Wow. Thank you so much for all the reviews. Seriously, it was awesome. I thought people had stopped reading this and I'm thrilled to know you haven't. Thanks again to luvcali who is always, always there when I'm about to go insane.
Just to let you know over at fanforum we are trying to put together a new list of zen fics. We need more people to add their choices so we can have a nice mix of stories. Go over to fanforum and visit the zennie thread. We don't bite. Well ... sometimes we do when we're talking about Danny. But we'll try and behave ourselves.
I own nothing, I'm just screwing with their lives for fun.
They sat in Hyde and Jackie's room, the five of them. Having so much to say to each other and no idea how to say it. So far they had managed to successfully avoid the topic of Red's health. It was obvious to all of them that Red didn't want to talk about it, and so the subject had been left alone. There were too many other things to talk about. But for some reason, they had no idea how to start.
Michelle sat on Kitty's lap and recited song after song for her new grandma. Kitty laughed and clapped with each verse of, "The Wheels On The Bus". Even Red, as hard as he tried to look annoyed, smiled at the beautiful little girl.
"Pretty cold in Duluth, isn't it?" Red asked Hyde. After all, when all else fails, talk about the weather.
"Pretty cold doesn't begin to describe it." Hyde scowled.
"Our super lake is frozen," nodded little Michelle, wide-eyed with sadness.
"Your what, sweetie?" asked Mrs. Forman.
"Our super lake."
"She means Lake Superior," Jackie smiled, running her hand absentmindedly up and down Hyde's leg. "You can see Lake Superior from her bedroom window."
"Oh, how fancy," Kitty grinned, nodding her approval to Hyde.
Hyde shrugged, nonchalantly. "Not really. Pretty much every house in Duluth has a view of the lake."
"Daddy says the lake's too damn big. It makes him crazy." Michelle reported to Red and Kitty with a grin that was an exact replica of Hyde's.
"Steven." Jackie scolded.
"What? It does make me crazy. We can't get to our own house because of all the morons trying to take a picture of a giant lake."
Jackie simply rolled her eyes and then laid her head down on Hyde's shoulder. It was then that Kitty realized since they had entered the hotel there had not been one second when Jackie and Hyde had not been touching each other. Not one. She stared in disbelief at the two adults who had replaced the children she loved so much.
"I can't believe how much you've both grown up." Mrs. Forman said, staring at Hyde and Jackie.
"I can't believe your damn sunglasses are finally gone." Red chuckled.
Hyde shifted nervously in his seat, not wanting to think about the moment he realized he had lost his old aviator shades. "Yeah, well, I got tired of it always being dark," he lied and moved his hand to circle Jackie's waist.
"Are you sure we can't take you out to eat? You've got to be hungry."
"No." Jackie hadn't meant to say it so quickly. But the word left her mouth before she could stop it. She smiled a weak apology to Kitty. But it wasn't necessary, there was nothing to apologize for. Kitty understood Jackie didn't want to risk running into anyone she knew.
"I think we'll just order a pizza or something." Hyde explained quietly.
"Pizza sounds good," Red added. "It's our treat."
"That's okay, Red. I got it."
"Steven, I'm paying for the pizza. Because then I get to pick what kind we get. Understood?"
"Understood."
Kitty smiled at the girl who had taken up residence on her lap. "Do you like pizza, Michelle?"
With a wide-eyed stare, the tiny girl nodded. "Uh-huh. But just cheese, no begetables."
"Just cheese, eh?" Red grinned. "How about sausage."
"What's sausage?" Michelle asked, squishing up her tiny nose at the sound of such a strange word.
"What's sausage?" Red glared at Hyde for raising a daughter who didn't know what sausage was. "In Wisconsin, sausage is like water, or bread."
"Or cheese." Kitty added quietly.
"What's Wisconsin?"
It wasn't supposed to be a sad question but it stopped the conversation that had taken so long to start. And now, they didn't know what they could talk about. Apparently, even the subject of pizza was going to be a difficult one.
After songs had been sung and stories had been read, Michelle had fallen asleep in Red's lap. The sight of his sleeping daughter in Red's arms made the whole trip worth it for Hyde.
"Red, I can put her in the bed," Hyde offered as he stood up to head towards Red.
"No, no," Red interrupted, "then she'll just wake up and start crying. And I don't enjoy the crying part of kids."
Kitty inwardly rolled her eyes at her husband. He was as transparent as a glass of Chardonnay. There was no way he was relinquishing his granddaughter.
Hyde seemed to understand and sat back down on one of the beds next to Jackie.
