Steven Hyde sits on the stairs leading down to the basement. He'd gone upstairs to grab a beer, but the conversation he heard on his way back down caused him to lose all feeling in his legs.

"Fez, what's wrong?" He heard Donna ask as he made his way down the stairs. "Are they discontinuing Twizzlers or something?"

"Jackie's gone," Fez told her. Hyde stopped in his tracks, halfway down the stairs, where they couldn't see him. He felt his stomach drop like he was going down on a roller coaster.

He heard Donna ask, "What?" He recognized that voice. It's the same tone she had when Eric announced his Africa trip. "Fez, what the hell are you talking about? What do mean 'Jackie's gone'?"

"I mean she's gone! I woke up this morning and everything Jackie had was missing." Fez cried out. Her room was empty and her car was gone! No note, no anything. She just left."

Hyde's breath caught in his throat. An unfamiliar feeling accumulated in his stomach. Fez is wrong. He has to be missing something.

"She just left without telling anyone where she's going?" Randy inquired. "I don't know Jackie very well, but that doesn't sound like something she'd do at all."

"It isn't," Donna said. "I know Jackie and she wouldn't do that. Fez, are you absolutely sure she didn't leave a note or anything?" Hyde heard the panic in her voice, the same one that was rising in his chest.

"I searched the apartment for over an hour. There is nothing. I was hoping she would call here."

His legs lost feeling, and he silently sunk down onto the step he was standing on.

"What the hell are you waiting for?" Donna yelled. "Go ask Mr. and Mrs. Forman!" He heard footsteps and a door slam.

Trying to process the conversation he'd just heard, his mind started to wander. No note? No announcement? There's no way Jackie would do that. She'd want to make a spectacle of herself leaving. Make sure he knew that he was losing her forever. It'd be straight out of a chick-flick.

Despite the constant numbness in his legs, he got up and walked back up the stairs, a clear focus in mind. He starts his El Camino and takes off to the old Burkhart mansion. This whole 'leave unexpectedly' move was impossible. It just wasn't Jackie. She wouldn't just leave Point Place. She didn't have anywhere to go. And if on the off chance she did skip town, she had to have left something. A note, or at least a phone number to call. And there's no way Fez looked everywhere. The poor kid just wasn't perceptive enough.

Nothing could've described what he felt when he reached her house and saw a 'for sale' sign on the lawn. A million thoughts ran through Hyde's head all at once. Her family home was for sale? Did that mean that she was never coming back? But then he thought that maybe she was staying there until she could sell the house. It would make sense, staying until she had to money to go somewhere. So he turned his car off and approached the front of the mansion. He knocked on the door and waited for her to answer. But when the door opened, it wasn't Jackie who was on the other side.

A tall, leggy woman with dirty blonde hair and who was dressed in business attire stood in the doorway. She had green eyes and wore a genuine expression on her face. "Are you here for the showing? I'm Jenny, the real estate agent." She looked over his shoulder, confused. "Over the phone, you said you were bringing your wife and kids."

"Uh...no. I'm looking for the person who owns this place, is she inside?" "Oh! You're looking for Jacqueline Burkhart, right?" He breathed an audible sigh of relief. She was here. "Yeah. Is she inside?" She smiled at him sweetly. "No, she's not here. This house has been in her name since she turned 18, and she consulted me about selling it a few months ago. She didn't want to go through with it, but this morning, she called me saying she had left town and that she wanted me to list the house." She explained. "It's a popular property, I already have a few showings."

It was like a punch to his throat and stomach at the same time. Everything he'd felt since overhearing Fez and Donna rushed to the front of his mind. The panic and the dread.

"S-she left town? Do you knew where she went?" His fear overtook his Zen.

Jenny must've noticed his panic because she answered him in a sympathetic tone. "No, she didn't say where she was calling from."

But he was already rushing to his car, starting the ignition and speeding off towards Fez and Jackie's apartment. She really is gone, but she had to leave something for them. For him.

When he reached the apartment, he lifts the doormat and finds a spare key. On a normal day, he would have smirked thinking about how predictable they were. A key under the mat? Typical. But this was not a normal day. The way it was going so far, it could very well become one of the worst of his life.

