Sleeping Beetle

A Beetlejuice fan fiction by Lady Norbert

A/N: For anyone wondering: Mr. Crumb, Beetlejuice's landlord referenced in the previous chapter, makes an appearance in the episode "Relatively Pesty" - the one with the ants-turned-aunts. He specifies in that episode that the lease says he can triple the rent for each additional relative who moves in with Beetlejuice.

The explanation for how a poltergeist is created is pure conjecture on my part. Basically, I'm just trying to clear up Beej's backstory, in order to make it fit with this prophecy/mythology that my weird little brain concocted. The fact that certain aspects of the cartoon help is just a delightful coincidence.

Chapter Three: The Destined Hero

They arrived punctually, a few days after his turn on the whimsical spook ride they had constructed, and the Fairy Godfather was pleased.

He knew they were confused. He would have been surprised if they were not, really. He hardly had a reputation for answering questions or explaining much of anything; it was not his way. That his unusual position afforded him opportunities to do things for his fellow Neitherworldians was chiefly a source of pleasure, and he certainly had no quarrel with the esteem and importance with which this led them to regard him. But his true purpose was something he kept quietly hidden, at least most of the time.

These two, however, were a different story.

When they were first admitted to his chamber, he took a moment to simply study them. Beetlejuice was as recognizable as ever, even though he no longer looked quite the same as he once did. The Godfather half wondered if even the poltergeist himself understood just how much he had been changed through knowing the human girl. He had softened, sloughed off his roughest edges, gentled like a stallion driven into the waiting arms of the sea. Oh, he was still conniving and greedy, to be sure; but there was enough of an alteration in his form and his nature that anyone who might have once disliked him could be persuaded to at least consider changing their minds.

Lydia, by comparison, was different from when he had first seen her - or when he had last seen her, for that matter. Like her husband, she had adopted a secondary appearance. In the Outerworld, she retained the face and figure which nature had bestowed upon her, looking every inch the ordinary young woman she most certainly wasn't. On visits to the Neitherworld, however, she took on a much more gaunt visage, with hollowed eyes and paler cheeks; her glossy black hair was the same, but thanks to the kindness of the prince, it was capped with a small jeweled diadem of silver. Where his relationship with her had left Beetlejuice calmer and more at ease, knowing him had strengthened Lydia, given her a confidence and an iron resolve that she would never have found on her own.

Oddly, and irrelevantly, and perhaps undeservedly, the Godfather found that he was rather proud of them both.

"Please, be seated," he said, gesturing to the chairs opposite his desk. "I'm glad you could spare me this meeting."

"If there's one thing I've learned over the years," said Lydia with a chuckle, as Beetlejuice drew out one of the chairs for her, "it's that an invitation like yours isn't wise to ignore."

"First, allow me to congratulate you not only on the marriage, but on your prior triumph over the Shadow Man," he said, ringing for one of his men to bring them some refreshment. "If I may be honest, your defeat of Erebos is directly responsible for my asking you here today."

"He ain't trying to come back, is he?" Beetlejuice interrupted.

"Not to my knowledge, and I do think I'd be aware of it before long. Ease your mind on that point," said the Godfather. "But the circumstances of his defeat have proven to me that a conjecture I have held for a long time regarding the pair of you is correct."

He watched them exchange glances, their puzzled expressions almost mirrored. "Meaning... what, exactly?"

"Well, it's hard to know precisely where to start telling you everything. But I suppose the easiest way to begin is with your curse, Beetlejuice."

"The one that won't let me say my own name. Vince said you told him something about that."

"Just so. To call it a curse is not technically accurate, because that implies the existence of what the writers of fairy stories might describe as a curse escape clause - that is, something which allows the curse to break," the Godfather clarified. "The kiss of a princess, for instance, resolved the magical dilemma in New Orleans. And make no mistake," he added, "it sounds ridiculous, I know. But there is a reason that Lady Delphine is so fond of that particular solution; it's usually effective."

"So it's not a curse?" Lydia asked.

"Not precisely. Beetlejuice, of course, came into being here in the Neitherworld many hundreds of years ago." He gave the poltergeist a searching look. "What do you remember of your life?"

"Not much." He shrugged. "I know I looked kinda like 'BJ' when I was alive, but that's about all I know."

"Truthfully, that's more than I expected. Few of us have any memories of our lives," said the Godfather. "When you died, you were born here into the Juice family, of course. They were not your relations in life; those who are born here as infants usually were orphaned young, and so are given new families to compensate for what they did not have in life. Such was the case with you."

"Well, that's interesting, I guess, but what's it got to do with the price of dung beetles in Zanzibar?"

"My boy... you are a poltergeist. A creature of emotion, as I explained to your brother and the prince." The Godfather leveled a sympathetic gaze at him. "There is no easy way to say this. Poltergeists are the spirits of people who have been brutally murdered. The anger at the injustice of your life's ending, combined with your painful loneliness over having had no family, caused you to manifest into a powerful spirit of chaos."

