He takes the subway, a rarity for him, but he reasons that he has enough to think about without the distraction of driving a car. He goes towards Farkle's house first, the farthest, in the nicest area of New York. He figures that the distance will be enough so that he can figure out what to say.
He doesn't.
Luckily, or unluckily, Farkle has plenty to say. Cory stares at him in bewilderment as he speeds off facts about enlarged hearts, the probability of having them, the probability of dying from them. How ironic it was that Riley, of all people would have an enlarged heart. Or not ironic, because she a had a large heart figuratively and in every sense of the word. Farkle speaks so fast, Cory begins to believe that the speed of his words could outrun his grief.
But it doesn't, and Corey ends up holding Farkle with his tear-stained face and voiceless desperation. Cory comforts him as best he can.
Farkle says to him hoarsely, "But Mr. Matthews, without her, we're nothing."
X
Cory flees before Farkle says anything else.
He goes to Lucas, because he needs to. Lucas had become an ocean of serenity in lieu of his troubled past. If he was being honest with himself, a part of Cory prays that Lucas is as cool-headed as he has been since moving to New York, because he needs that kind of calm.
But when he knocks on the door, Zay greets him with a bloodied lip and eyes that are swollen from crying.
"I've never seen him this bad before." Zay says simply, and Cory's heart plummets.
He knocks slowly on Lucas' bedroom door and presses his ear cautiously against the cool wood. There is nothing but silence to greet him. He turns the knob and steps in quietly. The room is in chaos. There are multiple holes in the walls, a lamp shattered on the floor, a wooden dresser cracked and face down.
Nothing is in its place and Lucas sits in the middle of it, huddled in a ball that blocks out the world.
The world without Riley.
Cory steps over the disarray and stands over Lucas forlornly. He eyes the cuts over the young man's hands and blood that trickles over his knuckles. He still hasn't come up with the right words to say.
Lucas looks up at him, eyes stormy with grief, "What do we do now, sir?"
Cory doesn't know, but he sinks to his knees next to Lucas and lets Lucas cry recklessly into his blazer. He leaves Lucas with Zay after he falls asleep from heartache. He makes his way to Harts' residence.
X
Katy Hart answers the door with tear-stains. She pales when she sees Cory, and wordlessly lets him in and leads him to Maya's room. She is on her way to being a more present parent, a better mother, but nothing could have prepared her for this. So she steps aside and leaves her daughter to Cory.
Maya is not in her room. Katy inhales sharply with worry, but Cory knows where Riley's best friend is simply from the cold draft that comes from her open window. It occurs to him that there was no other place that Maya could have been but there.
X
Cory steps into Riley's room for the first time since she's left the world. He has tiptoed past Topanga and Auggie, who had remained in a grief-induced slumber since he had left earlier that morning.
Maya is sitting at the window. Their window. Corey sits down next to her and doesn't really say anything except wrap an arm around her fragile form. For a while, there is nothing but a tragic understanding between them.
Riley is gone.
"How is the world still moving?" Maya says suddenly. Her voice is crippled with pain.
"I don't know," and he doesn't.
"You checked up on Farkle and Ranger Rick?" Maya manages in an attempt at normality.
"Yeah, I did."
"Are they okay?" It is a stupid question and they both know it.
"No."
"What do we keep doing Mr. Matthews? How do we keep going?"
"Together."
X
They stood together in front of Riley's grave.
Riley Matthews
2002-2015
Beloved friend, sister, and daughter
She went out to make the world her own, she became the world to others.
Cory Matthews crumples and holds onto his wife. His shoulders shake in despair.