DISCLAIMER: I do not own these.
A/N: This story is a companion to my other GMW stories, but the Cory-Topanga section of "Entr'acte" (And the "Her Monster" chapter of "Oh, We Have Come To Abigail") is the only one you might want to read.
Riley grows up in academia, learns how to be quiet by sitting in libraries while term papers are written and rewritten, how to read by quizzing her parents with flashcards, and how to love in the too-small apartment she doesn't remember by the time she's five.
The first few months of Riley's life are a balancing act. Senior year means theses, and grad school applications, and job hunts, and circling apartment ads in every newspaper they can find. Topanga and Cory fight, trying to figure out who has to give up what to make this work. Eric, as annoying as he is sometimes, is a great babysitter, never fails to make Riley laugh, and is the only reason they haven't all killed each other yet. For Cory's birthday, the Matthews parents send them a fat check that rests, uncashed, on their kitchen table for weeks, then Riley gets a stomach bug and can't keep anything down, spends a night in the ER with an IV hooked up to her, and that check- and the Easter one, and half of the Mother's Day one- goes to hospital bills. By the time the Father's Day one rolls around, Topanga has a summer job as a law clerk and Cory's waiting tables when not in his Teach For America training. Their apartment is a shoebox and they can't turn on the AC too often, but Riley, the sweetheart she is, doesn't even seem to realize anything is off about their current living arrangement.
Cory and Topanga have a plan. She goes to law school full-time. Cory is doing Teach For America during the day and chipping away at his master's at night. Riley is passed around between them and Eric and daycare and the nice old man upstairs. They're constantly exhausted, barely have time to do more than kiss as they trade off who's holding Riley, but neither of them would give up their life, their little girl, for the world.
Most of the time, the plan works.
The first time it doesn't, Topanga almost cries. Almost. Cory has parent-teacher conferences all night, daycare is closed, Eric has somehow gotten mono, the old man upstairs is out of town since his daughter had just had a baby, and she has a paper due in two days and needs to spend time at the library. She lays the landline back down in the cradle and sighs, running a hand through her hair, then makes her decision.
Riley's first time in a library is at ten months old, dressed in a Jack-o-lantern onesie and wrapped in a thick purple blanket. She sits calmly in her carseat, chewing on a ring of plastic keys and batting the collection of things attached to the handle. Being a college library in the middle of midterms, the baby is a perfect distraction, and random people keep coming up to Topanga and asking if they can play with her baby. She agrees, because it makes Riley smile to have people play peek-a-boo with her. One boy is in the creative writing MFA program and reads her part of the story he's working on, asks her questions she can't answer but rather coos to and he interprets how he wants. A girl majoring in German speaks to her in only German so she can get some practice in, and Riley stares at her in confusion. Another girl, this one in pre-med, names every bone in Riley's body, pointing each one out, and Riley squirms, laughing every time the girl finds one of her ticklish spots.
In four hours, Topanga has written two and a half new pages, bookmarked six more sources, and gotten the numbers of twelve new babysitters.
After three years, Topanga graduates magna cum laude from law school.
It is a perfect day.
Riley wears a yellow dress the little girl describes as "fluffy" and shiny white ballet flats. She skips around the hall the graduation is being held in while Cory, unsuccessfully, tries to calm her down. Topanga laughs from her place in line and Cory grins his goofy little grin at her.
The next week, Topanga begins her true job, not just an internship, at Elliott Brown. By the end of the summer, she's already been promoted.
Once Topanga's started at Elliott Brown, Cory quits Teach for America. He has just a few classes left for his master's, and is able to be a full-time student for a semester to get it all done. He goes back to working part-time at the café six blocks from their apartment. Day care is expensive, after all.
Just before finals, Cory goes to a job fair and is introduced to the principal of John Quincy Adams Middle School, who is looking for a new history teacher for the upcoming school year.
This man is none other than Jonathan Turner.
He calls Shawn that night and the two catch up. It's been awhile since Shawn's come around, and they spend the night talking like a young, lovesick high school couple. Shawn tells Cory about Los Angeles, and Houston, and Chicago, and Atlanta. Cory tells Shawn about Topanga, and school, and work, and Riley, always Riley. Shawn always seems to clam up when told about his unofficial niece, nods and says, "That's great, Cor," with little to no emotion behind it. He's so wrapped up in his daughter that he almost doesn't notice.
