This is set after the events of episode 7.12. It is an alternate take on Season 8, loosely based on a story suggested by Fiona Wallace Fan on the DD boards. Rated M for swearing and future "adult" content. :)

Disclaimer: I don't own any part of Dexter and I am making no money or profit from this story. Feedback is much appreciated.

Chapter One.

The little ceramic policeman mocked her more and more each day.

He stood next to her phone and as each day passed, the hypocritical nature of her current position gnawed at her. With each budget that she looked at and each report that she would sign off on, as he stood there with his gun drawn guarding the public, he reminded her that she was out of place. She was no longer worthy to be a peace-keeper. She did not keep the peace. She was a killer and an accomplice. And her partner in crime was only thirty feet away, holed up in a dark lab pretending to fit into the role he was assigned at the police department, while at the same time, planning his next kill.

She was getting good at sensing when he was not only doing police work, but working cases off the record for his own needs. It was too much. She knew she would never stop him. She would always choose Dexter over what she knew was right and it was killing her. However she didn't have to be a hypocrite too. Hannah, that fucking bitch, was right. She was a hypocrite. But she didn't have to be.

She made it just about a month after she shot down LaGuerta before the weight of her guilt became too much. She would no longer sit at her desk in her glass enclosed office and pretend that she was a productive member of the police force. She couldn't stand to see Dexter everyday at work. She didn't want to hear the seductive tambour of his voice as he sat across from her at her desk, telling her that she was a good person. She had to hide her blush of arousal when he would reach for her hand and cover it with his own, telling her that each day things would be better. She knew that he was only covering for himself. She just knew that he didn't really care about her, he only didn't want to get caught.

The actual night of LaGuerta's death was a blur. After she cried herself out, Dexter peeled her arms away from LaGuerta's body and lifted her away from the crime scene that he had to finish staging. She watch him as he placed Estrada's gun into his hand and pulled the trigger to make the trajectory of the bullet fit the supposed crime. LaGuerta's body jumped as Extrada's bullet hit the body, just as it had when Deb pulled the trigger. She watched him clean the rest of the crime scene of their presence and they both returned to the beach.

At that time as they walked through the crowd, making their way back to Papa's, she was glad that she could hold onto his arm, glad to be close to the warmth of his body as he put his arm around her. As everyone counted down to midnight, Dexter turned to her and pulled her body to him in a tight embrace. He was a master at seeming to fit in, at not standing out in a crowd. They weren't part of this party. They didn't know these people and the thrumming crowd didn't know them. Touching thighs to chest, it was the most intimate hug they'd ever had. She hadn't hugged him in months. She clung to him like he was the only thing that made sense, and started crying again, hiding her face in the curve between his shoulder and neck.

Keeping them joined, Dexter pulled back to see her face and partially released her only to wipe away the tears with one hand. His thumb stroked her cheek, his fingers threading into her hair. Holding her face, he leaned in and surprised her by pressing his lips to hers, very gently. At the time, it seemed like the least wrong thing that happened that night and she kissed him back. They were light kisses, his lips gentle on hers, capturing her upper lip, then her lower. And she kissed him back, sensing his next move upon her and responding in kind.

She pulled back just as he parted his lips to deepen the kiss. It was the first time that she considered that he wasn't doing this because he wanted to, but because he wanted to keep her under his thumb. He wanted to keep her happy so that he, himself, wouldn't get caught. Oddly, he looked confused when she pulled away from his kiss. Not his normal confused face, but a different, more personal kind of confused, as if he had surprised himself as well. Still, she believed that he would do anything to protect himself, and would try to keep her under his thumb by any means necessary, even by initiating action on her deepest desire.

He stepped back from her, but kept her hand in his and they continued down the beach to Papa's, as if nothing else had happened. He was so good at compartmentalizing the different parts of his life. She was in shock and people would chalk up her attitude to too much to drink. No need for that with him though. He could fool just about anyone. But not her, not anymore. He guided her down the beach, through the pulsing dance floors and along the lighted patios until they reached their party. They put in their appearances, gathered Harrison, and left together for her house.

That night he stayed with her after burning their clothes in a fire on the beach. It was just one of many fires on the beach that night; no one else suspected that they were destroying evidence. He stayed with her that night. He made no further attempt to kiss her or made any other advances. She was glad because she wasn't sure what she could have done to resist him. She'd wanted it for so long, but now, things had changed. She had changed. The attraction was still burning inside her but it felt even more shameful and wrong.

She took a few of the personal effects from her desk and her glass paperweight, and put them in her purse. After shutting down her computer, she picked up the patrolman and took it with her as she left her office. She walked to Dexter's lab and entered without knocking. He looked up with a shocked but pleased look on his face. She hadn't come to see him in a week. E-mails and texts were her latest preferred method of communication. She almost felt badly for what she was about to do.

"Dexter." She breathed out slowly through her mouth. "I'm leaving for the day. Fuck, I'm leaving for good. I'm quitting the force. I won't be back." He opened his mouth to protest and started to raise up from his stool. She raised her hands sharply, palms toward him to cut him off.

"I can't do this anymore. Dexter, I need a break. And I need a break from you. Please. Please don't call and don't come to see me, and stop fucking parking outside my house at night. I need to feel better about what happened and I can't do that if you're around me all the time. Can you do that?"

"No." He shook his head. "No… I can't do that. What the fuck do you mean?"

She looked out at the bullpen and the open doors beyond them. Her hair was falling in her face as she spoke and she didn't bother to push it back behind her ears. It felt better to hide her face behind her hair.

"This means that we're taking a break, Dexter. I… I didn't want it to be this way, but this feels right. I'll call you when I'm ready."

