Betelgeuse was livid. How long had Juno kept him away? The house was different. It didn't seem to matter what he tried to do to get her attention, she wouldn't even acknowledge him. He woke her up in the sweetest way, petting that starlight hair he coveted and hushing to her in his softest tones. She awoke frowning, staring right through him.
He watched her ready herself for the day; by the sweater she donned, and not her normal lovely layers of black lace, she must be getting ready for school. He touched her hair, moved her furniture. Nothing worked. He was unwilling to damage anything of hers but if she didn't notice him soon he was going to have to take out all his great rage on something.
Something was wrong with her. Lydia's room was no longer the tidy space it had been before Juno had called him away. Even with the absence of the windows and its usual gloom, there was a melancholy feel to it, the air stale. It reminded him of his grave. Not good, not fucking good. The light was gone from her eyes. The marks he left were gone too.
HOW FUCKING LONG, JUNO?!
When she left the house for school he lost it. She went ALONE. UN-FUCKING-ACCEPTABLE. He watched from the attic as she began the trek across the entire hill and car and people infested fucking hick piece of shit town. Winter River wasn't huge but it was too fucking big for a small, sweet, little blind girl to walk all the way across on her own.
He was done fucking around with the Deetzes.
The first floor was obliterated. Nothing made of glass had survived. All the electronics were shorted out beyond repair. Delia's studio? Clay and what smelled suspiciously like feces were smeared on everything. All the bookcases and shelves in Charles' study were blown to smithereens. All the furniture was stacked in complicated towers that were impossible to take down without toppling violently causing even more damage, hopefully some harm. When he got tired of making the house shudder and the electricity spark and go out, he started in on tormenting the living.
Delia was locked in the bathroom, and when she finally escaped he just locked her in her bedroom, viciously pleased to watch her scurry wall to wall like the trapped rat she was. All the faucets in the house flipped on and stayed on, flooding both floors‒ all except for Lydia's room and the path she would take through the front door when she came home to him. He knocked Charles down the stairs at one point, and when he tried to catch himself and get back up halfway down, he pushed him the rest of the way. Forcefully.
Betelgeuse was still trying to figure out how to take down large chunks of the house without destroying the whole structure when he felt Lydia come home. He waited near the top of the stairs to see how she would react to his hard work.
Mr. Howard, the tutor, had been especially handsy today. He touched her entirely too much for Lydia's liking, and he knew what he was doing. She was sure of it, and she hated that she couldn't see well enough to assess how he was treating the other girls. His hands lingered too long on her shoulder, the small of her back, and her waist as he "helped" her to and from her desk despite her multiple insistences she didn't require the assistance.
She complained once at the dinner table, the comment going unheeded in the wake of Delia's excitement to talk about her newest sculpture. The perverse teacher was tolerable, all things considered, but he was the reason for her showering immediately upon coming home from school every day. His touch made her feel dirty, not like‒
The house was chaos. Lydia stepped through the door and immediately lost her train of thought. Both adult Deetzes were screaming on the phone with various professionals about the state of their home and belongings. Lydia didn't dare try to broach the subject of what was going on with either of them, instead using her umbrella to sweep aside detritus on the path she knew led to the stairs. There were pieces of things everywhere. On her slow trek up the stairs, she hesitated to listen to them shout about broken windows and shorted out lights, and "who's going to pay for this?!"
Her bedroom was untouched. Something told her the attic was as well. A fire surged in her gut, not nearly as pleasant as the last one she lit. He was back.
"You might as well just go back to wherever you came from," she informed her empty room, glaring coolly toward the blank space where she felt a brush of his energy. "And stay out of my bathroom."
With that, the door was slammed, and the shower began to run.
How fucking dare she. Lydia didn't get to tell him what to do. Ever. He was in a solidly sour mood from that morning. Downstairs, a crash sounded as a tower of furniture toppled without being touched, Delia screaming as she was locked in the pantry.
"Stay out of my bathroom," he mocked. Well, if she didn't want to act like he was real, then fine. He would make her see, make her react. She may not be able to see or hear him, but he was solid enough. Little brat. No one ignored him when he wanted to be seen.
He went through the door. Once inside, he took in the sights. The shower had steamed up the room but as before she hadn't gotten the shower curtain all the way closed. Through the small gap, he could see her nude form standing under the wash of the water. She was still the lovely little cream puff from before. She smelled so good, and looked so… no. He was mad and she was here, and she would pay for ignoring him.
