𝐄𝐏𝐈𝐏𝐇𝐀𝐍𝐘.
(n.) a moment when you suddenly feel that you understand, or suddenly become conscious of something that is important to you.
𝐈𝐍 𝐖𝐇𝐈𝐂𝐇 - sydney suzuki learns that home can be a person, too.
✧.* i. midoriya / original chara...
[there will be a warning preceding every chapter. please remember, if any of the described topics may cause you harm, it is perfectly okay to skip ahead.]
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home. what a foreign word to sydney suzuki.
sydney didn't really ever feel 'at home' when at the suzuki's family house. her room was nothing more than a barren slate, holding all the flavor of a freshly-bought canvas and lacking even the simplest of toys to fill the space. to the young girl, it was nothing more than a shell bereft of any identity or familiarity, something that never truly felt like it was hers. sydney didn't like it at all, but she felt guilty expressing her complaints.
most days at home were spent in solitude; napping, coloring, or watching cartoons. the only reprieve was playing with her older brother, but even he was far too mature to be interested in spending time with his four year old sister. sydney was lonely, and not ashamed to admit it. there simply wasn't much to be done when she was so confined and isolated. the hours passed painfully slow within those four white walls, time feeling as if it were dragging on for ages without any progress.
and when she wasn't busying herself with mindless activities, there was watching mom and dad.
emi and haru suzuki didn't get along. sydney can't remember a time when they ever did. perhaps it was before she existed that the two of them were in love, going on dates and holding hands like people who love each other do. she saw that on tv all the time — why couldn't her parents be like those people in movies? sydney couldn't wrap her head around it.
still, she liked to think herself as mature for recognizing the reason her parents fought all the time — it was easy, of course, for they simply lacked compatibility in all the ways that mattered. haru was quick to anger and emi was just as quick to defense, an endlessly simmering volatile mixture. they were caught in a neverending circle of arguments that would eventually end in one of them abandoning the household to sleep outside or somewhere else entirely. she had seen this happen numerous times over, her father disappearing into the night to find some much needed space until the inevitable made him return, and the cycle repeated.
school wasn't much better. sydney was, by her own diagnosis, a loner.
she ate her lunch in silence, often keeping her eyes glued to the floor rather than joining in with the general chatter. with the playground serving as a place to have fun, she avoided the swings and slides and sought refuge at faraway sections away from her classmates, content in her isolation as she filled the pages of her coloring books with vibrant hues.
some of her teachers were concerned, of course.
they'd contacted emi, who'd talked to her coworker, mitsuki bakugo. the woman had practically forced her loud-mouthed son to invite sydney into playing kickball with his friends.
