Disclaimer: That '70s Show copyright The Carsey-Werner Company, LLC and Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment, LLC. The fictional band Degenerate Matter, their albums Vagabondage, Ultrarelativistic, WIMPs and MACHOs, Frozen Stars, the song "Self-Inflicted Violence," and all the lyrics contained therein copyright to the author of this story (username: MistyMountainHop, maker of Those '70s Comics).

CHAPTER 30
THE BROKEN MIRROR

November 25, 1994

Chicago, Illinois

Brooke and Betsy's Apartment
…

Betsy rushed toward Hyde. He was a foot into her apartment when her arms wrapped around his waist and her head pressed into his chest. "Steven," she said quietly, sounding younger than fifteen.

He dropped his duffel bag and hugged her back, but his gaze was on Brooke and Kelso. They were watching from a distance. The living room carpet might as well have been an ocean. Kelso was leaning against the sofa and clutching Brooke's hand as if it were a life raft.

"Hey, French fry," Hyde said, "want to take this to your room?"

"Yeah."

Tears were in her voice, and she gripped his hand same as Kelso held Brooke's. She led him the way she used to as a toddler, insistent and eager to get to their destination, but Brooke said, "Maybe I should be in there with you." She indicated Kelso. "Maybe we all should."

Betsy squeezed Hyde's hand harder.

"Trust me," Hyde said. It was a plea to all three of them. He'd spent the hour-and-forty minute drive to Chicago going over what he'd say to the kid. "Betsy and I are gonna work things through, all right?"

"It's okay, Brooke," Kelso said in a soothing tone. He'd become skilled at hiding his feelings verbally, but Kelso's face often betrayed him. The drooping lid of his left eye twitched repeatedly whenever he was upset. Hyde tried to check, but lamplight glinted off Kelso's thick glasses, obscuring his eyes.

Brooke waved toward Betsy's bedroom, giving Hyde and Betsy free passage. Betsy locked the door once they were inside, turned on her stereo, and Degenerate Matter's first album blasted from the speakers. Brooke and Kelso would have a hard time listening in on the conversation over Vagabondage, a violation Hyde doubted they'd try, but he understood Betsy's precaution. He'd taught it to her.

Ro's voice snarled into the song "Punchline," and Betsy snatched the watermelon pillow from her bed. She dropped onto one of her beanbag chairs and hugged the pillow to her chest. The sight of her, so damn lost, slammed into his guts. He'd fought hard to keep her from ever experiencing those feelings.

"Talk to me," he said and tossed his coat onto her bed.

She shrugged morosely. Either fear or embarrassment was silencing the truth inside her.

"All right, I'll talk." He sat across from her on the other beanbag chair. The beans inside shushed as he got comfortable. He hated these squishy seats, but they were everywhere nowadays. "You wanted me here for Thanksgiving."

She nodded, chin scraping against the watermelon pillow. "It's supposed to be about family. You're my family. Mom is family."

"And what's your dad?"

"Scary."

"You're scared of him?" He hadn't expected to hear that from her. "Why? His face?"

"He's always looked like that to me."

His throat thickened. Kelso's messed-up face was normal to her because Hyde had messed it up. "Is he doin' something I should know about?"

"No. He's just..." She buried her face in the pillow, and he barely made out her next words. "He's not you."

"Meaning what?"

"He used to be crazy," she said into the pillow. "You know. You protected me and Mom when he banged on the door. When he'd yell at her ... and try to take me."

Hyde scrubbed his hand over his eyes. His protection wouldn't have been necessary if he hadn't gone crazy himself fifteen years ago. "He's tryin' to make up for all that—"

"Don't." She tossed the pillow to the floor. "I already have Mom saying that shit."

He dug his fingers into his hair, scraped his nails against his scalp. "I'm on your side, kid. Not dismissing what Kelso—your dad—did, but he's not that guy anymore."

"I know he's trying, okay? But..." She quit talking as Lee shredded the solo for "Punchline". A few tears dropped down her cheeks, and she shook her head. "He's weird, Steven. He remembers random things at the strangest times. It's like part of him is stuck somewhere, and he rambles about stuff I don't have any clue about." Her arms crossed in front of her chest, but she readjusted them to hug herself. "It's not like I don't have fun with him sometimes, and he makes Mom happy. I just wish…"

She glanced away, toward one of her Degenerate Matter posters. "I sound so selfish, but I can't turn my feelings on and off. I feel what I feel."

"And your mom's been pushin' you."

"Yes."

"I'll try to get that crap to stop."

