Title: For Writingisfunlol and PrestoManifesto

Fandom: Dexter

Rating: M for language and explicit content

Disclaimer: I do not own Dexter or any of its characters, nor do I own any rights to the songs I draw inspiration from and refer to in my A/N. Owning songs is for rich and talented musos.

Author's notes: Alright, fine: it's a sequel. Dexter survived Break Me and returned to save Deb. I didn't want to know the truth but the effort and thought that's gone into this piece has confirmed it for me. You guys were right. Dexter lives.

But then that leaves the Morgans, and us, in a much stickier predicament than if Deb was just imagining him. Now Dexter needs to explain himself, Deb needs to come to terms with his abandonment and what this might mean for her future, and there's still a brutal crime to be cleaned up.

Also, fine: it's not two chapters, it's three. Obviously. Don't you guys know me by now?

Both Writingisfunlol and PrestoManifesto, the reader/writers to whom this fic is dedicated, are talented Dexter fandom writers themselves, and I strongly recommend to anyone reading here that you go forth and read their work, too. PrestoManifesto is developing a prequel novella about Harry Morgan in the years before he found Dexter. It's sharp and well-written, with heaps of shout-outs to the canon. Writingisfunlol has a collection of short Debster-tone pieces, and aside from being a versatile and talented storyteller across multiple mediums, she also happens to be one of coolest people I have yet found on the internet. Thank you to you both for your support of my work, but also for the friendship I have found with you.

Song for this fic is All of Me by John Legend. So soft, classic and sad, but then those lyrics are absolutely perfect for the tragic Break Me Debster: What would I do without your smart mouth?/ Drawing me in and you kicking me out?/ Got my head spinning, no kidding, I can't pin you down/ What's going on in that beautiful mind?... My head's underwater but I'm breathing fine/ You're crazy and I'm out of my mind/ Coz all of me loves all of you… I give you all of me/ And you give me all of you… You're my downfall, you're my muse/ My worst distraction…

/

/

I pull her to her feet. She stumbles a bit, legs weak from the physical trauma her body went through in the seizure, but gets her footing and stays steady once she's up. She looks at me and only at me. There's a fuzzy, daydreamy reverence in her wide gaze, a childish innocence I associate readily with her, but also a steely determination that I remember with much sharper clarity. She's overwhelmed, blown away by the reality of what she's just done and by my unexpected appearance, but equally she's prepared to deal with it in any way I ask of her.

I've lied to her for five years, and a lifetime before that, and she hates me for it, but some things will never change. She'd follow me anywhere I led.

How depressing.

I'm the big sibling, and that makes me in charge. I look around and confirm my first course of action. Matthews is very dead. The room is very well-dressed and will come down cleanly. The neighbourhood is deathly quiet, empty. There's nothing more urgent than the puncture wound in the side of Deb's neck. She has one hand clamped over it and the pressure is helping, but there's blood all over her neck, her chest, her shoulder, down her arm, flowing between her fingers and smeared up as high as her ear and cheek.

I gesture with a slight jerk of my chin and she understands; she tilts her head and removes her hand so I can look properly. As I saw before but didn't have the time to closely examine, the needle of the auto-injector is thicker than your average hypodermic and has torn a visible hole in her skin. It's tiny, as far as holes in the neck go, but the bleed is heavy enough to be concerned.

"Does it need stitches?" Deb asks, and I glance at her. Is that a veiled joke, a reference to another Monday's injury? But she isn't smiling. I shrug one shoulder and brush her long hair out of my way with my free hand. She's tightly holding the other, the one that pulled her up. It feels good to feel her hand in mine after so long without touching her. It feels right, while everything else in my vicinity is so damn wrong.

"No hospitals," I say. If we can help it, we need to avoid any record she even left the house. I gently touch her throat, pressing the skin lightly to pull it taut so I can see the size of the hole. She lets me. "I think I can deal with it."

