A/N: Beej is NOT happy in this one; life seems to be blindsiding him a lot the last few days. I didn't intend this story to be half so dark as it apparently wants to be, though given my other fics I think I'm just incapable of writing light and funny.
Betelgeuse had wanted entertainment. He hadn't wanted Juno.
He'd been Summoned halfway through his third beer, peremptorily and without warning, landing in a chair in her cluttered office with a dull oof. As usual, the place was packed with stacks of paper and hazy with cigarette smoke, and he waved it away and regarded his former boss, wondering why she'd called him. She looked angry, but Juno always looked angry.
"What?" he said, aggrieved. Sure, his visits to Lyds had been technically against the rules, but not nearly enough so to warrant this, and hew as pretty sure he hadn't committed any bigger crimes lately.
"I know you've been visiting the Deetz girl," she said, without preamble, "but I'm not here to get you in trouble. Since you're so fixated on her, you might as well make yourself useful."
"Huh?" What the hell was she talking about?
"I'm not supposed to tell you this," Juno said, taking a long drag off her cigarette and letting the smoke drift out through the hole in her throat, "but there's trouble coming. Maybe big trouble, and thanks to Sarah Williams, the Deetz girl is part of it."
Now she'd lost him entirely. "Juno, you've got to give me more than that. Are you talking trouble in the Otherworld?"
She shifted a pile of nicotine-yellowed papers. "No, but it might spill over there. I never told you this," she added, fixing him with a stern, beady eye, "but there's a war brewing a dimension over, and the Williams girl is its link to the Otherworld. She's friends with Deetz, who thanks to you is a link to our world. You see where I'm going with this?"
"Not really," he returned. "We're not actually married, remember?"
"She let you out last, you moron, and even though you're not married you came close enough to make all this my problem. Our problem. Kid was closer to the Neitherworld than most breathers even before she saw the Maitlands, and none of you have helped."
If he'd still been alive, Betelgeuse probably would have started getting a headache right about now. "So Lyds might let some damn war in some other damn dimension in here? Even if the Williams kid brought it to the Otherworld, what would the odds be of Lyds bringing it in here? Even I know that's shitty logic."
"It is," Juno sighed, taking another draw off her cigarette, "but the possibility's there, and there are - certain elements - here who want to get rid of it, if you take my meaning."
It took him a moment, but once he had he felt something in his gut tighten. "They want to kill Lyds?" he asked, in disbelief.
"If you can't convince them you can keep her from being a danger to the Neitherworld, they're going to," Juno said, watching him carefully. "What's brewing in the Labyrinth and the Legendverse is no horseshit, B, and if it spills over here it could tear the Neitherworld apart."
She tossed something onto the desk in front of him - a dull silvery butterfly-knife about the size of his palm. He took it in one grimy hand, turning it over. "What's this for?"
"Worst-case scenario," Juno said flatly. "We've only got one living link to the Otherworld that's connected to this. If it gets to the Otherworld, you need to sever the connection."
Betelgeuse stared at the thing, truly horrible comprehension hitting him like a cinderblock to the chest. "They want me to-?"
"If it becomes necessary, yes."
He kept staring at the knife, unable to tear his eyes away. He'd be the first to admit he was a grade-A asshole, and if it were anyone else he wouldn't bat an eyelash, but…Lydia. Lyds. He tried to imagine using it on her, and actually shuddered.
"I had to fight to even give you the chance to try," Juno said, a little more gently. "You won't have an easy time getting her to trust you, but if you can-if you can keep it from reaching her - you won't need that."
"Can't we just kill the Williams kid?" he asked, finally looking back up at her. If it meant Lyds would be safe, he'd do it himself. Juno snorted.
"Don't even think about it, B," she said. "Sarah's outside our jurisdiction. You'd better hope nothing happens to her, because if it does the Goblin King will try to come get her back."
"You mean-?" he prompted, unable to believe it.
