It's late July when she starts to see it. The cracks in Dexter's control, minute hairline fractures that she wouldn't even notice if she couldn't feel what was seeping out, wasn't specifically attuned to it.

Maybe she's even been waiting for it in some way. After all this is where she fits, what she knows. No sister, no kids, no dead wife. Hers alone.

So why can't she bring herself to open the file?

Dexter left it for her this morning, tucked in the half open top desk drawer in a way that's so uncharacteristically careless it could only have been deliberate.

And here it sits.

An unspoken offer. A question he doesn't know how to ask.

Lumen runs the edge of her thumb along the name ('Richard Mechem'), and it's almost a caress. Almost.

God. What is she doing? What the hell is she doing?

She doesn't know this man, he never did anything to her. Dan, Cole, Alex, Jordan . . . they were right, a balancing of the scales, a restoration of equilibrium and she's never lost a moment's sleep, never felt a drop of guilt. But this. She doesn't need this.

She doesn't.

And yet . . .

Abruptly she gets up, shoving the folder back in his desk. Tries to focus on ordinary things—makes lunch, does a load of laundry, goes for a run.

The mid-day heat is oppressive, smothering. She pushes herself to the point of near exhaustion, running too hard, too fast, her feet forming a rhythmic cadence on the pavement, as a voice in her head that might be conscience whispers run, just run, keep going.

It gets louder, more insistent, until it seems like the only possible answer. And she's almost ready to obey, to turn right instead of left, when she realizes she's holding onto something so tightly her hand has started to hurt. Looks down to find the knife Dexter gave her tucked into her palm like it was made to be there. She'd picked it up without thinking, an automatic impulse, a little piece of him to carry, to keep her safe.

The voice shuts up, and she turns left, goes back to the apartment, goes home.

Leaves the file in the desk, unread.

"It's all set." Dexter announces as he comes back to the apartment that evening. "Astor's at a sleep over. Deb's got Harrison and Cody. Which leaves us . . . Mechem." He smiles, keyed up, excited. "Tonight's the night."

Lumen feels like she's about to cancel Christmas.

"Dexter-"

He keeps going, too focused to hear her as he makes his way to the bedroom. "Mechem lives alone, heavy foreclosure neighborhood, closest neighbor five houses down, and two broken street lights." he strips off his shirt and tosses it on the bed, giving her a sideways look, "Economic downturn. Criminal, isn't it?"

She fights hard to swallow back the laugh, but can't quite stop the smile that plays at the corners of her mouth.

Dexter answers it with one of his own, one of those rare, genuine, perfect smiles, and she almost changes her mind.

"Dexter-"

"I know, I know, where's the challenge?" He shakes his head and goes over to pull out the trunk. "But I thought no need to rush things, just ease into it. Like training wheels or is that too patronizing?"

"Dexter!"

And now he looks at her, really looks at her, takes in what she's wearing and more importantly, what she's not.

"Oh."

"Yeah."

"Oh." He sits down on the trunk, looking for all the world like someone just killed his puppy (if, you know, that kind of thing would bother him). "So, you don't-"

"I- I'm sorry. I just-" she stops short, uncertain how to complete the sentence and squeezes her eye shut.

He'd planned this for her. Gone through all the trouble of getting the details right, making it perfect. Somehow she knows that if she went back and opened the file the victims would all be women, their deaths all sexually related. Dexter's version of a thank-you-for-enduring-the-summer-with-my-step-kids-who-hate-you gift.

It's disturbing how sweet she finds that.

"Have I ruined everything?"

He shakes his head slowly, dazed. Then seems to come back to himself and looks over at her, tentative, uncertain. "Have I?"

That propels her forward, and she comes to sit next to him on the trunk. He follows her with his eyes, but doesn't say anything, just looks down at where her hand now rests beside his, their fingertips only a hairs-breadth apart. The tiniest motion and they'd be touching.

Neither of them moves.

Lumen sucks in a shaky breath, exhales. "No." She shakes her head, says it again, "No." It's becoming more true by the second, and she struggles to explain, to find the contours of her moral illusions. "It's not that I don't -"

"Don't," he whispers, cutting her off. Bringing a hand up to her cheek, he turns her face to his. "Don't explain yourself. Not about this. Not to me." He traces a thumb along her cheek bone, "I never should have-"

"Don't." It's her turn to cut him off, and she silences him with a kiss, repeating his words back to him against his lips. "Don't explain yourself. Not about this. Not to me."

She waits up for him.

Sits on the couch downing cup after cup of strong coffee until she's jittery and anxious.

