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"Gale? Hey, Gale. Gale!"
When she finally finds herself out of the haze, Gale is shocked to still see Dewey standing in front of her, his right leg bent at the knee.
Even now, she can't believe she didn't imagine it. He's here. He's alive.
No matter her confusion, fear, and worry, she can't stop herself from falling forward and hugging him tighter than she ever has before. She almost cries at the sensation of him hugging her back.
"Dewey," Gale reluctantly breaks the hug to meet his eyes - they're just as beautiful as she remembers, "how... how are you here?"
There's a hesitancy in Dewey. "How about we sit down?"
She agrees, and soon the two of them are seated across from each other with Dewey getting distracted by the pictures of Gale on the walls. God she’s gorgeous.
“Gale.” Dewey takes her hand in his, his other hand covering the dorsal side.
“I just… I saw your body. I saw you on the gurney. Sam and Tara heard it happen.”
“No, no you didn’t.”
Gale stops. She removes her hand from Dewey’s and leans back against the chair in an attempt to get as far away from the man as possible. “What are you saying?”
Dewey adjusts in his seat before breathing in heavy through his nose.
“I helped Stu and Billy in 1996. And I’ve helped everyone after that until Amber and I faked my death at the hospital.”
Gale feels her whole body go hot from her feet to the crown of her head. He’s lying, he has to be. But there’s no other way he could be here in front of her unless… no, she’s confident that he’s lying.
“Okay, nice fucking joke, Dewey, now tell me what really happened. Did you almost die but fell into a coma and have been unconscious all this time in a different state? Did the paramedics falsely pronounce you dead and you figured staying away was the best way to protect us and everyone else?”
There’s a silent moment as Gale watches Dewey stand, his left arm going up the back of his shirt and his right pulling something out of his pocket. Time seems to stand still when Dewey remains motionless with a Ghostface mask in his left hand and familiar small device in his right.
The small device is raised to his mouth, and in an all-too-familiar distorted voice, “I’ve helped them all, Gale.”
“What the fuck?” Gale is standing now, instinctively backing away towards the kitchen where one of her many guns resides. “What the fuck, Dewey? I trusted you, Sydney trusted you. Woodsboro trusted you to protect them and you were one of the coward motherfuckers putting them in danger. You killed good people, people with their whole lives ahead of them.”
“I never killed anyone. I never even held the knives. I was the planner, Gale, I helped make sure that the kills were successful and made the calls when I had to. But I had enough of it. I couldn’t do it anymore, watching these kids lose the people they loved. I couldn’t.”
“What about us?” Gale nearly trips over her own foot, her mind going too fast to focus on her steps. She sees Dewey jump forward no doubt to help her in case she falls, but she manages to steady herself without pausing. “Did we mean nothing to you? You grew up with us, we went through everything together. And Tatum. How could your own sister be so expendable to you?”
Dewey freezes and Gale swears she sees tears start to well in his eyes. “They didn’t tell me that Billy was going to kill Tatum. I thought she was safe from it. I might have faked a lot of tears and screams, but I never faked anything having to do with Tate… or you.”
Gale wants to believe him. She wants to put everything behind them and fall back in love and grow old together, but she’s reached the safe. Without any sign of doing it she puts in the code to the safe - Dewey’s birthday - and slowly pulls the pistol towards herself. No words are shared as she raises the gun up with both hands and points it at Dewey’s head. She’s shot too many Ghostfaces and left them alive by aiming for non-vital organs. She’s never going to make that mistake again.
“Why do you get to just walk away? We lost everyone. I am still terrified, every day, that I’m going to get a phone call that Sydney is dead and it was some Ghostface motherfucker that did it. That her husband and kids are left completely alone, or worse, dead with her. You don’t get to fucking apologize, Dwight. Not after everything you’ve done.”
Dewey lets his hands raise above his head, admitting defeat and accepting his fate at being shot by his love. He knows he did the wrong thing, he knew he was doing the wrong thing helping Stu and Billy when he did, but he needed to protect Gale, something he thought he was doing by going along with every plan those coward high-school kids brought to him. But it didn’t work then, so he knows he was stupid to help everyone after because if Stu and Billy didn’t care, no one else would either.
“I know. I know I fucked up and I deserve everything that happened to me when you left. You deserved someone so much better than me, and not just because I was one of them. If I’m being honest I thought you were going to say no when I proposed. You had so much going for you and the whole future to pursue writing. And I was just some punk kid who somehow made it into the police station that had a crush on you since we were in school. Pull the trigger, Gale. You deserve to.”
Gale’s hands shake as sweat and tears mix on her skin, an awful, salty combination making its way into her pores and clothes. She hates Dewey. She wants him dead where he stands so she never has to deal with anything like this again. But then he’d be gone. And then every time she’d walk into her living room she’d be reminded about his limp body lying on her floor in front of her couch, red blood spreading across the floor towards her white furniture, staining her memories of him forever.
Despite the anger bubbling inside of her she lowers her gun. It lays on the counter, untouched, while she crumbles to the ground in a fit of shaking and sobs unlike any Dewey has heard before.
He knows he shouldn't, yet out of instinct almost he is limping towards Gale, collapsing next to her and wrapping his arms around her while she screams because of him. Because of the things he did she is going to be traumatized until the day she dies. He almost wishes she had pulled the trigger. Wishes she sent a bullet into his skull and ended him right there then threw him in a shallow grave and walked away.
He wishes he had died that day.
But then again, if he were really dead, he wouldn’t get to experience the moment she sniffles, wipes the tears from her eyes, and places her hands on the side of his face before pulling him into one of the most passionate kisses they have ever shared.
His own tears stain his cheeks now.
He knows he fucked up, worse than anyone else had, and he does not deserve forgiveness in any sense of word. But Gale is better than him. She’s better than most.
That’s why it always has been and always will be, her.