A/N: This is very canon heavy, and contains spoilers for all eight seasons. But it has a focus on episodes There's Something About Harry (2x10), and Remember the Monsters? (8x12 series finale).
I had originally included background canon information in the narrative, but had to strip it out to meet the challenge word count. I have the full version posted on Ao3.
Dad always became Harry, the seasoned homicide detective, whenever they had one of their 'talks'. Where they discussed Dexter's inability to be normal, human.
When Dad entered his bedroom, closing the door securely behind him, Dexter knew this was going to be one of those talks.
Harry held out a mask Dexter vaguely recognized from the new movie posters. It was a burlap sack with an eye hole cut into it.
This was an unusual start for their special talks.
"Dad?"
"I'm taking you and Debra trick-or-treating," Harry said. "So you need to dress up. You can be Jason."
"But I don't like Halloween," Dexter complained.
"Remember what we've discussed? You need to act normal to blend in. Trick-or-treating is a normal thing kids do."
"Mom doesn't like Halloween," Dexter pointed out. "Which means my dislike for this stupid holiday isn't abnormal."
"It is for a kid your age."
"But you've always let me stay home before."
Harry sighed as he sat down on the bed next to Dexter. "Yes, but that was before. It's different now."
Dexter furrowed his brow at Harry's grave tone. "Different how?"
"I got a call from your teacher today," Harry said. Dexter looked down at those words. He'd been hoping his teacher wouldn't say anything.
"Are you still seeing that woman?" Harry asked. Dexter nodded. "And you only see her on Halloween?" Another nod. "Are you sure you don't remember anything from before?"
'Before' referred to the time before Harry had adopted him.
"I told you Dad, I don't remember a thing."
It was an assurance Dexter's repeated many times. Personally, Dexter didn't think it mattered if he remembered anything or not. The result was still the same.
Harry had told him he'd blocked out the events that had caused him to have these unnatural urges. This need. A need that was only sated when Dexter had killed the neighbor's dog and chopped it up into little pieces.
"Your teacher said you turned around and screamed at an empty corner in the middle of class," Harry said.
Which was the main reason Harry was bringing this up. Even Dexter knew it was unusual to see a woman other people couldn't see. Screaming at her in the middle of class was even more unusual.
"She was always so quiet before," Dexter said. "But this year, she wouldn't stop talking. I couldn't hear what the teacher was saying, so I yelled at her to shut up."
"What was she saying?"
"The same thing over and over again. 'Close your eyes, Dexter.' It was really annoying."
Harry lowered his head, his face scrunching up in a peculiar way. Dexter still had a hard time understanding what certain facial expressions meant. Best he could guess, Harry was about to start shouting or crying, and Dexter couldn't understand why Harry would do either of those things.
"Can I see her because of what happened before?" Dexter asked, the question abruptly burning within him. "That let the Dark Passenger get into me?"
"I think so, son," Harry said. His voice was a bit thicker than normal, but when he lifted his head, Dexter didn't see that odd expression on his face anymore.
"I don't understand why this means I have to go trick-or-treating."
Harry didn't answer right away, twirling the mask in his hands as he thought. "Halloween was different in the past," he began. "It was believed that Halloween was when the boundary between the living and the dead could be crossed. People wore masks to scare away the spirits that crossed that boundary."
"You think she's a spirit?" Dexter was surprised Harry would make such a suggestion.
After some thought, he supposed it wasn't so far fetched. The Dark Passenger is real. The monster that resided within him, and was the source of his need. Who was he to say other demons and spirits didn't exist as well?
"Put the mask on and we'll find out," Harry prompted, holding the mask out to him.
Dexter was dubious, but pulled the mask on. He was able to see out of it surprisingly well, considering the design.
"Do you still see her?" Harry asked.
Dexter turned his head, looking at the far corner of his room, where she'd been standing this entire time. Her bloody arm stump dripping onto the hardwood.
