toned and tanned from years of recreational sailing. He goes through girlfriends like Joey Quinn used to, though he's never lost the friendship he found in Sari.

"Proof of identity," Cody replies as I start to skim what I just put my name to. "I applied for a name change and some of the documentation hasn't come through yet, so I need someone who's not immediate family but who's known me more than ten years to sign to say 'Cody Bennett' is the same person as 'Cody Morgan'."

I look up at him in honest surprise. He looks back at me evenly. I ask, "Are you fucking for real?"

"Absolutely fucking for real," Cody agrees, and I can't help but laugh. He asked Dexter for the Morgan name just before Dex died. It's taken him years to decide how he feels about the name and about Dexter himself but it seems he's made up his mind. He gestures at the form and I realise I recognise the watermark at the top. "If I'd just applied to the Academy as Cody Bennett none of this would have been a problem, but if I'm going to join the police force I want to have my dad's name, and my grandfather's and aunt's name. So it's worth waiting for the documents to come back-"

He's interrupted by my exclamation of disbelief and excitement. Cody's joining the police? Following in the footsteps of the Morgans that came before him. I can't believe it. It makes me so proud.

"You've never mentioned this before," I say now. "What brought this on?"

Cody reaches into his pocket and withdraws a familiar family heirloom. Harry's pocket watch.

"Dexter… Dad," he corrects, "gave it to me before he died. He said I was his first son and I should have it." He swallows. It looks painful. "For a long time I didn't know what I wanted to do with it. I was so mad at him, but this watch wasn't just about him. It was about his dad, your dad, who took Dexter in as his son even though he wasn't blood, just like Dexter then did for me. It was about you, and if it weren't for you coming through the door that night and busting Paul we might still be in that same shitty cycle." Cody turns the watch over in his hand, looking at it thoughtfully as he shares his soul with me in a way he's never done before. "Dexter might have done those things or he might not have – it doesn't actually matter. He gave his dad's watch to me because he loved me and I was his son, just as much as Harrison. I didn't know whether to be proud of that… but I am. He was a good dad. We loved him," he adds, looking at Astor. "I'm Cody Morgan. I should have done it years ago, when he was still alive. I think he'd be pleased. And I think he'd be happy about my choice to join the Academy."

"Cody Morgan, your dad would be so fucking proud," I say emphatically. I feel him with me, and I know I'm right. Dexter might have said he didn't want his kids near the law enforcement line of work but I know, looking at grown-up Cody, that he would backtrack on that statement if he were to see his son now. Hardened by life's tragedies but with a big heart guarded with resilience, Cody is perfect for the police force.

He's like me, twenty years ago.

"He wants to be a detective," Astor tells me proudly, and our conjoined pride makes Cody go shy. "Like you and your dad. The third Detective Morgan."

We drink to that, and it's easy to forget that I spent my day setting up a crime scene.

I wait until Monday, giving Lumen plenty of time to return to Minnesota. I sit at my desk and press hard as I write myself a message on a notepad. Reid, 1am, 133 Elk Street. I tear off the top sheet and ensure at least one of the writing tools in the cup on my desk is a pencil. I stop into Tom's office on my way out of work in the afternoon, my brother's ghost slipping from shadow to shadow in my wake.

"I know what you did," I say quietly, voice deliberately shaky while inside I am perfectly calm. Tom looks up at me, confused. I portray the body language I want him to see – fear, anger, self-righteous momentary courage. I hurriedly fold the paper in my hand and I know he notices as I shove it into a pocket. "I know you killed my brother and left him to die."

His face freezes and I am sure there are a billion thoughts firing through his head, but in comparison, my head is cool and clear. I'm on a roll, playing a part, seeing out my plan to its inevitable end.

"Debra," he begins, very slowly, very carefully, the world pulled out from under him, "I don't know what you're-" but I point at him with a trembling hand and whisper, "We're done. Fucking done. You stay the fuck away from my children, and you stay the fuck away from me, and you shove your motherfucking Code up your ass." I whip the scrunched notepaper out of my pocket and wave it at him erratically, and I drop the bait. If there's anything I'm good at, it's reeling in a catch. "You're going down. You wait until this shit gets out, you motherfucking cock-sucking lying fuck."

