Touch Starved (Tomura Shigaraki x Fem!OC)

II: GEM'S ORIGIN

The first time my Quirk appeared was in elementary school. It was winter and our class was doing an arts and crafts project turning paper into snowflakes. I was startled when my classmate next to me screamed out - she had cut the tip of her finger. Turning towards her, the scissors in my hand grazed her shoulder just enough to leave a shallow cut. I was staring in awe at the blood beading from the wound I caused, unaware of my surroundings. It made me feel real warm inside like I wanted to sing!  It wasn't until the teacher came to aid that I snapped out of trance. Apparently just like that, her finger was healed. I didn't connect the bliss I felt to my newly discovered Quirk, and none of us realized that she was only healed because I hurt her. The class cheered and celebrated, and the energy in the room made me realize: I could be a Hero now just like my parents.

"Your daughter has a special quirk. She healed her classmate in an instant. It seems she will be following in your footsteps", my teacher beamed to my parents. I'd wind up later resenting her for this, for placing that pressure on me. Because from that day on it was nothing but suffering.

That was the only time I'd use my quirk in the next 5 years. In that time I did everything I could to bring it out again: I kissed any hurt animals I could find, meditated with a blindfold for hours, touched just about everything I could in every different possible. My efforts weren't good enough for my father though, who decided to take a more drastic approach. He inflicted wounds on my mother, trying to not only give me something to heal but to see if emotions would trigger my abilities. When I couldn't heal her, she'd be mad at me. She'd say I didn't really care about her or my love for her wasn't strong enough to activate my quirk. I felt chained down by my raging father and a mother who stood aside and watched. I was so confused after spending years watching her rescue average citizens in need. Why didn't she rescue me?

After a while, my father gave up on trying to trigger my Quirk. I thought that would be the end to my suffering, but it was clear our family dynamic had changed. I was ignored and ridiculed by my parents. My father turned to alcohol and my mother's hateful gaze filled me with guilt. It wasn't until the summer before entering high school when I was allowed to have a friend over. Both of us having hero parents, we had wished to be heroes ourselves. "Let's make a pact", she said, "to each other... so we can promise to be heroes together someday." She brought out a knife she swiped from her dad's study. "I saw this in a movie, but I think this will make our hero powers really strong!" Standing opposite of each other, we took the other's hand and made the smallest incision. The second the knife made contact with her skin, I felt it... the same way I felt that day in elementary school. Except since so much time had passed, I unknowingly harbored desire and pent up energy. I wound up cutting my friend's hand deeper than needed.

I was enamored with the sight of her blood first beading then pooling together. It was like how you'd watch raindrops in the car as a kid. You would follow two racing drops until eventually they merged with others creating one huge droplet. Like before, I was ignorant to my surroundings, consumed with bloodlust. These feelings couldn't be wrong. Yet my buzzing energy was interrupted when my parents rushed out hearing her cries.  One look at my face and they decided what was wrong... was me.

Her hand still in mine, my parents noticed her scraped knees had healed and out two and two together. From that moment on my parents only looked at me with disgust, thought it didn't feel much worse than it had been. I lost my friend, our pact ruined. My bad luck spread like a weed, and I lost all my friends, classmates, neighbors... everyone ostracized me. I was sick, a disgrace to my family heritage, a mutated freak.

In life I was first put in a box for positives... forced to fit a hero narrative even though it came at a painful abusive cost. Then I was placed in a box for negatives when my quirk was deemed useless. I was labeled evil, a curse, a mistake.  Until eventually I was thrown from the box and left on the street, nobody thinking anything of me at all. From this day on, I hated heroes.