A/N: Thanks for the reviews :-)

(For disclaimer, etc. - see Chapter 1)

Chapter 12

Jackie wanted to move, she knew she needed too, but her arms and legs felt like they were bogged down in molasses, making it almost impossible. She had vague memories swimming around in her head, so misty that she wasn't even sure if they were memories at all or just strange dreams. The only clear picture she could make out was the face of a man she used to love like no other.

"Steven?" she said softly, unsure if she'd actually spoken at all until she heard him answer her.

"I'm here, Jackie" he told her, "It's cool, man, just open your eyes" he urged her, sounding almost worried.

It was then she realised that this was most definitely not a dream as her eyes opened wide as saucers and she saw the form of her ex-boyfriend hovering over her. Sitting bolt up right so fast she almost clocked him in the chin with her forehead, Jackie's eyes flitted around the lush apartment she was sat in. Her hands felt the leather of an expensive couch beneath her body, and her head swam some from her earlier passing out.

"This isn't real" she said, though she was pretty sure it had to be.

It didn't make much sense, how she had come to be here with Steven Hyde, the very man that had been invading her thoughts and dreams more than ever these past few weeks since Brittany had decided she needed to find her father. She wanted to find him, and yet it was Jackie that had done so, Jackie who wasn't sure she could ever stand to face him again, but here they were, and there wasn't a choice in the matter anymore.

"Jacks, seriously, don't" said Steven as she attempted to get off the couch, his hands on her arms feeling so familiar in the best and worst ways all at once.

"No, Steven!" she squeaked as she hopped to her feet looking mad, "You cannot just bring me here to your apartment and be all nice to me!" she complained, pointing an angry finger, "It's been twenty five years, Mister!"

"You think I don't know that?" he said with wide eyes, though she could not see them behind his tinted glasses they he still wore to this day, "You think I wasn't just as shocked as you were when my security brings a petrified little woman up here to call the cops about some bag snatcher and it turns out to be you?" he yelled, quite happy to get in her face as much as she was getting in his own.

The thought occurred somewhere in the middle of the yelling and posturing that this was just like old times in a lot of ways. There was only ever one outcome to one of their fights like this, it had always been the same. Either one of them walked out, an almost impossible task right now, or...

Suddenly, in a flurry of limbs, Jackie and the man formerly known as Hyde, were in each others arm, lips crashing together as they kissed like it was going out of style. It was as familiar as ever, took them both back to age seventeen or so, stood in the middle of the Foreman's basement, Point Place, Wisconsin. A fight about his not wanting to get serious or her ragging on his lifestyle, him looking at other girls, her getting too close to her ex, Kelso. The reason for the start of the argument was always forgotten then and was again now, however briefly, as the two people who had not laid eyes on each other in twenty five years renewed their passion with a fiery kiss.

It was a minute or so later that they parted, both with wide eyed and breathing heavily. This wasn't supposed to happen, they both realised it in the same moment, their arms dropping away from each others bodies fast. She turned her back on him, he looked the other way, neither sure what they were doing, what they were supposed to say. It was a situation neither of them ever really expected to find themselves in, especially not today, so suddenly, without any kind of warning.

"This is crazy!" said Jackie too loudly, the man formally known as Hyde had almost forgotten quite how loud she could be, "You're crazy!" she said, wheeling around to face him, pointing an angry finger, "I shouldn't even be here..." she waved her arms madly then reached for her purse as if to leave.

"Hey, man, you're the one in my apartment" he told her, equally as mad about this apparently, "not the other way around"

"I didn't know you were here!" she raved, "You were the last person I wanted to see!"

That stung a little, but Hyde didn't care to show it. He'd been playing this game almost his entire life and a lot of years with Jackie. He was Zen to this day, that had never changed, at least, the face he showed the world never flinched. Things hurt him, he was only human, but nobody would know, not ever.

"Oh, yeah?" he said, a nasty edge to his tone that he felt was justified as he continued, "Well apparently I'm exactly the person that our daughter wants to see" he yelled, "Why the hell didn't you tell me you were pregnant before you left Point Place, Jackie?" he asked angrily, and that accusation she could not avoid.