I stalk out, ignoring his calls for me to return, and I keep my shoulders tense and shaky like I'm fuming but I share a quick smirk with my brother's ghost. Trap set. Now to go spring it.

My medicine cabinet is a more impression collection of drugs than the Evidence lock-up at Miami Metro. Between everything I was prescribed (and invariably, didn't finish the course of) to manage my pain from the injuries inflicted by Hannah and Vogel, and everything Justice has needed to get her through her four years of life, there is a plethora of choice that night for the mercy cocktail I make for Joey. The kids have their dinner and I put them to bed. Justice, my good girl, goes down without protest. I kiss her and tell her I love her. She smiles her precious smile and opens an eye to look adoringly at me. I see the whole universe in her iris. She is everything. If what I'm doing protects her, then there is no question of its righteousness. I go next door into Harrison's room and he is awake, hiding under his covers with a flashlight to read the copy of The Horse and his Boy that he borrowed from the library.

"This is the next book in the series," he whispers to me when I lift the cover and give him a look. He shows me where he's up to. "Two more pages until the end of the chapter, then I'll go to bed, I promise."

"Read them to me," I whisper back, and he smiles and does. He's a fluent and eloquent reader. I have a crime to commit and a timeframe to manage but there's always, always time to read with my child. When he's read his two pages I take the book and the flashlight. "Go to sleep."

He smiles again and snuggles down in his blankets. Safe. Secure. Because of me, and the life I've given him. Whatever else I am, whatever else I've become, I've been good for my brother's child, and I'm good for mine. I spot something and gently take his hand. Dexter's watch. He's wearing it again.

"Baby," I murmur, admiring it, "can I borrow this?"

I sit up with Joey and watch TV. I make him a drink, a careful mix of crushed pills swirled into the fluid, bright flavours masking the taste. I know this is very Hannah fucking McKay of me but it's for his own good. He can't wake in the night and find me missing. He's not stupid. Once Tom's reported missing tomorrow he'll make the connection between my absence and Tom's disappearance and my family life will dissolve. So. Best that Joey falls asleep tonight with me beside him, and wakes in the same fashion tomorrow. Best for everybody.

Fuck, listen to me. Justifying the way I manipulate the people I love. I sound like my brother.

Joey gets drowsy and we go to bed. I wait for the drugs to kick in and I lie awake listening to him snore. He has been so good to me. He has protected me with his job and his life and he has gotten little back in return. And I repay him by risking everything like this?

But I don't have a choice, I remind myself as I slide out of bed and get changed. If Tom's allowed to write my family's future, Joey would lose out anyway. He could lose his daughter if Harrison is turned into another Dexter. He will lose me if Tom manages to get free of the trap I've already set and turns the tides on me. I've put too much in motion to back out now. I need to finish it.

I dress in black and pull a hoodie over my head. I tie two strips of elastic around my thigh to make a holster for Dexter's knife and I tuck the gloves and the taser into my pocket. I strap Dexter's watch, cool and dense with memory, onto my wrist. I take the photo Dexter had tacked to the mirror the night he killed Vogel and I almost fold it up and pocket it, too, thinking I'd like it for the kill room, but then I look around my darkened house and realise there's somewhere I'd like it more. I don't have a frame for it but I will get one. I stand it between some other family photos I have on the hall table. There are no photographs of Dexter in the house. Until now.

Now, it's perfect.

I check the house one last time before I leave. Joey is totally out. Harrison's room is silent, but I don't open the door to confirm what I'm already sure of. He's asleep, but he's hypersensitive. If I open the door I risk waking him. So I tiptoe instead into my baby girl's room. She sleeps through anything, sprawled across her bed with long skinny limbs all over the place. Familiar, much? I kneel beside her bed for as long as I dare to. Her nightdress is oversized; it's a pink princess one and the shop didn't have any smaller, so this is the one I reluctantly bought because she wanted it so badly. If she doesn't wear it out she'll grow into it by the time she's six or seven. The dress is skewed by her sleeping position and her chest is bared. The thin white scar is visible to me even in the dark. I never forget that she was born with a broken heart, so fucking darkly poetic for a daughter of mine, but likewise, I never forget that a miracle saved her. Even the very worst mistakes can be fixed. Justice's heart was put back together; I came back from the dead by my brother's determined hands and loving breath; Cody forgave Dexter and took our name; Lumen recovered; Astor's future is bright. Harrison has seen bad things and has been told he will follow the same path but all mistakes can be fixed. I can save him, like Justice's doctors saved her the day she was born on Dexter's birthday.