"He'd invade the Neitherworld for her. And yes, he could do it-the royals are right to be nervous about him." She crushed her cigarette out in her hubcap-sized ashtray. "Those two should never have met - it's our fault and I admit it. We weren't keeping a close enough watch on the Deetz girl, and we're paying for it now. You seem so obsessed with her, so you make sure she doesn't pay for it herself. That's not an official order, it's a personal one," she added. "If we do have to kill her it'll be a bad precedent. The Neitherworld isn't supposed to interfere like that out there, but we've never faced anything like this before."
Betelgeuse was not a creature much given to thinking about anything beyond himself, but he wasn't stupid. He could well imagine the consequences of this whole thing if it got out of hand, on a grand scale and a more…personal one. In all the bio-exorcisms he'd ever performed, he'd never actually killed anyone, because even he knew better than to break that rule. And Lydia…even at his most angry he'd never wished her dead, and he'd certainly never contemplated killing her.
"She won't believe me," he said at last. "Hell, I wouldn't believe me, and how am I supposed to do anything if she won't let me out?"
Juno waved an irritated hand. "If she really won't, I'll talk to her, but I'd rather not have to. I'm interfering enough as it is. I can't override your name curse, but if you can convince her she can trust you she'll do it herself." She gave him what was almost a glare. "You haven't done a single decent thing in your afterlife, so this is your chance to make up for it. And I swear if you ask what's in it for you I'll throw my desk at you - I've gone to bat for you too many times for you to ignore this. You owe me, and you owe her. If you hadn't been an idiot and tried to marry her, none of us would be in this kind of danger. You're also probably the only person in the Neitherworld who could do it, too," she admitted grudgingly. None of the bureaucracy liked to think about just how powerful he really was, because some things scared even the dead. In a way Juno - and the rest of them - were grateful he had no ambition whatsoever, because if he really wanted to he could give the royals a run for their money. "Now don't screw it up."
-p
"I was right," Lydia said, when she met Sarah before school the next morning. "B's already trying another tactic. I'm kind of insulted that he'd think I'd fall for it."
They were sitting on the fence that separated the boys' school from the girls'. It was a chilly golden morning, the air quite still without so much as a hint of a breeze, and their breath rose in frosty clouds.
"Well, he doesn't actually know a whole lot about you, does he?" Sarah said. Not like Jareth, she thought with a shiver - he was, in some ways, a little too perceptive for his comfort. It was her turn to be uneasy today - she'd found a huge snowy owl perched in the tree outside her window last night, and she hadn't forgotten Hoggle's warning - 'the owls are not what they seem'. She was pretty sure snowy owls didn't even live in this part of Connecticut. It was one more weird thing for her to worry about.
Lydia grimaced. "No, he doesn't, but I think he's trying to learn. He was asking a lot of question about the Labyrinth, too, until I told him to get lost, and what was even weirder was that he actually did it."
"What did you tell him?" Sarah asked, wincing.
"Not much. Just that the story was real. He said the Goblin King might be dangerous. I told him he was one to talk."
Sarah snorted. "God I hope those two never meet here. They'd either get along like a house on fire or go to war against each other."
"B's too lazy to go to war against anyone," Lydia said dryly. "He's pissy and vindictive, but if something was too much effort I don't think he'd bother."
Sarah shook her head. Jareth was the kind of person she could easily see pushing someone until they snapped, and this B sounded pretty crazy already. "You know," she said thoughtfully, "if you let B out, I wonder what would happen if we wished him away to the Labyrinth. I wonder if Jareth would be able to take him there - I wouldn't mind them meeting if they could fight it out there."
Now it was Lydia who shivered. "I don't think I want to try it," she said. "Beej would fight that - he wants out of the Neitherworld, but he wants to be here. I still don't know how powerful he actually is, but he saved the Maitlands, so he's got to be stronger than they are. That might really start a war."
The bell rang, cutting off further speculation, and they trudged into the building. In spite of herself, Sarah was morbidly curious as to what her English class would make of the first chapter of The Labyrinth, particularly Claire - assuming she'd even bothered to do the reading.
It turned out to be more interesting than she'd thought it would.
She'd expected Bertha and Prudence - especially Prudence - to actually think about it instead of just reading it, but even some of Claire's clique seemed to be genuinely into it. Apparently not all of them were as brainless as her, and one or two managed to even contribute to the discussion.
