(Alright, so, this here is the last part of this special three-parter. The next one will just be a one-shot featuring Dexter and Masuka (bless his perverse ass) bonding and walking through their sadnesses in a real way. Right? Oh, also, if you've got any ideas for little one-shots like these (nothing huge like "What if Dexter didn't kill Brian" or other stuff that would do well as an entire multi-chapter thing, just simple stuff), put them in the reviews! I might not do it, but I'll at least give it a lookie, yeah? Alright, enjoy.)

At 18 'o clock sharp, Rita Benett knocked on Dexter Morgan's door. She was dressed up nice and colourfully; a pink dress with strawberries on it. Nothing too much, just enough for him to think that she thought that this was a true, real date. One step to the right, one to the left. Fiddle with the hem of her dress. Glance down, look to the side. Knock again. Surely, he remembered? They'd had this planned for three days. She'd had it planned for two weeks.

If he didn't open, if he was out "working late," or if he was out bowling, or-, the door gave a little oiled creak as it slid open. "Oh, Rita!" He looked her up and down, cold eyes observing her dress as being non-casual. "You're… very well dressed." His eyes turned to his own dressing, finding it… casual. "Sorry, I… didn't think it was that kind of date, I-,"

"It's fine, Dexter," Rita said, giving a strained smile she hoped he wouldn't see through. He didn't. "Don't worry about it."

With a wry smile that squinted his eyes shut, Dexter held the door open for her to come inside. The inside of the apartment was, as always, absolutely immaculate. It was so clean, so well-organized that Rita felt tottery in comparison. She was no neat-freak, but she liked keeping things in order. Dexter… Dexter was on another level. His apartment was clean, drab, and boring. Not a single detail you could point to and place Dexter's personality in. It was as if he stole his apartment from 'Better Homes and Gardens', taking his personality along with it.

Crisp and clean. Hollow.

"Everything alright, Rita?" Dexter asked, circling around to face her. An empty, dead smile sat plastered to his face like a piece of roadkill. "I've shown you my apartment before, haven't I?" Oh, he had. Of course he had. But she didn't remember that tour including anything of personal value.

She tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear. "Of course you have, I just… I just thought it looked very clean."

Was that a speck of arrogance she saw in his lightless eyes? "I take pride in my cleanliness. Really, I just don't like it when everything's… messy," he said that last word with such disgust that it might as well have been a rotten cherry. "If my living-space is neat and organized, so is my mind." He smiled, eyes far-off and distant, as they often were. "I am a very neat… man."

She didn't doubt that for a second. She just wished he'd keep the incriminating evidence on a shelf or something. Somewhere she could find it easily.

Oh, hadn't she mentioned that? No, she didn't intrude on Dexter's little private-space to have a cute couples date, not at all. The only reason she would willingly place herself somewhere Dexter might get her was in order to expose him. He was something. Not someone. And she needed proof. That's what Doakes had told her, at least. If Doakes did something… Dexter would know immediately. But Rita could come and go as she pleased. Dexter had no reason to suspect her. All she had to do was find the evidence.

Even so, she couldn't help but feel uneasy. When she ate the food Dexter made, sat on the couch while he walked away and washed the dishes… It felt off. Strange.

Months ago, when they just started dating, she could remember going on a date like this with Dexter. She got a babysitter for the kids, much like tonight, and then she went over to Dexter's apartment. Took in his true self. Only then, she hadn't seen a too-neat flat, the kind that was so ordinary that it could only hide something terrible, no, she had seen a very clean apartment. She'd seen a guy who could cook and clean and take care of himself, a man who liked taking care of his appearance. A charming trait back then, when she didn't fear what his immaculate appearance might hide.

It had been like being in a wholly different world, with a wholly different Dexter. A perfect Dexter who couldn't possibly exist. The perfect gentleman. The perfect act.

They didn't go to sleep immediately. Why would they? No kids in the house. No distractions. Only Dexter, Rita, and a bed-for-two. Before they did it, she thought, for a moment, that if he truly wasn't human, he truly wouldn't be able to fake this part. That this deep part of human connection was something he would mess up, something that would let her peer deeper into his non-humanity, but… Not so. It didn't happen. He was ordinary, there was nothing strange about him, and when they were conjoined there at night…

He felt like a real human being. A real human being who loved her.

