Welp, looks like I forgot to put a disclaimer last time, so here it is. Pay attention, folks, because it's the only time I'll put it in here.

Disclaimer: I do not own, nor am I affiliated with, the Dexter franchise.

chapter one: devastation and reform

The first time my uncle put a blade in my hand, I was only four years old. He told me we were going to go hunting; that he had set up some traps in the forest behind our country house, and we were going to check if we'd caught anything. I remember how innocent I had been when we'd set out from that house, unknowing of how quickly I was going to grow up from that point on. I don't know what I had expected to use the knife for. Perhaps cutting the rope I expected the traps to be made of in order to let the animals that my uncle had caught go.

We set out on foot, hiking for a few minutes until we came upon the first trap. We got 'lucky' with the very first one.

There was a red fox whining and snarling at us, and I remember being shocked when I saw the steel trap his paw was caught in, and how it looked like it had just about snapped his foot clean off. I remember it clearly because it was the first time I saw anything that gory. The blood had run down his paw and pooled on the forest floor beneath him. My uncle had turned to me, expectantly. I didn't know what in the world he expected from me until he told me,

"Put it out of its misery."

"Uncle Cal...?"

He put his hand on my head and stared straight into my eyes, and I saw the strange hint of emotion in his usually empty eyes. I didn't like the emotion I saw there, though.

"Kill it," he said, nodding to the knife still grasped in my hand.

I was so reluctant. I think I even cried. Eventually my uncle held my hand in his own and guided the blade, his large hand clamping the fox's muzzle shut so that it couldn't bite me as he lent me the strength to bury my blade deep in its throat. I was distraught as the red liquid splashed over me.

There was that tiny part of me, however. The part that felt... powerful.

And what scared me, more than the look in my uncle's eyes at the prospect of killing, more than the killing itself, was the fact that I liked the feeling I had briefly felt.

That was the first time I killed an animal, but it would not be the last.

And it would not be the worst thing I killed in my lifetime.

It wasn't long before the killing escalated. Over the next four years, my uncle escalated from making me kill rodents and small animals to taking me deer hunting. I didn't have quite the issue with deer hunting as I did with killing the smaller animals. At least with deer hunting, we would cure and eat the meat, whereas with the other animals all we would do was skin them and use their pelts for decoration or sell them. The skinning, I found, was usually the worst part. Over time, though, I grew used to it, the actions becoming second nature. I still felt the same disgust as I had initially, but to a much lesser extent.

Then things changed again.

"We're hunting something a little different today, Tee."

I only had to look into his steely gray eyes, not unlike my own, to see the sadistic pleasure there. The only difference I saw from the times we hunted animals was the degree of the look. It was so much more intense than I'd ever seen it before. It made me uncomfortable to look at, and I averted my eyes as I helped pack hunting knives and duct tape.

"What are we hunting this time, Uncle Cal?" I mumbled, keeping my tone of voice carefully casual. I wasn't sure I wanted to know the answer.

My uncle stretched leisurely, cracking his neck, then turned his head to look at me. My gaze caught his, and I found myself trapped in his piercing gaze, unable to look away. It reminded me of a bug pinned to a display board. The only difference was I was alive. And had less limbs. My uncle gave an amused smile.

"We're going to kill a bad man, Teela."

My blood ran cold. Killing a person? I knew my uncle was a sick person. Mentally sick. He needed psychiatric help. Even at the young age of eight, I realized by comparing my uncle to everyone else that he was different, and not necessarily in a good way. But taking his eight-year-old niece on a manhunt? It was one thing to make me hunt and kill animals, but I could feel the fear overtake me at the idea of killing another human. I shook my head emphatically.

"No," I breathed, dropping the knives I had been packing onto the work table I was standing next to and quickly moving towards the garage door, wanting to head back to the sanctuary of my aunt and uncle's house. He would never dare so much as mention hunting in the house, as he treated my Aunt Aria like a delicate princess, as though she would faint at the very mention of something that involved blood. Which, knowing my aunt, she actually might.

My uncle was in front of me before I'd even made it three steps. He grabbed me by the shoulders with bruising force, eyes fierce as I found myself caught in his gaze again. A deer in the mother-effing headlights.

"I don't recall saying you had a choice in the matter," he said quietly. I knew shit was about to go down when his voice got quiet. I bit the inside of my cheek, worrying it, my mind racing as I tried to think of some way to talk my way out of my current predicament. My uncle was the most intelligent man I knew, and one of the only ones I found my silver tongue turned to lead around. Uncle Cal stared at me for a moment that felt like forever before his lips curved upward. His eyes didn't join his lips in the smile. "Pack the knives." His voice brooked no room for dispute. His grip loosened, and he moved one hand to stroke his thumb along the side of my face. I didn't dare flinch, even though I didn't like the knowledge that a psychopath was touching me, especially now that I realized he had killed more than just animals with his hands. The last time I had flinched away from his touch, I had seen a side of him that was even more frightening than his usual self. "Don't worry. You won't have to do anything this time around. I just think it's time you watch and learn how it's done." He straightened, patting my head. "Maybe next time you can give the killing blow."

I didn't want to give the killing blow. The only thing I wanted to blow was with the wind, as far away from there as I could get.

I let him herd me into the black SUV as he stowed the rest of our supplies in the stow-and-go storage compartment. Out of sight is good, even when it's dark out. He climbed into the passenger seat and the vehicle started, the motor sounding deafening in the silent dark as we drove to an unknown-to me, at least-destination. I could feel my anxiety levels rising more with every stop and turn we made. By the time my uncle pulled the car to a stop in an unfamiliar driveway on a poorly-lit street in a rather rundown-looking neighborhood, I was a nervous wreck. I remember biting my nails so distractedly that the only thing that made me realize I was even doing it was when I bit into the skin next to my nail hard enough to draw blood.