She sighs in her sleep. I touch her soft hair, admire her chubby cheeks and long lashes. Beneath her lids her eyes move, darting about with dream. I hope her dreams are nicer than mine. I hope everything about her life is nicer than mine. I need to handle tonight properly to ensure I can remain in her life, because no one loves her like I do.

I kiss my daughter's little hand. "I love you, Justice." She keeps sleeping. She doesn't know her mother is slipping out into the night to commit a homicide with the ghost of the uncle she was named for.

I drive out to Elk Street with Dexter's ghost. He talks me through what we're going to do and what to expect. He is certain Matthews will have gone to my desk for clues as to what was on my notepaper and will have discreetly shaded the underlying page to read the imprinted text. Reid, 1am, 133 Elk Street. He says Matthews will be waiting for me, probably from midnight or even earlier, trying to catch me before Agent Reid arrives. Not that I've actually called Reid, obviously, because to include that piece of shit now would be as much a detriment to me as it would be to Matthews, but Matthews doesn't know that I'm my brother's sister and I am guiltier than he ever imagined. He thinks he's the only one at risk here. He thinks I'm just angry – angry enough to call the F.B.I. and report what he did.

I am playing off the assumption that he'll want to stop me.

Apprehension starts to build in me when I pull the car to a stop outside the house Dexter chose. He peers left and right, eyes bright and narrow like the hunter he is. There's no car, no one in sight.

"He's got to be here," he murmurs. "Take it slow. Keep your eyes open." We open our doors simultaneously and close them softly behind us. I pull on Dexter's gloves and flex my fingers inside the age-stiffened leather. I feel it start to soften and give for me. It occurs to me that Dexter is with me in as great a capacity as he possibly can be; his watch on my arm, his gloves on my hands, his blood and that of his victims soaked into the leather and in the scratches of the knife I carry. My brother's ghost trails behind me as I sneak across the silent street and slip between two broken sections of temporary fencing. I tiptoe up the crooked front steps, looking around constantly. There's no sound, no lights, no movement. Aside from the shadow of Dexter I feel completely alone in the world. It's not entirely a comforting feeling. I push on the door and it creaks open without much force. I step inside into the dark interior. Utter stillness greets me. I can't be sure, though, so I take a chance.

"Reid?"

"Debra."

I almost leap out of my skin, turning to the voice directly behind me on the porch.

"Fuck, Tom," I mutter, breathing fast. "You scared the fuck out of me."

He's standing two steps below me, looking apologetic. He holds his hands up and open, wanting to appear harmless. But I know he's not.

Luckily, neither am I.

"I didn't mean to frighten you," he says. "I thought about calling but I think it's better we talk face-to-face, don't you?"

He didn't call me, not once all evening, because he knew I wouldn't answer. Missed calls, especially multiple missed calls, on the day of a disappearance or accident always look suspicious to investigators. Matthews doesn't know I'm planning to make him disappear, though, so…

"He's taking precautions in case he needs to dispose of you," Dexter's ghost breathes into my partially deaf ear, but I still hear him because he's not really here. "He doesn't want to hurt you but he will if it means protecting himself. Be very careful."

I don't even blink. Tom Matthews has known me my whole life and in the last few years he has embedded himself into my family's lives. As a result he is a very dangerous man to have as an enemy, and in the course of an evening I have made him into one. I tread carefully.

"I don't want to talk to you," I argue, letting a childish tone of obstinateness colour my voice. He came here expecting Harry's little girl. Dexter's baby sister and his last victim. Let him think that's who he's found. "I can't believe you, Tom. Dexter? He was my brother, and you killed him." I let my voice fade to a disbelieving whisper at the end. "How can I even look at you?"

