A/N: You know, I really liked Lumen and I was pissed that they basically wrote her out of the show for some contrived reason. You don't go through what she did and did what she did and suddenly come out of it smelling like roses, that's not how it works. So guess what, I'm fixing that.

This takes place a year after she left, but a few days before episode 1 of season 6. Well, the story does in general, this chapter is just Lumen's life over the year after she left as well as a bit more at the end.

Illuminated in Darkness

Chapter 1: It Never Left

Troy Hamilton groaned in pain as he opened his eyes, nearly blinded by the light that was illuminating him from above. He turned his head left and right as he looked around at his new surroundings. Plastic, lots of plastic. And pictures of the fifteen girls he had raped and murdered over the last few years.

He suddenly tried to move, to get away from whatever nightmare he was in, but Troy quickly found out he was wrapped tightly in not only duct tape, but saran wrap as well.

"What the fuck? Where the fuck am I?!"

"You're at your final destination, Troy." The slightly deep feminine voice startled him, and he bent his head back as far as it would go towards the source of the voice. He could really only make out blonde hair and a pretty face.

"Who the hell are you?" he asked in desperation. "And what do you want from me?"

"Who I am doesn't matter, and what I want from you? Retribution for all the girls you raped and murdered over the last several years," the woman said calmly, and Troy started to sweat as she grabbed a knife off a nearby table and ran a hand over the blade of it.

"Those charges never held against me! There was no evidence!" The woman chuckled and a shiver of fear went down Troy's spine at the darkness underneath it.

"The police never found anything on you, true, but they didn't search your house as thoroughly as they should have. I, on the other hand, found everything I needed to make sure you belonged on my table." After a few seconds of the sound of items being shuffled around, Troy was suddenly face to face with all of his trophies. Trophies, he might add, that he had hidden in a secret compartment in his kitchen cabinets.

"How the fuck did you find those?!" he asked in a panic as he struggled to get free once again.

"Oh, it took me a while, but a dear friend of mine taught me to always look in unexpected places for things like this." She picked up on his trophies, a fingernail decorated to look like the night sky, and studied it. "You're one sick bastard, you know that?"

"If I'm a sick bastard, what does that make you? A psycho bitch?" The slap to his face knocked him for a loop for a moment before a gloved hand roughly grabbed his face, forcing him to look into angered, brown eyes. An index finger was roughly pushed into his forehead.

"Never. Call me. A psycho bitch. You hear me?" she asked fiercely and Troy just narrowed his eyes as the finger was removed.

"Or what?"

"Or... I'll prolong this. I have all night, after all. I'll make you suffer, just like each of those girls that you raped, tortured, murdered, and dumped in the woods. They didn't deserve it, but you certainly do."

"What, are you gonna rape me?" he asked sarcastically, and the woman pulled a disgusted face.

"I wouldn't touch your dick even if I had fifteen gloves on. And after all that I went through myself, the only guy that is allowed to touch me is over fifteen hundred miles away in Miami." Troy scoffed at that.

"Then why aren't you there with him?"

"Oh, I plan to be soon, but I have some loose ends to take care of here, first. One of them being you." The next thing he knew, a terrible pain radiated through his body as the knife the woman was holding was plunged into his heart.

As his life started fading away, the blonde woman leaned in close to his ear and whispered, "Oh, and by the way, my name is Lumen." Darkness engulfed him after that, and Troy Hamilton was no more.

~IiD~

Lumen sighed in satisfaction as she watched Troy's blood flow underneath the saran wrap that held him down on the table.

'One scumbag down, thousands more to go. Dexter would be proud.'

She walked over to the table that held her tools and grabbed her bone saw, admiring it for a moment before getting to work.

'Really proud.'

As she began to methodical process of sawing up her victim, Lumen thought back to the past year after she had left Miami, foolishly thinking that the darkness within her had truly vanished.

'I was such an idiot.' She tossed the left arm carelessly to the floor after severing it before working on the right one. 'I should have known better given my area of study.'

The first two months of her life after returning to Minneapolis had been... okay. She had moved back in with her parents for a short while, at least until she could get a job and get her own place. She had managed to find a job as a receptionist for a doctor's office. It was not the most glamorous of jobs, but it paid decently and allowed her to get her own apartment.

Down went the right arm.

It started two weeks after she had moved into her new apartment. Lumen had just gotten home after an exhausting day at work, and, not really thinking about it, had turned on the TV to the news channel after changing out of her work clothes and grabbing a drink.

With a sigh, she had flopped down on to her couch and just let her mind wander. Most of her thoughts those days were taken up by her... ex-boyfriend? If that is what he could be called, though it sounded right. No matter what she did, Dexter invaded her thoughts day in and day out. She even dreamed about him. Most of them were about the two of them taking out Jordan Chase and his merry little band of misfits, but a fair few had been about just mundane things. And sex. Lots of that.

Lumen often woke up horny after those dreams and it drove her insane.