Pushing into the shower, he made the temperature drop causing the steam to rise more thickly. He started with small touches. A grab here, a pinch there, a light slap. When he could see her reacting to his touches he ran his fingers through her hair in the same sweet way he always did before winding his fist in the long silvery fall pulling her head back, the other palm going to her throat.
"Betelgeuse..."
His name was choked out painfully, giving him enough of a summons to have a voice again. His touches didn't really hurt. No, this pain came from inside. Why was he doing this to her? Had he come back to rip out the other half of her heart before leaving again? He hadn't exactly claimed her virginity, so it made sense that he would come back to finish the job.
"Why are you doing this?"
She wept, frozen still but tense in the hold of his spirit energy. What had she ever done to him to make him want to cause her this kind of pain?
"Just leave me alone…"
He couldn't be that selfish, could he? She was weak for him. It wouldn't take much effort to get her to call him back, to give the rest of her diminutive self to him. He would swallow her up until there was nothing left and then leave. Was his desire for her body that great that he would let her suffer that kind of heartache in exchange for it? Or did he really just not care at all?
He flinched when she said his name and the pain ripped through his rib cage. It took great pains to ensure he didn't add any more tension to his hold on her hair, the hand at her throat just holding, not squeezing. He growled against the side of her face, irritation and anger pouring off in waves. The room began to shake around them.
"Hey, baby girl, why're ya tryin' to ignore me?"
His words were bit out, the hand in her hair loosening. He had to shut his eyes for a moment as he got a strong flash from before, a different light haired woman turning pale eyes on him. He gave Lydia a shove to get her away from him, away from that. It caused her to stumble and fall to the shower floor. However, the passing almost washed away scent he caught not a beat later made him sneer and lunge right back down to her level.
"Who do you smell like? Who's been touching you?" It came as a growl. He pushed himself in her face, in her limited line of vision, his hand threading back into damp locks. "Why do ya smell like another man, babes? I get pulled away for a lil' while n' ya decide I ain't worth waitin' on?"
He forced her head back just enough to cause discomfort and force her attention to stay locked on him. The steam-thickend room began to fill with the smell of damp earth and rotting leaves.
What the fuck was he even talking about? Lydia was terrified.
"Wh-what?" She stuttered, still trying to catch her bearings from the fall. It hurt her back and tailbone, the back of her head thudding against the wall painfully, but not too bad‒ still bad enough to require time to recover, time Betelgeuse was unwilling to give. He was suffocating her space before she could, a threateningly gentle handle pulling through her hair again in a sweet way that made her flinch.
"I didn't, I swear, not anyone‒! I don't‒ I don't know what you're talking about…"
Wait… his senses were different from hers. He was smelling a man, wasn't he?
"My teacher," she offered up desperately, eager to calm what looked to have the potential to be a homicidal temper tantrum. "He t-touches me t-too much. I don't like it. It's why I'm showering. Please… Please stop, Beej."
His presence was gone from within the shower but she could hear the bathroom mirror break. Then, he was back and had her pressed against the wall, kissing her in a way that could only be considered violent. Big hands were rough against her skin as he pawed at her. The smell of her fear had ignited something in him. He wanted to be mad, but lust was creeping in, especially with her naked little body pressed against him.
"How long?" It was almost a growl but sounded more like the him she was used to. "How long was I gone?"
He cupped her cheek and pressed another desperate kiss to her bruising lips, his other hand sliding down her front leaving goose bumps in its wake. The room gave another shudder and something else came crashing down on the bottom floor. Charles and Delia were both screaming again, and it felt like the whole house heaved.
Lydia didn't know what to do with the deranged thing in her shower stall. Her pulse fluttered beneath his touch, and she saw no other option than to submit and give him her all.
"Three months."
And what an awful three months it had been. In the midst of all the current chaos, the Deetzes below were run out of the house. Authorities would come later to look for Lydia. But for now, they were utterly alone.
"I missed you so much."
She still wasn't quite returning his occasional violent outbursts of lust and affection so much as tolerating them, still quite afraid of how he was conducting himself.
"Where did you go? Why did you leave me?!"
That one was angry, more aggressive than was likely wise in his current unpredictable state, but Lydia was filled with too much hurt, too much anguish to keep it swallowed indefinitely.