She glares over my shoulder at the auto-injector on the floor beside the table. "Weaponised fucking medication," she complains. Darkly, she adds, "and I fucking gave it to him. So fucking stupid."

She sounds like her old self again, though I can't be sure that's who I've got. I don't know why she'd give Matthews an EpiPen but it sounds ill-advised in retrospect. I put her hand back on the wound.

"No more stupid than luring him out here in the first place armed with a taser and a stolen knife that can be traced back to previous crimes," I comment coolly, accepting the hard look I get in return. "Where's your goddamn sidearm?"

"You told me not to bring it. That it could only make things worse."

For every step we make forwards, for everything she says that lets me think she's fine, there's a big step back where I'm reminded she's actually at least half-insane.

Holy hell, my sister is half-insane.

"I've got a first aid kit in my car," I tell her. "I'll be right back."

"No, I'll come with you," she insists, hand tightening on mine and eyes hardening. "What if you don't come back? What if I wake up?"

"You can't leave," I disagree. "Not while you're dripping evidence everywhere." I wait for this to make sense to her. She was reasonable once; well, no, she wasn't, not by my reckoning, but she'd have understood this. "I'll be right back. You won't wake up - you're already awake. Will you be alright here for one minute?"

She swallows and nods. "I've survived five years, haven't I?" And she lets me pull my hand from hers.

I feel heavy as I turn away, swallowing the 'I didn't want to!' and the 'It was for your own good!' that rise in my mouth. I've survived five years, haven't I? Just shoot me in the heart, why don't you, Deb? But honestly, I didn't think I'd get away with it. I've never entertained the thought of revealing myself to her and returning to her life, because as surely as I know she has loved me more completely than anyone, I know she will never forgive me for what I've done in abandoning her.

Even, or especially, if it was the right thing to do.

I leave and run to my car, parked a street over. I wrench open the passenger door and dig through the glove box, very aware that I'm leaving stains of Deb's and Tom's blood all over my possessions but unable to feel any concern over that right now. I'm not going to be a suspect in this disappearance. No one's going to search my car looking for traces of the missing deputy chief.

But there will be an investigation into my sister. She's a close associate, professionally and personally, and as far as the F.B.I. is concerned she only narrowly twisted out of a serial murder case five years ago. Her brother was the Bay Harbour Butcher, Dexter Moser. There can't be anything linking her to what she's done to Tom, not even a fibre at the scene, or it'll be only too easy for them to pin her for it.

I return with the first aid kit, keeping a cautious eye out for unusual activity in the surrounding houses. Nothing. There's nobody around. She chose this spot well.

God, Deb's good at this.

I let myself back into number 133 and pause when I find the spot I left her in empty. Thomas Matthews, lifelong friend and attempted murderer of us both, is dead on the floor, gutted and knifed in the heart, but where I found Deb there is only a smeared pool of blood and from where I pulled her to her feet there is a steady blood trail, leading… I step further inside, cautious, and move to see around the corner into the front room where Deb had planned to execute Matthews in the same way Brian Moser once tried to kill her.

I've been out of the profession since I left Miami but blood is my language and I can still read it fluently. I can't see her but I know where she is, hiding behind the small segment of wall that separates the main entryway from the front room.

"Deb, I'm back," I say softly, on edge. I assume she hid in case the next person who walked in was not me, but I can't be sure. She's my sister but she's also someone new that I can't predict.

There's a small rustle of plastic and Debra steps out, Matthews' gun levelled at me.

I should have taken that before I left. I am definitely out of practice in dealing with little sisters.

"It's just me," I remind her gently, raising my red hands with the medical supplies I've brought for her. She doesn't lower the gun. I start to feel uncertain again. "Deb. It's me."

"I'm not so sure," she says coldly. "He would say that, too."