My uncle paused in the middle of removing his seatbelt and half-turned to me, pinning me with his gaze.

"Stay here. I'll be right back with our...guest." He smiled a bit at that, genuinely this time. His genuine smile frightened me more than his usual fake smile. I nodded quickly, not wanting to upset him in his jittery, pre-kill state. He was always the most easy to upset when he was anticipating a kill, and I feared the more he was anticipating it, the more upset he would get if something didn't go according to plan. I didn't exactly want to end up as his victim instead of, or on top of, the poor shmuck he currently had in mind.

I kept my gaze fixed on my lap even as my uncle maneuvered the limp body of said poor shmuck into the middle row of seats of our SUV, staring determinedly at the fingernails I had bitten completely down to the quick. A terrible habit, really, I realized distantly as my uncle climbed back into the driver's seat once more, backing the SUV out and taking us to another, also unknown to me, location. I resisted the urge to study the face of the man sprawled on the seat behind me, acutely aware of the fact that my uncle was going to kill him in a matter of minutes. The horror of the situation, however, didn't fully hit me until we pulled up to an abandoned cabin a few minutes outside of town, and I entered it only to find everything covered, like one might do to protect the furniture while painting, except for the fact that the walls were covered, too.

The hair on my arms and the back of my neck stood on end as my uncle duct-taped the poor shmuck to the plastic-covered table in the middle of the room. He was smiling all the while, even going so far as to whistle a cheery tune while he set out the hunting knives he had brought with us. The sound combined with the situation sent chills down my spine. That may have been the point when I started crying. I forget, to be honest. I know I did at some point, though. My uncle selected a wickedly sharp knife with a curve to the blade, inspecting it before looking over at me. His content gaze quickly turned into a heated glare.

"Stop crying," he hissed. That just made the tears fall faster. "Stop it," he demanded. He never reacted well to me showing my emotions so openly. It made me wonder how he dealt so well with my openly-emotional aunt. Guess it was just because he obsessed over her so much that he learned to roll with it. Not so much with myself, unfortunately.

Uncle Cal snatched up my chin in one hand. It didn't help that he still had a grip on the hunting knife with his other hand. Thankfully for my well-being, the panic I felt at the sight of the knife threateningly close to my person stopped my tears in their tracks. He examined me for a moment, turning my head from one side to the other to confirm that I had stopped crying.

"...Good," he said at length. "Now...watch carefully, Teela. The magic is about to begin." His eyes lit back up with that sadistic glee, and I stood rooted to the spot as he took his position next to his intended victim's head, unable to look away.

"This man is a bad man," Uncle Cal said passively as he made several long, shallow cuts along the man's limbs and torso, almost as though he were making lazy brush strokes along a flesh-colored canvas. He cut off the man's undershirt, leaving him in nothing else but his socks and boxers. "He beat his wife for years until she finally hung herself. Now he's started robbing people in back alleys. He even shot one person in the stomach. They almost didn't survive the surgery to take the bullet out."

I listened attentively to what my uncle was saying as he toiled, and I forced myself to think of the man he was slicing into as nothing more than one of the animals we had hunted so often. It was surprisingly easy, with the knowledge that he was a bad man. The point of view made it easier for me to keep my supper from coming back up when my uncle began carving deeply into the man's face, peeling the skin back, exposing the muscles that lay beneath the flesh. It scared me how easily I was able to shut off the rational emotions that I should be feeling as I watched my uncle cut up another human. No disgust, no anger or fear towards my uncle for what he was doing. The only fear I felt was towards my own ability to shut down so well. The only other thing I felt was... curiosity. Before I knew it, I was stepping closer to get a better look at my uncle's work, almost as if I was in a trance. My uncle glanced at me momentarily with an amused smile playing on his lips.

"I see you've come out of your shell," he commented airily. "Good." He beckoned me closer yet, and I complied. He pointed to one of the muscles he had revealed in the man's cheek. "See this here? This muscle is called the masseter." He paused, then grinned. "I know. Let's learn while Uncle Cal works, shall we, sweetie?" He proceeded to peel back more skin and name other muscles as we went. I doubted I would be able to remember many, if any at all, by the time we were done, but it kept my mind occupied, and it made my uncle happy to be able to 'teach me' while doing something that he enjoyed. I tried not to think about the fact that it was something sick and twisted that he enjoyed. I knew my uncle was sick. I didn't want to accept that the fact that I was actually semi-enjoying this time with him meant I must be sick in the same way as he was.

When we were done, I waited in the car as my uncle disposed of the evidence that anything out of the ordinary had taken place in the abandoned cabin. It all came crashing down on me then as I stared out the window into the pitch black night-the guilt, the fear, the anger, the disgust. It was like a tidal wave of emotion crashed over me all at once, and I found myself crying so hard I was hiccupping. I fought to control myself, knowing that if my uncle found me like that he would get angry all over again. It was a good few minutes before I was able to stop the tears, and when they stopped, I slumped back into my seat, exhausted from the emotional outburst and the whole ordeal I had gone through that night.

It was a relief, I realized, to be able to feel things so strongly after thinking for a moment in that cabin that I had rid myself of all emotion forever.

I never wanted to become like my uncle. Being able to feel was exhausting. But it also made me feel alive.

A/N: I love and appreciate it when people read, follow, and favorite my work. But I love it even more when they review! (Hint, hint)

See y'all next Sunday! I'm starting back to college this week though, so after next week's update I'll likely drop down to monthly updates rather than weekly.