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. I don't own Band-Aid. I wouldn't try to take credit for Band-Aid's fantastic work, saving the world one ouchie at a time. What kind of person do you think I am?

Author's notes: Last instalment! As usual it spun wildly out of control word count wise, but I don't think anyone is surprised. Thanks to everyone who has been reading and especially those who have commented so far. I'm back to being unsure whether this is a sequel or an AU, because I actually really liked the ambiguity of Break Me's ending, but I really enjoyed writing the raw and untempered versions of Deb and Dexter I got to uncover through this fic. Thankyou Writingisfunlol and PrestoManifesto for prompting me to write it. All readers, please read and enjoy and remember that I live off your praise, and please decide for yourself whether or not this is canon to Break Me.

Writing to bridges at the moment. Still writing to All of Me by John Legend but mostly captured by the opening verse and the bridge. And you give me all of you/ Give me all of you/ Cards on the table, we're both showing hearts/ Risking it all though it's hard… Too perfect for Debster. I hear it and my mind comes straight to the Dexter universe. But as usual I'm also writing to my favourite musical inspiration, Matchbox Twenty. The Difference has never much spoken to me before now but it is very fitting for this chapter in particular. The lift in pace at the end of each verse into and through the chorus fits the rise and fall of Dexter and Deb's confrontation, and the lyrics make pictures of them in my head: Slow dancing on the boulevard/ In the quiet moments while the city's still dark… There was nothing but her love and affection/ She was crazy for you/ Now she's part of something that you lost… Now she's moving further from you/ There was nothing that could make it easy on you/ Every step you take reminds you that she's walking wrong/ And for all you know/ This could be/ The difference between what you need/ And what you want. And then this bridge is so potent! Every word you never said/ Echoes down your empty hallway/ And everything that was your world/ Just came down.

Chapter three

/

/

I don't need directions. I drive her out to my old place. Her old place. Our old place. The apartment. I turn my lights off as I get closer and drop my speed, taking this moment to respectfully acknowledge the harsh pang of nostalgia and horror I feel in my chest at the sight of my old home.

Where I lived.

Where I hid.

Where I fielded a one-sided game against my long-lost brother.

Where I looked after my sister when she was fearful and traumatised by her experience with the Ice Truck Killer.

Where I raised my son.

Where I heard my son's terrified screams for me as Hannah tore my family apart.

Where I watched my knife sink into Deb's flesh, and her blood pour over my carpets.

Where a bullet shattered a window and struck Deb in the temple.

Where I was so sure I'd lost everything.

"Astor lives here now," Deb whispers as I pull to a stop. Just like that. All that happened here to me is extinct, just like that. It's Astor Bennett's place now. And she's happy here, I hope, and so all that came before that doesn't matter anymore. I don't live here; I don't hide here. My brother is dead. Hannah is dead. My children are safe. My sister is alive, and here, and probably insane, but alive is alive. And my home is no longer my home.

And I'm glad.

We're stealthy about unpacking the trunk and carting Matthews' bags up to the marina. It's so much quicker with Deb than it ever was on my own. I often considered that she'd be the perfect partner in crime, and she is. Sick, I know.

The Slice of Life. It's exactly how I remember it, and it's not until I set foot on its deck I realise how much I've missed it.

"I gave it to Cody," Deb says softly. And again, I'm glad. My eldest son has upgraded some of the equipment and has kept the rest in perfect condition. Enrolling him in sailing club all those years ago was clearly a good call.

Deb has the key but she hands it over. I kick away from the wharf and let the boat drift for a bit before I start the engines; and even then I keep the power low until we're out of earshot of the apartments. I anxiously watch the dark window on the second storey. No lights come on and I'm relieved. It's bad enough that I revealed myself to my sister. I shouldn't have interfered, let her see me. But I did. I can't shatter my daughter the same way.

Though, presumably, my daughter would never put herself in the extreme kind of situation I had to rescue Debra from earlier this morning.

Deb sits at the back of the boat with one arm wrapped around herself against the cold ocean air and the other hooked through the handrail for support. I glance back at her occasionally as I take the Slice of Life further and further out into the dark. She hasn't really said much, I realise. She's acknowledged that I'm real and that's about it. She hasn't asked how I survived; she hasn't asked how I could bring myself to avoid her for five years and let her believe I'd died. I'm not looking forward to that conversation, because when Deb hits she hits hard, but the fact that we haven't yet had it worries me. Deb isn't one to shy away from challenge, so she's not scared.

It makes me worry again that she's not entirely the Deb I left behind. That she's different; damaged. That the bullet she took and the seizures she experiences now might be linked to the kind of mild brain damage her doctor predicted back at the time of the shooting. I've seen those scans, read those notes. My employer made sure I had access to them. When she passed a psychological evaluation and went back to work I assumed it meant she was fine.

Now I think I was too happy to jump to conclusions, and doctors' notes about impaired judgement and issues with empathy and impulsive decision-making come reluctantly back to mind.

Did my little sister lose her mind? While I was racing as far from her as I could get to protect her from every outside evil I could imagine, was she falling victim to the one evil I forgot to factor in – the one inside?

Did I leave my sister to devour herself in madness? Or… had she already started down this path when I knew her?

I angrily slam the boat to a halt, and both Deb and I jerk forward at the change of speed. I don't mean for my anger to affect her. I'm just so pissed off at the prospect that my greatest sacrifice, costing myself her and Harrison and Rita's kids, might have ultimately not helped at all. That maybe Deb was never within the reach of help. That the damage I'd already inflicted was enough that she never stood a chance of real recovery.

I growl in frustration and kick the protective wall of the steering column. There's nobody around – even the shoreline is distant and dim from here – and it's dark and I'm alone except for the dismembered body of Thomas Matthews and the very still, now standing figure of Deb, who mightn't really be Deb at all. Momentarily I lower my head to rest on my forearms, which I stretch across the steering wheel.

I shouldn't be here.

She shouldn't be here.

We shouldn't be here.

Jesus, Deb, why'd you have to send that email? Why couldn't you leave this all alone? Why couldn't you find some other way? Why'd you have to lure me out here the same way you lured Tom and why did you have to ask me whether I'd help you clear everything up? Now I'm questioning myself, questioning my choices, and I don't like it.

It makes me not like her very much right now. I never love her any less, but I don't always like her.

Regardless of whether I like her I still fucking love her and I'm still committed to removing this stain from her life so she can carry on from here as if she never made tonight's mistakes, so she can go back to being Joey Quinn's girlfriend and Harrison's idolised aunt and one little girl's beloved mommy. I pull myself together and push away from the wheel. I turn back to Deb and she's standing there at the back of my boat – my son's boat – where I left her, watching me.