Kitty looked Hyde up and down; amazed at the difference in his appearance. Of course the hair was still the same, but almost everything else had changed. In her eyes, he looked so different from the boy she had kept in her memories all these years. "Steven, I can't get over how wonderful you look."
With a proud nod, Jackie grabbed hold of Hyde's bicep, possessively. "Steven boxes."
Noticing the shocked expression on Kitty's face, Hyde shrugged, nonchalantly, and Kitty couldn't tell if it was from modesty or embarrassment. "Turns out I have some anger issues," he stated, with his trademark smirk.
"Boxing's good for you." Red nodded in approval. "Take all your crap out on someone that's not your wife. That way you never go hungry."
"So, Steven, how do you like your job?" Kitty asked, hopefully, unsure if she was prying or just making conversation.
With a shrug, Hyde cleared his throat. "It's good, I guess. I mean, they let me buy a small percent of the place so now I'm not just a bartender, I'm one of the owners."
In Hyde's voice, Red was sure he heard a little embarrassment. Maybe Hyde felt being a bartender wasn't what Kitty and Red had in mind for their adopted son. "Steven, you work hard to support your family, and it's honest work. That's what's important."
Kitty smiled and gave Hyde a reassuring pat on the knee. "That's right. The world needs bartenders, too. A lot more than other silly jobs. Like, a lawyer, for example. How many times have I needed a lawyer in my life? Never. And how many times have I needed a bartender?"
"Kitty..." Red's voice trailed off but Kitty couldn't be stopped.
"Lots of times, that's how many."
Hyde couldn't help but crack a smile. God, he'd missed them so much.
There were so many things Jackie wanted to know, but she was careful to avoid leading the conversation towards Eric and Donna; not wanting to upset Kitty more than anyone else. "How's Laurie?" Nothing got Kitty's mind distracted like talking about her troublesome daughter.
"Well she is just wonderful. Wonderful," she added for emphasis. "She owns her own little place in Madison. It's one of those," she paused and wrinkled up her nose, "what do you call it, Red?"
Red sighed, clearly this wasn't the first time he'd done this. "A tanning salon."
"That's it," Kitty nodded. "Isn't that the craziest thing you've ever heard? People pay money to pretend to be in the sun." And there it was, the infamous Kitty Forman laugh. But just as quickly as it began, Kitty clasped a hand over her mouth and shot an apologetic look towards Michelle. The little girl, however, remained fast asleep.
"And Fez?" Hyde asked, thoughtfully. "Where's Fez?"
"Oh we are so proud of Fez," Kitty smiled her cat-ate-the-canary grin while Red put on a frown.
"I wouldn't go that far, Kitty."
But she ignored Red and kept going, full-steam ahead. "He went to school. And he didn't just go," she paused for emphasis, "he graduated. Can you believe that?"
"Wow," Jackie smiled, sincerely proud of their old friend. "What does he do?"
"Ooh, he's in publishing," Kitty added using her hands for dramatic flourish.
"Tell them what he publishes," Red smirked.
Her lips now pursed, Kitty cleared her throat and covered little Michelle's ears. "He publishes smutty novels. But they're the nice, fancy dirty books - with pretty pictures on the cover."
"I always thought Fez would end up in the skin business," Hyde chuckled. "But I kinda thought he'd be selling candy at the X-rated theatre."
"Well, he went to school in Minneapolis. And we were all sure he'd come back, but he stuck it out. You know, I think he just wanted to get out of Point Place after ..." Kitty stopped. She hadn't meant to bring the conversation there.
Hyde seemed to pull into himself a little and he nodded, "Yeah... after."
There seemed to be no way around it. All roads lead to Rome, so it would seem ... and all dialogue lead them back to this place. The place Hyde and Jackie had fled years ago.
If there was one thing Hyde wasn't, it was a coward. And skirting around the subject no one wanted to talk about but controlled all their minds felt cowardly. It had never mattered much to Hyde what other people thought of him. But he had to know that Red and Kitty believed him. So he took a leap.
"I just ... I just wanted you two to know," Hyde continued, making sure he looked Red square in the eye. "I didn't do any of the things they said I did."
Funny how he felt lighter after the words left his mouth. But the weight he had carried had know been transferred to the air around him as he waited for a response. A question had been laid at Red and Kitty's feet and all Hyde could do was hold his breath. He realized by asking the Formans to acknowledge what he said was true, they would have to also acknowledge that Eric had lied. But to Hyde, it was a question he had to ask. Because believing the Formans thought he was a liar was worse than knowing they thought he was.
