A/N: I hadn't planned on updating this fic, because I suck and it's kinda scary to try and finish something you started back in 2011…but I randomly decided to look up this old account and saw that even up until July of this year, user bjq had been asking me to finish this story. So, bjq, this chapter is sincerely and wholly dedicated to you. Thank you so much for liking this story (& its whole 2 chapters) and motivating me to update.

Please note that since this was last updated in 2012, I have lost all plans/notes that I had drafted for the story, so I'm totally winging it and seeing what happens. I also haven't watched the show in years and my writing style has probably changed (hopefully for the better haha), so things may be awkward to say the very least.

(in the wee hours of the morning; at Point Place Community Hospital)

The waiting room was swelteringly hot, as if to make a point to the bone-chilling forces that continued to rage on outside.

While all the others wordlessly resigned themselves to the grimy plastic chairs that were too narrow and too small, brushing off their sweat and staring at the nothingness around them, Donna Pinciotti paced back and forth like a madwoman. The movement helped to ease her mounting nausea and distract from the paralyzing reality that was here and now.

But the mind is a powerful mechanism, and walking around the room only did so much to relieve her thoughts. Like the unyielding storm unfolding outside the walls of the hospital, visions of the past hour continued to plague her.

How did we end up here?

(flashback; 1 hour ago; at the water tower)

"JACKIE!"

Hyde's voice rung like a broken bell in the bitterly cold night. As he began climbing the tower, Donna followed - her body numb, her mind blank. All she could see was white against black, a canvas of madness and uncertainty.

"Fuck…"

Fear wrenched Donna from her thoughts and she scrambled to catch up with him. Finally atop, she saw Hyde slumped over, digging through a heap of snow. It was only seconds later she realized that under the heap lay a body.

"Oh my god…"

"For fuck's sake…" Hyde rasped, furiously dusting snow off and wrapping the frozen bundle in the warmth of his jacket.

Donna's gaze jerked back toward Hyde and rushed beside him, gently hoisting Jackie Burkhart into his arms, wrapping her scarf around the wet body.

"Go start the car…," he ordered, as he slowly stood up.

Donna nodded, but as she moved toward the ladder, she looked back at him with sudden doubt. "Hyde…how are you going to get her down?"

"GO NOW," he barked, carefully treading towards her - his frame suddenly Herculean, his eyes frantically ablaze.

She didn't question him any further. In that moment, she knew that if his life depended on it, he would get both himself and Jackie down safely.

She rushed back to the car and immediately started the engine, praying to foreign gods that they'd make it down okay. Moments later, she could see the faint silhouette of two bodies descending - Hyde, clutching the thin railing of the ladder with one hand, and Jackie, pinned to his own body with the other.

Anxiety flooded her as she watched each down-step, and Donna wished that she could hit the rewind or fast forward button on their lives…for this was eternity - a moment inexplicably stuck in time.

(present; at the Point Place Community Hospital)

Tick. Tick. Tick.

Hyde didn't know how much longer he could just sit and wait. Everything around him was swaying in super slow motion and sound was magnified tenfold.

Tick. Tick. Tick.

It took everything in him to not grab a chair and smash the clock in and end its mocking forever.

Tick. Tick. Tick.

He wiped the sweat off his brow and continued to stare at the wall in front of him. It was unbearably hot and all Hyde wanted now was to go back outside and take a good hit.

Tick. Tick. Tick.

He knew it was an awful thing to consider in the moment. But timing, along with a whole lot of other things, was something he was never good at. Self-sabotage, on the other hand? Of that, he was the master. So he stood up and headed towards the door, refusing to meet the glares that followed.

"Where the hell do you think you're going?"

Hyde froze in his tracks. "Fez, just leave it."

But before he could take another step, a firm hand grasped his shoulder. Clenching his fists, Hyde turned around, ready to sock anyone or anything that defied him.

"This is all your fault…and you're leaving?" Fez demanded incredulously.

Hyde had to admit - he was pretty proud of his friend for taking a stand. In all the time they had known each other, he couldn't remember a single moment in which Fez had ever challenged him. But right now, Hyde was not having it.

"Look man, I'm not kidding…just leave it," Hyde warned, as he headed back towards the exit.

Fez just shook his head in defeat. "You heartless bastard," he spat, "…you never deserved her."

Heartless bastard. You never deserved her.

And suddenly there was only muffled ringing in Hyde's ears. All other noise drowned out as he hit the cold tiles of the waiting room. His eyes rolled upward as the hazy figures of Donna and Mrs. Forman - mouthing words, holding Fez back, embracing his shaken friend - shadowed over him.

Fez's words stung him all over. They were venom entering his boiling bloodstream, at once immobilizing him. Leaving him fixed in the fire he was desperate to escape.

So he lay there, all former resolve perfectly broken. Playing back the words he knew to be true.

Heartless bastard. You never deserved her.

Never deserved her.

Never deserved.

Never.

(flashback; in the Camino en route to the hospital)

She was shivering all over, blue to her fingertips.

Hyde wasted no time, stripping her wet clothes, layer by layer. Pulling his own dingy t-shirt over her head, he cursed himself silently for not having worn anything warmer. He removed her drenched boots, peeling the nearly frozen socks off her. His own were too big but he put them on her tiny feet anyway. Finally, he wrapped her back in his jacket, cocooning her as best he could...breathing warmth into her hands, her neck, her face.

If only Jackie could see herself now…except that this wasn't Jackie. She was barely recognizable… a sham specter of what once was.

"Mmm…paradise," she murmured, her body trembling to the rhythmic sound of rubber hitting the road. "Eyes…hypnotized…"

"Shh," he whispered, his hands tenderly but swiftly warming her arms, back, legs. Every familiar touch burned him…brought back memories that he had buried deep within himself.

He could feel Donna's gaze through the rearview mirror. "What?"

"What's she on about…?"

He looked down at Jackie's face, wiped away the crystallized tears, and pulled her body close.

"I don't know," he replied flatly, swallowing the gnawing lump in his throat and staring into the darkness ahead of them. "I don't know."

Addendum: Oh god…if you read this super awkward, long-winded chapter without cringing, you deserve a cookie (or whatever your heart desires).