IMPORTANT, PLEASE READ! What follows is a copied-and-pasted roleplay between deetz-n-beej and myself (tumblr tag: xxx-strangeandunusual-xxx/xxx-theartofsuicide-xxx). They are playing as Betelgeuse, me as Lydia. Because of the nature of roleplay, the point of view changes often and you will see each event as it was perceived by our renditions of these characters. It's being posted here so that we can have a comprehensive archive to look back on and reread easily rather than having to dig through tumblr. Please be warned going in that this may never have a clean or concise ending as that is not the point of roleplay.

Reminder that this was something that was meant to be fun, not judged. Therefore constructive criticism is not welcome.

Lost & Found

Time moved strangely in the Waiting Room. There was no way of knowing exactly how long you would be sitting in the cramped, uncomfortable chairs that lined the seemingly cramped yet endless space. No windows or doors could be found, save the single entrance that led deeper into the department. After all, there was no escaping death.

Betelgeuse liked to consider himself an expert on this room. He had been here so often and in so many different centuries that he was hard-pressed to know exactly when it was just by looking at the newlydeads.

Being the conman he was, he was able to trade numbers, again and again, lying his way up to be the next in line. Oh, yeah. When your number is called, that's it. You go to heaven or hell… which way ya think you're going? Or, Behind that door? Oh, that's the pit. It wasn't hard.

Finally, the beauty queen behind the receptionist window called his number and he bounced up out of his seat. He was so close… His freedom was within reach. He could almost taste it, licking his lips to make sure he couldn't actually.

He let himself back to his long-time friend Juno's office. He liked to consider them friends, anyway. He had been here longer than she had, even, and she was far from a spring hen. He let himself in with a half-assed knock.

"June-bug! Time to say the magic words and get me the fuck outta here."

Betelgeuse wasn't supposed to be in her office yet. His number was purposefully impossibly high, exorbitantly so, in the hopes that by the time he actually made it through the line, his unfortunate bride would be fortunately dead and moved on. There was only one end befitting an angel like Lydia Deetz, and it certainly wasn't the Waiting Room.

Things never did happen the way they were supposed to.

Juno didn't have any smiles or friendly greetings for her former protege. She never did. Why he thought they were friends was beyond her. Clingy sonuvabitch.

"Sit the fuck down," she grumbled, looking over his paperwork for the umpteenth time. All of the details were already imprinted in her expansive memory bank, she just wanted to make sure she had everything absolutely clear before spelling out the limitations for him.

"Don't know where you think you're going. If you knew what I knew, you'd be a lot less chipper. Oh yeah, and congratulations. I heard it was a lovely ceremony."

He tipped his head as he flopped into his usual seat, crossing his legs and jiggling his foot nonchalantly. "What do you know that I don't? You're startin' to sound like Carmen. Careful, people will think you're fuckin'."

He grinned at her lecherously. "So what is it? Someone out for me or what?"

He took a moment to try and process what she'd said.

I heard it was a lovely ceremony.

Ceremony? Was she talking about…

"Is this about Lydia?"

Oh, wow. He remembered her name. A miracle.

"Of course it's about Lydia, shit-for-brains! You know, the teenager you married? Black hair, about yea high, entirely too young for you? That girl?"

He didn't know. His expression said as much, and Juno was equal parts amused, unimpressed, and annoyed by the revelation.

"You did it. You're hitched. You've got your freedom. I repeat; congratu-fucking-lations. Now you get to play pet ghost to that poor girl for eternity. Here's what you need to know before I cut you loose. You're on a short leash. She is your haunt. She is the only one who can summon you or put you away. Do anything stupid like trying to kill her, and that'll earn you a one-way ticket to the Lost Soul's Room. Lay a fuckin' hand on her, magical or otherwise, and you'll have me to deal with."

The last wasn't an official rule so much as a personal note from Juno. She taught him better than to hurt little girls.

"Any questions?"

He had so many questions.

He did it, but he didn't… conditional freedom wasn't freedom at all. He had two options here… stay in the shit hole known as the Neitherworld or… be on a short leash held in his little wife's perfectly shaped hands.

It was an obvious choice. He could always persuade her into taking him where he needed to be, right?

"Just one. You gonna tell me where she's at? We ain't exactly kept in touch since the honeymoon. You know how it is."

He was already getting excited. He got his freedom and the hot piece of tail that freed him? Bonus.

