Fanfic Recs by coprime

Anywhere but Here (ensemble | PG13 | 4,490 words) is about what life might be like for the different Daria characters if Lawndale didn't exist. Sometimes things are better for the characters, sometimes worse. But, to me, they all make sense.

Excerpt:
PORTLAND, OREGON

The memory of that awful night had never left Vivian Taylor. The night that had saved her marriage.

Vivian had been living in that tiny apartment, separated from her husband. Only the formalities remained until they were divorced.

Then came the phone call. Her husband, his voice barely understandable, choked out the news that their daughter Brittany had died in a car wreck.

Brittany was a passenger in the car driven by her boyfriend Biff Raines, quarterback for the Pacific High Rams. It was a post-game party and Biff had gotten drunk. Vivian would never know how strongly Brittany had argued that she should drive Biff's car. But Biff was 17 and had a license. Brittany was 15 and didn't. Brittany gave in. It had cost both of them their lives.

Vivian and Steve decided the next day that the divorce was silly, that they were arguing over nothing, that there was nothing more important to them than their son Brian and his future. Their only child, now.

Vivian stared at the familiar tombstone and felt Steve's hand squeeze hers.

They both knelt and placed what Brittany would have wanted on the tombstone - not flowers, like every other grave. No, they each placed a red-and-blue Pacific High pom-pom on the plaque which read:

BRITTANY LEIGH TAYLOR B. 1984 D. 1999 GO, RAMS, GO!

And below that a megaphone inscribed "P.H.S."

What an awful place to be thankful for the saving of her marriage - her teenage daughter's burial plot. She wished it could be anywhere else, anywhere but here.