Three months. Three fucking months, THREE FUCKING MONTHS!? Fucking Juno! That fucking old bitch and her meddling, three fucking months! If he ever got his hands on that dried up old cunt, she would fucking wish she could die again.
"Where did you go? Why did you leave me?!"
"Got summoned. To the other side," his face was pressed into the side of her neck. He had pulled her into his arms just this side of too tight. "Nothin' I can do about it, say my name three times and I have to go." Pulling away as he had a thought, he considered her though narrowed eyes, furniture starting to shake in her bedroom making a fair amount of noise.
"Why didn't ya' call me back?" The growl was back.
That's it. Lydia was done tolerating his temper tantrum. Rage took full control of her, all four feet and ten inches, and she drew back her skinny little arm to get enough momentum to slap this jerk right across his incredibly annoying mouth.
"I thought you LEFT me!"
With enough squirming, she was able to squeeze out of his hold, especially in his stupor of having been slapped.
"You told me to NEVER say your name!"
The water beating down on her was becoming cold, and Lydia thought it ridiculous to stay in the shower. She pushed past him aggressively, thoughtlessly, and on her too rough downstep inevitably stepped a dainty foot on a piece of broken mirror. A sharp cry echoed through the room and she lost her footing again, landing on her ass near the door to the bathroom closet. The very white Lydia in her very white bathroom was now stained with splashes of bright crimson.
"Just go away! Leave me alone!"
Her sobbing was back full force now. He had only been back five minutes or so, as far as Lydia was concerned, and her entire home was broken, herself bloody and bruised. How could she continue to feel this way about him?It wasn't fair.
She slapped him! That little bitch! SHE FUCKIN'...
"I thought you LEFT me!"
He froze. He would never willingly leave her… not that he could leave this house even if he had wanted to, and he definitely hadn't, but she still could have called him back.
"You told me to NEVER say your name!"
He had, hadn't he? He threatened her. While they were in the throes of passion, he had taken the time to stop and warn her off ever saying his name.
The moment she cried out in pain, he let it go. His sight was hazy red and he still wasn't just seeing Lydia's face when he looked at her. Sometimes, it was this sweet girl standing in front of him, and other times it was the bitch from before. But this girl, the girl now, was in pain and he could smell blood.
He stepped from the shower stall as she yelled at him to go away, scooped her up in a bridal carry, gently set her on the counter near the sink, then knelt to pull the glass from her foot.
"Why weren't ya watchin' where ya… fuck." A washcloth was pressed to the wound. "... I shouldn'ta broke the mirror like that…"
Her crying had calmed to sniffles, and maybe he was done being mad at her but she was nowhere near done being mad at him.
"I want… a towel…"
This was not a request. It was a demand but due to the fact that she was shaking in the cold and bleeding and it was all his fault, the demand was conceded and Lydia gained just that more ground on their hostile playing field. Once she had it, it was wrapped around her shoulders and her shivering slowed as he tended to her foot.
"I shouldn'ta broke the mirror like that."
What she said next was probably pushing her luck but she would not back down. He had invaded her space in a hurtful way and if he was going to insist on staying there, he would have to fix the damage he caused.
"Then clean it up. You broke it, so you clean it. If I can do it with a broom and a dustpan, then you can do it, too."
Braver now, and more than a little pissed off‒ she hated that she couldn't just walk away from him because of the glass‒ she dug her point in deeper.
"They're not going to put up with this. They're going to move and they'll take me with them and we'll never see each other again."
He pulled the wash cloth back to check her cut. With a tap on her dainty foot, it was wrapped in bandages. Sitting back on his heels, he gazed up at her from the ground. With an impatient gesture, the broken mirror fixed itself and snapped back into place in the frame.
"Ya want me to fix the resta the house too?" He spat back, a cigarette appearing clenched between his teeth. "Much as I hate yer parents I… I don't want that t'happen."
Standing, he pulled her into his arms, moved her back to the bedroom, and set her on the bed before taking a seat at her vanity on the stool. He was still shaking, vibrating with manic enegery, every movement jerky and forced.
"If you would, please."
She could hear shuffling down below as everything started to put itself back together. Well. At least now her parents couldn't possibly blame any of the chaos on her. She did try to tell them that the place was haunted.
"Why do you hate my parents? Why are you this attached to me?"
