Nothing Happens for a Reason

Nothing Happens for a Reason

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Synopsis: College freshmen Daria Morgendorffer and Tom Sloane are together again, joyously happy and blissfully in love—until the day she finds him in bed with a small zoo and Tiffany Blum-Deckler. You’ll weep, you’ll cry, you’ll kiss ten minutes of your life goodbye when you read this unofficial sequel to Mahna Mahna’s Daria/Tom shipper, “Everything Happens for a Reason.”

Author’s Notes: Everything ended so well in Mahna Mahna’s story that I felt a little extra story was called for. You can read Mahna Mahna’s story first, or you can just begin by assuming that once day, Daria and Tom meet in Boston and make amends and start dating again and fall in love with a little help from Cupid from Holiday Island, and then things really get fun! Unless you are a Daria/Tom shipper, I mean. The following three parts are presented in the order they were offered on PPMB, after Mahna Mahna’s tale.

Acknowledgements: Thanks to Mahna Mahna for being such a good sport and not having me assassinated, so far. Thanks also to Robert Nowall for his immortal contribution to Daria fanfic, appearing herein.

THE POSTSCRIPT

Daria Morgendorffer was walking on air when she arrived at Tom Sloane’s apartment. Nothing would ever go wrong again. She was doing well at Boston’s Raft College, Tom was again her boyfriend, and the artful Jane Lane was still her best friend. Life was perfect. Home from classes early today, Daria hoped to show Tom the new self-defense device she’d purchased and maybe get a little loving in to celebrate—but she couldn’t find Tom anywhere.

            “Tom? Damn, where is he?” Daria reached down and opened the apartment’s bedroom door, walking in. “Tom? TOM!”
            “Daria!” Tom shouted, pulling the covers up, but not fast enough to hide the golden retriever, the goat, the hamster, and Tiffany Blum-Deckler.
            “Does this goat make me look faaat?” Tiffany asked, just as Daria pulled out her shiny new .357 and opened fire.

THE FOLLOW-UP

The next day, unaware that anything had gone wrong, Jane Lane appeared at the restaurant where she was meeting Daria for pizza. She was looking over the list of appetizers and was ready to order six of them when someone cleared her throat. Jane looked over the top of the menu—

            —and frowned. “What the hell are you going here?” she asked.
            “Did you order yet?” said Veronica. She took the seat next to Jane.
            “That’s reserved for Daria!” said Jane. “Buzz off! You don’t even exist!”
            “The pot’s calling the kettle black again,” said Veronica. “Hey, does this place have barbecue wings?”
            “Where’s Daria?”
            “In the pokey, about to do hard time for giving Tom and Tiffany Blum-Deckler lead poisoning. Shame about the dog and the goat.”
            Jane stared at the younger near-copy of Quinn. “You’re joking.”
            “No. They had a hamster, too.”
            Jane made a face. “Eww.”
            “Eww, indeed. So, do they have wings?”
            After a pause, Jane consulted the menu. “Yeah. So, no more Daria?”
            “Well, there’s visitation.”
            “Yeah, but Kinsington Reformatory is a long drive from here. You like the garbage pizza?”
            “Sure. Wanna be my partner in crime? Walk around Boston and make sarcastic comments on everything? Go out for pizza again and again?”
            “Veronica, assuming you do exist, you’re still in high school.”
            “I can drive up on weekends. Got my permit.”
            Jane sighed and put down the menu. “Okay. Just don’t tell your sister about this.”
            “Thirty years to life. Don’t worry about it.”
            “Hokey-dokey.”
            And they were happily sarcastic ever after.

