Author's Note: Okay so first Author's Note, definitely gonna be a bit wordy. This is the first time that I've EVER written ANYTHING like this, so go easy on the critique sauce, por favor? :} However, opinions, comments, and anything else are welcome. Constructive criticism as well. I was inspired to write this a few weeks ago, when a dream that I had about Beetlejuice got me back involved with the show that I had loved so much as a child. I looked on here to see if there was anything, and was surprised to find that it seemed as though many other people had re-caught the Beej Bug (get it? lol) as well! Or maybe they had just never lost it. Nonetheless, I was pretty excited by the great works that I found on here and was inspired! I hope that this does okay; I have no intention whatsoever of not finishing this, come hell and high water (even if I get no fans). This is just for fun and I hope it will be fun for others as well. If not, well, then up your big toe and take THAT society! So without further ado….

DISCLAIMER: I own nothing. I'm too po' to own anything related to Tim Burton's genius. So, if you do sue me, you're SOL, cuz in the wise words of everyone's favorite, sarcastic poltergeist "Look, I don't care how Poe you are, I aint giving you any money!" (Nor do I own any humor related to cereal brands.)

P.S.-Chapter one will be a wee bit shorter than I plan for the others to be. Just how this writing thang works I reckon….

Chapter One: Prelude/How had it come to this?

Clear liquid swirled in stale circles, the undrunk foam having disappeared long ago.

There were some thoughts that couldn't hide behind the veil of alcohol.

How the hell had it come to this? The Ghost with the Most had become the schmuck of fate. He had always prided himself on his complete lack of…. Well…. Anything that even remotely related to reasoning. He was a free spirit! He was free from all responsibility, free from guilt and, gawd, free from obligation.

And the Powers that Be had never given a damn.

Until now, when just a few acts of actual kindness, and from him of all people, dammit, would mean his ultimate undoing. Was he a tragic hero? Pshh. Hell to the no. He was karmas punching bag. Yet…. had he been the one to pay for his sins, it would be different.

His hand tightened around the glass, oblivious to the fluid that escaped from the cracks and down his hand to gather in a puddle on the dirty counter top.

The one who had paid for his sins was also the one redeeming quality which he possessed. The retribution for his wrongs had fallen upon the spark within an innocent pair of wide, chocolate brown eyes, until that precious spark had flickered and died to be forever replaced by a cold, flat lifelessness.

Faces turned to watch as he shrugged out of the bar and into the night, eyes downcast. He pulled his long, brown trenchcoat closer around him. Despite the fact that he couldn't experience a chill from the weather anymore (being dead and whatnot), something on the inside of him seemed to radiate a cold that his body wasn't used to. It was a cold that could only blow through him from an aching emptiness somewhere around his dead heart. No one knew exactly what to think of Beetlejuice leaving without indulging in one of his usual shenanigans. Everyone there knew it was about Lydia, but everyone there also had the sense to keep quiet.

The street that he kicked up dust upon felt truly empty and lonely, not like the usual highway of opportunity that it had become for him just a few years ago, when he had that sweet and boundless energy walking beside him. She had taken this stale, dead road and shown him how to make the most of it with the excitement that she found in every simple thing. Much had changed.

How had it come to this?

Beetlejuice thought back to a night about three years ago when he sat at a rickety table in his roadhouse, fighting back the first sign of tears that he had even considered shedding in 600 years, if not his entire existence. As he blinked away emotions that he would never admit to (he was still Beetle friggin' Juice fer Christ's sake) his vision blurred to a few nights before when it had all started….

He, as in THE Ghost with THE Most (you better believe it!), and Lyds reclined on his decrepit old sofa, watching some bogus 70's horror movie, where blood was still ketchup and ghosts wore sheets. The scenes seemed to belong on the rickety tv monitor, with its cobwebs forming intricate patterns from the screen to the leaning walls. Lydia loved his place. She called it "ethereal"; he called it "shit".

The poltergeist cackled recklessly in his usual manner, pointing at the movie. "Ha! Look at those fools, Lyds! Say, ya reckon that's where those Maitland yuppies got that idea? Amateurs…." He threw a beetle in his mouth and crunched down on it. "Lyds?"

He looked over at her and grinned. She had fallen asleep, head dangling over the arm of the chair and black bangs covering half of her face, a stark contrast to her alabaster skin. A small speck of drool glistened at the corner of her mouth. She was out.

Beetlejuice chuckled with a mix of amusement and affection. "Cute kid." He and Lydia had been best friends now for about five years. She kept reminding him that she wasn't a kid any longer, but he loved to tease her about it nonetheless. The quick defiance in her normally nurturing face always set fuel to his fire, and he picked on her about it all the more.

"I see that yer enjoyin' the movie too, Babes!" He snorted and picked at his red nails. "Fuddy Duddy horror flicks, ya know I love 'em."

Instead of poking her in the ribs and cackling maniacally to wake her up, as he was tempted, he conjured a dirty old blanket and covered her with a tenderness that would have everyone, from Jacque to Juno, questioning his motives. Sheesh, what's a guy gotta do to be trusted? He didn't much give a damn, however. Everyone was always suspicious of him, and he preferred it that way.

