Bug Princess and the Seven Months

A Beetlejuice fanfic by Lady Norbert

Author's Note: I wasn't sure what kind of response to expect after being away from this story for three years. You are all very kind. Thank you. 3

Chapter Six: The Victim of the Sleeping Death

Beetlejuice pondered the matter for a few minutes. "If we're all going," he said, "we're gonna need some help. With Lyds out of commission for the next ten seconds at least, we can't have her say the B-words, and they don't work quite as well if anyone else does it because she's got the juice."

"You can't say them yourself?" Hugo ventured.

"I thought F.G. said you got yourself a Tumblr. Didn't you read up on the exposition?"

"Yes, but what I found didn't explain very much about that. Something to do with you being under a curse that might not actually be a curse?"

"More or less. I can't say my own name, let's leave it at that. There's a reason I introduce myself to people on this side as BJ." He shrugged, then moved over to Lydia's mirror. "How does she work this thing… there's no radio dial… hey! Royal brother-in-law! Can you tune in on your end or something?"

It took a minute or so, but the picture rolled like a bad signal on a television screen, and then Prince Vince appeared. "Beetlejuice? What in the world?"

"Long story and I don't know if Tumblr's been updated yet. We need to get through, and I mean all of us." He gestured at the others.

"...oh dear." The prince's eyebrows almost shot off his head, he raised them so fast. "Give me a few minutes - I can open the mirror to serve as a portal, but it will take me a little time to do so."

"You get it cooked up and call me back. I've gotta make a phone call anyway."

He went downstairs to the landline telephone. Hardly anyone had one of these anymore, but Lyds liked the aesthetic of the antique handset so they kept it, and mostly used it to call her parents. He steeled himself for what he was about to do. Lying to Charles and Delia came as naturally as eating beetles, which meant that it was always much easier in his usual form. He morphed his head into a replica of his wife's, in order to better disguise his voice as hers, and placed the call.

"Hi, Daddy," Lydia's voice chirped from his throat. "I just wanted to let you know that we're heading down to Florida to see BJ's dad. We got a call from his new wife, there was a surfing accident and he wants to see us."

"Oh, no, pumpkin," said Charles, sounding genuinely concerned despite his known dislike of Mr. Beetleman. "Is it serious?"

"We're not sure. I guess we'll know better when we get there."

"And is it safe for you to, you know, go?"

"Oh, of course, I checked with the doctor. I'm fit as a fiddle! But we might be down there for a while and we could be very busy, so if you don't hear from me for a bit, don't worry, okay?"

"I'll try. Call me when you can."

"I will."

With the necessary deception planted in Charles's mind, Beetlejuice turned his head back into its usual self, then returned to where the others were waiting with Lydia. "All right, gave her dad a story that should hold him for a while."

"Will it suffice, do you think?" asked Lady Delphine. "It's hard to say how long this might take."

"It should. One thing we have on our side," he said, "is the way time works. Neitherworld time and real world time don't move at the same speed. So we might be over there for a while, but it won't be as long here."

"Wait, really?" asked Hugo. "How does that work?"

"No idea, kid. I didn't write the rules. Doesn't seem to be a consistent thing, either," he added, pausing to think about it. "I never put it together before, but it actually seems to have something to do with where Lyds is. If she's on this side, the two time frames are closer together, but if she's on the other side, it slows down over here. I wonder if that's tied to her share of the juice."

"I never thought of that either," said Donny. "Well, that should help keep the truth from her parents a little while longer, then. And maybe once she's in the Neitherworld, Vince and the Godfather and Lady Delphine can all put their heads together and come up with an answer."

Beetlejuice nodded, trying not to look too gloomy. "There's gotta be some way to bring her back, right? I mean, something's gotta give."

"We'll figure it out, lad, don't you worry," said Lady Delphine. "Look, there's your friend in the mirror."

"We're ready for you, Beetlejuice," said Prince Vince, as his image swam into view. "The Fairy Godfather arrived a few minutes ago, he's going to help me bring everyone through."