There were a million reasons, excuses, responses she had been planning for years in case this conversation (or argument, as it seemed to be) ever actually came up. Right now she had nothing but the truth to give, and some very old pent-up anger to let go of.

"Because I was scared, Steven!" she told him, with no less volume than before, "Okay, you never talked about that night we had, you acted like it never even happened!"

"So did you!" he countered immediately, both getting in each others face, waving arms in emphatic gestures, not aware of anything but each other and this fight that had been more than twenty years in the making.

"That is so not the point!" Jackie argued, "You showed up with your latest skank, you totally moved on, and that was what I wanted to do too!"

"But you knew you were having my kid when you left!" he accused her, sure it must be true from the simple math alone.

"Yes" she admitted, wincing at the sound of her own voice a moment before regaining momentum and going at him again, "but what good would it have done telling you? C'mon, Steven, tell me!" she yelled when he glanced away, "What would you have done? Married me?"

"Yes" he told her firmly, meeting her angry and astonished eyes a moment, "No" he changed his mind to, "Maybe, I don't know" he said, turning away again, his hand to his head.

Jackie was the only woman in the world who ever made him this mad, this confused, this conflicted.

"Exactly" she nodded once, looking equal parts proud of herself and incredibly sad, "Either you would have run away and left me literally holding the baby" she told him, "or you would've married me because you felt you had to" she explained what he ought to have already known, "I didn't want you to wind up hating me!" she yelled at his back when he refused to face her, but he soon got his anger back at the sound of those words, that accusation she would dare to throw.

"Oh, and running away from me, never telling me about our daughter, that was just gonna make me love you so much!" he said angrily, "You're as crazy now as you were when we were kids, man!" he yelled, pointing a finger at her.

"Whatever!" came her response as she folded her arms and tried to turn away, but his hands at her shoulders forced her back.

"Don't pull that crap with me" he told her "I invented it"

"Whatever!" she yelled again, just to be annoying he was sure as she forcefully knocked his hands from her body and turned away again.

It was ridiculous, and they both knew it. Twenty five years on from being the angry teens that loved and hated each other in equal measure most of the time, to anyone on the outside looking in, Jackie and Hyde would appear just the same as they'd always been. So much for growing up, moving on, learning to be adults. They had done that easily apart and now here they were, back together again, acting like the kids they'd been when they parted.

This situation could not go on, couldn't be allowed to. The thought of how Brittany would react to her parents arguing like this pulled Jackie sharply out of her teenage-like rebellion against Steven Hyde. Too much water under the bridge, and way too much time wasted. They had to be better people than this now, they just had to be.

"For what it's worth" she said with a sigh, pushing her hair out of her face as she turned to face him, "I'm sorry I never told you about Brittany. I knew it was a crappy thing to do but... well, I did try to tell you later" she explained, "I wrote to you when she was eight but the letter got returned to sender. You were gone from Point Place by then, I guess" she shrugged her shoulders, feeling all kinds of defeated and in so many ways.

"I didn't stay long after you left" he admitted, at least a little glad to know she had made some efforts but all too late and in vain, "What did I have to stay for?" he asked,his eyes meeting hers, making Jackie feel as guilty now as she had the day she ran out of Point Place without so much as a goodbye to spare for her former boyfriend.

"Steven..." she sighed, "I don't know where to start" she admitted as she dropped back down onto the couch with a thud, "I imagined seeing you again so many times, thought about it, dreamt about it... I never did figure out how to make things okay between us" she smiled a kind of dreamy smile a moment as she thought on it before she caught the much more serious look on his own face, "I guess they can't ever be" she said, letting her expression drop, her eyes going to the floor.

"You'd think after all these years we'd both have grown up enough to talk like adults" Hyde considered, "Guess not, huh?" he added with a wry smile as he sat down beside her.

"I am sorry, Steven" she assured him, and he didn't doubt that for a moment, "I'm so sorry you never knew about Brittany. Okay, you have to know, I didn't keep her from you just so I could throw it in your face or something" she told him, almost desperate for him to understand apparently, "I never set out to hurt you" she said honestly, a hand to her heart in some kind of gesture that he seemed to understand.

