To Dust

by Bone Dry

Series finale alternate ending: On a bright afternoon, Debra Morgan comes to bury the monster, and to say goodbye.

A/N: I feel better now.

His body, what was left of it, turned up two weeks after they found the remains of the boat. He was consumed by the hurricane, chewed up and spit back out, left to wash up on the shore somewhere in Key Biscayne. The coast guard found him.

It took some time before they knew who he was. How long, I don't know. Didn't ask. But he was registered as a missing person by the department while I was under, lost in the coma, and they matched his dentals with the corpse.

Dexter always cared a lot about oral hygiene.

For some reason that was the first thing I thought when they told me, when Batista and Matthews walked into my hospital room with the envelope. As if I wanted to look at it. As if I needed the confirmation.

But I took it anyway, flipped through the papers blindly.

Dexter always brushed his teeth for exactly two minutes, twice a day, flossed every night before bed. But for some reason he still always got cavities. Sometimes I think it bothered him, because it was one of the few things in his life that he knew he couldn't control.

That's what I thought about. Then I sank down, was pulled back under that heavy, pillow darkness.

It wasn't until I woke up a few hours later that it finally penetrated the fog and I realized what it meant, what they had been trying to tell me. That he's gone. That he's dead.

My brother.

I felt something like stillness then, gently, slowly, firmly locking around me. Something bloodless and cold.

I remembered his face the night Rita died, the way it scared the shit out of me. Like we were all ants and he'd hopped a freighter to the Moon. While the neighbor sobbed beyond the tape. While his son cried in my arms.

When I opened my eyes to look at the ceiling I felt the tug of the transport. That terrible, blank field, a vast expanse of Nothing.

But then I felt something else. Something that felt, horribly, like relief.

And the grief, however much of it there was, if it even truly was, crystallized inside me.

Now I'm standing on the neatly-trimmed lawn of Flagler Memorial Park, being partially supported by a tall gravestone, my expression hidden safely behind my sunglasses. We've been here at least a few hours, since before anything was set up or anyone else got here. I sat and watched Quinn put up the pictures we picked up this morning, arrange the flowers I had delivered, straighten the urn on the little pedestal the funeral director loaned us, all with a laser focus I'd never seen before in my old partner, that I would never have suspected he was even capable of. But I think all this is the only thing he can think to do for me, since I sure as shit couldn't have done any of this myself at the moment.

I pull my hair to one side, exhale slowly, carefully.

About the best thing I can say about my insides at the moment is that they no longer feel like a bag of broken glass. But the walk from the car to here was exhausting, and it was only recently, since people started arriving, that I summoned the energy to get out of the chair. At some point I took residence over here by the tombstone, fielding well wishes from co-workers and what's left of my brother's family. But at the moment, thankfully, I'm alone.

It's been five days since they delivered the news. I had to coordinate most of the funeral from my hospital bed. Quinn offered to help, and I gladly shoveled as much of it off onto him as I could, but in the end I had to make most of the calls, had to sign the papers, had to decide what to do with what was left of my brother.

For a brief moment I thought about cremating him with what they recovered of his boat, pouring his ashes into the ocean. It was the only place that I knew for sure Dexter had any real connection to. But I was repulsed by the idea of returning him to the thing that had killed him, to the place he dumped his victims.

And, besides, I realized quickly, I was trying to bury the new and terrifying Dexter I'd so recently come to recognize: my brother, the monster. But I'm one of the only people left alive who knew that Dexter, who will ever know that Dexter, and I know as I stand here that I'll never breathe a word of him again.

So I chose to bring him back here, to Rita. To the woman who loved him for everything she thought he was, for everything he may've been. And maybe it's appropriate that I chose this cemetery for Rita all those years ago, because Dad and Mom are buried here, just a six-minute walk away. I think he would've wanted that.

I stare at the huge pictures that ring the urn on its pedestal. Into my brother's face, and the face of my nephew.

Something shifts inside me, a wave rippling along an endless, unmediated extension.

Harrison.

His body didn't turn up with my brother's or the boat, and I alone know it never will. My brother's final secret, the very last to warm his grave. Because I know Dexter's son is alive, somewhere. Maybe in Argentina. Maybe not. I don't know if the bitch ever made it down there, or if she truly loves my brother enough to keep his son, or if she even knows that he's dead, but she hasn't contacted me. I don't know what's stopped me from siccing the feds up her ass. Or maybe I do, and I don't want to acknowledge it.

I stare at the pictures, at their smiling faces.

And so to the world the last of the Morgans, save one, will be buried here today, witnessed by a handful of people from the department, some friends of friends, and Rita's two children. And me.

I swallow, straighten my blazer, pat my pocket just to check that the eulogy's still in there.

They're coming with the stone next Tuesday. And then it'll be over. All of it.

Another ripple. My hand is bone white as it grips the stone.

And where the fuck do I go from there?

"Hey, you alright?"

I look around, see Quinn at my elbow. He's been attached like a shadow since the shooting. Apparently he sat vigil at my bed when I went under, hardly left once in those 38 hours. He was the first thing I saw when I finally came around. It scared me almost as much as it thrilled me to know how much he cared.

"Yeah," I say. "It's just…" I try to find something to finish the sentence, but it floats away from me. Because the truth is I feel like ten kinds of shit.

"I know," he says, even though he doesn't. He squeezes my shoulder, but lightly, as if afraid that I might shatter under firmer pressure. "But I'm here for you. We all are." He nods around at the small crowd. I focus on the back of Batista's head, which looks strangely naked without his hat. He's in the center of a ring of cops, talking quietly.

"Thanks," I say, forcing a smile. I feel like I'm being pulled further away by the second. I want to reach out for him, but I'm checked by an invisible tether. Because I know that right now I'm safest here, locked down beneath the deep freeze.

"I think we're all ready, if you are." His gaze is soft. It's still strange to see the tenderness there, beneath that whole hard-ass New York cop thing he cultivates. "But it's up to you."

I nod, "No. I'm ready."

He nods back, finally lets his hand slip from my shoulder. "I'll go tell everyone."

"Thanks," I say, truly grateful that I don't have to do that. For a moment I just watch him as he heads away and talks to people. Some of them are already sitting down, in the handful of chairs that're scattered around.

Quinn was the last one to see Dexter alive. He said he went into my room, sat there with me awhile, whispered… something to me. And then he left. And then he got in his boat and rode out into the hurricane.

Quinn's avoided talking about it, and I haven't pushed. Every time I think about it my tongue turns to cotton. I don't want to know what it means, if Quinn could've overheard something, or if maybe I did and it's locked somewhere down deep, sound bytes waiting to surface.