The only person who was allowed to trust him, and surprisingly enough, did in fact trust him, was Lydia. Though Beetlejuice had to admit, even that was completely unintentional. It had taken a few turns around the worst parts of the Neitherworld, sweat, blood, and loose gears to make the girl who had once detested him become his partner in crime.

But boy it had been a hell of a time; I mean a hell of a time.

He lit a cigarette and thought back to the first time he had talked her into coming with him. She had been drifting around her room lighting candles (warm vanilla and sugar—a scent that the poltergeist would forever associate with as being purely Lydia). The small fires cast an unnatural glow around the dark purple walls of her room, throwing dancing shadows in every corner. Her canopy bed looked more like a giant death shroud.

"I'm not letting you out Beej. Last time I did that you tied up my parents and sent Barb to be sandworm munchies." She sounded almost bored with the argument as she slid gracefully from candle to candle.

He grinned widely and began picking his teeth as he reclined against her mirror frame and rested his ankle upon his knee. Somewhere in the back of his mind he noted, once again, that she didn't complain about the almost marriage part. "All in a day's work, babes. Anyone can learn."

She rolled her eyes and blew a loose strand of hair out of her face. Maybe it was wishful thinking on his part, but Beetlejuice thought that she looked unwillingly amused.

"Come on, babes! It's been months since all of those silly watcha-ma-call-its happened! Dontcha wanna meet legs, and bone head, and big fluffy, and all of those other creeps that I've told ya about? We'll even go get eye scream, and maybe even explore the Neitherwoods…."

It was an argument that he now knew by heart, so he was unprepared when his words seemed to finally have an effect. She was facing away from him, so he noticed her back stiffen in determination as she lit her last candle.

"Though I know I should be wary…." She began hesitantly. "Still I venture someplace scary. Ghostly haunting I turn loose! Beetlejuice!" Her voice rose with confidence. "Beetlejuice!" He dusted off his sleeves. "Beeltejuice!"

Cackling triumphantly, he jumped out and, for the first time of many to come, grabbed her hand. It was soft, warm, trusting, everything that he wasn't used to. And he came to the stark realization that he liked it.

He still remembers the sound of her petrified scream as they took that first leap through the darkness within her oval mirror….

"AAAAAAGGGGGHHHHHH!"

A few indignant spiders fell from the ceiling as Beetlejuice crashed into it, startled awake from his half asleep reverie. His cigarette had long ago burned out on his couch, leaving the 278th hole in the derelict, Swiss cheese lookin' sofa.

The scream had come from Lyds, who was now crying professedly in her sleep.

"Ha! Aww hell babes, yer havin' a nightmare." He shook her awake and watched her eyes roam around in confusion before finally settling on him and filling with relief.

"Beej!" She hurled herself at him and clung on tightly.

"Lyds! Yer gonna squeeze the death outta me," he joked. In all the years that he'd known her, she'd never been one to throw herself at people and cry; it put him completely out of his element.

"Beej…. It was all so real! There was a giant hand…."

"Ya mean that real handy guy that I beat at golf? Army or somethin' like that…."

She ignored the interruption. "….and it kept snatching all of the people that I love away from me…. Mom, dad, the Maitland's, you…."

"Aww babes I'm touched," he grinned in a light hearted way, trying to cheer her up to the best of his somewhat-limited-in-this-field abilities. He, of course, failed miserably as he reached over and began patting her on the head lightly, as if petting a puppy (anything to change the mood, fer Christ's sake). Lydia looked up at him in what she thought was reproachfulness, but only managed to look even more vulnerable, with her big eyes full of tears.

They (whoever they are) say that the eyes are the window to the soul, but his Lyds didn't need that sorta thing. Her soul shown through every aspect of her character…from her warm little laughs, to the kindness that she gave to everyone-from misfits to worms and even (most surprisingly) to him.

Bj usually tried not to look too deep into Lyd's eyes, because instead of seeing her soul, he saw his own broken one, and it put a pressure on his chest that he wasn't quite sure about, and this time was no exception. He felt something deep within his psychological being shift and begin to change as he looked into her eyes. Something about it made him hold her tighter. He submitted to the urge to bury his face in her hair and inhale the familiar scent…. warm vanilla and smoke…. Like the candles in her room.

"I don't know what I'd do without you Beej," she nudged her face in his chest, snapping him off of whatever trail his mind had been beating within the forest of his thoughts. He'd never had a moment with her before that felt this serious. Shucks, hell if he'd ever had a moment that felt this serious, period. It shook him up in a bad way, like a descending shadow was falling onto their carefree little playground of a world that they had built together.

"Look, kid, aint nobody goin' nowhere. And 'specially not me. It'd take more than the Hand of Fate to keep us apart! We're Bonny and Clyde! We're Michelangelo and the Sistine Chapel! We're coo coo for cocoa puffs!"

Lydia sat back and slapped a hand over his mouth to end the torrent of nonsense. "I'm not a kid anymore," was her only response to all that he had said. She raised an eyebrow. Beetlejuice gave the girl a once-over, taking in her long hair, still messy from sleep, and her baggy red and black poncho hanging off of one bare, slim shoulder, the silky folds unable to hide her now very noticeable curves.

Bj sighed in defeat; as his mind tried, once again, to make that unfamiliar shift in his head. Definitely not a little girl anymore. "I know Lydia. I know."