She turned around and reached for the doorknob. She heard the creak of his chair seconds before he captured her from behind, circling her in his arms, one over her shoulder, one around her waist. He pressed his cheek along hers. "Deb, don't do this, please…"

"Let me go, Dex." He pulled her tighter against him and turned to nuzzle his face behind her ear and into her hair. She heard him inhale, taking in her scent.

She exhaled loudly, centering herself, she pulled his arms off her, and stepped forward and away from him. Looking halfway over her shoulder, she didn't even look at him for her last words to him.

"Goodbye, Dexter."

She took the patrolman out of her purse and left it on Batista's desk as she walked through the bullpen for the last time. The elevator doors were beaconing her down and out.

I realized it now. She'd always reached out to me. She was the one who called me, she was the one came to my apartment, she was the one to seek me out. I became accustomed to it. Looking back, I always needed her but rarely initiated our interactions. I took her for granted. When she became Lieutenant, she relied on me even more than before. After Travis Marshall, I got used to hearing from her daily, even lived with her for a while. What I didn't realize was how much I came to rely on her.

After LaGuerta's death, she called less and less. Besides New Year's Eve, I hadn't been inside her house again. Harrison and I stayed with her that night. She could barely care for herself and after putting Harrison to bed in her guest room, we laid on her bed together. She was warm beside me and I realized this is what I'd wanted all along. I could still feel her lips against mine when she kissed me back. Her lips were soft and she yielded to me as I held her in my arms. I wanted so badly to touch her again and just be close with her, yet I didn't make another pass at her again that night. In retrospect, I wish I had. Maybe things would be different now.

Why couldn't I see what Hannah was? I was blinded by her beauty and her danger, and I let her manipulate me into believing that she was the one. She accepted me, but how long would that have lasted… Looking back, she was the easy way out from Deb's well-meaning and accurate assessment of me. Hannah accepted me; Deb challenged me.

After seeing her at the prison, I finally knew that she never thought it would work out. In the end, she would have turned me in or set me up in some way at the first sign on trouble. She said she always thought it would have been me that would have wound up in prison or dead. I guess we didn't know each other as well as we thought.

Even so, I think she loved me in her own way. And I loved that she loved me. But Hannah would never have done what Deb did. Deb killed who she was when she pulled the trigger. She did it for me.

Even though Deb told me not to call, I couldn't help it. She never returned my calls. Her house was dark more nights than not. I wondered where she was and what she was doing.

I found that for maybe the first time I felt a loneliness. I felt incomplete and hollow. I felt adrift like my life was the 'Slice of Life' and someone had taken an axe to the bow and stern lines holding the me to the dock and pushed me away from the moorings. I felt...

Sitting at my desk at home, I flipped through my old research files, looking for a victim. It had been a long time since I had a righteous stalk and kill and if anything made me return to 'normal', that was it. Each of these candidates were worthy of my table. Al O'Brien, a murdering gang enforcer, released on a miranda complication. Roger Milano, a serial husband, each of his wives committed "suicide". Sasha Rivera, a kidnapper and madam, whose 'employees' never returned to work because Sasha fed the true underbelly of sexual deviants.

None of these names felt right to my Dark Passenger. None of them felt like they had the possibility to bring order and peace back to my mind. But there was the one that got away. The dark orchid she left me was sitting on my desk, the last midnight petal hanging limply. I knew she was out there. We'd all been alerted the next day at the station that Hannah had escaped custody.

Find her and kill her. For this kill, I wouldn't miss not getting a blood slide. She would never be a trophy to me. Slicing her up into pieces, watching her flesh separate from her bones was not what I wanted either. A simple burial at sea for her, but I was looking forward to seeing the spark leave her eyes. She would know that she was bested and I would know that my family would be safe. Deb asked me to kill her once before and I denied her. Maybe if I followed through now, Deb would come back to me. It couldn't be that hard to find her.

He ran his fingertips along the smooth wood of the desk in front of him. It had been too long since a man sat in this office. Not that it was a sexist thing. He loved mujeres fuertes. Maria was a driven, smart woman. She rose to the top quickly and knew how to play the game. Well, until the end, she knew how to pick her battles. It hurt to hear him say it, but Dexter was right. She wouldn't let go of her obsession with him and it led to her murder. If Hector Estrada was still alive, he would have hunted him down and taken him out hombre a hombre for what he did to his wife. Ex-wife. He hadn't been married to her any longer, but he was still her protector and friend. Once Deb made LT, she made the office her own, but it was never personalized the way it was when Maria sat here.

One of the first things he had to do as LT and as an ex-husband, was to go through Maria's files at home and her files at work. Her house was going on the market very soon, and as executor of her estate, he needed to clear out the work she had taken home. He had her boxes at his home and her boxes from work, now sitting in his office. Even though she had let part of the job slide the last few weeks, most of the case information on everything but her obsession with Dexter was well in order. But the information on Dexter and her investigation of Doakes and the Bay Harbor Butcher case was scattered. He's owed it to her to go through the information, but most of it seemed crazy. He'd even briefly glanced at warrants for Debra's phone as well as Dexter's for a case. Absurd…loco!

For now, he looked through the box from her office. It was a random sampling of notes, files, and a DVD labeled 'Anderson Surveillance' and written in Maria's handwriting '15:37'. He would sort it out later. As far as he knew, all of these were old cases and the information simply needed to be filed.

In one of the boxes was another vase from her office, crimson like the one that he gave to Dexter. It reminded him of her. He put it behind him in a prominent position to remind everyone of her legacy and spirit.

And from another box from his own desk, he pulled out Deb's patrolman statue. He placed it on the front edge of his desk for the same reason.