"We're far enough out," I say. "The current's good here."

We're nearly half an hour out from the marina. Deb hasn't spoken since we first set foot on the deck. Even now she silently walks to the side and looks over the edge into the black water as it placidly laps the sides of the boat. The quiet water is nothing like the stormy grey seas of my last trip out on this boat, the night I drowned Jacob Elway. I nearly lost my boat. I nearly died. Even still, I'd take that night again over this one. At least that one, if relived, could maybe be rearranged to result in different consequences. Maybe I would waste less time playing with my prey. Maybe I would make for home quicker, call Deb, meet her in Orlando with Harrison and forget about trying to remove Hannah from my life, forget about trying to salvage my Miami life at all. In the end that wasn't even what I wanted. Maybe–

Maybe I should give up dreaming new endings that aren't to be and deal with the nightmare ending I created for myself instead, because I am here and she's here and everything is totally screwed but it'll be worse if we don't get rid of this corpse we – she – created.

I grab the heaviest of the bags and carry it over to where Deb stands. She looks at it. She looks at me. She looks, for the first time tonight, like she actually understands the gravity of the situation, and I hope that means she can handle a bit more weight.

"If this is ever found, you're fucked," I warn her. "You bled all over him, all over the scene. There's no reasonable explanation for that except for your presence at the murder. If anyone finds any one of these bags, it's a nail in your coffin, Deb."

"Do you think someone will find them?" she asks, sounding nervous. Good. She should be nervous. She killed a fucking deputy chief of the police force. Being nervous is a normal response. Panic would be better, but nervousness will do for now.

"Doubtful," I admit. I lower the bag to my feet, lean on the edge and point to the horizon. Almost imperceptibly, Deb leans closer to me to see along the line of my sight. I describe the path this current takes. "It's fast, too," I add. "It'll have these little packages out of Miami before you have breakfast. The weights will keep them down at the sea floor."

"And that's deep, right?"

"Very deep."

Deb exhales anxiously and looks out over the water. The soft breeze catches the ends of her damp hair and her white hands clench on the side of the Slice of Life. She looks… vulnerable. When I pulled her upright after her seizure earlier this morning she looked vulnerable. Since then she's looked anything but. She's looked manic, uncertain, angry, determined, lots of things, but not like this. Afraid. Worried.

That she's afraid is good. Fear is instinctual. That she's worried is even better. Worry is for the future. For consequences. Impulsive decision-making. You don't worry if you aren't pausing to consider your actions. Maybe she's not lost.

Or maybe she was when I found her, and maybe she's found her breadcrumbs and is slowly trekking back.

"It's a risk but it's still the best way, isn't it?" she checks, looking down at me as I untie the first bag and chuck in a couple of broken bricks from the power station. I look up at her. Impaired judgement. She's weighing up options. Seeking expert advice. Evaluating. Making informed decisions. Another good sign.

Relying on me, her unreliable dead liar of a brother, for confirmation of the best option. Hmm. Not such a positive sign.

But not unlike my Deb, so, with that in mind, definitely a good sign.

"It's the best way," I agree. "It's the cleanest way to remove the evidence from the reach of the people who are going to be looking for it – Miami Metro, and the F.B.I., I assume, but even they'll start with Miami and work outwards from there. There's nothing linking this to you, nothing that warrants opening a murder case over a missing person investigation. They'll probably never find the body. But if they do-"

"I'm fucked," Deb finishes. I nod and lift the bag as I stand, and I tip it over the edge. We both watch as it lands with a plop and then a splash in the black water, and we feel the gentle rock of those little disturbances on the water surface against the boat. The bag instantly disappears.

We both return to the pile for another bag. We untie the tops and weigh them down with rocks and bricks. I leave her at this task and continue carrying completed and weighted bags to the side to throw over. I look back at Deb and she's kneeling beside her latest bag, looking in.

I can tell from the expression on her face that it's the bag with Tom's head in it. The stricken, disgusted expression is right out of my memory – so her, so Deb – and for a moment I'm so contented to see it. Then I remember that what it took to bring Deb's Deb expressions out was seeing the decapitated face of her murder victim in a plastic garbage bag on the back of her dead brother's boat in the middle of the night after drugging her partner and leaving her children unattended at home, and I'm not contented anymore.

I'm furious. Furious that she would throw away all that made her good. She was everything I ever wanted to be, and now she's everything I ever was. All the worst things. The antihero.

This can't be real.

I stride over and take the top of the bag. I toss in the bricks with less care than our father's friend probably deserved, and Deb stands hurriedly, wincing as they audibly strike Matthews' skull. I hope she didn't see that.

I tie the top with taut and strong arms. I know I'm scaring her. I know I'm undermining the progress we've made. I can't make myself stop. I can't slow down and look at her and act calmly to make her understand that I'm going to make everything as right as I can.

"What a fucking night. What a fucking mess," Deb says faintly. Like it upsets her. Like she's waking up to herself, coming out of the shock she's been in since I found her. Like she's not sure what she's doing here. She looks around and shivers and I start to suspect that this is the case. But maybe she should have thought of all that before she planned this terrible crime and baited her oldest friend out in the night to murder him, inadvertently ripping me back to her and forcing me back into her life.

I wasn't meant to come back. I'd accepted I would never see her again. And that might have been better than this, helping her cover up a crime I never wanted to see her commit and struggling to reconnect with her in these most extreme and unwelcome of circumstances.

"Need I remind you, this is your mess we're cleaning up," I remind her, irritated.

She's back. She's just as quick as ever.

"You don't need to remind me, fuckface."

"And need I mention that-"

"No, you don't," she cuts me off. "I am aware that this situation is entirely fucked. But it was my fucked situation and you threw yourself in and made it even more fucked than it already was. After everything in the last few years, and especially these last few days, I did not need you to return from the dead and turn everything I believed upside down, tonight of all fucking nights, Dexter."

She talks in that condescending, spiteful way she perfected a long time ago. She says the things I least want to hear and makes me question myself. Years of separation and we're still at this? Sniping at each other, rubbing each other the wrong way. Siblings to the end.

"I did not need to come back here and find you tying Thomas fucking Matthews to a table in plastic and stabbing him in the gut, with a dose of adrenaline in your neck, blood everywhere and a paralytic fucking seizure on the horizon," I shoot angrily at her. "You're right to call it a mess."

"We wouldn't fucking be here cleaning it up if you had taken care of it properly before you fucking left me," she snaps back. She thrusts the next bag at me with a sharp glare in her ever-familiar eyes. The sharpness would be relieving if I wasn't so angry. She's very present; she knows what's going on, enough to be pissed with me. So she isn't insane, thank fuck. I don't know what to do with an irreparable Deb. Broken, yes, I've dealt with that before. Cracked, hurting, lost, dark… I've seen and loved many incarnations of Deb, but deranged, delirious murderess Debra – I don't know how to manage that, for either of us.

