If the world was the way I wanted it, not only would the idea for Beetlejuice be mine, but so would Beetlejuice himself. That is, alas, not the case. I don't own any of it, not Lyds, not Beej, not the Neitherworld... Basically not anything in these pages that can otherwise be accredited to Tim Burton, and/or the Geffen Film Company. Now, there is some stuff in here that is mine... But you? You're reading this for Beetlejuice... And Lydia. And them together. Am I right?

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Shortest chapter I've written for a while... But there's really nothing to add to it.

However, I do have something to say. Squee! Ahem, yes, you heard me, squee. S-Q-U-E-E. That, dear readers, is a fangirl squee. I'm certain at least a few of you are familiar with them. See, Spencers13, (who writes both occasionally here, in this particular fandom, in fact, and offers wonderful drawings on deviantart as well,) was kind enough to draw a picture of me with her OC, Kyle.

Therefore, the squee. Let me say it again. SQUEE! Because no one has ever done that for me, see, drawn me, and because the way she drew me, I turned out beautiful, and just because it's a very emotional, beautiful picture, and... I don't know, personal, in a way that's really flattering. You know? I mean, I love fanart of my stories, really, REALLY do, but this was, like I said, personal somehow.

Ahem. Um. Feel free to pop over to deviantart. Don't take my word for it. :)

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They hadn't seen Lydia in two days now… Never mind that at some point over the previous day, she had come home- albeit briefly. The hum of her new spectral energy danced through her room like tiny threads of warm light, kissing everything she'd touched, and then, like her, just gone.

Adam sat on her bed, head bowed, hands folded, lips pressed into a thin line, hidden behind laced fingers. He was staring at an open photo album on his lap, the girl, his daughter, or near enough to be, maybe thirteen in the picture, holding up a spider above her head, the size of both her hands outstretched, grasped firmly and unafraid around the middle, while holding the camera with her other hand, leaving her shakily off center. She looked like any kid, having the time of her life.

He turned the page. It had gripped him, some time during the night, to come in here, and take away all ideas the girl had left of 'secrets…' She'd been lying to them for years, never seeming to care what it did to them, and he was tired of pretending he was okay with it. He wanted to know everything.

It hadn't taken long to find more clues to her secret life than he would have ever guessed she'd hidden there, so close to where he or Barb or Olivia could find them, if they'd ever thought to look. Album after album of pictures, obviously nothing from this world. How he could have ever mistaken them for something photo-shopped… Endless piles of sketches, more than a few of them of the poltergeist, others of strange, twisted creatures, who may never have been human. A world he'd never imagined existed, much less was an everyday part of her life…

Colored images, with smoothly pigmented charcoals, that said she'd seen sandworms, for god's sake, closer than he would have ever wanted her to.

He couldn't quite bring himself to read her diary though, and once the page was turned, he dropped his hand to the side, absently, resting it on the thick leather cover, fingers tracing the words etched across the front. 'Book of Shadows…' What did that mean, anyway? It looked like a spell book… But beneath the original scribe, Lydia had painted, in odd, white nail polish, 'Diary.' Like it was an afterthought. Or an invitation.

In truth, Adam wasn't sure which disturbed him more, that she'd managed to hide this whole other side of her life from them for so long, or that she really had, in the end, gone to so few pains to hide it. The signs were everywhere. Open a drawer, any drawer, and he'd find some sign of the poltergeist. Open her wardrobe, and find a crude drawing of a sandworm on the back panel, obviously not drawn by her. Notes, scattered here and there in old boxes, on paper that had to be decades old.

The desk, itself, was as supernatural a thing as he'd ever seen in his short afterlife, when he actually bothered to look at it. He even realized now that, logically, it never should have fit through her doorway in the first place. And every available space much larger than it should be, with hidden places packed full of forbidden treasures. He could even pick out which presents were from Beetlejuice, and which from Vincent. The prince's gifts were always so over-the-top, that he was certain they were worth more than some people lives… Or afterlives.

And yet it was her new husband's trinkets, trash and twisted oddities, that were tucked away with an odd tenderness, each carefully in its own place, each worn from much handling… And most important to Adam's mind, most carefully hidden, to make certain they'd never be stumbled onto by accident. As if he'd really have fewer questions over a solid jade belt with a spider clasp, than a worn ace of spades.

It wasn't clear what he was feeling. He was almost sure though, that it was nothing like he'd ever felt in his own living life. Not even when they found out that Barb would probably never be able to have a baby. That they would never be able to have a baby.