With a lengthy roll of her stormy, heavily bagged eyes, Juno bothered to flip through the girl's file. She wasn't obligated to give the filthy ghoul any further help here, but she could throw him a bone. If he got himself landed on Saturn bumbling around looking for his wife and getting into trouble, it would only mean more paperwork for her.

"She's on the Southside of Chicago. Here's her address."

With jerky, impatient motions, she scribbled the street name, number, and apartment building onto a post-it before passing it his way. The information supplied in Lydia's file was sparse and need-to-know, but a little tidbit did make one of Juno's silvery eyebrows arch.

"Huh. A 'Jonathan and Miriam Gallagher' are listed as her current guardians according to mortal law‒" something the dead rarely respected. "Guess the Deetzes shoved her off on some relatives. Fuckin' yuppies. We done here?"

He scowled at the added info. The Southside of Chicago? Even an address this specific wouldn't make it easy to find the kid. And who the fuck were the Gallaghers?

He had a strange sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach. Oh well. Had to start somewhere. "Thanks, Junie B. Jones. Gotta get going!"

He stood up and brushed his suit clean of imaginary dust. In a flash of dramatic green light, he was suddenly standing outside the address he was given wearing a deep scowl.

This place was not where his girl should be. The building was in desperate need of repairs, the siding missing in places and the paint peeling up. He hovered his way into the apartment itself, only to find who he assumed was Miriam on the couch, chain-smoking.

He sneered. Where the fuck was Lydia?

It was another late night at the library for Lydia. Anything to keep from going back to that asbestos-ridden, roach-infested hovel. As much as she admired insects, she had her limits. But… it was getting dark out. It wouldn't be safe to stay much longer. She didn't want to get mugged again, not that she had anything worth taking. Her camera was long gone, stolen by one of her foster siblings when she first arrived. Probably sold it for drug money for all she knew.

All she had left to her name was a drawing pad, some pencils, a couple of heavily recycled outfits, a cheap pocket knife, and a backpack that carried it all. She slept with it every night to make sure it didn't disappear as well, but that didn't stop the other kids from trying to sneak it open while she shifted through her restless slumbers on that lumpy bunkbed.

Jonathan and Miriam Gallagher had custody of eight children in total, four boys and four girls, all of them sharing a three-bedroom apartment. They raked in a little less than two grand a month from the state per child, but one couldn't tell from the state of their lodgings. Lydia had already exhausted all of her attempts making complaints to her social worker‒ an equally useless and indifferent woman. If there wasn't any extreme and active abuse going on, she didn't care, and the Gallaghers didn't like snitches.

On sluggish feet, she checked out her book‒ a fantasy featuring dragons and a tower-trapped princess‒ and began the long walk "home." Hopefully, there was some beef ramen left over. She hated the chicken kind.

This place was disgusting. The kids that were lounging around weren't much better, most of them unbathed and high off their asses. He amused himself for a while messing with them. A tug on the ear here, an unexplainable noise there.

When the door opened he felt his heart fall through his stomach. Lydia. But she didn't look like the girl he'd known two years ago. That girl was healthy and excited by the world. This girl looked ready to drop dead at any moment.

He hovered around her, taking a good look. This wasn't going to do. He'd have to get her out of here ASAP. He brushed his hand over her cheek gently, unsure if she could still see him.

"Lyds?"

Chicken again. Damn. Lydia bothered to wash a pan and boil the water properly to make her meager meal, unlike the other kids who defaulted to the microwave.

"Prissy bitch," Megan sneered as she waited for her ramen to finish off, roughly shouldering Lydia as they shared the cramped kitchen. Lydia, in turn, didn't react at all. No flinch, no blink, nothing.

Be invisible. Do not attract attention. Do not become a target.

However, when she felt a hand reach out and touch her face, she couldn't help the way she jumped and yelped, grabbing a nearby fork to brandish like a knife. Megan wasn't even within arm's reach of her. No one was. Thanks to her dramatic reaction, all eyes were on her now‒ except those of Miriam that remained glassy and locked on the television.

"I‒ I thought‒"

The microwave beeped. Leveling her with an ugly, unimpressed deadpan, Megan gathered her meal.

"Watch yourself, trick. You don't wanna bring a fork to a knife fight."

Oh, that bitch was going down first. He couldn't believe the way these people were treating his wife. He stood in the doorway and when the girl who was bullying Lydia came close he pushed the bowl of hot soup up into her face.

