Broken Bird / Fan Works

• Firefly in Ace Combat: The Equestrian War. Her parents were brutally killed by a griffin solider and due to a misunderstanding, she believed he was mocking her pain the last time they were face to face. She was so overcome with grief she completely broke down and it takes most of the story to recover.
• Advice and Trust: In chapter 1 Shinji and Asuka open up and talk about their pasts (their mothers' demises, their fathers' abandonment, their lack of friends, their feelings of insolation and loneliness, their self-worth and trust issues...) and realize that they were more alike than they thought:
  Asuka: What Sensei?
  Shinji: The one my father abandoned me with after my mother died in an accident with the Eva! Not that you'd understand that,
  Asuka: Me too. [...] My mother... There was an accident with Unit-02... She... died, eventually. My father... didn't mourn very long. [...] So yes, Third Child, I know exactly what that felt like!
  Shinji: Your father abandoned you after your mother was gone,
  Asuka: You have nightmares all the time about it. The memory keeps coming after you when you try to sleep,
  Shinji: (nodding) It's hard to sleep. You feel lonely and cold at night, because no one ever held you after that,
  Asuka: You never had many friends before you came here. No on ever wanted to just talk to you for you.
  Shinji: Your father never explained or apologized for why he just left you.
  Asuka: No one even tried to understand your pain. No one cared.
  Shinji: You miss her every day, but don't even have any pictures, barely any memories. No one tells you about her.
  Asuka: And there was never any point in talking about it to anyone, because there was no one in the world who could understand what being an Evangelion Pilot was like,
  Shinji/Asuka: (in unison) You're just like me.
• All For Luz: Having gained PTSD from the Death Camp and going through even more suffering via Fantastic Racism when she came back home to Gravesfield has made Luz a very cynical and violent girl.
• In Power Girl story A Force of Four, Kara had two options when she landed on Earth and was told her "life" had been a lie and her family — except her cousin — was gone: breaking down or making herself stronger. She chose the latter.
  But she had to be tough. Finding out that so many years of her life were a pre-programmed lie, coming to a strange world, finding only one man of Krypton and then losing him, turning from innocence into grim experience on a planet she never made... she had to be tough, or break.
• All This Sh*t is Twice as Weird reveals Cassandra to be this, given how many loved ones she has lost and how much testing her faith has endured.
• The Aladdin fanfic Antiphony portrays recurring villain Mozenrath as one; he used to be a sweet, excitable child who just wanted to help people and had a strong devotion to his god. Fast-forward fourteen years of what was essentially slavery and emotional-psychological torture, and he's become a sarcastic Social Darwinist who scorns any form of faith and seeks power for himself.
• Bait and Switch (STO): Recurring Orion character Captain Meromi Riyal of the IKS HoSbatlh had her parents murdered by a Syndicate boss and was given as a Sex Slave to a Klingon nobleman. After escaping, she became a gangster and Arms Dealer, but was eventually captured and forced to become an Indentured Slave Mook for the Klingon Defense Force. Her current boss, General Brokosh, freed her after his wife became the head of her house, but by now Meromi is bitter and bloodthirsty and seems to take pleasure only in killing enemies. She's also got a Slasher Smile that sends chills down the spine of Brokosh, a battle-hardened mercenary himself.
• The Bolt Chronicles: At the end of "The Survivor," Mittens winds up abandoned in an alley, bitter and distraught, and struggling to find food.
• The Child of Love: Asuka lost her mother when she was four, got ditched by her father, got trained to fight giant monsters despite being just a kid, got pregnant when she was fourteen... and she always tried to overcome her troubles and becoming stronger and more self-reliant.
• Child of the Storm has a number of examples of this and related tropes, thanks to its author's love of breaking his characters.
  • Harry — a Rare Male Example, who starts out as an All-Loving Hero with a snarky side and a hint of cynicism, before truly ridiculous amounts of trauma (including death, Mind Rape, actual rape, near-death, and seeing at least one friend killed, which he blames himself for) in the space of barely a year drives him insane, and he is only barely talked down. Afterwards, he is much snarkier, deeply cynical, and a Knight in Sour Armour who's Resigned to the Call in the most bitter way possible to the point where he has a full-blown breakdown at being railroaded into the Triwizard Tournament because it's not something he chose to do or can get out of (which does not mix well with his control issues). Yards and yards of therapy, plus time, understanding, and a lot of love eventually have a much more positive effect on him, turning him into a philosophical Knight of Faith. However, even after that, he's distant, secretive, compulsively manipulative (to the point where even he isn't always aware of it), a frighteningly ruthless Blood Knight, and as he admits, about "three-quarters sane" at the best of times.