"Why would the girl wish her brother away in the first place?" Mrs. Scarpello asked, and Sarah wondered if she was reading off a preprinted list of questions. Probably.
"Who hasn't wished their little brother would disappear?" That was one of Claire's hangers-on - Tiffany, Sarah thought her name was, like the singer. That got a laugh from half the class, presumably those with younger siblings.
"And it's not like she'd expect anything to come of it," Sarah added. "I mean, who would?"
"Lydia, maybe," Claire giggled, and the teacher threw her a stern glance.
"Another little kid, maybe," Lydia said, glaring at her, "but not a teenager. People might believe In all kinds of things, but I don't think many sane people would actually expect goblins to invade their house just because they wished their little sibling away."
She glanced at Sarah, who gave her a small, wry smile.
"And what of Alexandra's sudden determination to take her younger brother back? To rescue him in spite of the danger?"
"Her parents would probably kill her if they came home and he was missing," Claire snorted.
Selfish motivation, Sarah thought. "Annoying as he is, he's still her little brother, and sometimes you don't realize how much you love something - or someone - until you don't have them anymore. She was the one who wished him away, so it was her job to get him back. No matter how dangerous the Labyrinth is. Was."
"She had to know the Goblin King was going to like, cheat, right?" Tiffany said, twirling a strand of dark hair around her finger. "I mean, he sounds like a real as - uh, jerk. But she went in anyway."
"Stupid," Claire muttered.
"Desperate," Lydia countered. "Brave. It would take a lot of guts to go in knowing the game was rigged."
"Besides," Sarah said, "you can manipulate the rules of almost anything without actually cheating. And it helps that he underestimates her. A lot."
"Why would he do that?" Bertha asked.
"Because she's a teenage girl," Sarah said, a little bitterly. "Look how few people in the real world take us seriously."
"Good point," Tiffany said. Claire glared at her. "What? It's true."
"What I want to know," Prudence said, flipping through the first chapter again, "is does it only work on children? Is there some kind of age cutoff?"
"I know who I'd wish away if there wasn't," Claire said sweetly, looking at Lydia, and Sarah paled.
"I think it's only children," she said hurriedly, trying to keep the panic out of her voice. "It says in the book that the goblins are children wished away by their brothers and sisters." She actually had no idea at all how that worked - if there really was an age cutoff. Or not.
"Yes, but what's the definition of a child?" Prudence persisted. "Anyone below the age of thirteen? Eighteen?"
"I think you're reading too much into it," Lydia said. "It's a fantasy, it doesn't have to follow normal rules."
Mercifully, the bell rang before Prudence could ask any more questions, and Sarah breathed an audible sigh of relief. There were eighteen chapters in the book-she somehow had to get through another seventeen days of this. At this rate she'd have a nervous breakdown by the time they were done.
Sarah decided to go home with Lydia after school, because they both had quite a bit of homework, and she was much too tense to be on her own.
Lydia made certain the curtains were drawn, shutting out the afternoon sunshine and eliminating whatever reflection the window might have cast. The pair sat on the floor, slightly cluttered with boxes, leaning against the foot of the bed.
"I bet you Claire tries it on someone," Sarah said. "I wish she'd break a leg or something and miss a few weeks of school."
The savagery in her voice made Lydia wonder if she wouldn't try to arrange that herself. "It has to be the exact words though, right? The 'right now' and everything?"
"I think so. I haven't exactly tested it or anything since then."
They somehow managed to sigh in unison, but before Lydia could reply there came,
Lyds. Lydia, I need to talk to you. You have to let me out.
Both girls twitched, though Lydia more so, because there was recognizable, unmistakable worry in Betelgeuse's voice. "What?" she said. "Why?"
It's important, Lyds. You and Sarah both need to hear it. Let me out-I promise I'll behave. This is fucking serious.
Lydia swallowed. Nothing Betelgeuse had ever done had managed to scare her as much as his tone now did. Even he couldn't be faking it, either - there was a sincerity in it that couldn't be manufactured by anyone. If something was worrying him, it had to be bad.
