"And if your heart stops beating,
I'll be here wondering,
Did you get what you deserve?"
—Dead!
My Chemical Romance
The time seemed to fly by. As much as he desperately tried to stretch it out, there was no avoiding the inevitable pull of her exhaustion. She was adorable, curled up and slack in his arms.
Asleep she looked younger, less weighed down than she did awake. There was a softness to her that made his chest ache. He was ruining this tiny angel. Making her his completely and pulling her from heaven by the ankle. He felt bad for a half a moment but pushed it aside. She'd had a choice in this too, he told himself.
He carried her to bed, gently tucking her into the soft sheets, having wrapped her in a silky nightgown. He hoped she slept as long as she could, but he knew she'd become accustomed to having him beside her.
He pressed a kiss to her head and departed, dropping into the waiting room with a crash. Miss Argentina jolted from her window and he grinned, winking at her playfully. "Hey, how's it goin'. I need to talk to Juno. Now."
Miss Argentina leveled the foul ghoul with a sour deadpan before picking up the phone and dialing the caseworker's lengthy extension of which she had long since memorized. There was no use arguing with Betel once he had his sights set on something.
"Congratulations," she snarked in a lilted, exotic accent that added extra H's where there shouldn't have been any as she waited for Juno to pick up, having caught sight of his wedding band; a brassy gold ouroboros. It was hard to miss. After so many years working alongside him, she knew exactly how many rings he wore on each hand, how many watches on each wrist, how many stripes were on each patch of that tacky suit.
"You're all anyone's been talking about," she continued, filing at her already perfect nails nonchalantly. "Actually roped some poor little living girl into marrying you. Tsk tsk tsk… Naughty."
As an attractive woman with next to nothing to lose, Carmen felt safe enough teasing the revered poltergeist. "Boss is pissed— Miss Juno! Yes, Beteljerk is here to see you. Isn't really in a waiting mood…"
He smirked when she started to dial, no questions asked. He must really be in trouble then. Oh well, he could handle Juno just fine. She was like a mother to him. Or an eternally disapproving grandma. He let his arm extend, slithering into Carmen's booth and pinching her ass firmly. They'd had a fling, once upon a time, and she'd been entirely unimpressed. The only woman he'd had to say so. It made her fun to poke jabs at.
He could hear Juno's voice on the other side of the phone, shouting as usual. He shrugged and wandered his way into the back offices, appearing, as all the souls did, back in the place he'd died to wait. It was a parking lot now, for some sort of chain restaurant. He shook his head and lit two cigarettes, knowing Juno would want one of his despite her own being readily available.
This had been his home once. His life. He could picture the entirety of the little colony that had stood here. Could walk from this point to Sarah's house in his sleep. But the houses were gone, Sarah was dead. He had no option but to wait for Juno to make an appearance.
"You have got some fuckin' nerve."
Betelgeuse didn't have to wait long for the decrepit spirit to make her entrance. In a puff of smoke, she materialized beside him, snatching the lit cigarette he had to offer with a snarled "gimme that." The higher-ups had been breathing down her gashed neck, burying her in paperwork as punishment for allowing the abomination of a union between the living and the dead to take place. As if she could have done anything to stop it.
"You actually did it. I can't believe you actually did it."
She wasn't privy to how or why her least favorite protégé managed to bind himself to a living child, only that it had happened when he was supposed to be under her watch. Sneaking rat.
"Now you think you can just waltz into my office and demand to see me. I have shit to do, Betel. What do you want?" A grim, matronly storm brewed behind her gray eyes and she dared poke hard him in the chest with a sharp talon at the end of a wrinkled finger. "You better be treating that little girl nice. You're not going to be happy if I hear anything to the contrary."
They had a volatile relationship, but there was a modicum of closeness there. Juno knew who he was and how he operated, but she hoped she had been able to instill enough virtue in him in their time together that he knew better than to treat someone like the Deetz girl the same way he treated his other women.
"Hey, now! You know that this shit is different. Lydia's different." He lit himself another cigarette and sighed.
