I do not own That 70s Show. Nor do I own the characters. I only own my O.C.
Hope you enjoy it.
"You are in my blood. I can't help it. We can't be anywhere except together."
– Francesa Lia Block
The curly-haired teen growled, taking another drag of his cancer-stick, awaiting the calm that usually came with it, his left hand clenched into a fist.
The usual smoke-filled peace didn't come. He lost his Zen.
Agitation still itched in his blood stream and he couldn't stop himself from throwing down his last precious cigarette and slamming his clenched fist into a nearby tree. He let out a scream, primal and raw, banging his flesh against the bark, over and over again.
It was Fez that had started this. The little foreign boy just couldn't be left alone without some consequences. However, it was Eric, his so-called best friend that had let it happen. The Glory Days, he called it. He knew how Hyde felt. And had somehow forgotten.
Home Movies… Mrs. Forman just couldn't resist taping Eric's childhood moments, most of them filled with mini-version Kelso, Donna, Eric and Hyde. That's what Fez had found in the corner of the basement, abandoned and dusty. Forgotten memories, meant to stay that way, in Hyde's opinion.
The first couple of videos were alright: Eric's first birthday, his first steps – about twenty videos were dedicated to that shit. There was the school concerts, embarrassing and disastrous.
But there was one video, which Hyde just wish he could forget, he couldn't stand to watch.
The one with Blue…
Blue…
Laughing eyes, green button and blue marble.
Platinum Blonde vines atop her head, wild and long. Skinny legs and arms, pumping , covered in bruises and cuts.
Someone would have called her, his first love.
She had been his opposite, hyper and loud, constantly on the move, a smile, large and bright, never taking anything too serious, with a sense of justice that would have battled Batman's.
Himself being, Zen and quiet, brooding behind his sunglasses, serious and still, and mostly was the Villain.
She had been waving at the camera, grinning like a madman, high on life-helium, words bubbling fast from her mouth in French. Red screaming in the background "Learn to speak some god-damn English!" or "This is America!" Half her face was covered in icing from Forman's ten-year birthday cake. Hyde was curved-back on the bench beside her, marking at the wood with a pencil. His face was nearly covered by the Aviators, and his curled-afro large. He muttered something inaudible to the camera, and she laughed, her eyes squinted shut. Then something else, faint, muttered, muffled by what seems to be cake by the way pieces of marble-sweet flew forth. Blue leapt up and her dirty nails, marked in blue marker, reached out for the camera.
Then the film cut off; just like that she was gone.
Now Hyde stood there, with his palm bleeding, his cigarette on the ground, abandoned and snuffed. And his grief heavy on his still-slumping shoulders
Eric didn't know what to say. He had never seen his best friend like this.
He shook his head. No he had, and for the same reason too.
He took in Hyde's appearance. The curled-afro, the Aviators, the Led-Zeppelin Band-Tee. All the familiarity of these things vanished. Hyde became Steven once again.
He sighed softly and looked up at the grey sky, deciding it seemed fitting for the scene for Hyde's way. Grey like the teen's words and turning away from the warmth.
How he wished Donna was here. She knew how to deal with Hyde in such areas; Blue being her specialty.
It wasn't that he couldn't understand why Hyde was so hung up on her, it was the fact that even though they were best friends, Hyde hated when another man mentioned her name. Female voices were the only thing he could tolerate if/when Blue was brought up.
Blue…
He didn't remember much about her, just vague bruises and cuts, tangled blonde locks, green and blue, paint, wild, laughter, skinny, no shoes, and freckles.
However, she was Hyde's living laughter-candle, that much he remembered. Hyde would never let anyone forget. The laughter had gone when she had.
I'm sorry man. I didn't know. I didn't think… I didn't know she would be on the film. I told my mom to burn every tape with her in it. Eric clenched the words in his throat, and held onto them in his gut. Hyde didn't need to hear it. Ever since she left, it was an unspoken law, that anything with her existence attached to it, instead of being thrown out, would be burned, no one else could take a piece of her away from them.
Except for one thing: Hyde's Aviators. That was the only thing that he refused to let float into the flames. They had become a part of him, much as Blue had been a part of him.
"It had been so long… I had almost forgotten what she sounded like. It got harder and harder to … remember… her voice." Hyde mumbled as he leaned his forehead against a close tree. He could recall dreams where her face, lined but foggy, mouthed words, with her fingers gripping at his curls, but no sound came out.
"I want it to stop… I don't want to remember…" Broken and lost. Much like when he was twelve. ]
Eric sighed softly, recalling the Blue left.
Blue never talked about what happened at home. She was skinny and dirty and tangled limbs, brittle and small. Like most of the kids their age. Whenever she appeared at the Forman's, she sat with her eyes gulping down the food the moment it was placed in front of her. But didn't all kids?
She laughed; her parents were mentioned, she ended up silent and her smile frozen. But didn't all kids get embarrassed by their parents?
Her mother just didn't function anymore. She laid on the couch, soiled and dirty and winced at the loudest words. Her father crept into her bed at night, and she gritted her teeth in pain, as she laid beneath him.
Till a year later, no one knew. By then, police showed up in red and blue glows and she curled into the stretcher, frail and shrinking.
Hyde had been sleeping over at Forman's. He blamed himself mostly, because as it turned out, him and Blue were separated by a wooden fence, daily.
They should have known. But by then it was too late.