False Reality

Unfortunate

** TW: Parental death, grief, brief mention of suicidal thoughts.**

It was unfortunate, really.
All of it. Nearly your whole existence.
Mom and dad were too busy with their own lives to pay too much attention to you, mom had to work two jobs and dad had to work even when he was at home just to put food on the table.
You didn't resent them for it. You got it, kind of. You were used to them denying you 'priviledges' throughout the years to the point you didn't even blink anymore when you'd attempt your luck at getting them to pay for school trips, only to be denied and end up being the only kid to stay at school doing worksheets.

Hell, mom even timed your showers so she wouldn't have to pay a heightened water bill at the end of the month. There wasn't really much you questioned anymore when you were told something was too expensive.
But because they were so busy trying to provide in a life that was too expensive for them, you'd ended up having to raise yourself on the internet, learning everything you needed to know about life from there.
You'd even found a couple replacement parents there, a couple in their fourties that were more than happy to listen to your day-to-day struggles, and your secrets as well as confide in you about their own.

Their names were Ama and Genji, and you relied on them heavily on a day to day basis.
Even more so when your life got even trashier, your house having been destroyed by a guy with a crazy growth quirk while you were on the way to school.
The heroes had told you it was instant, that they wouldn't have known, but that didn't soften the blow that your shitty little apartment, with what little belongings you had and the only two people left in your family had all been torn from you so easily.

And you were mad. You were furious.
The one time they'd taken a day off for you. Your fourteenth birthday.
They should have been at work. They never cared about your birthdays before, telling you that they'd celebrate it with you when they got back. So why specifically that day? Why your fourteenth? It wasn't even a significant age, for fucks sake.
You remember the text you'd sent Ama.
'They're gone.' You'd sent. Blunt. Direct. You don't even remember doing it, you had been completely detached from reality for a solid few days after that, ignoring the many texts and attempts at phone calls both Ama and Genji had made.

It had helped for the first few nights being in care being completely detached. You'd just sat, laid, and stood around, completely mute, with no facial expression whatsoever.
It seemed to creep the other kids out, so they tended to avoid you as much as possible, giving nervous glances whenever you appeared in the room.
There were a couple of other girls that would at least attempt to try and involve you in things, but in account of you not really being able to find the strength within you to reply verbally, the attempts lessened and lessened.

The only way you could talk was through blunt and brief text exchanges with Ama and Genji, sometimes sending dry messages to your other internet friends.
The kids at school weren't much better. You had never been liked anyway. You were different. Poor. No-one wanted to come to your house for dinner or sleepovers, and even if you'd been given the chance you probably wouldn't have been allowed thanks to the price to pay for another kid to eat at yours.
But now they looked at you with pity, and then there were the few kids that didn't get the memo that actually, losing your parents was already kind of shitty, without adding bullying for losing your parents into the mix.

And then, one day, you'd screwed yourself over.
You'd been walking home from school, earphones in and eyes transfixed on the screen before you, listening to a new music video from your favourite artist.
In fact, it was the first time you'd felt relatively at peace since losing your parents. You couldn't hear anything but the song, and it felt like you weren't even in the world while you watched the video.
You didn't even clock the villain that had actively robbed the bank you were walking past until he had grabbed you by the wing roughly, and yanked you backwards against his chest, holding a knife to your throat.