A weird hush is falling over everyone, and eyes are turning in my direction. A few of the chairs have been scooted around to face the pedestal. Abruptly, I know that it's time.

Something shudders inside me as I push off the stone and start walking forward, toward the cat litter in an urn that somehow now is supposed to represent my brother. In the silence, somewhere in the distance, a motorcycle farts, fades to a whine. Each unsupported step sends fireworks rippling through my gut, but I grit my teeth, keep going.

Finally, I get to the little stand. I stop just short of it, afraid to get any closer. I'm still afraid to touch the Thing sitting there, and I don't know if I ever will.

And then I just stand here, watch as Astor and her friend take their seats. After a beat I remember the eulogy, pull the fucking thing out and unfold it.

"Uh, thank you all for being here," I start lamely, glancing up from the paper on which I scrawled that to look at everyone gathered around me and Dexter's ashes, some of them sitting, some of them standing around in clumps. Now that I'm up here I can see how few of them there really are. One final, sordid metric for Mr. Invisible. "I know it would mean a lot to my brother to see you all here," I continue, not really knowing if that's true.

Fuck, what the fuck am I doing?

I clear my throat, feel my brows pinch as I look back at the paper for guidance. But suddenly all the well-meaning bullshit I spent so long stringing together doesn't mean anything to me, and the words seem to swim around the page. "Dexter…" I say, stop. A moment of total silence passes, and finally I lower the paper, crumple it back into my pocket. "My brother was hard to get to know," is what I come up with. "He kept the world at arm's length. And he was always like that, even when we were kids." I let my gaze wander, distracted by the muddle of a dozen shallow memories. "Growing up I used to think he just had a ten-foot rod up his ass and nobody— not me, not my father, not his girlfriends, not God or a professional life or children or a hundred fucking boring-ass conventions —would ever be able to remove it," I glance at Masuka for some reason. He looks bizarre in a suit, and with that somber fucking expression on his face.

"But I loved him more than anything," I continue. "He was always keeping me safe, from myself, from the monsters under my bed, and from other monsters, the ones that weren't imaginary." I pause, feel an old shade wrap around my throat. And I remember the news about Saxson, his death in the holding cell. My brother's final gift to me. With a breath I let them go. "No matter how many times I fell apart he was always there to pick up the pieces and put me back together again. He never gave up on me. And no matter how many times I fucked up his sterile-ass apartment and his boring-ass life he always let me back in to do it all over again. Always. And I just sort of took it for granted that he'd always be there for me, to take care of me.

"But I…" I falter. I'm already off script, and inside something yawns, something deep and empty and awful. Something black and bloodless. "I lost him. And I lost my nephew. Just when they were going off to start some new, weird fucking chapter in their lives that I didn't really understand."

The big Nothing is spreading, swallowing up blood and bone. I realize I've been looking at Cody, who's crying quietly into the arms of Paul's mother. I look up and away, at a more distant row of tombstones. At a woman standing there. "I lost them and it doesn't make any fucking sense."

A cool breeze ruffles the trees, and I can feel the sunshine warming my skin under the blazer and the clean, starched blouse. Standing here you'd never know there was ever a storm, that anything terrible ever happened here. And, distantly, from a million years ago, I remember another funeral: a flag pulled off a coffin, folded just so and handed to me with a salute. Not so far from here.

I push up my glasses.

"A couple weeks ago we were just saying goodbye to them, but now all we have left is whatever we can think to say. The rest is ground to dust, or floating somewhere in the ocean." My gaze is drawn back to the woman who's standing in the background, staring down at the stone in front of her. "I don't know how all of you will remember Dexter. Maybe just as the blood guy or the guy with the morning doughnuts. I hope maybe some of you will want to come up after me, to say what you'll remember. But before I…" I break off again, abruptly. The woman's looked up from the stone, and suddenly her eyes find mine.

Without warning, something inside me seems to seize, pitch and roll, and a wave of pain follows. I press my hand to the bullet wound, hissing an oath. Suddenly, the ground tips sideways as everything and the world sears white hot.

Somehow I notice Quinn and Batista twitch toward me, but I shake my head slightly, take a steadying breath. And when I look just to the right of their heads again I find she's staring at me openly now, her arms crossed awkwardly around her waist.

The dizziness passes almost as quickly as it hit, leaving the cemetery and everything in it glazed over in a new, flare-like haze. I look away from the woman as I take another breath, try to remember what the fuck I was trying to say. "I just…" And somehow it comes back to me, and I hear the words leave my mouth as if from a distance, "I wanted to say that I know my brother loved his family more than anything else, more than I think he had any idea how to express, coz god knows Dex was never particularly in touch with his feelings." Something hot and loud is roaring up an internal fault line as the apparition continues to stare at me, and as I avoid her gaze. "And I think he did, in some ways, think of our department as part of his family. Or, at least, as somewhere he could come home to.
"And Harrison…" I focus, blindly, on my nephew's picture, "Harrison was just the sweetest fucking kid I ever knew, sweet enough to crack even Dexter's damn shell. He was as much Rita's kid as he was his father's. And sometimes when I talked to him I could see her in his eyes." I look away, pinch the bridge of my nose between my fingers. "It breaks my fucking heart I'll never get to see him grow up."

For a moment the heat is suffocating, and I feel it overflow the void, force its way out the cracks. My whole body quakes beneath it, under the weight of it, like so much piled dirt. Something like a sob catches in my throat, and I swallow it, gulp down another breath.

There's a soft crunch of grass, and then a pressure at my arm. When I open my eyes Quinn is standing next to me. Gently, he pulls me against him, but I resist the urge to turn and wrap my arms around him, in part because I'm not sure I'm finished, and in part because I feel like that might tear my stitches out.

So instead I just lean against him. Swallow and swipe at my eyes. Look back at the people gathered in front of me, at all the cops from my department, some of whom probably only came because the rest of them did. Look away. "I don't know," I say eventually, trying to catch some non-existent train of thought. "They left a big, giant fucking hole in my life, and I don't know if I'll ever be able to fill it again. And I don't know if I can forgive him for it. Because even if he was usually a selfish, distant, inscrutable fucking asshole, he was still my brother, and I loved him."

I stop, and instantly everything fractures, starts sliding apart. Nothing makes sense. It all suddenly seems so ridiculous, how much I can't say, how much he got away with, how little the people that came to this fucking farcical funeral really knew my brother.

Except her.

Number Thirteen.

Something balloons up my throat, and I sob back a peal of horrible, inappropriate laughter. Because I don't know what the fuck we're even doing here. Because if it wasn't all so fucking bright and crystal clear, if I couldn't feel the grass beneath my feet, I wouldn't be sure that I'm not actually dead or, if not, then still laying on that bed, locked deep in a prison without bars.