Hyde didn't say it was okay or that he accepted her apology, though he knew she was sincere. Jackie couldn't pull off lies so well with him, he knew her too well. Twenty five years apart didn't change the fact he could read her like a book. Neither of them had really changed all that much in a lot of ways.

"She looks like you" he said in the quiet that followed, reaching for the photograph that he had abandoned on the coffee table a couple of hours before, "It's all I can think when I look at her, how much she looks like you, how beautiful she is" he smiled at the face of the daughter he had never met, a perfect little copy of Jackie in a lot of ways.

"She has your eyes" the woman beside him pointed out, tears beginning to fill her own eyes as she spoke, "If I didn't feel bad enough about not having you in my life, every time I look at her eyes, I see you" she said, glancing his way, "even now"

Hyde didn't know how to answer that. He never really had learnt how best to take kindness or compliments. He lived without them so long, when they started coming he just batted them away to save having to deal. As a habit, it had never really gone away. Still, only Jackie Burkhart could make him feel quite like this. That thought caused a chain reaction in his head, and a question came to his lips.

"The PI girl, Veronica... something? She said you guys don't go by Burkhart anymore" he recalled, "You got married?" he asked, not able to look at her as he said it, instead focusing on the picture of their daughter still there in his hand.

"Uh-huh, married" she confirmed, "and divorced. Arthur did his best but... raising another man's child wasn't easy for him. He left when Britt was eight" she explained, as calm as anything for a moment then suddenly kind of exploding and almost making Hyde jump, "God, Steven, I thought surviving on my own would be easy but it was so hard" she told him, wiping a stray tear from her cheek before he noticed, "Brittany thinks I was this tower of strength for years, she has no idea how many nights I cry myself to sleep" she shook her head sadly, feeling so mixed up right now.

All Hyde could do was replay in his head the last few words Jackie had said. Not past tense, not how she used to cry herself to sleep, or she cried herself to sleep. No, she still did that sometimes, and it almost broke his heart to think about it.

"Jackie, y'know, if I'd known about her..." he said, putting a tentative hand to her shoulder.

"I know you would've been there, Steven" she smiled as she turned to look at him, a little closer than she expected him to be, "In my heart, I know it. So many times I wish I'd just told you the truth before I left Wisconsin, but I couldn't" she said with tears welling up one more time in her eyes, spilling over her lashes at last and down her cheeks, "After all we'd been through with Michael, and Sam, and everything" she shook her head as her lip quivered and eveything gave way as she began crying hard.

"Hey, c'mon, Jackie. Don't do that" Hyde urged her as he pulled her into his arms, holding on tight to the only woman he had ever truly loved, and probably ever would.

"You must hate me for what I did" she said, ironic given the fact he was thinking just the opposite, but she never saw the odd smile on his face, her head tucked under his chin as he held her still.

"No way, man" he promised her, "I mean, yeah, I thought I did but... I get it, y'know? I get that you were scared and, honestly, I don't know what I would've done back then if you told me about a baby" he said, still finding the whole thing overwhelming even now.

"I still should've given you the chance" said Jackie, as she pulled away from him just enough to look up into his eyes, "You've missed so much of Brittany's life" she said tearfully.

"I've missed you, Jackie" he told her, reaching up to push loose hair off her face where it was stuck to her cheek by tears, "Y'know for the longest time, I'd wake up after some intense dream about the old days" he recalled, "I'd actually think you were gonna be there next to me. When you weren't... those were the hardest days" he admitted, not even sure why he was bothering now, but it was like his brain wasn't even attached to his mouth anymore.

"I've done the same thing" she smiled a watery but genuine smile as they stared into each others eyes and felt a million memories washing over the both of them, "Why did it all have to go so wrong, Steven?" she asked him in earnest, "It could've turned out so differently..."

She couldn't say anymore as suddenly his lips were upon hers taking her breath away. This was stupid, ridiculous, idiotic, it shouldn't happen, and they both knew it. Unfortunately, it also felt so good, so familiar, so everything that had been missing from both their lives for too many years. There was no stopping now, neither of them wanted to do that, they only wanted each other, consequences be damned for tonight.

To Be Continued...