Chapter Text
For as friendly as Officer Morgan was clearly trying to be, she was obviously frustrated by all the non-answers and half-truths Meg gave her while they talked over lunch.
Meg was as honest as she could be about her relationship with Zach and how much he meant to her. It was only when the Officer’s questions started pressing closer to his disappearance and her post on the Defender Signal site that she suddenly had a lot of blank spots in her memory.
“I’ve just been so worried,” Meg told her. “After Zach disappeared, everything just sort of blurred together. I can barely keep the last few days straight.”
The smile Officer Morgan gave in response was a strained mix of understanding and impatience. “And what about the box you found? The one mentioned in your post? The one with all his, uh, trophies in it.”
For the first time, Meg faltered. She had never touched the box again, never wanted to see it again. Not since the first and last time she had laid eyes on it. But she quickly recovered.
“I didn’t make that post,” Meg insisted once more. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Right,” Officer Morgan agreed, the subtle pulse in her temple the only sign of her frustration. Finally, she seemed to reach a decision.
“Listen,” the Officer said, leaning forward, “can I be honest with you?”
Meg hesitated, then gave a small nod.
Officer Morgan didn’t hold back. “Listen, truthfully, I couldn’t give less of a fuck if you made that post,” she started. “I didn’t bring you hear to talk with you like a cop. I brought you here so I could be fucking real with you. I’ve been in nearly the same situation as you, and I—”
The Officer choked on her last word. Meg held perfectly still.
“What I’m trying to say,” Officer Morgan managed to continue after a deep breath, “is that I get it. I really fucking get it, okay? More than anyone else probably.
“The guy you were dating was a sick, twisted bastard, and you did what you had to do to survive. But this other guy? The Bay Harbor Butcher? This… ‘Dark Defender’? He’s the same type of guy, no matter who he kills. And that’s why I’m trying to catch him. And that’s why I don’t care what you’ve done, I’m just trying to do my job and stop this guy. So if there’s anything, anything you could do to help, you’d be doing be me a huge favor.”
Meg forced herself to meet the Officer’s eyes. She didn’t know someone could exist who understood her feelings so completely… and yet still so fully missed the mark. Maybe Officer Morgan was right about how Meg felt about Zach, but she couldn’t be further from the truth about the Dark Defender.
The Defender was nothing like Zach, could never be like Zach. In a way, the Defender was more like Officer Morgan than Zach. They were both stopping the bad guys. They just had different methods.
From the corner of her eye, Meg could see Dexter silently chewing his burrito. The perfect picture of casual disinterest. But Meg could see the telltale stiffness in his shoulders. She could feel the way he watched her every move, clung to her every word.
She wondered what it was like for him. He was the very person his sister was trying to hunt down. His own sister had just as much called him a ‘sick, twisted bastard’ to his face, and yet he kept quiet. Officer Morgan had no idea who he was, who he really was. She had no idea how many lives he’d saved. Probably many more than she, or any other cop, had.
But Meg knew who he was.
And she also knew that it worried him. She didn’t blame him. She knew his secret and she could just as easily share it. But if there was one thing Meg would never do, could never do, it would be betraying him.
“I didn’t write the post,” she insisted once more.
Officer Morgan ground her teeth so hard Med feared they might shatter.
“Fine,” the Officer snapped. “You didn’t write the post.” She took an aggressive bite of burrito.
After nearly forty-five straight minutes of Officer Morgan attempting further interrogation and Meg dodging every one of her questions, the Officer finally gave up.
“I’ll take you home,” she told Meg as she picked up their trash. The friendly smile the Officer gave was dampened somewhat by the steeliness in her voice and the aggressive way she threw away several napkins.
“Thank you!” Meg replied, hopping off her seat and all but dashing to the door.
The Officer followed at a far less enthusiastic pace.
As Officer Morgan opened the door, Meg looked back at Dexter who hadn’t moved from his seat. Their eyes met. His expression was unreadable, but she suddenly had the feeling that she would never see him again.
“And thank you to you too!” Meg blurted before she lost her nerve. “For helping out, I mean.”
Dexter held her gaze a moment longer before breaking into a polite smile. “I’m just doing what I have to do.”