His face took on a softer expression as he thought about his wife. He hated leaving her alone, but it was a necessity. It was too dangerous to bring her here. He took a long drag of his cigarette before speaking.
"I need to find someone. Might be back in the cubicles if you catch my drift. I got a name and a cause of death. Need ya to get me back there." He tapped his ash onto his boots, giving her a determined look, his eyes dark in their sunken sockets.
"I'll owe ya one."
He didn't say this lightly. Favors in the Netherworld were a high-value currency, and he couldn't afford to hand out too many.
Lydia's different.
Juno was already in on this without needing to be told. It would have to be a truly special mortal to make him actually abandon his perpetual bachelorhood, to keep him this docile for so long. After receiving the bad news, she thought for sure he would have been out and about in the living realm wreaking havoc by now, raising armageddon and splitting the barriers between worlds— for no better reason than that he could. This "Lydia Deetz" she had heard so much about must have had one hell of a grip on his balls.
"Okay, Betel," Juno conceded with a slow, vengeful smirk that rivaled the ones she knew he could produce. "I'll help. But it won't come cheap. All this bullshit paperwork I'm having to fill out on account of your jailbreak? Not my problem anymore. That's aaallll on you. Enjoy."
And that's what he got for being an insufferable bastard. The crone nodded firmly as they walked the parking lot, satisfied with the proposed exchange.
"Still want to deal or is it not worth it anymore?"
Ugh, paperwork. He did have an office at the house and it would be nice to have something to do other than ravage his wife. He followed behind her, falling into step easily.
"It's still a deal. I'd go back to the department if Lyds asked me to."
He realized in an odd way just how attached he'd become. He truly believed that he'd do anything Lydia asked of him, no matter how severe.
"Name's Natalya Volkov. Supposedly offed herself via the needle. My girl thinks it's her fault." He glanced at the woman who'd become the closest thing he had to a family. "You should really meet her, Ma. She's something else."
"She must be a saint to be putting up with you," Juno barbed back good-naturedly, foul mood improved with the knowledge that her workload was going to be that much lighter. This girl seemed good for him. As much as he liked to earn her ire, Juno cared. She didn't want to see his filthy soul on the chopping block for crossing one too many lines— not that the head honchos would ever be able to catch him now. With his recent nuptials, he was far too powerful for his or anyone's own good. Luckily the girl seemed to have a tight hold on his leash.
"Natalya, Natalya, Natalya…"
Juno muttered, searching her expansive memory of new arrivals. Abruptly, one stuck out. With a grim turn to her wrinkled mouth, she crushed the butt of her cigarette beneath her heel and led him down a nearby alley toward a door with a glowing exit sign.
"I know her. She's one of mine. Sad case."
The door opened to unending rows of towering cabinets and desks, a poor, unfortunate soul occupying each one.
"C twenty-six," she informed from memory, pointing a maroon-painted claw down the way. "Take it easy on her, whatever it is you want. She's a real mess."
He chuckled at the way Juno made a show of disliking him. He knew that deep, deep down she really did care. After all, he was her most famous case file. He looked down the hallway of cubicles and cabinetry, scowling. He'd spent far, far too much of his existence here. He'd thought he'd never come back.
"Thanks, Junebug. I promise I ain't here to start any shit. Just got some questions."
The walk down to her desk was a long one, accompanied by the incessant sound of typing and scribbling pens. Not one soul looked up as he passed, too absorbed by their eternal punishment. He was getting close, he knew, when he spotted a shock of raven black hair out of the corner of his eye.
For a moment he thought he was looking at his wife. The same pale peach skin, though this woman's had taken on a blue tinge in death, and the very same thin heart-shaped face. It took him a moment to recognize the Veronica Lake hairstyle, her hair pinned out of her face on one side rather than hanging in the short, rounded bangs he was used to.
"Natalya?"
While others typed on, well invested in their pointless work, Natalya was one of few who remained eerily still, tiny powder blue hands frozen limply over her keyboard while a dead, hazel gaze stared on at everything and nothing at all. It took several dragging moments for the sound of her name to even register. Ever so slowly, she blinked, then her jaw ticked slowly up, movements isolated from the rest of her achingly familiar body.