He. I assume he is the other me, the me she hallucinates in her darkest moments, the me who convinced her to come here tonight and premeditate this gigantic fucked-up murder conspiracy plan. He twists and manipulates her, forces her to come to conclusions she mightn't have come to without the help. Right now, she's either falling further into her delirium or she's clawing her way out of it and coming to terms with my return. I can't expect that to be easy – she believed me dead, and I'm sure the regression of grief that is to come will be quite awful, when she's stable enough to go there – but I feel impatient with her regardless. She's got both hands on the gun, and the blood's running from her neck again. I need to treat her.

"I'm me," I insist. "I'm here, really here. Look," I add, drawing her attention to my foot as I trace my shoe through the blood and smear it. A ghost wouldn't be able to do that. I meet her eyes again. "I've got cotton pads and medical tape-"

"Don't you fucking even," she snarls as I step toward her. I freeze when she tightens her grip on the gun and raises it in line with my forehead. She doesn't trust me. She doesn't trust I'm me. "You mightn't even be real, so you just stay the fuck back."

"I am real!" I exclaim, annoyed. "I was just here! I was here, I was here when you stabbed Matthews. I was holding your fucking hands, Debra. I've got your blood all over me, look," and I wave them at her, palms red. She blinks, not sure. "You've got my handprints on your wrists. I'm me, I'm here. You don't believe me?" I can't help the incredulous laugh that escapes me as she bites her lip, confused. Déjà vu. Haven't I had this conversation before? With my own hallucination, of her? Didn't her ghost get mad when I accused her of not being real, the same way I'm getting mad at her now for the same belief? She and I have lived together through some screwy times but this is so sad it's ridiculous. We don't deserve this night. We've both suffered enough in our time to repay my life's crimes threefold. "Are you going to shoot me to find out if I can bleed, too?"

"It's an idea," Deb confesses shakily. "This could all be some fucked-up nightmare for all I know."

I really don't know if she's bluffing. Five years ago I would have walked right up to the gun until the barrel tip pressed into the skin of my temple, and I wouldn't have feared her pulling the trigger. Tonight I just don't know.

That's the most frustrating thing ever.

"Put the gun down." I am firm.

"No." So is she. Shaky, but firm.

"What the hell is wrong with you?" I spit in irritation, and her lip wobbles. "I'm here to help you and you're going to shoot me? Fine." I square my jaw. "Go ahead. You'll confirm something for both of us."

It's a risk, giving her permission, but I'm relying on my optimistic belief that she's still my Deb underneath the haze of mental illness and chemical imbalance. The panic that rises in her expression confirms it – she doesn't want to shoot me.

She's almost crying as she whispers, "I don't know who you are. I don't know what's happening."

I could say the same, but I don't. As patiently and kindly as I can, I answer, "I'm your brother."

She chokes on an angry sob and exclaims, haltingly, "How am I-I supposed t-to know that's the fu-fucking truth?"

I realise I can't get through to her with words. Deb and I are not talkers. Our love was always a sitting-on-the-couch-watching-bad-TV, drinking-beers, loaded-looks kind of relationship. We didn't need many words. The reason I knew she loved me was the way she stood up to James Doakes when he insulted me; the way her feet drew against mine when she backed up to me during a fight with our father when she was fifteen; the way she fired a bullet into Captain La Guerta to protect me. Actions speak louder than words, and I am not winning her over with words.

I take a chance on her. She's worth it. I throw the first aid kit behind her. Distracted, she watches it fly. I move forward quickly, praying her uncertainty wins out over her fast reactions. I borrow her move from before. I grab the gun with both hands and twist the barrel upwards in case it goes off; simultaneously I pull the butt towards me. The weapon slips free of her bloody hands and she's yanked forward, surprised. Already I am bringing my elbow up as she did but I don't strike her. I catch her across the chest with my forearm and push, twisting the collar of her shirt in my fingers to optimise my control, driving her back into the room as I get a grip on the gun in my left hand.

Deb is almost exactly my height so her eyes burn straight into mine as I force her back the three or four steps until she bumps into the table. I don't relent; I lean into her even as she bends uncomfortably back. She pulls on my wrist but I have the dominant position, over her. I show her the gun.