The room seemed to stand still and Hyde was acutely aware of Jackie grabbing a tighter hold on his arm. There was no noise; just a sentence hanging in the air - waiting.
There was nothing Kitty could bring herself to say. Any response seemed like a betrayal to one of her boys. In her heart, she had always known Eric had lied. But if she didn't say it out loud, it didn't quite feel real. But Hyde deserved an answer, and she wanted to give him one. But when she opened her mouth, no sound would come out.
With a sigh that finally betrayed how physically and emotionally spent he was, Red looked up at Hyde and gave him a simple nod.
"We know, Steven."
Kitty and Red Forman made their drive home in almost complete silence. As if talking about the reunion that had just taken place would break the spell and they would come to realize it had all just been some figment of their imagination.
As they approached the last mile of their drive, Kitty reached across the car to take her husband's hand in hers and she said the only thing she could think of. "They're so different, Red."
"What did you expect, Kitty? It's been almost nine years."
Red turned the car onto Main Street skidding slightly on a patch of ice and Kitty sighed, so deep in thought she didn't even notice they almost hit a stop sign.
"I don't know what I expected, but it wasn't that. When two teenagers run away you certainly don't expect them to mature into what Jackie and Steven have become."
"I'm proud of them." Red stated, simply and honestly.
"Oh, Red." Kitty smiled at her husband.
"They were dealt a bad hand, Kitty. And they picked themselves up out of the mess and they made something with their lives. There's no way those two have had an easy life these past years."
"Isn't Michelle just the most beautiful little girl you've ever seen?" Kitty's eyes began to fill up with tears just thinking about the precious little girl who had been named after Michael Kelso. It seemed too cruel that Kitty finally got to meet her, only to say good-bye to her in a day.
"Why do they have to go back to Minnesota? They need to stay here. This is their home."
"Kitty," Red spoke as gently as he could, "this isn't their home anymore. And they took a big risk in coming here." Red couldn't help but feel guilty about the fact that they had come to see him, and though he would miss them when they left he would be satisfied in the thought that they were safe.
"It's just ... if Eric and Donna could just see how happy Steven and Jackie are ..."
"Stop right there, Kitty. This is something you can't fix. How many times have you tried to talk to Eric about this? It's over. Let it go." It seemed to Red they had this conversation almost daily and he was amazed that Kitty could hold onto hope even after all these years.
"I was thinking tonight when I was watching them ..." she paused unsure of how to say what she wanted to say without sounding cruel. "I was thinking about how different Steven and Jackie are from Eric and Donna."
There. It sounded awful, but they both knew it was the truth. Eric and Donna carried a heaviness in their hearts that had been caused by eight years of anger and bitterness. Their inability to forgive Hyde and Jackie was weighing them down and Kitty feared that one day, it would drown them.
Jackie had a light in her eyes when she looked at Hyde. And Hyde, the boy that Kitty was sure would end up alone and angry at the world, he held onto Jackie as if he needed to touch some part of her just to exist.
Kitty knew Eric and Donna loved each other, but she worried that they had so much hate in their hearts it left little room for much else. They had both spent so much time and energy over the years despising Jackie and Hyde that it had given them a hardness no one their age should have to bear.
When Kitty watched Hyde with Jackie she saw two people who existed on their love for each other and their love for their daughter. When she watched Eric with Donna she saw people who had hated for so long, hate had become what they existed for.
Jackie and Hyde lay together, arms and legs entwined, in their hotel room bed. It sometimes still amazed Hyde that he could only sleep when Jackie was in his arms. If he woke up and they had somehow managed to separate from each other, Hyde would run a tired hand across the bed until he found his tiny wife and then he would pull her back to him. And when he knew she was back in the safety of his hold on her, he would succumb to sleep again.
"I never really realized how much I missed Mrs. Forman until tonight." Jackie spoke the words quietly as she ran her fingers through the hair on Hyde's bare chest. The room glowed, dimly lit by the bathroom light left on in the distance and for the hundredth time Hyde turned his head towards the bed next to theirs' to look at the tiny girl that occupied it.
"Steven, she's fine."
"I know she's fine." Hyde said, pulling the blanket up around he and Jackie. "She really loved Red and Mrs. Forman, huh?"
Jackie smiled sadly, wishing her little girl could spend more time with the only grandparents she would ever have. "Yeah. I think she really did." Sleep was close to claiming Jackie, but she found herself searching Hyde's face in the near-dark room looking for an aswer. "Steven, are you glad we came back?"
"I guess ... I mean I'm glad we saw Red and Mrs. Forman. All the other crap in this town doesn't really matter. It hasn't mattered for years."