There were slight differences between she and her daughter. Natalya had a tiny beauty mark beneath her uncovered eye, a swathe of dark hair falling over the other. Her face was sunken with death, but her cheekbones were higher and more sallow than Lydia's, giving her lips the illusion of being fuller. Though, perhaps the younger's would thin out with age.
No emotion registered.
"I do not know you…"
The heavily accented whisper came with a ghost of curiosity. Interest.
"… but you know me."
That was heroin alright. She looked as though she'd been beautiful once, like her daughter, but now he could only register disgust. This was the woman his sweet Lydia was ready to kill herself over? The woman who'd sold her daughter's body for a fix. If he looked closer he was sure he'd still see track marks in her arms. Disgusting. She and Charles both.
How had the two of them created such a perfect creature?
He came to lean against her desk, his face twisting with a combination of anger and sorrow. He could recognize the woman from the photo in her. Could see Lydia's nose and eye shape. It was painful to think of the sweet little girl who'd gone hungry and drugged so that this thing could get high.
He brushed it off. He had questions for her.
"Privet, Mama. Ya zdes' dlya Lydia." He lit another cigarette. "You remember? Your baby girl?"
It had been many years since anyone had spoken to Natalya in her first language. So long that she had grown accustomed to defaulting to English.
"Ly… di… a…"
Each syllable was savored on dark, bloodless lips, big eyes drifting shut as if awed by the very sound of it.
"Always wanted little girl to call… Lydia." Natalya was somewhere else just then, off in some dusty corner of her far-gone mind, living out fantasies of a life that never was. "To braid hair… to dress pretty…"
This was the extent of memory she had left for her daughter. Everything else was taken by the drug. Moment gone, the zombie-like Natalya met the stranger's gaze once more, whatever light of life she exhibited in the midst of trying and failing to gather memories extinguished.
"Will you stay with me…?" She begged, again with tragic familiarity, a splinter of despair coloring her tone. "Zdes' tak odinoko…"
Nothing. She remembered nothing. His heart ached in a way it hadn't in a long time, his chest pained with the unfamiliar emotion. How could she forget her own child?
Not for the first time, he cursed the name of Gregory Green. It was clear to him that Natalya wanted to remember. To know that her little girl exists, alive and well. The bastard had stolen her life by getting her hooked. And now he'd ruined her afterlife too. He had to be next. Had to pay.
He pulled the photo out of his pocket and set it in front of her. "Look, Natalya. You don't remember?"
There was no reaction. She didn't even blink. He sighed, pulling the photo away and tucking it back into his pocket. Standing, he put a hand to her cheek. "I can't stay, Mama. I have to go home and take care of our girl. But I'll be back… okay?"
Natalya leaned into the touch, bring a small hand so very like her daughter's up to gently grasp his wrist, as if to keep the kind stranger from leaving her too soon.
"Promise?"
Save for the heavy accent, this woman seemed to channel her daughter in every aspect of her mannerisms— or maybe it was the other way around. Just like Lydia might, she begged prettily, pulling at grimy heartstrings she didn't have any right to have a hold on.
"I will wait for you… pretty green eyes…" Something dark and romantic was uttered in her native tongue, a fleeting thought she hadn't the capacity to filter. "I love man with green eyes…"
It was hard to pull himself away, but he managed, muttering a goodbye in Russian before making the trek back up the rows and rows of cubicles.
This was going to be hell. He'd have to go back to his wife… his wife who he'd just managed to get back to some semblance of happy and content. And now he had to tell her that her mother didn't even remember her.
He arrived in their living room, pacing over how to break the news. Maybe if he hid down here for a while she'd find him on her own.
A whole week. He'd been gone for a whole week. At least that. She wasn't really sure anymore. Lydia only knew because of a working watch she had from her old life that still seemed to be keeping track of time there.
The first day wasn't so terrible. She slept in, skipped making breakfast and went straight to lunch, and lounged in the hot tub with a good book. The second was much the same, most of it spent snacking on junk food in the library and napping intermittently. By the third day, she began to worry.
