This is my version of what happens after Season 7 episode 1. If you haven't seen that episode yet, STOP! Great many SPOILERS follow! That is that last episode that I have seen so far, so please forgive my ignorance if I rip off something from the show or wholly disappoint you by heading in a different direction. It's rated M because I could not do justice to Dexter with anything less.

**I do not own Dexter or any rights to it. The following is of no profit to me except for my own personal enjoyment and the (hopefully) enjoyment of any readers.**

"Did you kill all these people?" Deb asked numbly, staring at Dexter where he stood staring back at her, his expression like a man staring at the firing squad and resigned to his fate.

"I did," he said in a clear monotone after a long pause.

"Dex… Are you a serial killer?" she asked, though it was pretty much rhetorical at this point.

"Yes," he replied hollowly.

"Holy motherfuck…" Deb breathed, fighting the threatening hysteria. Finding the knives hidden in his closet had been a bad sign, but she'd known the truth as soon as she'd found the box of blood slides. She wasn't sure why it hadn't totally hit her until he'd admitted it. Some part of her must have been holding out hope that he'd have some vaguely rational explanation.

"Deb…" she heard Dex's voice say uneasily and she looked at him.

Dex stared at her silently for a long moment, then his eyes dropped to the table in front of her. She followed his gaze and realized that she was gripping her gun where she'd set it down.

An image of lifting the gun, pointing it at Dex, and putting a round through his head flashed through her mind and her stomach turned. Then she imagined shoving him down on the ground and handcuffing him, calling into the station… That didn't sit much better. He was her brother. She loved him. She was in love with him.

"Cocksucker!" she sputtered, letting go of the gun and lurching up out of the chair. Her hands flew to her face in a feeble attempt to keep her head from exploding. She paced quickly to the wall across the room and pressed her forehead against it, sinking slowly down to the floor, unsure if she wanted to break down crying or attack Dexter for putting her in this situation. For being a fucking serial killer!

"Deb," she heard again, this time closer.

More images flashed through her head. Dexter's arm coiling around her throat until she couldn't breathe, waking up bound and helpless while he spoke to her with utter calm, waking up strapped down to a table, naked and helpless again as his knife fell toward her chest, this time with no one to stop it…

A wordless whimper of terror escaped her lips as she lurched up away from where Dexter stood now just out of arm's reach. Too panicked for logic, she found herself crouched in the corner, staring up at Dexter's very white face.

"I would never hurt you, Deb," he said in a very quiet voice.

That small voice, vulnerable as she never remembered hearing it before, cut through her panic like a slap in the face. Despite… everything, she knew that Dex would never hurt her.

"If you want to arrest me, I won't resist," he continued in that same voice, his shoulders hunched slightly, like a boy expecting a hefty punishment for being caught at something he knew he shouldn't have been doing.

"Fuck, Dex!" she almost cried. "I don't know what I want! How the fuck am I supposed to know?" she demanded. "What…?" her eyes roamed aimlessly. They settled on the blood slides scattered over the table. "What the FUCK!" she screamed, abruptly furious.

Dex looked worried now. "What do you want me to say, Deb?" he asked helplessly.

"Anything!" she screamed. "Fucking something! How…? Why…? When…?" The steam slowly leaving her sails as she realized that, not only did she not know where to begin questioning him, she wasn't sure that she wanted to do it at all. It seemed absolutely certain that explanations could only make everything even worse at this point.

"I'm sorry, Deb," Dex implored. "I'm so sorry. I never wanted you to find out… This isn't your burden…"

"Burden!" she screamed, latching on that word. "Is that what you call it! Mother of fuck, Dexter! You fucking kill people! There's like forty fucking slides here!"

Dexter grimaced, and for once, Deb understood exactly what it meant.

"There's more?" she asked in horror, and then it hit her. She should have seen it sooner. Her eyes were just about as wide as they could go when they turned back to the box of slides. She'd seen a box like that before. Exactly like that. "Were you and Doax working together?" she breathed, her eyes seeking his once more.