For several long, demented moments I feel myself unwind in the entropy, in the pain spasming up and down my core as the laughter climbs up my throat with a pickaxe, as the last of it falls to pieces. As my breath rips into sobs, Quinn pulls me the rest of the way toward him, and I pull off my glasses, bury my face in his shoulder. He's whispering something to me, but whatever it is I can't understand it, and his grip is still too light, far too gentle. But in the agony I crush myself against him, try to find something stable there, because suddenly I'm terrified that I'm about to fall off the fucking world.

Because nothing makes sense anymore, and I can barely remember the last time it did. Because I don't know what it means that it's over. Because a long time ago I used to have nightmares of dying in the ocean, of drowning it, of sucking cold, briny water through my nose as I sank down into the black like an anchor.

(how long where were we when we lost)

But eventually it yields. Reality trickles back, slowly fills in the gaps. As the waves roll in, I feel Quinn lead me away, and I allow him to. And as we walk some small, unaffected part of me wonders, from its seat on the Moon, what all my old subordinates must think of me.

Quinn's talking again. And finally his words filter through, though their meaning is still stuck in the grate. "You want to sit down?" he's asking.

The cemetery snaps back into focus. I realize he's taken me just to the right of everyone else, near the tombstone I was leaning against earlier, to an empty chair. I pull away from him slightly to stare at it, and I find I can't remember what I'm supposed to do with it.

"You sure you're okay?" he mumbles in my ear.

I feel dazed as I look between him and the chair. And finally I realize that it's the bullet hole that hurts so fucking badly, like maybe it was set on fire. At some point my hand moved down to cover it, as if that would help.

"Are you in pain?"

My thoughts are dying, strangled in the smoke. "Help me down?" I manage, even though I'm sure that it's only going to make it worse.

"Yeah, sure." His damn mumbly-grumbly voice.

My breath fires out like a piston as he helps lower me into the cheap, plastic chair. And all at once the pain jumps triple-fold, breaks the meter, and everything melts away, dissolves into battery acid. Once again I find myself wishing, suddenly and acutely, that I was dead.

"Hey, you alright?"

"My stitches," I gasp. My hands shake violently as I push back the blazer and pull my blouse out of my pants.

Finally, he understands what I'm trying to do. He stops my hands with his, then lifts the shirt. A single, cool finger taps skin, and I swallow a scream.

"They're fine, Deb," he says, after an eternity.

"They can't be," I whisper. My teeth are going to crack between themselves.

"Do you want me to grab your meds from the car?"

"I just took some a couple hours ago." I look down, but I can't see the stitches at this angle, under the shirt and his ham hands.

"Do you need to go?"

I follow his words, a string through the maze, and they lead me back up to his face. And suddenly I remember where I am, what we're doing here. I can hear low voices buzzing somewhere in the vicinity.

"No," I shake my head, trying to clear the haze. "I just… need to fucking sit here."

"You sure?"

Gunmetal blue eyes, pinched in concern. I remember my blood all over the concrete, spilling hot between my fingers. My brother, and our one, last, impulsive hug.

(This is just for now. It's not forever.)

"I have to be here," I tell them.

For a second he says nothing, but then, eventually, "Alright."

Nodding, I lean back. As I reach up to smooth away my hair I realize I'm still holding my sunglasses, and I push them back on, then, slowly, blow out a breath. Already the pain is creeping back to normal, to something I can screw a cap on.

But as he stands back up my mouth pops open, "Stay here." I look up at him.

"I'm not going anywhere," he says. He squeezes my shoulder. It doesn't escape me that from where he's standing he's blocking my view from almost everyone else, and I don't know if the privacy makes me feel safer or not. But with a sudden flush of shame I pull my blazer back around my waist and hold it there, direct my vision somewhere, anywhere else.

And as I do I feel the back of my neck itch. I know she's still there, somewhere. But maybe if I sit here long enough, maybe if I just ignore her, she'll go away. But even as I think that some small, idiotic part of me hopes she won't.

As I ease another breath out between my teeth, trying, despite myself, to figure out how to signal her without attracting Quinn's notice, I spot movement in my periphery, hear a throat clear. When I look right I see Masuka standing up there, in the spot I recently vacated. His face is all knotted up, but it's a second before it registers: those are tears. All at once the features of the short, bug-eyed lab tech seem somehow alien, like he's merely some far-removed relative of the fucker who sits behind my old desk.

"I, uh, wrote something down. It's not very long, but I wanted to say something," he says after wiping his eyes. He takes a second to push his glasses up his nose, then clears his throat again, looks down at the single, neatly-folded piece of paper in his hand. Slowly, he unwraps it. "We came here today to honor and remember our friend, Dexter Morgan," he begins, voice stiff and controlled. "I just wanted to share a few of the things I'll remember about him.

"Dexter was one of the first people in Miami Metro that I met back when I first started on. That was in 1998, and he'd already been there a couple years. There aren't many people left who were around back then, and the department's changed a lot over the last fourteen years— people moving up and out or retiring or dying or whatever. But there was one thing that never changed through all that, and that was Dexter. For those fourteen years I knew him, pretty much every day he brought in doughnuts, sat down in his office, did his reports, and left. Like clockwork.

"We used to make a lot of jokes about Dex. Called him Opie. Anal retentive. A fun sponge. But I think that's what made him so easy to work with. He always just showed up and did his job. He never complained about anything, not even that one time I got his computer confiscated because I downloaded a couple hundred megs of centaur porn onto it while he was at a conference in like Tampa or something."

I feel another bout of horrible, infelicitous laughter lapping at the pit of my stomach. Because for some reason it clicks, and for some, awful reason, I don't understand it: he's grieving.

"But Dexter was also one of my best friends," he continues, utterly oblivious to what's seething inside me. "You can't work with someone that long without thinking of them like family. And sometimes to me Dexter was like the doofy, incredibly boring, older brother I never had." I half expect him to look at me when he pauses then, maybe out of some kind of weird solidarity, but instead he chokes back a little sob, wipes his eyes again.

And as I stare at him it starts happening again. The melting. Peeps in a microwave.

Instinctively, I wrap my arms around my side.

"—miss you, Dex," I tune back into his voice. "I hope you have fun in that big party in the sky. Or, you know, whatever the fuck happens when you kick it." With that, he refolds the sheet, looks around at everyone. "Thanks for listening."

His eyes stop on me, and in that split second it erupts again. That goddamn hysteria, or whatever the fuck it is, starts geysering up my throat.