"I know you're upset," the deputy chief says gently. "I know you feel betrayed and you have every right, but I can explain everything." I scoff, because that's the reaction he expects. "Dexter was on a self-destructive path. He was going to destroy everything and everyone around him before long, including you. I did what I did to save you."

"No," I refuse. "No, you're lying. You've lied to me for so fucking long, Tom. You wanted to save yourself. Reid's on his way, and I'm going to tell him what you told me. It's time to take some fucking responsibility for what you and Dad and Vogel did to my brother." And to me and the rest of my family and close associates by extension.

Tom sighs and looks away. He pauses a long moment. He looks back at me with a resigned expression.

"You're right. You're right." He sighs again and scuffs the heel of his shoe on the splitting timber of the step. "I hurt you in doing this and I'm sorry for that. I should accept the consequences. I guess there's no getting around it now that you've told Agent Reid, anyway."

"I haven't told him yet. I just told him I have information, and he said for me to meet him here."

I take my metaphorical fingers slowly off the catch of the trap and watch as opportunity flashes behind Tom's eyes. I just made myself easy prey. No one else knows what I know. The game can end with me. He can't not come after me now. He glances at his watch.

"He won't be far away, then," he comments. "I'll cooperate. I owe you that much. Come on; let's wait by the car so he can see us when he arrives."

I'm the closest thing he's got to a daughter so I'm meant to trust him. Staying firmly in role, I hesitate long enough to look like I'm really thinking about it, before relenting and nodding and moving past Matthews to start down the stairs. Dexter clings to my side, a shadow, and whispers, "Gun." I see the motion of Tom's hand under the lapel of his jacket at the same time and react.

Tom draws the gun and I'm on the step below, at a disadvantage, but I'm a quicker animal than he knows to expect. The gun is almost level with my chest as I grab it with both hands and twist upwards and away from me, effectively getting myself out of the line of fire. At the same time I yank the butt of the weapon toward my hip. The pistol comes free of his single-handed grip and he's pulled forward, off-balance, by the force of my unexpected tug. Gun still in both hands I put my whole upper body strength behind my good shoulder and swing my elbow up sharply into Tom's jaw. The uppercut drops him.

It's quick and clean. I shove the gun at Dexter and we get our hands under our victim's arms and drag him up the steps and into the dark house. Dexter shuts the door while I feel about for the free-standing light Lumen suggested. I flick it on and the plastic-wrapped room is flooded with soft yellow light. Tom is stirring, shielding his eyes with his hand against the brightness.

"Draw a gun on me, motherfucker," I accuse irritably, striding over and thrusting my hand into my pocket. I stand with one foot on either side of my father's friend and lean down to shove the taser into the side of his neck. It sparks with electricity and Tom's face and body go rigid and tense as the current overwhelms his nervous system. I hold it there longer than necessary and when I withdraw and step away, Tom Matthews is panting on the floor. Helpless.

"Get him onto the table," Dexter instructs, and I do as my brother tells me. Tom is weary, sweating and mumbling. He pulls against my grip but he's weak and clumsy. He lies back, exhausted.

"Debra, don't… I didn't mean… We can talk…"

"Shut the fuck up," I snarl, gathering the shrink wrap from the stack of supplies Lumen and I bought. "We've got nothing to talk about. You murdered my brother."

"And," Dexter's ghost reminds me, "he's a threat to your family's future. Don't lose sight of what's important. Revenge isn't why we're here."

I nod but I find it hard to meet his gaze. Here I am, righteous cop and general do-gooder, taking moral advice from my serial murderer brother. And fuck him, he's sounding more honourable than I do. He said so many times, he always just wanted to be me. I wonder whether he got his wish in the end; he worked so hard to be better, to be more like the person he loved to believe I was.

Didn't we both have ridiculous misconceptions about each other?

He reaches across the table to take my face in both of his hands, and pulls me close as though for a kiss, but instead he presses his forehead into mine and looks straight into my eyes. "It can't be about revenge. Tell him it isn't for revenge. It's for them."

