Title: An Unexpected Conversation
Author: kbk
Rating: R for gore and language
Disclaimer: Not mine and I'd be a little concerned if they were, to be honest.
Summary: Dexter and Debra have (surprise!) an unexpected conversation.
Notes: My heartfelt thanks to thunderemerald and vicky_bmore for volunteering to beta, which was a great help. Written for jmtorres, under the auspices of New Year Resolution 2008.

His sister is not the very last person on Earth that Dexter would have expected to walk into the room. Neither is she the last person he would have wanted to walk in. After all, there are any number of people (either dead, abroad or both) who might fit in the first set, and a number of other police officers (and perhaps Rita and the kids) in the second.

"Hey, Deb," he greets her, and - once he filters out the slight echo from the mask over his face - his voice sounds absolutely normal; the same as it does when she shows up at his door, or his desk, or demands that he join her for lunch somewhere. It's possible he ought to be worried by that, because Deb is staring at him - eyes wide and blinking, mouth slightly open, hand on the butt of her gun - and when she speaks her voice is loud and unsteady and about an octave too high.

"Oh my fucking god!" she says. He blinks at her, and searches for a suitable response, but he's obviously too slow, because she gasps in a breath and continues. "Oh my fucking god, are you fucking kidding me? Tell me... tell me you're fucking with me, Dex, because this is, this is, holy crap, this is fucked up."

He's not entirely sure what specifically she's referring to, but if he had to guess, it might be the partially-dismembered corpse on the dining table. Thinking about it, he would, actually, have access to corpses; not entirely legitimate access, but if he wanted to fake a scene like this, there are enough J. Does entering the county morgues that nobody would miss one. Still. "This would be kind of elaborate for a practical joke," he says. Especially since he - they - have no real history of that sort of behavior.

"No fucking shit!" shrieks Deb. "Is that a fucking bone-saw?!"

Dexter looks down at his hand, just to check. Yes. He is, in fact, holding a surgical bone-saw, which is quite obviously not shiny and new. "Um," he says. Confirmation would be pointless, and might lead to more shrieking; denial would be even more pointless. So, change of topic. "What are you doing here?"

She blinks at him, obviously thrown off, and looks at the floor. "I got Mike from the lab to track the GPS on your cell." She sounds almost exactly like she did the last time she had to explain to Dad why she was three hours late home from school: a flatness to her voice that Dexter suspects is supposed to be nonchalant, and a guilty little frown between her eyebrows. Mike isn't a name that connects to anyone for him, but there are at least two techs whose eyes dilate whenever Debra graces the lab with her presence, so her success at misusing police resources is not surprising.

Still, he blinks. "Um. Why?" The light flashes off the bone-saw when he gestures, so he sets it down on the table. He takes a moment to remove his face-mask; not wise in terms of forensic evidence, but Deb is bringing in all sorts of trace anyway, and seeing his bare face ought to humanize him for her.

"God," Deb mutters. "I was worried about you, OK? You just took off."

Even Dexter, maladjusted as he is, can read the subtext, see her uneasy glance at the meat behind him.

A sickly silence sidles up to them. Deb's lips open and close again as she searches for something to say. Dexter is oddly apprehensive about what that might be, so he opens his own mouth.

"I, uh. I don't know what to do now," he says. Deb always likes it when he admits his weaknesses. What he really wants to say, to ask, is 'Why haven't you arrested me yet?' but he doesn't want to give her any ideas. And prison would be. Hm. Uncomfortable.

His saving grace has always been his superficial innocence. If anyone were to look closely, they'd find enough circumstantial proof to execute him a dozen times over. Being caught literally red-handed is presumably enough to make people look closely. So he's, well, really, he's fucked.

He's startled out of his thoughts by Deb's harsh crow of laughter. "Fuck, bro, you think I do? I got no fucking clue!"

Her laughter is oddly unsettling. He watches her as she coughs and hiccups her way back to sobriety. She's beautiful when she laughs.

There's a simple and obvious solution to the situation, of course. He's bigger and stronger than she is; he's trained longer and harder; he sincerely doubts that she would actually use her gun on him. But he couldn't do it for Brian, who almost became all his world. Could he? Should he? Would he? In the name of self-preservation. In the cause of his own freedom. In defiance of Harry's Code.