She looked at him again, and her expression brightened. "You will?"

"Do my best." Apparently, his previous effort hadn't been enough. He grabbed the watermelon pillow from the floor, and he squeezed it alternately with his left hand and his right. "I was nine when my stepdad left. Back then, he was the only dad I knew. My ma had a lot of boyfriends, brought 'em home. Some were okay. Most were fuckers. Could never get used to 'em, and Ma tried to force me to."

"How?"

"Not important." Edna's tactics were too brutal for Betsy's ears; she'd had enough exposure to the dark side of humanity. If he had his way, she'd never experience it again. "Your mom's got to accept that you can't see Kelso as 'Daddy' 'cause he never was that to you."

"Exactly!" She leaned forward in the beanbag chair. The beans shifted, sounding like rushing water, and her knees bumped into his. "You're the only dad—real dad—I've known since I was a baby." She took the watermelon pillow from him, and her eyes fixed on his left arm. "How'd you get that?"

She was staring at the bright pink scar on the underside of his forearm, and he cursed himself for not wearing long sleeves. "Wasn't payin' attention when I should have."

"Were you cut by a piece of glass or something?"

"Something like that." A cigarette craving gnawed at his chest, but he didn't reach for the gum in his pocket. "Look, Kelso can't be your 'daddy'. That chance has come and gone, but he can still be your dad, man. If you give him a shot—"

"No!" She stood up and walked halfway across the room. "Don't you get it? You're Dad! You did what dads are supposed to do, and too freakin' bad for him … and for Mom."

Hyde shut his eyes and grasped his knees. "But I'm not your dad."

"You are! In every way that counts—"

"I'm not, Betsy. You think Kelso's weird? I've fucked up some lives big-time—"

"Not mine." She sat on the bed, beside his coat. "I know about the DUI."

His shoulders stiffened, and his emotions began to desiccate and shrivel. He was entering the state Ro despised, where his affect flattened and he seemed thousands of miles away. "You know … what?"

"Mom and 'Dad' told me last year—about how you and my dad got wasted after my fifth birthday party. How he drove into a drunk woman and paralyzed her."

His mouth dried out. "Why'd they tell you that?"

"He couldn't lie anymore. That's what he said." She pulled Hyde's coat into her lap and fiddled with the buttons. "He told me you took the rap for him so he wouldn't go to prison. To keep me from being without him. So if you're, like, trying to make me see you differently—"

"I'm tryin' to get you to see me more clearly," he said, but she could never understand the full picture of him. Because if he shared his darkest moment, it would poison everything else he was to her. "I was just as much of an alcoholic as Kelso."

"You kept it away from me, just like you keep your smoking from me."

"Damn it." His pulse tightened. His emotions were reestablishing their connection to his body, and he stood up from the beanbag chair. "You know I smoke."

"I've smelled it on you a few times. And on one of the video bootlegs you gave me, there's footage of you re-taping down wires onstage with a cigarette in your mouth."

"Well, shit." He slumped on the corner of her bed. "What else do you know?

"That you curse a lot."

"Anything else?"

"That you're the one who should be marrying my mom."

He reached into his coat's left pocket. "Brooke and Kelso are engaged?"

"Not yet, but they will be if you don't do something."

Ro was singing "Self-Inflicted Violence" through Betsy's speakers. Her lyrics were fitting for him, but not for Betsy. She hadn't asked for any of his or Kelso's bullshit. Didn't deserve any of it.

"Nothin' I can do about that one, French fry." Kelso's violation of Jackie was Jackie's to tell, despite that Hyde had come close to spilling it to Brooke. More than once. Even if he did tell Brooke now, she might not accept it. Same as Forman refused to. Jackie and Kelso were the only people who had a chance of convincing her what he did, but they'd both chosen not to. Kelso's reasons weren't hard to guess. He might lose his family again.

Jackie, though, could've entrusted Brooke with her rape years earlier, before Kelso and Brooke's relationship healed. Maybe feeling gratitude for Kelso's near-murder shamed her into leaving Kelso be. Or if Step Nine of AA involved Kelso apologizing for the rape, that generated enough good will to give him the freedom to pursue the life he wanted.

Regardless, destroying Brooke's relationship with Kelso wasn't Hyde's right or in his power to do.

He pulled his wallet from his coat pocket. "Just like Brooke's got to accept how you feel about Kelso," he said, "you've got to accept how she feels about him. Not sayin' you have to like it, but it ain't somethin' you can change." He slid his finger into his wallet. "There's also somethin' you've got to accept about me."