"I wish I could say it wasn't revenge," I whisper back. I'm terrified. I'm terrified of who I am right now. Or have I always been this? He strokes my face with his thumbs. His touch brings me comfort, even though I can tell in its feel that it's not real.

"It can never be about revenge," he says. "Revenge is what got me killed. I won't let it have you, too."

Revenge and protection of my children feel like almost one and the same but I know they're not. My reasons for being here should be them, not my fucked-up love for my dead brother. I know it's for both the past and the future that I have arrived here tonight.

Either way, I'm here for family.

I step away from the ghost's touch and start the shrink-wrapping process. I don't have time to strip Matthews down. I know that's doing the ritual wrong but I don't have the tranquiliser Dexter would have used to keep his victim compliant and still, so I improvise.

"Deb," Dexter warns, starting around the table, and there's an unexpected bang on the window, but he's a fraction too late. "Deb!" Tom reaches up for my throat and grabs me. I feel my expression twist with anger as I slam my forearm into his, knocking his arm out from between us and freeing my neck, but his other hand has been fumbling inside his jacket. His hand flashes towards me and I feel a sharp prick in my neck. He grabs me again, the front of my shirt this time, to keep me still and I see determination in those familiar blue eyes. Determination to survive.

He knows it's me or him.

Now I realise the same thing. I miscalculated my prey and if I'm not careful I'm about to become prey myself.

He sits up, pulled upright by my backwards step. My breath is constricted by the tightness of my collar around my throat, and this grip gives him all the control. On top of that I can feel the effects of the injection he's given me already. My pulse picks up, momentarily strengthened by the chemical surge through my body and the onset of panic for my life. The banging on the window is urgent and consistent now, and does nothing to alleviate my terror. I grab his wrist with my left hand but can't wrench it off me; with my right I grab for Dexter's knife at my leg. Thumb down, fingers wrap around the hilt. I rip it free of its makeshift elastic bindings and thrust forward.

And twist.

"Deb! Don't!"

Tom gasps as Dexter's blade sinks into his lower gut. His cold face contorts with shock and pain and his hands come loose. I cry out as the needle in my neck is dragged down my skin instead of out, cutting me, and I feel blood well there, hot and wet. I shove him off and back up, tearing the knife out and holding it out before me defensively. I cover the small wound on my neck with my other hand. Blood comes fast. My heart is racing and my vision starts to blacken at the edges and my head starts to ache.

The EpiPen falls to the floor. Adrenaline. The magical life-saving auto-injector that I gave to everybody in Justice's life to help protect her against her delicate little body's many overreactions has been weaponised against me to stimulate my own overreaction.

"Deb," Dexter's young ghost murmurs, frightened for me. "The seizures…"

"I know, I fucking know!" I snap at him, panicking. I know and so does Tom. My heart thunders in my chest to match the sound of someone banging on the door and my hand trembles. Someone's here, someone's overheard, I'm so fucking fucked. I keep back, brandishing the bloody dripping knife as Tom slowly clambers off the table, clutching the crooked gash I put in his stomach. He looks up at me, and I see none of the love or affection I've felt from him these last years.

"You're psychotic, Morgan," he snarls, breathing hard. "A monster like your brother." He points at my forehead. "That bullet you took changed you. We should've locked your brother up sooner; that way he wouldn't have been there to bring you back." He looks to the door; whoever is here is strong and probably law enforcement, because the pounding of a fist has become the slamming of a body trying to smash the locked door in. "Reid! We're in here! Morgan's the one, it's her!"

I have to let the blood flow from my neck when a blinding flash of white-hot pain attacks the front of my brain. I press my fingers to my temple, trying to contain it, but the stress on my body is too great and my vision goes blotchy and I stumble to my knees.

"Fuck you, Tom!" I spit at him. My brother's ghost drops down beside me and tries to calm me down, tries to prolong the onset of the seizure, and I see Tom start awkwardly for the door when nobody answers him. He sneers at me as he passes me.

"This room is going to look pretty bad for you," he mocks. "I guess Reid will get his conviction after all. Provided you survive another seizure, of course. The last few were pretty bad, weren't they?" He gives me a disgusted look. "Another tragedy in the Morgan family. I'm only grateful your father never- Argh!"