(they don't know they'll never know they have no idea everything he ever was was a lie every action a piece of the mask every one)

(who found out is dead victims of all that greed and blackness in his heart that it took so long for me to recognize or forgive and that)

(we murdered to protect)

Desperately, with every bit of strength I have, I try to force it back down. I shake slightly under the strain, feel my side burn. Feel Quinn squeezing my shoulder again. And somehow that makes it worse.

(we that we murdered that we got away with that we did)

(she died with my name on her lips)

(and he never cared)

I double over slightly, still holding myself, as my insides part like continents. I don't know what I'm doing or what I'm feeling, if there's a name for it. I don't know that I can stop it. Because it's too much, everything that's happened. It's too much for me to bear alone. And at least when he was here I had him to blame it on, him to slam the door on, him to drive into a lake.

But somehow all that he was— the man who outsmarted me and Lundy and most of the department, who murdered close to a hundred fucking people or maybe more —has been reduced to fit inside a cylinder about the size of a pepper grinder.

(and they think he killed himself)

Not that anyone's said it. And not that anyone would have the slightest fucking clue why he did it.

The thought occurs, suddenly, horribly. Triggers another wave of laughter to choke on.

(what do they think it's coz he couldn't live without me)

And then I hear it. I open my eyes, find the pedestal automatically, feel a drop of something acidic. Standing now just to the left of it is Batista. He's taken off his sunglasses, rebuttoned his suit. The sorrow on his face is real. He's faced more loss than anyone, these last few years.

I don't know if I can fucking take it. I don't know that when he opens his mouth I'm not going explode all over Quinn and the other cops in my department and this lovely, manicured grass, and suddenly all those surgeries and all that time spent keeping me alive will have been for nothing. And I can't help but imagine it: Quinn trying to wash the gore from his nicest, most expensive suit, the one he keeps in a bag in his closet so it doesn't get dusty; Dexter pinning his little red strings from all around the lawn back to this chair, like it's the epicenter of some shitty fucking art installation.

(but he's dead he's gone and for all I know he really did kill himself finished the job I was too)

(I'm losing my fucking mind)

"—Vince. I think I'm actually the only one left from those days. But I think back when they hired him on they were still keeping all the lab guys in a different building, like with the coroner or something—"

Batista's words swim in and out of focus. I'm afraid to listen to them. I'm afraid to see how much he cares.

My breath is shallow and ragged. It's making me dizzy. I can feel hands on my shoulders, gently massaging. Random, disjointed memories.

(You really want to play the what-if game? What if you weren't a serial killer?)

I see his face floating there in front of me. All twisted up in hostility, and in something I once refused to label as guilt. And, sometimes, maybe, a rare suggestion of regret. Doubt. An almost child-like bewilderment.

(We'll always be together, right?)

"—bear claw every morning. Sometimes I think maybe I have him to thank for this." He smiles, gestures at his stomach. "I don't remember when that started. I think it was when they decided to move the techs into the new building. Well, I say new…"

The images are coming faster now, conjuring up the traces of our old, lost selves.

That first day I went back to school, after Dad died. Dexter dropped me off in his shitty old car, the one that got totaled a couple years later when someone clipped the door off in a parking lot. We both just sat there for what felt like forever, staring out the windshield. Finally, he turned to me, opened his mouth. "Have a nice day," he said. Then I left the car, ended up in the bathroom five minutes later bawling my eyes out.

Flash.

That weird, shitty fucking college party when that asshole Greg dumped me in front of everyone. For some reason I went back to Dexter's apartment, but I didn't have a key to get in so I just fell asleep against his door. He found me at like four AM, and when I asked him where the hell he'd been he told me it was none of my business and to just come inside.

That day I called him after we all had to get tased at the Academy. His half-laugh, like he wasn't sure if it was funny. Or like he wasn't sure how to do it properly.

"—and he was one helluva bowler. First time Miami Metro ever won anything against the Sheriff's Department and MDFR was when he joined. We were real sorry to see him go, but we understood, with his kid and all. There just wasn't—"

That night of road accident number twenty-something, when I invited myself over, got drunk and asked him how he dealt with it, all the carnage every day. He asked me if I regretted becoming a cop. I said no.

Dad's funeral. Silently eating the neighbor's tuna casserole in front of the TV. Neither of us had the slightest fucking idea how to cook. Not that Dad did either. Not that we ever really learned.

Rita's funeral. Hours of waiting under the sun. We were all sweating. He never told me where he went, why he left his son with his crazy fucking downstairs neighbor or why he told her I'd know what to do.

The shipping container. LaGuerta slumped on the floor. The smell of gunpowder and iron. Somehow I hit her. Somehow I killed her, instantly. She was dead when I hugged her, already desperate to take it back.

(This is not who you are!)

Something barks out of me, but I swallow the rest of it. And I can still hear Batista talking, like he's tuned in from some distant station in another county. And everything he says is just so fucking ridiculous.

"Honestly, I was surprised when he put in his papers. I kind of expected Dexter to always be there. He was like a permanent fixture in the building. Half the time you didn't even notice him, but he was always there, every day. I don't know how many thousands—"

I can see him, exactly as he was that night. The way he stared at me, like he was amazed I made that choice. Because there was a moment where he resigned himself, when he threw down the knife, when he gave me permission.

And there was a moment where I saw him through my sites. Where I imagined it, what it'd feel like.

(Do what you've got to do.)

Dimly, I notice Quinn squat down beside me. He unpeels my hand from my side, rubs it gently. My breath comes in strangled wheezes as I glance at him, then away again. But it was enough to break me from the loop, to bring me halfway back.

Batista's voice filters in. "Anyway, that's all I wanted to say," he says. "And, Deb," I flinch, look up at my old friend, "I know you said you didn't really want to do a wake, but tonight I'm hosting a private party at Papa's. It'd mean a lot to me if you could make it. You know, if you're feeling up to it."

I stare at him, hit the rewind button. The realization that I have to speak seems to flow through my body in slow motion. When I finally open my mouth my voice sounds raspy and slightly distorted, as if I'm hearing it from the bottom of a well. "Yeah," I hear myself promise. "Of course I'll be there."

His face seems to light up a shade, and he flashes a forty-watt smile. "You don't know how happy that makes me."

I can feel his simple, uncomplicated, unwavering affection pour into me, and it seems to curdle in my stomach. All at once I remember why I left to begin with, why I ran away from Miami.

I killed LaGuerta, I want to tell him. I murdered her with my own hands, that night you were supposed to retire. I killed her because she realized Dexter was the Bay Harbor Butcher. Dexter was a goddamn fucking serial killer, and you want to throw a party for him.

Instead I call up the best smile I can manage. Nod. Suck in another breath.