  • Carol — psychologically abused by her father from a young age, sexually harassed from shortly after hitting puberty, and until she meets Harry, has only two close friends — one of whom is reserved and secretive by nature, and the other of whom is a benevolent Lex Luthor who is nevertheless a Knight Templar Big Brother who she has to rein in. While her life broadly gets better during the series, she still undergoes more than one case of Break the Cutie, including coming to terms with the knowledge that her father asked Harry, her Best Friend and future boyfriend, to Mind Rape her into being a more compliant and classically feminine girl, and Harry going through an epic Trauma Conga Line that drives him insane, which is something that, thanks to their accidental Psychic Link, she has a very clear insight on.
  • Diana — faced murder attempts for being the daughter of Hercules from infancy that meant that she had to be sent to Asgard for safety meaning that she hardly ever sees her parents, developed empathic powers at a very young age, and lives in perpetual fear of the Blood Knight tendencies that are literally In the Blood which could turn her into a berserker — and on at least one occasion, almost do. Oh, and she nearly gets roasted alive by HYDRA's Destroyer knock-off. She's 12 when this happens/has happened, by the way.
  • Ginny — suffering from the after-effects of what Riddle's Diary did to her mind, which is described in horrific detail. One of the milder examples is when a sickened Sean Cassidy, a veteran former cop, describes the Diary Horcrux's attack on Ginny as being the psychic equivalent of grooming, rape, and (thankfully only attempted) murder. Oh, and the scars of those psychic attacks are still sensitive, and being in a world where intense psychic phenomena are on the rise, plus within relatively close distance of a monstrously powerful psychic with Power Incontinence, then horrific traumas of his own, means that she frequently suffers from the backlash. Also, she's bisexual in a deeply conservative society, with her mental struggles over her sexuality and conviction that she is somehow wrong being shown from her point of view in heartbreaking detail. She's 13, by the way.
  • Maddie Pryor a.k.a. Rachel Grey — stolen from her cradle at birth, raised to be a Living Weapon by a Mad Scientist who, though he never bothered with overt cruelty, programmed her with shut off commands, raised her to believe that she was nothing more than an Artificial Human he'd created to serve as his enforcer, bodyguard, and hunting hound, and told her that this was the way everything was meant to be. Her life was so cold and loveless that when Remy Le Beau a.k.a. Gambit sought to seduce her and use her to get out from under said Mad Scientist (who also had a hold on him), she went along with the fake relationship even though she knew it was fake, on the grounds that no one had ever even pretended to care for her before (he later comes to genuinely care for her and realise that she's a victim too). The full extents of this are shown when the narrative contrasts her Dissonant Serenity in combat and serving as Sinister's Hound, where she's The Stoic, and her reactions a) when she finds out the truth about herself, she collapses to her knees, only not totally breaking down because they're in the middle of a crisis and she was taught how to shut away all her emotions (though that only postponed the emotional collapse, as she later admits), and b) when she finds herself being treated with honest kindness and compassion by newly discovered family and people who are otherwise complete strangers, and completely breaks down because she simply cannot deal with it, having no frame of reference whatsoever. Think about that for a second: she didn't even know what it was like to be loved. Consider all of this, then bear in mind that when we meet her, she's only 17.
  • Petunia Dursley becomes this when her life is destroyed. She tries to keep her arrogance when she is confronted by her actions by Harry's angry guardians for the way she abused him, and when she and her husband's crimes are revealed to all of London, gaining the hatred of the public where she an abandon by her neighbors and friends. She and her husband quickly lost their arrogance when they were arrested for their crimes and sent to a private prison. Prison broke Petunia's confidence quickly, and when M summoned her, she meekly asked how long she and her husband were going to be imprisoned; she was utterly broken when M informed her that she and her husband were going to be in prison for life and how they embarrass this country with their actions and when M told her that she knew her parents and they would be disappointed in her Petunia just depressedly accepted her fate and return to her cell to live out the rest of her life in prison.
• Children of an Elder God: In order to try to get over her mother going crazy and killing herself, and her father abandoning her shortly after, Asuka trained to become the best war mecha pilot ever. Thanks to find a decent mother figure she did not become as hostile to and frightened of other people as her canon self, but she still tried to be self-reliant. Through the war she lost friends, her own humanity and worse, but her reaction to each tragedy was trying becoming more badass and more independent.
• Beth Lestrade gets this twice in Children of Time:
  • Having to watch the man you love slide down the slippery slope, then running for your life for nine months, then finding out that said love interest has done a Face–Heel Turn, then committing a Heroic Suicide... will do that to you. The timeline in which most of the above happened is retconned into never having happened, but the main players, Beth included, still retain the memories. She later tells Sherlock that she was considering shooting herself.
  • The beginning of the next season seems to imply that Season 2 might ultimately be about her Character Development, just as Season 1 was ultimately about Sherlock's. Initially after Sherlock's rejuvenation, she seems okay, but future episodes prove that she's not to the point where even Professor Moriarty was concerned about her. (She spent a year thinking that her husband was irretrievably dead and became a Death Seeker.)