His spiel is cut off with an exclamation of pain when I stab Dexter's knife into his calf muscle. It sinks in with less ease than it did into his soft stomach and I am rough with pulling it out. He reacts by lashing out, grabbing my hair. I scream incoherently, or maybe I scream for my brother, and the back of Tom's other hand catches my cheek and I fall back. My head hits the plastic-protected floor and I go out.

I hear my brother's voice in my head. Give it to me. Let me take the pain. You don't have to feel this, Deb. I do as he says and let him absorb it all from me. I feel myself relax. I start to blink away the black fog of unconsciousness and come to. It must have only been for a few seconds. I can't see much at first but I know my brother's ghost has left me. The seizure is in full-swing, though less intense than the others, and for once I'm conscious for it, my body in small convulsions that I can't control, and I'm shaky and sweaty and clammy and weak on the floor where Tom left me.

The door is open, still swinging violently on its hinges from having been busted in, and someone is standing in the doorway. Reid? No… Nobody actually invited him, so he's got no way of knowing this party's on.

"Deb…?"

I hear a sharp inhale. "You… You can't…" A loud crashing sound, the noise of someone landing bodily on the plastic. "Dexter?"

"Don't you fucking move. Don't think I didn't just see what you did to my sister."

There's the muffled crunch sound of footsteps on plastic wrap. My jaw loosens and my convulsions decrease quickly to only twitches. I try to blink away the daze and get a grip on my situation. Someone grabs my arms and pulls me up into a sitting positon against the wall. I try to see past the person to where I heard Tom's voice. He's the one, he's the main fucking threat here. He's on the floor too, on his hands and knees by the kill table in the middle of the room, a trail of blood behind him showing where he stumbled, or was pushed more like, and is trying to get back up. I breathe, trying to breathe through the residual panic so I calm down enough that I don't seize again. I can't afford to let him get away. But I also can't move.

"Deb?" I'm not alone. Dexter is crouched before me, looking terrified. He presses a hand against the cut on my neck. He lifts it away to look at the blood on his palm and puts it straight back. There's something weird about the way the pressure releases and returns to my wound. "Jesus, Deb. Are you alright? Can you hear me?"

There's a lot that's weird. He doesn't look the way he did a moment ago, before my seizure. He's dressed differently, all in black like me, and his hair's longer than I've seen it since his teens. He's sporting a beard. I can't remember him ever looking like this.

He's older, too. Older than the Dex that plays my Dark Passenger. Older than Dexter was when he died, maybe.

"Can you hear me?"

"I… I hear you." I feel breathless, and speaking is a chore. My tongue feels heavy, my brain is fried, my eyes won't focus, my limbs won't respond to immediate commands. All systems are trying to kick back in at the same time and like a computer being rebooted I feel frustration with all the lagging. But it's getting there, if I'm patient.

I start coming to my senses and my breaths start to even out. Tom is staring at me and the ghost tending to me. That same ghost maintains one hand on my neck and systematically checks me over for other injuries. His hand alights on my wrists, my elbow, my knee.

I feel every touch, and every touch feels real.

"Get away from me!" I shove him clumsily away and my hands seem to feel honest resistance and true texture, the fabric of his shirt. He backs off, hands open, and where he moves a trail of blood drops follows across the plastic. It drips from his hand. My blood. Only I'm not over there, I'm here. I cover my wound with my own hand and point at him, beyond petrified. "Don't touch me! Stay away!" I watch another droplet of my blood fall from his hand. "What the fuck? What the fuck?!"

"You had a seizure."

"I know I had a fucking seizure, you moron. I'm talking about you. What the fuck?"

"I could ask you the same," he replies, looking around. His wide eyes take in our surroundings, the plastic, the blood, his knife beside me. "What is this? What were you thinking?"

I stare at him, incredulous. His touch feels real but he can't be because I know he's dead. He's not really here. He's just an element of my own mind. "What was I thinking? This was your idea!"