"Okay. Hang tight while I get Lydia." He glanced at the others. "Dunno how to prepare you for what you're about to see in the Neitherworld. It's… well, it's a whole lot of weird."

"We'll manage." Lady Delphine sounded almost amused. "We have larger priorities just now."

"Yeah." He moved to the bedside and carefully shifted his wife's sleeping bulk into his arms. "Buggy boy, you keep taking care of your mom, okay?"

"And that's all we know."

It was roughly three years later, or at least half an hour, when they had finished relating all of the details to both Prince Vince and the Fairy Godfather. Following a quick round of introductions (Vince was pleased to finally meet Lady Delphine's acquaintance, even if the circumstances weren't exactly ideal), they had taken it in turns to share every scrap of fact they could remember about the whole mess. Donny, having witnessed the most, had talked the longest.

Beetlejuice himself had said virtually nothing. He'd barely even listened to the others, really. He knew he should be listening, should be analyzing every detail for possible significance, but he just didn't have it in him somehow. He was diverted by the weight in his arms, the tight grip of fear inside the chest which was covered in a wealth of black hair.

It just didn't add up. He and Lyds could not be separated, not by life or by death. But in her peculiar current state, she wasn't entirely in either camp; alive but not living, deathlike but not dead. And he didn't know how to deal with something that inconclusive.

"Beetlejuice."

It was the F.G. who spoke, and belatedly he realized that the Godfather had been trying to get his attention. "Hm?"

"You should take Lydia to your rooms. Make her comfortable."

"Oh. Yeah."

He did his level best to ignore the way all their eyes followed him out of the room. It wasn't hard until he started up the stairs; the squelchy sound of eyeballs bouncing on the steps was a little uncomfortable under the circumstances. "Get back where you belong," he scolded the round buggers, and off they scuttled. Grumbling to himself, he resumed levitating up the stairs and around the bend to the suite of rooms belonging to the Princess of Beetles and the Ghost With the Most.

He was glad they had this as a place to go, away from Lydia's twitchy parents and any other prying eyes. Lydia herself had decorated the rooms, and she always had great taste; Beetlejuice was perfectly comfortable with the Victorian gothic style of wallpaper and the black velvet draperies. A balcony overlooked the royal gardens, and even he had to admit there was a certain enjoyment to be had from relaxing in the claw foot bathtub. Sure, he was more likely to fill it with slime than hot water, but still.

The spiderweb quilt helpfully turned itself down as he nodded in the direction of the canopied bed, and very carefully he settled Lyds into the crisp linen sheets. "All right, you," he told her in a mock stern voice, "I've had just about enough of this. You'd better wake up soon or I'm not going to be able to behave myself. You can't hold the leash like this, and the longer I'm away from you, the worse I get. We both know it. So you'd better come back and take charge, you hear me?" He brushed the hair back from her pale face. "You'll be safe here. Vince and the Godfather and Delphine, they'll figure out what to do. Maybe even Hugo will turn out to be useful, stranger things have happened."

He paused then, his thought process interrupted by a stream of musical sounds coming from the balcony, and he turned to see a familiar figure perched on the railing. "Oh, hey Feathers," he said. "Been a while. And you probably don't understand a word I'm saying anyway."

The little bird, who had been Lydia's only comfort during her strange imprisonment in the castle of the strigoi mort just months earlier, chirped a greeting and then fluttered over to land on her pillow. He studied her unmoving expression and chirped again, a questioning sort of sound.

"No idea," Beetlejuice replied, vaguely amused. It was almost like he could make sense of the bird's noises, although not in a way that he fully comprehended. "Huh. I wonder if some of her power transferred itself to me the way mine went to her when I was in this kind of a state. Makes about as much sense as anything else around here."