But yes, if he thought about it, despair, a sort of frustrated desperation, an overwhelming unfairness… That was the same. But most of all, just the unavoidable sense that something infinitely precious had just been yanked from his grasp, and in the end, he couldn't do a damn thing about it.

Helplessness. Utter helplessness.

And he couldn't help but notice, that in all these pictures she was in, his daughter just looked so happy. Happier than he'd ever seen her. Happier than any of them had ever been able to make her. And that made it feel like his fault. Like it was something that he'd failed to do, that made this whole mess end up this way. For the death of him, he just couldn't convince himself that there wasn't something he could have done to have prevented this.

"Adam?" At his wife's worried tone, the dead man lifted his head, blinked, and realized that he was having trouble focusing his eyes. He wasn't certain at first if he was just tired, or crying… But no, no, just tired. She poked her head around the doorframe, warm brown eyes watching him tenderly, a sort of sense of acceptance there that he himself fought against… And knew she did too, even as she fought to make peace with how everything had changed. "Are you all right?"

"I'm…" He started to say, only to have his own words failed him, and taste sour-bitter on his tongue. What was he going to say? That he was fine? He grimaced, and shook his head, turning another page, not saying any more.

Barbara came into the room slowly, turning her eye around it, as if seeing Lydia's presence everywhere she looked, just as her husband could feel the casual, tingling brush of her energy, as he rifled through her things. He half expected her to say something about violating their daughter's privacy… Instead, she just came over and sat next to him on the bed, sliding her arm around his back, tucking her chin into his shoulder, and peering over his arm at the photos of distorted lights and savage angles.

"She's really good." Barbara said at last, reaching over him, and tracing an image of what had to be two ghosts, but somehow came across in a dazzling display on light across the lens, cascading across a torrent of falling water.

"I know." He agreed, almost angrily, despite his best intentions to sound calm. They'd missed so much… When had she learned to take pictures like this? How could they not have known? "And she wasn't more than fourteen when she filled this album."

A small pause, as his wife let this sink in. "How many are there?" She asked, a little slowly, as if dreading the answer to such an innocuous question.

"Twenty-seven." He said simply, though he'd obviously not had time to go through even half of them yet… However long ago he'd woken up. "I think this was one of her first ones." And this was all he said, and for a moment again, it hung between them, how much had happened without their knowing it.

"I think she's actually better than her mother." Barb noted softly, sort of a guilty admission, as if as, as her first friend, she should always like Olivia's pictures better.

Adam wasted no such effort. "She is." He agreed simply, closing the book, and setting it aside, on top of her still locked diary. He had no intention of putting anything back where it belonged. He intended for it to come to a head… Or at least an understanding. There would be no more secrets. No more lies. Even if it was too late to make a damn bit of difference. "How is Olivia?"

A soft sigh against his shoulder, before the ghost woman drew away, soft lips pursed with worry. "Still breathing." She answered simply, like this was saying so much. "I checked on her before I came to find you. As hard as she's been pressing herself at work lately, I think that's the most we can ask for." A small, weighted silence, before softly, she whispered, "She's really afraid of losing her job, Adam. What are we going to do?"

There was of course, only one answer to this, and he knew that Barbara knew it as well as he did. "There's nothing we can do, Barbara." He reminded her anyway, reaching for her hand with a tired expression. "We're dead. We can't do anything anymore."

A small sound fell from the ghost woman's lips, acceptance or protest he couldn't tell. "Adam…" So softly, her voice almost a muffled whimper. "Things… aren't going to be okay, are they? I mean," She waved her arm, uselessly. "Lydia's never here anymore, and we're always fighting whenever she is. Edmond hasn't even tried to talk to Olivia, and Beetlejuice…" She shook her head. "And then with Olivia maybe losing her job…"

"I can't stand this. I really can't stand this." A frustrated, helpless glance in her husband's direction. "We're going to lose everything, aren't we, Adam? We're going to lose all of them."

Adam shook his head, taking Barb firmly by the hand, and held on, hard, his next words firm and reassuring, even if the expression in his eyes was no more convinced than she was. "We're not going to lose them, honey." He said simply, as if this was just the one thing that absolutely couldn't be taken away from them. "They wouldn't let that happen, and neither would we."

Before she could press this, something in the room, shifted a little, and the brush of warm energy returned in a rush, leaving them turning in surprise to see their daughter popping up literally out of nowhere, looking half asleep, distracted, muttering under her breath, not really to either of them, "Urg… poncho… goddamn tired…" Before pausing, more than a little surprised, first to see them, then to see the state that Adam had left her room in.

