I wasn't going to update until this Friday, but the response has been so great, and this weekend is going to be a bitch, so I'm updating now instead.

Thanks for the reviews; I'm really happy that you guys are digging this. I think that this may become my favorite thing I've written thus far. A lot of work is going into this, and I'm really happy that you guys are responding so well to it! Please keep reviewing!

Just as a note, I'm taking a lot of liberties with the actual episode.

This chapter is transitional. Jackie's fairy tale adventure has only just begun, as has Hyde and Donna's quest for redemption.


"The King's daughter shall, in her fourteenth year, be wounded by a spindle and fall down dead." –Briar Rose.

Fez and Kitty were already at the hospital when the gang arrived with the ambulance. The EMTS took Jackie directly into the emergency room without stopping. Red walked up to Kitty and embraced her into a bear hug. Fez walked up to Bob, Donna and Randy.

"I called Kelso." He told them. "He's on his way."

"Good." Donna said her heart pounding.

Fez looked around. "Where's Hyde?"

"Red made him walk back." Randy told him.

Fez couldn't help but laugh. "Good burn."

Donna burst into tears and hugged Fez, who hugged her back without even trying to grope her.


Jackie sat down on the ground, feeling helpless. "Okay, think, Jackie." She said aloud.

"What do you need to remember?" Part of her knew that it had something do with the prince.

"I'm supposed to remember him right?"

Silence.

"Because I know him right?"

More silence.

"Because he's my prince right? But something… something tore us apart."

Jackie waited for an answer. "Are you even listening to me?" She asked.

Silence.


"How are you doing?" Randy asked, sitting next to Donna and putting his arm around her.

She snapped at him. "How do you think I'm doing?" She threw his arm off and stood up.

"Uh… can I do anything?" It was clear that Randy was worried about her.

Donna turned around to face him. "Leave."

Randy stood up. "Uh, okay, you need to be with your friends…call me tomorrow?"

Donna looked over his shoulder at the group. She took a deep breath. "We need to talk." She took his hand and led him out the waiting room door and into the hallway.

"Look, Randy, you're a really nice guy, and you've been really sweet these past few months, and well, you saved Jackie's life last night."

"But?" Randy pressed.

"But I can't… I was so caught up in you that I didn't think about anyone else except me. I've been really selfish lately, and I just… I can't do this anymore."

She watched as Randy took in a deep breath. "Are you sure?" He asked.

Donna nodded. "I am."

Randy smiled sadly. "Hug?" He asked, holding out his arms.

Donna let herself be hugged by Randy. He whispered in her ear. "She'll be okay."

Donna gulped and thanked him, but in the back of her mind, she wondered if okay was going to be good enough. She watched as Randy walked out of the hallway doors and out of her life before going back into the waiting room where she sat next to her dad.

"Don't you have a shift sweetie?"

Donna had forgotten all about her shift, and it was too late to call in and get a replacement. She was going to have to go into work.

"Crap."


The house was dark when Hyde finally got back to the Forman's house. He didn't notice that both cars were gone, or the note on the kitchen table as he passed by them to go down into the basement. All he wanted to do was sleep. He took his clothes off quickly and changed into his sweatpants before passing out onto his cot and into a dream filled sleep.

"If she dies…"

"Did you push her?"

"She could die…"

"A foot in the ass will be the least of your worries."

Hyde woke up two hours later, Donna's screams echoing into his head. The fog that had entranced Hyde was now lifted, but the uneasy feeling he had, it was still there. He chalked it up to having a hang over. He turned on his stereo to hear Donna's voice.

"I know the next song isn't what I usually play, but it's a dedication to my own best friend. Jackie, I'm praying for you…" ABBA's Dancing Queen started playing.

"Jackie, give me your hand!"

The uneasy feeling returned. What the hell had happened last night?


Jackie stared at the clearing where the small house had been. The path she had taken kept winding back to this spot. A small part of Jackie hoped that the house, and its inhabitant would reappear, but they never did. She had never felt so defeated in her life.

