A/N: Happy Easter, everyone! Thanks for all your reviews and whatnot…I really appreciate them! Like, seriously – they make me feel all sweet and gooey inside – like a chocolate chip cookie. =)

Disclaimer: Listen, homie. If I had ownership of That 70s Show, Hyde would've been Mrs. Jackie Hyde since that date on Veteran's Day…

Chapter 10: Regrets & Realizations…

Eric looked around his basement, and wondered when exactly life got so complicated. Was it when he proposed to Donna? Was it when they caught Jackie and Hyde making out on the couch? Was it when Hyde cheated on her with that nurse?

Or was it when he had left for Africa, and the world as he knew it got shot to shit?

Eric Forman might not have been a betting man, but if he had been, he would've bet on horse number four.

The summer of 1980 had come and gone, and it had been lousy. The infamous dinner when Red all handed them their asses on a platter was still fresh and vibrant in his mind, even months after the fact.

It was funny how not even watching the Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back seventeen times (Vader is Luke's FATHER! And Leia and Han? He still couldn't wrap his head around it) could wipe out the aftertaste of shame and bitterness that that dinner had left behind.

And if the tense environment in the basement had been any indication, it had left the same aftertaste on his friends' palates, as well.

Personally, Eric didn't know how it all came to this. Granted, to him, Jackie was the devil, but…if what Fez had told him was true, then man… He couldn't believe that the love of his life would do that to her best friend. Yeah, he knew that Donna could be bitchy…but. He couldn't believe that Donna had that amount of cruelty in her. To completely ignore Jackie, who even he could tell adored Hyde, and to ditch her for a stripper…

And to let Hyde constantly and consistently burn her…for what, man? For having the gall to love him?

Dude, it just…it wasn't right.

But Eric Forman knew which side of his bread was buttered, and so he kept his mouth shut when the topic of Jackie came up in the basement. He just agreed with whatever bullshit nonsense that Donna came up with to make her feel better, and partook of the circles that Hyde seemed to be having round the clock lately without complaint. He doubted his girlfriend and his best friend slash brother would be happy to find out what he really he thought about their actions this past year.

Eric Forman would happily admit that Jackie was never his favorite person in the world. She wasn't. But she loved his brother without reservation. Pushed him to be more, to want more.

And, to Eric…that made Jackie incredible.

But he, too, was feeling guilty. He thought of the trip to Chicago to visit Kelso after Jackie had been gone for a month, and his almost ridiculous glee of being rid of her. Rid of her, his ass. No matter what Red had called him in the past, Eric wasn't dumb. For all his bitching and moaning about her evilness, he could admit that he and all his friends needed her. Jackie, for all her shallowness, had been a better friend to them than they had been to her. She had been there for all of them, regardless of whatever had been going on her life. She had had to deal with her boozy (yet hot mom with an awesome rack) mother coming back from seemingly out of the blue, and yet she still took the time to help Donna with the wedding that wasn't. Fez told him how she had helped Kelso figure things out with Brooke, and had helped Fez stand up for himself at the salon. She had helped Hyde reach out to his father, had helped him hundreds of times with Donna, helped his dad with the Toyota, and gossiped with his mother...

And for all that…Jackie got treated like shit.

It was a wonder why she didn't leave Point Place sooner, really.

After that great dinner where the shit literally and metaphorically hit the fan, Fez had really told him what had happened while he was away. He had told Eric about all the times that he would hear Jackie cry herself to sleep in her room. How she would sometimes cry in the shower. How the light in her eyes had gone flat, and even the tones of her voice had changed. It amazed Eric the detail that Fez went into, but considering the fact that Fez had been in love with Jackie since the moment they met, he found that it shouldn't have been all that surprising. For all his perverted ways and general all-around creepiness, out of all of them, Fez had never abandoned Jackie. He had held her when she cried, joined her in her laughter, and had helped Jackie try to find her way back to herself. While Donna had left Jackie behind to join forces with a stripper, Fez had picked up the best friend baton that Donna had so unwillingly carried for the past several years. No longer was Donna the one that Jackie would come to talk to. If Eric were to really think about it – and it hurt him deep in his heart that he could think this – but Jackie had been a better friend to Donna than Donna had been to Jackie. He remembered when everyone found out that Jackie had been staying with Hyde, and the pressure it took for Donna to agree to let Jackie stay with her.

It had taken a lot of pressure, man….