"I'm going to regret this," she muttered. "Betelgeuse."
"What are you doing?" Sarah whispered. "Are you sure this is a good idea?"
"No," Lydia whispered back. "Betelgeuse."
Sarah was already looking around the room, close to panicked, her back pressed hard against the bed. Lydia herself drew a long breath, trying and failing to steady her nerves.
"Betelgeuse."
She didn't know how the hell he did it - one moment he wasn't there, the next he was, before either of them could even blink. Sarah stifled a little shriek, but Lydia could only stare. "You look like hell, Beej," she said.
He did, too. She hadn't thought ghosts could lose weight, but he'd lost far too much-his striped suit hung on him like a tent, and his cheeks were so hollow his cheekbones stood out like razors. His hair was still the same, at least, a wild blonde halo with a slight chlorine-green tint to it. The moss was still there, too, all along his hairline, but the poison-green eyes in his shadowed sockets seemed more than alive.
"Thanks a lot, Babes," he snorted, sitting on the rug facing them. Sarah couldn't take her horrified eyes off him, but he himself only looked at Lydia. "We've got trouble, Lyds. Juno called me in today." He leaned forward, elbows rested on his knees. "She said there's war starting between the Labyrinth and some other place, and the royals in the Neitherworld're worried about it spilling over our way, through you." His eyes flicked to Sarah a moment, who sat frozen, then back to Lydia. "They want to kill you, Lyds."
Lydia stared at him, her dark eyes huge. "What? Why? And - when?" She looked around, searching for ghostly assassins in the shadowy corners.
"She's the Goblin King's link to your world, and you're the link to ours," he said, nodding at Sarah. "I'm not going to let them do it, Babes," he added. "Juno said if I can watch over you they'll leave you alone, but you have to trust me. You have to."
It seemed to Lydia that the bottom had suddenly dropped out of the world. Kill her - kill her?
"Kill me?" she whispered. Betelgeuse's intense urgency was such that she didn't doubt he was telling the truth. He wouldn't make up something like that, not when he knew she could cross-check it through the Maitlands. All the blood had drained from her face, leaving her half-dizzy, and she rested her head against her knees.
"I won't let them, Lyds," he said again. "I won't. But you have to work with me - if I say I need out, you have to let me out."
This was…too damn much. Betelgeuse sounded more serious than she would have thought possible-it was yet another personality shift, and she didn't know if she could handle it. A year ago she'd have gladly died and followed Barbara and Adam, but a lot had changed since then. And Beej - well, he had a vested interest in keeping her alive, didn't he? His selfishness, oddly, would probably make him actually work to make sure nothing killed her. Oh, the irony.
"What do you mean, war?" Sarah asked. "Did Jareth finally piss someone off too much?"
Betelgeuse shrugged. "I only know what Juno told me," he said. "Which wasn't much. The Labyrinth and the Legendverse, whatever the hell that is. Dunno why she thinks you'd be involved, even if you have been there."
Lydia looked at her friend, who was white to the lips, looking nearly as horrified as she herself felt. She didn't need telepathy to know what Sarah was thinking - the sudden appearance of the books made much more sense now.
"He's looking for a way in, isn't he?" she asked softly.
"I think he must be," Sarah said unevenly. "He knows I'd never call him out, so he's trying to find someone else who will. I just…if he's going to war, I don't know what he'd want with me. I'm just a human."
"Maybe you're not." Betelgeuse's green eyes regarded her appraisingly. "Has anyone else ever gone in that place and gotten out?"
Sarah bit her lip so hard she almost drew blood. "I don't think so," she said, though now she didn't sound as sure as she had when she'd told Lydia her story. "I've been wondering…I don't know how the book could have been written if nobody else ever had. It's an old book, though - maybe, if someone else did, they've got to be either dead or really, really old by now."
"Things like that…leave marks," he said at last. "There's a reason we're not supposed to let breathers into the Neitherworld. If you beat this Jareth guy, it may be you took some of his power away, and he wants it back."