• Satsuki's portrayal in The Crimson Garment paints her as one of these. The fic attempts to delve into the adverse affects of childhood sexual abuse through several tweaks in her character. From what we see so far, she despises physical contact and seems to see it as indication of dominance. It's also implied that her desire to control and be stronger than others is to compensate for her insecurities.
• A Crown of Stars: The preface makes a good work summarizing how badly broken Shinji and Asuka were before the beginning of the story. To make a long story short: Their mothers died and their fathers abandoned them when they four. At the age of fourteen they were forced to fight alien monsters. Their pain, their inability to reach out to each other and the war broke them down, and then they died when the world ended. Shinji gave the humanity the possibility to return and they were reborn... into a wrecked world populated with warlords, bandits and starving masses. They were turned into the tools of bloody dictators for three years, and Asuka was turned into a plaything during that time. They went through another conflict where they got shot and nearly murdered, and at the end they stuck together because they felt that no one else in the world could understand their pain, but they were so soul-weary and broken that Asuka was afraid of loving Shinji and they had no hopes of developing a real relationship.
• Juri/Jeri in Destiny is even more of a broken bird then her canon self ALREADY was, as not only did she see both her biological mother and Leomon die as in canon, but she is the only survivor of a car accident in which her father, stepmother, and half-brother all died, and becomes suicidal as a result.
• Miko in Dirty Little Secrets is definitely one; she's just good at covering it up. It's a wonder she's not worse then she is; she was born from a long line of prostitutes and raised to join the 'family business', starting when she was 12... and both children she became pregnant with were aborted against her will, with the second incident rendering her barren. To make matters worse, she was happy to get pregnant the first time and spent the time up to the abortion begging to be allowed to keep her baby. Additionally, due to her valuable status, one of her boss' favorite punishments when she acted up was making her watch him beat other less productive girls. And even once she manages to escape into protective custody in the States, she's legitimately terrified that if Jack and Raf's parents found out about her past, they'd forbid the boys from seeing her ever again. Her confused relief when June tells her that she'd never dream of doing that and that she doesn't think any less of Miko is heartbreaking.
• Doing It Right This Time: Asuka and Rei. Their reaction to a decade of abuse and mental trauma culminating with their deaths is striving to become more badass after being sent back to the past. Shinji also counts, although he is much more messed up in the head than either of the girls.
• Evangelion 303:
  • Asuka. Prior to the beginning of the story she had been traumatized (it is implied that she tried to commit suicide at one point), and her performance -which her self-image depended hugely on- was slipping due to her past personal issues making her falling apart. She recovered... and then the experimental jet fighter that she was testing crashed, and her best friend died in the accident. She spent several months in a coma, and when she woke up she was a neurotic, short-tempered mess who blamed herself for the failure of the mission and her friend's death and hated herself for being a failure and hurting Shinji due to her out-of-control temper.
  • Rei. She was piloting a war plane and it crashed in the middle of sea. She survived, but she suffered brain damage and she spent several months in a coma. When she woke up, she had become cold and emotionless. She recovered, but she never became her former cheerful self again.
• Everything Turns to Gold: Gem becomes one after her twin fWhip's death in Chapter 20, as a result of Adaptational Angst Upgrade. She flies into a screaming rage when Lizzie has to drag her away from the top of the pyramid, spends most of the trip to Mezalea completely despondent, and when they arrive, she immediately throws herself fully into taking care of Scott, whom they'd just rescued from a heap-ton of Cold-Blooded Torture. When Pix attempts to get her to take a break, she quietly admits that she can't stop, afraid that she'll start seeing her brother's death again if she does. She finally breaks down the next day after Scott accidentally slaps her during a traumatic flashback, and cries into his chest while continuing to insist fWhip is going to come back.
• Fallout: Equestria - Empty Quiver: Despite being one of the much more optimistic stories set in the FoE universe, it's later learned that Crash Dive's blunt and extremely bitter qualities stem from this. Her first and last mission as a true soldier of the Enclave ended in disaster after her platoon is seemingly wiped out and she is left stranded in the wasteland. A lucky attack by a raider badly damages both wings to the point where they're little more than a charred useless mess, and the constant mental and physical agony drives her into a severe Med-X addiction. Combined with the Enclave's propaganda, this incident causes her to become so paranoid she isolates herself from the wasteland and almost forces her to commit suicide. Even after meeting up with the heroes, she's so overly protective of Night Strike - the only other Pegasus she has seen in decades - that she almost murders another member of the group over some light teasing. To make matters worse, just as Crash Dive starts to genuinely recover from this, Night Strike begins to gradually slide down this slope herself.