"Like what?" Betsy brushed her long, brown hair from her face and wound the ends around her fists. "Did you used to slaughter animals in strange rituals? Because that one might make me less comfortable around you."

"I'm engaged."

Her hair slipped from her hands. "No way."

"For a year. Since last November."

"I don't believe you. That's not a secret you would've kept from me."

"You're right—" he said, and a self-satisfied grin rose to her lips—"if circumstances were different. But they dictated I keep my trap shut."

Her grin fell. "And now they don't?"

"You're more important to me than my privacy."

"Whatever." Her eyes flicked away from him. "I won't like her, no matter who she is. Just keep her a secret."

He removed a creased, partially faded picture from his wallet. "Take it."

"I won't look at her."

"You already are."

Her gaze was fixed on the same Degenerate Matter poster as before. It depicted Ro hanging from the lighting truss while the band played onstage beneath her. "You're not..." Betsy's breathing became shallow, but she turned toward him. "You're lying."

He held the picture to her eyes. It showed himself and Ro together in his dad's house. His hands were resting o Ro's hips, and she was cradling his cheeks. They'd been so focused on each other that they hadn't noticed his dad taking the shot.

"Oh—my—God. Oh—my—God." Betsy was hyperventilating, and he rubbed her back until she calmed down enough to scream, "YOU AND RO SKIRVING ARE ENGAGED!"

He winced at the volume of her voice but said, "Want the whole city to know?"

"Sorry, sorry." She plucked the picture from his hand and studied it. "Tell me everything."

Jackie was driving on North Rexford Drive. The gleaming white City Hall shrank in her rearview mirror as Degenerate Matter pounded from the car stereo. Anders had given her permission to drive one of his cars around Beverly Hills, a first. Perhaps as an apology for his awful Thanksgiving business meeting. She'd chosen his blue, two-door '90 Mazda Miata. It drove almost identically to her own '93 Miata, and once she hit Sunset Boulevard, she took a detour.

Ro sang-chanted the chorus of "Self-Inflicted Violence" in a pulsing cadence. The song was off Degenerate Matter's first album, which Steven hadn't written any lyrics for. She wouldn't chance exposing his words to thieving ears. From this day on, whenever she visited her mom, sticking to Vagabondage was the new standard.

Several curvy roads led to the Historic Greystone Mansion, where she and Ralph had gotten married. Many movies used that mansion as a shooting location, a perfect place for her wedding. She'd stopped considering her life better than a movie during college.

Her wedding should've been the happiest day in her life. Her mom certainly acted liked it was for herself, but joy had eluded Jackie for over a decade by then. She'd accepted a middling existence, her therapist told her, due to trauma and mild depression. Given up on true happiness to keep herself safe.

"I'm lucky for what I can get," Jackie always argued back. She'd lived her life by that motto since Dale Fischer's assault, maybe ever since Steven had left her, but lately that motto felt constrictive.

It wound around her neck as she drove. Anders's Miata sped down Lorna Vista Drive. The Greystone Mansion disappeared from sight, and Ro sang, "You run the hardware store.
I grew up there, and I keep coming back. I buy what you blindly put on sale with my eyes half-open."

Ro's voice curled around Jackie's throat, protecting it from being crushed by shame. When she was seven, she'd accidentally broken her parents' Lalique vase. She'd been emulating Shirley Temple, attempting Shirley's clog-dancing routine from Heidi, and she'd kicked the vase right over. Her mom yelled at her for fifteen minutes afterward, saying the vase was priceless. Dad, though, was gentle and loving.

"Jackie," he'd said, "you understand you have to be more careful when practicing."

"Yes, Daddy," she said. "Is the vase really priceless?"

"No. Just very expensive."

"What is 'priceless'?"

Her dad grasped her hands and said, "You are, kitten. But if you want to keep nice, expensive things, you have to be careful with them."

She never broke another of her parents' antiques, but she might have destroyed Steven's trust. She'd almost revealed O. MacNeil's identity to her mom, and she needed to tell him. He had the right to make choices with his eyes fully open, even if it meant losing him again.

Hyde told Betsy what he could of his relationship with Ro. Vagabondage was halfway through the song "POW!" by the time he finished, and Betsy said, "You make a lot more sense now."

"I do, huh?" Her words should've been comforting, but the thrashing beats of his heart resonated in every nerve. A CONDEMNED sign was tacked to most of his relationships. He'd eventually have to sacrifice himself to give Betsy her dad back. She'd learn the truth, and her feelings of betrayal would transfer to their rightful place: him.

