Admittedly, I haven't been able to get Gale/Dewey out of my head for going on a month, although, let's be honest, they've been up there since I was maybe six years old, so it's safe to say that Scream (2022) gutted me — pun fully intended. I wouldn't say that I liked it, but also wouldn't say that I hated it… I'm just not sure how to feel. But the one thing that I am sure of is that my ship wrecked me — also pun intended.
So anyway, please enjoy whatever this is and huge thanks you to my beta, Samantha Paige, for editing this even though she doesn't do horror.
—
and it hurts like hell
She was all that he'd had left — she and Sid, anyway — after having lost his father to cancer five years into their marriage and his mother to a heart attack a month after they had officially separated. He called that day, needing to hear her familiar voice, and expressed a truth that they had both known: his mother had been gone since the night of his little sister's murder.
She was all that he'd had left, so it isn't surprising when a lawyer calls to tell her that she — Gale Weathers, Dewey Riley's soon-to-be-ex-wife — is still the beneficiary of his estate. He would have been hers, too, actually.
The single coroner in town signs his personal effects over to her, the items that had been with him sealed neatly in a plastic bag. His cell phone. His badge. His wallet. The old picture of her in his wallet. And it isn't until the cool metal of his house key meets her fingertips that Gale truly realizes what comes next — not in the grand scheme of things, not in the form of stages of grief, but in her reality. Physically, in her movements. She has to go into a home that she has never lived in, she has to go there without him, and face the life he left behind. She has to face the life that he had lived since New York, since he had left in the middle of the night seventeen years into a nearly two decade long marriage that they fought tooth and nail — knife and gunshot wound and masked serial killer — for. She has to face the last twenty-five years of her own life as well.
—
There's a gravel road leading up to a small trailer, and the key in her hand slides easily into the lock. One twist pops the bottom open while another unlatches the deadbolt and it seems too simple in contrast to how difficult opening that door feels. But Gale does it; turning the knob and pushing in, opening a portal into the life left behind by a man she had once shared one with.
His scent clings to her first, peeling off of the wood paneled walls and wafting between hints of whatever bottle of alcohol had been left open on the table. Bourbon, probably. The cheap stuff, not his favorite but one with enough of a punch to take the edge off on a particularly difficult day. Dewey rarely drank before, but she had always known this about him — that the cheap bottle came out after a particularly rough shift, the expensive when they had had something to celebrate, and the label that Tatum would steal in a raid of their parent's liquor cabinet, once a year on the anniversary of that first night at Stu Macher's house in '96. Gale can't help but wonder how many of his nights had edges these days.
One foot brings her through the entryway, and two more steps into the small living room that made up most of the mobile home. There's a couch and a television, but the cup on the ledge of the counter catches her eye and she can see it — Dewey perched there, one arm slung over the side with a cup of coffee and the same fresh face of stubble he had grown after their move to New York. She can almost feel his warm eyes on her, the brown that melted from iris to pupil soaking up every breath she took just like he used to. Gale thinks that if he were really there, she'd place a hand on his cheek. Just for old time's sake.
The room is more cluttered than clean, which is something someone that didn't know him would chalk up to his most recent bender but she lived with him for more than a decade, and had loved him for more than two. Dewey had always been a little bit of a mess — organized chaos as his brain stumbled through scattered possibilities and words and outcomes. Yes, this Dewey was fairing worse, but her Dewey had never been clutterless either.
There's a small wooden box on a shelf off to the side of the room; a memento that she would recognize, labeled or not. Tatum. Her ashes. They should go to Sidney now; to the best friend of Tatum Riley and the pseudo-little sister of her now late older brother. Dewey would want Sid to have her.
It's what's next to Tatum that catches Gale off guard entirely, though. A photograph — one that she knows well because it's her, it's them, in a frame next to the sister that Dewey had lost and a lockbox that previously held the remains of the career he had lost as well. She's right up there with all the things that he had loved so much, yet lost anyway.
She thinks she might die where she stands, crushed by the weight of a man that had loved her for half of his life, even in the moments that it had been too much and not enough.
"Is that what you're looking for?"
"My whole life."
"Dewey," she whispers. "I'm so sorry."
Her fingers graze the top of the shelf, past the picture frame and the thin layer of dust covering it. The gun is missing from the lockbox because it had been with him when… and so had his badge, which she carries now.