• In Gensokyo 20XX, we have this with Yukari, who is the most noticeable than the others and became bitter towards her experiences during the course of the series.
• Ghosts of Evangelion: After Third Impact, Asuka struggles to overcome her traumas and become stronger and keeping on living in spite of her daily nightmares, PTDS and getting raped again.
• A Growing Affection has Hanabi become one after Madara's attempt to Body Surf into her.
• HERZ: Asuka. Let's see: she lost her mother and got ditched by her father before being four. She was turned into a weapon and a tool and trained hard for ten long years to become the best as a way to validate her existence. When the time came to prove her skill she got overshadowed by a boy that -as far as she knew- was a rookie with no training. She got repeatedly defeated, humiliated and mind-raped by the enemy. She managed rising from her ashes only to be impaled, mutilated and eaten alive. And still she survived even after her heart stopped for a short while, she became a fine soldier and she even delivered a healthy child.
  Asuka leaned into the kiss. She had lost much and suffered terribly, but from the ashes, she had risen anew.
• Higher Learning: When they got together Shinji learnt that Asuka's aggressive, stubborn and fearless behaviour had its origin in her childhood's tragedies -which mirror his own- and her desire and need to overcome them. When she got a severe breakdown he tried to reassure her by reminding her that she taught him to fight back when you are hurt.
• From Kill la Kill AU, we have this Ryuuko, who is a bit young for one, however, she seems to have a rather cynical view of the world, especially when it comes to her poor health, having been in and out of the hospital, along with the fact that she was separated from her mother when she was two, meeting her again fairly recently. Apparently, due to the aforementioned poor health, she counts how much time she might have to live, considering death to be a release.
• In Kitsune no Ken: Fist of the Fox, Tenten is shown to be this. After all, losing both of your parents during a year-long rampage by the Kyuushingai, having no other living relatives to take you in after the fact, bouncing about from place to place without a stable home for a long time following said orphaning, and being driven to learn how to fight just so you can take revenge on the people responsible for said orphaning can't be good for one's psyche.
• Last Child of Krypton: Asuka devoted herself to train to become the best Humongous Mecha pilot and prepare to fight giant alien invaders to overcome being an orphan kid abandoned by her surviving parent. When the war finally broke out, nothing was going how she thought it should: her enemies beat her, the Commander berated her for anything and an interloper come from nowhere was hogging the credit. However she kept fighting and found a worthier cause to devote herself to.
• Cinder Fall is given this interpretation in The Makings of Team CRME. She was abused as a child and lost her father because her Evil Matriarch drove him to suicide for money. Her past continues to have an effect on her as she starts assembling Team CRME. She has become a damaged sociopath and an emotionally-stunted Psychopathic Womanchild who thinks that taking her anger out on the world is acceptable. While she isn't an entirely sympathetic example, it is clear that Cinder is deeply broken due to her experiences. Her strangling Melanie Black is because she reminded Cinder of her abusive mother, showing that she hasn't moved on from her past. And her desire to be powerful is due to her resentment of her past.
• The Kamen Rider/Metroid crossover fic, Metroid: Kamen Rider Generations has a recovering example in Mitsuzane Kureshima. And yes, Micchy has fell into Despair Event Horizon thrice in the TV series. From being an Unwitting Pawn by the likes of Sid, Redyue, and Ryoma Sengoku that he thought he had been manipulating to "killing" Kouta and let Mai die right before his very eyes are the worse for him. Since then, he has a well-hidden self-animosity and guilt over his past actions to the point he becomes more distant, he more often hides it by just making snarky remarks, or by just being normally cheerful and carefree. As the story progresses, he reaches out to Samus; who is in fact a Broken Bird herself, deciding to follow her throughout her journeys and the bounty hunter herself becomes Micchy's Second Love.
  Samus: I have a feeling that deep inside you, there is a scared little boy who is hopelessly terrified that he's too weak to protect or see his loved ones die right in front of him, and you are generally nowhere as arrogant, cheerful, and snarky as you might others want you to believe.
• Mako becomes one in A Minor Miscalculation after Nui kills her brother at the Naturals Election, losing much of her sense of humor and getting more hostile toward enemies. It takes the intervention of the Fighting Club remnants for her to find any joy in life again, and the battle with Ryuketsu to swing fully back around to her former self. Sadly, she relapses during the events of Consequences after she finds one of Isshin's confession tapes.
• In Neon Genesis Evangelion: Genocide:
  • After losing her mother, being abandoned by her father, being treated like crap by NERV, used like cannon fodder against giant monsters, being mind-raped and abandoned... Asuka wakes up after spending several months in a coma and starts to get better.
  "We make our own lives, not the lives others want for us." Stop, a part of Asuka screamed as she spoke. Just stop now. Please stop. "If you depend on others, then you are weak, because you can't live for yourself. It's always what others want and what they impose on you. Even if it's your own mother."