"Huh." Was all she said after this though, her lips turning just briefly into a frown, before that emotion was dismissed, apparently as no more than an annoyance. "Okay, now that we've got that out of the way…" She turned to the two ghosts, took in their distressed appearance, and ran her fingers through her tousled black mop, clearly uneasy, but unwilling to cry foul at the ransacking of her privacy. "You two look like hell."

"We're… fine, honey." Adam assured her, straightening his glasses, and doing his best to look like he was in control of his own emotions. "Just doing a little catching up on the things we missed out on."

"Uh-huh." Lydia murmured, turning from one to the other, dark brown eyes narrowed in thought as she considered each of them in turn. "You can't lie worth shit." She decided at last, flatly. "Obviously I didn't learn that particular skill from you two."

It was a little surprising, how blatantly unapologetic she was for the years of secrets she was referring to, and it gave both her foster parents pause, as she did anything but try to avoid the lingering feelings of betrayal between them. "Lydia…" Barbara protested weakly, feeling like even now, it was something they just shouldn't be talking about so easily, while Adam, for his part, couldn't manage a reaction at all.

"If you wanna talk about it, we'll talk about it." Lydia cut in, clearly not up for any tear-jerking speeches, and looking more than anything, like she wanted to just go back to wherever she'd just come from, and finish sleeping off her day. "I'm not going to say I'm sorry I lied, because I still think I pretty much had to…"

"But since it's all out in the open now, if you've got questions for me, just ask, okay?" She grabbed her desk chair as she was offering this, spinning it around, and sitting, as she added, sighing, "Forget this sneaking around stuff. I've got nothing to hide anymore. So go on. Shoot."

Neither Maitland offered a word, just sort of staring at her, utterly lost for how to respond to an invitation like this. There were a lot of things they still really weren't ready to know, after all… And as the silence dragged between them, Lydia just sort of tucked her forehead between thumb and forefinger, looked tired, patient, and for once, didn't say anything to either one, to push their buttons. And Lydia of course, was always pushing people's buttons. Even before she'd met Beetlejuice.

"To be perfectly honest," Adam offered at last, with a bit of a strained smile, "I don't think either one of us would know where to start, honey. Why don't you just tell us what you want us to know?"

Lydia lifted her head, just a little, and managed a trace of her usual smirk. "I thought that's how this mess got started." She noted dryly, then gestured sort of absently, in the direction of the pile of albums to one side. "Pick a book, any book…"

Then, a brief pause, as something changed in her features. "Actually, here, pick this one." Before they could react to her first suggestion, she was already on her feet again, apparently no longer tired in the least, and yanked a thick red album from the middle of the pile, somehow without making any of the others topple over. "You're going to love this…"

She dropped right onto the bed next to Adam, flipped the book open to a random page, seriously, and pointed at a set of pictures very different from the ones he'd been looking at before. "These are the shots I took with my new camera." She murmured, with some satisfaction. "No more orbs of light, see?"

First she indicated what looked like a disturbingly large, oddly colored spider, with decidedly human-like features, dressed in hot pink silks. She noted, matter-of-factly, "That's Ginger. Except for Beej and the prince, I've known her longer than anyone else there." A pause, then, with some note of this being important, she added, "Her act is seriously taking off right now, she just made her first gig as a headliner. Girl's got feet so fast you just can't even follow them."

"This," She went on without hesitating, flipping through a handful of pages until she found the right one, "Is Jacques la Lean. He's a body builder." A skeleton, with no muscles whatsoever to account for the term 'bodybuilder,' beamed up from the page with an unsettling grin, wearing the most stereotypically French outfit Adam could have imagined, thin handlebar mustache neatly trimmed, eerie red coals burning from some depths of his otherwise empty sockets, looking pleased as anything. "He's Ginger's roommate. Accent thick as cheese, and doesn't have a bad-tempered bone in his body."

Flip. Again. A mass of hair, with no discernable facial features, other than a widely grinning maw blessed with enormous teeth, towered over a scrawny flesh-colored animal, vaguely dog-like, while the first tipped a too-small cowboy hat to the camera. "That's The-Monster-Across-The-Street… That's actually his name. I don't think he was ever alive or human. And that's his little Poopsie-Woopsie." Finally a grin at this, like it was some private joke. "Beej is a royal ass to both of them… But they always put up with me anyway. Even though I'm usually the reason he's showing off in the first place."