Meg returned the smile.
“All right, let’s get going,” Officer Morgan urged her, as grumpy as ever.
Meg craned her neck to get one last look at the Defender just as the Officer closed the door.
The ride back with Officer Morgan was decidedly silent. The only words they exchanged were when Meg was getting out of the car and the Officer told her, “Have a good day. Call me if you think of anything.”
“I will,” Meg promised as the Officer slipped a card into her hands.
Officer Morgan gave her a tight-lipped nod and drove off.
Once inside, Meg tossed aside the card and locked the door behind her. Her heart was racing and her thoughts were a blur. The last few hours had felt like a dream, and now she was home again where everything was just as she had left it that morning. She had no idea what to do now.
Just as she had the thought, her phone rang.
Meg’s heart sank as she read the caller ID. It was Stephanie’s mom.
“Hello?” she answered, fearing the worst.
“Meg?” the voice said on the other line. “This is Stephanie’s mom. I’m at the hospital right now. She… she just woke up. The doctors say she’s going to be okay.” Her voice broke with relief as she spoke. “Everything is going to be okay.”
* * * * * * * * * *
Meg was at the hospital within the hour. By the time she made it to Stephanie’s room, she found her friend already awake and talking quietly with her mother who was sitting at her bedside, teary-eyed.
“Meg!” Stephanie said, her voice cracking.
“Hi, Stephanie,” Meg responded, unable to hold back a smile and tears of her own. “It’s been awhile.”
“So I’ve heard. You’ll have to catch me up on everything I’ve missed.”
“Don’t worry,” Meg told her. “I’ve got a hell of a story to share.”
* * * * * * * * * *
If there was one person in the world Meg could trust with her story of the Dark Defender, it was Stephanie.
When it was just the two of them in the hospital room, Meg regaled Stephanie in hushed tones with the chilling story of finding Zach’s box, realizing all he had done, and reaching out for help on the Defender Signal site.
Stephanie listened, wide-eyed and silent. The only time she spoke was after Meg revealed it was Zach who had put Stephanie in that hospital bed.
Stephanie’s face scrunched in disgust and horror. “I always sensed there was something odd in the way he behaved toward me,” she whispered. “But I thought I was imagining it.”
“Why did you never say anything?” Meg pressed.
Stephanie shrugged. “I saw how happy he made you and didn’t want to ruin that.”
Meg felt a small pinch in her heart. She reached out and took Stephanie’s hand. “I’m sorry I never noticed anything off. If anything like that ever happens again, please tell me, no matter what, and I promise I’ll listen.”
Stephanie nodded solemnly and squeezed Meg’s hand back.
The only part of her story Meg didn’t share was meeting the Defender. She let Stephanie believe Officer Morgan let her go due to lack of evidence and left it at that. Meeting the Dark Defender, seeing the end result of his work, that was a secret so deeply buried in Meg that not even her oldest, most trusted friend could know.
Stephanie was, however, glad to know who had hurt her, and even more glad to know that he had been brought to justice.
Within a few weeks, Stephanie was out of the hospital and things were (mostly) going back to normal. Officer Morgan never returned and the heat of Zach’s disappearance began to cool.
The search for him never turned up anything. The only one who felt any real sorrow over this was Zach’s mother. Meg was always in contact with her. They were constantly on the phone or going out to lunch together, always there to lend a sympathetic ear and offer support.
At first Meg only did it because she felt bad, but then she actually began to enjoy their time together. Although Zach was a terrible person, his mother was a wonderful woman, and even though Meg wished she could heal the hole in her heart, she also knew that it was probably best that Zach’s mother would never know what kind of man her son truly was.
It took weeks and a lot of convincing herself, but there came a day when Meg felt she was ready to finally confront the last remnant of Zach.
She stared at the vent for a long while, looking for the tell-tale shape inside. It was right in her bedroom, but she had refused to acknowledge it since its first discovery. However, she knew she couldn’t ignore it forever. It invaded her dreams, made her heart race whenever the room got a little too warm. It was time to get rid of it.
With a deep breath, she pried the vent off and reached inside.