  • Shinji also starts to recover from his past issues after the war.
• Many characters in The Night Unfurls qualify.
  • Kyril Sutherland is a male example. He's a stoic, cynical One-Man Army who went through the nightmare that is Yharnam, a land of gore, illness, madness, tragedy, and depravity. Regardless, he has soldiered on, but the experience has left him shell-shocked and desensitised towards anything one considers unsettling. Kyril also ticks off the box of filling a mentor role towards his four less-experienced apprentices, eventually feeling pride towards their growth as hunters, akin to how a father feels towards his children Taking a Level in Badass. Ultimately, he doesn't have a high opinion on love and humanity, but his cynicism never stops him from doing good and empathising with other people.
  • Lily is a downplayed example. Her Cynicism Catalyst is a Crisis of Faith which stems from a Rape as Drama at the hands of the Black Dogs, an Army of Thieves and Whores who rapes, pillages, and burns in war. While she does Take a Level in Badass by becoming Kyril's third apprentice, together with how she develops into a Nay-Theist who only believes in her own strength, Lily is by no means aloof or confrontational.
  • Maia, like Lily, also suffers from a Rape as Drama by the Black Dogs during the story. In contrast to the example above, she is an inversion due to her Freak Out — she goes from being outgoing and confident to being withdrawn, chastened and melancholic. The fact that she used to be part of the Black Dogs, only to find herself betrayed by the very people she sees as fellow comrades doesn't help matters. On one hand, Maia eventually acknowledges that she can't let the trauma affect her anymore, as it is impossible to change what happened to her. On the other hand, the pain is there all the same despite her efforts to move on.
  • Olga Discordia is a Really 700 Years Old Lady of Black Magic who has tried her best to steel herself during her time as Dark Elf Queen. In the past, she witnessed the enslavement of her kind, the dark elves, on the hands of human slavers. Jaded, with a strong belief that Humans Are the Real Monsters, the once passionate woman's verdict was to fight prejudice with prejudice, to declare war against Eostia for vengeance against humankind. She sacrificed her bond with Celestine, sent her myriad of armies to her former friend's lands, and betrayed a portion of her own people to the orcs for them to play with, all for the sake of achieving this end. Fast forward to present day, and the war failed to change anything for the better. The "Broken" part becomes more severe throughout the story, for Olga's past sins find themselves next to her doorstep. She finds it increasingly difficult to maintain her seemingly expressionless facade, to the point where she shuts down hard when her vassal Chloe is put under critical condition. Not all is lost, however — Olga manages to reconcile with Celestine, warms up to Kyril, and brokers an uneasy alliance with the people she wronged to fight against the current threat, the Black Dogs.
• Once More with Feeling:
  • After going through the Angel War and the end of the world, Shinji is trying to grow a spine and be more determined and braver to not let his second chance go to waste.
  • As she is arguing with Asuka about the latter's desire to go to Okinawa, Misato reminds herself Asuka suffered terribly and lost a lot since she was three, but she always tried to become stronger and more determined.
  • After fighting Sandalphon Misato tells Asuka about her childhood, her troubles with her own father and how she tried to overcome it.
• The One I Love Is...: In chapter 6 Asuka shows Shinji she has been very, very badly hurt but she has always tried to overcome it and be a strong-willed, self-reliant girl.
  Asuka: Don't worry Shinji. So far, I've lived on my own, by my own, only for me, only for my own values and my own satisfaction. I don't need you, or anyone else for that matter. I... I don't want to be lonely anymore. If I could... I'd rather be with you then be alone. But it's too late now. And besides... half of your heart is not enough. If I can't have you all to myself, then I'd rather not have you at all...
  Shinji: Asuka...
  Asuka: It's okay. I can manage on my own.
• In Origin Story, Alex Harris' conversation/therapy session with Doc Samson reveals just how much psychological trauma she's experienced over her young life. Alex's partner Louise also qualifies. The pair of them use their relationship to help each other heal.
• In Origins, a Mass Effect/Star Wars/Borderlands/Halo Massive Multiplayer Crossover, we are given O.C. Stand-in Athena who is tricked into killing the only people she considers family, causing her to fly into an Unstoppable Rage whose brutality haunts her. From the same galaxy, a Rich Bitch named Jackie Jakobs is set up quite unsympathetically, but is revealed to have had reasons to act out in the ways she does.
• Misty in Pokémon Reset Bloodlines becomes very cynical as a result of her terrible childhood. To sum it up: she was her parents' least favorite child, her sisters kicked her out of their house as soon as they could, and on top of that, she's had to deal with anti-bloodliner prejudice. Thankfully, she begins to grow out of it thanks to Ash's positive influence.
