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It was almost three o'clock in the morning when Beetlejuice stumbled across Lydia sitting at the dining room table nursing a now-cooled cup of tea. She was staring blankly at the wall in front of her, not registering the demon walking right in front of her line of sight.
Beetlejuice had never seen her like this. Not when they met on the roof, not when she summoned him during the disastrous (hilarious to him) dinner party, not when they shared the house for three days, not when she stabbed him, not when they said goodbye that first time, and definitely not in the past six months since he decided to move back in.
Her clothes hung pathetically and limply off her frame, seeming much larger on her than they usually were. Her pale skin glowed unnaturally in the moonlight streaming in from the large windows behind her. Her hair, always tamed to the most unperfect degree, was a messy nest that she would never be caught dead in.
Concerned, Beetlejuice halted in his tracks. He had been on his way to spoil the milk in the fridge and turn Delia's block of tofu defrosting in the fridge into an actual block, but his BFFFF Forever needed him first.
Carefully sliding into the chair across from her, he sat as still as he could until Lydia's gaze drifted to him. She seemed to start out of whatever trance she was in and focused in on his face.
Sad purple started to leak into his hair, something Lydia would have normally caught on to, but she seemed so out of it that Beetlejuice decided to make the first move.
"Lyds...are you okay?"
It was like a waterfall had been released. Tears poured out of her eyes, streaking down her cheeks and dripping into her tea. Beetlejuice's eyebrows shot up in shock. Lydia had never cried. In fact, he wasn't even sure she could until now.
"Lydia...?"
"It's Dead Mom's birthday."
Oh. He should have known. He should have remembered.
While things had been getting better between Lydia, Charles, and Delia, there was still some lingering tension and mistrust. After all, a family doesn't heal just from one encounter with a demon from hell taking over your house and a demoness from hell trying to kill you all. Charles had been pushing therapy on Lydia every day since she admitted to nearly jumping off the roof, something that Lydia insisted she no longer felt the urge to do and therefore didn't need to see a "head doctor looking to make a quick buck off of me." And Delia never quite got the hint that the only crystals Lydia would ever want are crystal athames to gouge her eyes out when her ex-life coach got into her spiels again.
And so, even though Charles got better at discussing Emily Deetz, there was hesitance around today. Beetlejuice was an invisible witness to this exact topic last week. Lydia asked her father if they could make the drive to New York to visit Emily's grave. Talking to herself in her room to share stories with Emily was great and all, but Lydia wanted to see her mother on her birthday. Charles somewhat reluctantly shot her down, saying he had a business trip he couldn't miss. When Lydia desperately turned to Delia for help, she only reminded the girl that she didn't have her license...anymore.
"Fifty," Lydia sniffed. "Dead Mom would've been fifty this year. She never liked her birthday because she said it made her feel silly when all of the attention was on her, but she was excited about this one. 'Halfway done,' she would say every time it was brought up." A sob wracked out of her body, doubling her over. "I want my mom."
His friend was hurting...badly. Beetlejuice understood from his brief stint alive that the aching in his chest was sympathy...or was it empathy? He was still learning. Either way, Lydia hurt, so he hurt.
Phasing through the table, he ended up right in front of her. Tugging her close to him, Beetlejuice carefully laid her head on his shoulder and awkwardly patted her head.
"Hugs help, right?" Before she could answer, he nervously continued, "I know I'm not the best thing to hug 'cause I'm so cold but...I'm sorry Lyds. I know it's hard right now and all you're feeling is hollow and pain. And I know you miss her. And I know if she were here she'd tell me I have a great ass, but she'd also be so proud of you."
"You're just saying that," she mumbled from his stripped pajama-clad shoulder.
Snorting, he eased her up to look at him. "No, I'm not. You know I used to be a guide. Do you know how many newly-deads sometimes stuck around way longer than they should have just to see their family and friends continue to live their lives? Do you know how proud they always were? How happy to see them not being dragged down by them not being there anymore? I know it's a stupid breather saying that the deceased would want you to move on and be happy, but it really is true. I've never met a ghost who was mad that their family, even if they missed them, continued on." He paused and furrowed his brow. "Well, unless you discount jealous and toxic wives who watch their husbands get together with secretaries young enough to be their daughters."
That got a smile out of the goth teenager.
And then Lydia noticed his hair.
She sighed. "Beej, we've talked about this." She waved a hand to gesture to his ever-changing strands. "Just because I change moods doesn't mean you have to."
Tugging her in again, he squeezed her. "I know I don't. But you're my family. It's my job now."
They stayed at the table until the first rays of sunlight started peaking through the windows. Beetlejuice helped keep Lydia entertained through stupid parlor tricks, like heating her tea with tiny fireballs or releasing harmless baby sandworms into the house for Charles to find later.
By the time the sun rose up into the window, Lydia had fallen asleep facedown on the table. With a sad smile, Beetlejuice conjured the fuzziest blanket he could and levitated her to her bed.
As an afterthought, he put all of his concentration into possessing her dreams to give her a highlight reel of her greatest memories with her mother.
There would be no nightmares for Lydia Deetz today, real or imaginary.