So it's been taking a while. Mostly because I kept rewriting this, to find an angle that hasn't been done before. There is already so much great fiction out there focusing this issue.

Mainly, I'm just tackling the gap of the missing six months, without Vogel in the picture. To those waiting for Dexter/Deb angle, it is present, and headed there, though I'm treading carefully on this... above all, I want to stay true to the characters.


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02. Break

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We lie, half-entangled, twisted and uncomfortable, crammed to our respective ends of the couch, as if needing to escape from each other yet reluctant to do so.

I can barely sleep, like that. Instead, I'm content watching her. Resting. Somewhat.

Deb was always the part of me that made sense. The part that didn't need my instructions - on how to act and what to feel. The part that didn't need fixing.

How we've managed to get to this point, I don't know. And yet, the old patterns occur, new moments of doubt and silence.

Maybe we were always headed this way, and I never realised. Was never willing to admit.

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About the third time her eyes snap open they stay so. It's still dark outside, the dawn still hours away. She gapes and blinks at the ceiling, and the fan that isn't working.

I close my eyes when she looks my way, steal another precious moment of her unguarded self.

I peer at her through my lashes. She stays like this for a while, looking in front of her, with elbows on her knees, as if remembering something.

I get these moments a lot... memories. Reminders. Lessons from times passed.

Somehow I doubt they add up with hers.

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She then gets up, finds a bottle and walks out onto the patio, shilouetted against the glowing strip where the sky meets the sea. For a while I can only see the slump of her shoulders, the curve that keeps on bending, polishing those proud edges. Like the sea grinds rocks into sand.

I sit by her side, quiet as the night around us. She shares her whiskey with me.

It's as if we were kids again, ransacking Harry's liquor cabinet, staying up all night.

I remember times when these things didn't seem to matter. Small things. How Harry kept telling me how each action had a consequence.

I guess I've learned my lesson.

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"I dreamed..." she says, eyes on the horizon.

I wait patiently.

"We were back in the station. I was still a detective and we were all covering you - me, Batista, even Quinn... You kept taking new victims and we all worked for you. We were all in it. And I just- didn't care."

I've had a similar dream once, when I had left a man, half-chopped, on my table. Everyone was acting so normal it took me time to realise it wasn't.

That I'm not normal.

"It's crazy, right?" Her bottom lip twitches, not quite a smile.

Beyond us, the sea gushes on. Calming. Unstoppable.

"I don't think you're crazy." I know that for sure. "You're hurt, nothing more."

It happens - when killing an innocent. I've acted outside the code, plenty of times. Oscar Prado, that red-neck I clubbed to death... Hannah's father, Jonathan Farrow. There's been mistakes, self-defence, revenge, even mercy... But nothing so utterly unjustifiable.

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It's what's kept my humanity intact. This and Deb. How fitting.

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"I pulled the trigger, Dex." She echoes, savouring the words. "I really did it."

And there's that guilt again, ebbing a hole in me, where I've buried Brian and Rita. Let go of Astor and Cody. But not Deb, not yet Deb.

"I brought you into this. It's my fault."

"I did it," she repeats, with different inflection. And yes, I can't argue with that.

I can't make her forget this. No more than I can fix Rita's death.

But I can help her past that. Save her.

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"Debra. Deb? Will you listen?" I chase her through the living room through another open door, where she collapses on her bed. "You need help, talk to someone."

"I can't see another shrink, not after-" she halts and turns away. Bites her cuticles, as if actually considering it. "I don't know what I can say."

"No, I don't mean like that. Someone who knows."

"And who's that?"

"Me."

Her eyes snap open, and the idea sounds even more ridiculous once I've said it out loud.

"You're not a therapist, Dex."

No, but I killed one, I want to say, but it's not the time. The less you know...

I push her legs aside, to make room for me on the edge of the mattress. "Just, I'm asking you to trust me. Please."

She obliges, and sets both her legs on the mattress. Waiting, just so.

"You've done this often?"

"Just relax. It's my first."

"Sounds like some other first times," she jokes crudely, in self-defence, and I flinch, much to my embarrassment.

But she's right... this is crazy.

Besides, how many of us would allow a serial killer into their head?

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"Okay."

I didn't really expect that.

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She's still a bit drunk from whiskey, probably why she agrees to this in the first place. But I sit and wait, for her to confirm this. "You're okay then?"

"Yeah."

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Much like her, I don't know what I'm getting into.