"My idea?" he demands. We still bicker like siblings, even though we both died five years ago this month, even though one of us mightn't be real. He stares back at me, miserable and hopeless. "I never wanted this for you. I left you so you could escape all this." He gestures at the room, still looking miserably amazed that I put this room together. "I told you to let it all go. You were never meant to know. You can't kill someone."

"You told me to kill him," I retort, and he looks at me like I'm insane. "You came here with me."

"I came here to stop you." He doesn't remember, he honestly doesn't remember, and I start to wonder. This is not the same ghost who has helped me plan this night. But he's still got to be a ghost. Maybe a conscience instead of a darkness? I shouldn't be surprised that both sides of my personality wear the same familiar face, should I? "I saw him pull his gun on you and I saw you take him down." He reaches out to touch my forehead, maybe feel for my temperature, but I shy away and he retracts his hand. "I tried to get in here in time to stop you but you'd already started reacting to the adrenaline."

"What are you?"

I have to ask. I can't properly explain what he is but I know I'm fucking insane. Dexter's eyes are filled with pity, and sadness. He can see I've lost the fucking plot. He sees that the brain injury I received from those minutes without oxygen after that first stroke have made me different and this is the next inevitable step. Insanity. Psychopathy.

"How?" Tom asks, panting beside the table. "How did you survive?" Dexter looks from me to Matthews but won't answer that. Our father's friend pulls himself up using the plastic-coated table that was meant to be the place he died. "How are you here?"

"You can see him?" I demand. I look back to Dexter. "How can he see you?" I blink back tears at the impossible thought that strikes me. "Are you real? You can't be real." He can't be real because that'd mean he's alive. That'd mean he's hidden from me for five years. It'd mean I just avenged a murder that wasn't committed.

But I can't accept either of those prospects. Much more logical to accept that fact that the Dexter before me is an intense multi-sensory hallucination experienced in my post-seizure delirium and that he will be gone once my brain chemistry returns to its usual unbalanced balance. The doctors said there was an underlying condition, side-effects of a brain injury I didn't want to know about. I suppose now I'm seeing that.

"You were dead," Tom asserts.

"No one said I'm not," Dexter snaps back. He glances irritably at Harry's friend over his shoulder. "Dr Vogel started seeing ghosts just before she died - do you think that's a coincidence?" He levels a warning finger at the older man. "Stay put and I'll deal with you in a minute."

"We can talk about it at the station," Matthews says with a pained cough. He's pale and drawn and blood drips from his midsection. It makes sense that the reason Tom can see my ghosts is that he's close to death. I can't let him get away. I reach forward and my hands fumble for the knife. He sees and turns, limping to the door. Dexter pulls the knife from my hand and when I feel the sensation of his skin against my glove I whip my hand away. The blade drops between us. He hasn't felt this real since the morning of Justice's birth, and before that, since he was alive. Could that mean…? No, it can't – I remind myself of the coroner's reports, the F.B.I. investigation, the fact that Joey said Dexter was dead. The apparition in front of me is a cruel figment of my imagination, an imagination spiralling into madness.

I've officially lost it.

"I can't let him get away," I urgently tell Dexter's ghost when he tries to keep me still, tries to tell me the seizure mightn't be finished. "He'll report me. I'll be arrested!" And everything will have been for nothing. I stare at my brother and he stares back. I feel like crying. "Stop looking at me like I'm such a fucking disappointment and help me!"

Dexter gives me a reluctant look and stands as Tom reaches the door. Dexter crosses my kill room with only a few swift strides and catches up without difficulty, throwing an arm over Matthews' shoulder and across his chest to pull him back inside the room. He kicks the door shut and throws our old friend onto the floor like a ragdoll. The old deputy chief rolls through his own blood and comes to a stop only a yard away from me. I don't stop to think about it. I snatch up the knife.

"Deb, no!" Dexter calls, throwing himself down beside me and reaching for my hands, but I have already plunged the knife down into Tom's chest. The blade sinks between two ribs and blood spurts over my hands and Dexter's when they close over my wrists. Tom's eyes go wide and he sputters helplessly. Dexter pulls on my hands, too late, and the knife, his knife, comes free with a wet sucking sound. I open my hands and the weapon clatters to the floor. Dexter releases me and I see bloody handprints on my skin. My vision of him is much more vivid than usual. Is it because I'm crazier than usual, senselessly delirious like I was following Justice's labour and the seizure?