Knowing she's not that should improve my mood but her words grate on my rawest emotional wounds. They redirect my attention to my choices. She always could bring out the worst in me. Does this mean I've been a better person, all these years without her?

I can't believe that, but maybe.

I throw the bag she gave me overboard and turn back to her.

"Alright," I snarl, losing my patience and hating myself for it. Five years apart and this is my reunion with the love of my life? I shrug, raising my hands in faux submission. Really it's a challenge and she doesn't need a pocket phrasebook to translate. She knows. She straightens, tenses, ready for the punch. "Okay, let's have it. We've been playing for hours, avoiding it. Just say it. Come out and fucking say it, Debra. Tell me I shouldn't have left you. Tell me I should have stayed."

Her gaze is steady and hateful. Our love has been this for so long, a love so deep it is also hate.

"You should have stayed. With me."

Why don't you just punch me in the heart, Deb?

I can hit just as hard.

"Would you be happier if I had?"

"What do you think, fucknugget?"

"Would you be happier?" I repeat, and she glares back evenly. "What's your daughter's name?"

That throws her. "Justice. Justice Rita."

I didn't know the middle name. I pretend like it doesn't throw me. "If I'd stayed," I barge on savagely, "you wouldn't have your daughter. You'd be in jail. We both would. Everything we ever did wrong would be public record and our friends and family would despise you. You'd be the detective who killed her captain, harboured Hannah McKay and covered for her murderer brother. Harrison wouldn't be with you and neither would Quinn. So tell me," I challenge, ducking my head to catch her gaze when she tries to drop it, "how much happier you'd be if I'd stayed."

She can't.

"Tell me they don't make you happy, every day."

She can't.

"Tell me those kids and Quinn haven't made you happier than I ever did. Hmm?" I circle her and push her shoulder in challenge when she can't respond. She swats at me with an angry hand but misses. I walk around her and hiss in her ear, "Lie to me and say you'd have me back over what you have at home with them. Say you'd trade in an instant."

She shakes with equal parts frustration and hurt. A selfish part of me wants her to argue, to say I did make her happy. To say what she used to say, that it was worth it, that she would choose what we had over anything else. But I know, and now, finally, so does she. I never deserved her. And she never deserved me.

Harry Morgan should never have brought me home.

She shakes her head and looks away with a humourless laugh.

"You're a fucking asshole," she mutters.

"I haven't changed."

"I hate you," she adds, acidly. I nod wearily, turning away from her.

"I know." I lean my elbows on the safety rail and lower my head again to rest on my forearms. "I don't expect you to forgive me."

"Five years." Her voice is rising, but we're so far away from anyone or anything, there's no chance of being overheard. This whole night, bar Matthews, we've been totally alone. Isolated. It's like the world turned its back on us to give us this night in privacy. Like we're the only people in the world. But that only means if she wants to throw me overboard she can do so without interference. "Five years," she repeats, bright incredulous eyes on me. I keep my eyes on the decking of the boat as she rants. "Five fucking years. You were dead. I buried you. I cried-" She stops. Swallows furiously. "I cried forever."

I can imagine. I have imagined. I never pretended I wasn't hurting her in leaving her like I did; I only convinced myself I was hurting her less this way.

"I didn't mean to hurt you-"

"Fine fucking job," she snaps. "Do you have the faintest fucking clue how it feels to see you standing here with me after all this time and to realise I cried all those tears for nothing? To know you've been alive and that you didn't even once reach out to let me know, you selfish sack of shit? I'm your sister," Deb reminds me harshly. "This is one of those ball-shattering secrets you're supposed to let me fucking know!"

"Why, so we could have this delightful conversation even sooner?" I demand, using anger as a defence for my helplessness. She's wrong – it's not that I should have told her earlier, it's that I shouldn't have told her at all. Now look at us.

"Why the fuck not? How could it possibly have gone down any worse than the last two hours?!"

I growl in frustration and glare across the dark grey sea. She's right, damn her. No conceivable reunion could be worse than this one. I really screwed this up, and I'm not making it any better.

I try not to imagine a Mufasa-like apparition of our father bearing down on us from the clouds to scowl and berate me for my gross mistreatment of this situation and for letting my sister and I stray into this unfortunate future. It's all so easy to envision. He'd be so beyond pissed off.

"Things might have gone down much better," I say finally, tone tight, "if I'd not make contact with you at all. But that would have meant standing at the window and watching you die, which wasn't really an option, you know?"

"How could you stay away all this time?" she asks, mystified and shattered. Didn't you miss me? Didn't you want to come back to me? She doesn't remember trying to leave me. She doesn't remember the resolve of knowing you were doing the right thing by everyone involved. She doesn't remember because I didn't let her stay away.

"Because I love you," I say, knowing it sounds weak. "Because it was right."

She explodes. "You're a fucking liar, Dexter Morgan! You said, you said you'd always choose me, you'd never let anything happen to me, and then you fucking left! And all this time I thought you'd left by accident, that you were taken from me, from us, from Harrison and Astor and Cody, but you weren't. You left us. By choice." She draws an angry breath. This is definitely Deb, my Deb. Whoever I've been dealing with up until now has been some disassociated, shell-shocked, post-traumatic-stress recovery model of Deb's mind, and I feel bad for the way I've treated that fragile version of my sister. I feel bad for not recognising her in trauma. I feel bad for not believing she was still in there. "I had nobody. Nobody who could see me, who I could be me with. I've been in fucking hiding in my own fucking body for the last five years, you piece of shit. Lying to everybody. I did fucked-up shit with you, Dexter," she reminds me furiously, "I covered up all kinds of horrible things, killed people for you, I fucking kissed you in a fucking toilet at your kid's goddamn birthday party, and no one knows, they all think I'm so delicate and innocent and some kind of fucking victim, like I didn't know about anything, like I wasn't desperately in love with you and wilfully involved in every stupid motherfucking thing you were up to, like I wouldn't do it all over again if you asked because I'm hopeless and stupid like that, and you have no fucking idea what it's like to miss you like I did. No idea. You're so fucking selfish," she screams, lashing out suddenly. She violently shoves me and, leaning lightly on the rail, I go down hard on the decking. I curl up instinctively and she bears down, still shouting. "I hate you. I hate you!"

"Deb!" I yell back at her, gamely raising my hands, catching her foot and pushing it away when she tries to kick me. "Don't! Just… Stop!" She pauses and I scoot quickly away into a sitting position against the captain's chair. "We've been here before. It doesn't end well."