It was as her thoughts drifted to wondering what Dexter was up to that the news station played a report on a murder suspect that had gotten off on a lack of sufficient evidence. A suspect that had prior convictions and had done time in prison already. He had allegedly murdered seven people, three men and four women.

Ashton Yates was the first.

The left leg joined the two arms.

Lumen had watched the news report with rapt attention, growing angrier as time went on at the injustice done. It slowly, but surely, stirred up that dark beast that she thought had disappeared months ago.

At first she tried to ignore it, but the longer time went on, the more desperate her urge became. She was irritable, cranky, and downright off-putting to everyone around her for quite a while.

Until she caught Yates.

The right leg joined its brethren.

It had taken her a couple of weeks to track down information on the guy. Without Dexter's access to the criminal database, she had to resort to other means of obtaining info on her would-be victim. Once she did, though, it was only a matter of watching and observing the guy and his routine, like Dexter had taught her.

She bought all the necessary supplies for the kill room ahead of time, hiding them in the trunk of her car. The only hiccup she had was getting some sort of tranquilizer. Lumen had looked into M-99, Dexter's drug of choice, but it was a highly regulated and restricted drug, which made her wonder how he had managed to even get it on a regular basis in the first place.

That left her with a secondary option- ketamine. It was not as powerful, but it was easier to obtain and less likely to draw attention and suspicion.

Off went his head! It joined the limbs in the pile.

Soon after, she managed to catch Yates alone in his rundown, dirty house and drugged him.

When she had stabbed the cocksucker, she felt free once again, but Lumen knew it was only a matter of time before it came back.

The only problem after that was disposing on the body and evidence. She did not live near the ocean nor have a boat, a convenience she missed greatly. She had thought about dumping everything into the Mississippi River, but they had a chance of being discovered too easily that way.

Luck had been on her side, though, as she had found a public incinerator right on the outskirts of the city. It was perfect.

With the torso in two, she began bagging up the body parts and tearing down the plastic and pictures, shoving them into trash bags as well. She wiped down her tools before putting them in her bag, doing the same to her kill clothes and splash shield.

Lumen had discovered her urge to... kill would not activate unless she saw injustice being done by criminal scum going free. So, it was simple to just not look into murderers and/or rapists going free, right? Wrong.

She had tried to ignore the itch to look for more future victims after killing Yates, but it would not go away no matter what she did. It was nearly the same feeling she had after she and Dexter offed each one of the monsters who tortured her. Just less strong.

After her second victim, a Timothy Willis, who was a horrible creature who raped and murdered young teenaged girls, Lumen decided to just roll with it. Honestly? It started to feel exhilarating to liberate the world of monsters that hurt the innocent.

And no one suspected a thing. After all, who would suspect a woman of her stature capable of killing people double her size and weight?

Even with her renewed urges being sated, one thing never was- loneliness. She had tried to date again a few times, but she never fully trusted any of the men she went out with. On top of that, she kept comparing them to Dexter in her mind. How none of them were like him, how they could never understand her like he could. One guy she actually tried sleeping with, but when he touched the scars along her back, she went ballistic on him.

The only one that was allowed to touch her scars was Dexter. The one who healed her, who helped her, who understood her completely. The guy she was still desperately in love with.

She would often wake up on those days after they got together to him running a gentle hand over her scars, tracing them lovingly with gentle fingers.

Lumen shuddered pleasantly at the thought as she tossed the bags into the back of her trunk before getting into the driver's seat of her Toyota Camry.

'Don't worry, Dexter, I'll be home soon.'

~IiD~

Three Weeks Later

"Ready to spend some time with daddy today, buddy?" Dexter said as he hoisted Harrison a bit further up on his hip. Dexter smiled a bit when his son giggled at the movement. "Just gotta stop home and grab some things first, alright? Then it's beach time for you and me."

He had managed to leave work early that day due to a lack of work, so he decided to use the rest of the day to spend some time with his son. Jamie had taken him to the park that was nearby, so Dexter had to go retrieve him before heading back to the apartment to grab their beach stuff.

He never noticed the white Toyota Camry that was parked nearby.

"In a few days you'll be going to pre-school, you sure are growing fast," he said as he ascended the stairs that led to his apartment. Well, apartments, really. He did own 9B now as well. It was technically Harrison's apartment, but since a two year old can not own property, it was under Dexter's name.

As he stepped on to the upper landing, he paused as he noticed a figure standing in front of his apartment door. They were leaning against the railing, but as he studied the person, it did not take him long to identify who it was. Dexter would recognize her anywhere.

His breath left him as he continued to stare, and one name slipped out of his lips in a whisper.

"Lumen..."

END

A/N: My first chapters are usually short, but yeah, here you go.

So a fun fact: Lumen's driver's license says she's 5'3", but that is clearly incorrect. Julia is 5'8", only two inches shorter than Michael, who is 5'10". XD (160.02 cm, 172.72 cm, and 177.8 cm for those who use the Metric system.) Dunno if it was a typo or what, but it's kind of funny because it's so obvious they are close in height to one another when they stand next to each other, lol.