Quinn was the one to stumble upon her body. Their mother had been calling her down for dinner for over five minutes, becoming more and more irate, finally sending Quinn up because she would snap at Daria, and she didn't want to ruin her dinner by sharing her bad mood with her eldest. It was a moot point, as dinner was ruined when Quinn started screaming and didn't stop, as Helen and Jake stood up so quickly that both their chairs fell over simultaneously, and it would have been humorous if something terribly wrong hadn't happened. They ran upstairs, found Quinn hugging Daria to her, wailing her fucking head off, saw the spray of blood and bone and brain on the padding just above her bed, and they knew their world was over.
On the floor, discarded after being read by Quinn, was the suicide note.
"You know why."
Three words, simple and brutal in their execution (in both the literal and metaphorical sense). When Helen first read the note, when she realized that that was the whole thing, it struck her as totally in-character with her daughter, and then her face crumpled as her stomach and lungs and nose and eyes produced sobs and wails and snot and tears. Jake, manning up for the first time in his life, took the paper from Helen and wrapped his wife in a bear hug. Reading it over her shoulder, anger triggered within him and he crumpled the offending piece of paper up into a ball and let it drop on the floor.
"You know why."
Jake and Helen did know why. They were too distant and inaccessible as parents: Helen, too caught up in her endless, futile quest for partnership at her law firm; and Jake, who used buffoonery and impotent rage at his father as an emotional shield, not to prevent himself from harming his children, but to prevent his children from harming him.
"You know why."
Quinn knew why. She was a shitty sister, who constantly put down Daria and her interests, and even denied being related to her at every chance she got.
"You know why."
Most of the kids at school knew why (after Quinn, too grief-stricken to know better, spilled the contents of the note to the general public). They knew how much of a misery chick she was, how shitty (they thought) her life was, how she liked making other people miserable. About half thought 'Good riddance!' and only thought of her again during the 'In Memoriam' part of graduation, and in later years when nostalgia brought them to flip through their yearbooks; the other half shrugged, thought "Well, that sucks," and she entered their thoughts about as often as she did the first group's.
"You know why."
Jodie knew why. She was the closest thing to a friend Daria had outside Jane, and Daria was the closest thing she had to a friend, period. All the volunteer resume padding bullshit her parents had her do left her practically no time for a social life; she barely had enough room in it for Mack as it was, and by consequence was acquaintances with Brittany and Kevin (who, if given a choice, she would not hang out with on her own). She was pretty sure the last time she had exchanged more than three sentences with somebody outside her family, Mack, Kevin, Brittany, and Daria was in freshman year. She understood solitude, and she knew Daria understood it well enough. In her secretest of hearts, she admired Daria's courage, and wished she could do the same.
"You know why."
Mr. DeMartino knew why. Daria was his brightest student by a very considerable margin. The number of students who actually put an effort into learning, he could count on one hand, and have enough fingers free to drive them into his eyes. He reasoned that she was just as depressed at the state of the nation's youth as he was, and decided to end it all before one of them became President and did the job for the whole world. He didn't bother killing himself; the cigarettes and the booze and the might-or-might-not-be-fried-cheese-logs from the PayDay were doing that just fine.
"You know why."
Mr. O'Neill knew why. It was his fault for not noticing. He had to transfer to Lawndale Middle School after two weeks because he kept bursting into tears at the sight of the empty chair where his biggest personal failure once sat.
"You know why."
Jane didn't know why.
She had no goddamn idea why her best friend would put a gun into her mouth and pull the trigger.
Not one. Fucking. Clue.
Before the coroner's report, she was certain that it had been a murder staged to look like a suicide. Afterwards, she was forced to conclude that Daria had done it herself.
She ransacked Daria's room, looking for answers. Jake and Helen and Quinn wanted answers, but they were too heartbroken to enter Daria's room again, or upset her belongings. The only concession they had made was hiring a cleaning crew to remove the canvas of Daria's last moment from the wall, leaving a conspicuous patch of drywall in a sea of padded squares. They did allow Jane to search to her heart's content, though.
She found nothing.
Reading every single story on her computer (even the ones password-protected...she was the only one who knew Daria's password) turned up nothing, and wasted hours. She even took the damned thing apart, wondering if there was a message hidden inside the computer itself. Nothing.