Some other Monday. A beach, a big fight, harsh words of truth and deep emotion and regret. A spiral of events that got us both killed. A cycle more powerful than either of us. One we can't afford to restart.

"Maybe not for you," Deb sneers, but she does fold her arms and settles back on her heels. "Pretty sure I won that round."

I don't argue, though I'm sure I have grounds to. Arguing is what we do but it never helps. I helplessly scrub at my eyes with the heels of my hands. There has to be a better solution for us. I'm still the eldest sibling. It doesn't matter I've been away for five years and she's grown and I've grown and she's a mother now and I'm someone totally new. I'm still her big brother and any mess we find ourselves in is still my responsibility to fix.

Even if the mess is Deb herself.

"Alright," I say vaguely, thinking. "Alright, let's just get through this. Let's take a breather."

"This is bullshit," Deb says staunchly. "I don't even know what this is. You, here? Matthews in the fucking sea, in pieces? Where the fuck do we start?"

She's right. The mess extends much further than the confines of Deb. I'm responsible for the majority of what constitutes this disaster, and the unfortunate circumstances surrounding this unhappy Morgan family reunion. We have five years of bitterness, resentment and grief to air out between us. It was never going to be pretty, and I never had a game plan for approaching it because I never intended to meet her again.

"Let's…" I exhale slowly, trying to gather my thoughts. "Let's take turns. Let's start with… You have epilepsy. Tell me."

I don't know why that's the first thing that jumps to mind but it's something I do want to know more about, and it feels like a safe point to retreat to while we regain our strength to take on the bigger issues between us.

She's surprised by my retreat but accepts it. "Yeah. Side-effect of Vogel's fucking marksmanship."

"But you manage it? Mostly?" Not that I should be asking, because the more I know about her daily life the worse I feel about not being part of it and for shattering it like I have tonight, but now that I've brought it up I need to know that the brain injury she sustained because of me and my mistakes isn't too seriously ruining her life.

"Mostly. I don't tend to stick myself too frequently with Justice's fucking EpiPens-"

"Justice's EpiPens?" I interrupt. My niece is anaphylactic? How severe is her allergy, and what's it to? Matthews had one of the auto-injectors – is her risk of reaction so severe that even someone she's only infrequently alone with needs the life-saving medication?

"Hey," Deb warns, "you said to take it in turns. You had your question. So, where the fuck have you been?"

"But I wasn't finished," I protest. "How often do you have seizures?"

"Too fucking bad. Where have you been?" She glares and I frown back, unappeased. "Not often," she relents after a pause. "Only when my brain chemistry gets fucked up. Like in labour."

I know she had a seizure while she gave birth to her daughter but I don't say so. I imagine admitting that I visited her and saw her baby even before she did, and didn't reveal myself, wouldn't go down well right now.

"I've been in different places," I say, giving in only a little, "but I can't tell you anything else. It's not safe for you to know."

She scoffs. "Bullshit. Since when has that concerned you?"

"Since, oh, forever," I counter, shrugging irritably at her. "Since our dad and a crazy psychiatrist wrote a Code for me to live by to keep you from knowing things that weren't safe for you to know."

Deb rolls her eyes. How could I think I'd lost her? She's very obviously still herself.

"The adrenaline injector was for Justice," she confirms begrudgingly. "Everyone who has her has one."

"What's she allergic to?" I ask, and I'm already saying, "No – don't worry, don't answer that." But Deb is laughing bitterly at my question and either ignores or doesn't hear my amendment.

"The whole fucking world, as far as I can tell," she answers. "Bees and insects, dust and pollen, dairy. Nuts. Keeping her alive is a fucking mission I wasn't prepared for."

But I can hear in her voice that it's a mission she chooses to accept and will continue to accept every day for the rest of her life. It's why she's out here tonight. For my son and for her daughter, and their future.

It's a consolation. She didn't kill Matthews for me, out of misplaced revenge. That would be even more tragic than tonight has already become. I can't imagine how she would explain this to her rational self if her only excuse was that she'd thought he killed me.

"My turn," she says. "How did you know where I would be tonight? How were you there to see what went down with Matthews?"

"I was watching Lumen's emails," I admit. "I thought she was the one I needed to worry about."

My sister rolls her eyes. I see my son in the gesture and remember the frequency with which I noticed similar expressions and habits in the pair of them back when we were a family. Now Harrison lives with Deb as her child. They see each other hours of every day. How similar are they now?

"She was very happy to help, I'll have you know," Deb replies, "but she didn't have a wolf in a grandparent's pyjamas manipulating her fucking family. Her kid is safe and sound. Speaking of which," she adds coolly, "I think you owe someone a fuck-tonne of child support."

"Her kid?" I repeat, surprised, but catch myself. "No, wait." I don't want to waste my turn on a question I'm not sure I want the answer to, and besides, I know Lumen wasn't here long so I can assume Deb doesn't have all the information anyway. They're not friends. "That's not my question. Harrison. Is he more like you than ever?"

"You mean, does he intersperse every sentence with 'fuck' and fall in love with inappropriate people? Dex, give him a chance; he's only nine."

"You know what I mean."

"No, I don't really," Deb answers coolly. "Is he like me? I don't know myself well enough now to be able to answer that question. He looks like you, and like Rita, sometimes. Like Cody, only fairer. He throws tantrums like Astor." I see him in my mind's eye. I picture him exactly. "No, he doesn't say 'fuck' all the time. I'm the perfect soccer mom, haven't you heard? I think I've dropped more f-bombs tonight with you than I have in the last twelve months put together."

"I definitely don't believe that," I refuse. She smiles wryly at me.

"I don't drink, either, or eat any of the shit I used to live off. Hannah's acid and knife saw to that."

I was going to steer clear of the heavy topics but these 'safe' topics aren't any less confronting.

"I was right to leave you, Deb," I say finally. I raise a defensive hand when she snorts in derision and makes a start towards me. "Don't get mad. It's the truth. I should have done it years before I did."

"Leaving me alone to deal with your fallout was in no way the right thing to do, brother."

"That, no," I agree. "That wasn't fair. The investigation-"

"Not the investigation," Deb interrupts, and I hear hurt behind the anger. "The kids. Matthews. The questions. Cody, wanting your surname. Astor, wanting to believe in a decent father figure. Harrison." She closes her eyes and swallows, and I realise that I have no idea the depths of difficulty my son has caused for Deb. My heart twists. What's he been through? What's she had to suffer through with him? She opens her eyes and I'm reassured that nothing she's struggled through for him has fallen short of what she's been willing to do, what she's found herself to be capable of surviving. "And me. I wake up every day beside someone too good for me and it kills me that I need him too badly to let him go. I'm a liar, a killer, and I'm sure he knows it but he doesn't care and I don't deserve that kind of love no matter how much I might love him back. I'm not who I thought I was going to be. I have a baby, Dex. A baby," she says again, and even though she's had Justice for years now I start to understand how unbelievable it still is for her. "No one was around to understand why I didn't want her; no one was around to see why it seemed wrong to mother a child when you've already taken more lives than you're putting back into the world. You should have been there to tell me it would be okay. You're the only one who knows me." She looks straight into me and I feel a chill to know it's still true. "You shouldn't have left me to handle all that by myself."