He chuckled cruelly as the girl screeched and her skin turned red. Served the bitch right for treating his girl like that. He rounded on the boy nearby next, ready to fight him off if he came for his Lydia.

This was seriously fucked. He'd have a harder time than he thought… she didn't see him. He'd have to make her. He shook his head, rubbing a hand down his face. Why were things never simple?

Lydia didn't sleep that night. The room was colder than usual, and Megan was pissed about her ramen mishap, staying up long hours to bitch to her apathetic boyfriend on her cellphone. At least she didn't blame Lydia for the incident, though Lydia couldn't help but feel strangely responsible. The timing was too convenient. It wasn't as though she could deny wanting something bad to happen to Megan at that moment.

School was just as unpleasant as "home", but at least she blended in there better. There were other angsty freaks dressed all in black that let her share their table at lunch, but by no means could any of them be called her friend. It was an arrangement of begrudging acceptance‒ birds of a feather and all that shit.

The sleepless night had her dozing off in class though, which led to a trip to ISS. She was better off there, really. That teacher didn't care if she slept.

What kind of crackhead put a kid in suspension for falling asleep? Shouldn't they be checking on her? Shouldn't anyone care?

It was clear to him that Lydia was suffering. She was just surviving. She deserved to thrive. He hovered nearby after his attempts to stay at the apartment had visions of sandworms dancing in his head.

Now, he was watching her sleep and wondering if a visit in her dream counted towards Juno's no touchy rules. He decided eventually that it didn't.

He popped into her dream and looked around. "Lyds? Ya in here?"

Where once Lydia's dreamscapes were wild and unpredictable, her imagination had suffered along with her physical shell. There wasn't any real scenery or backdrop. Just nothingness, a blank slate where there should have been dreams and fantasies.

Betelgeuse found her curled up on the ground in the fetal position; sleeping, even here. She was so tired. Slowly, she blinked "awake" to gaze up at him with a light of confusion‒ but not much else. No anger or hostility. Definitely no fear. Some things never changed.

"What are you doing here?"

Didn't he hate her? He should. A frown pulled her mouth down further, making her look so much older than she had any right to.

"Is this going to be a nightmare?"

The lack of… anything in her subconscious was concerning. He was late to this draw… she'd been hurting for too long for him to just fix it, no matter how badly he wanted to.

He sat beside her and took her hand cautiously. "It ain't a nightmare, kitten. Not any more than what's out there. Right?" He rubbed slow circles on the back of her hand. She was so tired. He could feel it.

"I'm here to help ya. I wanna get you out. Out of the apartment, outta Chicago if ya want… you n' me can go anywhere ya want." He smiled weakly. This was harder than he thought.

"Jesus, Lydia. What happened? Why aren't ya still in Connecticut with the Maitlands?"

The Maitlands? Adam and Barbara hadn't crossed her mind in a long time. It was too painful to dwell on what her life would look like if she had been able to stay with them.

"They're dead. Everyone I care about is dead. Everyone who cares about me is dead. I want to be dead, too."

Her frown pulled even deeper at the last, eyebrows crinkling. Barbara wouldn't want to hear her say something like that, but she couldn't filter her thoughts here. Everything just came pouring out like water as soon as it popped into her head. This was her head, after all.

"I haven't dreamed about you in a long time. They weren't good dreams… I'm sorry about the sandworm."

"Aw, ya dream about me? That's sweet, baby." He looked her over carefully. People tended to look better in dreams than they did in life, but once again his Lydia didn't do things the way they were supposed to be done.

She was every inch as skinny and sickly looking here as she was outside. This was bad. This was going to take work to fix… he hated work.

But, keeping him topside was worth keeping the squirt alive.

He carefully rubbed circles into her knee, reaching over to tip her face up to really look at her. "Hey… look at me. People bein dead never stopped you before… why would it stop you now?"

She flinched when his hand came near her face, expecting the worst, but ultimately remained lax, if trembling, in his calloused grip.

People bein' dead never stopped you before… why would it stop you now?

What did he want from her? She wasn't powerful like him. What was she supposed to do? These questions and observations spilled out of her mouth just as quickly as they occurred to her.

"It's not like there's a long line of convenient poltergeists offering me their hand in exchange for favors. I guess I could just kill myself. Eternal civil servitude sounds like an upgrade…"

"No. Yer not doin' yerself in. I won't let ya."