I am out of practice in dealing with little sisters but not in turning tables on victims, and Deb was always one of mine.

Looking down at her, I find I haven't hated myself this much since I left her. This is why I left. I can't love her without overpowering her. But how else can I prove to her it's really me unless she can see the lengths I'd go to in order to look after her? Doesn't she know I always know what's best for her?

Or that I'd run her off the edge of the world trying to hold her down long enough to apologise when it turns out I don't?

"Feel familiar yet?" I ask in a low voice. Slowly, so I know she won't shove away, I release her clothing and withdraw the pressure I'm exerting on her breastbone. She doesn't move except to breathe heavily.

"Are you going to shoot me?" she asks. We break eye contact to look at the gun in my left hand. I look back at her in disgust. If she has to ask that, perhaps I'm wasting my time after all. Maybe she's lost it.

"Only if you don't hold still," I threaten. It's a useless threat. She's not afraid. I close my eyes and take a deep breath. This is the furthest thing from my ideal reunion. I reopen my eyes and she's still there, pinned between my body and the table she meant to use for this kill. She's real. I never thought I'd be this close to her again, let alone able to speak with her. I need to get a grip and stop being the asshole she's been mourning. She's extremely delicate. I'm the big sibling. I should act like it. Deliberately calm, I disarm and dismantle the weapon in front of her and cast its components behind me. I backtrack. "No. I am not going to shoot you. I'm going to patch up this mess you call a neck. May I?"

It feels weird to ask Deb for permission for anything. I drop my arm and wait.

Her answer is silence, though she does lower her hands to the tabletop behind her hips and lift herself onto its edge. I take that as yes.

I fetch the first aid kit and I work on her without speaking. She doesn't speak, either, but she does turn her head to watch me whenever my hands leave her neck. I get the wound covered first and then attempt to clean her up. There's more blood here than what I can deal with armed only with a pocket pack of tissues.

"We'll burn these clothes," I comment, thinking aloud. There's too much blood soaked into the fabrics – washing them is no guarantee of removing the evidence that will tie her to this crime.

This crime she committed.

But which I'd never let her be found guilty for, because I'm a sucker and I'd throw my whole fragile arrangement with my shadowy employer away before I let Deb accept the natural consequences of her own ill-considered actions.

I pack away the medical kit. She's not bleeding anymore and her wound is covered, but I can't take her anywhere until the blood on her is dried enough that I can trust her not to drip all over the place. There can be no trail from here.

"You're sure no one knows you're here?" I check. She looks up at me and shakes her head.

"There's no trace, Dex," she promises, and I'm slightly lifted out of the deep robotic misery I have felt since I first touched her tonight. She hasn't spoken since she asked if I was going to shoot her, and she's not crying now. I like the sound of my name in her voice. "No calls, no emails, no proof I was ever here unless I'm caught in the act." She has to look away. "The kids are asleep and I drugged Joey. He'll be out until morning. Pretty Hannah fucking McKay of me, right?"

The kids. Now I have to look away, look busy. My heart aches with missing. Harrison, my son, is her child now. And she's got her own one. A little girl. I suppose she'd be four now. I have no idea what she looks like, whether she's started school, what games she likes to play – unlike Deb, and Harrison, and Astor, and Cody, I've deliberately avoided learning anything about Deb's baby. I figure if I was to know anything about her the universe wouldn't have so obviously positioned us in such opposing parts of Deb's life. Past: Dexter. Future: baby.

I saw her once. When Deb had her. I received a one-line text to my phone – Dt. Morgan hospital labour critical will advise – and even though the will advise part was clearly intended to assure me that I would be kept in the loop provided I kept my neck out of it, I couldn't stay away. Like this time, I drove all night. It was a risk. I always take risks on her. But I had to know I wasn't doing what I was doing for nothing – that Deb was alright, that she had survived.