With one slow and steady breath, an anchored sigh, Gale pulls the star from her purse and contemplates putting it back in that box — placing it where Dewey had after every shift, after his very last; the honor he had carried for most of the time she had known him. Once a small town deputy oozing with lack of experience but layered with confidence, and later a small town sheriff who took every single matter to heart. This man… he cared so damn much. About her, about everyone.
She grasps the badge carefully — holding it as if it was more fragile than glass, as if it was his lifeline. A reminder of the man he once was. Of the man he always was. But as she lifts the lid of Dewey's familiar lockbox, another flash of gold steals her attention, and she finds herself staring down at a band. A gold band. Dewey's wedding ring.
He kept it. Two and a half years since he left, and still, he kept it.
She kept hers, too, stashed safely in her bedside drawer in the town house that they shared for two months in New York. It's still her place, though it will always feel like theirs, with his favorite shirt still in the dresser and the hollowed out copy of her novel tucked neatly amongst the other books on the bookcase. She hasn't changed a thing since he left. She doesn't want to, is what she tells herself, but she can't, is the truth.
Mindfully abandoning the badge in favor of Dewey's wedding band, Gale removes it from the box. It feels heavy in her palm, but it's no comparison to the ghost of the feel of his hand in hers and god, she misses that. She misses the courage and the strength wrapped up in him, with a tenderness that exists nowhere else in the world.
Existed.
—
Three days later, she makes the flight after Dewey's funeral with just enough time to spare, choosing the first ticket in coach available rather than waiting around for an available seat in first-class. She doesn't belong in Woodsboro, not without him, and the ride to the airport with Sidney confirms the same for her, too. This town had once been the younger woman's home, but it isn't any longer and it has never been Gale's.
Dewey had always been Gale's.
So she checks a bag and takes an economy seat, awkwardly cradling a jar containing what remained of the man who made her feel safest.
"You were his whole life, Gale, and you said it yourself that he's your best friend. He needs to be with you," Sid had insisted.
"I'm so sorry for your loss, Ms. Weathers," her seatmate, an elderly woman who must have seen the headlines in the news, says with a glance from the urn up to her face. "How long were you and Mr. Riley married?"
Gale swallows, thinking for a moment. She knows how long they were married. In fact, she could probably pinpoint those nineteen years to the day without much thought but that time, those years placed somewhere in the middle of the twenty-five since she met Dewey feel so inadequate in explaining the depth of what he meant to her and the length of their relationship. "Not long enough."
—
Their — her — townhome in Manhattan feels too cold, too empty to sleep in and Gale fights her exhaustion the next morning, pulling the blankets up as she tries to focus on the book in her hands. It's a mystery novel, something to be reviewed on the show once she returns from leave, but her mind is elsewhere. Her heart is elsewhere and she sees his eyes every time she blinks, capturing that first smile he'd thrown her outside of Woodsboro High School in her mind, and she can feel him next to her as if he's fast asleep on the right side of the bed the same way he slept for years.
She thinks of the gold wedding band on his left hand, the one now stored in her unpacked suitcase, and of the way that it felt against her skin. She thinks of the moment he proposed, of his humored "I know it'll never work, and you know it'll never work. But, what I'm asking is just to see if we're wrong." as he asked her to marry him, and of the promise of forever as he slid a ring on her finger at their wedding a year later.
She thinks of the moment she took it off — the ring now hidden somewhere in the drawer mere inches from her side, the ring that had been there since their separation had morphed into unfinalized divorce proceedings five months prior.
A faint buzz sounding from across the room startles her out of her grief stricken thoughts, and Gale reaches for her phone. No missed calls. No unread texts. Not a single alert. Her own phone isn't buzzing, but the one in her suitcase is so she climbs out of bed, crossing the floor in the dim light of the room and digs for his. For Dewey's.
It's an alarm — set Monday through Friday and it takes a moment for the hour and the timezone to reconcile before she realizes.
"You were on air."
The lump in her throat grows thick.
Clicking "stop", Gale swipes to unlock the phone but opens the missed call log instead and her own name appears first. It's the call she made before or during or after his death. It's one of the few calls from her that he'd never answered, the others being just after he left.