She lifted her head now, fanning her fingers across both open pages, and met Adam's gaze straight on, her lips drawn a little tight, but smiling anyway. Kind of like she was just determined to get through this as pleasantly as possible, regardless of whether she wanted to be having this discussion or not. "See… I always have gotten along with the dead, better than the living. Here? This world? I've managed to make two friends, my whole life. Living anyway. That's it."

A pause, followed by a lifting of her hand, and a brief gesture at the page she'd been concealing a moment before. "But check it out… There? Everyone's a freak. So no one thinks I am."

Adam sighed, drawing his fingertips down his face in pressed patience. "Lydia… You're not a freak…"

"You're wrong." The goth girl denied flatly, closing the album with a slow sense of finality. "But you two have always been so ready to think there's nothing weird about me… So that's not strange. You're so nice it's freaky in itself. But the rest of the world doesn't work that way… You don't believe me?" She flicked her eyes up, first to Adam, then to Barbara. "Ask mom how many friends she has, other than you two."

At this, neither one seemed to have a ready reply, both just sort of looking caught off guard, like it had honestly never occurred to them to question it before. Or at least not anytime recently.

Her foster mother folded her hands, tightly enough across her middle that she seemed to be wringing them, and couldn't seem to look away from the goth girl. Adam, utterly silent, gazed off at nothing, lips twisted in a frown. "I'm sure your mother…" He started to say, only to be interrupted by Lydia, with a sigh.

"If she did, don't you think you two would know?" The question made them fall silent again, as she'd known it would, and she considered them with a sense of frustration and guilt. God, why were the people in her life so blinded to what they didn't want to see? Was everyone like that? Or was it just her own family?

Was she?

She wasn't sure she should say this next part… She knew it was a deep cut. And as much as anything, that was why she needed to say it. Even if she'd hate herself later. "Dad's the only person she ever let anywhere near her." She pointed out, quietly. "And everything was perfect, totally lovey-dovey… Right up until they had their first actual fight, and then she was ready to drop him like he'd never meant a damn thing."

"That's not true…" Barbara protested, but just like with Adam, Lydia wasn't up to letting her argue the point either.

"You know damn well," She denied quietly, meeting her foster mother's gaze without flinching, "That from the second my dad even hinted about forcing her to make a choice between you two and him, she never had a second thought about which one she was going to choose." And if she had to face up to it, then they should too.

That though, was about as long as she was willing to dwell on that, before she decided, as straightforwardly as possible, to get to the point. "But forget my parents for now. Forget whether I'm a freak, or whether you want to believe it… Whether mom and I prefer dealing with the dead, and what it might mean… And please, forget trying to figure out what the hell is which person's fault? Because there's really no point, trying to figure out why anything…"

"…And because none of that's got anything to do with the reason you're in my room, picking through my things in the middle of the night. Right?"

A small pause, to let this sink in, and then as evenly as possible, "So understand this, right now. You can be angry I lied. You've got good reason. I'll even be the first to admit it. And you can think I'm too obsessed with death. I dunno, maybe I am. You can pilfer through my stuff. Whatever. You can tell me I'm wrong about being a freak. You can even hate Beetlejuice… God knows you're not the only ones I love who do…"

"But don't," And here her voice turned to something… else, as she rose slowly to her feet, regarding the two, both some height taller than her, like she was the one currently towering over them, "Don't do what my dad did to my mom. Don't make me choose. Not between you and Beej, not between this world and the Neitherworld, and not between my friends and my family! Because I swear to god…"

And here, the first trace of weakness entered her voice, as she made no effort to soften what she was saying to the two people she loved most in this world, "It'll be the one that makes me choose, that I'm going to end up walking away from."

Then, in a quieter tone, completely counter to the one she'd just used, she went on, not quite as strongly as before. Tired. Frustrated. Annoyed with everyone's inability to just understand what she was going through. "I just… really want to keep you all." And a smaller pause followed, before, almost as if she already expected them to argue it, "Please?"

And then, before either of them could answer, she turned to the spot just behind her, where Beetlejuice had been floating unseen for the past few minutes, utterly silent as she'd made her little speech, with nothing to indicate what he thought either way… And she said it again. "Please?"

Slowly, the poltergeist turned visible, looking as uncomfortable as if she'd just caught him with his hand down another woman's blouse, frowning, and twisting at his wiry hair with his fingers, looking anywhere but at her. And hell if she wasn't the only one who could ever make him feel like he'd done shit wrong… And she knew it, and knew he gave a damn, without his saying anything at all.