Her limbs slowly fell away throughout the day. First an arm, then a leg. She would pull herself after him with a single arm once her other leg was gone. Leaving it behind in chunks of fleshy, bloody pieces.
She'd lie there as nothing but a torso, face down in her own blood, when she couldn't crawl or pull herself forward any longer. She only disappeared once Halloween passed.
But with this mask on...
"She's gone."
Dexter wore a mask every Halloween after that.
He remembers the woman, briefly, every time the holiday rolls around. But he never asks about her or mentions her again, since a mask is all it takes to keep her away.
It isn't until years later, when Harry walked in on Dexter killing Juan Rinez, that the matter came up again.
"Did it bother you? Seeing that woman lose her limbs piece by piece?"
It was the first time Harry had spoken to him, after vomiting in the kill room and telling Dexter to stay away. So it took Dexter a moment to gather his thoughts, cautious as he was about Harry's state of mind.
"I'm not sure," Dexter finally answered. Harry was pale, and he wasn't sure if it was the result of the conversation, or his declining health. "The sight of it didn't...appeal to the Dark Passenger, like it usually does. I don't know why."
A moment's silence. Then, "Have you ever taken your mask off on Halloween? To see if she was still there?"
"I've never had the desire to," Dexter said. He didn't understand why he would. The woman didn't mean anything to him. "But I have seen her a few times over the years, when I'd wake up Halloween morning to see her standing over my bed. Before I had the chance to put a mask on."
"Did she say anything?" Harry asked, voice a hoarse whisper.
"The same as before. 'Close your eyes, Dexter.'"
Harry closed his eyes at those words, as though the woman had spoken them to him.
"What does any of this matter, Dad?" Dexter asked, when Harry stayed silent.
Harry took a deep breath, opening his eyes. He looked even paler. "I suppose none of it does."
"Then why ask? You haven't even mentioned her in over a decade –"
"I've been wondering if you'd start to see other people," Harry interrupted. "If you'd see Rinez, or the others you've killed."
"I don't know why I would," Dexter said, after a moment of confused silence. "I didn't kill that woman, Dad."
"I know you didn't."
"Then why..."
"That woman was the first to feed your need. It makes sense that you'd see the others that fed it as well."
Harry died the next day, and Dexter forgot all about those unusual words.
Halloween arrived a few weeks after Harry's funeral. It was the first time Dexter broke one of Harry's rules, when he decided to forgo wearing a mask.
He didn't care about seeing that woman. But he thought if he could see her, a stranger, then why couldn't he see Harry? He needed guidance. A conscience to ensure he adhered to The Code.
Dexter waited the entire day to see Harry. Night arrived and there was still no sight of him, or that woman. He even looked around for shades of his victims. Despite Harry's theory, they didn't appear either.
Dexter didn't understand why, until later that night, when he was killing his latest victim.
He was reaching for the bone saw, ready to start cutting the body down for disposal, when he saw his reflection in the gleaming steel of his knives. His face shield was splattered with arterial blood spurts. He removed the face shield and picked up the gleaming butcher's knife, to take a better look at his reflection.
He saw himself, and the table behind him that held his lifeless, plastic wrapped victim.
Dexter didn't need a mask anymore. The Dark Passenger was now more monstrous than any mask he could wear. His need wasn't something he could remove.
Harry was lost to him forever.
Years passed, and Dexter gained a new appreciation for Halloween. It was the one day out of the year where normal people wore masks, instead of him. They were trying to be the monster this time. And Dexter had yet to come across anything that could scare him away.
Dexter forgot about the woman who haunted his childhood on that Hallowed day, until he'd learned she was his mother, Laura Moser. Dexter uncovered many more secrets Harry had kept from him. Despite that, the Dark Passenger was enough to keep the spirits, the haunting of his past, away each year.
It had been enough, until Deb died.
All Dexter ever wanted was to be like other people. He wanted to feel what they feel. Even when he pretended otherwise.