• In Worm/Ward fanfics:
  • Quicken:
    • Emma was an average, carefree teenager... then she was assaulted and nearly raped. From that point on, she's determined to survive not matter what and doing whatever it takes because no one else will help her.
    • When she finally meets her best friend, it's implied that Taylor became this as well after losing her mother and Emma in a very short lapse of time. She looks more adult, grimmer and more physically fit.
  • Victoria Dallon from Warp was put through a lot of awful experiences thanks to her emotionally abusive parents, her obsessed stalker of a sister -who was responsible for Vicky spending two years brainwashed and transformed into a malformed garden of meat- and heinous super-villains, but she overcame her personal tragedies and built herself up into a better person, fighter and hero. Now she's been flung into the past, and her first thought is helping as many people as possible before the end of the world.
• Racer and the Geek features Sunny Breeze, a stallion who knows nothing but war, isolation, violence, and betrayal. He's suitably messed up to match, having problems with both post-traumatic stress disorder and severe alcoholism. Even worse is that, despite his vague age, it's readily apparent that he's so young most ponies see him as a colt. His own inability to see the good in himself is his tragic flaw. It's evident in every chapter, although chapters three and four showcase it best.
• The pro wrestling story A Ring Of Their Own portrays Molly Holly as one of these, that getting her head shaved at WrestleMania 20 and her subsequent losing streak caused her to lose all confidence in herself and retire from wrestling. It would take some serious arm-twisting on the part of her best friend, Ivory, to convince her to come out of retirement and join the FWF.
• Every. Single. Character after the Fall of Beacon in Ruby and Nora.
• Shigeko Kageyama AKA Mob: fem!Mob after the events of the Mogami arc. Post chapter 40 Mob has severe trauma from being held prison and tortured by Mogami. The night after escaping she goes to Reigen for comfort, who pushes her away in an attempt for enforce some basic boundaries. This leads her to running away from home, living in the park and couch surfing, until she reconciles with Reigen. Afterwards she becomes afraid to leave the house and clings to Reigen constantly.
• Superwomen of Eva 2: Lone Heir of Krypton: During a heart-to-heart talk Asuka tells Shinji she strove to be strong-willed and excel at everything because after her mother went insane and died and her father abandoned her -making her realizing that he never loved her- she thought nobody would care about her unless she was the best.
• In The Second Try, Asuka's life history is an endless cycle in which she loses something or someone dear to her, and she tries to get over her pain. In "Repeat" she was shattered because her daughter had disappeared, but after a while she managed to recover her fighting spirit.
• In Supergirl (2015) story Survivors, Kara and Kal crash-land on Earth at the same time. Kara is essentially a homeless teen mother whose family regarded her as a means to an end and has been stranded in an alien, unfamiliar country with no money, food or clothes... and it's still better than her barren, sterile home. Even so she refuses to give up, manages to survive and find help and becomes the world's premier hero.
• Tales of the Undiscovered Swords: This is what Sasanoyuki turns out to be. He reveals in his final kiwame letter that after singlehandedly emerging victorious from his tameshigiri, which essentially proved him an Absurdly Sharp Blade, he came to loathe himself for being such an overly deadly weapon that took countless lives because of said sharpness until he told himself to accept his fate as a sword and repressed his feelings, turning himself into a cold, emotionless killer.
• Zelda in Their Bond became a Child Soldier at age 12 and was forced to become queen in her late teens after her father's sudden death. Her main trauma stems from years of extreme torture, mental manipulation, and sexual abuse by Ganondorf stemming back to 12. It left her with terrible self-esteem, severe self-hatred, and a warped view of the world (especially romance). Still, she doesn't tell her caretaker and girlfriend Impa about Ganondorf's abuse until after she almost dies of suicide.
• Thousand Shinji: When Asuka was four her mother went crazy and hang herself (and her daughter was the one found her corpse). Shortly after her father remarried and virtually abandoned her. In response to it she tried to become stronger, tougher and fully self-reliant. Shinji discusses it at one point:
  "Passing the favour forward? Yeah. I've been helping Rei since I got here, she was far worse than she is now socially, and then you came along. You were the kid, the one in a million, who chose to become strong instead of break in response to such monumental adversity. But I could see it in your eyes, the tone of your voice in sheltered moments that you still carried the wounds, that you were more fragile than you seemed," Shinji explains.
• The Naruto Continuation Fic White Rain has one in Lucia Van Alstyne. She witnessed her mother's murder as a child, and married into an abusive relationship. The readers can easily tell how broken she is when she regards both Ino's friendship with Sakura and Hinata's genuine love for Naruto with curiosity.
• Evelyn in the Dragon Age: Inquisition fanfic Walking in Circles has become this trope by the time canon events starts in the story. The trauma she suffered before and during the Circles uprising plus her two years as a Tranquil has made her into a much more cynical and ruthless person to the point that she actually supports Solas' goal. Yet at the same time, she still retains her kind and caring attitude.