"I didn't know about the baby," I remind her uselessly. "I couldn't have known. What Hannah did to you… When I found out you were pregnant I couldn't believe-"

"You knew," she accuses sharply. "You've been keeping tabs on me? Spying on me?"

I pause, allow my irritation to settle before answering. "I wouldn't have left under any other arrangement, Deb. Yes, I know about your daughter. Now. But I didn't know when I left that you would ever have her – that she was even an option on the horizon."

"Exactly," Deb says, jumping on her opportunity. "You had no fucking idea. Maybe she's the best fucking thing that ever happened to me, but you left me unconscious in a hospital with a traumatised nephew who watched you fucking die and figured, what? That I'd be just fine?!"

My response isn't filtered; it bursts out. "I figured you'd be better off unconscious in a hospital with the traumatised nephew, without me, the brother who put you there, than you would with me, and I figured he would be better off with you than in a fucking foster home, because that was his next stop if Batista had to arrest you for being my accomplice." I frown at her and let this sink in. It's nothing she doesn't already know. "Does my son belong in foster care, Deb?"

She narrows her eyes. "No. He belongs with his fucking family. With me. With my daughter." Her gaze gets sharper. "With you."

"Because I've been such a positive influence." I scrub at my face with my hands. "It took me thirty-four years to wreck your life; look what I managed to do to his in only four. He's good with you, isn't he? He's happy… and safe…?"

"He is now," she answers aggressively. She points at the last bag. "Now that I took care of shit you managed to miss on your clean-up of Miami five years ago."

I turn my attention to the last bag of Thomas Matthews. I need more of these details, what he was doing, what he had planned to do, with my son, but for all her insanity I trust Deb's judgement and right now we have us to resolve before we get into other issues.

Deb turns away from me, exasperated. "Shitballs, Dexter! I forgot how easy it is to hate you. I wish I could wind the last few hours back and unknow. I wish you hadn't come in tonight. Until you showed up I knew what I was doing. You've fucked everything up. You should have stayed outside."

"And let him kill you?" I venture.

"And just let him kill me. It couldn't be any fucking worse than this, right now."

"It would be for me. You'd be dead." And my son would have lost yet another parent.

"I wouldn't feel like this," she says bitterly, gesturing vaguely at her chest, where I assume the bitter feeling originates from. "I wouldn't feel… like… like…" She trails off, shaking her head, and when she finally finishes her sentence, it's soft and betrayed. "Like a fucking idiot."

"You're not an idiot."

"Well, thanks," she says sarcastically. "I'm a detective who didn't know her own brother was a serial killer for twenty years, fell in love with him, helped him cover his fuck-ups even though I knew it could only end in blood and tears, thought that meant he really would stay with me forever, and honestly believed he was dead because, hey, if he wasn't, he'd pick up the phone, right? So it's a real weight off my chest to know I'm not an idiot."

I sigh. All I do is hurt her. "Isn't that a sign that I was right? You liked me better dead than you do alive." I look up at her helplessly. "We're all screwed up, Deb. We were only going to run each other into the ground the longer we stayed together."

"I know."

She knows. I run my fingers through the tatty damp ends of my hair. I didn't think I'd ever hear her say that.

"I did so much wrong with you," I say, feeling the familiar twinge in my chest that comes with telling truths like these. "I couldn't fix it all. I had the chance to walk away with the assurance you'd be safe, and I took it."

She still just shakes her head. She can't look at me. I worry she'll cry.

"You're not an idiot," I add gently. "You weren't to know. I made sure."

"How could you?" she whispers. Still not looking at me. "How could you want me at arm's length while I've wanted you right back beside me?"

The hardest question. The honest answer is that not once in all this time have I wanted her at arm's length, but when wants are at odds with other wants, one has to prioritise. "The consolation has been not seeing you cry, not even once, in five years, Deb."

"You missed a lot more than just tears."

"I wouldn't have if I'd stayed."

"I wish I didn't know," she murmurs, gaze fixed on the stars far up above us. "I wish I was still an idiot, just ignorant. Yesterday I missed you. Now I wish you w-weren't here." She finally looks at me. She's breaking. "I hate that I wish you weren't here."

I hate it, too, but it's my own fault that I am here and that she has to deal with the fact that I chose to leave her, so I don't allow myself the luxury of feeling sorry for myself.

"I wish neither of us was here," I say.

"Quinn knows," she says, not a question. The stronger tone is a clear indicator that we are changing subjects, at least momentarily. She's cracking under the weight of the previous topic, and we need another break, another brief distractor. "Doesn't he?"

I wonder if Joey Quinn will be in trouble when he wakes up. "I think he at least suspects. He'd have to. He was used in the cover-up."

"That dirty lying fuck…"

"That dirty lying father of your child?" I rephrase dryly. "He's the only reason I'm alive."

"I know he's the one who found you. I… I heard your message for me." She hesitates. "He's always been vague about that night," she admits.

"He was probably threatened, Deb. Muscled out at least. All I remember was him wrapping my wound and calling the ambulance." Very faintly I recollect telling him things to share with Deb. That I loved her. Did he record those thoughts? "When I woke up he was gone and I was with strangers. These aren't nice people we're talking about. Whatever he knew or suspected, it would have been a risk to you to let you in on it, and he must have known I was never coming back so sharing his suspicions with you wouldn't have achieved anything. Give him a break."

"Oh, God." Deb rakes her hands back through her hair agitatedly. "The fucking coffin. He wanted me to see for myself, because he couldn't fucking tell me. And I was too chicken-shit to look!"

I don't know what she's talking about, but I think I just saved Quinn an earful.

"'These people'," Deb repeats now. "Who are we talking about? 'These people' who threatened Joey and made it look like you'd died? When you quite clearly haven't."

I ignore that last part. "You don't want to know."

"Yes, I do."

"Well, I don't want you to."

"Fuck you." There's enough of a hint of venom behind the words to make clear she doesn't mean it affectionately.

"I don't know exactly," I admit. "Dangerous people. The kind of people who liked what they saw in the Bay Harbour Butcher files, let's put it that way." She stares at me with those big eyes. "The kind of people who can make an F.B.I. investigation honed in on your little sister just crumble away into dust." I point a threatening finger at her. "And they can revive it just as easily if that's what they want to do, so just you keep your head down from now on. They know exactly what you are and they're okay with it provided you don't parade it and you look reformed."