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Hypnotherapy, really? I remember thinking of Masuka's latest plan to attract chicks. Convince them he's the new Freud and open a back-door into their minds. And pants.

It's not like he was short of volunteers. It just this stuff doesn't often work. You can't suggest anything that conflicts with the persona, and even then the results are fleeting at best. Besides, it came dangerously close to the consent issues, so he dropped it before any sexual harassment cases could start piling up.

Which is why I should not be on this website in the first place and should continue my search until Deb wakes up.

Still, the idea won't leave my mind. What a concept: crawling up into another person's head. Organizing things around, telling them what to think. Fixing... things.

I snap my laptop shut, plunging myself into darkness.

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This is wrong. Right?

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"Morning."

Debra stumbles over the threshold, to a bacon and eggs turned into pancakes. "I had to use up the milk, before it went bad," I explain, wondering if she remembers the power outage at all.

"Oh. Sure." She sounds groggy, hung over, but I keep my mouth shut.

She sips at the hot beverage and curses when she burns her lip. It sounds oddly like her old self. I breathe, a little. It's a small step, but definitely in the right direction.

She looks around her mess of a apartment, something I am yet to fix. All I had time for was take out the bottles.

"Something wrong?" I ask, when she's looking around like she's lost something. The keys to her car, for example.

"Why-" she frowns, looking at me. "Why are you here?"

"You crashed your car last night, you don't remember?" Silence. "I just stayed to make sure you were okay. You may have a concussion."

"Yeah, I do feel like shit."

Probably because you downed most of the 30-year-old whiskey last night. Instead I point her to the counter.

"There's some meds for your headache."

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For the best half of the morning everything seems to be fine. She smiles at me, jokes and slips some more curse words, even mentions her job as through some old habit.

Then, it all comes crashing down.

She stares at the shards of her mug where it fell on the floor, and the bang awoke something we'd just buried. A collision? A gunshot.

A piece of evidence is all that's needed to crack a case. The same goes for our memories.

Our past and present are interconnected; one silver thread of reasoning and my work comes undone.

And then, the inevitable.

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"The fuck you did... It didn't work. Your freaking scientific mumbo-jumbo."

I can't tell what she's more pissed about. The experiment itself, or my failure to do it right.

"It's an tested method for working through trauma. You agreed to give it a try, remember?"

"I can't believe I let you talk me into some brain-wash crap..."

I approach her carefully, touch her arms at her shoulders, while she grapples with the confusion.

I should have known. Damn Masuka.

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"Deb, relax. It didn't work."

"Yeah, but you let me walk around for half a morning, remembering what it was like... to be a full person."

"You are a full person."

"No, I'm half you, half-" She breathes, deep, "...nutbag."

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"Deb, you're not going insane."

"Well, how would you know?"

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"Because, you're too strong."

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Tired, she slumps against the back of a couch. "Fuck."

I dump the shards in the bin and begin drying the floor. I look up to see her pressing her fingers against her eyes. I don't need to guess how she felt.

It feels like what Brian left for me, in room 103.

"It's okay to be upset."

"No- Fuck. you."

"Deb, I just wanted to -"

I drop the towel. There's a nice retort in mind, but its better to let her finish. As long as she's in this - state.

"No more lies, okay?" Her eyes glisten. "I worked my way through knowing the truth. I can't do this all over again. Ever."

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"Okay. I understand." And I really mean it. "I'm sorry."

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"I wish it had worked," she amends, belatedly. "Too good to be true, huh?"

She kicks her heel against the back of the sofa. These days, even her own psyche seems to be working against us.

"I'm sorry." I repeat, because there's nothing else to say.

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"Just, stop fucking saying that. You're not the only one feeling sorry here."

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I dare to come closer again. There's a difference between being pissed and being messed up, though with Deb, it's often hard to tell.

It's latter, I can guess, when I sit by her side without a further protest. And if my guess is right, there might be some hope yet. She's not down the ravine yet.

I just wish it could be me that brings her back from the brink of it.

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She's breathing softly. I try to match her tone. Not overpower it.

"We can stop if you want..." I offer her a way out. The door is open. I'm not forcing her. Or am I?

Is this yet another trick?

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She shakes a bit and her mouth tugs at a smile. It falls right off.

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"What's next?"

We might yet stand a chance.

I shrug, nonchalant.

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"Breakfast."


I'm toying with some ideas here... for therapy. some may sound crazier than others. But still, hardly more than Dexter letting Debra out of his sight for six months, after what happened. I mean, really..

Next chapter up sooner than later, I hope. Thank you all for the feedback!