AN: Written to "The World Spins", off of Julee Cruise's Floating Into the Night, a magnificent collection of floaty, lovely, breathy music even if you have never watched Twin Peaks. Rated M for language, violence, character death, and um, well, you've been warned. I'm sorry. I go where they take me. And no, it's not complete. Not yet.

Chapter 13: Trade

Screaming.

"B, have we eaten?" A half-groaning chuckle against the back of her neck, and she giggled. "Food. Nourishment. I don't think I've eaten today." She tried to get up but his strong arms held her from behind.

Someone was screaming.

"Lyds… do you have to get up?" He propped himself up on one elbow and stroked a gentle hand through her tousled hair.

Brown eyes. Her eyes were brown. But she wasn't looking at him.

"If I don't, I might gnaw something off." She cocked an eyebrow at him, and he held both hands up to ward her off playfully.

"Eat! Food is good. Keeps up strength." But he fell back onto the bed, content just to watch her walk to the door, tugging on a robe as she went. His Lydia, graceful and lithe and his. He heard the beep of the answering machine, and a stern voice distorted by old, much-rewound tape.

She wasn't looking at anything. Her eyes weren't looking at anything.

"Lydia Deetz? I'm calling because we need you down at a shooting. It's… two o'clock now. We're at the corner of Canal and Centre, in Chinatown. Double homicide. Call as soon as you get this. 37463."

"Oh, crap. I missed a shoot. Think they're still out there?" She reached for the phone as he jumped out of bed, thinking of a reasonable protest that would keep her there with him. For a week. But she held the phone to her ear, shook it, and then sniffed the receiver. "Burned up…" She raised her eyes to him. "Beetlejuice, it's burned up. My phone."

The screaming didn't stop. It was beginning to hurt his ears.

He didn't know what had happened to the phone. At least, he didn't remember anything. Besides, hadn't he lost all of that? He had, hadn't he? She nodded, still looking at him curiously. "Well, maybe we can go down there and see if they still need help. It's not far. Would you come with me?"

"Sure, Lyds. Anything you want." And he meant it, to his considerable surprise.

And dimly, through the darkening haze of his vision, he realized it was his voice screaming, because his throat was raw with it. And it was his Lydia that was in his arms now, not moving. Not breathing. "Anything you want, Lydia. Anything…" He was bowed, broken-voiced, over Lydia's small frame; he might have been crushing her, even, but he couldn't feel it, couldn't feel anything. Faint shouting, sirens… something not here. Not in this circle that was him and her. Not here, in the only world that mattered.

An outsider, rushing onto the scene, would have seen nothing but a wild-haired man and a frail, dark-haired woman on the sidewalk, he on his knees and she on her back, a pool of blood underneath her delicate head. And then, a flickering. A shadow of cigarette smoke. Maybe. But inside the circle that he had made, the shouting took up where the screaming had left off.

"BEETLEJUICE! You can't do this!"

"Fuck you, Juno! FUCK YOU! I can do this! I can do this forever, if I have to!" But he couldn't. He had minutes, if even more than one, before he flickered out like firefly light against the darkness.

"Let her go!"

"NO! Get away from me!" His voice broke in anguish. "GET OUT!" But Juno stood firm against his blazing fury. What had been his mortal body was now searing with blinding firelight, and she could hardly look at him. He held the sphere intact with the power of his entire soul, and Lydia's soul was trapped inside it. And he was not letting go.

It had happened so quickly. They had gotten out of the cab at the corner that Lydia had indicated, and the street had been dark. He had tried to get her back in the cab, but she had insisted on walking around the back. And he had followed, feeling nervous again in the dark, toting her gear. "Must have gone…" she had said, and shrugged in that delicate, deliberate way that he liked, and they had shared a smile that felt like love.

Her widening eyes, an attempt at a shout, and he had been smashed on the head from behind. He flailed at his attacker, feeling himself falling, the bag being tugged away, and he was reaching inside his coat for the gun that he no longer carried, that he hadn't carried in more than six centuries… a loud explosion deafened his right ear, and Lydia… she had just collapsed on the street. He couldn't hear, but he reached for her, and felt the tug the tug the tug of her soul coming out of her body oh god oh GOD NO!

Everything that had been hidden inside him, locked away in this mortal body with an imperfect key was unleashed in one blinding explosion of energy, aimed at securing her, locking her in, not letting her go. And he held her, and screamed because it hurt, and it wasn't allowed, and he screamed until he had no more breath, and all that was left was holding on to her. "Please…" His voice was nothing but thought now, moving parched lips that had been burned by his own unnatural energy. "I'll do anything… take me. Take me instead."

Juno froze, uncertain of what she had heard. "What?"

"Take me. Let her live. It's my fault anyway!" He looked up at Juno then, and he was crying. "I reached for a gun I don't even have, and she's gonna die because of it? Juno, please." He was begging her. Beetlejuice didn't beg. But what he said next shocked her to the core. "I Trade. I Trade my life… for hers."

"Beetlejuice, do you know what you're asking? Do you even love this girl? Does she love you?" Juno was stunned. But he shook his head, weakening even as he poured everything he had into holding Lydia's soul.

"It doesn't matter, Juno. It doesn't matter—don't you get it? I don't care if she loves me! Because she might have. She could have. And that's worth everything to me. And I'm worth nothing without her." He was crumbling, breaking right in front of her, and Juno felt her own tears. She bowed her head. And nodded.

"The Trade is done." She thought that she wouldn't be able to bear watching it happen. But she stood, and did not close her eyes, when she heard the crack of the whip, and his whimpered pain. The t-shirt over his back parted in fine red lines, and blood dripped to the ground underneath him, and onto the body he was cradling, as he bowed, and trembled, and endured dying for the second time. For the dark-haired, pale woman, and as well for the sixteen-year old girl, who would never know what had been sacrificed for her.

It took a long time.

o0O0o

Lydia woke in the hospital. The doctors couldn't explain what had happened, even though there had been eyewitnesses. She had been shot by muggers, they said, and there was a man with her, with wild blond hair, and he had been yelling for help, they thought, and then everything had gotten very dark, although no one told that part in the same way. When the darkness cleared—just a few seconds, they said, she had been on the sidewalk alone, covered in blood. Lydia herself remembered nothing but brief pain, and a strange tug behind her ribs, as if someone had been pulling on her heartstrings, except literally. She asked about the man, again and again, but no one had seen him, or where he had gone, and he did not come for her.

Her own wound, which should have been fatal, was stitched and bandaged easily. The bullet had gone in through her left breast, and come out just outside her left shoulder blade, but had impossibly missed her heart. The doctor in surgery told her it was almost as if someone had pulled it out of the way. Only later, after Lydia had left recovery for a quiet room, did the doctor tell her that she had been soaked with blood when she came in, blood that wasn't her own. And she had been too tired to weep, but had wept anyway, more bitterly than she knew was possible.

Because she knew that he wasn't coming back for her this time.