He sighed and tried to think through the next step. He clearly had to get her out of here… but how? He kept his hand on her knee, wanting a point of contact with her.

"You don't need a whole line of poltergeists. Ya got the only one that counts. I ain't goin anywhere. I got yer back… I ain't gonna let these assholes ruin you. 'Kay?"

He squeezed her knee gently. "No more. This ain't you. I ain't known ya long but I know that. This is not you, Lydia."

A huff of something that might have been laughter blew past pale, chapped lips‒ dry and humorless.

"You don't know me. I don't know me. Why do you care anyway? You're not even real."

An alarm sounded, loud and jarring. Quite abruptly, the ghoul was torn from her subconscious as Lydia jumped awake at the back of the overcrowded classroom, a gasp of "Betelgeuse" on her lips. Immediately, she clasped both hands over her guilty mouth, glancing about wildly in search of bold black and white stripes. Nothing. Just punks and hoodrats rushing to escape the oppressive establishment of education just as quickly as they could. Lydia was in no such rush.

What a strange dream…

"What? Wait, no—"

Before he could clasp his hand around her throat and keep her asleep, she was being pulled into wakefulness, and Betelgeuse was dragged out of her head as a side effect. He shook his head as though trying to get water out of his ears. He hated being pushed between planes without doing it himself.

Now to prove he wasn't just a dream.

Sketchbooks. They were in her backpack. He'd seen them. He shrunk himself down and slipped between the teeth of the zipper, pulling out a pen from his lapel pocket that wrote in a deep emerald green ink.

He left a note, near the back.

It wasn't a dream. Call me. ‒B

After school, Lydia walked herself to the library as per her usual routine to wait out the hours until she was forced to return to the Gallaghers. All the way, she couldn't shake the feeling of being watched, of someone trailing hot on her heels. Stalking. She kept her bag close, her pocket knife clenched tight in her fist.

She read until her eyes burned, dry from exhaustion, and then she broke out her drawing pad. The pages were filled with all manner of doodles‒ animals and people and architecture and strange creeping designs‒ right up to the margins, no space wasted. A new drawing pad wasn't exactly something she could afford, and this was one of the few joys she had left in life.

Therefore, a sick feeling churned in her gut when she turned to one of the last empty pages to begin anew and found words scribbled across the pristine page, covering nearly half of it. Then, she read them.

"Betelgeuse," she gasped again despite herself, this one just as involuntary as the last utterance of the boogeyman's name.

Just two more, baby.

He hovered over her, producing his pen again and bending over her shoulder to write on the page where he'd started. Until she was sane enough to see him again, this and the dream world would have to do.

He scribbled a note out quickly.

Hey, babes.

Hope you're not too scared. Promise I'm not here to hurt you. Want to get you out of this house ASAP.

Love,

BJ

He hastily sealed the note with a doodle of a beetle, hearts floating around its head.

Her heart beat faster and faster as words continued to materialize on the paper– words that didn't make any fucking sense at all. Help? From him? Who said she even needed any help!? Who did he think he was?!

Love. Hearts upon hearts upon hearts. Lydia was going to be sick. Unable to bear reading his note a second longer, she immediately tore the page from her book, crumpled it into a ball, and threw it across the room. He thought she was scared of him? Adorable.

"I'm not scared of you."

The librarian gave her an odd look at how she was hissing at herself. Lydia couldn't bring herself to be embarrassed. Still, struck with paranoia, she glanced over one shoulder, then the other. Nothing. The library was just as empty as always. What kind of game was he playing at? What was the catch?

If she knew anything about Betelgeuse, it was that he didn't do anything for free.

He growled and tried to think through how he could get this kid to trust him again. She'd done it once… at least a little. Enough to call him out of the model in any case.

That sketchbook was looking pretty full. She seemed to draw all kinds of things that expressed how she was feeling at any given moment. That was probably good, right? He knew jack shit about teenagers.

So he summoned a new sketchbook. Maybe gifts would get him in her good graces. The book was thick and high quality, a sandworm embossed onto the cover in silver metallic ink. Anyone that tried to take it from her would get a nasty bite from the serpent that defended her art.

A set of good quality drawing pencils was put on top and he slid the whole thing into her backpack. The inscription on the inside cover was simple.

Good. Don't be scared. I'm here now.