And that idea scared her.

The time was 02:21. She knew that for sure. She had checked the time, listened, laid still, and made sure. Made absolutely sure that Dexter was asleep, that he wouldn't know. Assured, assured and terrified, she slipped out of bed, and began her search. If she hadn't been so anxious, she might have begun in the bedroom. Might have checked beneath the bed, or inside the closets. See if there were any monsters.

This she did not do. Instead, she left that room, that room where Dexter slept sweetly and soundly. She had to find something. She didn't know what, or where, but she would find it.

The clock was ticking.

Nothing in the kitchen apart from sharp knives she hoped weren't used for anything bad. Nothing in his bookshelf apart from non-descript best-sellers and scientific texts she couldn't understand. Nothing on the shelves. Nothing beneath the couch. Nothing in the freezer. Nothing in her head. Think, Rita, think! There has to be something! If there isn't anything, that would mean she'd been imagining it all. That she'd projected some translucent image of a psychopathic monster onto her loving boyfriend. Nothing in her heart.

Nothing in the cupboards. God, she had to get her mind out of the gutter! This was a matter of-, of something, and she didn't have time to stand there dazed and naked, staring at the ventilation unit like it was about to hand her a bloody knife or something.

Not that she wanted anything like that. -Really, she wasn't sure what she expected. Doakes had riled her up real bad, made her think he might have committed some violent crime, but… a hidden compartment filled with drugs would be just as bad, right? Right. A hidden compartment…

Was it a trick of the light, but could she see something in there?...

In where? Why, in the air-conditioning! And that… that might have been the stupidest thought she'd had in a good while. Really now. The air conditioning. That was her next step? Genius. Next up she'd bust open the back of his microwave to check for rats. Real clever there, Rita.

...Though, now that she looked closely, did the air conditioner even have screws holding it in place? Surely, it did. It wasn't as if she could just pop it right off the wa-,

Pop. Oh. Guess she could.

The entire face of it just… fell off. revealing the interior of an air conditioning unit. Nothing strange there, nothing to look at, nothing-,

Nothing but a little compartment. And a little box.

She slid it out. It was long and rectangular. Smooth. Rosewood. Well-crafted and well-loved. She flicked open the little golden hasp, and slowly, carefully, she opened it. She had expected drugs. What she saw might have been a little worse.

A line of perfectly immaculate little glass slides. She counted 46 of them, but there may have been more or less, she couldn't be sure. Carefully, with slippery fingers, she removed one of them. Held it against the chuckling light of the silver moon. Between those two slides of glass, a single, pressed blood-drop could be seen. Frozen in time. Preserved forever. Whose was it? The victim of some homicide Dexter had solved? Unidentified blood at a crime scene? Was it-,,

Was it not related to his job as a blood-spatter analyst?...

...Whose blood was this?...

He awoke.

For a startled moment, he hadn't known why. Something was off. Something here was wrong. A dry chuckle came from the Dark Passenger and he knew that things were far from the way they should be. He was awake, for one, and at this hour it usually wasn't a good thing. What had happened? What had he heard? Yes, that was it… a sound. He'd heard a sound. A human sort of sound, one he hadn't made himself. Like a little soft gasp. Birdwings.

Well, that wasn't any out of the ordinary, Rita was over for the night, so having her make a sound wasn't-,

Hold on. Where was Rita? The bed was cold and empty, the covers flat and bare.

Dexter lifted his upper body into the air, feeling how his dune covers tumbled off. She wasn't in bed. His upper body twisted and he gazed out into the darkness leading into the combined kitchen and living room. She was out there. Maybe he should have left it alone, spared himself the trouble of getting out of the bed at this dastardly hour… Left her to finish doing whatever she was doing. Getting a glass of water. Going to the bathroom. All typical nightly activities for a typical human. But it wasn't typical of Rita.

Rita was a mother of two. She got the sleep she could.