Mother was religious. The things that existed here existed because of belief, Betelgeuse said. What if she sent herself to Hell because she thought she deserved it, not knowing any better? Tricked by the religious institution into one of those ghastly tourist traps like the River Styx?
The entire fourth day was spent crying behind the crimson velvet canopy, Lydia unable to drag herself from bed for anything other than water or the toilet. Though, she never forgot to feed Percy.
By the fifth day, she was questioning her sanity. What if she was dead? What if Betelgeuse had already fulfilled that initial promise and everything from their first night as husband and wife until now was little more than an apparition brought upon by her twisted mind?
After all, Lydia had never believed in any Gods, but she believed in Betelgeuse.
Once that thought managed to worm its way in, she stopped checking the time. Therefore, it was a shock when the heavy, unmistakable thud of his boots pacing the floor hit her ears. Unaware that she had even memorized the sound, she was on her feet and flying down the steps two at a time in a frenzied rush to greet her husband.
"Beej!" She called excitedly, jumping into his arms without any warning, actually making him stumble just a bit. Arms tight around his neck and legs banded around his waist, she peppered his face with kisses, so fucking happy just to see him. "I missed you— I missed you so much— You were gone for so long— I thought you'd never come back!"
He'd been considering waking her when he turned and suddenly found his arms full of his enthusiastic, excited wife. How long had he been away? It had felt like hours for him, but who knew what had happened here.
I thought you'd never come back!
"Baby… baby calm down…I told you I'd be back." He chuckled softly, pulled from his concerns by her happiness to have him back home. He easily supported her with a hand under her ass, leaning in to kiss her firmly.
It was nice to see that she was so worried about him. He carried her to the couch and settled in, happy to keep her close while he still could. He was sure that after he broke the news about her mother she'd never want to see him again. She was a mess. Her hair was up in a tangled bun, her only clothing one of his dress shirts, hanging to her knees as he settled her sideways on his lap. He ran a hand over her thigh, nuzzling into her neck lovingly.
"Glad ya missed me, kitten… I missed ya somethin' fierce." It was true. Seeing her mother had made him ache to have her close again.
Quite suddenly, Lydia was painfully aware that she hadn't brushed her teeth. Or bathed. Or shaved. How long now? That she couldn't immediately remember made her terribly ashamed of herself.
As well as her body, their home had been neglected. The bedding on their mattress was rumpled and unmade, black fur shed on the cream sheets to mark Percy's territory. Dishes were piling up in the sink. There was an empty bottle of wine tipped over next to the hot tub leftover from a particularly miserable bout of self-loathing.
He didn't seem to care about any of that— yet. So, she tried to bury her guilty embarrassment over the matter and just enjoy that he was back.
"You were gone forever," she choked the last bit against his neck, kissing a mossless portion as he rubbed her stubbly calf. "What happened? Where was she? Please say you found her, Beej. It's been killing me."
He had noticed the lack of cleanliness in their home but decided not to mention it. Clearly, she was in a fragile state. He let out a breath as she nuzzled into him again, one hand coming to cup the back of her neck.
"I… I found her. Yeah." He pulled a joint out of nowhere, already lit and nudged at her until he could give it to her. She'd definitely need a little herbal assistance swallowing the bad news. "Babes, I…"
He didn't know what to say. How did you tell someone you loved news like this? News you knew would cause them pain? He didn't like this. Didn't want to tell her.
"You look just like her… ya know that? 'Cept the cheeks." He ran his thumb across her soft cheek as though comparing them. "Kitten, I gotta tell ya… it wasn't pretty."
"Dad said that once," she remembered the only instance he had ever spoken of her mother within her earshot save for that last time, shaking her head and then pulled away so they could meet her husband face to face. There were dark circles under her eyes, cheeks missing more color than usual.
"I don't see it. She's beautiful."
Oh, no. He wasn't as happy as her. In fact, he was downright grim. Lydia's energy took a sharp turn as he produced the burning marijuana, the strong aura of dread clouding him finally enveloping her.
It wasn't pretty. Lydia went very, very still, save for the stream of smoke drifting gently past her lips.