"Fuck. Dad would totally freak." Deb startles him again by seeming to read his mind, and he forgets to think before he speaks.

"Actually, he..." Dexter stops when he sees Deb's jaw literally drop; it's not her best look. He clears his throat and starts again. "He knew before I did, I think." He can almost see the switch flip inside her head: Dad said it was OK. He's not the only one who lives by Harry's code. "I still thought I could be normal, someday, but he knew I was. Was wrong inside."

"You're not... Oh, Dex." He must be imagining that Deb's eyes look wet. He must be.

"I'm not normal, Deb," he says. "I tried really hard." He doesn't know why he steps towards her. "I try really hard."

She launches herself at him, arms wrapping around his waist, head knocking against his jaw. Dexter is nonplussed. His hands are sticking out awkwardly to the side. "Deb?"

"God, Dex!" She thumps him, hard, right on the spine. "Why didn't you fucking tell me?"

"Ow!" She thumps him again in exactly the same spot. "What was I supposed to say? 'By the way, Deb, I'm gonna go kill someone tonight: don't worry, I know what I'm doing, and he's killed three women that I know of.' Would that have worked?"

He feels her stiffen as he speaks, feels her head lift from his shoulder to gaze at the corpse behind him, and he isn't surprised when she releases him and steps back.

Debra looks at him steadily, eyes narrowed - her 'Detective' mask slipping into place. "Three women?" she asks.

"His wives. And he got engaged again a few weeks ago." It isn't an excuse, it's a reason. Or should that be the other way around?

Debra nods slowly. "Fucking bastard."

She's talking about the guy on the table, Dexter realises with a dawning sense of lightness. She's talking about the guy that Dexter killed. She's changing her focus, aiming her disgust at a target which doesn't come with twenty years of history.

"The fiancee will be upset, but at least she'll be alive," he offers quietly. 'Look at the good I'm doing,' he doesn't say. 'I've saved more people than I've killed, because I've killed.' Deb wouldn't like that, but she'll empathize with this unknown woman.

"Yeah. OK." Deb breathes deeply. "Do you, um. Need any help?"

He gazes at her long enough that she starts squirming; he thinks she's realizing exactly what she has just offered, and what that might mean. "No, I got it," he tells her.

"This is fucked up, Dex," she says quietly. Her eyes track over the scene again, lingering on the man's face, the saw, the surgical gloves on Dexter's hands. "I don't want to know, but I have to."

"OK," he says. It's meaningless, just a way to acknowledge what Deb's saying.

"I'm going to go, and, uh." She swallows hard, shakes her head. "Process."

"Deb." He can't help it, damn it, he has to ask, has to know. "You're not... going to arrest me?"

She punches him in the arm. "Fuck you!"

Dexter assumes that's a 'no'. He taps the back of his hand carefully against her shoulder; he doesn't want to get blood on her.

She gulps, and her eyes are shining again. "I wouldn't. OK? You're my brother."

"I know." He curves his lips upwards and inwardly denies feeling a slight prickle of moistness in his own eyes.

She smiles at him, then attempts to glare. "I mean it." She looks like she did when she was twelve and he wouldn't help her with her homework.

He almost laughs at the memory, but it wouldn't help the situation. Instead, he leans towards her, just a little. "Thank you," he says.

Deb stares at him, with something in the lines of her face suggesting pain. "You shoulda told me."

"I should. But I thought..." He doesn't have the words to explain how his lack of feelings intersects with his surface life. He doesn't have time for a discussion about Dad, or about his reasons, or - Christ - about Brian. "It won't be easy," he tells her instead, because it's true. This is going to change things for both of them.

Deb shoves her hands in her pockets and shakes her head at him. "Fuck, Dex, you keep trying to protect me, but it works the other way round, too, OK?"

She's his sister. "OK."

She steps backwards. "Call me when you're done." She flinches, just a little, and determinedly keeps her eyes away from the table. "We'll talk. I'll bring the beer; I'm gonna need it." Dexter nods at her, watches her stride out of the room and close the door behind her - fingerprints, he mentally notes.

Dexter turns back to the table. He pulls on his mask, and picks up the saw. He looks at the man's face. "Perhaps I ought to thank you for that," he says contemplatively. Just before he gets back to work, another thought strikes him, and he smiles.

"You might not have ended up here, if you'd had a sister."