He turned the key to open the door and immediately noted the absence of her flower pillows. The pounding in his heart began to stagger. She'd taken those pillows everywhere with her. She had them in her room during that summer when he'd sneak in through her window. She brought them with her when she lived with Donna, and took them with her back to live with her mom. And they were here when she lived with Fez. Of course, she would take them with her if she left.

If he felt bad before, opening the door to her room increased the pain tenfold. There was nothing but furniture, and the bed was bare of sheets. Her closet was empty and wide open, and he searched around the room for any sign of her. There was nothing.

But then, he glanced down and saw something small and brown sticking out from the trash bin. He knew it was a dick move, going through her trash, but he picked up the box regardless. As he shuffled through the contents, he wished he hadn't even seen it. A copy of 1984 by George Orwell. A small teddy bear he won for her at Six Flags. The grasshopper necklace he gave her for their first anniversary. And buried at the bottom of the box was his Led Zeppelin T-shirt. The one he gave her on her 17th birthday. It felt like metal rods were being shoved into his heart. His whole body went rigid. This can't be happening.

He didn't know why he felt so...betrayed. Wasn't he married to another woman? Didn't he tell her he never loved her? Didn't he push her into a fucking creek? That's not the type of thing you do to the woman you love. That's not what a man does to the love of his life. He didn't deserve to feel betrayed. He deserved for her to find a guy better than him in every way, to marry someone else, and to have that guy's babies, all while he was forced to sit there and watch. He didn't deserve to miss her. Not when he had practically pushed her out the door.

How had he let this happen to them?

He doesn't have an answer to that question. Their fall from grace had been so quick. It moved so fast, yet so slowly. He knew it was happening with every burn he shot her way, but it was as if he was watching himself say these things in slow motion. Every bone and muscle in his body screamed for him to stop hurting her, to grab her in his arms and kiss her senseless, until he could absorb all the pain he'd caused her. But Steven Hyde was cursed with discordance between his heart and his brain.

Carefully, he lifted the old T-shirt in his hands and brought it up to his nose. It still smelled like her. He exhaled deeply, relished in the light breath of vanilla and jasmine that he'd been deprived of for far too long. He hadn't even realized how much he's been yearning for her scent.

God, he missed her. It's not just now that he didn't know where she is. He's been missing her for so long, since Sam walked through the door and he didn't kick her out. Is it possible to miss someone this much?

He didn't know what he expected from her. Was he just expecting her to wait until he was done being a dickhead, and then he'd apologize and fight for her and promise to love her? Realistically, he knows that he's lost her forever. They're too far gone. He's too far gone.

If this were a different world, they might be planning their wedding right now. Maybe they'd be living together, and she'd be beaming at him, her smile brighter than all the stars in the sky combined. Maybe in a year or two they'd have a kid, a daughter, and she'd look just like Jackie and they would be his favorite two girls in the world. Then, in a few more years, they'd have another kid, a boy this time. He'd be a good father, nothing like Bud had been to him. And he knew Jackie would be nothing like Pam. He'd still have Grooves, and he'd come home from work to be showered with hugs from his babies and to be kissed by his wife. They'd grow old together, watching as their kids went through the trials and tribulations of their own lives. They'd die together, holding each other and finding peace together in the afterlife. But that was in a different reality. Where he made better choices. Where he was a better man.

What was he supposed to do now? Was he just supposed to go back home to his wife, pretend like everything's okay, and that the world hadn't just fallen apart at his feet? He couldn't do that. As Zen as he was, he never could hide his love for Jackie. If he needed to hide it, aloofness was not the answer. The only thing that could mask it was destruction, her destruction.

The searing agony of the past year came over him suddenly, all at once. His legs gave out and he collapsed, sitting on the floor next to the bed.

What was he supposed to do now? He had no idea. She was the one real thing in his hellhole of a life story. She was the love of his life.

But for now, he sat, paralyzed, on her empty bedroom floor, waiting for an answer to come to him.

Ok um...thanks so much for everyone who messaged me. I uploaded this from my old desktop, so I'm not surprised it screwed up. Please review and let me know what you think.