"Well hell, babes…" He grunted at last, lifting serious green eyes to her, even as a guilty little smirk crossed his lips, "You know I ain't gonna tell you to do shit." A pause, and then, almost pointedly, with his first trace of irritation, "That don't mean I gotta play nice with these yuppies, does it?"

Lydia smiled, both with the realization that he in fact, probably would, if she asked him now… And a moment's reflection that if he wasn't asking her to change her life upside down for him, why did she keep thinking he needed to change for anything? Her mind had been plagued lately with ideas that she needed to rein him in, or make him start behaving, or… what? And why?

I'm growing up… It was almost an unwelcome thought, and made her frown, 'd never figured herself for giving up childhood ideas, just because she got older. Changing, I guess. But he's been pretty much the same guy since before I was born… He's not growing up any more than he is now. And besides, this was the him she'd fallen in love with… the him that… had offered her so much…

"N- Um… no." She denied, slowly, though she knew she'd never be able to explain her logic to her parents. "Damn it, Beej…" A curse, a sigh, "I don't want you to change a damn thing you don't want to. I swear."

Clearly he had no idea what had just been going through her pretty dark head, because he just gave her an odd little look, arched one brow, and made a small, solid sound with his tongue. "Wasn't planning on it, Lyds." He assured her, a little dryly. "But now that we got that outta the way… What the hell am I supposed to do with the in-laws?"

What to say to that? "Shit, Beej… I don't know." She offered simply, finally smiling at the sheer ridiculousness of the situation, which was only really now making itself apparent to her. "Just… try not to make them hate me, I guess. Think you can do that?"

"Lydia!" Barbara's protest, a sort of heart-broken sound, as she moved instinctively to reassure her. "Honey… We could never hate you!"

"Barbara's right." Adam agreed, softly, sternly. "You should know better than that." A brief pause, followed by a bit of a strained smile. "You're our little girl."

Ignoring Beetlejuice's derisive snort, as well as his comment about, 'a fucked up family tree you got going there, Lyds…' Lydia gave both parents a grateful smile, and allowed herself one brief moment to wish she could be sure the rest of the family felt the same way. But Edmond and Olivia were a whole other mess… And not one she was willing to deal with just then.

For now though, thankfully, she didn't have to. Lydia felt herself swept up in Barbara's embrace as the ghost reached her, and closed her eyes, not protesting the possessive grasp, or the way the woman seemed to want to hold her away from the whole world, at least for a few seconds. "I don't want to keep secrets from you anymore." She promised quietly, tightening her fingers gently on the ghost woman's dress. "I'm not really a spoiled little brat. Even if I act like it."

"Sez you…" Beetlejuice muttered good-humoredly, followed almost instantly by the sense of his magic tugging her, just as possessively, from Barbara's arms, and twisting her through the air with that sense of being between places, briefly, before she reformed, quite firmly clutched in his lap. "But hell, you know I love it…" He murmured silkily in her ear, giving her a slow squeeze. "And if these two saps are worth half the shit you think they are, they ain't gonna ask you to be something you're not, just to fix their crap!"

It was actually a lot like what she'd been thinking about him, really. And Lydia just giggled, relieved that at least with Beetlejuice, she never had to worry about being anyone but herself, and still knowing she belonged…

Only for a soft, short sound of further amusement to interrupt her, and make her twist her head in surprise, to see Adam Maitland regarding the design across the ceiling of her room, with an expression surprisingly like agreement. "It can't be a good thing when Beetlejuice starts making sense." He muttered aloud, dropping his gaze to hers, with sort of a defeated shrug. "But I'll be damned if anything else does."

"We're too close to losing too much right now." Barbara agreed, a little less certainly, as she considered the poltergeist, and her daughter's position in his lap. "We're not going to do anything to risk losing you now." A pause, and, pointedly, "Even if it does mean having Beetlejuice as a son-in-law."

This was too much to resist, and a decidedly nasty expression snaked itself across Beetlejuice's lips, almost perfectly disguised as a smile. "Mom." He chuckled with a hiss, extending his arm towards her in a companionable way, despite being halfway across the room, "Dad."

"You two, are gonna make the best family ever… No, I mean it! Really. You… Me…" A pointedly indecent squeeze of the goth girl in his arms, "Little Lyds here…" He chuckled again, managing to make both of them frown uncertainly, which was of course his intention. "This is gonna be absolutely the fucking best…"

Well, Lydia reflected, amused, resigned, and for the moment, content, I did say he didn't have to change. And knowing Beetlejuice? And for that matter, especially knowing her, with Beetlejuice? That was probably a good thing.

Assuming they survived each other after all, the rest of the world didn't stand a chance…

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