I found the neonatal ward first. Saw the tiny baby girl with IV tubes and bandages and heart monitors and a ventilator helping to keep her alive. Saw the oversized tag on her ankle that said Morgan. Saw baby Debra's round eyes and tuft of dark hair.

Saw my niece, for the first and only time, and loved her before Deb ever did, before Deb ever saw her, and knew wholly that staying away was the best thing I could ever have done for my sister.

"Do you have bags?" I ask, forcing myself back to the present. Deb glances into a corner and I see her small pile of supplies. She's much too good at this. Or perhaps she's not. Perhaps she just knows too well how to find the kind of people she needs to help her, like Lumen. I inhale slowly. "Alright. Here's what's going to happen. We can't move the body as it is. I need to take it apart." She nods. I watch her cautiously. I think she still thinks she's dreaming. She's way too okay with everything. "I'm going to put it into the garbage bags and pack the plastic into the bags, too. When we leave we'll wrap plastic around our shoes before we take even one step onto the floorboards, okay? Don't step on the floorboards."

"Don't step on the floorboards," Deb repeats in semi-sarcastic acknowledgement. "Fine. What do you want me to do?"

"I want…" I have to stop. She wants to help me. My head swims. "Just stay there."

"No, I can help-" she insists, pushing herself off the tabletop, but I grab her shoulders and push her firmly back onto it.

"No," I state forcefully. "You can't. You stay where you are."

"Dexter-"

"Debra." My voice is a warning. "If I have to watch you help me cut up a body – our dad's best friend – I'm going to be violently sick. So stay the fuck back, alright?"

She stays the fuck back. I don't look back at her as I deftly hack Matthews into pieces with the few tools she has available, but I know she's watching. I wish she wouldn't. When I stand to retrieve the garbage bags, I am satisfied to note that she's distinctly green.

Good. That'll teach her.

I pack the body away but I let her help me take down the room. I'm hyperaware of time. She needs to be clean and back in her bed at her place before Joey Quinn's alarm goes off at dawn. I need to be back on the road before the sun comes up.

As she stuffs plastic sheeting into the bag beside me I feel grateful that she – or her hallucination of me, which is still really her, I guess – thought to wear my gloves. There won't be a print of hers anywhere near this crime, and if I ensure her blood disappears with the body, and if she's telling the truth about her carefulness in her stalking of this prey, and if she wakes up beside her partner in the morning and he can verify she was there all along, I think that's enough to be sure she's safe.

We wrap our feet in plastic before we step onto the rotten floors of this old house. I make Deb tuck her hair under the collar of her shirt. What's she thinking, committing a crime with her long hair loose and drifting all over the place? I'm sure I wrapped at least three strands of hers up inside the bags. Three strands that could have connected her to this crime if I hadn't turned up and agreed to help.

We heft the bags over our shoulders and slip out into the night, kicking the free standing lamp out of the wall socket to put out the light so we don't leave any prints. I lead my sister to my car and we load Matthews and the kill room, all compacted down into just a few plastic garbage bags, into the trunk.

"We'll come back later for your car, and his," I tell her, opening the passenger door for her. I've got a strip of plastic lining each seat so we don't spread evidence. It looks sterile and suspicious. She hates me; she isn't even sure I'm real; she just watched me hack a lifelong friend into bloody pieces; she was in love with me and I left her with a wreck of a life; she pulled a gun on me tonight and I violently disarmed her. She hasn't seen me in half a decade and I could have any intentions. But Deb doesn't hesitate. She climbs straight into the car and I close the door behind her. I get in behind the wheel and start the car. Neither of us speaks as I drive away with my lights low; I turn them up when we reach more populated neighbourhoods.

"Where are we going?" she asks idly after fifteen minutes. I'm taking her along the outskirts of the city, vaguely towards my old apartment but steering clear of main roads or nice, law-abiding neighbourhoods. Instead we drive through ghettos and industrial areas. Places my beat-up car and the hour of our misadventure won't seem out of place.