For a second Batista glances around at everyone, still smiling in that kind, sad way. And then he starts walking away from the urn, and it's with a bolt of horror that I realize he's heading toward me. Sudden, mindfucking panic blows everything else away as he approaches, as Quinn gets up and moves back behind me. Wildly, insanely, I can't help but wonder if he somehow heard my thoughts.

But when he gets to me he just reaches down, squeezes my shoulder. "I'm truly sorry for your loss, Deb," he says. "I hope you know you've got the support of the whole department behind you, and me."

My throat and all the muscles in my face constrict painfully. I choke again, squeeze my eyes tight against a sudden burn there. "Thanks, Angel," I whisper when I open them again. "You guys are all I fucking have left."

He smiles and sniffs, wipes away his own tears. "We always will be."

"I don't know what I did to fucking deserve it," I laugh quietly, mournfully. For a second I press my fingers into my forehead, then I clear my throat and look up again.

"Of course you deserve it," he says. His voice is husky with grief. "I'm just so grateful that we still have you here with us."

I stare up at him. Pain far worse than any bullet, worse than anything else I've been feeling this whole fucking day, for the last fucking year, is rising fast, burning away every inch of me, drowning everything else.

I'm sorry, I want to tell him. I'm so fucking sorry.

The tears don't come easily. They claw and squeeze their way out, fight for every micrometer. Without really knowing what I'm doing, without really deciding anything, I force myself up and wrap my arms around him, dissolving into a sudden, violent rack of sobs. Like Quinn he holds me softly, as if he, too, is afraid I might snap in half.

I crumble against him as the last of it collapses, as it all comes crashing down. Pain worse than murder. Pain worse than anything. Like guilt. Like something that could be grief.

I cry. For everything we've lost, for everything we've done. For my father, for LaGuerta, for Harrison, for Doakes, for Batista, for Rita and her kids, for Lundy, for everyone I can't even fucking remember. For me.

For my brother.

The pain is so intense I lose all connection. It pounds it all away. Grinds it down.

I'm so sorry, I hear myself saying over and over, or maybe I just think it. I'm so sorry.

It comes back eventually, piece by piece, or just chips away. The pressure. Slowly it crawls back to a normal rhythm. Reality seeps in. A car honking, quiet conversation, the ragged cadence of my breath. Batista feels like a big, soggy bear under my face, this particular section of his suit soaked through with tears. And possibly snot.

I release something like an embarrassed laugh as I finally push myself away, rub my face with the back of my hand. "I'm sorry," I say, unable to look at him. I can feel my sunglasses digging into my hair, but I can't remember how they got there.

"For what?"

I drop my hand, sniffing. When I force myself to meet his gaze I feel my stomach drop a couple flights at the warmth I find there. It still makes me feel like such a piece of shit for wanting so badly to accept it. "I don't know," I murmur.

"I know maybe it doesn't seem like it, but everything's gonna be alright. Eventually," he squeezes my shoulder, searches my eyes for something I'm not sure is there. "I promise."

"Yeah," I nod, reaching up to grip his hand.

And for a beat we just stand here, something quiet passing between us, something I remember once being desperate for. But then he retracts his hand. "I'll give you a minute," he says. "Or however long you need."

I nod again, mutely, and something seems to tear off of me as he goes. Before I can really figure out what it was, Quinn's hand is on my elbow, his voice in my ear. "You alright?"

"Yeah," I nod, clear my throat. "Yeah, I'm okay."

And when I glance right everyone is still over there, though some of them have stood up and moved away. Most of them aren't looking in my direction, maybe out of politeness. I don't know whether I'm grateful or not. I don't know if I feel anything about it or, suddenly, about much of anything. I think maybe it all finally drained away.

I don't know what we're supposed to do now either. I asked to be the one to do it, to put him in the ground, but I can't seem to remember how. I think someone told me.

For what seems like a century none of us move, nothing happens. And it slowly sinks in that it's because I have to be the one to do it. It doesn't end until I decide it does.

But the thought doesn't mean anything to me, like maybe it occurred far away, and to somebody else.

Randomly, for no reason, my gaze continues right, sweeps back to that distant tombstone. And when it gets there I find she's still standing there. Standing there, her face hidden behind her fingers. Because she's crying too, but for the man she'd seen inside the monster, for the person who, to me, blew away like string that night in the church.

My own voice echos up from somewhere, a hundred years ago.

(The vigilante, she has someone in her life, a guy who's helping her, someone that would do anything and everything for her.)

And a body on a table, shadows behind a sheet. The things I never mentioned, to anyone.

(I know what they did to you. I've seen the tapes. I watched them over and over and over.)

Movement to the left. My gaze yo-yos back, lands on Cody. The boy has stood up and is staring up at the pedestal with an expression I can't see from this angle. I can hear the murmur of Paul's mother as she encourages him, but after a long, protracted moment, he sits back down, wraps his arms around her.

He always was a sweet, innocent fucking kid.

For some reason that's what unsticks me. I find myself floating forward, the knowledge of what I have to do hardening inside me, like a promise. When I get up there again, everyone falls silent, suddenly and completely. Because somehow without my having to say it, they all know that this is it: the End, capital E. Whatever the fuck that means.

Slowly, cautiously, I reach forward, take the urn off the podium. The thing is light in my hands, about as heavy as of one of those wrist weights suburban housewives take with them on power walks. Shiny, perfect, brushed steel flashes in the sunshine. Not a speck of dust, a single fingerprint. That great Nothing seems to whistle through me. There's nothing left.

When I turn to look at everyone I find they're all standing now. Everyone staring, waiting. And just to the right, behind everyone's heads, she's watching too. And somehow I know, as we look at each other for a fraction of a moment, that she knows that I know. About her. About all of it.

I cradle the urn in my hands. Something else seems to take over as I walk to the hole in the ground, the one I've been avoiding looking at since I got here. As I crouch next to it I can't help but wonder if they're going to take it back out when we all leave, dig it up and rebury it. That maybe this is as much a part of the act as the rest of it is.

I look down at the urn, and several long, airless moments seem to pass. Fuck knows how many. I glance at Rita's flat little gravestone, set in concrete. Dexter's will look exactly like it. That's what I told the engraver to do. They'll be reset together in new concrete next week. For some reason that I can't remember it seemed really important that I have that done.

The urn seems to lighten as I finally reach forward, until it's like nothing— a small, cylindrical thing made of air and spray paint. I set it into the ground. I let it sink away from me. And then with my hands I take the dirt that's piled there, drop it on top. Fistful after fistful. Each one seems to weigh less than the last. I cover the last suggestion of steel, bury it down. And as I do something horrible seems to wail inside me, tones bouncing off a vast, empty landscape.

And then I run out of dirt.