Now that he does, he just wanted it to stop.
When he had released Deb's body into the ocean, seeing her fade away from him forever, he'd been flooded with his newfound humanity. It consumed him. More than his need ever did.
I just want it to stop.
So he faked his own death, and started a new life. A half life. He folded himself into the new identity of a lumberjack. He had nothing but his isolated, barren trailer. There was no hunting. No killing. No human connection. Just his life, day after day, surrounded by landscape and truck loads of logs.
And there was his need.
Deb had asked him once, what his need felt like. He'd told her it felt like blood, trickling down the back of his eyelids. The trickling turned into a flood, filling up all his empty spaces. It was when the blood turned black, pressing, making him feel like his head was going to explode, that he had to do something. The only way to relieve the pressure was to let the blood flow. Spill it from his victims.
Dexter always assumed if he ever became human, his need would disappear. But it hadn't. It was still there, just buried. Debra and Hannah and Harrison had been all that he'd needed to keep his inner monster at bay.
Now that he was without them, isolated, Dexter had nothing to keep the monster buried. It consumed him once more. It left him with that relentless pressure churning inside his skull. The emotions he'd yearned for, but was now cursed with, had been stripped away. Crushed under that flood of black, festering blood.
It was a reprieve and a punishment, all in one. Nothing a monster like him didn't deserve.
It was even worse on Halloween.
Now that his inner monster wasn't being fed, the spirits had returned. He doesn't just see his mother. Dexter sees all of his victims. Some of them have their throats sliced open, blood pouring out. Others have a stab wound in their chest, or an ice pick in their neck.
All of them haunted him throughout the day, reflecting their gruesome ends at the hands of Monster Dexter. At night, some of them try to exact revenge.
Dexter is in his secluded, barren trailer. He's covered in plastic, naked.
He knows it isn't real.
When he closes his eyes, he feels the pillow beneath his head. He feels the warm clothes shielding his body from the constant chill. But when he opens his eyes and glances down, he's wrapped in plastic; strapped to a table and unable to move. Like many of his victims had been. The same victims that were doing this to him now.
His need thrashed around inside him. He can barely hear their chanted words as the black blood pressing inside his skull swirls around within him, itching to get out, threatening to explode. He can't stop himself from baring his teeth at them. He needs to show these spirits who the real monster is.
But he doesn't. He lets the torment of his unsatisfied blood lust rush through him, washing away the remaining specks of humanity. It's another reprieve, another punishment. Nothing he doesn't deserve.
Dexter had stopped referring to his monstrous needs as the Dark Passenger. Hannah had helped him realize he was using it as an excuse to avoid taking responsibility for his dark desires. The need was all his own, not the result of a possessing demon, the way he'd thought for several decades.
But on Halloween, surrounded as he was by spirits, he wondered if the Dark Passenger truly was real. A demon thrashing inside him, threatening to tear him apart if he didn't sate it.
Feeling it churning around, tearing him up, is agony. Dexter knows he can stop it, stop all of this, if he just puts a mask on.
He doesn't. He won't.
It isn't the sight of his mother's, or Rita's spirit, that prevent him from donning a mask. From escaping.
It's Deb.
When he turns his head, heedless of the crinkling plastic tying him down, he sees her, standing alone. Deb doesn't interact, or even seemed aware of the other spirits. She's still shrouded in a white sheet, her skin gray with death. She's staring off into the distance.
Dexter calls to her, over and over, but she doesn't hear him. Or refuses too. She never turns her head. Never looks his way.
Dexter averts his gaze, unable to stare at her for more than a short time. Sometimes it takes his need a bit too long to wash it all away.
Harry is there, next to him.
"Just put on a mask, Dexter."
Dexter can't answer. Miguel has a wire wrapped around his neck, trying to strangle him. Even though Dexter can't feel it, he can't get his voice to work.