• Raz, in the D.Gray-Man fanfic Wanderers in the Dark. She is found by the protagonist, Allen, and is a member of the villains of the manga, a Clan settled in destroying the human race and like them, she has proved herself to be able to be quite dangerous and frightening (if you mess with someone she cares about, anyway)... However, this is a girl who has no memories of her past, has cried upon recalling people she killed (which was, by the way, the first memory she remembered, along with her best friends who are both dead). Against all odds, she decides to stay by Allen's side no matter what, even when the chance to go back home and remember her life is offered to her. The way she is written gives her a hauntingly innocence at times that is just heartbreaking.
  • And what she is the Noah of? Loneliness.
    Raz:''It seems useless, doesn't it? To cry when no one bothers to see your tears... To speak, when no one really cares to listen... It feels useless and senseless... But... I am your friend. So, I'll see your tears. Even if you don't cry them...
• The Pokémon: The Series fic The Final Battle: Ash, due to the deaths of Pikachu and his friends. And, later revealed, Delia, who was kept as a sex slave by Team Rocket.
• Escape from the Moon: In the sequel The Mare From the Moon, having learned empathy from her time in Equestria, Spliced's breakdown is shown for the first time when she realizes the consequences of what she did with her viral creations, and then again during her trial, getting worse as time passes in chapter 30. Over the years, as she's lost all her friends to age or dimensional barriers, she reaches the point where the emotivers call her emotionally dead - her sorrow has bottomed out and they doubt she can feel any actual emotions anymore. She can still get depressed or seem pleased, but nothing is really there.
• Katara in Cabin Fever (Southern Hearts). Her mother gets killed in a Fire Nation raid, she's captured by the Fire Nation in the same raid and spends the next 3 years in a waterbender prison - with inhumane living conditions. It takes seven years following her escape just for her to start climbing back up the morale ladder.
• Carol Danvers from A Prize for Three Empires has been through seven kinds of hell. She has lost lovers, friends and family. She has been almost murdered several times. She has been raped once. The trauma she suffered causes her jerkassery and cynicism to go several levels up for a while, and she develops a drinking problem without realizing it, but fortunately she gets better.
• Kara of Rokyn has Jara. Born into a poor family, she tried to make some money by starring in erotic films until she managed to join a wrestling circuit. No wonder that she's a bitter, mean-spirited jerkass as well as a dangerous fighter.
• Hellsister Trilogy has Kara, who lost her parents and her whole civilization when she was fifteen, and spent the next decade and one half fighting super-villains and cosmic beings. She is rather bitter about her unability to live a normal life or form any lasting relationships due to the ceaseless conflict, but she still helps to fight evil whenever she is needed.
• In the Supergirl (2015) fanfic Future Shock Kara is several shades of this, having careened over the Despair Event Horizon years before the fic starts, and only tenously holding onto her sanity throughout.
• Metro: Even more than is typical for the Whateley Universe protagonists, Mads has seen (and done) some of the worst humanity has to offer. A year of intensive surgical interventions, and two years of advanced psychotherapy barely brought him up to "functional".
• X-Men fanfiction Devil's Diary has Magneto. After surviving traumatic loss after traumatic loss, Erik has come to believe that emotions and personal desires are weaknesses which he must overcome.
  Irrelevant. This is my part to play. MUST BE STRONG. Like the iron. I bend the iron to my will.
  It is only by strength that I resist the temptation to bend.
  Spring outside. White gulls fly about my island. Pietro and Wanda are outside, catching some of them with hexes and speed, setting them free again. The surf can be heard even in here, and I consider taking my boat out alone and fishing like a Hemingway character.
  Irrelevant.
  Resist the Temptation To Bend.
• Unbreakable Red Silken Thread: Heather, though she disguises it very well most of the time. Her mother really did a number on her over the years and her father didn't exactly help the situation even if he wasn't directly abusive towards her.
• Down And Out: Simon definitely qualifies. As Grace's prisoner, the events of the season (plus his prior trauma with The Cat) not only have him now retreating emotionally, but also filled him with hopelessness and despair about the future.
• The Things that Don't Destroy Us and its sequel The Ones who Rebuild Us:
  • General Hux acts as a spy to the First Order to aid the Resistance, but admits that his motives were more self-serving than heroic, and he remains hostile (at least, initially) to the side he's helping even after they retrieve him. He is also suffering from PTSD due to all the abuse and torture he's endured at the hands of his father, Snoke and Kylo Ren, to the point that he requests to be executed during his trial. After being spared, he eventually later realizes that most of his choices and actions he made as a general were done out of self-preservation instincts reacting to subconscious threats that his abusers have instilled in him.
