Disclaimer: That '70s Show and the various characters aren't mine.

This fic is written in Hiberno-English, so there are extra U and Ts everywhere, and probably grammar that doesn't seem right to some people.

Thanks for the reviews everyone (: They made my day!

Coming home to find everyone had become different people was.. well, unnerving. Unsettling. Inevitable, when he thought about it. But Eric was different too. The things he had seen, they changed him. His eyes were opened to the wider world, and he could see more people there than himself. And he swore he'd never forget it.
Though he himself had changed for the better, he couldn't say the same for his friends. Eric imagined, while he counted down the days, the weeks, and the months until he could come home, that a year would make the group that much wiser, that much more mature. Ha. How could he have been so stupid? If he was someone else and he heard himself say that, he would have thought he'd never have been a part of that group at all.

But if there was one person he thought, personality wise, had no way to go but up, that was Jackie. Except for a couple of occasions, they never really got along. He didn't see any of her supposed good points. And here he was, disregarding all the name calling and bitchiness (not to mention letting him fall off the water tower) of the past to try and help her, but she just pushed him away.

Hyde was such a jerk. He was probably the only person who actually saw what was happening to Jackie, but he didn't even try. He just dismissed it as funny, that she blew it and then couldn't get over her own mistake. Then he kicked her when she was down, making it worse by getting her annoyed so she'd say the stupidest things, robbing herself of any dignity she still had. Though that couldn't have been a lot, because, as Eric found out from a smirking Hyde, Jackie tended to make her drunken confrontations very public.

Even Donna, Jackie's best friend, didn't have a clue what was going on. Eric had learnt of her dating this new guy for a while, until a day or so before he got back. Apparently they were pretty close, so maybe Donna was just too busy with that relationship to notice Jackie.

Eric was confused about what would happen with him and Donna. He had only been back a few days, but everything with Donna was very vague. They had kissed, they'd sat on the car and talked for a while, but that was all. Eric was prepared to make their plans together; he figured they'd go to school together in September, and get an apartment, but Donna had it all figured out.

A day ago, she had left to go on the 'WFPP On the Road' tour to Florida for the summer, and when she got back, she'd be packing up to go to Madison. Alone. There had been no time for them to talk about anything, not properly anyway. There were always other people in the way, Red and Kitty, or Hyde and Sam. Fez was spending the summer with Kelso in Chicago, so they weren't in the way, but they picked the worst times to ring.

Eric wasn't even sure how he felt about her anymore. I mean, sure, he thought about her every day. Every crappy day that he was away from home. But the Donna he thought about was some sort of perfect Donna, with a golden halo at a weird angle (she wasn't that good) above her head and a sash that read "Best Girlfriend Ever". He was clinging onto the good memories he had of her, and choosing to ignore the rest. And here he was, back home, with this other Donna, who makes plans for her life without him, dates other guys (shouldn't she have known that he didn't really mean it about breaking up? Or was he asking too much of her to throw psychic into the bargain too?) and who won't just.. stay the same.

There was nothing he could do but wait until she came back. This discussion they needed to have probably wasn't something to be done over the phone. For the moment, he was just going to pretend everything was as it was before he had gone to Africa.

Deciding that it was best not to go out of his way to make Jackie his problem, Eric ignored the fact that the weekend passed by without any word from her. Well, why would she come over? Fez, Donna and Kelso were all out of town. It's not like she and Hyde were friends. She didn't get on with Sam, understandably. And the idea of Jackie and himself being friends, and hanging out alone together in the basement was almost laughable.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

At 2AM on a dark, misty Monday morning, Eric found himself wandering around the town centre of Point Place. He was still messed up from the jet lag, and had slept for a lot of Sunday. He strolled up the main street, past all the shops which had shut for the nights hours ago. If he looked up, directly above his head, he could see parts the sky, not yet devoured by the mist. They was clear, and he could see every single star. The night was quiet, but that's just how he wanted it tonight. It complimented nicely the quietness in his head.

Suddenly, he heard a rough voice shout from the door of the bar across the road; "Look lady, it's closing time, now GET OUT!"

"Bu' I'm not finished!" A small figured answered back, trying to squeeze past the man and back inside the musty looking bar. She was in the shadows, but Eric could tell from her voice that it was Jackie.

"I mean it lady!" The man sneered, as he pushed her to the ground and went back inside, locking the door behind him with the jingle of a key and the snap of a padlock.

Eric crossed the road to where she sat, with her head in her hands. "Jackie? What are you doing here?" He asked gently. She looked up, startled, when she heard his voice, and took the hand he offered to help her to her feet.

"Eric!" Jackie smiled all too brightly. "I was jus' in tha' bar, buyin' lossov 'spensive drinks, and now I don' feel well.." She slurred, laughing at her own attempts to regain her balance. Jackie let go of Eric's hand suddenly, and slipped back down on the ground. He took her hand tighter this time, pulled her up, and bent down to get a look at her face.

"Let's get you home, okay?" Eric turned her until she faced forward, held onto her with both arms to keep her upright, and calmly steered her up the road. In a matter of seconds, everything had changed, and the night wasn't so quiet anymore.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"You know what Eric?" Jackie whispered. They were lying on her bed, staring at the ceiling. It was the middle of the night, and Jackie was just coming down from a giddy high. She really went through the motions when she was drunk, but at least she wasn't slurring now. "I think you're brave. You're like.. one of the bravest people ever in the history of.. people that're.. brave. You wanna know why?"