At an old power station I pull up and get out of the car. There's no one around, no sound but the hum of electricity moving through the generators inside. Deb leans silently across the seats to watch me as I tug my bloodied shirt off over my head and slide my now-stained trousers down and off as well. I stand in the cool night air in only my underwear and pile my clothes up with the plastic I was using for shoes.

It seems hugely dishonourable to tell my sister to do the same, to strip for me here in the dark, outside, in some strange place, but she has to, so instead of saying it aloud I catch her gaze and gesture with a jerk of my head. She shuffles across the seats obediently and steps softly out of my car.

"We have to burn the clothes," I explain, and she nods. She crosses her arms to take hold of the hem of her tight black top and tugs it up. She never had any shame. Her head pops out, hair everywhere, and she peels the sleeves down. She's right in front of me so I take the shirt in my hands and pull, helping her to free her arms. One sleeve catches on my watch, Harrison's watch, but comes off with a second tug. She kicks off her shoes, plastic and all, and unzips her jeans. I keep my eyes cast down, thinking it's probably too late to offer any sort of privacy, but she dips back into my view as she bends to push the legs of her denims over her calves and ankles, and when she straightens, so do I.

I know it's weird to be looking at my sister's near-naked body in the middle of the night, but it's no weirder than that same sister to be looking at mine. A lot I recognise – she's still skinny, tall, all long limbs and protruding bones, with excellent muscle tone and tight tanned skin over all that. But there are some new features. Features I hadn't counted on, but should have factored in whenever I've thought of her.

Scars. The aftermath of her ordeals.

I spotted the bullet hole in her hairline already but now my attention is drawn to the white line under her ribs. It's ugly, blindingly white against otherwise smooth and consistent skin. I know there are more on her back. A horrific reminder to the wrong person that I was an idiot who played dangerous games with the lives of the people I loved. The scar shouldn't be on Deb. It should be on me.

In some ways it is. Her gaze drifts across me in my bared state and sticks to my abdomen where I have a scar to mirror hers. She doesn't share my sense of boundary and as she hugs her incriminating jeans to herself she extends the other hand to lay gloved and tacky fingertips on my scar. The injury she thought had killed me. The lie.

The scar, the injury, the lie she committed murder for tonight.

I take that hand and gently pull the glove off. I know she'll object to burning those so I post it through the window of my car. She catches my hand in hers, now bare and ungloved, and turns mine so the palm faces upwards. I love that her hands are clean under the leather. I love the concept that the blood, my influence, my glove, all of this nightmare can be slipped off with relative ease, leaving her clean and pure and still Deb underneath.

Please let it all be so simple.

Deb finds the curved pale scar of the teacup I smashed on my first attempt to kill Vogel. How much of our miserable history could have been avoided if I'd just done that fateful deed right then, that day? If I'd just ignored Deb's call, pushed my conscience aside for another thirty seconds? I was more than capable. There would have been plenty of time to make it up to an angry Deb. Maybe I'd still be in her life. Maybe I'd still be a dad to my three kids. Maybe I'd be an uncle to my niece.

"You're real," Deb breathes, tracing the scar and looking up at me with a shine in her hazel eyes. "How the fuck are you real?"

Her tone doesn't make it clear whether she's pleased or infuriated by this realisation. I imagine she feels both. But I'm mildly relieved to know we're both standing in the same real world.

I lay her hand back on my body, this time over the long old scar she should recognise. I got it impaling myself on a fencepost trying to fetch her ball when we were kids. Not a lie. A truth. That I've bled for her, would again, and that's what I'm doing here against all better judgement. "I'm real," I agree. "I'm here."

She stares at me as I reach back through the open door of my car for the box of matches in the well of my handbrake. Can't stress enough how useful it is to have these on-hand in emergencies. I strip the plastic from the seats as well.

"But you're leaving," she states hollowly. "Again. Already."

"I told you I'm going to help you clear this up. I meant it."