Though, honestly? This wasn't really what motivated Dexter to slip out of bed. It just… felt right. Somehow. He was a little on edge. After all, if the Dark Passenger was up and about, something was surely up.

He found her in the living room, standing in front of his shelf. She was easily dressed, nightgown covering her only barely. To any other man, she'd be ravishing.

...No. Even to Dexter, she was… she was pretty. In a weird, ethereal way. The thought struck him straight in the chest and he was left reeling, frozen in place where he stood in the entrance. Staring at her moon-licked form. Yes, she was beautiful. Sea-stone eyes and gold-weave hair.

He took a step towards her, feeling how sleep roiled off his body, and she must have heard him, because she turned to him, those beautiful eyes of her widening, showing the whites. Whites of terror.

Once again, Dexter stopped where he stood. Her eyes stared at him. Frozen lakes of terror. He stared back. Why was she looking at him like that? Why-,

And then he saw what she held in her hands. In those ivory little hands.

A rosewood box in her left, and a blood-slide in her right.

Dexter recognized the drop of blood on the spot. Little Chino. Such an elusive little sport. If he hadn't had the pride to catch his own killer, he would have made it. All the more fun for daringly decapitating Dexter. A nice night with a night fellow. What was he doing in her hand? He shouldn't be out and about, away from home.

Thoughtlessly, Dexter stepped closer. Eyes transfixed on the little slide, on his little friend, he completely missed how Rita withdrew from him, backing into the open air conditioner. Eyes wide and trembling.

Soon, Dexter stood mere inches away, completely shadowing her from the soothing rays of the moon. His hand reached up, and he eclipsed hers in his own. He removed Little Chino from her grasp. Held him up to the moonlight. And let the memories flood back. It hadn't been long ago, and yet it already felt like a memory so far gone, painted with nostalgia and tainted with bloody fun.

-But why was his hand trembling? How come there was a tremor in his hand? He glanced down, letting his mind return to the present.

Ah, as it turns out, Dexter himself wasn't trembling. Rita was. And since he was holding her hand, it transferred. How quaint!

He let go of her hand, and she retracted it with such speed that Dexter briefly supposed it might have been pulled back by an invisible rubber band. "Sorry," he said, fearing that he might have hurt her. The way she looked at him… Dexter hadn't often been in the company of animals, they tended to either attack or flee upon his presence, and little white rabbits were no different, most taking to flight.

This little rabbit had frozen.

"Everything alright, Rita?" he asked softly, locking his eyes into hers. He tried to move closer. She attempted to meld with the wall. "Did you sleep badly?"

Rita shook her head. "N-, no-, I just-, I-, Dexter-," good lord, Rita sure knew how to stutter. "Whose-, whose blood, um, is that?..." she asked, pointing one great, big finger at Little Chino. For a moment, a mere moment too long, Dexter considered telling her. 'Why, this is Little Chino, my former friend! I stabbed him with a machete and here he is. Say hi!' Oh, no, he couldn't say that. Not at all. "P-, please, Dexter, tell me!"

At 2 am, only Dexter Morgan, non-human extraordinaire, could possibly have remained silver-tongued. "I, err, uh. Work?"

She gave him a look like he just told her a very, very tasteless joke. "Dexter, please!" Well. When she asked so nicely… Nah. Even if she asked him, he couldn't tell her. If he did, he'd have to kill her. Ha-ha. Ha… "I… Dexter, I know about you." -She did? "I've been-, I've been looking, and… and seeing the things you do, or what you don't, and-, and I know you're not normal, and with this-?" She held up the rosewood box to Dexter's face. Practically rubbing him in the reality he wouldn't accept. "It's-, it's too late, Dexter. You have to tell me what's going on! You can't lie your way out of this!"

And… and she was right. As Dexter stared into that box, containing one less slide than usual, he knew deep inside, as deeply as he'd ever known his own truth, that he'd been busted. Somehow, somewhere, he'd gone wrong, and now Rita, of all people, had found his dirty little secret.

The truth of the matter echoed through his head, tearing down the wallpaper and tossing over tables and throwing his entire neat world into complete and utter disarray.