Lydia was honestly trying to make sense of it all because she did care about him, and these intense emotions he couldn't seem to control were clearly bad for him. His energy felt as miserable as hers but his was charged with a chaotic spark that felt it could blow at any moment.
"You barely even know me."
"Why do you hate my parents? Why are you this attached to me?"
Letting out a frustrated growl, he scrubbed his face with his hands. He was on his feet pacing across her room back and forth before he spun to answer her, coming in close and grabbing one of her tiny hands.
"Ya kiddin' me Lyds? Why do I hate them? Lookit how they treat you. Like yer already dead..." It didn't come out kind. He was still shaking and his eyes had started to glow softly, "they don't treat ya' like the treasure you are."
He was across the room again, his hands shoved in his pockets. The air was vibrating.
"Bein' dead ain't like...it ain't like before. I don't gotta know ya, I just know I can't not be around ya." This came out soft, barely more than a whisper.
It was one thing for Lydia to think to herself that her parents were inadequate and treated her poorly. It was another thing to hear it out loud from someone else. Her immediate urge was to defend them, redeem them somehow… but nothing came to mind.
"My real Mom was good to me," she said, instead giving honor to the woman's memory. Maybe it would ease Betelgeuse's burden to know her entire life wasn't as tragic as he seemed to think it was. "She learned braille when I was born so that she could teach me when the time came. Gave up her career to stay home and take care of me. She died when I was young, but I still remember a lot about her."
With so much space in her memory bank free from not having to store images, there was room for a more advanced auditory memory. She could still very distinctly remember her mother's voice singing to her, going over different lessons, watching movies together and explaining the different things that were happening on screen in a warm and entertaining way. Lydia loved her Mother.
"...I can't not be around ya."
Her frown deepened further. That just wasn't realistic, as they had both learned the hard way.
"You'll have to be sometimes, Beej. You have to be okay with that."
He leaned back against the wall. His eyes shut as he took in a deep unnecessary breath.
"I don't gotta like it… but I guess I also don't gotta destroy the house every time ya leave." The sound of her voice, even angry, paired with the smell of her so alive in the small, cramped room started to sooth his irritation.
"I didn't do this cause ya left today. I did it cause ya' had ta go alone. Why the fuck're you walkin' to and from school by yourself?!" Rage was resurfacing again, threatening to overtake his newfound calm.
"Its a long fuckin' walk." He spat.
Lydia returned his ire with another spark of her own.
"I know exactly how long it is, thank you very much!" Down to the number of steps. "I can walk it just fine! I don't need anyone with me! Ugh!"
Snowy cheeks were pink with rage for once. She was so irrationally mad, so infuriated by the reason for his destructive outburst that she had one of her one. Her biggest, fluffiest pillow was grabbed‒ it looked ridiculous in her small arms‒ and she hauled off and flung it across the room in his general direction. It hit the floor a few feet in front of him, Lydia not having the strength to actually throw it hard enough to hit the mark.
"THAT'S why you blew everything up?! You‒ you‒ I can't believe you!"
He watched her mildly as she lobbed the pillow and how it fell short. He cleared his throat and glanced up at her, all the vibrating energy disappearing from the air around them as he pulled it back to himself.
"Ya' know what, Lyds?... fuck it. I fixed the fuckin house. I won't worry 'bout ya gettin' hit by cars or gettin' lost. If ya preferred me gone, then fine." His voice was empty, sounding far too soft for the conversation, "I'm gone."
There was an absence in the energy of the room when he left.
"No," she cried out abruptly upon the loss of his energy, "that's not what I want! That's not what I meant! Come back! Please come back!"
At least before she had plausible deniability on her side, could imagine kinder things had taken him away from her. Now she knew without a doubt that she had pushed him away. It was her fault. The wound that was left when he abandoned her the first time was ripped back open to bleed gratuitously.
He didn't return, not after a few minutes, not after a few hours. She didn't go up to the attic to look for him. Everything hurt. Her parents returned eventually with the police, only to be fined for calling in a false report. They were on edge. Lydia ignored them and their nerves through a late night supper, too despondent to attempt any kind of conversation. She didn't eat. Her veil covered her entire face, not just her eyes.
When she went to bed at night, she cried and cried, never making a peep and wishing beyond all hope he would come back to her. Pride refused to let her call. She would be damned before she begged, would rather join him in death than do so. All weekend long, she didn't eat, just stayed in her bed and slept and wept. Neither parent took notice, too paranoid and afraid for their own hides to check in on the weakest link.
