Escaping from pirates with LeVar Burton was the fourth or fifth craziest thing that had happened to him, he liked to say, decades later. Fourth or fifth after the thing with the pillow fort and the thing with the air conditioners and the time they went to Disneyland without the kids.
It didn't surprise anyone when he turned up a few years after he'd left, with a beard and a girlfriend. And it didn't surprise anyone when he left again. The place didn't feel the same without all the old faces: times changed, people aged, and one woman kept dragging the conversation around to steel drums.
He ended up in LA, of course. It was the best place in the world to bankroll the worst genius filmmakers he knew, and there wasn't a better way to spend the money that he never really thought of as his. It was funny: his best friend from back home had moved out too, a couple years prior, but they'd fallen out of touch like people do and only reconnected over a pitch meeting.
"We never lost as much as we made," he always said, whenever anyone asked him about those movies, and then he had to explain the reference the way it had been explained to him.
After her father went to Jesus she kept finding new reasons to stick around. Mr. Butcher needed her, and the kids were settled in, in better schools than she'd been able to afford in Colorado. She lost touch with the old gang so gradually she barely noticed; one day she realized it had been six years since the last time they were all together, at the wedding.
But when her oldest started applying to film schools she was able to put him in touch with a producer she'd known, and when Jordan teased Ben about wanting to be a lawyer and wear a suit every day she reminded him that lawyers were people too, however much they sometimes denied it.
She'd never really retired, she just made sure that her husband made fewer messes that needed to be cleaned up. Eventually they sold the big old house and moved into something easier, with a short walk to church and an extra bedroom for when one of the kids visited.
She hadn't expected to be the last one standing, but at the end of her third senior year she successfully lobbied for them to start a Master's program and that meant another two years that stretched into four and then the Master's accreditation lapsed. She was the only graduate of the program and the value of her degree was in doubt but by then she'd realized there was only one place she wanted to work as a guidance counselor, anyway.
She wore glasses every day and helped people and she never made enough to pay back her parents. But at least she didn't have to borrow from them any more, directly or no, and her cats could finally live in the lifestyle she'd always wanted for them. For years after, sometimes early in the morning she'd meander over to the old study room and just sit and drink a cup of coffee and remember. Sometimes one of the others who were still around would join her, but it was never quite the same as the original seven.
President had never been on the table but she went as far as she could with two bachelor's degrees from the same community college. Assistant Director in Charge of the Field Office was farther than anyone but her husband had expected.
That took years and years, of course. The internship was only ten weeks, but then there was a semester to finish out the second diploma and then the FBI Academy… The plan had been to aim for the regional office in Denver, but there's many a slip betwixt cup and lip: both of the kids were born in a hospital near Philadelphia instead.
She'd worried, at one point early on, how well he would handle all the changes. He'd seemed pretty well settled when she'd upended his life. A weekend on visiting her gave way to two weeks and then most of a summer break and then he was hugging the dean and lying about how often they'd come back to Colorado to visit.
But even though he complained constantly he threw himself into childrearing with gusto, letting her put her attention on her career. He joked that it was just like teaching at Greendale, except that now he actually cared whether the kids learned anything or hurt themselves.
The show he'd moved to LA to work on was cancelled before the third episode aired. He considered just going home, but broadcast television was a dying medium anyway. His willingness to work for almost nothing on almost anything meant he never lacked for employment. He'd never intended to become second unit director for America's Next Kitchen Sensation but he was, at least, in show business and not running his father's restaurant.
A little side thing that he'd knocked together with some friends took off online and they parleyed that buzz into bigger budgets. Then one friend he hadn't heard from in years, and whom he'd kind of thought was dead, showed up at his door one morning offering him a bucket of cash. Suddenly they were picking up right where they'd left off, putting together a movie a year. Each made just about enough to fund another one.
Twenty years after he went west he started work on a dream project, a series based on their college years. It lost a staggering amount of money, but you can put just about anything online these days.
Strangers often assumed she was his second, trophy wife. He delighted in her explanation that no, in fact he was her trophy husband.
Getting a teaching job in the DC area turned out to be harder than he'd expected. He limped along as an adjunct for a few semesters; when it was happening at a real school teaching wasn't soul-crushingly terrible after all. But when she got pregnant they had several conversations and made several pro-con lists and landed on the decision they'd both known they would. Child care was hugely expensive and neither of them wanted their kids to be raised by anyone else.
Still, he didn't stop worrying that he'd ruined her life until the year she was named head of the Chicago office. That was the same year their oldest started college (at a private four-year liberal arts school, none of this community college crap). When their other daughter moved out, a couple of years later, he took his wife to Paris and spent the entire time staring at her like she was the sun.
He was sixty-two and she was forty-six on that trip. As time went on the age gap became less of a thing, and then suddenly it was a major thing and he was in the hospital and she was telling him she wasn't going to lose him until she was ready to go, and he started really focusing on taking care of himself.
They go a little nuts when the girls visit at the holidays. He tells his grandchildren (and who would have thought he'd have grandchildren?) the same stories he told the girls, about paintball and debate and Model UN and how, late one night in Virginia, they'd both confessed to being the Ass-Crack Bandit. And just like his daughters, his grandchildren roll their eyes and don't listen and complain that none of that stuff could possibly have happened.