Jackie clutched her knees to her chest and sobbed. "I don't want to be alone anymore." She said through her tears. "I want my prince back." She looked up. "I'll give anything."


When Hyde woke up, Donna's voice had been replaced by Krazy Karl. Hyde glanced at the clock and saw that it was nearly noon. He had slept half the day away, which wasn't an unnatural occurance, but he was surprised someone hadn't come to wake him up. Hyde swallowed a couple aspirin with some water and threw on his usual tee shirt and jeans ensemble. He looked for his shades but couldn't find them. Come to think of it, he didn't have them on when he came home last night either. Mrs. Forman's ring, Fez, and now his shades, the woods took everything.

He expected to see his friends already in the basement, watching TV or listening to music. He'd take Jackie aside and tell her that he was sorry for his behavior last night, and she'd smile and everything would be, okay.

Well, maybe not okay, but at least he wouldn't have this strange sense of guilt on his shoulders.

Instead, he was greeted with silence. Confused, Hyde headed upstairs where he saw that no one was in the Kitchen.

"Mrs. Forman?" He called through the door that separated the kitchen from the living room.

Hyde shrugged, maybe they were outside. As he walked to the patio door, he saw a piece of paper on the table. Hyde picked it up with the same sense of trepidation one picks up a dead rat.

"Steven,

We're at the hospital, come when you can."

Love,

Kitty and Red.

The note on the table confused Hyde. Why were they at the hospital?

Hyde tried to remember the night before. He had been arguing with Jackie, and then he had been sitting on a rock while Donna and Randy had gone off to be alone. But then Donna had come back and she was different, she was scared. Hyde had never seen Donna scared. He hazily remembered Fez and Bob returning. Everyone was running, scared. Randy… Randy hadn't returned.

Had Randy gotten hurt somehow? The note had said to join them at the hospital. Hyde grabbed his keys and drove to the hospital. He walked up to the front desk.

"Randy Pearson?"

The nurse stood up and told Hyde that she would be right back. A few minutes later, she returned, shaking her head. "There's no patient by that name."

What? Hyde blinked. "Check again."

"Do you know when the patient was admitted? There's a good chance that the file just hasn't come down yet."

"I think it was two hours ago." Hyde wasn't positive, but it seemed right.

"Oh." The nurse frowned. "Then I'm sorry, but there's no patient here by that name."

What the hell?


After an hour of crying, begging and pleading with no one, Jackie stood up. "Okay, I've had enough of this!" She yelled. "If you're not going to bring my prince to me, I'm going to go find him!" He was probably in the clutches of some evil witch right now.

"Oh, if she lays a hand on him, I'll make her wish she was never born!" She yelled, marching into the woods.


Hyde didn't notice Kelso run past him towards the stairs as he tried to rack his brain for a reason as to why the nurse couldn't find locate Randy. Part of him was beginning to wonder if Randy wasn't the one who had gotten hurt.

Donna had been fine, angry and scared, but fine. Fez had been okay. Wait, he remembered that Randy had walked past him later with Bob, Red. There had been a stretcher…

"We were told there was a drowning victim?"

"She could die, Hyde."

Wait, she? He could now vividly remember Donna saying she. But, that couldn't be right. There was no other she with them, except for Jackie, but she had gone home without them.

She had gone home without them. She had gone home without them. She had gone home without them.It became a mantra inside Hyde's head. He had been standing on the log and he had told her to take his hand but she had refused, and then… she had just walked off.

But something about the memory didn't feel right. He felt like there was a huge chunk missing. The odd feeling he had last night was coming back full force.

Hyde made his way back to the nurse's station.

"I checked again, and there's still no Randy Pearson."

Hyde nodded. "Uh, I think I might have gotten the wrong name."

The nurse stood up from her chair and waited.