He? Had been found out? By his disguise?

No. No, that was impossible, that was-,

"D-, Dexter, that hurts," Rita whined, trying to draw back and out of a grip Dexter hadn't realized he'd taken.

He let go of her arm. "S-, sorry, I just…" Left with no option but denial, he shifted into old patterns, old inhuman reflexes. "Out of what, Rita? What's wrong?"

She transfixed him with a long, hard gaze. "You know what this is. You know that I've found this. If-, if you don't tell me what this is, I'll… I'll call Sergeant Doakes. He'll be here within the hour, and-, and you can explain this to him. Okay?"

Dexter stared at her for just a moment longer than he had to. With slow, careful movements, he took the rosewood box out of her hands, snapped Little Chino back into his slot. With that done, he closed the box with a little tock, and cradled it in his hands as he trailed back over to his couch. Rita didn't seem too keen to follow, but when he gave her a quick look, a quick look that was true and not-false and everything he had hidden from her, she complied, scrambling over to sit behind him. Of course, at a tasteful arm's length away.

"My mother died when I was three." Rita didn't even try to react to the content of his words. Her attention was entirely and fully captured by the look on Dexter's face. Inhuman. "I saw her die. I and my brother did, that is. She and three other men. We were left in a shipping container for three days. My foster father found us in dry blood an inch deep. It was a miracle we survived, but if left… it left some damage." He turned to her, a fleeting smile dancing over his lips. "Would it help if I told you my brother was the Ice Truck Killer?"

She stared at him for a long moment before the words he'd just spoken finally settled in. "He was-, you, how… Um, how do you know? How can you-, you couldn't have remembered so far back, I just…"

"He told me," Dexter said, relishing in her reaction. "After all, he found me. Nothing obvious at first, just a few murders that I found rather… interesting. Then he left me little hints. Just little things. A barbie doll in the freezer. Body parts in places I remember. The usual." Dexter leaned back in his seat. "He took me to the house we used to live in before it all. He brought Debra."

Rita shook her head vividly. "Why-, why would he-,"

"He wanted me to kill her." Rita jerked at the word. That word. 'Kill'. Maybe she'd been avoiding it until now, Dexter didn't know. "I didn't do it. I couldn't. But Brian… Brian had other plans. If I wouldn't kill my fake sister, then he would."

She gasped, placing one dainty hand in front of her dainty mouth.

"Don't worry, I… I killed him before he could hurt Debra."

There it was again. Kill. Killed. Rita froze at the mere mention. Eyelids fluttering, shiver coursing through her body. "N-, no, he-, the Ice Truck Killer killed himself, I-, I saw it on the-,"

Dexter gave a dry, shallow chuckle. "Yeah. I made it look like it. I couldn't let Debra think he just up and disappeared. She had to get closure, and… and this was how I did it."

Rita shook her head, a tiny, desperate and ultimately denying smile blossoming on her pink lips. "But-, but that doesn't explain the-, the slides, that's just-,"

"That wasn't my first kill." Rita's jaw snapped shut. Dexter could see the hope drain from her chest and puddle on the floor. "Brian and me… We weren't so different. He was an empty, soulless husk that could only kill, and me…" Dexter turned an eye on Rita. She trembled and shifted uncomfortably under his gaze. "I'm the same. The only real difference is that… that I have a code."

"A-, a code?..." Rita stammered.

Dexter nodded. "I only kill the people who deserve it. And I make sure of it. I would never hurt an innocent." An empty, unsaid 'but' lingered in the air between them. A word Dexter didn't dare say. After all, all of a sudden, it didn't feel true. "But… that is, unless… unless the innocent somehow, in some way…" He turned his eye from her. Looked out of the window. "-Find out too much."

She drew a sharp breath. "F-, find out, find out what?..." She already knew what he meant. What he was trying to say in as many words as possible to make her think less. 'People who know the truth can't live.' And, more so… 'you can't live.' It was a horrible realization. Terrible, even, but in the middle of that cold, shallow terror that rose inside her, she felt another realization come on. The memory of something she'd seen on the television, a title she'd heard. 'The Bay Harbour Butcher.' Miami's newest serial killer. The one who only killed other murderers.

