A/N: Thank you to all of you that Reviewed the last chapter! I hope I didn't keep you waiting too long, I don't want your impatience to grow too much. Happy reading all!

Previously…

Forman's Basement 9:30 pm

Donna's voice broke that silence with a smile. "This is nice. The whole gang back together again. Everyone where they should be."

Eric kisses his wife and continues the conversation in his sarcastic way. "Yeah I give it a week."

Kelso who is sitting in the lawn chair shakes his head at his old, scrawny friend. "No Eric, with these two together, I give it two days before we are listening to them fight."

Steven laughs but pushes Jackie up off his lap so he can grab another beer from the shower. "Why wait two days?" Everyone turns to Hyde. "We can have our first fight now."

"Oh Steven don't pick a fight."

"Yes pick a fight. Jackie is quite sexy when she's angry."

Steven ignores Fez's comment and just stares down Jackie from across the room. "I'm not picking a fight. This one is all on you."

"We've been back together for like four hours what on earth could I have possibly done?"

Steven's voice got quiet and rough. "You kept my daughter a secret from me."

A unanimous cry of "What?" echoes against the cement walls.

Jackie's face was that of a deer caught in a headlight. This could go one of a few ways but she figured she owed him honesty now. "How did you find out?"

"Find out? Jackie did you honestly think I wouldn't recognize my own daughter?"

"Honestly, yeah I was counting on that."

"I figured it out the first time you put her in my arms. She was wrapped in my shirt. Named for Zeppelin. And damn if that girl doesn't have my eyes."

"Yeah she definitely does. Do you hate me?" Her voice grew soft hoping this could end right here with all their friends watching. Embarrassment bubbles high within her chest.

"Why didn't you tell me?" He spoke ignoring her question. Jackie just stared at his eyes without his sunglasses. He knew she was thinking deeply about a way to make herself sound good in this situation. "Say something… anything."

"I wanted to call you the second I found out, but I couldn't. I picked up the phone and suddenly I realized I was bout to call up my ex-boyfriend from five hours away, after we had a crazy ridiculous break up and ask for a huge commitment from one of Wisconsin's biggest commitment phobes. I freaked out. I couldn't deal with that all again we had just gotten on a good page before I left."

"Dammit Jackie! You don't think I would've been there." He was growing angry now and feeling so insulted.

"Why would I think otherwise!?" She was screaming now, she stood up and slammed her beer onto the coffee table. "Every time I asked for a commitment from you, you ran!"

"Not true, name one time." Instant regret hit his face.

"I asked you to tell me to stay and instead you let me leave, I wanted to know that we would get married some day and instead you married a whore!"

"You slept with Kelso! That's all on you!"

"I never slept with Michael! You know that! Why can't you get it through stupid, stupid head!" There's the Jackie he had remembered, the Jackie he had fallen in love with.

"You turned me into Bud and Edna, Jackie. You made me a loser, good for nothing Dad! My daughter doesn't know me! All because you're a selfish, spoiled princess that doesn't want anything that'll inconvenience you."

"Everything I do, I do for Coda. I'm not the same person anymore Steven. And I had began to think that maybe, just maybe, you weren't either." The room got very quiet, they just stared at each other waiting for the next move to be revealed. She really was different, he could see it in her eyes. She wasn't giving him that deadly glare anymore, no her eyes were soft and sad.

"When the hell did you guys even do it?" Donna was confused and hoped that by budding in she could diffuse some tension.

"Well let's see," Steven starts laying out the math in his head. "Coda's like twenty-one months old, so September of '87. Right?"

"Yeah that'd be right."

"You guys slept together in 1987 and didn't say anything!" Donna exclaims.

Hyde shook his head at his friend, "I wasn't aware we were suppose to share all that information. Good to know." The sarcasm was thick in his tone. "Well in the interest of sharing and good friendships, I've been fucking Jackie off and on since your wedding to scrawny boy."

"Steven!"

"You two fought at our wedding." Eric points out the memory of the two arguing and throwing burns back and forth with wicked speed.

"And then we made up the only way we know how." He flashes that iniquitous smirk to her and the sound in his voice made her face brighten up. He wasn't as furious at her as he was trying to portray.

May 4, 1983

The wind rustles through the trees, Jackie lays by the edge of the reservoir just gazing out across the sunset that was glowing a burning red athwart the horizon. She had run off from the wedding knowing no one would notice and no one would care. It's not like she had pictures to be in or a toast to make.