...Almost.
The summer after Cory graduates, they move into a new apartment. It was a graduation present from her and their parents, and technically Riley pitched in what she could find in the couch cushions ($3.27). It is big, and spacious, and within weeks, it becomes clear that Riley is not going to remember their shoebox. It's almost upsetting, really. That's the apartment she spent the majority of her life in, with all of her secondhand furniture. One of the few signs is that she still piles herself up in blankets and sweatshirts once it gets cold outside, like she expects the heat to not be on.
Topanga takes the morning off so she can take Riley to her first day of kindergarten. Cory had already said goodbye to her before he left for JQAMS that morning, and there had been lots of tears- on his part. Topanga thinks she's going to be stronger.
She thinks.
"You're going to love kindergarten so much, Riley," she whispers, straightening her little girl's pigtails. The mother just behind Riley's shoulder is glaring at her, clearly aware that this mother is at least ten years younger than her, and so she does her best to focus just on her little girl's big smile. She doesn't want to focus on anything else.
"Daddy says it's like preschool," Riley says sagely, and Topanga laughs and nods. "But with homework." She wrinkles her nose at that. She's been around homework her whole life, after all, and Cory's procrastination sessions are legendary in their household. A bell rings and Topanga straightens up, taking her daughter's hand.
On her way back, wiping away tears, she practically runs into…
"Stuart?"
"Topanga!"
As she walks away, she can't resist texting Cory, You'll never believe who I just saw.
Five blocks over, Cory's phone buzzes loudly in the middle of reading his class syllabus and he jumps.
"Sorry, that's probably my wife- my daughter starts kindergarten today-"
"Wait, Mr. M, how old are you?" a boy in the back of the class asks loudly. One of his friends slaps his arm. "It's a fair question! Look at him; he looks fresh out of college!"
"I'm actually twenty-six, Mister… Lawrence. Ha, that's my wife's maiden name. Got any cousins named Topanga?" he teases, rambles, really. A girl in the front of the classroom shoots her hand up. "Yes, Ms… Quinby."
"If you're twenty-six, and your daughter is presumably five, that means she was born when you were twenty-one, when you were likely still in college. Isn't that a little young to become a parent?"
He flounders.
Cory opens the door to Riley's room to call her for dinner and finds two girls in it.
He's not embarrassed to admit he screeches a little bit.
"Who are you?"
"Daddy, this is Maya Penelope Hart and she's my best friend!" Riley announces. He smiles, though it feels a little more like a wince.
"Maya, don't you need to be getting home? It'll be dark soon."
"It's okay. My parents probably won't notice I'm gone." That strikes a chord with him, and he asks for her phone number. She frowns, but then rambles it off, and Topanga graciously calls it. The woman on the other end, Katy, thanks them profusely, tells them she had been worried sick. Tells them she is about to leave for her shift at the Nighthawk, but that her husband would let them in.
Cory takes Maya home, and Riley insists on tagging along. Their apartment is far enough away to be in another school district, the same one his Teach for America gig was in, though he was with high schoolers, not elementary schoolers. He knocks on the apartment door, but there's no response. Maya is about to knock on the neighbor's door when someone calls her name and an older woman rushes in, pulling Maya close. Her grandmother, live in, basically a nanny. She opens the door, and while Riley doesn't seem to notice anything- Thank God for that he can't help but think- he does. It might as well be the apartment he and Topanga lived in after their graduation from college. Gammy- she hasn't offered her name and he hasn't gotten the chance to ask it, but that's what Maya called her- only seems about his parents' age, so Katy and her husband- was it Kevin?- must be somewhere around his age. He almost laughs. He and Topanga never expected to meet other parents with first graders but still in their twenties, and now they know two.
"What would you think about having another baby?"
Cory's head snaps up from the paper he's grading to look at his wife. Her computer is open and her hands are on the keys, but she's looking at him.
"What?"
"Riley mentioned wanting to be a big sister when I was tucking her in. And-"
"Now you're thinking about it," he says and she nods, tucking a lock of hair behind her ear nervously. Now he thinks about it. They're settled now, with well-paying jobs, an apartment certainly big enough for four people, and a daughter with the biggest heart in the world.
He loves being a dad. Topanga is a brilliant mom.
"So?"
"Yeah. Yeah."