That man, that man who killed so many…

Now sat in front of her.

That little thought made it so much more… real. The bodies. The blood slides-, no, that wasn't what they were, they were… Trophies, yes, that's what they were. 46 little trophies of 46 little victims. Human beings. And one of them… One of those victims was Paul. Must have been. Should have been. -But was she sure? "-Did-, did you kill Paul?"

A blunt question. Dexter stared at her for a moment. His blank, hazy eyes, now so emotionless they might as well have been painted glass marbles, turned on her. "Yes," he admitted. "I killed Paul."

"Why?!" He hadn't meant to say it so loudly, but she couldn't help it. The need to know clawed at her insides. Dexter was a psychopath. A cold-blooded killer and a murderer and the worst possible kind of person and he was sitting right next to her and telling her all this just so that he could kill her in an hour or so and this was the last thing she would find out. Was Paul so annoying that he deserved death? Had he called Dexter something mean? "Why did you kill Paul?!"

Dexter's gaze did not falter from her. A tender, almost human smile grazed his lips meekly. And for the first time since Rita started to look for it, it didn't seem forced. It was a true smile.

"I did it for you."

-What?

"I, you… What?..."

He looked out at the moon again, but his eyes and heart remained here. In the moment. With her. "I did it to-, to save you. And the kids. With what he was doing, what he was capable of doing… He could have killed you, you know?"

She threw herself to her feet, standing tall above Dexter where he sat. Fists balled, she clenched her jaw. "And you won't?!"

He blinked once. And then twice. His face showed no emotion but his eyes were wide. "Why in the world would I do that?"

Because she found out his secret? Because she uncovered a serial killer in his face? Because she hadn't loved him in weeks and was practically asking him to leave her?

"Why wouldn't you?..."

He looked away again. Smiling. A tender, uncertain smile. "I guess, now that I think about it… It just wouldn't make any sense." He turned back to her. "I only dated you as a form of disguise, you know?" By this point, she was too jaded to let this break her heart. "Like a fake beard. It's part of the deal when you're a monster like me." A monster. How accurate. "But… I think you might have become a little bit more than that." -What? "I think, maybe, just maybe… I actually loved you. Not just-, not just as a formality, as… in a real way. Does that make any sense? I don't know, I just-," he shook his head, "when I thought about how Paul was screwing you over, I just got so mad, and my mind turned red, and… And before I knew it, I'd broken my code. All for a disguise." He scoffed. "Isn't that just odd?"

Maybe it was odd. Maybe it was strange, but it sure wasn't what the perfect cold-hearted killing machine would do. No… A true serial killer would have taken her out by now. A defective disguise should be thrown away. Was she somehow… more than that? "I-, I guess it is? I don't-,"

"You don't have to say anything, Rita. I should have known something like this would have happened eventually. If we'd kept our life together, if I'd moved in with you… Hell, with the discovery of my dumping-ground, it's only a matter of time before they catch me. It was bound to happen. Has to happen. Maybe it was better for it to happen like this, than… Than the police busted in while we were at home. It'd be a shame to break up a pretty marriage."

"M-, marriage?!" Rita exclaimed, swaying on her feet. Dexter considered her for a moment.

"It's the usual outcome, isn't it? We've been dating for a year now. It only makes sense we'd marry one of these days."

A blush Rita thought she'd purged worked it's way up to her cheeks. "W-, well, yeah, but-, but if you're going to propose, do it in a more formal manner!"

Dexter grinned. A rare, playful grin that made Rita second-guess herself. Until he fearlessly threw himself on the carpeted floor and went down on one knee. "Well? Will you?"

She looked down at him, and all of a sudden he wasn't the Bay Harbour Butcher anymore, he wasn't the man who killed Paul and he certainly wasn't a monster. He was just Dexter. dashingly darling Dexter with his endless patience and love for kids, and how could she possibly say no to that?

"Y-, yes," she choked out amidst a flood of rising tears and sobs. "Yes, I do!"

Dexter grinned, and that was that.