Shadowfire - OC x Shoto Todoroki

Chapter 5 - Motherfucking Pigeons

Kaida's shoulders slumped the instant she stepped through her front door, her exhausted mind instantly releasing the waves of stress and anxiety that had been bubbling and lurking inside her during her first month at UA.

She could certainly tell that she was far happier now than she had been when first starting at the school, but the new school, the new people; they all brought forth new anxiety, more than Kaida wanted to experience in a lifetime. She just wanted everything to be ok. To be calm and quiet, to let her rest.

The bright smile, oozing confidence and sarcasm that she had worked so hard to construct perfectly, artificially filling her eyes with feigned light each time she coated her face with the beaming grin began to slip off her face, morphing into a gentle curve of her mouth. An improvement to the usual scowl that sat naturally on her face, she noted.

Her ribs ached from the battle trial that had occurred that day, and her brain felt like it had run a marathon, cohesive thoughts becoming tangled and warped as her hold on what little mental stability she had left weakened with the shutting of her front door, closing off the outside world as Kaida imprisoned herself in her own home.

She rubbed her eyes roughly. It had been so easy in elementary school to just hate everyone. She didn't have to worry about being a people pleaser, didn't have to stress about the hundreds of contrasting opinions that people could make about her. She had known exactly what people thought of her; Kaida Kisaragi was the girl with skin coated in scars, so quiet she could be mistaken for a mute, that held a look of death and fury in eyes that were far too weary for her young face. She was the mystery, the one whose power scared even the teachers away. The witch. She was gifted solitude and isolation, and gladly accepted it, not trusting her young mind to be able to defend itself from the prying eyes of her teachers, the walls around her mind not quite fully constructed.

But now, Kaida demanded control over exactly what people thought of her. She had put as much planning into her image as she had into designing her hero costume, designing a mental set of blueprints for her new personality that appealed to the desperate, aching desire for friendship and carefully hid the intricate network of lies and denial that surrounded her and her mother.

As much as it didn't appear so, Kaida was aware that she was going through the five stages of grief all at once when it came to dealing with Mariko Kisaragi; she knew her mind was poisoned by a daughter's love for her mother. She knew she was blinding herself to whatever illness plagued her mother's broken mind, filling her own head with a personalised sickness that whispered lies and empty threats into her ear.

In the weeks after her father's arrest for child abuse and neglect, Kaida had practically watched her mother's sanity shatter before her very eyes, like a fragile glass statue thrown to the ground, splintering into thousands of miniscule diamonds. Something evil grew in the mind of her mother like a parasite, slowly sucking away all reason and rationality, robbing Mariko of her memories and robbing Kaida of her mother.

"I don't know you!!" Mariko screams at her daughter, just barely arrived home from school. The episodes had been getting worse as Kaida's time at elementary school came to an end, and her impending start at UA drew nearer.

"Get out of my house!! I'll call the police!!" Mariko's voice begins to crack from the strain of screaming at her daughter, who is on her knees on the floor, clutching a bleeding shoulder.

Mariko's knuckles tightened around the knife brandished in her hand, blood sliding down the blade, making her grip on the handle slick.

"Mom..." Kaida rasped, her voice wet and broken from the sobs barely contained in her throat. "Mom, it's Kaida. I'm your daughter and I live with you and I just got home from school" She tried to explain.