He hears a chainsaw fire up, and knows it's Jimenez.
"Close your eyes, Dexter," Laura says, from the corner of the room.
The chain revs.
"Put him down!" That was LaGuerta.
The chainsaw comes down. Dexter doesn't feel the pain, but he knows his leg is being sawed off. Then his arm. He feels blood splatter all over his face. He sees it on the ceiling and the walls.
If he wasn't such an expert in blood splatter, this haunting wouldn't be so realistic.
"Just put your mask on," Harry says again.
I deserve this, Dexter thinks, still unable to say anything. He knows Harry can hear the thought.
He turns his head, even as Miguel yells, "You freak! This isn't over!"
The moment he catches sight of Deb, the wire disappears from his neck. Miguel fades into the background. Dexter can breathe again.
"I did this to her."
"You didn't."
"How can you say that?" Dexter asks. "After what I drove you to do?" He stares at the bottle of pills in Harry's shirt pocket.
"Did you forget what Debra told you?" Harry asked. "The last words she ever spoke to you?"
"I don't want you to feel guilty about this, about anything. About who you were before. Who you are now. You were meant to be happy..."
Dexter would never forget.
"She told me to be happy," he whispered. "Fuckin' happy."
"Then why aren't you?" Harry asks. "Why are you here and not with Harrison? With Hannah?"
How can I be happy when my sister is dead?
Harry looks up, his face grim, as Lila comes over. She stabs Dexter in the heart.
"Do you think this will make it better?" Harry asks.
"It's not supposed to."
The black pool of blood stirs inside of him. Dexter jerks in his restraints; bares his teeth at the converging spirits.
"You can't keep going on like this, son."
Halloween passes, and his need settles. It stops thrashing inside him, but the pressure is even more relentless.
Over the course of the following year, Dexter learns Harry is right. He can't go on like this. His need, having gone so long without release, or light to keep it away, was rotting him from the inside out.
He started to dream of hunting animals. He'd rip them apart with his hands and teeth; soaking in their blood. It wasn't until Dexter woke up one morning, covered in blood and fur and vomit, surrounded by animal carcasses, that he realized it wasn't a dream.
His need was turning him into more of an animal than ever before. Soon Dexter Morgan: husband, father and brother, would be gone. All that would remain was the need. The need that went by many names. The Dark Passenger. The Bay Harbor Butcher. The False Prophet. The Beast.
And then he wouldn't just be killing animals.
It's Halloween again. Brian is talking to him this time.
"What did I tell you little brother?" Brian looks at the far corner, where Rita lies lifeless in a bath tub full of blood. "You can't be the hero and the villain. It doesn't work that way."
"I know," Dexter said. I know that now. "I should have listened to you."
"Close your eyes, Dexter." Laura again.
"Yes, Dexter. Close your eyes," Brian mocks their mother's words. Her last words. "As if that would have been enough to protect you – protect us – from becoming this."
"Close your eyes."
Jimenez, the one who murdered his mother, their mother, in front of their eyes, revs the chainsaw.
Brian watches with intrigued interest as Jimenez saws through Dexter's leg.
"You can end this, you know," Brian said. Dexter can barely hear him over the chainsaw. The Dark Passenger writhes within him as his own blood trickles down his face. "Don't listen to your fake father. Harry wants you to wear a mask, but you know a better way to end all this. Don't you?"
Blood. Dexter knows he can end this with blood. It would be so easy, to take his axe and murder everyone in this podunk town.
"Do it, Dexter. Do it!"
Dexter turns his head towards where Deb is. She's still lifeless, shrouded in white. The sight of her helps him push aside that temptation.
"Listen to me!"
Those are Brian's last words before he fades away.
Then Harry appears. He never showed when Brian was around, for some reason.
Harry put his hand on Dexter's slick, blood covered cheek.
"You can't keep going on like this, son."
Dexter leans into his father's touch, surprised he could feel the warm, calloused hand.