THE SEQUEL

            Eight long, eventful months passed.
            A knock sounded at the apartment door of Jane Lane, sophomore BFAC student. After a pause to spit out the mouthful of bagel-and-cream-cheese sandwich she was chewing on, Jane headed over to answer it. “Coming!” she shouted. “Hang on! Almost there!” She opened the door. “Ready or not, here I . . . DARIA!”
            “No,” said the figure at the door. “I Daria.” She wore the same outfit as always, though the suit looked a bit worn and dusty.
            “I thought you were still in prison,” whispered Jane, unable to think of anything else to say.
            “Mom got me out on a technicality having to do with leap years. I’m on probation. Mind if I come in?”
            Jane’s eyes widened. “Uh . . . sure. Come in. Sorry, I’m just a little—”
            “Who is it, Janey?” called a feminine voice from another room in the apartment. “Tell them to beat it, so we can get back to fooling around!”
            Daria started to enter, but stopped and frowned. “Who’s that?”
            “Daria,” said Jane in a rush, “since you’ve been gone, a lot of things have happened, and maybe we should go out for lunch instead so I’ll have time to explain some of the most important events that you—”
            A teenage girl with long red hair walked out of a back room. She resembled Quinn but was barefoot and wore a very large Nirvana nightshirt that could not conceal that fact that she was quite pregnant. The young girl came to an abrupt stop when she saw who was at the door. “DARIA!” she cried in astonishment and horror.
            “—should be aware of,” finished Jane lamely.
            “Who the hell are you?” growled Daria.
            “Stop being mean to me!” shouted the young girl. “I’m your youngest sister, Veronica, and I’ve been living with Jane since you went to the slammer! Don’t you recognize me?”
            Daria squinted at her, then looked at Jane with the same squint, though by now it had become a glare.
            “Daria,” said Jane, “before you jump to conclusions, it’s not what it looks like.”
            “If Cupid set this up,” said Daria, “Holiday Island’s going to look like Eniwetok when I get through with it.”
            “No, trust me, this isn’t what it—”
            “Who’s at the door, Janey?” called a male voice from the same back room. After a moment, Trent Lane walked out, wearing box shorts and nothing else. He wandered over, gave Veronica a long, soulful kiss, and waved at Daria. “Hey, Daria,” he said. “Long time no see.” He patted Veronica on the tush. “Let’s go back and work on some more lyrics, okay?”
            “Sure,” said Veronica. “Sorry, Daria. Got to go.” She blew a kiss, then disappeared after Trent and shut the room door behind her.
            “That,” said Jane, “that was exactly what it looked like.”
            “Let me get this straight,” Daria growled. “I go through a very long and painful series of blind dates when I get to Raft College and finally fall in love with Tom again, and we almost get married and then I find him in bed with Tiffany Blum-Deckler, a golden retriever, and a goat, and—”
            “And a hamster,” said Jane, making a face.
            “Shut up. And I shoot Tom and Tiffany and the dog and the goat—and the hamster!—and go to prison and get sprung by my mom, only to come back and find that Trent and my imaginary youngest sister are shacked up in your apartment, and Veronica is preggers?”
            Jane thought it over. “Um . . . yeah, that’s about it. We have a hamster, too, but only because Trent thought watching it would help him write lyrics.”
            Daria’s glare could have cut through steel. “Is there anything else I should know?”
            “Uh—” Jane began.
            “Hey, Daria!” shouted Kevin Thompson, walking out of another back room. He was as naked as a jaybird and didn’t seem to care. He waved at Daria, walked into the kitchen, got a carton of milk out of the refrigerator, drank it dry, put the empty carton back in the refrigerator, then walked over to Jane and gave her rear end a healthy squeeze before heading back to the back room. “Don’t be gone long, babe,” he called before disappearing. “I need you to help me with my warm-up exercises! Push-ups!”
            Jane’s face was bright red as she cleared her throat. “I think you know almost everything there is to know, at this point,” she said.
            A goat bleated from the room Kevin had entered.
            “Okay, now you know everything,” Jane finished, looking at the floor.
            “I’ll violate my probation if I stay here a second longer,” said Daria, turning to leave. “I’m going back to the hotel.”
            “Sure you don’t want to do lunch?” called Jane in a hopeful tone. “Maybe tomorrow, while Kevin’s out taking the goat for a walk?”
            “We’ll see,” said a glum Daria. She walked out of the building and got into the passenger side of a white Sunbird in the parking lot.
            “So, like, how’d it go?” asked the driver.
            “Lousy,” said Daria, glaring at the glove compartment in front of her. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
            The driver nodded in a knowing way. “People have a way of waddling over your innermost feelings as if they were indoor-outdoor carpeting, don’t they?” On impulse, Sandi Griffin leaned over and kissed Daria on the cheek. “At least we have each other.”
            “Don’t remind me,” Daria grumbled.
            “Hey, if I hadn’t shot Stacy Rowe over that bottle of nail-polish remover she borrowed from me and then gave to Brooke, I’d never have met you in prison in the special way we did. And to think I was originally looking forward to having Martha Stewart for a cellmate.” She shook her head and started the car. “It was that serene-thing, the something-dipidity, I forget what it’s called.”
            “Catastrophe,” Daria grumbled.
            “No,” said Sandi, “that’s what happens when people mix primary colors in the daytime.” And on that note, they drove away.

Original: 05/12/04, modified 12/28/04, 09/22/06

FINIS