Chapter Text
Like most people who jump, Lydia has second thoughts the moment her feet leave the roof tiles. Her mind goes into freefall just as her body does.
What did she just do?
Oh God, what the fuck did she just do?!
Jumped off the goddamn roof is what she just did, and for what? To make a point? To get back at her dad? She’s going to die. All the reasons she had for wanting that are unreachable now, forced aside by the overwhelming surge of adrenaline, replaced by the primal instinct screaming at her to stay alive. But there’s nothing she can do now, nothing but wait for the ground to reach her, it shouldn’t be-
Crack.
Thud.
Silence.
She isn’t falling anymore.
It’s a sickening feeling, being knocked loose from your body. Like your skin is beginning to detach from the flesh beneath, not quite fitting your form anymore. Lydia hates it, viscerally. And still panicked and desperate for an out, she blindly seeks to escape. She scrambles to her feet. She tears herself free, ripping away from her own bones.
She’s off the ground now. But also, she finds, still slumped against the birdbath.
There’s blood on the old stone. Blood in the water. Blood in her hair and running down her face. Into her eyes. They're still open, staring. Terrified. For an unblighted moment of silence, Lydia stares down at the broken girl she’s left on the lawn.
And then the world catches up.
They’re yelling up on the roof. Ghosts so close and yet unable to make it that bit closer, screaming for something she can’t process because she’s preoccupied with the sound the door makes when it hits the wall. With the sight of a man who, even from inside, heard her skull crack.
“Lydia- LYDIA! Oh God, call an ambulance, Delia, CALL AN AMBULANCE!”
This was what she wanted, wasn’t it? She wanted her dad to be sorry. So why does this make her sick? The frantic look in his eyes, the way he collapses to his knees beside her. She never imagined him having to deal with the immediate aftermath. She never imagined him hesitating to touch her, terrified of somehow making it worse, staring at the blood in her hair and running down her face and neck and soaking into black lace.
“Lydia. Lydia, please, I don’t know what to do, I don’t know- oh God-”
He’s noticed the way she’s staring. Delia stands a few feet away, phone to her ear, the colour drained from her face.
“I think she jumped off the roof,” she’s saying, her voice uncharacteristically flat. “She’s fifteen. There’s… a lot of blood.”
Horrified at the scene in front of her, the scene she caused, Lydia steps back, breath catching in her throat, forced out in shallow, cold gasps. They're still yelling up on the roof, something about how there must be a way.
"You can't leave the house! No ifs, ands, or buts about it!"
"Then you help her! You got in, you can get out!"
"But I-"
"She's just a kid! She's a child, and she's- Christ, help her!"
“Alright! Okay, I’ll go get her!”
There’s the sudden sound of movement behind the girl, and she spins on her heel to stare wide-eyed at a demon. He glances over her shoulder, reaching out to take her by the arm.
“C’mon, kid,” he says, far quieter than she would have ever thought him capable of. “You don’t need to see this.”
But she wrenches her arm away from him, shaking her head wildly. “No, no, I- I can't-”
They’re talking behind her about attempting CPR. She’s shaking violently.
“It’s over, you’re dead. That’s what you wanted, right?”
“I don’t know! I… I thought…”
She shrugs off another attempt to touch her, to shepherd her away from the sight she turns her back on him to see - her dad has bitten the bullet and moved her limp body to lie in the grass, Delia knelt beside him relaying the 911 operator’s instructions for chest compressions as she holds his jacket to her bloodied head.
“Dad,” she says quietly, watching the tears welling up in the man’s eyes. “Dad! I’m right here!”
“He can’t hear you-”
“I know! I know he can’t hear me, but… But I…”
There’s sirens in the distance now, growing louder. Her body jerks limply from the compressions but remains unresponsive, and why wouldn’t it? She’s not in it anymore. They’re trying desperately to bring her back and even though she knows it’s pointless she can’t tear her eyes away. A hand pats her shoulder.
“C’mon,” Beetlejuice tries again, raising his voice to be heard over the sirens, “there’s no point.”
She pushes him away again. The paramedics are arriving on the scene now, and she points to them.
“They- I… At least let me stay until they declare it. Please, just… Just so I know it’s really over.”
She knows that if he wanted to, he could take her out of the situation by force. Use some demon power, teleport her, even just grab her and go. And she half expects him to. But instead he nods, not meeting her eyes.
They watch in silence as a woman takes over from her father. Someone holds an oxygen mask over her body’s bloodied face. And in amongst the flurry of movement and paramedics calling to each other, Lydia tries to steady her breath. It's almost over, she tells herself. Any second now they'll call it, and that will be that. What happens after is another issue. She just tries to focus herself on waiting for the end.
Any second now, she thinks as she watches the continued attempts at CPR. Any second.
There's a crack that she's pretty sure came from one of her ribs. She has to admire how hard the woman's trying, even if it's pointless. But she'll give up soon. She'll have to. Any second now, she'll be declared dead. The thought makes her sick, but it's unavoidable. She shuts her eyes, waiting to hear it.
Any second-
"We have a pulse!"
Lydia’s eyes snap open, her body going rigid. After a moment, she manages to point to what she thought was her corpse, the body that’s now being loaded into the ambulance. Though it’s weak, she could’ve sworn she saw its chest move.
“Why am I breathing?” she asks, turning to the demon beside her. “Beetlejuice, why am I breathing?!”
But he doesn’t have an answer - he looks just as shocked as she does, joining her for a moment in staring after the unconscious girl before turning his head towards the roof to share a confused, panicked look with the Maitlands. Lydia’s hand drops to her side.
“...Now what?” she mumbles.
“Huh?”
“What am I supposed to do now?”
Her dad has climbed into the ambulance with her body, Delia rushing to her car to follow them. She looks from them to Beetlejuice, from the Maitlands on the roof to the blood in the birdbath. The sirens are screaming in her ears again. They’re leaving now, she’s leaving. Or a part of her is.
She doesn’t stop to think. She takes off after it.
Charging down the lawn to the road, she barely hears Beetlejuice over the sirens. He’s calling after her, yelling that this won’t work, she can’t leave. But as they keep running his protests fade as the truth becomes obvious; yes, she
can
leave, because somehow she
isn’t
dead.