There was something very… normal about the box. Nothing sinister, nothing extraordinary. It was just a box.
Her heart still sank when she opened it. Everything was as she had last seen it. With a grimace, she began plucking everything out.
Most of the stuff she threw away. She didn’t need the reminder. She knew every time she looked at it, she would only ever picture them back inside this box. There were some things, however, that she couldn’t bring herself to simply put in the trash.
She carefully laid each bundle of hair on her bedroom floor in a neat line. For a long while, all she could do was look at them and think.
She thought of the blood slides and how different she felt looking at those. The slides had felt like a victory, a closure for all the victims. These bundles just felt like tragedies with no such closure. But Meg wanted to give them closure, she wanted a way to properly give all these people the ending they deserved, even if she was the only one who knew about it.
She spent nearly an hour, sitting and turning over everything she knew about Zach and the Defender. And then it finally came to her.
She waited until sunset before she went down to the beach. In her hands, she held a small box. Not Zach’s box, not the plain one that had been hidden in the dusty dark for so long. But a nice box. A small, pretty one she had once used for jewelry.
She walked along the coastline until she found a quiet spot. Then she stepped out of her shoes and walked until the waves flowed over her ankles and splashed up her legs. The sand was still warm from the quickly fading sun, and the cold ocean sent gooseflesh up her skin. Around her, the wind whipped her loose hair and dress about. She hadn’t exactly known what to wear for the occasion, but white had felt appropriate enough.
She looked up at the sky, stained orange but quickly fading to grey. It was one of those evenings where the moon was visible in the sky even before the sun was gone. Meg smiled up at it. At least she had some company for this.
And then, she looked down at the box in her hands. It was surprisingly small for such a large burden. Meg inhaled as she slid it opened and revealed the bundles of hair within.
She plucked the first one up and examined it. It was brown with shining gold strands. She had no idea who it belonged to, but she tried to imagine them anyway, what they were like, what kind of life they had led. And then, right as the current pulled back out to sea, she threw it in.
The bundle disappeared in the blink of an eye, and Meg felt a small weight lifted from her heart.
The ocean was where the Defender had laid his victims to rest. Meg had read all about it in the news back when his work had first been uncovered. She hadn’t known it at the time, but that discovery had been the first domino to fall in her journey to this very moment. There was something fitting about ending everything where it had all begun. Something fitting about laying Zach’s victims to rest in the same way the Defender did to his.
Besides, Meg thought as she pinched the next bundle and held it up to the light, this place was beautiful, peaceful.
Meg repeated her process with each bundle of hair. She’d take one out, examine it, imagine who it could have belonged to, then threw it into the blue depths of the ocean. There were two bundles that she didn’t have to imagine anything for, however. David. And Stephanie. She already knew who they were, what they were like. Meg’s stomach turned just looking at them, but she finished her ritual for them all the same.
Finally, she was down to the last two bundles. The ones tied in ribbon. She spent a special amount of time on each. She knew for certain that, whoever they were, they were once just like her. Trusting and in love with Zach. And then betrayed by him.
By the time Meg released the last of the hair into the ocean, she felt a lightness in her body that she hadn’t felt since before she’d discovered the box. And she knew that, at long last, it was all over. Zach was behind her, and her future was as wide as the ocean she stood in.
By the time she got home, it was dark and her bedroom was cleansed of the dreaded box. Meg slept a deep, dreamless sleep that night.
It was only a few weeks later that she saw the news. Not only had the Bay Harbor Butcher been identified, but he had also been killed in a gas leak explosion.
Meg’s heart sank to her stomach and her skin grew cold as she watched the news report live. That couldn’t be right, she thought. He couldn’t be gone. Not like this.
But then the report flashed an unfamiliar face and an unfamiliar name. James Doakes.
It took Meg a moment to comprehend, but when she did, she let out a short, sharp laugh.
They had the wrong guy. They had the totally wrong guy.
She continued laughing as the news report went on, but she wasn’t listening.
The world was moving on from the Bay Harbor Butcher, but not her. Never Meg. Because she knew he was still out there, an avenging angel, doing the work no one else could do. She knew he was making this world a better, more just place to live.
Him. The Dark Defender.