"Sure," Eric rubbed his eyes with his fists and yawned quietly, tiredness starting to set in. It couldn't have waited just a few more hours? He should probably stay awake to keep an eye on Jackie.

"You and Donna.. you're like.. still together with your first loves. Even though you aren't engaged, or even boyfriend and girlfriend. It's like you aren't going anywhere. All that time just.. passing by while you do nothing about your relationship.. Most people would be freaked out. I know I would be. I'd be wondering if I was just wasting my time, because I'd expect the one to be as committed as I was, and we'd have gotten engaged already.

"I don't think the first person is always the person, you know? If I think about it, I don't really know anyone who's still happily with that first person they started going out with when they were sixteen. 'Cept you guys. But I had to learn that the hard way, after Michael ran away when I wanted to get married. I thought we'd be.. 'Michael and Jackie - together forever', immortalised by a.. big banner or something." Jackie grew quiet, maybe she was getting tired. "Hey, wanna know a secret?"

"Um.. sure..?" Eric thought maybe he preferred the conked-out Jackie to the one who shared her daunting opinions, without considering what impact they might have on the thoughts of others.

"I was glad when you didn't turn up for the wedding. I put on a 'that jackass, I'll kill him!' front for Donna, but really I was just hoping you saw sense or something. You did, but it wasn't the kind I was hoping for. I hoped you'd see what I saw." Jackie played with the silver ring on her finger, distracted by it's shininess.

"And what's that?" Eric was slightly intrigued

"You didn't.. look around. Try out different things, different people. There was too much organising. It was like you were just slowly planning your doom, every time you two had to make a wedding decision. You should try -at least once- being impulsive. Just making a decision like that-" she snapped her fingers "-and sticking with it."

"Okay, well, I think that's enough Jackie-wisdom for now," Eric leaned up on his elbows. It wasn't that Jackie was annoying him, just that she had given him a lot to think about already, and his head was crowded with all these new thoughts just whizzing around in there. Drunk-Jackie made sense. Too much sense.

"Fine. Just remember," She stretched out her arm and pointed her finger in the air "it's okay to.. to outgrow people. You were young then. You're still young. You've still.. you've got.. all the time in the world." Jackie's eyes slowly closed, and she started drifting off at last. Eric settled backwards, leaning up against the headboard. Suddenly, Jackie sat up. "Oh god!" She cried, turning pale fast, and jumping up to run for the bathroom.

"You need me in there?" Eric called after her, getting up from the bed.

"Yes please.." came the quiet reply. There was just one thing in life that made Eric squeamish, and people getting sick was it. But he hated to be alone when he was sick, so he understood Jackie wanting him there. Though he couldn't be sure of whether it was that she didn't want to be alone, or that she didn't want anything to happen to her hair..

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"I'm not going to say it, because I know you don't want to hear it," Eric said the next morning, handing Jackie a plate of toast and sitting on the edge of her bed. "but you know what I'm thinking." Jackie nodded. Her face was pale with a slight green tinge to it. "I'm worried about you.. Should I be? Or are you going to go back to normal soon?"

"Well, is Steven going to leave his wife soon?" Jackie put the plate in her lap, she didn't feel much like eating.

"I don't know, Jackie.." Eric crossed his left leg so that his ankle was resting on his right knee. He played with his shoelace, winding it tight around his finger, watching as the lack of blood flow turned it white. Anything, so that he didn't have to look Jackie in the eye.

"Eric, come on. I'm not asking your opinion, I'm asking you, straight out, if he's going to leave his.. his wife." Jackie stared at him, waiting for him to turn around and look at her.

"Okay, alright." Eric turned to her. "Honestly..? I don't think so. He seems.." He searched for the appropriate word, but Jackie didn't have the patience.

"Happy?" She cut in abruptly. Tears pricked her eyes and stung the back of her throat. She waited.

"'Happy' is a bit of a stretch for Hyde, don't you think?" Eric replied wryly. "But he seems.. comfortable. And not unhappy. I don't know why you're so concerned about him now anyway. That guy, the one down in the basement with the Las Vegas stripper, he's not the guy you fell in love with. He's just some.. jerky guy with zero respect for you."

Jackie narrowed her eyes and cocked her head to one side. "Where are you getting that idea from?"

"Oh.. my God," Eric put his palms to his eyes and stood up off the bed. "Can't you see it? Jackie, the things he said to you on Friday night at The Hub; that's not what someone who loves you says. If he loved you, he wouldn't be letting you embarrass yourself like that, and he wouldn't be egging you on like he did. This is fun to him, it's a game. This is a different guy. Something's missing. He doesn't love you, not anymore." Eric put his hands down by his side, and took a deep breath.

"How could you say that? Don't ever say that!" Jackie, eyes wide, put her hands out and shoved Eric backwards roughly. Then she stopped. She thought. She put down her hands. None of this was Eric's fault, she asked for the truth and he gave it to her. He was just trying to help. She shouldn't be taking this out on him. She softened. "..I-I'm sorry, I'm so sorry. I didn't mean to push you, I just.." The stinging in her throat came back, and spread to the tip of her nose. Jackie put her hands to her mouth as she started sobbing in little bursts. "I don't understand," She choked through her tears. Eric sat down again, and awkwardly put his arm around her shoulder. She cried into his shoulder, as he sat in silence. There was nothing he could say, he didn't understand it either.