I smooth it down, feel the soil crawl up under my fingernails. Somewhere above, maybe in that tree over there, birds chirp away. It all seems so ridiculously, relentlessly mundane. Like I'm ten years old again and outside with Mom replanting carrots or whatever the fuck it was, on one of those rare sunny days when she felt strong enough to get out of bed.

But, of course, I'm not.

I stand up when it's done, brush the dirt from my hands, watch the wind pick it up and dance away with it. When I look around at everyone no one's really moved. I wonder if maybe I was supposed to say something over it, something more than I already did, maybe like a prayer or some kind of goodbye, but I don't see anyone holding up a signpost with the answer written on it.

So instead I just say the only thing I can think of: "Thank you all for coming."

And, for whatever reason, I pull my sunglasses down, push them back over my eyes.

The next few minutes drip by. Some people leave almost immediately, are already basically in their cars before the others reach me. One by one they pass, exchange platitudes. Francis stays for a bit. So does Ramos, Yale, Matthews. Paul's parents. I hug the kids. Mention something about Dex's SUV to Astor. I think it's still at the marina. They're gonna stay in town for the night, and did I want to come to breakfast tomorrow morning? I say yes. Cody doesn't really want to go and some part of me doesn't want him to go either, but eventually they do.

Masuka walks up almost nervously, which is a way he's never approached me before. We have a conversation that doesn't seem to be made of anything. Before he leaves I'm seized by the sudden, bizarre impulse to hug him, and when I do he hugs me back. The need to make a joke hangs heavy, but somehow I can't say the words.

And finally it's just Batista and Quinn and a long string of cars driving away. Jamie didn't say anything to me. She just left. If Batista noticed, he doesn't say anything. When he hugs me again his suit is still damp. He reminds me about Papa's. He's gonna swing by Miami Metro on his way back, but he's gonna spend the rest of the day at the restaurant. Officially, the celebration starts at 7. He hopes I might come before then. I tell him I will.

As he walks away I remember his face when he came into my hospital room after I woke up. He started to cry when I said hello. He said they were all scared they'd lost me. It was terrifying to see how much that seemed to break him.

I watch him get into his car.

"You want to get going?" Quinn asks, when I show no outward signs of life. Batista's car is pulling away from the curb. "Or do you want to stay?"

I turn to look at him. And as I do see that she's still standing over there. Watching.

My gaze sticks to her for a moment. But for too long, I realize, as Quinn glances behind him, then back at me. Apparently this time he noticed. "Do you know her?"

Several possible responses pop into my head. For a change, I choose the truth, "Yeah."

His brows wrinkle, and he looks back at her again. Lumen seems visibly rattled at his attention, but before she can do anything I grab Quinn's arm, bring it back to me. "Can you give me a minute, Joey?" I ask.

He searches me for a moment, obviously confused. And I think if it was any other situation, any other day, he would question it. Instead he just says, "Okay." But before he goes he kisses me softly, briefly, squeezes my hand. I don't spare a thought to imagine what he must be thinking, or for what I'm going to say when he asks me about it later. I don't have the energy.

And suddenly, just like that, we're alone, with nothing in between except scattered rows of chairs and headstones and a big, blow-up picture of my brother and Harrison. It feels like thousands of miles, a great, invisible wall of What The Fuck.

But the second Quinn walks away she starts toward me. Her expression is wary and nervous, a deer approaching the highway against all better instincts. I know exactly how she feels.

"Hi," she says awkwardly as she enters earshot. She's wearing a slate-grey knit over slacks, blonde hair tumbling down past her shoulders, a sterling-silver, four-leaf clover hanging around her neck. For some reason I find myself searching for a weapon in the folds of her clothing.

I don't reply, just cross my arms over my chest. I don't even know what to say to that. I don't know why the fuck I'm standing here either, why I didn't follow Quinn back to the car.

She stops just short of friendly range. For a long moment we just look at each other. I remember the first and only time we really met, with Dexter standing between us in the house, oblivious to our mutual surprise at having found the other there. She's my tenant, he said. Like that even made any sense.

(Jesus fucking christ, Dexter. You moved your girlfriend into the house where Trinity murdered your wife so you could kill together.)

"I guess you know who I am," she says when I offer nothing.

An unpleasant smile pulls at my face. "I remember you, Lumen," I say. "Or should I say Number Thirteen? The other half of Dexter's dynamic duo."

She winces.

I feel that old ugliness well up, the way it did with my brother. "Why the fuck did you come here?"

I don't know if she's as surprised by the venom in my voice as I am, but she doesn't step away. "I don't know," she says after a moment. "I guess I thought I owed him something. Everything." She pauses. "My life."

Despite myself I can hear them. The screams from the tapes, echoing around my skull. And I can see them, see all those fucking girls, like if I closed my eyes and reached out, my fingertips would hit that computer screen again.

"I didn't know if I should come here," she says. "I almost just waited for you to leave. But when you saw me…"

"What?" I ask, even though I already know the answer.

"I knew. I knew you remembered me. And, truthfully, I wanted to talk to you. That's part of why I came."

Again I don't know what to say, but this time she waits for me to come up with something. "Yeah," I say eventually. "I guess I do too." And with the admission some of that putrid whatever inside me seems to shift, drain away. In its place I just feel tired. And sad.

I nod at the chairs, let my hands fall down my sides. "Want to sit down?"

"Sure." She watches me as I walk forward, then kind of reaches out, retracts halfway there. "Do you, uh, want help?"

I stop in front of the chair, let my gaze sharpen into a glare.

"I heard what happened to you," she adds, as if that wasn't clear. As if there's anyone in the whole fucking city who doesn't know.

"No," I say shortly. But that doesn't mean it doesn't hurt like a bitch as I take a seat. I blow out a breath at the sudden rush of static, slowly lean forward. When it finally clears again I find she's sitting there beside me, watching me with something that looks disturbingly like concern.

And if I wasn't so fucking tired, if I wasn't so empty, I'd almost find it funny.

"When did you find out?" she asks. "When I… he said you didn't know."

"Last year," it feels weird to admit it. Weirder that it wasn't even that long ago, that everything managed to fall apart so fucking quickly. I laugh softly, because it isn't funny. "I fucking walked in on him." I can't believe I can actually say the words.

"Oh," she says. "So I guess he didn't stop then, after me."

At that I laugh again, but more sourly. "No," is all I manage to say.

Something I don't try to read flashes across her face. She looks away, studies the grass. "There was a lot I never asked him. I mean, I knew he'd been doing it before he found me. Obviously he was going to keep doing it when I left."