"You know I mean after that."

"Deb," I sigh, tossing her jeans and the plastic onto the pile of our clothes.

"But I just got you back!"

"I'm not back," I respond. "I'm just… here. And I shouldn't be, but I am, just for now, alright?"

She shakes her head. "No. Not fucking alright."

"Everybody thinks I'm dead," I explain reasonably.

"So do I. How can you be here and already leaving?"

I'm not ready for this. I dance around it. "This, tonight? It's not happening. When we're done, you have to forget about it. Pretend this didn't happen. No one can ever know I was here because then everything else comes out. I can't just move in with you and stay on your couch, Deb. It's not like old times."

She's silent. Fuming. I light several matches and throw them down on the plastic, which catches easily. Slowly, the drying clothing ignites, too, and then it all burns. I move closer to the shed housing the power station and find a faucet at knee-height, presumably for an absent hose. I turn it on and wash my hands in its cold stream. I push the water up my arms and, shuddering, onto my chest and face to remove any stray smears or specks of Deb or Tom's blood.

"I don't want to pretend. I'm fucking over pretending."

I pause, frigid water in my cupped hands, and glance back at my sister, standing where I left her. Furious with me. Hurt. I used the wrong word. But it's the only word.

"I wish you didn't have to," I answer, because that's all I've got for her. I pretended for so long so she wouldn't need to. Once she knew the truth I was hiding, her turn at pretending began. "But it's not for me. You have other people to pretend for."

She doesn't get an option, sadly. Like me growing up with a little sister to keep deftly blindfolded, she's got two kids – our two kids – to protect against the horrors of the world. Horrors like 'Your father pretended to die so you could have a better life, but he's actually been in hiding all this time and made no attempt to contact us' or 'Your aunt/mother committed murder last night and helped her supposedly dead serial killer brother dispose of the body'. She doesn't have a choice. They're her responsibility the same way she was mine. I failed her; she can't fail them. She's meant to be the better of us.

I don't hear her approach. "It is for you." Deb's hand, though cool from the night air, feels shockingly warm against the back of my neck and shoulder when she wipes blood off my skin. I look back at her. "Pretending was always for you."

I don't know what to say. I lower my gaze and go back to rinsing her blood off me.

She cups her hands under the cold water, too, and splashes it onto her body. The shock of temperature makes her gasp and step back; the water that reaches her drips off in eerie moonlit crystals of pink, tinged with blood and backlit by our little fire.

She doesn't like it, but it makes her cleaner, so she's going to have to put up with it. I take her arm and pull her back to the tap. Reluctantly she kneels on the cement, recognising the logic, and goes about washing herself.

Is this sexy or morbid? I don't know. I don't know I know the difference with her.

My hands shake, half from cold and half from the burden of ethical dilemma. If it felt wrong to make her take her clothes off, it feels even worse to wash her, but she's got so much more blood on her than I had on me, and that cut in her neck bled as much down her back as it did down her front. I crouch beside her and make a cup out of my hands to gather water to spill over her shoulder. She shivers as it strikes her skin and runs down her back; she tenses further when I scrub at the dried blood trail with my fingers. Then my fingers don't come away.

Raised whitish scars read like braille under my fingertips. They're horror stories. I revisit the chapter about a glass cabinet shot to pieces in Evelyn Vogel's upstairs hallway, about a sister thought stolen and murdered who appeared in time to save her revenge-driven brother from Oliver Saxon, about a split-second decision to shove her brother at a wall and to shield him with her body as bullets fired and glass shattered all over her, cutting her deep. I run my fingers down to the plot twist near the end of the narrative, the chapter where Hannah McKay drugged the stupid brother and bound him, rendering him powerless when she gained the upper hand over the sister who had come running, again, to save him, and drove a kitchen knife into her back three times.

