A/N: the beginning of this is a callback to the first chapter, just an FYI :)


Point Place, Wisconsin

1984

Jackie Burkhart believes in fairytales, in true love, in happy endings. She believes she found her Prince Charming, the love of her life. They'd broken up, many things came between them, but they found their way back to each other, and they always would. Somehow, some way.

The shambles of her parents' marriage and the disaster of her past relationships had, once upon a time, destroyed her hope of finding true love and getting a happily ever after. Kelso's unexpected death had only helped further that destruction.

Now, while some scars still remain, all the wrongs have been made right and all the hope has been restored. Bad things happen, yes, and relationships- and people- are sometimes lost. But that's not the end of the story. Good things will always happen again, sometimes even emerging from the wreckage of the bad things, like a flower springing up from a dead field.

She's not exactly glad things happened the way they did, but now she knows it all led up to this, to her finding her way back home. Home: where she feels loved and happy.

She's in love with Steven Hyde, and she always will be. They have a beautiful surrogate daughter together, Betsy, and another child on the way. Yes, Jackie Burkhart and Steven Hyde, children of neglectful parents and dysfunctional families have formed a little family of their own. A loving, unlikely family. They vow to never treat their children the way they were treated by their own parents. And they plan on keeping that vow.

Most of all, however, they know that no matter what happens, no matter what comes their way, they'll get through it.

Together.

As a family.


"Alright Bets, put the flowers on the ground," Hyde says to Betsy. The five-year-old places the bouquet down near the gravestone and Jackie quickly comes over after her to arrange the flowers neatly.

Hyde picks up the child, hoisting her on one hip, and stands back so they can admire the newly decorated stone. It reads:

Michael Kelso, 1959-1981, Brooke Kelso, 1957-1981.

Jackie goes to stand next to Hyde and Betsy, putting one hand on Hyde's back and resting the other on her swollen, pregnant belly.

"Miss you, Kelso," Hyde says to the person six feet under the green grass. "Miss you too, Brooke. You were cool," he adds.

"Miss you!" Betsy repeats, louder than Hyde, and he smiles. His determination to keep Kelso's memory alive in her life has not faded in the slightest and he's glad to see his efforts have not been in vain.

Jackie takes her hand off of Hyde's back and slips it into his own hand, the wedding band around her ring finger smoothly gliding against his skin and into place as it, along with the rest of her fingers, easily fit between Hyde's fingers like a missing puzzle piece. She leans her head against his shoulder as they stare at the headstone. "Do you think he'd be proud of us?" she asks, despite knowing how much Hyde hates to answer cheesy questions like that.

She hears him scoff. "Even if he was, he'd never admit it. And I'm not sure how he'd feel about us having a kid of our own. Ya know, taking the attention off Betsy and all."

Smiling to herself, Jackie gently shakes her head. One of Hyde's main concerns about having their own child had been Betsy. "What if she feels like she's being replaced?" he'd asked. "Or what if she feels like less of our kid than the other because she's not biological?"

His concerns had been valid, she supposes, and she'd be lying if she said the same thoughts hadn't occurred to her as well. After all, both her and Hyde had been only children, so they don't know what it's like to share parents with a sibling. But she'd managed to convince him that they simply wouldn't let that happen; they'll make sure all their children feel loved equally.

"He'd just have to deal with it," she responds. Kelso was quite the attention hog himself, and she's sure he'd believe his kid deserves more attention than anyone else's, but she also knows he would be understanding of her and Hyde wanting to have their own children, too. Eventually.

Hyde snorts. "Yeah, I guess."

"Can we go to the park now?" Betsy interrupts, already bored now that she's paid her respects. Yeah, she's still Kelso's kid alright. She's theirs now, too, of course, but there are some parts of her very being that will always remind them of Kelso. As she should.

"Yeah, man, let's go," he says, removing his hand from Jackie's in order to set Betsy back on the ground.

As the small family starts walking away from the meaningful gravestone, Jackie takes one of Betsy's tiny hands in hers and Hyde takes the other.

"When the new baby comes, I can't wait to take her to the park and show her how to feed the ducks," Betsy says from between Jackie and Hyde.

"I'm sure you'll have a blast with that, Bets," Hyde replies. "But we've been over this; the new baby might not be a girl."

"But I want a sister, so why can't you make it a girl."

"Yeah, well, we don't really control that."

"Why not?"

"We just don't."

"Why?"

"Because, uh," Hyde sends his wife a caged look. "Jackie, help me out here."

She smiles, always enjoying getting to witness moments like this, seeing him squirm or simply get stumped by someone who's a fraction of his age. But she decides to have mercy on him and help him out. "Betsy, you'll just have to wait and see if the baby is a boy or a girl, okay?"

"Okay," she pouts. "But if it's a boy then you need to have another one that's a girl next time."

Jackie looks over at Hyde and lets out a laugh at the expression on his face. She can't resist teasing him. "Yeah, Steven, that sounds good to me. What do you think?"

"I think we should take it one kid at a time," he suggests.

"That's not a no, so I'll take that as a yes," she says, eyes twinkling, and he doesn't deny it.

And just like that she's suddenly hyper-aware of the fact that she's walking with Steven Hyde, her husband, and their surrogate child, laughing together and talking about their unborn child(ren), their future. This, the moment she's living right now, used to be her fantasy, her dream. It was something she had given up on, something she thought was unreachable; a lost future. But that lost future is her present, it's reality, it's her life . She's happily married to Steven Hyde, raising a child with another on the way; this is her long-sought happily ever after.

Yes, Jackie Burkhart believes in happy endings because she's certain she got hers.

The end.

A/N: and there we have it, short and sweet. I would like to thank all of you: my dear readers, commenters, followers, and so forth. ALL of that means so much to me and posting my fics online wouldn't be fun without you all. I can genuinely say that you not only encouraged me to keep posting, but you also encouraged me to improve the story even more. It made me more passionate about it, and I thank you.

I also want to thank Writerperson100 for betaing a lot of this story and my irl best friend raspberryghoulaid for supporting me- I literally wouldn't have even STARTED writing this fic if it wasn't for her encouragement. I pretty much only wrote oneshots before this and didn't think i could do it, but i was really passionate about this idea. She told me I have what it takes and to "just do it. Just write it." And so I did. I've never written this much or stuck with/finished a multi-chapter fic before and i'm proud of myself :')

this story means a lot to me. I started writing this story all the way back in March, right after I had abruptly left school due to personal reasons. I moved back home and didnt have a job yet. I was down, and trying to figure out my life (i mean, i still am lmao) and i needed something to be productive with, something to feel passionate about and to escape into. That's what this was to me. And now as I'm posting this epilogue, I move into my new school next week! So yeah, sorry for being cheesy and making this long, but this story helped me through a lot. So thank you for being so kind in response to me sharing it.

And lastly, I have another fic in the works so keep an eye out ;)