But that day wasn't today.

"Totally," she said. "You get this faint smile on your face whenever you talk about Ro. I thought it was from liking her music so much, but now..." Her face paled "You're the one she sings about in 'Tenderize'.'" She stuck out her tongue, as if she'd eaten something foul. "I can never listen to that song again."

"Sorry, kid. Try not to think about it." He shoved a piece of gum into his mouth. His cigarette cravings had hijacked a third of his brain, and he was pacing Betsy's room. "I'm also sorry for laying this on you, but you've got to keep me and Ro a secret. Your mom knows. Jackie does, too, so talkin' to them about it is fine. But you can't tell anyone. Not your friends, not even your dad. Not yet."

"It's the coolest secret ever." Her thumb ran over the picture of himself and Ro. "Almost. You and Mom having another secret affair would be cooler."

He quit pacing and sat beside her on the bed. He tried to communicate his feelings through his eyes, but she was only fifteen. He couldn't expect her to read him the way Ro did. "I love you," he said, voice hoarse with emotion. "Never want to hurt you—"

Her fingers glided over the top of his wrist. "You won't leave me just 'cause my mom and dad are together?"

"I'll only leave if you ask me to go. … You might someday."

"Nope." She moved her fingers to his hand and grasped it. "Could you and Ro adopt me?"

He laughed, but grief stained his thoughts. Through the years, his fundamental self had been fractured into hundreds of splinters. To put himself back together, he'd have to tear this girl apart. No guarantees she'd get her dad back from learning the truth, either.

Kelso and Hyde's crimes were inextricably linked. Kelso's horrible treatment of girls as a teenager had culminated in his rape of Jackie. Hyde almost killed him for it—and would've succeeded had Forman not shown up in time.

Donna called Hyde's truth-hoarding noble. Ro urged him to live in the now and accept all the good he'd created. If he yanked the past into the present, he'd be put Kelso's sobriety at risk and with it the life Hyde helped him rebuild.

"Jenny's mom is an adoption agent," Betsy said, referencing a friend from school. "I'm sure she could help us get started—"

He pointed to the picture in her hand. "Would you settle for keeping that? Long as you have somewhere safe to hide it."

She hopped off the bed and lay stomach-side down on the floor. Her arm disappeared beneath the bed frame. It came out hooked around a small metal safe, and she said,. "How's this?"

He nodded his approval, and the picture was locked in the safe moments later.

"There's one more thing I've got to ask," he said, standing nearly eye-to-eye with Betsy. Her last growth spurt had made her as tall as her mom. "I need you to give Kelso space to prove himself—"

She opened her mouth, probably to protest, but he put up a hand. She remained quiet but clutched the safe to her stomach, just like she'd held the watermelon pillow.

"Give him room to do better," he went on, "'cause he'll sure as hell try. He's never gonna be me, but I've known the guy my whole life, and..."

Their friendship had ended the moment Hyde learned what he'd done to Jackie. Hyde's support of Kelso was out of obligation, not just to him but to Betsy and Brooke. All that remained for Kelso to reclaim from Hyde's fists was his relationship with Betsy. Once that healed, Hyde could move on from him.

"And what?" Betsy said.

"Try to get to know him for who he is today."

She stared down at her feet. "Will you talk to him—not just Mom—for me?"

"What do you want me to tell him?"

"That he can't get between me and Mom. If I mouth off to her, she's the one who has to discipline me. Or you can." She glanced up. "But not him. He can never talk to me that way again."

Hyde's tongue pushed his chewed, flavorless gum into his cheek. "What way?"

"Like he doesn't love me."

Jackie arrived at her mom's mansion, expecting Pam to be off pampering herself somewhere. Her mom was home, though and greeted Jackie warmly in the living room.

"Cook has made one of your favorite meals for lunch," she said in her melodic voice, and Jackie gave her the side-eye. "Oh, don't look so suspicious. This is the first part of my apology for last night. I do let my anger get the best of me sometimes."

"And the second part?" Jackie said. Because last night was truly terrible, for both of them.

"I thought we'd get mani-pedis, but only if you want to."

Jackie clenched her purse at her side. She'd been prepared to defend herself, to put up a new boundary and protect herself from her mom's demands. But Pam was asking, not telling. And Anders had let Jackie use his car. She'd either made a breakthrough with both of them, or they were manipulating her.

"Your nails are perfect," Jackie said. Her mom had obviously gotten them done recently, for Thanksgiving.

"I know, but I'm sick of the French look. I want to try more youthful style."

