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How did he end up here?
For the briefest moment, Dexter wondered. And it was a brief moment, because the answer was plainly obvious. It came at him immediately, with bracing clarity.
How did he end up here? Well, that´s easy.
He was never far away.
Dexter Morgan was born this way. Not born from his mother, but from the shipping container. He emerged from that place as this. This thing. He was born from blood. Born wrong. Born a killer. And there was nothing to convince him otherwise now. Not here. Not with her.
It started out as him killing murderers, and then it was him killing bad people. But after Doakes, everything started to slip. The code stretched. Rapists, an ex-cop, a pot-farmer, an abusive father, a ship-driver, a stranger…
All could be rationalized, yes. All of them had been bad, in some way.
But then, there she was. And there she would always be. Whenever he thought of himself as morally better than those on Death Row, there she would be. His latest victim.
He crouched low, back against the wall, eyes blank. The gun cold and heavy in his hand. He never liked guns– Impersonal, messy, and too loud. Yet here he was, gun in hand, staring into the hole it put in the body. Laguerta´s body.
The ultimate contradiction of Dexter.
Maybe he could tell himself she did fit the code– the first rule, don´t get caught. But so had Lumen, and he didn't kill her. So did Deb. Maria was as innocent as them, according to the code, perhaps more, because she didn't help him. She was as guilty as Angel would be, or Masuka. Rita. She had just been doing her job– doing it well– and she was dead. And the gun was in Dexter´s hand.
As if shaken from a trance, he stood and dropped it. It clattered loudly against the floor. Dexter wavered, then sat down again. Still burning a hole into the bullet wound. It was strange, this was one of those moments where he thought he should be feeling everything… but there was, well, nothing. He didn't feel anything.
¨But that's what you expected, isn't it,¨ he broke the fuzzy silence, eyes briefly flicking to the feet of the man who wouldn't look at him, ¨No emotions.¨ Though they had begun to feel real, he had been taught they weren't. He´d been taught to fake them. Clearly, he had started to fall for his own lies.
He thought more. About the Code. He wasn't really sticking to his rituals anymore, either. The differences were minor, but there was a time when he followed his rituals like a checklist. Always the same. Vet, stalk, plastic, knife. But now? He was branching out, so to speak. He acted quicker, found new ways to deliver the fatal dues– ways he thought were sort of poetic, ways that suited the recipients. It was always quick, and never with a gun. Until now, at least. He was drifting, from his rituals, and from the code. Like the bags in the sea, they were getting away from him.
Dexter liked to pretend, everything he did was pretend. Pretending to be a person. Pretending to love and grieve. Pretending he was normal.
But there was no pretending anymore. Not here. Not with her.
She was innocent, and he killed her. Simple.
He looked up.
Maybe Harry knew. Maybe he had always known.
People are always changing, taking in new stimuli and adapting because of it. And Dexter never had a Dark Passenger, just Dexter, and with no dark inside him, well, there can be no light. Just Dexter.
Maybe Harry could see, could tell that it wouldn't last. And that's why he did what he did, why he couldn't handle his son. Because his son was Dexter. Just Dexter.
Maybe he really did have a curse. As if he were a magnet for ´bad shit´. He lost Rita, Lila, Lumen and Hannah. Astor and Cody lost their mother because of him. He and Deb lost Harry because of him. Deb nearly lost herself because of him. Harrison was almost killed because of him.
And for what? Harry couldn't handle Dexter. How could Deb? Or Harrison? Or anyone else in his life?
He exhaled. There was no more time for thinking. For now, he just had to make sure he would even have a life for them to be in. He had to take care of this.
Dexter stood slowly, legs tingling as the blood rushed back into them. For the first time, he dared to look at the face of the man who wouldn't speak to him.
¨I have to clean up.¨ He said.
Harry stood stock still, brows furrowed, eyes locked on Laguerta. He remained silent for a while, even though he knew Dexter was looking at him.
Finally, he closed his eyes and sighed.
¨Go home, Dexter.¨
But Dexter did not go home, he cleaned up. He removed all traces of himself from the scene, and set it up as he wanted the police to find it. And while he did it, Harry never looked at him. Never spoke to him. And when Dexter was finished, he went home. And still, Harry never looked at him, and never spoke to him.