I shouldn't be touching her, but I'm transfixed by the memories carved into my sister's skin. She trembles, ignoring my wandering touch and concentrating on washing her face. I know I shouldn't but we're already alone, out in the dark, sopping wet and almost naked after having shared responsibility for a gruesome murder, so boundaries are hard to grasp. I trail my fingers from the scar at her kidney down to her hip, where I feel the faint satiny creases of stretch marks from her pregnancy. The epilogue – I only skimmed those chapters. I know she didn't carry full-term. I remember how Rita looked pregnant with Harrison and wonder how big Deb got. From there I drift upwards to the story's paramount tragedy and press my hand across the mark Hannah made in her stomach.

Deb gives up pretending not to notice my attention. She turns towards me, eyes bright in the dark, filled with too many complex emotions to name. I take a long moment to meet them with mine. For a while I'm trapped in that story, in that moment when the brother got free and the sister ripped the knife from her own body to take out Hannah, to protect her brother and nephew at her own expense even as her brother screamed at her not to, when she fell forward and her brother had to catch her and press his hand to her wound to keep her blood inside her. Like this, like the way my hand covers the scar now. But now the wetness that streams over my fingers is icy and clear, just water, and her wound is closed, long healed over. I've revisited this story a thousand times in nightmares but reading it on her takes me back with sharper clarity than my imagination can ever provide.

I finally do look up at her. Her breaths are deep and slow, constrained with nervous energy. I raise my other hand to her face, to hold her wet hair aside to see the white scar in her hairline. Vogel's bullet. Hannah's knife. Saxon's hallway attack. But all of it my fault. Deb was the hero in my story, and I let her become this. I let her take these scars. I let her become a killer. I let her lose her mind.

I'm devastated.

She's shaking in my arms. The intensity between us is overwhelming. I'd forgotten about this, her draw on me. The reason I couldn't just walk away from her – when I left, it was at a run with no glances back. She's full-on even when she's doing nothing more than just looking me in the eye. All or nothing. I could kiss her, we're so close, but she makes no move to initiate and I don't know whether she'd reciprocate or strangle me for trying. Selfishly I'm pulled to her, body and heart, but with the same certainty I know she's my sister and this desire isn't right, that I shouldn't have kissed her even once, let alone now, and that I don't deserve to even if I desperately might want to. The internal debate wars inside me and in the seconds of indecision my eyes fall from hers to her mouth. Her breath quickens; I hear it. I move my hand from her hair to her lips. I feel for the proof of life. Her exhalations are warm on my cold fingers. CO2 direct from my sister's lungs, pumped all through her body by her heart in blood that isn't mine but might as well have been.

It's wrong but I want that CO2 in my lungs.

Reluctantly I drop my hands and sit back, out of reach. I shouldn't be touching her. I have no right. But we don't have all night, and I can't take her any further still covered in blood. I certainly can't drop her at her home like this. So I hold the stained ends of her hair under the stream of water and rinse the blood out, and rub a mark from her chin. She drops her gaze from mine and won't make eye contact. I wonder if she's disappointed or relieved.

I leave Deb standing in the dark, shivering and drenched in her underwear, but clean, and I dig about in the back of my car. I've always got a few changes of clothes for emergencies, shoved into a small duffel bag tucked behind my seat. Dull shirts, conventional coats, unexciting shoes. No labels, nothing at all distinctive. The wardrobe of someone hiding in plain sight.

I find Deb something to wear and she hurriedly pulls the oversized clothes on. I get dressed, too. They're my own clothes so they fit me perfectly but Deb can't take a step without my trousers sliding from her narrow hips down to her knees. I don't have a belt. I don't even have a rope. But she can't walk around holding her clothes on. I end up cutting the seatbelt from the middle of the backseat of my car for her. She's going to need her hands for what we've still got to do.

Our fire burns out and I gather the charred remains of our clothes into another garbage bag. I toss it into the trunk with what's left of Matthews and the kill room while Deb gets back into the car. I grab some rocks, some broken bricks, anything that's heavy and won't be missed.

Nearly done, but not quite.