Ari

The second time is at your funeral. She watches them lower your body into the ground and something inside her splinters. The sound that tears from her throat isn't human. Dexter has to physically restrain her from jumping into the grave after you. Later, she'll have no memory of this – just the dirt under her fingernails and bruises on her arms where her brother held her back.

The third time destroys her completely.

It's been two weeks since that convenience store security camera caught your last moments. Two weeks since a frightened kid with a shaky trigger finger turned your chest into a crime scene. She's standing in your shared apartment, trying to pack up your things because that's what people do, right? They pack up the dead's belongings and pretend it helps.

Your forensics kit is still by the door where you left it that last morning. She opens it, and your scent hits her – latex gloves and that shampoo you loved and something uniquely you. The organized compartments blur through her tears. Each tool precisely placed, because that's who you were – someone who brought order to chaos, who could look at blood patterns and tell stories of violence with scientific detachment.

She starts throwing things. Your carefully labeled evidence containers shatter against walls. Your case files scatter like dead leaves. She's screaming, but she can't hear herself over the roaring in her head. Over the echo of your voice from that last argument:

"You can't keep running forever, Deb. I love you, but I can't chase you anymore."

The neighbors call the police. Fucking ironic, isn't it? Angel finds her surrounded by the wreckage of your professional life, clutching your laminate to her chest. She's laughing now, a horrible broken sound, because isn't this exactly what you were afraid of? Her inability to handle emotional intimacy, to face her feelings instead of drowning them in rage and whiskey.

They take her to the hospital. Put her on leave. Make her talk to department shrinks who use words like "complicated grief" and "post-traumatic stress" and "survivor's guilt." As if labeling her breakdown makes it more manageable.

She dreams of you. Not the you from the security footage, bleeding out under fluorescent lights. But the you who used to wake her from nightmares about the Ice Truck Killer, who knew exactly how she took her coffee, who could make her laugh even at crime scenes. The you who saw her walls and loved her anyway.

"I'm sorry," she tells your ghost. "I'm so fucking sorry."

But you're not there to forgive her.

Dexter finds her one night, sitting in your office at Miami Metro, organizing blood slides with obsessive precision. Trying to find patterns like you taught her, as if understanding the science of death will somehow make losing you hurt less.

"You're starting to worry me," he says, in that awkward way of his.

She laughs, sharp and bitter. "Starting to? Fuck, Dex, I'm starting to worry myself."

The security footage plays on repeat in her mind. She's memorized every detail – how you raised your hands, trying to de-escalate. How you stepped in front of the teenage clerk, protecting her. Your body jerking back, a crimson flower blooming across your chest. The way you looked surprised, almost confused, as you fell.

She keeps working cases, because what else is there? But every crime scene becomes yours. Every victim wears your face. She gets reckless, aggressive with suspects. Takes stupid risks because maybe, just maybe, if she's fast enough, smart enough, brave enough, she can save someone else's you.

Angel takes her gun after she nearly beats a convenience store robber to death.

"This isn't what they would have wanted," he tells her gently.

"Yeah? Well, they're not fucking here to want anything, are they?"

She finds one of your hair ties under the bed and falls apart all over again. Remembers how you used to gather your hair back before leaning over evidence, that little furrow of concentration between your brows. How she used to tease you about being so serious, so focused. How you'd smile and say, "Someone has to be, with you charging around like a hurricane."

The hurricane is all that's left now.

Some days she can almost pretend she's healing. She goes to work, follows leads, eats when Dexter reminds her to. But then she'll catch a glimpse of the forensics lab, or smell latex gloves, or hear someone mention blood spatter analysis, and she's right back in that convenience store, watching you die on an endless loop.

The department shrink asks her what she thinks you would say if you could see her now.

She doesn't tell him about the letter she found in your forensics manual. The one that begs her not to let grief make her harder, not to let loss change how fiercely she loves. She's already failed you there.

Instead, she says, "They'd probably say I'm proving them right. About running away. About not being able to handle my feelings."

But that's not entirely true, is it? Because this time she's not running. She's standing perfectly still, letting grief consume her, letting the absence of you hollow her out until there's nothing left but echoes and regret.

The security footage plays on. You raise your hands. The gun fires. You fall.

And somewhere in Miami, Debra Morgan keeps breaking, keeps shattering, keeps failing to put herself back together.

Some things just break, and stay broken, and all we can do is learn to breathe around the shards.

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