She goes quiet, reflective. She leans back on the railing, stretching her arms out along it and twisting her fingers around it. The soft breeze pulls on the loose clothes she's borrowed from me.

"I hate that I wish you weren't here," she says again after some time of staring at the deck, the sky, the water, anything but me. "I only wanted this for so long. For you to not be dead. I wished so hard…" She chokes on a laugh. "Be careful what you wish for, right? To be honest I prefer missing you over knowing you've been living your life without missing me."

It's not true! It's not true. Of course I've missed her, insanely, but I'm trying not to admit to that, because admitting it to her means admitting it to myself, and that's something I try to avoid admitting every single day.

"I prefer you missing me over you knowing I've been alive without you, too," I agree after a moment's struggle. "I would have left it alone; I'd planned to. But I wasn't prepared to let Tom hurt you, and I wasn't prepared to let you go down for this." I gesture at the last bag. "I sacrificed everything I had, everything I loved, everything I was, so you could live this life you're living now. I'm not even Dexter Morgan anymore – I'm no one, somebody new whenever they need me to be. And I'm okay with that. I just wanted you to be happy, Deb, and safe."

She turns away from me, rolling her body along the edge of the boat to face out over the water. She folds her arms on the rail and leans into them. I recognise from the slow reduction of tension in her posture that she's starting to accept it – that my choice, though it hurt her, was most definitely made for her. It's several minutes before she reaches down and lifts the last heavy garbage bag from beside her feet. She hefts it over the side.

"It sucks you've had to fake being dead for five years but it would suck a fuckload more if I went to prison and it was all for nothing, so I'd better not give them any evidence to nail me with," she comments as I haul myself to my feet and stagger across the deck to stand beside her. The water is still black to reflect the night sky and by the time I look there's nothing to say any ugly bag of death ever disturbed its inky smooth surface.

"Like it never happened," I say. I look out across to where the water meets the sky. "They're not going to get you for this." I pause, unsure of whether to say the next words, but they let themselves out without my permission. "I meant it. That I'd never let anything happen to you."

Deb's hand is once again warm compared with the cool ocean breeze when it drifts against mine; after a moment's hesitation she takes it. Her fingers curl around mine. Her thumb runs across my knuckles. I want to look at our joined hands but I don't let myself, in case she pulls away, caught out.

She whispers, "I wish none of this was true. I wish I wasn't out here and none of tonight happened."

"I know."

"Is there the slightest possibility that this is just a nightmare?" she pushes, and I am about to refuse when I look around at our scenario. It's the dead of night. I'm alone on my boat with my sister and we're alive and together and all that happened in the last few hours has been totally improbable and unpredictable, surreal. Is she crazy to still wonder if this is just a dream or am I naïve to insist it can't be?

I'm the psychopath, the little boy from the shipping container, traumatised by horror so intrusive it wrote the script for the rest of my life. My mental health has been more questionable than my sister's for the majority of our lives. I'm unsettled to wonder what qualifies me to judge her sanity and to trust my own perception of reality over hers.

Shit. That's a very scary concept.

"I don't know," I admit weakly. "I suppose there's still a slight possibility we'll both just… wake up… sometime soon."

She swallows. "I don't think I want to. I don't want you to leave."

I give in and I look down at our hands, joined between us, hanging at our sides, and I look back up at her. She looks calm but unsure. Conflicted.

Calm because we've taken care of the immediate problem.

Unsure because she doesn't know the next step. Neither do I, for what it's worth.

Conflicted because as much as she hates that I'm here she loves it, too.

"I wish I hadn't said all that," she whispers. "I wish I never told you I wish you weren't here. You are here," she tightens her fingers and I tighten mine, "and it's what I've wished for every day since you left. I've missed you so fucking much."

I was never meant to come back. I was never meant to tell her all this, either. I was never meant to touch her, speak to her, even see her ever again. I've broken nearly all of my rules tonight. I break another one. I admit it: "Me, too." And another one. I tilt my head up and lean toward her; she dips her head in response so I can kiss her forehead. My lips taste the soft salt of the sea breeze on her skin and the taste of her and I can't pull away. "So fucking much, Deb, every fucking day. You can't possibly know how much."

She stays where she is, enjoying the closeness, the warmth. I inhale her scent with slow, deep breaths. The gentle winds blow the few dry hairs of hers across my face, trying to tickle me, but it's not enough to make me break the contact between my lips and her skin.

"After this," she murmurs, thickly, "you're going to leave again."

No. Never again. "Yes," I confess reluctantly against her skin. It's right. It's for the best. I can only do damage if I stay around, and the tenuous arrangement that keeps her out of prison could come crashing down if it became known that I was hanging about Miami again.

"So take me with you."

It's a simple, hopeful suggestion, and I want to answer yes, absolutely, but I say, "No." I only say it for my son's sake. I should say it for hers, too, and for mine, but it would be a lie to claim that.

"No," she repeats. I close my eyes tightly and hold onto my resolve. Try to block her out. She says only the one word but she assaults all my senses with it. Her scent fills my nostrils. Her taste plays on my lips. Her warmth radiates through my hand and all through the rest of me. Her voice rings in my ears and all I can do is close my eyes and refuse to look at her, because if she pulls away to give me a desperate, appealing look I mightn't be able to look away.

"No," I say again with the same shaky strength. I don't want to say it. I want to take her with me. I want to run away with her like I should have five, six, seven, ten, twenty years ago. I want her, with an intensity I haven't felt since I walked away from her, and she's hard to turn down. But I want Deb and Harrison to have each other and to have the life they deserve, and none of the Morgans will get that if I take Deb.

Deb doesn't argue, which surprises me. She drops my hand and wraps both arms around my middle, snuggling herself close into my chest. Does she feel safe there against me, breathing me in the way I'm breathing her in, ignorant of the rest of the world? I rope one arm tightly across her shoulders and weave the other hand into her damp hair to cradle her head as she starts to cry. I hold her so close, and she hugs me so tightly as she sobs wretchedly with grief, and I know it's my fault, really, all of it. I feel tears escape the corners of my eyes, feel them run into her hair as I lay my cheek on the top of her head, hurting as my overwhelmed Deb cries her heart out into my shirt. She cries for years lost; for mourning misplaced; for a horrifying crime she just committed that she would never have done in her normal, rational state of mind, for disbelief in her own capabilities, all rolling over her in black waves.