The spring nipped at her bare flesh with moist and frigid breezes. A towering willow dances beneath the rising and glistening stars on this calmest of evenings. As Steven grew closer he becomes infatuated with the glimpses of her that he's seeing. She lays with her head resting on the softening log, her hair draped over the bark in ebony curls accentuating the darkness of her large intriguing eyes. Her skin is sun kissed and glistens in the most irresistible way possible. She exudes peacefulness. It was tranquil out here, that's why he always ran to this place to escape the chaotic mess of life.

"If you're done staring, could you scurry off somewhere else? I want to be alone." Her voice snaps his attention.

"Go be alone someplace else then, this is my spot." Steven takes his place beside her assuming that, as anyone would, she'd leave. She did nothing of the sort.

"If you could be anywhere right now, where would you be?" Jackie speaks up after a lulling silence.

"What," her question confuses him.

"Well, I'm just assuming that you're here to hide, disappear, I know I am. So if you could be anywhere else, when you close your eyes where do you go?"

When had she gotten so philosophical, college had done a lot for Jackie's personality. Steven thinks for a moment in silence. He hadn't thought like that before and honestly he didn't have answer. "Nowhere."

"Why's that?" Jackie rests back on her propped elbows.

"I don't know."

"Well, I'm assuming the emptiness is soothing to you. It used to seem that way, but maybe I'm wrong."

"I guess you could say that."

"So tell me Steven, what's so bad in life, that nothingness is better?" The words or request roll off her tongue so pleasingly that he actually thinks about answering that.

The question is one that he has snapped at others for asking in the past, but her voice washes over him with an urging force, as it always used to. He wants to talk to her and that's just something he doesn't normally do. "You know how it feels when everyone walks away and nobody looks back. To be kicked aside without a second thought."

"Yeah."

"It's really not that great."

"I understand, but you never stood back up. You got comfortable on the ground, Steven." She moves in closer to him, his walls were down and he wants desperately to raise them up again. "Be the strongest one, stand back up."

"You really think it's that easy."

"I know it is. You can't run away if you're lying on the ground."

He chuckles at the farcicalness of her concept, "Well doll, isn't running away quite the opposite."

"No, as long as you're running to something as well as from something…or someone."

"Is that what you're doing?" He looks at her.

"I keep having my home and my family torn away from me. I need a home, I'm going to make one in Marquette."

He didn't respond, he had no response to that. Instead they both just lay back on the rain ridden log and close their eyes, allowing the sunset to warm their eyelids as they waited out the end of the day to greet the coming night.

"I see winter when I close my eyes, I love that sparkle on the snow, fresh and pure. The bitterness of the cold, it scares off others allowing me to be all alone and I can just lay back and stare up at the stars and watch the snow fall down to the ground, beautiful dancing crystals, and I can just forget everything and lay in the silence."

She spoke for the first time in hours, the sun had completely drifted beneath the horizon, stars glistening on the pond. She spoke as she stood up from the grass brushing off her dress.

"That seems nice."

She smiles down at him before taking his hand in hers, "Just keep those eyes closed, all in all everything will be safe and sound." She whispers in his ear before attempting to turn back but he catches her lips as she turns her face passed his.

Steven approaches Jackie, sitting on the arm of that old yellow sofa. Leaning over Jackie who's still resting in his old chair he whispers sweet words in her ear. "Just keep your eyes closed, Doll. All in all, everything will be safe and sound."

"Do you forgive me?"

"You're the love of my life, the mother of my child. Of course I forgive you." He smiles.

A resounding "aww" echoes throughout the basement from their friends.

"That's it." Hyde says walking towards the steps shouting, "Mrs. Forman! I want my sunglasses back!"

Jackie's Apartment

"If happy little bluebirds fly, Beyond the rainbow, Why, oh why, can't I?" Jackie sings softly to her baby, sleeping soundly in her crib. Behind Steven is standing in the doorway unnoticed. It takes her by surprise when Steven takes her chin in his fingers and catches her lips in his own for just a few moments before she pulls away.

Later that night…

The stirring in bed woke Steven up. His eye flutter open to see a woken Jackie setting Coda onto the bed and snuggling up so their daughter lay between them. For the first solemn minute he finally came to terms with his life. He kissed Coda on the forehead and Jackie smiles. Steven pulls his girls in close to him for the most peaceful night sleep he has had in years.

A/N: I think it's a little short but hopefully you liked! I'm surprised nobody noticed in chapter three that Eric and Donna were married on May Forth (Star Wars Day) :) Please Review!