At this, Dexter's eyes closed and he sank down onto the couch as far away from her as he could. "Doax was innocent," he said wearily after a long moment of silence.

Deb's stomach turned so violently that she thought for a moment she actually was going to throw up. "Fucking… shit fuck. You killed him. You framed him?"

"No!" Dex said forcefully, his eyes shooting back up to meet hers. "Deb, I couldn't."

Deb stared hard at him, trying to force the truth out of him with her eyes alone.

After a moment, Dexter sighed and leaned back tiredly. "He found out about me. We fought. I… I took him prisoner. I couldn't kill him. He'd never murdered anyone. He didn't fit the code. I was going to let him go. Turn myself in. But then…"

"How did he die?" Deb demanded when he'd fallen silent for almost a minute.

"Lila found him," Dex frowned. "She… She was trying to protect me…"

"She knew?" Deb asked, for some reason both increasingly disgusted at that thought and hurt that he would share with Lila what he had never shared with his own sister.

"She was stalking me," he said darkly. "She found out when she found Doax, I guess. She blew up the cabin with him inside. His getting blamed for what I had done… That was an accident. Afterward… It didn't seem right to make his sacrifice meaningless, so I…"

"You let everyone think that he was the Bay Harbor Butcher," Deb finished for him, torn between outrage at what he'd done to Doax's memory and relieved that her brother hadn't been caught. "Wait, what about Lila?"

Dex's eyes fell to the slides, "She didn't get away with it."

Deb swallowed bile. Lila had been his girlfriend, and he'd killed her. Then another thought occurred to her. "If you're the Bay Harbor Butcher…"

He winced slightly.

"What?"

"I really hate that name," he muttered.

He cared about that right now? "All of the victims we found were criminals…"

"Murderers," Dex corrected. "That's the code. My code. All of my victims were murderers. I may not follow the law, Deb, but I make absolutely certain that they're guilty." His voice and eyes were both pleading with her to understand.

Deb's stomach was turning again. She couldn't stop seeing that moment when Dex had driven the knife in Travis. All she could think about was that knife falling, not toward Travis, but toward all the others. Dozens, maybe more than a hundred people that he'd murdered. She believed him that they were all murderers. She'd been front and center on the Bay Harbor case. She'd seen the evidence up close and been through it thousands of times in her head. The Bay Harbor Butcher was as much serial killer as he was vigilante.

And when the fuck had she started rationalizing vigilantes as acceptable?!

Her eyes met Dex's again as they implored her to understand. Since she had found out that Dexter was a serial killer, her entire world had turned upside down and inside out. Everything was different now. Everything she'd ever believed as a cop or as a person had just gone out the window. The only chance she had to ever get that back was to do what that person would have done and arrest her brother immediately.

But she knew that that wasn't going to happen. This was Dexter. No matter what he'd been hiding from her and the rest of the world… Regardless of what he was… He was still her brother, and she still loved him just as much as she ever had. She had no idea what this was going to do to their relationship, but she knew that she wasn't going to arrest him.

She pushed herself up off the floor and dropped onto the couch at his side, wrapping her arms around his neck and hugging him hard.

The tears started immediately, followed by uncontrollable sobs. "Damn you, Dex. God damn you…" she wept onto his shoulder. His hands came to rest hesitantly on her back as he returned her embrace in the uncertain, awkward way that was so very "Dexter". The feel of his familiar hug helped to wipe away some of the terrible last few hours, reminding her that he was most certainly still her brother. Her love.

Fuck, she was fucked up.

I'm not sure if I'm going to do anymore with this one at this point. Let me know if you like it, as that will most likely impact my decision. Let me know if you don't like it too. Come on people, I went to the work to write this for your reading pleasure, you could take a minute or two to write a review, right? Right? Riiiiggghhhtt?