It seemed such a crazy thing to say, but it was true. They had so long ago forgiven Eric and Donna; and with that forgiveness came a peace. Jackie was still cursed with nightmares of a day she never remembered, but the nightmares left behind only fear. Never hate. And fear, she could handle.
"We did the right thing, Steven." Jackie whispered, scooting up a little as she placed her head on his pillow. Their faces only inches apart, she looked into his eyes and smiled tenderly at him. "Thank you."
"For what?" Hyde asked, running a hand through Jackie's long curls as his eyes started to drift closed.
"For making me feel safe."
At the word "safe" Hyde's eyes opened back up and he looked at the girl he held on to. "Jackie, you never need to be scared. You and Michelle ..." The words seemed so ridiculous in his head, but she needed to hear them. If for no other reason than it made him believe they were real. "To keep you two safe ... there's not a god damn thing I wouldn't do."
And there wasn't. Hyde only hoped he could get them out of Point Place without having to prove it to her.
Donna took a long drag off of her cigarette and held the smoke in, letting it fill her lungs. She kept her mouth closed and blew the smoke out her nose, getting a masochistic sense of pleasure from the burn it left behind. Pain reminded her she could still feel. She turned slightly to her right and stared at Eric's naked back. He always slept so far away from her. He used to sleep right next to her, practically on top of her.
He used to do a lot of things.
God, she missed him.
And Jackie. And Hyde. She hated herself for it, but she missed them every day.
It wasn't all his fault, she used to be different too. She wished she could remember the exact moment they had stopped doing the things they used to do to make each other smile. Like, when had he stopped holding her hand? And when had she stopped rubbing his leg as they rode in the car? If she knew the exact days these things had happened, maybe she could go back in time and fix things. There were so many things, where the hell would she start?
Would she start with the last time she saw Jackie and Hyde? What could she possibly do differently? She couldn't forgive them. She may have been able to if she wasn't haunted by the searing image of a bloodied and lifeless Kelso. In her highest moments she wondered what their lives would be like if they had just forgiven Jackie and Hyde. Would she still feel like she was suffocating with every breath she took? Would forgiveness lift the weight that pulled on her soul?
And then there were the days she allowed herself to imagine Kelso had never died. She loved those days. She could pretend that she and Eric had their dream jobs and had gone to college. Jackie and Hyde lived in Point Place, close enough so Kitty and Red still had them over for breakfast every morning. Fez and Kelso ran a candy store together and employed the best looking women in Point Place. They were all still best friends. Their lives were full and happy and she and Eric were more in love than they had ever been. But then, the real world would come back, and Donna was left feeling worse for having let herself pretend.
Sometimes she thought that she and Eric might as well have been in that van with Kelso because so much of them died that day. She'd lost three best friends and if she was honest with herself, she'd probably lost Eric in that moment too. They'd never been the same since that day. She had hoped marriage would bring them back to life and for a while it did. But after her miscarriage, Eric pulled back from her even further then before. She never even told him about the second baby. He wouldn't have been able to handle it.
She took one last drag on her cigarette and then tossed it into the ash tray on her night stand along with all the others. She grabbed the bottle of beer next to her and took one sip, then another. The fact that the beer was warm was inconsequential. She had stopped drinking beer just for the taste of it years ago. Now, she drank it just to make the days so faster. Again, she glanced at Eric's side of the bed, this time looking past his sleeping form to count the empty beer bottles on his night stand.
"Huh." she muttered to herself. Four beers. And that's just what he drank while they had lain in bed watching TV. She knew what she and Eric had become and she wondered if Jackie and Hyde had done any better.
She wondered if Jackie and Hyde were married or if they were even still together. She wondered where the hell they were. She wondered if they hated her and Eric. And if they did, did it eat away at them like it had eaten away at her. The anger and the hatred filled the hole in her heart. The hole where Eric used to be, and Kelso, and Jackie, and Hyde. The hole was so big, she needed an enormous amount of hate to fill it up. And Donna was terrified that if she ever let go of the hatred, the emptiness in her heart would be too much for her to stand. So she kept the hatred ... it was just better that way. Better to have a heart full of pain, then a heart full of emptiness.
So there they lay. The remains of a love. The remains of two lives. Two people unable to forgive, unable to forget.
She wondered if Hyde slept so far away from Jackie.
A shirtless rock lifter to anyone who reviews ;)
Sorry. Guess you had to be there. We're naughty girls over at fanforum
Oh and if you're only going to review to tell me how mean I am to E/D, please don't. I'm already aware of that. But there is a purpose to it, I swear.