She looked under the bed, taking the mattress off so as to make sure there was nothing hidden on the frame. She took a knife to the mattress (and the pillows, and to more than a few of the padded squares). Nothing.
Every pocket of every item of clothing in her closet. Emptying out her closet. Examining the poetry the room's previous occupant had carved into the door. Nothing.
Only when Jane actually start ripping the carpet from the floor did Daria's parents ask her to stop.
School was her next target. Ms. Li graciously allowed Jane to review all footage of the day of Daria's suicide. Jane watched Daria go about her day: Enter school with Jane, go to class, go to another class, exchanging a not-so-pleasantry with Upchuck, lunch, another class, Brittany prattling on to Daria for three minutes, another class, talk with Jane, leave school. Jane asked if she could look at older footage; Ms. Li only kept footage up to a week, which meant that Jane reviewed four more days' worth of footage (as it had been some days since Daria's death and Jane undergoing her investigation). Nothing.
Jane asked Upchuck and Brittany what they had talked about on the day Daria killed herself. Upchuck had made the usual smarmy pass, which Daria had cut down with a withering mark, prompting the red-head to interject his usual "Feisty!" as she left. Brittany tried to tell Jane, but she broke into sobs every time she said Daria's name.
With Jesse backing her up, she ventured into the wilds of Dega Street at night. She actually found the guy who had sold Daria the gun. That wasn't what he told Jane at first, but Jesse simply hit him until he began coughing up blood, and he was more than eager to tell all about how the sullen young girl had given him a hundred dollars for a pistol and one bullet. He remembered that detail because the monotone way she had asked for it had creeped him the hell out, and he'd had a pretty good idea what she was going to do with it, and he'd read about it in the paper afterward, and he was awful sorry...Jesse began hitting him again, and was still hitting him as Jane walked away, with as many answers as she'd had before sending the low-life to the hospital.
The guy had said that she'd purchased the gun two days before she'd killed herself. Jane dissected each and every moment that she had spent with Daria over those two days, moving on to the two days before she had bought the gun, then two weeks before, two months...she hadn't realized she'd been obsessing over every single moment of their friendship until she realized she had been sitting in complete darkness for over three hours.
She couldn't think of a single clue, a hint, the subtlest indication that her best friend intended to take her own life. The gun salesman seemed to think that Daria's tone was of a depressed, suicidal nature, but when Jane had mimicked her usual speaking voice, he said that it was the same tone...was it possible that Daria was suicidal her entire time in Lawndale? Perhaps even before? According to Quinn, Daria had always talked that way. It was ridiculous to believe Daria had been suicidal her whole life...but Jane couldn't rule it out entirely.
There was only one other place she could turn to for answers.
"Daria Morgendorffer, born 1982, died 1999. Beloved daughter, sister, friend," Jane read the tombstone aloud. "Bullshit." She waited for a response that never came. "BULLSHIT!" she shouted again. "You didn't love any-goddamn-body! Why else would you kill yourself and leave that dumb fucking note?"
She began to kick the tombstone, the dull pain from the impact gradually increasing. "I don't know why, Daria! I don't GODDAMN KNOW WHY!" Her voice, hoarse from crying jags over the past few days, cracked, and she found herself barely able to speak above a whisper suddenly. "You bitch," she wheezed out. "You fucking cunt, I hope the devil packs hot coals into your ass forever!" Her voice finally wore out entirely, and she was left withe futilely assaulting the granite edifice that marked her friend's resting place. After brusing her hands and feet, exhaustion took her, and she slumped onto the ground, the tombstone supporting her. Only a few tears streaked down her cheeks, the most her depleted body could give up. "Why did you do it, Daria?" she whispered out. "Why did you leave me?"
The grave was silent.
XXXXXXXXXX
It was so, so tempting to make this veer off into Crackville at some point. Maybe I'll post them as outtakes later, haha.
I'm intrigued by the "Daria suicide" trope, as it's so wildly out of character for her. Really, try to imagine a realistic scenario where she actually takes her own life. It's silly! It's one of the more amusing tropes from early on in the fandom days. And yet, here I am, continuing it, hahaha.