With a deep breath, both to calm down and to convince himself that he was making a mistake, he said her name. "Jackie Burkhart."

The nurse who had been sitting across from them perked up. "Isn't that the girl who drowned?" She said, standing up and walking towards them.

"What do you mean drowned?" Hyde blurted out.

"Hit her head on a rock too, poor thing might never wake up."

"Wake up? What the hell are you talking about?" Hyde yelled.

"The orderlies have started calling her sleeping beauty." The nurse continued to say.

Hyde didn't listen to the nurses as he took off. He wasn't sure where he was going, but he knew that eventually, he'd find either the Formans or one of his friends.


It had been Fez who had filled Kelso in on what happened. They watched as the color drained from Kelso's face.

"So Hyde pushed her in?"

Kitty shook her head. "No, it was an accident." She seemed to be trying to convince herself as much as him.


"Steven!" Jackie yelled through the darkness. "Answer me!" The only answer she got was the sound of a raven cawing.

"I am not scared." Jackie said defiantly. "I'm going to find Steven if it's the last thing I do."

"It's hopeless." The voice finally spoke again.

"No, it's not. I can find him." She yelled back.

"Do you even know why you're here?" The voice asked, sounding much kinder now.

Jackie stopped in her tracks. "Well, no." She admitted.

"You're here because of him. Do you really want to rescue someone who put you here?"

"It was a mistake." She said, not feeling very sure. "I have to find him." Jackie said, strengthening her resolve.


"Give me my M&MS you son of a bitch!" Fez hit the vending machine for a third time. He was beginning to understand why Hyde liked to hit so much.

"Fez!"

Fez turned to see Hyde running towards him. 'Speak of the devil' Fez thought to himself.

"Well, look who finally sobered up." Fez crossed his arms and glared at Hyde.

"Fez, what's going on?"

"You don't know?"

Hyde shook his head. "No, the nurse said something about drowning and coma and well, to be honest, I have no idea what's going on right now."

Fez knew he couldn't be the one to tell him, simply because he wasn't sure himself.

"What happened to Jackie man?" Hyde asked the worry clear in his voice.

"I think we were hoping you'd tell us. You were there when it happened right?"

"When what happened?"

"Red figured it out, that she had fallen into the creek and since it had rained earlier…."

"Jackie didn't fall into the creek!" Hyde said. "She didn't fall into the creek!" He repeated it louder, causing Fez to wince. "She went home. This is… this is all wrong. You've got it all wrong."

"She drowned you fool! She's lucky to even be alive!" Fez shouted.

Hyde felt like he was going to be sick. He couldn't deal with this. Not now.

Fez sighed. "You're going to take off aren't you?"

Hyde didn't want to admit that was exactly what he was planning on doing. Fez rubbed his eyes in frustration with his friend. "You always do this. You always bail when things get too scary for you."

"Fez."

Fez held up his hand to keep Hyde from going any further. "If you walk away, you're going to regret it, maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon and for the rest of your life."

"Are you quoting Casablanca man?" Hyde asked incredulously.

Fez smiled through his heartbreak. "Is it working?"

"Fez, I need to go. I can't be here."

Fez felt like crying. "Go. Jackie doesn't need you here anyway." But it was too late, Hyde was already gone.


"You know, I thought we agreed that if I remembered Steven, I would you know, be home?"

"I don't remember making any such agreement." The voice sounded bored.

"But I remembered!" She shouted. "You told me to remember, and I did, so let me go!"

"What, exactly, did you remember?"

Jackie frowned. "Uh, I remember Steven!"

"Is that all?"

What else was there?


Hyde drove past the Welcome to Point Place sign and pulled over. He knew that the only way he could remember what had happened to Jackie is if he came back to the woods. Three Ravens sat on a tree branch, cawing in unison as Hyde walked towards them. They stared at him with rapt curiosity, as though they were trying to look into his soul.

"CAW!"

"CAW CAW!"