  • Rey as well. After losing her Force powers, as well as getting injured, she becomes easily set off and lashes out and everyone who even mildly inconvenience her. As Hux correctly notes, this is a symptom of her deep-rooted abandonment issues, and she is worried that if she doesn't get her powers back, the Resistance would no longer find her useful and discard her. Kylo Ren tries to exploit this in the second story, when he convinces her to use the Dark Side and rule with him so that she doesn't have to be a victim anymore. It almost works, and the only reason Rey rejected his offer is because she doesn't want to share the power with him.
• Coppermane in the works of Nordryd.
  • His pony version has him living an orphanage bullied by everyone else for being more interested in magic and music, and there eventually comes an incident where they ruin the spellbook he had for years. After this, he is pushed to the Rage Breaking Point and summons a number of copies to cathartically beat up his bullies. However, when he sees what he did, he is horrified at what he did, especially since he very nearly could have killed them and didn't study magic to cause harm. Regardless, everyone in Canterlot treats him as an outcast with some even calling him a "psycho", all over a single incident and he starts to see himself as unworthy of friendship and even starts calling himself a monster. It says something that when he's compared to Twilight Sparkle by Celestia, she's better in social ability and mental health.
  • Think that was bad? His Equestria Girls counterpart is much worse. To start things off, before transferring to Canterlot High, he was part of Crystal Prep, and was treated as an outcast and a target for bullying, and even humiliated when he tried to confess to one of the girls. When he had enough of being bullied and beat up the head bully, he is expelled for his behavior, even though he very clearly regrets what he did. Much like his Equestria counterpart, he sees himself as worthless and a loser, and after getting bullied by a pair of jock bullies in Canterlot High, he feels that history is repeating itself, and he sees only one way out. The day Fluttershy and Twilight found him would have been his last day had it not been for their kindness, even having written a suicide note. Even after finding friendship and love in Fluttershy, he's still shown to be severely emotionally damaged and scarred, having bouts of insecurity and self-deprecating thoughts.
• Emily in the Thomas & Friends fanfic Thomas and Emily's Relationship is revealed to have been acting so bossy and controlling because she's actually quite sad, frightened and intimidated on the inside as a result of continuous bullying by James and Gordon.
• Syngenesophobia:
  • Lincoln obviously, after being beaten within an inch of his life by his sisters, traumatized by their appearances, and experiencing nightmares involving them is bad enough. But he's also questioning his relationship with them and his fear is being replaced with anger.
  • The Loud Sisters, despite the fact they put their brother is the hospital, have to deal with their guilt that they nearly killed Lincoln, all because they lost their temper. They also lost all their hobbies, possessions, and friends (Although the readers never actually saw the fallout itself). By chapter 27 they pretty much come to terms with this and accepted the fact they are now outcasts. They even are indifferent that their father has toned down their punishments, with Lynn stating that it doesn't matter since most of their friends hate them anyway now.
• Jayne Cobb, very much so in Salvage Mission. He was arrested, tortured by the Alliance for information, and sold as a slave. For a while, he was a Breeding Slave. Physically he's thin, arthritic and his beard and hair are shaggy. Mentally, he's broken. He's far too docile and compliant and Mal has to tell him to do things like just sitting down. Until Mal talks to him, he hasn't spoken in the four years he's been a slave. Mal has to tell him to do everything after buying him back. Jayne assumes he's Mal's slave and Mal has to tell him he's free. He doesn't think he belongs with the crew and is still afraid they think he's a sellout. Jayne says Mal should just shoot him but Mal knows they actually owe him for preventing their capture and he doesn’t want to give up on him.
• In Sing To Me, a Death Note fanfic about L's backstory, L is one. By the end, he's seen so much death and violence that he is unable to make himself feal much of anything. He goes from a naive, cheerful child, to a moody, angry child, to finally a nearly-emotionless young man.
• Ben Tennyson is a male example of this in Ben 10: Unlimited. Forced to Watch his family get butchered by Vilgax, he's driven past the Despair Event Horizon and attempts to commit suicide to reunite with them, only to end up on the DCAU earth during the Thanagarian invasion with little time to grieve. He's also shown to believe that it was because of his life as a hero that put his family at risk, and has nightmarish flashbacks and is reduced to Inelegant Blubbering when he's made to look back at their deaths. What does he ultimately want at first, as revealed by the Black Mercy? To be back with his old family.
• Cyrus is a male example of this trope in Skylanders Academy: New Horizon. Abused by Omen from a young age, he is unable to sleep, both as a result of the horrific nightmares he has and the pain that wracks his body as a result of the torture brand. When he comes to see that Spyro is actually his brother, and had a much happier life, he erupts violently, with his last words before losing consciousness being a broken "Why was I never given a chance to be happy?".
• True Potential: Roshi ultimately is revealed to be this after confronting with his inner darkness.

---