Sarah shuddered, drawing her legs up and resting her chin on her knees. She looked…well, fourteen again, a girl not much more than a child facing the terrible unknown with only thirteen hours to beat it. "Maybe that's why he wanted me to stay with him so badly," she said suddenly, and Lydia's eyebrows shot up - she hadn't heard that part of the story. "He seemed awfully set on trying to make me stay, but I said-" She paused, something obviously occurring to her. "I said he had no power over me."
Betelgeuse snorted. "Then maybe it was more than his ego that took a hit," he said. "I dunno how the rules work in that Labyrinth, but maybe you made him weaker when you beat him at his own game."
Sarah shuddered again, and Lydia laid a hand on her shoulder, though she knew there was nothing she could say. "Can you - would you look after Sarah, too?" she asked, almost hesitantly. He shook his head.
"Juno says she's out of our jurisdiction. I'm not sure what that means, except she's in no danger of being killed by the royals. They can't."
Lydia breathed a sigh of semi-relief. Whatever else Sarah might have to worry about, that wasn't part of it. "How can you keep them from killing me, though?" she asked. She didn't like the sound of 'royals', given the sort of power it implied. Betelgeuse gave her a crooked grin.
"Ghost with the Most, Babes, remember? Any've them try to fuck with you, they'll be looking for their teeth. In their own ass."
That brought a shadow of a smile to Lydia's face, but it was very brief. So he was probably telling the truth when he said he'd look after her, but could she actually trust him? Especially after what he'd done to her in her sleep…she really, really hoped her face wasn't as red as it felt; she rested her forehead against her knees, just in case.
One cold dead hand touched hers, and she jumped, her eyes peering at him over the plaid fabric of her skirted knees.
"You can trust me, Lyds," he said, apparently reading her mind. "I'm not…gonna do that."
That reassurance didn't do anything for her flaming face, any more than the odd and not unpleasant feel of his hand on hers. "This is just too much," she said, by way of distraction. "Finding out the rulers of the afterlife want to kill me…jeeze, I don't know how the hell to take it."
"Neither do I," he admitted. "But they'd have to go through me first, and there's not many in the Neitherworld stupid enough to cross me."
"I…should probably go," Sarah said, and Lydia wondered if she wanted to talk to her friends from the Labyrinth. "I'll see you at school tomorrow, okay?" She was still far too pale, her eyes wide and filled with a mixture of shock, fear, and something very much like anger. If that Goblin King though he was going after a pushover, Lydia thought dimly, he was likely in for a very big surprise.
"Okay," she said. "Be careful."
Sarah cast a glance at Betelgeuse, still sitting like a slightly malevolent striped spider. "You too," she said, and when she left she shut the door very carefully behind her.
When she'd gone, Lydia tried to draw a deep breath, but only managed to shiver. Now that the initial shock was wearing off, she too was getting decidedly pissed off. "This is your fault, isn't it?" she asked, now half glaring at him. "If you hadn't tried to marry me, there wouldn't be this…link, whatever it is."
He had the grace to look almost something like guilty. "It'd still be there, just not…this bad. Even if it wasn't for me, you'd still have the link through the Maitlands, but it wouldn't be so strong." Again came that crooked smile, though there wasn't much that might be called humor in it; it was fey, feral, and admittedly downright scary. "Nobody fucks with my Lyds, okay? I don't care if the Prince himself comes after you - you're not gonna die."
"You'd be kind of hosed if I did, wouldn't you?" she said, still peering at him. In the dim light her eyes were black, as black as the curtain of her hair, twin black holes that neither admitted or released light.
"I would," he said quietly, "but that's not why I'm here." His own eyes…burned, cold green fire, and she found herself hoping she never wound up on the receiving end of his glare. She found she didn't want to ask him just why he was here - it was probably, she thought, something she didn't want to know. He was close enough for her to smell him, that peculiar damp earth/moldering leaves/ancient pine scent that seemed so odd coming from a man who was literally a corpse.
"So how does this work?" she asked after a moment, unable to stand the silence. "You just…shadow me everywhere I go?" God, that would be too creepy, knowing that everywhere she went a perverted poltergeist would be watching her, even if he had promised to behave.