Just four months later, he's buying a pregnancy test on his way home from work, and it's positive.
Riley had been excited to be a big sister, but when the day finally arrived, it was like she'd clammed up. When he comes to relieve Mrs. Svorski sixteen hours after leaving his little girl, she is curled up in a ball on the couch, crying.
"Riley!" he cries, rushing over to her and pulling her close in his arms. "What's wrong?"
"I thought you and Mommy left! Like Maya's daddy!" That sentence makes his blood run cold. Was that why Katy had been avoiding his calls?
"What happened to Maya's daddy, sweetheart?" he asks instead, running his hand through her hair.
"He went for a walk last week and hasn't come back. Maya doesn't know where he is," she manages to say around hiccups. Cory clutches Riley closer.
"I'm not leaving you or your brother, that I promise you, okay?"
"Okay," she mumbles out.
Over the next few years, he watches his two girls- because, he's decided, Maya is his now. He knows about Kermit from Katy, knows how they lived their life and he knows that things are going to be different. He watches Maya slowly crumble, watches the walls go up as Katy spends more and more time at the Nighthawk and at auditions. Isla- Kermit's mother, Gammy Hart- does her best, but it's not the same. She, after all, is working weird, long hours so she can watch Maya. Cory watches, and it breaks his heart that he and Topanga can't do more.
Instead, he sets an extra place setting at the table, and comforts Riley when Maya's problems make her cry and ask why Maya is so sad while she herself is so happy. He can't answer that one for her, which breaks his heart. After all, he and Topanga had been in the same situation as Kermit and Katy back when they had found out about Riley, but somehow, they had made it out. They had gotten to a great place in their lives, with their two kids and their great jobs and amazing apartment.
Of course, Riley doesn't remember life before this apartment, and because of that, doesn't realize just exactly how lucky she is. And that breaks his heart more than anything, because it will be years before she ever understands.
Riley starts John Quincy Adams Middle School at age ten. She no longer wears hair bows or pigtails, but still wears her Mary Janes from time to time. She's almost as tall as her mother, just as awkward as her father, and her bright pink braces decorate every single one of her many, many smiles. Maya is by her side every step of the way, their arms threaded together. He knows the next few years are going to be difficult for them, that things are going to pit them against each other and bring them even closer, but he also knows that things between them won't be this close forever. He, after all, barely speaks with Shawn anymore. Jack only recently accepted his friend request on Facebook, Rachel rarely talks to anyone that isn't Eric, and no one's heard from Angela since she and Shawn went their separate ways.
In the staff room all day, he is practically showered with compliments for his daughter, how well-behaved she is, and some wise soul has mentioned how close Riley and Maya are, so she gets the same treatment. He's a proud father, so he can't help but believe it.
By the time they've reached his seventh grade history class, though, he knows they're not quite as sugar and spice as they've been presented, and setting off the sprinklers with a sparkler while inciting a homework rebellion cements this.
In the blink of an eye, his daughter is a high school graduate with an acceptance letter to New York University framed on her wall. She had fallen in love with it early in her sophomore year, but had spent every second since then telling whoever would listen that she wouldn't get in, had even set up her list with "dream school" NYU and "realistic number one" Syracuse, but then she did. Maya, of course, had done the exact same with the Pratt Institute, but now she was in. Farkle's ED acceptance to Princeton hadn't been a surprise. Lucas was headed back to Texas, Zay to California, and Smackle to Princeton, just like the two of them had vowed years ago.
It's weird for him that his daughter is going to college but not moving out. Then again, with the astronomical tuition of NYU, he doesn't want her to ever live in campus housing.
As he watches from the stage with all the other teachers while the graduates toss up their caps, he catches Topanga's eye from the audience. Auggie is beside her on one side, his hair swaying everywhere as he jumps up and down. Shawn and Katy are standing on her other side, their arms wrapped around each other. She smiles widely back at him, tears pooling in her eyes, and he flashes back to that heart-stopping moment he found the What To Expect When You're Expecting book on their old and ratty banged up coffee table eighteen years ago. He had been so terrified, yet somehow, despite everything, Riley is perfect. She leans over to pick her cap off the floor, and once she's back up, Lucas and Maya have their arms wrapped around her, and all six of them are in a big group hug at the edge of the stage. Tears are rolling down his face, but he smiles. Yeah, he and Topanga are pretty lucky.