A/N: "Rest In Peace" is copyright Buffy The Vampire Slayer (Or whatever company produced/wrote the song). BJ belongs to Tim Burton. This story works better if you listen to the track on loop while reading.

I died
So many years ago
You can make me feel
Like it isn't so
And why you come to be with me
I think I finally know

They were rushing through realities, ripped through Purgatory and through the Neitherworld, up into the glorious light that was the real world. They landed in Lydia's front yard at noon, and for a moment they sat there on her lawn, praising the sweet sun and all the light it gave off. They rolled in the grass, feeling its spiny texture and flew through the air, feeling the wind against their being.

Finally Beetlejuice remembered that Lydia was, in fact, still a spirit. He was startled to see the sun through her, and he knew this wasn't right.

"My God, Lydia…how did you die?" he demanded of her, shaking her from her crystalline laughs.

She let out a sigh and her face fell. "Oh, Beej…I'm sorry. I'm just so sorry…"

He grasped her wrist and pulled her up into her room. When they reached it, he almost threw up from the sight.

Lydia's body lay, slumped against the bed, in a pool of her blood. It was still dripping from her wrist, so she hadn't been dead long.

Time must have stood still here…or the Neitherworld moved too fast…

He picked Lydia's spirit up and brought her close to the body. The stench of fresh blood was making him drunk; it was so pure and so corrupted that he felt genuinely sick. "Look, Lydia! This is what put you there!" he stated, forcing her to look at it.

She didn't seem to be listening. Reaching out, she made to touch the wound that still glistened with fresh blood. When she stroked the cut, she let out a gasp.

As Beetlejuice watched in astound, Lydia's spirit seemed to stretch and collapse in on itself, being sucked through the very wound in her body's cold skin! His mouth dropped open when her transparent self disappeared entirely and the cut scarred over, then fell away to reveal a line of light pink tissue covering what used to be the fatal wound.

He barely dared to hope. His heard leapt, however, when Lydia's eyelids fluttered open. She tried to turn her head, but hadn't the strength. He reached over and turned her face towards him.

"Lydia?"

"Yeah. Hey."

"Lord God…"

"It's great you're being religious for once, but I'm freezing," she said, halfheartedly laughing. He hurried to wrap her up in the comforter from her bed and he picked her up, putting her down on the soft bed.

"Thanks," Lydia whispered, shivering. The blood was beginning to reproduce in her marrow, and she was actually recovering.

Beetlejuice smiled softly for a minute, then thought twice and turned to go through the fractured pieces of the mirror.

"Where…where are you going?" she cried.

"I can't stay with you."

You're scared
Ashamed of what you feel
And you can't tell the ones you love
You know they couldn't deal
Whisper in a dead man's ear
It doesn't make it real

"Why not?" Lydia was almost crying now. "After all that…you're just going to leave me…like before? Why?"

"Lydia, you can't understand. You just can't. Something happened that was and wasn't entirely my fault. Some of it and none of it was yours. I just can't explain."

That's great
But I don't wanna play
'Cause being with you touches me
More than I can say
And since I'm only dead to you
I'm saying stay away and
Let me rest in peace

"But-…"

He turned back to her and knelt before her bed, taking the chilled fingers that grasped the blanket closer to her shivering body.

"Lydia, you remember that horrible half of me that put you in Purgatory. I know you do. Don't you hate me for that? That was me that put you in that horrible place!"

"But Beej, it was only part of you!"

"I know! That's the whole point! You don't understand; what he told me when he came out; about you getting sicker and sicker; it was all true. All of it. I know that if you keep visiting the Neitherworld, you're not going to pull a wild card and get to come back like this time. You're really going to die, Lydia.

"And the worst part is that you might skip the Limbo part altogether and just move on. You might not get put in the Neitherworld at all!" he finished, upset.

Let me rest in peace
Let me get some sleep
Let me take my love and bury it
In a hole 6-foot deep
I can lay my body down
But I can't find my, sweet release
So let me rest in peace

"But-…"

"Lydia, I know you think I'm being cold. This isn't like me at all; you know I wouldn't give a damn about your well being and keep dragging you through dimensions until you really do kick the bucket. But I do care. And that's why I have to stop this."

You know,
You got a willing slave
You just love to play the thought
That you might misbehave
Till you do,
I'm telling you
Stop visiting my grave
Let me rest in peace

"But why can't you just visit me here?" she tried through tears.

"God damn it, Lyds! Because when I'm not here, you'd want to come through to the other side! It's like smoking; if you can't find a cigarette in the house, you have to go to the store to buy some. Well I'm gonna make you quit, Lydia."

She was silently crying now, sobbing into the comforter and sniffling.

I know I should go
But I follow you like a man possessed
There's a traitor here beneath my breast
And it hurts me more than you've ever guessed
If my heart could beat, it would break my chest
But I can see you're unimpressed
So leave me be

"And Lydia, if we didn't do this, that other half of me would come back. I can feel him inside of me, seething. He's royally pissed at how things turned out, and who knows? Purgatory might just open up again, and I wouldn't want you around for that."

"B.J…."

"What?"

"I understand. But…is it true? Are you really the gateway to Purgatory?"

"I guess."

"Then how come when I went in, I didn't see you? I only saw…oh. He was there."

"Yeah, I guess I just looked like a pair of gates to you."

She looked up, anger in her eyes. "I don't care! If you leave me, I swear to God that I'll keep coming over, calling you to me and everything else!"

He took her shoulders and shook her slightly. "Lydia! You have got to leave me alone! If Purgatory opens again, it could mean that the entire Limbo Plane of reality could cease to be! Don't you understand?"

"No! Explain it to me so I can!"

He gave her an icy look and ripped open the tattered front of his suit, unbuttoning the maroon shirt beneath and pointing a finger to the keyhole-shaped scar on his chest. "Do you see? Another woman already sacrificed herself because of me to lock the gates! I don't want that to happen to you!"

She was staring at the scar, a tear halted on the edge of her pale cheeks. "Did it always have that gash through it?" she asked, absentmindedly.

He looked down and gasped. The scar looked now like it had a diagonal stripe through the keyhole, as if crossing it out. He recalled the blinding pain he felt when shoved up against the edge of the portal in Purgatory and reasoned that it must have developed after the wound healed.

"No. I got it from back there."

Suddenly a voice echoed in his head, sounding a lot like his other side's voice.

It's cancelled out. Purgatory locked itself in.

"Locked itself in?" he whispered.

"What?" she asked.

"Purgatory…it locked itself…the edge of the hole, it must have sealed Purgatory from within…" Beetlejuice mused, staring into space, developing the idea faster and faster in his mind.

"So…?"

A wide, malicious grin spread across his face, and he jumped up to hug Lydia while she shrieked with terror.

"So it means I'm not the Gate anymore! It means it won't be my fault if it breaks open again! And Babes, it means you have got to forgive me for everything I just said!" he raved, laughing foolishly as she sat still, wide-eyed, trying to decide if he was completely insane or completely serious.

Deciding on a healthy combination of the two, she broke out in laughter and hugged him back, the tears still not yet dry.

"Oh Beej!" she cried.

And let me rest in peace
Let me get some sleep
Let me take my love and bury it
Im a hole 6-foot deep
I can lay my body down
But I can't find my sweet release
Let me rest in peace
Why won't you
Let me rest in peace?