This chapter was originally written as a one-shot (thus it's shortness) but I decided to continue it, obviously. So this chapter is shorter than all the upcoming ones, and truly functions as a prologue of sorts. Enjoy!


Chapter 1: Unfixable

They don't figure out until later that they need her. They were Cory and Shawn for practically forever before Topanga came along, so that's what they'll continue to be now that she's left them, right? If she wants to claim that the boys are more of a primary couple with her as their tag-along then they are a real triad, then they'll just take this chance that she's given them to prove her right, and they'll run with it.

They'll be fine. That's how this was supposed to happen… only that isn't what's happening right now. Right now Topanga's gone and Shawn started drinking again and Cory didn't know what to do to help him. Topanga was the triad's problem-solver when it came to the realstuff, but she's not around now.

No, now Cory is pacing a hospital waiting room because Shawn got drunk behind the wheel and crashed because Cory couldn't reach him, because for the first time in forever – or so he thought – he wasn't enough to get him past the fact that anotherperson had left him. Now Cory and Shawn have no Topanga, and Cory's waiting to find out if Shawn is even going to make it off the table… or if there's not even going to be a Cory and Shawn anymore, either.

Cory was supposed to be the crazy one, the one who took everything too far and too hard, especially with something like Topanga leaving, but Shawn… god help them, Shawn had shattered, the pieces of him falling to the ground too quickly for Cory to know how to pick him back up again.

So now Cory was left to wait, feeling alone in a room that was crowded with his family, to find out if Shawn's body had been broken as far beyond repair as his spirit seemed to have been. Cory's too far gone to even cry – or so he thinks – until he hears his mom gasp behind him and turns around to see Topanga coming off of the elevator, tears already streaming down her face. He's never been so relieved to see anyone in his life, and he goes to her instantly. It's as if nothing ever happened at all, as if she'd never even left, even as the weight of what her leaving's caused presses in around them.

"How is he?" she chokes out, looking desperately up at Cory.

He can only shrug, even while he tries to tell her, "They don't know…"

But the words, his mouth, won't work.

Until someone else speaks, a soft, regret-filled voice filling the silence in the room that had previously only been broken by Topanga's sobs. A woman in a white coat whose face Cory can't even think well enough to focus on asks, "Shawn Hunter?"

Cory barely manages to nod, because he knows, he can see it in the woman's eyes. The doctor doesn't need to speak; Cory and Topanga can see it in her eyes, but he doesn't think he can bear to hear the words. He knows that Topanga couldn't; the woman's expression is enough to send her into a round of heart wrenching sobs the likes of which Cory's never heard before.

Shawn is gone. Dead and gone because Topanga left and Shawn got drunk and Cory couldn't fix anybody and all three of them were so busy feeling apart that they never realized just how connected they were, just how much they all three relied on each other.

Now they know, they learned the hard way… but Shawn is gone in a way that no one can come back from. He can't walk off of an elevator and back into their lives like Topanga just did, not this time. Now Cory's left with the shattered fragments of himself and Topanga to deal with, and once again he still doesn't know how to fix it.