"CAW CAW CAW"

As Hyde went deeper into the forest, he worried that he wasn't in the right place until he saw a large plastic cup. Donna had been drinking out of a cup like that. Hyde walked over to it and picked it up. It still had a little bit of liquid left in it. He removed the lid and poured the coke onto the putrid smelling ground.

Hyde stood up quickly and fought the urge to gag. It smelled like rotten yeast. The memory of throwing up flashed in Hyde's mind. Glancing over, he saw one of the rims of what used to be his shades.

"Did you find Fez?" Hyde asked Donna as she past by him to run to the street.

She had turned to him, staring at him like he had grown two heads. He watched her blink rapidly in front of him. He couldn't stop her as she took his sunglasses off his face and threw them at the tree. He watched as the lenses shattered into a thousand pieces against the tree.

"What the fuck, Donna?"

Hyde dropped the rims and took a deep breath. The sunglasses could be replaced. Hyde walked towards the creek. Each footstep he took reminded of the night before. He had called Jackie annoying, had laughed at her, said she was bitchy. Soon, Hyde reached his destination. He stood by the log and watched the rushing creek. Even though the rain had stopped, the creek was still full and moving fast. As he walked with the current, he had no trouble imagining Jackie as she tried desperately to stay above the water, but he knew, as tiny as she was, there was no way she could have. He saw the blood on the large rock, the pieces of her sweater that had washed up onto the bank.

And then he saw the mud. The indentation of her body, the footprints of their friends as they tried helplessly to save her, and while all of this was going on. He had been laughing. He had said it was peaceful without her around. He had ignored Donna as she pleaded with him to sober up, to realize what was happening.

"FUCK!" Hyde yelled as loud as he could.

"I take it you remember what happened."

Hyde turned around to see Red.

"Red!" Hyde jumped back, shocked.

"I figured you'd be here." Red told him. "When Fez said you were gone, I knew there was only one place you could possibly be."

"I let her… I let her fall in and I didn't do anything. I didn't, She's in a coma and it's because of me." Hyde paused and looked at Red. "Isn't this the part where you tell me it wasn't my fault?"

Red crossed his arms. "Sorry, can't do that." He uncrossed his arms and pointed to Hyde. "But, I will tell you this much. You are going to tell me everything you remember from last night, and then you're going to get into your car and I'm going to follow you home where you're going to take a shower and get some sleep, and then tomorrow morning, we're all going to go the hospital and you're going to look at that girl. You think you feel guilt now? Oh, it hasn't even begun."


The woods were silent as Jackie ventured deeper in. There was no cawing of crows, no hooting of owls, not even the wolves were howling. Everything was dead still as she stepped over the dead thicket. Jackie ignored her pounding heart and the urge to run away. She had come this far, she had to keep going.

If only she knew where.


"Can I come up?" Donna asked Fez as she pulled into the parking lot of his and Jackie's building.

Fez nodded. "Yeah."

The two walked in companionable silence up to the apartment.

"How does something like this happen?" Fez finally asked.

"Hmm?" Donna knew what Fez meant, but she still needed him to elaborate further.

"Why is it that she always gets hurt but Hyde…? Hyde gets off? How is that fair?" He spouted as they entered the apartment.

"It's not fair." Donna replied as she walked to the kitchen for a beer. When she opened the fridge though, the memory of Hyde throwing up in front of her made the beer repulsive. Instead, she grabbed two cokes and handed one to Fez who smiled gratefully at her before taking a swig and then slamming the bottle on the counter.

"He's supposed to protect her!" Fez yelled. "He was supposed to be the one who loved her, but instead he just let her…"

Donna nodded sadly and Fez plowed on. "Remember how he used to try to get Kelso get caught cheating? Or how when her mom left he let her stay with him?"

Donna remembered. She remembered every last moment of it, which is what made it that much harder to deal with. The person last night, that wasn't her friend. She didn't know who he was, which only brought her back to Fez's original question.

How does something like this happen?


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