"Where is she?" She whispered once her lungs emptied, scarcely gathering enough oxygen.
His chest ached as her smile fell. She took a deep drag off of the joint and he took the moment to gather himself.
"She's in the department for the deceased. She's working as a civil servant. Like you thought…"
He kept his hand firmly on her hip as he spoke, worried that she'd try to bolt.
"I asked her about you. Showed her a picture of you when you were little, but…" He swallowed, not able to meet her eyes. "The drugs got to her brain pretty bad. She wasn't… I don't think she was really alive even before she got down here. She didn't remember… anything."
"No."
It couldn't be true. She didn't. He was wrong. He was lying again.
"She wouldn't," Lydia shook her head in abject denial, pushing the joint back into his hand. "She promised."
A splitting pain started to throb at her temples as what he was really saying sunk in. She doesn't remember you.
"She wouldn't forget me. Not ever. It's not— it's not true… No, no no no…" she backed off from his lap, receding like a cat from water, pale fingers curling and pulling hard into her fussed main to attempt stilling the screeching thoughts.
"My mom loves me. She needs me. Take me to her, I need to see her. Please!"
Lydia was cycling through all the different levels of grief, jumping from one to another in a confused rush, acceptance far beyond her grasp. It seemed she was at a cross between bargaining and anger now.
"I did everything right and I do everything you say, so take me to her! You know where she is, I need to go. Now. Please."
He knew she wasn't going to take it well. She retreated from him swiftly, her eyes growing panicked.
I did everything right and I do everything you say, so take me to her.
He shook his head, putting his face in his hands. "I can't,… I'm so sorry baby, but I can't.." Seeing her mother as she was now would do her no good. It would only hurt worse to see firsthand that she just didn't remember.
He didn't know what to do, or how to comfort her in this. He had no way of knowing exactly what she felt, beyond pain. He'd done as she'd asked, he'd found her. Asked her about Lydia. Just because she didn't like the results didn't mean he hadn't done his job.
He looked up at her with a certain pain behind his own gaze. She'd need a reason that he couldn't take her. "I had to make a deal to get in… they won't let me in again. I can't…"
"How long did you even talk to her?!"
Rage took sudden overwhelming precedence over all the other warring emotions. Letting anything else take over was to admit that there was no hope. That she really was that stupid. That worthless. That she had been willing to throw away everything on a woman that died a long, long time age.
An accusatory bite to her chewed words, a constant flow of tears streaming down each cheek, she laid into him; fearless of consequences. What would he do? Kill her? If she could take it, so could he.
"You just don't want me to leave this house. You don't want me to go anywhere else or see anyone but you ever."
Once Lydia was of a clearer mind, she would regret this declaration, decry it ridiculous and childish on the face of it, unwilling or unable to recognize how accurate it really was.
"You can't just—just half-ass this and feed me bullshit and expect me to eat it! Not this time Betelgeuse! Stop lying!"
This was a tortured plea disguised as an accusation, though whether Betelgeuse was able to see the truth of that was yet to be seen.
He stared at her for a long moment before standing up and adjusting his suit. "Fine. If you don't wanna listen, I don't gotta sit here and listen to you call me a liar. I tried. I made a deal to get in to see her. A big one. I gave her the picture. Tried to tell her that you missed her. Told her you looked just like her. But sure, I half-assed it."
He shook his head, trying to keep the boiling rage beneath his skin at bay. She was hurting. He knew that logically, but having her spit such venomous words back in his face had his fuse burning shorter by the moment. He had to walk away before he did something he'd regret.
"I'll be in my office if ya need me. You know. So you can work through this on your own. Since I'm feeding you bullshit." Maybe he shouldn't have made the deal with Juno. This wasn't worth it. He'd tried so hard and done everything she'd asked and she still hated him. Maybe she always would, deep down.
He trudged himself upstairs to his office where a towering stack of paperwork was already waiting. He slammed the door, just to hear the wood rattle and sat down to get started. Case File 2,005,943: The Marriage of Betelgeuse to Living Girl Lydia Deetz. What a joke.