Title: Penumbra
Fandom: Dexter
Characters: Dexter
Prompt: #11, Castration Anxiety
Rating: PG13
Warnings: None besides the fandom.
Summary: You need to see to make the right cut.
Spoilers: VERY SPOILERY OF S01E12.
Author Notes: Post episode S01E12.
Word Count: About 400.


It has been a month since I butchered my brother, and I haven't killed anybody else. It's not because of Sargent Doakes's watchfulness or the inconveniences of having Debra living with me. Truth is, since Brian turned on the lights of my memory, I've found it difficult to walk my way in the darkness of other people's hearts.

It's as if the spilled blood of my brother overpowered my senses, masking every other predator. I can still look for them in police reports and news, but I no longer have the instinctive certainty I used to.

I walk in the light, blind. And Debra walks next to me.

"Hey," she says as she enters the apartment. She's already twisting her lips, close to tears. She never cries in the job, of course. She seldom smiles, in fact, or show any kind of emotion. She keeps inside all of them, fearing that if she let them free, they wouldn't let her be a cop. Her job is all she has left now.

All I have left is mine, and I can't do it.

"How was work?," I ask playing to role of the concerned brother. I am concerned, but not about the petty power squabbles of the new Litenuant. I couldn't care less.

"It sucked, Dex. She had us discard evidence Angel had collected just because he had been in a bar before he did the stint, and now we had to let go a guy who..." She shakes her head in distaste. "He's a murderer."

"Are you sure? I mean, you know how evidence can..."

"I know," she says, her face close to mine, almost angry. No, definitely angry. "I know because he scares me, Dexter. Nobody used to, and now... I..."

I hold her as she breaks down and cries on my shoulder, shacking and trying not to. I know she thinks I've opened up to her in the last weeks. I know she's grateful for that.

She's wrong. I am the one who should be grateful to her. If too much light is obscuring my sight, the new darkness in my sister has made her that much more perceptive. That much more aware of evil. Except for mine, it seems. That's also something I'm grateful for.

She'll guide me. She won't know it, but she'll help me do my work. I smile over her shoulder as she keeps crying.

We'll do it together. As a family.

.finis.