While it sucked complete balls that Jackie had left, what had sucked more for Eric were the events that led to it. When he had been Africa, the loneliness that came from being without his friends and family for really the first time in his life had been almost too much to bear. But he had fallen in love with the kids there, taught them about Star Wars, met some awesome volunteers. And while it never completely took away the ache of being away from Point Place, the new experiences had made that ache more tolerable. Regardless of the fact that he had come back from Africa early, he had needed to go. Needed to see what was outside Point Place's city limits, needed to become the man that Donna deserved. And, most of all, he had needed to go for himself. He was sick and tired of being the "scrawny neighbor boy," sick of always having to explain how a dork such as himself got such a hot girl like Donna. He wasn't particularly good looking, he wasn't rich, he didn't have zen or whatever the hell was that Hyde had. He could be charming, he supposed, but that wouldn't be enough to keep a girl like Donna, who was hot and smart and so very sexy. He had gone to Africa to become the man that Donna deserved, that Donna needed.

And now…now he had come back from Africa early, having decided that he couldn't bear another second away from the love of his life, only to come back and find out that absolutely everything had changed.

His best friend, no, brother, had married a stripper. Kelso – Kelso! – had become the responsible one. Fez had more tang than he knew what to do with, and the love of his life – the one who he wanted to bear his children – she had simply stood by, watched as her best friend watched the love of her life marry some skanky stripper.

How can things change so quickly?

As the television blares on in the background, Eric finally comes to a conclusion. Maybe he should never have gone to Africa. Maybe, if he had stayed, found some other way to go to college, found a job – maybe….maybe things would've been different. Maybe he could've convinced Hyde to ditch the stripper, work things out with Jackie. Because, he realized as he got up to get a popsicle, that's what was the core of the problem.

Jackie and Hyde.

Eric quietly chuckled, amused at the irony. Here he thought that he and Donna were the group's golden couple, but the reality was actually far from it. Underneath everyone's noses, while he and his red-headed neighbor girl had gotten engaged and he had chickened out and had practically left her at the altar, Jackie and Hyde had fallen deeply in love with each other. What Eric had thought had been a creepy and unnatural relationship, based on shallow emotion that had nowhere near the depth of the love that he and Donna supposedly had – had been the exact opposite. Jackie and Hyde had brought out the best – and sometimes the worst – in each other. Hyde had grounded Jackie, turned her from an annoying little girl to an alluring woman. With Jackie, Hyde had been less than less pissed off – he had been happy. Together, they made each other real – more than the one-dimensional caricatures they had played off to be to their friends. They had brought the more in each other that no one else had had the patience to look for. Jackie had seen in Hyde more than just some burnout. And while even he was loathe to admit it, but Hyde had seen in Jackie more than some stuck-up cheerleader. While everyone had been focusing on the almost comedic relationship that Eric had had with Donna, Hyde and Jackie had gone and formed a relationship that went deeper than anyone had ever given them credit for. As everyone else watched the drama that had unfolded with him and Donna, Eric had started to realize that Hyde and Jackie had been reaching a level of intimacy and maturity that he and Donna had yet to even get to.

As he sucked on his popsicle, his thoughts on Jackie and Hyde, Eric came to the uncomfortable notion that had been floating around his brain since the infamous dinner. If Donna Pinciotti was the love of Eric Forman's life – and he had no doubt that was the case, then Jackie Burkhart was the love of Hyde's. And the more he thought about their relationship, the more he considered Hyde's newfound refusal to be sober for more than an hour, about Donna's self-righteous indignation over Jackie's disappearance – he finally realizes what Jackie and Hyde had went deeper than anything he had ever seen. Their relationship wasn't perfect, wasn't some idealistic version of the perfect love.

No, Jackie and Hyde's relationship had been made up of flesh and bone. It had had its faults and insecurities. It had consisted of two people who were proud and stubborn, who had met their match in each other. It hadn't been perfect, it hadn't been some fairy tale or some stupid childish immature notion of true love.

But it was real. Powerful. It had been, in essence, two different planets from two different universes that had collided and exploded, and the explosion had been beautiful.

But then he this stupid idea of going to Africa, Hyde marries a stripper, Donna becomes the best friend from hell, and all of a sudden, Fez and Kelso are the only ones that seem to make any fucking sense.

And Jackie…Jackie gets left out in the cold – by the people that she thought were her friends, yet flake on her graduation party and treat her like she's some sort of cancer.

And Eric Forman looked around his basement – from Hyde's chair, to the lawn chair, to the television blaring a laundry detergent commercial, he finally realizes what the problem was really all along.

"Red's right. We are all dumbasses."