"I'm sorry," I breathe into her hair, rocking her gently as we stand there in the cold wind, two hearts breaking together, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry…"

The words don't change anything but I hope she knows they're genuine. I'm sorry I left. I'm sorry for the lie, the betrayal, the cover-up. I'm sorry she's been so alone. I'm sorry she's been too scared of herself to marry Joey and I'm sorry I haven't been there to push her into it, to drag her anxious ass down the aisle. I'm sorry for the state I left my son in when I left him with her. I'm sorry I wasn't there to tell her it was okay to be afraid of being a mother to Justice Rita Quinn but that she would do fine and I'm sorry I wasn't there for that whole emotional journey. I'm sorry I don't have an EpiPen in my glovebox for the safety of the niece I should be around to be an uncle to. I'm sorry I don't know the boy Harrison is growing into. I'm sorry I don't know the adults Rita's children have become.

I'm sorry Deb felt she needed to plan and execute a terrible murder to keep my son safe.

I'm sorry I wasn't there to handle it for her.

I'm sorry I had to interfere and reveal myself to her and shatter her world like I did.

Most of all I'm sorry that she still clearly loves me as completely and as devotedly as I still love her, and I'm sorry we weren't better for each other.

It's the first time I've held her since I carried her from my apartment to the ambulance after Vogel shot her and just like back then, I don't want to let her go. We stay entwined forever, I couldn't say how long. Even when she runs out of tears she stays tight against me.

When she speaks again, her voice is thick and heavy, but not unhappy.

"You remember Astor's birthday? The candles?"

"Ours?" I know Deb never married Quinn, which was the summary of my wish for her, so I'm no longer convinced of the magic of birthday candles, but I still listen. I like hearing her voice.

"Not ours. Yours, kind of. Harrison's."

"What did he wish for?"

"He didn't tell me until that February," Deb tells me softly, voice muffled against my chest. "After it came true." She finally shifts, tilting her head to look up at me. "Justice. He wished for her, Dexter. He wished for a sister, like Cody had Astor and Angel had Jamie and you had me. She came true. And you – you had some fluffy wish about a big back lawn and Harrison playing with some kid of mine I didn't want back then. She's a fucking wish. No wonder she's so fucking perfect. Well," Deb corrects herself, "she wasn't. She was too early. Broken heart and shit. She nearly died."

"You nearly died," I remind her. I remember clearly, though she probably doesn't. I remember leaving that tiny baby with Morgan on her ankle tag and scouring the hospital halls for the ICU. She wasn't there. Please, God, not the fucking morgue. I remember the swish of my borrowed white medical coat as I turned corner after desperate corner, the beat of my footsteps on the floor of those long empty night-time halls, the sweat in my palms as I reflected on how not okay it would be to travel so far on my freaking birthday to find my sister dead and a precious little premature baby with our surname on her ankle alive, and despite already having fallen in love with said baby simply for being Deb's baby being forced to accept that the precious baby of Deb's was the reason Deb was not alive.

Then I remember finding her, and finding her alive, barely, in recovery, and being so damn grateful that I didn't need to blame the baby with Morgan on her ankle.

"She's the whole world, Dexter," my sister shares with me in her soft, reverent voice. "I can't even tell you how fucking incredible she is."

"She changed your life," I say. Like you and Harrison changed mine. She nods.

"And Joey's. She's his princess. She's everyone's fucking princess. Harrison…" She smiles fondly. I know without a doubt she was the only person to raise him. Certainly better than me. My son couldn't have done any better than Debra. "You think I was a manipulative sister. She's got your boy all figured out."

I smile at the idea of a bossy baby Debra making demands of my son. Harrison isn't the same as me and I don't know Justice at all but I can easily imagine the scene.

"Maybe they'll do a better job of being siblings than we did," I suggest. Deb's smile falters.

"They're everything," she says. "I know you're mad about what you saw tonight but I don't regret it. Tom needed to be stopped. He was going to fuck up our kids' lives the same way he and Dad and Vogel fucked up ours. And those are my kids. Our kids," she adds fiercely. "He had no fucking right. So I'm not fucking sorry."

"You'd be sorry if he'd killed you," I disagree. She nods once, relenting.

"All I mean," she says, "is that Harrison and Justice were worth that risk and so I took it." She pushes away but keeps her hands on my chest. Feeling my heartbeat? "I would have done the same for you. Still would. But them… I wouldn't have them if you hadn't died. If you hadn't left," she corrects. Her face is wet from crying. I run my thumbs underneath her eyes to clear some of the tears away. It takes her so long to admit this last part. "I hate you so fucking much for it but you were right to go."

The sky looks paler out to the east. I turn the boat around and drive it back, but I don't rush like I did to get out here. I sit at the wheel and steer, and Deb stands beside me with her hand hooked around the back of my seat to keep herself close and upright. She tells me about Harrison (and Justice – she can't help herself, she's infatuated) and his struggles. About the outbursts at school. About the dog he killed at a barbeque, thinking it was biting his cousin. About Matthews trying to edge Deb out of the role of chief parent and decision-maker. About the tantrum in the bedroom and the watch and the admission that Harrison remembered everything from the last time he and I saw each other.

About Deb's realisation that the man playing grandad to her baby girl had also put a knife into her brother and wouldn't take no for an answer to moulding a new serial killer out of her nephew.

She's breathing a little heavily; it's raw and hurtful. I feel the same discomfort inside me as she recounts the story. I had never envisioned this outcome for my little family. The city's back in view now and I'll have to say goodbye soon. I say, "Tell me something nice. Who does Justice look like?"

"Oh, she's just a mini-me," Deb answers dismissively, not even noticing my subject change. "Not a single strand of DNA from her father." She doesn't say from Joey. "Asexual reproduction at its finest. Though she does possess a love for all things pink and frilly that must have come from somewhere other than me."

"Just a recessive gene deep in one of your cells," I tease. She smiles at me and leans her weight into me, looping her arms around one of mine and resting her head on my shoulder. I soak in her warm nearness. How incredible she and I are, the way our cycle can take us from vindictively tearing at each other's hearts to holding each other lovingly close in such a short space of time. The difference for us between hatred and adoration is so slight.

Back at the marina I have her help me wipe the boat down for prints. I ask after Jamie Batista. I'm disappointed to hear she's still confined to a wheelchair.

"We see her every month or so," Deb shares, scrubbing at the deck in the dark. "She takes Harrison for the day. He used to ride on her lap but now he's too big. He can push her now." She pauses and looks up at me. "He's tall, like you were at that age."

I glance up at my old apartment – Astor's apartment – as we pass it on our way back to the car, wistful. Part of me wants to go and knock on the door and wake up my daughter and have them all back. Debra. Harrison. Astor. Cody. Jamie. Angel. Even Quinn, who wouldn't let me die, who refused to accept he'd have to inform Deb he'd lost me, who has selflessly protected and loved my family in my stead, especially if he comes part-and-parcel with this amazing little soul called Justice that Deb's raving about. But Deb gets into the passenger seat, oblivious, and I reluctantly get in beside her and start the car. I drive away.