And the contact picture attached to her name is the same framed in his trailer — the two of them on the beach on their anniversary. He took that picture and fell in love with it despite her critique of her own mussed hair and sand covered skin, and Gale can't help the tears that reach her eyes, tears that threaten to consume her, as she thinks of how much Dewey had always loved her in spite of everything. Flaws and ambition, selfishness and jealousy. They split a handful of months after that photograph had been captured, and still, he kept it. He kept so many others, too.
Settling back into bed, Gale swipes away from Dewey's missed calls and sees the blinking indication of an unread text message. She taps the Messaging app and it opens, but not to the unread message nor to the compiled catalog of previous conversations. The app opens to one thread, one name.
Gale.
There are two texts from him — one confirmation that Ghostface had returned, asking her not to come back for her own safety because of course he'd want to protect her, and another, asking how she was. The text messages contrast each other, sent less than a minute apart, and it's so incredibly Dewey to stumble over words that hold more meaning than he can express. It makes the ache even deeper.
The two replies from her are short — the first is his name, followed by Seriously? Over text? and the second is a plea. A plea for him, for his life. A promise that she wasn't sure she was allowed to ask of him anymore, but had anyway. Promise me that you will be safe.
He hadn't promised. He hadn't even replied.
But as she looks at the conversation on the phone that belonged to her late ex… her late husband, she notices the unsent words in the text box.
I still…
"I still" what, Dewey? Gale thinks, even though deep down, she knows.
Placing the phone on the nightstand next to her side of the bed, Gale pulls open the drawer and digs for a moment — reaching all the way to the back, fingers probing past an old pair of glasses, a container of Vaseline, and a variety of miscellaneous clutter until her touch meets the smooth white-gold she'd been searching for. Her wedding ring.
He could have meant that he still watched her show every single day, or that he still missed her, that he still thought of her. Each of those statements were true, but something about those two little unsent words felt different. They felt like longing, like need. They felt like every mistake between them, encapsulated by every good — great — moment that they shared. It was he should have stayed with her and she should have left with him. It was the look in his eyes the last time he'd seen her, and the familiar feel of being under his gaze.
I still…
I still love you.
That was one thing that had never changed between them, and one thing that he had never lost. For twenty-five years, and a fifth as many break ups, or a hundred thousand arguments and just as many make ups, he had never fallen out of love with her. And she had never fallen out of love with him, either.
"I know it'll never work, and you know it'll never work. But, what I'm asking is just to see if we're wrong."
It didn't work, or maybe it had in their own way. Maybe they had been wrong — wrong place, wrong time, wrong circumstances but right for each other, somehow, with every stabbed, scarred, and sacrificed fiber of their beings.
And because of that, because they were right for all of the wrong reasons, Gale can't help how effortlessly she slides the ring on her finger just like the first time, only now feeling weight with nineteen years of familiarity. I still love you, she thinks — unspoken words that claim an unsent message, forming the epilogue of a novel that had been a life. His. Hers. The one that they lived together. The one that they lived apart.
She's not sure that she can bear a sequel without him, not even another chapter of a story that isn't theirs and a thought crosses her mind once more — a memory, a moment during their last conversation where Dewey had insisted, that endearing spark in his eye, that she was always happiest while she was writing. It was true, most definitely, and she thinks of what she said to Sidney and Sam — she thinks of the story of the small town sheriff who cared so deeply for everyone, including her. Especially her. He was Woodsboro, the embodiment of every good aspect of that godforsaken town and she realizes that he was the story all along. Not the murders, not the man or the woman or the teenager in a Halloween mask, but the inexperienced deputy turned topic-expert sheriff with more courage in his heart than any single person she had ever met.
The man behind the heart of The Woodsboro Murders, not the mask.
—
It's just over a year later that she's credited as Gale Riley, forfeiting her professional moniker in favor of the married name she wore the way she wore her ring, on the cover of a novel dedicated to her best friend; to the bravest man she ever knew, the only man she ever loved. The only person who ever truly knew her. Dwight Riley — or, Dewey — a nickname he had been stuck with a long time ago.
—
End.
—
With full disclosure, I would like to put it out there that I am fully team #DeweyLives and would not object for a second if they decided to pull a bait and switch and bring him back to life, so someone behind the scenes, take notes. We can have a full campaign, I'll make t-shirts, it'll be fun.
Comments and criticism are always appreciated, but of course, never required!