In her mind she's with him, beside him every step of the way, carefully preparing the kill-room down to the last detail, taping up the plastic, setting up the pictures, giving the victims one last voice, a last moment. She's there as he waits in the dark, syringe in hand.

Lumen imagines Mechem laid out on his table, conjures the scene in vivid, excruciating high-definition—the sharp chemical burn of ammonia from the crushed ampoule; the flat, taunting, darkness of his voice; the sound of Mechem's desperation; the flash of the knife, the resistance and give of Mechem's flesh; and then the silence, the peace.

She forces herself to recall all of it, not to whitewash a single detail, and she waits.

Waits for the guilt, the self-disgust, the normal human emotions that should be attached to this.

What comes instead is fear, concern . . . worry.

It could all so easily go wrong, for all his advance preparation, his careful planning. A mistimed ambush, an unexpected guest, an unanticipated witness . . .

So many moving parts, so many little pieces, misplace a single one and she'll lose him.

The thought is like physical pain.

She should have gone with him. Why the fuck didn't she go with him?

It's almost three a.m. when she hears the scrape of his key against the lock and nearly jumps out of her skin.

Dexter enters quietly, obviously expecting her to be asleep, trying not to wake her up. Stops short at the sight of her sitting there waiting for him, and for a moment she can see him start to automatically construct the lie, spin the fabrication, and then it registers . . .

The effort is unnecessary.

"Hi."

It's quiet, testing. He's trying to read her, trying to figure out what it all means.

"Hi," she whispers back.

Dropping the bag, he comes over to stand in front of her. Stares down at where she's spread out the remnants of the file on the coffee table.

Self-consciously she starts to clean it up. "I, um, I couldn't sleep. I kept thinking about all the things that could go wrong, and then I realized I didn't know where you were going. That if something happened, if you didn't come back, I wouldn't know- where to go, how to find you."

Without a word Dexter kneels down and reaches out to still her hands with his gloved ones. And its only then that she realizes she's shaking.

"I can't do this. I thought I could. Thought I could, I don't know, treat it like a poker game or a trip, but it's not. It's not and I can't pretend that it is."

"You can't?"

"No! I couldn't live with it. Losing you like that. All for the sake of conscious denial. Like that buys me anything . . ." she trails off at the sight of his face, the slow dawning relief that's washing over him. "Oh. Oh God, you thought I meant-"

She doesn't get to complete the thought.

In one sure, swift motion, Dexter tugs her gently forward and kisses her across the coffee table.

It's sweet and soft and tender, just like always, but there's something else, there in the tremble of his fingertips, a barely checked urgency that he can't quite disguise.

Fumbling slightly in an effort not to break the embrace, she kneels up on the coffee table and deepens the kiss, leading him where he wants to go. Crime scene photos and surveillance notes go flying, but they're past noticing.

"You have to give me details." She murmurs the words against his mouth, "Locations, timelines. And knives, you have to leave me knives."

"Lumen-"

"I need to be able to help if you need me. And if I can't- If can't, I need to be able to kill whoever took you from me."

At that Dexter pulls away, suddenly serious, "No. I'm not worth it."

"You are."

He grits his teeth and pins her with a look that has probably made grown men run. "Promise me you won't do anything so fucking stupid."

But Lumen's stopped running. "You first."

Dexter doesn't say anything, so she pushes. "Promise that if someone hurts me you won't hunt them down and put them on your table." He drops his eyes, avoiding her. Slipping off the coffee-table, she moves to straddle him, ducking her head to catch his gaze as she repeats. "Promise me, and I'll do the same."

He can't. She knows he can't. Because they're the same, because vengeance is burned in their flesh and etched on their bones.

Because she's not self-delusional enough to think killing Jordan fixed her, made her whole. She is at best an imperfect replica, a construct of broken, mangled pieces of her previous self she stole back from them in death, held together by nothing more than strength of will and this man's hands.

She won't let him be taken from her without a fight.

Slowly, deliberately, she reaches out and takes his left hand. Peeling off the black leather glove, she places a soft kiss on the flesh of his palm, smiling slightly at Dexter's sharp inhale, and draws it to her waist. Repeats the process with his right.

As she puts his hand to her cheek, something inside him finally (finally) breaks, and he surges forward, catching her lips with his and leading her down to the floor.

They make love there amidst the crime scene photographs and blueprints and surveillance notes, and when it's done she waits for regret, for remorse.

It doesn't come.

Lumen stays in Miami, compromising herself by inches.

And it feels dangerously like love.