I already walked away. I can't just come back. Deb, my Deb, she can handle it. She can handle me. But no one else can. No one else could ever handle the complication that is having me embedded fully in their lives, in all my raw and honest glory.

Back at Elk Street, we circle until we find Matthews' car. He hid it further away than Deb or I did. He also left the key in the ignition. I suggest to Deb we leave it. This is a dodgy neighbourhood. Someone scummy is sure to notice an expensive unattended car, and that scummy person will be most delighted to find the key and a half-tank of gas.

Deb drives herself home and I follow in my car. It's her idea. I think she doesn't want me to go yet, and I think she wants to let me know where she lives so I know where to find her in future, should I change my mind.

She parks her car in her driveway and slips back to the street to where I'm parked out front. It's a nice house, similar to where she and I grew up. I like that this is where my son and her daughter are growing up. I like that they're growing up with her for a mother – she who would do anything for them, even at the expense of her own sanity and happiness. I like that the biggest threat to their collective familial happiness has been taken care of and I like that they'll all wake up in a couple of hours none the wiser.

Deb leans on my car door, forearms resting on the wound-down window.

"If you're ever back in Miami," she says, "my couch folds out. And Joey's forgiven you for totalling his car."

I lightly tap her hand. "Give that watch back to Harrison. But for God's sake, wash it first. And get rid of those clothes. And change the padding on that neck – change it to a Band-Aid, something inconspicuous. And have a shower."

"There's no way I smell worse than you, fucknose," she argues instantly, though she sniffs her shoulder experimentally. She eyes my beard critically. "You look like a fucking hobo. Have a shave when you get home, wherever the fuck that is these days."

"I'll sanitise these," I say, reaching into the backseat to find the knife and gloves. "I'll get them back to you in a few weeks once the investigation has laid off you and you can put them back in Evidence where you found them. Your place," I add, looking past her at her home, "is going to be turned upside down. There can't be anything here for them to find. You're one of his closest associates, aren't you?"

Deb hangs inside my window, deflates slightly at the reminder. "I'm like his daughter. Justice calls him Grandad. She did," she corrects. She's quiet for a moment. "He took care of me after you… died. He wanted to be the one who told me. He didn't want me to hear about you from anybody else." She struggles a bit. "I saw his face tonight – he really thought he'd killed you. He killed you and he was taking care of your family."

She says she doesn't regret what she did but she does. But I don't feel any satisfaction this time. She's right – it had to be done. It should have been me to do it, but Tom Matthews needed to go.

"Nobody will know," I assure her gently. "You're going to be okay, Deb. I promise." I catch her face in my hands before she can pull away and go back into the house. "Deb – what you did tonight, to Tom. It was the right thing to do. The only thing. But don't you ever do it again. Don't do it to yourself again; don't put yourself out there like that. Swear to me."

She gazes at me with the kind of intensity that has seen us make out on the odd occasion. We're a screwed-up pair. But when we're even, like we are right now, I wouldn't have it any other way.

"I can't promise that," she answers, disappointing me. "I can't promise that unless you promise you'll be there to do it for me. If the need arises."

I know I should say no, because I should never come back here, to her, and the least I should be able to do for her after the destruction I've caused tonight is to get out and stay out, but now that my secret's out to her I can't promise to stay away. In a normal life there should be no occasion when the need arises to kill somebody and hide their body, but Deb's life isn't as normal as I would like. She's living in the aftermath of me, and the repercussions and aftershocks of being my sister and raising my son will ripple through her world for always, opening up sinkholes and volcanic crevices under her feet when she least expects it.

"I'll send you a phone when I bring back the knife. For emergencies," I'm firm in adding when her eyes light up, "if anything happens. Don't expect me to show up for coffee."

"People would see you," she acknowledges. "I understand. Thank you." She sighs slowly and relaxes all over, accepting that I'm alive, that I'll be within reach in moments of desperation, that anything the other Dexter she sees and hears from and takes bad advice from tries to tell her can now be discounted as insanity knocking, that she survived the night, that the sun is still rising and the world is still soldiering on even though everything in it is different than what it was yesterday. I start to accept it, too. She and I… we might be okay. "Then I promise I won't do it again."

God, I love her.

Her eyes flicker away to glance at my mouth, and I try to push her away but she grabs my hands on her face and holds them there.

"Don't kiss me," I insist.

"Why not?" she asks. Eyes not returning to mine. Staying on my lips. Breaths deepening. "Is someone watching?"

"No. But I don't deserve it."

Our whole relationship was tainted by the concept of deserve. I didn't deserve her. She deserved better. But we got what we got and neither of us could ever walk away. Too good and not good enough can be just as intoxicating as perfect.

Deb considers my argument.

"Neither do I," she reminds me, and she reaches into the car and I lack the will to fight her off as she pulls me close to kiss me hard on the mouth. Her lips touch mine and it's a cosmic collision. I'm already reaching for her, already pushing back to deepen the contact. I'm struck with the same electricity as ever, burning all through me, desperation and hunger urging me to draw her nearer, to thread my fingers through her salty drying hair. Our kiss is hot and intuitive, breathy, the way I remember it, and I gladly poison myself on her hot exhalations. She's my sister and I've hurt her so badly and this shouldn't feel as right as it does but there's so much wrong about us that this has often seemed like the least of our indiscretions.

She tastes like boundaries broken and lines crossed and apologies accepted and love so deep it's also hate. She tastes like coming back to life. She tastes like it's been too long since I last drank in the light of her presence and she tastes like this shouldn't be the last time but very well could be.

It's a good thing she breaks away because I mightn't have bothered.

"Christ, Deb," I mutter. "Maybe you should come with me."

She lingers in the frame of my open window and I see the shadow of my brother dance behind her eyes as she considers it. But it's only an instant before she pushes away from the car, touching her soft smile with her fingertips as though confirming the kiss. She backs across the silent street towards her house without saying goodbye. I don't call any sort of farewell to her, either. This parting is not goodbye. How can it be goodbye if I'm not even sure it's happening? It's indistinct the way no other parting has ever been. When I died it was meant to be goodbye, and here I am, lips still tingling with the afterglow of her kiss. Now as she turns to walk up the steps of her front porch and I restart my car, it could easily be the last time we ever see each other, but I still refuse to say goodbye.

It ends like all of my other dreams, watching her drift further and further away. I watch her open the door; I watch her close it behind her; I watch her glance out the window to check I'm still there. My eyes catch hers one last time – hazel, so similar in colour to mine that we might have honestly been related – and then she's gone, successfully released back into her home environment.