Of course she did, but Jackie studied her own nails. They were rough-edged and needed work. "What the hell," she said.

"Is that a yes?"

Jackie confirmed it but swallowed a lump in her throat. Going with her mom could be a good first step in healing their family. To get some peace. Or to be drawn further into whatever machinations Pam had planned.

Hyde and Kelso took their talk outside, strolling down a leaf-strewn, tree-lined street. Brooke's neighborhood of Ravenswood was quiet enough to hold a serious discussion, and Hyde smoked freely. The stink would stick to his denim jacket, but since Betsy knew of his bad habit, hiding it was no longer necessary. Not that he planned on exposing her to that addiction whenever he had a craving.

"My parents barely disciplined me," Kelso said, and his breath came out like fog in the cold air. "I might've turned out better if they had."

"Betsy's not used to seeing that side of you, man."

Kelso's left eyelid twitched. "But she'll accept it from you."

"I don't really do the discipline-thing. Brooke does."

"So you can be my kid's hero."

His eyelid twitched faster, but pissing him off wasn't Hyde's intention. "Ro Skirving's her hero," he said evenly. "Those are posters of her on Betsy's wall, not me."

Kelso shoved his hands into his jeans pockets, and his shoulders hiked to his ears. "Dads are supposed to be their daughters' first hero. I never had a chance to be Betsy's—" he stopped on North Walcott Avenue and stared at Hyde—"I was too messed up."

The hairs on the nape of Hyde's neck stood on end. Kelso's face showed an expression Hyde hadn't witnessed since high school, when Kelso claimed repeatedly that Hyde had stolen Jackie from him. It was the same look Lee reserved for Hyde, one of all-encompassing resentment.

But it dissolved into sorrow as Kelso shuffled his feet. He lowered his gaze and muttered, "I never should've gone into those woods. What was I even doing there?" Hyde had heard the lament dozens of times over the years, usually while Kelso was drunk, but Kelso's posture straightened. "If you hadn't found me, I would've been dead."

"Focus," Hyde said and sucked in a lungful of smoke. "It's 1994. You're buildin' a relationship with your kid..."

"It was Jackie," Kelso said, "what I did to her. That's how I ended up in those woods. God put that mugger there to beat sense into me, and I screwed it up."

Hyde took another long drag off his cigarette. The paper burned away, leaving ash. "God had nothin' to do with it. You were at the wrong place at the wrong time. Random shit happens."

"But I wouldn't have to build a relationship with my kid if that shit hadn't happened. We'd already have a relationship. That guy, the mugger robbed it from me..." Kelso hit his forehead with the heel of his hand. "No. No, I took it away from myself 'cause I raped Jackie."

Hyde dropped his cigarette stub onto the sidewalk and crushed it beneath his boot. Kelso's memory was fucked up thanks to Hyde's fists and Kelso's alcoholism. Kelso often forgot certain facts for periods of time then remembered them. The blank spaces colored his attitude, but when the facts filled them in, his attitude would shift.

"You've got what you've got," Hyde said, pushing a second cigarette between his lips. Talking with Kelso about this subject, what Kelso did to Jackie—what Hyde had done to both of them—forced Hyde to the edge of his control. He inhaled smoke until his lungs blazed with pain. He coughed it out, but his seared nerves reminded him why he was here.

"Can't change the past, man. Alls you can do is move ahead." He and Kelso turned onto West Ainslie, and he flicked his half-smoked cigarette to the street. "Like you've done with Brooke. You want to get in good with your kid, then you've got to respect who she is, what she's been through. You've got to put her first."

"Is that the key to raising kids, Hyde? Putting them first?" The question seemed innocent, but animosity skidded beneath Kelso's tone.

Hyde's thumbs tapped each of his finger tips in sequence, pointer to pinkie, pinkie to pointer. Clenching his fists with Kelso around was too risky. Staying physically present, if not relaxed, helped keep the flashbacks at bay. "Listen," he said, "if me stepping out of Betsy's life would be better for her, I'd do it. In a damn heartbeat. But my absence would only make her life harder—"

Kelso patted Hyde on the back. "No, I appreciate everything you've done for her. Everything you do for her … and me and Brooke." His whole demeanor had changed. He was even smiling. "I want Betsy to feel safe with me, and if it means being the good cop, I'll be the good cop."

"It does," Hyde said, and some of the tension left his body. He and Kelso had achieved the best understanding they could. Brooke would have to explain the rest, repeating it as many times as necessary. Kelso's brain retained only so much information. The leftovers rose away like smoke.