"I should've… should've known…" Tom stutters. "Morgans… You're… you're as… bad as… each other…"

Tom Matthews, the last of Dexter's creators, dies by my hand, and when his last cough becomes a breathless wheeze and his heart gives out, the kill room falls silent. My brother and I look up at each other and simultaneously, I think we both recognise and can't recognise the other. He's just as I remember only not; I'm the killer he didn't want to accept but always knew was inside, waiting, and now there's no denying it.

"What have you done?" he breathes, horrified.

I have to make him understand. "I had to, Dex. He was going to ruin everything-"

"What, and you didn't just do that yourself?" my brother asks, voice rising in panic. "This isn't you. Look at what you just did!" My conscience theory fits with what he's saying, but I feel his breath on my face, he's so close, but it can't be real. It can't be real. Can it? Am I real? What's fucking real these days? "I saw what he just did to you but you're the one who drew him out here in the first place. What the hell for, Deb?"

"For your kid, Dexter. For our kids. Matthews was meddling, trying to create another you in Harrison." I shake my head. "I couldn't let that go. I had to stop him."

Dexter hangs his head. "I didn't know. I thought you were all safe." Which makes no sense, because if he's part of me, he should know everything I know.

"Are you real? Who are you?" I ask him, softly. He's too shocked by what just happened to answer me. He only asks in return, "Who are you?"

Fuck, I don't know! I don't know what's real, what's imagined, what led me to this point. I look around at the horror I've created in the name of protecting my family. Blood, bodily tissues, a knife, a gun, a fucking auto-injector, a dead fucking body…

"That's my third," I murmur, head feeling light. I've killed three people outside the line of duty. That makes me a serial killer.

"You should go," Dexter mutters, looking around. "Get your neck looked at. I'll take care of all this."

But then he'll disappear, I know it, and I'll never know if I imagined him here tonight or if my world has been shattered with impossibility. I shake my head, feeling weak and unwell but determined.

"No, I'm staying," I say stubbornly. "I started this and I'm going to finish it."

He sighs. "Deb-"

"This is my fucking mess."

"And you can't clean it up on your own."

"So are you going to help me or not?"

My big brother gives me a helpless look. He doesn't want to be here, wouldn't have come at all if he could have helped it, but now that he's here he can't leave me to the consequences of what I've done. He miserably wipes his hands on his pants and closes his eyes for a long time. I see a thin faint scar on his cheek and eyelid, and I wonder whether I'd find a teacup shaped scar on his palm and a bullet scar under his clavicle and a jagged gash in his stomach and a straight pink line on his side from a fence paling. If I looked. I'm too scared to touch him in case it confirms whether he's alive or imagined. Have I been lied to and hidden from by the person I loved most, or am I beyond the help of any mental health professional? At this point either possibility is equally terrifying.

"Of course I'll fucking help you," he murmurs finally. "I'd never let anything happen to you; you know that." He opens his eyes. "Do you still have my boat?"

"I still have a key," I agree. The Slice of Life is Cody's but he still lives in Orlando and the boat's moored at Astor's apartment.

"Does anyone know you're here? Did anyone see you?"

"No. I covered my tracks." Like you showed me.

"Jesus, Debra." Dexter looks away again, still in as much shock to be here with me in this situation as I am. "Alright. We've got to do this fast." He stands and offers me his hand. "Come on. I'll show you."

I look at his hand for a long time, hesitant. Taking it might answer a fuckload of questions that are bubbling away in my head, but it will most definitely confirm or deny the most basic and essential question: is he real or am I insane? One more touch and I'm sure I'll know and aside from his help in cleaning up my crime scene and making it all go away, this answer is what he offers me in his hand. He's my big brother, and I love him and I trust him, but fuck, he scares me right now with what he's offering in his silence. His hand stays out, and all I've got to do is take it and know, once and for all.

I make my decision and he says, "Tonight's the night, Debra."