I look straight ahead, at the now empty podium, down at the little patch of brown where I buried him. But I can feel myself being pulled away, stepping back into Jordan Chase's house of hells. At the time I didn't really want to acknowledge why I went to that camp alone, why when I told dispatch where I was going I didn't ask for backup. But lately I've known, with an exhausting sort of clarity, that I'd gone there to kill him. Because some fucked up part of me identified with this faceless, miraculous survivor, saw myself in her. Was almost jealous of her and those conscious, bloody endings. I'd thought that maybe if Chase attacked me, that if I killed him it would fix what was broken inside me. Everything that Brian Moser and Christine Hill ripped away before their suicides.

It was an ugliness I tried to bury.

"How did he find you?" I ask the dirt. I feel it weighing down.

She doesn't answer for a beat. Then, "He killed Boyd Fowler. I was there. I saw him do it. He saw me and took me away, nursed me back into a human being again."

"And then he helped you hunt down the rest of them," I say.

"Yeah."

"Were you together?" I want to hear her say it, because Dexter never wanted to admit it.

Another pause. "Yeah. Later."

I nod. And even though I knew that it still makes me a little sick. "How long did it go on?"

"I left after Jordan. After we…" she trails off. "I left the next day. I realized that whatever it was that made me do it, that it was gone. I knew that it was finally time to go home."

"Did it help?" I find myself asking the thing I've, secretly, wanted so badly to know.

"Yes," something seems to harden in her voice. When I look at her again her gaze is a thousand miles away, lost in some internal perdition. And suddenly I know that everything I believed about her was probably true. "I've never regretted what we did."

I look away.

"Dexter told me you figured us out," she says. "He said you called us the vigilante killers, and that you knew we were in love."

"Were you?" I can't help asking.

"I don't know," she says, then pauses again. Several moments pass in silence, and I don't interrupt them. "It was more complicated than that," she says eventually. "I was… lost. We both were. But he did more than save my life. He gave it back to me. He made me feel safe again, helped me take back what they stole from me.

"But he was in a lot of pain. He didn't like to talk about it, or maybe he just didn't know how to, but I could tell. He felt guilty about what happened to his wife. Even though he couldn't help her, he could save me, and I think that was the only way he knew how to deal with it."

I remember all those vague feelings of romanticism. I remember expressing them to Dexter. Sometimes, somehow, it still astounds me how fucking stupid I was.

"But I know I didn't help him as much as he helped me. I felt guilty about leaving, because even though I knew it was time it felt like I was abandoning him. Sometimes…" Pause. "I thought about calling him, but I didn't want to open that door again. I guess I was afraid what I might find on the other side."

I stare hard at some speck of nothing. Because I know what she's talking about. It was on the other side of that door that I lost almost everything I knew about myself.

"Do you…" she stops. It's a long moment before I can force myself to look at her again. "Did he ever find what he was looking for?"

I let the last year scroll by in flashes, think of the box of slides I dug out of his air vent, think of all those bodies the FBI pulled up out of the ocean and all the rest we never found. Travis Marshall, Ray Speltzer, Vogel, LaGuerta, Hannah McFuckFace and his random decision to run away with her and start a fucking alpaca farm in Argentina, or whatever the hell they were planning to do.

"No," I say shortly, then look away again. In truth, I really don't have any fucking idea. Because for as much as I wanted it to be true, that Dexter's little spirit journey or mid-life crisis or mad infatuation would drive him toward a peace neither I nor anyone else could give him, I can't see McKay as anything but a liar, and my brother as anything but lost in a world he could only understand by manipulating it to fit his narrative and his… "Code."

"Oh," is all she says.

For a long time we sit here. I feel myself get lost somewhere in the past, in all the things I'll never get to know, in all the things I still can't accept or acknowledge. I wonder at the brokenness that drove my brother and the woman sitting next to me together, and that brought her back here today. I wonder what it means for me that eventually I'm going to have to leave him here and go on without him.

"I wanted to ask you," she says, finally breaking the silence. "Why did you let us go? I mean, you were there. You saw everything. You saw what we did to Jordan."

I glance toward her, away again. That ugliness seems to uncoil inside me. And with it I feel an old shadow of pain, of total, blind, soul-shredding terror. And for the first time since that day in the basement I can finally admit that any of it happened. "Because I was rooting for you," I say quietly. "I'd think Dexter of all people would've known why."

She shakes her head, "No, he never said."

I feel the truth well up, push at the base of my tongue, but I swallow it. "I watched those fucking rape tapes a thousand times," I say instead, because it's just as true, even if it's not the reason. "Over and over and over. Until I saw them in my fucking sleep. Until every detail burned itself into the back of my eyes. I still don't know what the fuck I was searching for in them, but I couldn't stop myself.

"And then we just kept finding out more about those guys." I smooth my hair back, feel my brow pinch. "I was actually happy when I realized why they were disappearing." I exhale. "It made me feel like maybe there was some justice in this goddamn broken world.

"And then I realized who was behind it. That it was somebody who'd escaped. Who'd survived them."

When I look at her I see it blaze again inside her. Something hot and jagged, and that I understand.

And suddenly I want her to know everything, to know the rest of it, for her to know me the way I knew her. "I saw myself in you," I say. And it feels like I'm pleading with her as I search her gaze. "I knew you. I knew how you felt, or a part of it."

I almost hear it click in her mind as her mouth opens, slowly. Her expression seems to blur. "What do you mean?"

The answer comes rushing up hot and giddy, because even after all this time it still terrifies me to remember, to let it out into daylight. "I…" My heart throbs painfully. "Somebody took me once," I tell her. "Somebody who had targeted me, who wanted to torture and murder me just to make a point. He waited until I trusted him, until I fell in love with him, before he did it." I feel the black swallowing me up again, eating at nerve endings. His voice in my ear.

(So desperate to fall in love.)

(no that's not who I am anymore that's not who I am that person is dead she died on that table)

"I know what it is to be powerless," I say over his voice and mine, over the memory. "To have to lay there and know I'm gonna die screaming and there's not a fucking thing I can do about it. To be left in some pitch-dark garage and have to wait for the moment he decided to come in and start sawing me apart. And even now I can still feel it," I rub my neck. "What he did to me. What he was going to do."

Everything seems to tunnel down, blinks out the sun as my mouth goes dry. Plastic wrap and duct tape. A body in a trunk.

When I drop my hand it evaporates, instantly, but it's a moment before I look back over at her. "What you went through…" I fight for traction. "I meant what I said to you in that basement. It's a miracle you survived it. It's a miracle that you're sitting here." Something dangerous tugs at my throat. I let it tumble out, finally, after all this time, "And maybe I was even a little envious of you, that you were able to end things on your terms."