"You're losing yourself."
Dexter knows he's right.
"I don't know what to do," Dexter admits, "how to fix this." He turns again to look at his sister's ghostly form. She's still staring off into the distance, and Dexter wonders if she's been looking for a way to escape him. "There isn't any other way to make this right."
"Losing yourself to your need is as good as dying," Harry said. "Don't let Deb's death be in vain. You have to overcome your need."
Dexter didn't think that was possible.
"It is. Just put on a mask, Dexter. Trust me."
Dexter tries to get up, to free himself from the table, but he can't move. He's still wrapped in plastic. Even knowing it isn't real, he can't will his body to free itself of the imaginary bonds.
"I can't break free."
At those words, Deb, for the first time, moves. Her head turns towards him. Her glossy dead eyes stare right into his. Dexter feels the Dark Passenger, that black pool of blood, freeze inside him.
Water starts to pour out of her, gushing from her ghostly form. The waves crash over Dexter even as they wash the other spirits away. Water keeps pouring out of Deb until the whole trailer is a sunken relic under a vast ocean.
Dexter is free, then. He swims around until he finds an empty sack. Remembering his first mask, he digs his thumbs into the fabric, ripping a hole it in for him to see out of. It isn't until the hastily fashioned mask is pulled over his head, that he can breathe again, though the ocean still surrounds him. It smells like dirt and rotted potatoes.
"Dad," Dexter calls outs. He turns his head, hearing the swish of water as he does so. He can only see out the one eye, but it's enough.
"Dad." He can't find Harry. He'd been washed away with the other spirits.
I still need you.
The frozen monster within was starting to thaw, to shake and batter against its imprisonment. It was going to shatter. Mutilate him from the inside. It was going to kill Dexter, so the monster was all that remained.
The monster pressed. Dexter felt it splinter. Kill, kill, kill.
Then Dexter saw Deb, still shrouded in white. The light in the darkness.
She smiled, bright and warm and alive.
The floodgates opened.
Dexter could feel it, The Beast, draining from his mouth, his nose, his eyes. That black, rotted blood that's grown inside him since he was three years old, was bleeding away. He was choking on it.
He tried to scream, but it wasn't the thick, tar like entity clogging his throat that was the cause.
It was the ocean. The water that had poured out of Deb was now pouring into him, into the empty spaces the need left behind.
It flooded him; filled him with the humanity he had yearned for, then gone to desperate lengths to get rid of. He'd let his need rot within him to chase it away. So he wouldn't have to live with what he'd done.
Deb is dead because of me.
Dexter thought of Hannah. I left her. Then he thought of Harrison. I abandoned my own son.
Dexter couldn't run from the truth any longer.
A sound left his mouth. It was an inhuman, guttural noise. The only thing he could do to endure what consumed him now.
This is how a monster dies.
An eternity seemed to pass, and the Dark Passenger was gone. The trailer was empty. The ocean was flooded within him now. Consuming him. More than his need ever did. He couldn't take it.
Deb was still there. The sight of her just made the pain worse.
The waves crashed within him.
"It's not too late," she said. Her voice sounded far away. Her ethereal form was fading.
Dexter knew after this, if there was an after, he'd never see another spirit again. Even without a mask. The Dark Passenger, and the haunting that came with it, was gone.
"It's not too late," she repeated.
Deb faded away completely. She was lost to him forever.
The ocean swelled inside him, crushing, suffocating. He couldn't take it. Humanity would destroy him in ways his need never could.
Just when he though he'd break, shattering from the inside out, images of Hannah and Harrison appeared in his mind. The waves calmed, even as they continued to churn within him.
It's not too late.
He had to find them. Hannah and Harrison were the only ones who weren't lost to him. Dexter had needed them to tame his need. He needed them now, more than ever, to endure the humanity that swelled within him.
It scared him more than any monster ever did.
Edit: Jan. 1, 2017