"Kinda, yeah. That's sort of what watching you means. Juno said the royals were gonna give me a chance to make sure nothing could use you even if you're alive, but I don't trust 'em. Just think of me as a bodyguard."
The idea was so ridiculous she had to laugh, though there was no more humor in it than there had been in his smile. "Okay," she said. "But no watching me in the shower."
"Wouldn't dream of it, Babes," he said, with a grin that was only a little wicked. "Well, I might, but I wouldn't do it. I promised I'd behave, remember?"
"You did," she said, not trusting that promise to last in the slightest. "How long is this going to go on for?"
He shrugged. "I have no idea. I don't think even Juno knows. Until this war is over, probably, however the hell long that will take. Until then you've got yourself a personal poltergeist."
Great, she thought, wondering what kind of hell he'd start raising whenever he got bored. Winter River probably wouldn't remain peaceful for very long. "You don't have to stick with me the whole time though, right? I mean, can you go off and do your own thing?"
"Sure, if I wanted to," he said, in a tone that implied he had no intention of doing so at all. She didn't trust that to last, either.
Finally she stood, dusting off her skirt and looking down at him. "You might want to now, then," she said. "I've got a lot of homework and you'll probably be bored out of your mind."
"Part of it involves that book, doesn't it?" he said, rising with her. She knew he wasn't actually terribly tall, but compared to her he was; the top of her head barely came up to his chin. "Either read some of it to me, or let me read it. I want to know what the hell we're up against, and your buddy seems way too jumpy to talk about it much."
Lydia tried not to roll her eyes. She had a feeling she wasn't going to get near as much done tonight as she ought to. "Okay," she muttered, digging the little red book out of her backpack. When she turned back she discovered he'd flopped on her bed, leaning back against the headboard and trying not to grin. Now she did roll her eyes - he might have promised to behave himself, but he was still a pervert, and she was somehow going to have to learn to deal with the more innocent aspects of that, if there even was such a thing as innocent perversion. So long as he didn't actually try anything, she really couldn't object. Too much.
"We've already done the first chapter," she said resignedly, sitting next to him with rather ill grace and a glare that told him he'd better keep his hands to himself. "Basically it's Alexandra wishing her brother away and the Goblin King giving her thirteen hours to solve the Labyrinth to get him back. I think chapter two is when she actually sees the Labyrinth itself."
She clicked on her reading lamp and opened the book, trying to ignore the fact that there was, you know, a dead guy sitting next to her. It was just weird, sitting so close to a creature that radiated the kind of chill he did - the Maitlands did too, of course, but either theirs wasn't nearly so pronounced, or she'd just gotten used to it in the last year.
"The ground was uneven, sloping and dusty-red, with only a few twisted and stunted trees, and before her loomed the outer wall of the Labyrinth, dark and forbidding - jeeze, what a run-on sentence. To one side was a little pond, green with scum and water-lilies, and beyond it was a gate, black as the wall itself and twice as high as her head.
"How can I solve this in thirteen hours, she thought, quailing at even the gate. The gates must be locked and barred, and I could never climb that stone. Huh," she said, mostly to herself. "No mention of Hoggle. Sarah said he was the one who told her how to get in."
"Maybe he wasn't alive then, if this book is so old," Betelgeuse pointed out. He was leaning in a little to see the page, and she had to resist the urge to elbow him. For all she knew he was just doing this on auto-pilot.
"Or maybe it's - I don't know, some kind of second-hand account? I wish we knew more about the author." She huffed an irritated sigh, flipping through the pages at random.
Betelgeuse looked at her, his expression the strangely thoughtful one she had a feeling she was going to learn to dread eventually. "Well, if she is dead, we can ask her ourselves."
A/N: We will see Jareth soon, I promise. This war is going to be pretty weird and rather nasty, but God help the first person who tries to fuck with Lydia. Beej might have lightened up on the creepo routine, but he's still Mister Possessive Poltergeist. Poor Sarah is worried for all the wrong reasons, though, as she'll soon find out.