She studies me for awhile, her face softened in something that could be concern, or pity, or something else. "How did you escape?" she asks eventually.

At that I smile thinly. "Dexter. He… saved me." But now there's a hitch, a blip in the narrative, something I was too terrified to ask him about. "I guess we have that in common too," I add. But there's the rest of it, the other half I'm leaving out. That the Ice Truck Killer was Dexter's brother. For some reason I feel the need to protect her from that.

Because there's still a question there. Because last year I thought I remembered something. A conversation, words filtered through a druggy haze, shadows falling across my eyelids. I don't know if what I heard was real. I don't want to know, and I'll never know. It doesn't matter anymore.

"What happened to him?" her voice pulls me away from that garage, from whatever it was that really happened that night. "The person who… did that to you?"

I laugh again, "He killed himself. Fucking cowardly piece of shit." I flash on walking into that meat locker, seeing him hanging there. And I remember when I finally read his note months later, how much it pissed me off.

"I'm sorry," she offers.

"I am too," I say. "For both of us."

We seem to breathe out together as we look out in random, opposing directions. The wall's already coming back up, but I feel safer behind it now than I did before, oddly lighter. Because lately all my secrets have been so big and terrible, and I've had to hold onto them alone, something I never used to do. I've been so desperate for confession.

As the minutes pass I can feel some of that weight drip away, down somewhere between us. But only some of it.

"I'm not leaving for a couple days," she says suddenly. I don't know how long we've been sitting here like this. "I…" she stops, then pulls her purse into her lap and starts digging around in it. I watch her without saying anything as she pulls out a receipt and a pen, then smooths the paper out on her knee and scrawls something on it. "This is my number." She holds it out. "I don't know if you want to talk again, or if you even want to see me again, but here. Just in case."

I look between her and the receipt, then take it. "Thanks," I say. And then another impulse hits me, and I find myself gesturing for her pen. "May I?"

"Sure." She looks almost surprised, but she hands it to me.

Quickly, without really letting myself think about it, I rip the paper in half, write my number on the blank piece, then hand it and the pen back to her. "That's my cell," I say. But even as she takes it, I find I have no idea why I did that, or if we'll ever use them.

"Thanks," she says. She looks at the slip for a long moment, then drops it into her purse, zips it up. And when that's done she sort of hugs it to her chest, glances up and away, at the empty podium and the pictures. "I think it's time for me to go."

Before I can think of anything to say, she's already getting up. She throws her bag over her shoulder and pushes some hair behind her ear, and when she does I can just make out faint scars along her collarbone.

She looks down at me. I want to stand too, whether out of politeness or something else, but I can't seem to. "Thank you… for everything," she says.

I nod. It's all I can really think to do.

She seems like she wants to say something else. Or maybe she doesn't. For a second neither of us do anything. Another breeze rolls through, rattles the poster boards in their stands, pushes away some of the heat. Then she turns and walks away.

I don't watch her go.

Instead I look down at my hands, at the half a receipt I'm still holding. My fingers are dirty and the paper is kind of smudged. Underneath the dirt is a phone number with an area code I don't recognize. I try to imagine myself dialing it, try to think of what I would say if she answered. Her footsteps have already faded away.

I shove it into my pocket with the eulogy I couldn't read. Set my elbows on my thighs, blow out a breath through my teeth at the faint stab of pain.

Soon that stillness washes over me, pulls me back under. I feel my blood drain away from it, feel it slowly harden to ice. I think about the fact that all his shit is already boxed up in his apartment, all stacked up and neatly labeled and ready to go, sitting just where he left it for me. I was going to ship it to him when he had an address for me, when he knew where they were going. I was. Now it's all just… sitting there. All of it. Everything.

I ended up with most of it. The lawyer who came after they confirmed his death said I was the beneficiary for his assets and some of his money, the rest of which was split between the kids. Harrison's portion went to me. The car I'm giving to Astor tomorrow. The boat was lost to the ocean, but its insurance wasn't. And then there's the apartments. I don't know what to do with them.

I don't know what to do with any of it. I've thought about just hiring some guys in a truck to take it away. But I know I'll have to go there eventually, have to open that door and walk inside and figure it out. I can't help but wonder about everything he kept in that trunk, about all the knives and plastic sheeting and his blood slides, if all that shit was boxed up too. Knowing my brother, if it was it'll be in a box labeled "KILLING TOOLS - BEDROOM" in his clean, block print.

I snort at the thought.

Dexter.

Feel myself deflate.

Tonight is Batista's party. Tuesday the engraver comes. By next month I'll hopefully be back at work, back at my old desk, back where I belong. They'll probably have hired someone else by then, some new butt buddy for Masuka. I wonder which geek'll take my brother's old station, or if Masuka hasn't already taken it. I imagine what it'll be like to walk in and set all my shit down and go for the morning briefing knowing that he won't be there, and that he never will be. That it'll be someone else in there instead. He'll never show up again with that damn doughnut box.

Something aches inside me.

I close my eyes. I remember the last conversation we had, before I sank into the coma. He was trying to apologize, and I was trying to throw him out. For some reason it pissed me off to see him standing there when he was supposed to be gone. It pissed me off that he chose that moment, of all moments, to finally try to take some of the guilt I've been dragging around away from me, as I laid there half dead. I told him to go, and to tell me goodbye. And he did.

Goodbye.

I open my eyes again, look at one of the pictures. It's the best one I had of him on my laptop. I took it at Harrison's second birthday, when he wasn't really paying attention to me. I'm a shitty fucking photographer, and I'm not sure how or why I ended up with the camera, but he looked good in this one. Happy. The laugh seemed to reached his eyes.

Another ache.

I dig my fingernails into my palm. Slowly push myself to my feet.

I don't know what it means that he's gone. I barely knew what it meant when he was here. My brother: father, lab guy, avenger, serial killer. In the end I don't know which of them he really was, or if it even matters. Maybe it only used to.

I inhale, smell grass and pine trees.

And I don't know what it means that I'm even still here at all, that somehow I survived. That somehow I have a future again. I'd thought I'd blown that away forever that night in the shipping container. I'd felt it spilling away from me, flowing red between my fingers, washing out all over the concrete. In the delirium I'd felt my sins pulling me, giddily, down to Hell.

And yet they came for me, pulled me off the floor. Stuffed me full of drugs and blood transfusions and handed me back my life.

Somehow I lost him in the process.

I stare at the picture, at his smiling face.

And, suddenly, I know that this is it. That this is where it stops. That it's finally time to walk away— for now, and maybe for forever.

His last words to me seem to echo up, fill something very small inside me. When I exhale it I feel it gently unwind. Feel their ghosts stir up the dust.

I turn away.

Goodbye, Dexter.