Feathers was tilting his head back and forth, like he was trying to analyze the situation as much as his birdy brain would allow. He angled himself downward to rub his beak against Lydia's cheek, then puffed out his tiny chest like some kind of wannabe-superbird before letting out a fairly sizeable squawk. With determination in his beady little eyes, he took to the air, flapping his way out of the open balcony doors and off into the… actually, Beetlejuice wasn't entirely sure what direction he took.

"Yeah, Feathers! Go! Attack the plot!" he called. "The plot has a lot to answer for in this episode!"

At that, he paused. "Babes? Don't go anywhere, I'll be right back," he said, and disappeared with a pop.

"Monitor," he said, suddenly materializing in the throne room.

"What?" asked Hugo.

"Monitor. Vince, send somebody to interrogate Monitor. I'd bet a week's supply of beetles that he's got something to do with this."

The prince, however, smiled sadly and shook his head. "That was my first thought as well," he replied. "I've already spoken to him. He seems to have learned his lesson from our prior interactions; he claims to have no knowledge of what's befallen our dear Princess."

"And you actually trust him?"

"Under ordinary circumstances, not as far as I can throw him," Vince assured him. "And I think we both know that isn't terribly far. But in this instance, I judge him to be sincere. He knows all too well what I might do if I learn that he's being less than forthcoming about his activities - assuming, that is, if there were anything left of him, since I don't doubt you would get there first."

"Damn right." Beetlejuice wasn't happy, but he was a little bit soothed. Vince wasn't one to take any sort of threat to his subjects lying down, let alone a threat to the woman he considered his sister, and he'd had to lay down the law with Monitor in the past.

(He and Lyds never had learned exactly what the "creative" punishment had been for the whole mess after the senior prom. Beetlejuice wondered about it occasionally, but decided it was more fun to come up with his own answers. They were, at least, never dull.)

"So… what do we do now?" ventured Donny. "I mean, we have to do something, Lydia and the little tyke are counting on us."

"Quite right," said the Fairy Godfather. "I believe that for the moment, we should turn our attention to research. Delphine and Hugo, I can offer you the hospitality of my estate for your visit, and the three of us can avail ourselves of my library. Perhaps in the depths of the shelves we can find an answer."

"I'll continue checking the internet," said Vince. "It's perhaps a long shot, but there are a number of sites dedicated to various arcana. If Donny assists me, we can work that much faster."

"And me?" Beetlejuice was fairly sure he knew the answer.

"You should stay with Lydia," the F.G. directed. "If there would be even the slightest change in her condition, you would recognize it before anyone else."

"I guess I can handle that. For a while."

"For a while?" Hugo repeated.

"You remember what was happening to me topside when we came to your city, kid? You saw the best I was able to manage with my nerves fraying and no power. It was taking everything I had to keep going."

"I remember… but this is different."

"Yeah, it is." Beetlejuice was scowling now. "This time, Lyds is right in front of me and I've got my juice and I still can't do anything. I'm gonna -"

"Brother, stop!" Everyone looked at Donny. "Don't say another word, please!"

"Don't tempt me."

"Brother's what you might call a literal genie," Donny explained, seeing the confusion on Hugo and Delphine's faces. "If he says the wrong thing, something terrible could happen."

Before anyone could make the very obvious point that something plenty terrible had already happened, Vince's television set in the corner abruptly powered itself on. Somewhat involuntarily, everyone turned to look at the screen.

"Are you alone? Confused? Depressed?" inquired the bald spokesguy. "Well, so are thousands of friendless worms in our community!"

"A commercial?" Beetlejuice asked in disbelief. "They interrupted Donny's exposition for a crummy old commercial?"

"Is this supposed to be some kind of a hint?" Hugo wondered.

"I somehow doubt it," replied Prince Vince. "The plot isn't usually so helpful. Maybe whoever wrote this episode just decided that we needed a break."

"A break?" Beetlejuice yelled, pulling at his hair for a moment. "I don't need a break, I'm about ready to snap as it is!" As soon as the words left his mouth, he froze in a panic, anger briefly forgotten. "Uh-oh."

It was the last thing he was able to say before he felt himself snap clean in half.