Lydia looked alarmed, and distraught at the idea of her beloved having had to endure such a thing, even though it was so many lifetimes ago. She reached over to put her hand on his arm, though Beetlejuice almost didn't seem to realize it; he was stunned silent by the revelation. "How do you even know that?" he managed after a moment. "Who was I?"

"The victim of some very unfortunate circumstances," the Godfather replied simply. "Your specific identity is unknown to me, but for our current purposes it matters very little. Suffice it to say that in the time when you lived, certain factions sought to either subjugate or exterminate certain other factions, and many innocent lives were caught in the crossfire and destroyed under horrific conditions. Not that modern humanity has necessarily learned much from these past mistakes," he added, somewhat bitterly.

Beetlejuice finally recovered sufficiently from his shock to take notice of Lydia's distress, and gave her fingers a slightly awkward squeeze. "It's okay, Lyds. All that matters is that I'm here now. But F.G., what's all my tragic backstory got to do with anything?"

"Well, you're hardly the first - or last - poltergeist to pass this way, of course," said the Godfather. He felt his patience starting to slip, and marshaled it back into place; after all, he was delivering quite a lot of exposition to the duo. "But you are an inordinately powerful one, so much so that you are a continuous source of alarm." Beetlejuice puffed up a bit at this. "Naturally, this caught the attention of a number of individuals, not least myself. And I thought there was a chance that you may actually prove to be more than you appeared. In the meantime, however, we could hardly risk you being summoned to the Outerworld by someone unable to keep any sort of control over you. So the curse, as you persist in calling it, was placed on you to prevent you from speaking your own name, lest you teach it to the wrong person."

"But I taught Lyds..."

"Yes. And when you did that, after being so long contented to ignore the mortal realm, I began to think that my theory was correct."

"So you mean, it's okay for me to know his name?" Lydia ventured.

"Quite. For the first time in centuries, a poltergeist had willingly placed itself more or less under the governance of a human. Names have power, you know, as I told Donny and the prince; and by allowing you to know his, Beetlejuice gave himself into your keeping, as it were." Beetlejuice looked vaguely affronted, albeit faintly amused as well. "He can refuse you nothing, as you may have observed."

"Yeah, it's come up once or twice." She chuckled.

"So my observation of the situation began. My next indication that my suppositions were accurate came with the revelation of the shrine."

"The shrine?"

"You've seen it yourself. Beetlejuice has a well-tended shrine to you inside his head."

"Oh, I forgot about that. How is Will, anyway?" she asked.

Beetlejuice shrugged. "So there's a shrine in there," he grumbled. "So what? She was my best friend. She's important."

"Best friends don't commonly get shrines, Beetlejuice, as I think you know perfectly well." The Fairy Godfather leveled a serious gaze at him, then turned it on Lydia and added, "But goddesses do."

He couldn't really blame Lydia for the blank expression in her eyes at this new idea. Clearly she was trying to absorb what he'd just implied, but he could appreciate the difficulty. "I'm not a goddess," she finally managed. "It's taken me a while to get used to being a princess, but a goddess? No way."

"If it comforts you at all, Lydia, you're correct. You are not, strictly speaking, a deity of any sort." The Godfather finished his tea.

"Then what does the shrine prove?"

"That I was on the right track. Beetlejuice knew, without knowing that he knew, that you were - and still are - of the utmost importance to him. The shrine was a manifestation of that. In truth, I suspect that the shrine may have predated your acquaintance, and lay dormant until he found the individual for whom it was intended."

"Wait a sec." A light bulb had appeared over Beetlejuice's head, and it suddenly lit up. "Does all this have to do with you offering us that contract? All that stuff about 'your life will belong to her, her death will belong to you'? Because that's where it sounds like you're going."

"You begin to understand." He couldn't help being pleased; this was quicker than he'd expected Beetlejuice to grasp the finer points. "I still had my doubts even when you approached me for assistance regarding Lydia's school function. But once I made the discovery concerning the allocation of your juice, and how a portion of it had come to reside permanently within her, I knew there could be no more question of what you both truly are."

"So what are we?" The Godfather hadn't anticipated an outburst from Lydia - Beetlejuice, yes, but not her. "What's the big mystery? And why do you know more about who and what we are than we do?" She looked eminently frustrated. "Sorry, sir. I don't mean to be disrespectful," she added, toning it down a little, "but this is all incredibly vague and weird and confusing."

"I can imagine that it must be. I apologize if it appears that I'm being less than forthcoming - I have had a great deal of time to grasp all of this, but of course everything is very new to your comprehension." He pushed his chair back from the desk and got to his feet. "But if you will indulge me a bit longer, I can answer those questions and more. Please, follow me to my library; I have something I wish to show you."