Come Monday, the skies were clear on her way to school, but a storm came midday and according to the newscast, it was expected to rage well into the night. The phone line was busy at home when she tried to call in‒ probably her father holding up the line on a work call, or Delia chatting with Otho. They had forgotten her.
"Could you take me home please, Miss Shannon?"
Lydia couldn't see it, but the older woman was making an unpleasant face.
"I'm terribly sorry, dear, but I absolutely must get these papers graded and I'm afraid I'm going to be here late into the night. It wouldn't be appropriate for a student to be present on school grounds at that hour."
A voice cut in too close over Lydia's shoulder. A sick shudder travelled her spine that he had been able to close in on her that quietly without her noticing.
"I can take you home, Miss Deetz..."
He was tired. So fucking tired. This was not the type of tired that sleep would cure. It was the bone weary exhaustion of centuries upon centuries spent fighting to be treated humanely after just one bad decision. One horrible, evil decision.
Truly, there were a number of poor decisions and wrong choices that brought him to that place. He should have known the girl was too good to be true‒ not Lydia but the bitch who came before. He didn't remember her name. It didn't matter. Maybe it wasn't so much that he couldn't remember as he chose not to. Her face, however, he had no choice but to call vividly, along with her voice burned into his memory bank, the way she smelled like cinnamon.
He knew better than to trust her type. What was the saying? Hindsight is 20/20. She was always too friendly, too cheerful, too willing.
When she told him there was a baby, none of that mattered anymore. They were going to be a family. He gladly made an honest woman of her and moved her into his home, bought and furnished with ill-gotten funds. She and the baby would want for nothing with him. He was able to provide, and provide well with his unsavory work. He was even considering giving up the black market trade for good to stay home with her and be a real husband and father.
There had been an unavoidable trip but he was able to make good time and arrived home earlier than the bitch had expected. His men were loading her things into the carriage he provided for her. He stopped them and sent them away, sure there had been some kind of mistake. When the maid tried to waylay him on his way to his bedchambers, to the room he shared with the bitch, his anger had risen and he sent her and all the rest of the staff away, carefully maintaining a low volume.
He remembered not knowing what to expect when he got to the bed chambers. When he saw her with another man in their marriage bed… that's where the memories melded, tinged red with rage and betrayal. One stood out in sharp contrast to all the others. He asked after the babe, and the bitch had laughed‒ said there never was a baby and that she would never carry any child of his.
There wasn't much left of their bodies by the time the sun rose the next morning. Just a bloody mess across the bed clothes. When Betelgeuse showed up in the waiting room, he was covered in a crimson layer of them both, the noose still hung round his neck. He didn't remember what he did to them, didn't remember what he did to himself.
One-hundred and twenty-five years in Hell reliving their murders and his subsequent suicide cleared up any confusion the shroud of death left behind.
That awful clarity in itself drove inhabitants of the fiery pit mad half the time before the end of their sentence. He stuck it out, got spat into a cubicle at the end of his run, crawling his way up from the bottom with no one in his corner but him.
The early years in the cubicles were the hardest, when his emotions were fresh and still resembling something human. He hadn't felt like that in centuries. Not until Lydia.
Lydia had never counted how long it took to get from home to school in a car. She had never taken the drive but it couldn't be that long. Minutes ticked by in awkward silence, rain pitter-pattering on the roof of the car. She wished he would play the radio or something, though supposed she was glad he wasn't trying to make conversation with her either.
It felt like this ride had been going on for too long. It was a fair walk but it had to be a short drive, right? Finally, the car came to a stop and she released a breath she didn't know she was holding.
"Thank you, Mr. Howard‒" She was unbuckling the seatbelt, checking the floor for her bag and umbrella. "‒I appreciate it."
And she did, even if he gave her the creeps.
Click.
When she went to pull the handle on the door, it was locked. Her heart plummeted. He hadn't touched her once the whole ride except when giving her unnecessary assistance into the car but suddenly both of his hands were on her; one on the knee, one on the shoulder.
"Not so fast, Lydia."
She gulped. He had never called her by her first name. No. No no no no nononono, this wasn't happening.
"Let's have some fun before I take you home. You're so beautiful… and let's face it. Your dad's passed out drunk by now and your stepmom's got a pill for every color of the rainbow. They won't miss you for another hour or two…"