Mina's POV

'AHAHAHAH!" The cups shook as Jirou slammed her fist into the table, her other arm muffling her laughter.

'Stop laughing! You promised you wouldn't laugh!"

She coughed, wiping a few tears from her eyes. "It's jus- ahah, you seriously destroyed his entire clinic? Just like that?"

Burying her face in her hands, she muttered out a muffled "Yes."

"Aw man, if I were him I would've flipped!"

"I knowww…"

"Well," Jirou took a sip of her honeyed milk, suddenly looking thoughtful. "You want to make it up to him right? What does he need? Money?"

"I don't have any to give him."

"Company?"

"I'm the last person he would want to see!"

The siren grinned. "Se-"

"Jirou I swear!

Izuku's POV

Man, house visits were the worst.

Signing, Midoriya trudged back to his clinic. It wasn't that house visits were bad, he earned more and it was good exercise, but his slight but ever present social anxiety made entering anybody's house a somewhat nerve racking experience. Not to mention the address system in this city was terrible, after the war houses and even entire neighborhoods had sprung up willy nilly all over the city where destroyed buildings were, and illegal squatting areas built into intact areas. Therefore there were two competing address systems, the official and the one the lower class folk used, which made finding places which he had only heard about by mail a difficult task.

Oh well, at least now he could rela- Wait. He tilted his head back and sniffed. Blood?

Instinctively reaching into his bag for his last few needles and bandages, he followed the smell around a corner.

"You?" The jackalope he had seen a few days ago was leaning against a crate, breathing heavily. A trail of blood formed multiple feet behind her and ended at a large splatter, presumably she had jumped from elsewhere and landed here.

"Wha- what happened?" Her legs had been destroyed, he couldn't even see how badly they were damaged due to the thick layer of fresh blood over them. They were barely functional, he could see her other muscles working as they tried to move the legs and failed.

The jackal ops gritted her teeth, blood trickling out from them. "It's nothing… I- I just have to take a breather and… and then I'll-"

"What do you mean a breather? You need medical attention!" He reached out to pull her up.

"No!" she swiped at him. She missed him by half a foot, but even in this weakened state the swipe shattered a thick clay pot. "I… I've told you, I" she paused again to cough out a few drops of blood "I don't ne-"

He didn't have time for this. Grabbing an instant anesthetic, he stabbed it into her shoulder, catching as her as she went limp. Grabbing an emergency coagulant, made for field surgeries, he injected her with that as well, to slow the flow of blood.

Hefting the surprisingly heavy jackalope, he bridal carried her to his clinic.

Miruko's POV

Wha-where was she?

Her eyes flew open, and she looked around. She was on some type of table, with that accursed doctor dabbing lightly at her legs with cotton.

"Hey what are you-" she tried raising her arms, but she couldn't. Looking down, she realized that she had been strapped to the table, thick leather belts with metal hoops encircling her legs and abdomen.

"So," he started conversationally. "You have severe muscle damage to your legs, two cuts on your upper lip, a cut inside your mouth likely from accidentally biting it during combat, and you've lost so much blood I had to force feed you iron supplements. I've cleaned the wounds, so I'll be starting by extracting the shrapnel and-"

"What are you doing? I don't need this!" Discreetly she tried to pull the straps off, but she couldn't even get them to budge.

The doctor took a deep breath. "I'll start by extracting the shrapnel, before sterilizing the wound. It's a large one, so I'll be using concentrated strongwine mixed with bluewood extract and fireflower petals. After that I'll apply a coagulant paste and stitch up the wounds. I can't have you moving, so I'll administer general anesthetic."

"Let me go!"

"Once I do that, I'll look at the rest of you. Your teeth are bleeding, I'll send you to a dentist once I'm done with you. I can see small lacerations on your arms, back and ears, those I'll just clean with mild alcohol and let them heal naturally. You'll need to keep your legs immobile and clean. If you're willing to pay extra we can use elven bandages, but if you're willing to wait the extra few weeks normal bandages will do just fine."

Was this guy deaf?

"I said-"

"I know what you said, I'm not deaf." He sat down beside her and fixed her with a glare that wasn't malicious or unkind, but was immovable and intense. "What I'm trying to do is drill into your head the sheer extent of the damages you've received, and how much work is going to take just to get you back on your feet."

She scoffed. "I've survived worse."

"No you haven't. Even jackalopes can't survive this much injury without medical care. I saw how much blood you lost. If I had came across you even a few minutes later you would have bled out on the sidewalk."

She pulled on the straps. Ordinarily she would have ripped these apart, but they held firm with only slight creaking. Well, since this guy didn't want to listen to her, she just had to knock him out. The jackalope's face remained unchanged but internally she was grinning, he asked for it.

"Alright fine, why don't you stitch me up." Subtly she shifted her arm into a position where she could drive her elbow into his head.

"Yeah, I'm not falling for that. I know what a false surrender looks like." He edged even further away from her and picked up a mirror.

Fuck it. "What's wrong with you? I've never met someone that's so weird! For the last time I don't need your goddamn help!"

"Fine then. Leave."

"For the last time I'm- what?"

"Get out." He undid the straps on her legs, pulling a cord that somehow unlocked all the locks at once, and sat back on his chair. "If you're that insistent on not receiving medical treatment, I'm not going to waste my time, get out."

That's more like it. Grabbing the table, she pushed herself off.

Only for her legs to give out.

She flopped onto the floor, landing on her face. Groaning, she tried to get to her feet, but even though she was able to push herself up her legs weren't cooperating at all.

"Wha-" she looked in horror at her legs. Fresh trails of blood were flowing out of them, but the worst thing was she couldn't even feel them. Hesitantly, she reached out and poked at an open wound. Nothing.

"It's muscle damage." The doctor was busy studying the label on a glass bottle. "Judging from the looks of it you were shot point blank by a blunderbuss or a small hand cannon. It shredded through the tendon tissues, meaning you can't move your muscles now. You're lucky it didn't hit bone or your spine otherwise you'd be out of commission for months."

She swallowed. Months? What did he mean months? 'So what does that mean?"

"It means-" chills ran down her spine as he pulled out a massive saw. "-that you either let me treat you now, or in a few weeks I use this to saw off your useless, rotting limbs so you don't die of sepsis."

Saw off her limbs. Subconsciously the jackalope reached for her legs, as if grabbing on to them would let her keep them. No, no! This fucker was just scaring her, right?

But deep down she knew that that wasn't the case. She knew what flesh wounds were like, she had gotten her fair share, this was much more severe. If she couldn't even feel any pain in her bones, something was terribly wrong.

"Why don't you want medical care?" He looked incredibly perplexed. "I won't judge, I just want to know. I get not accepting charity, but this goes far beyond personal pride."

She huffed, turning away. She had survived the entire war, lived her entire life by the same philosophy. Even if she someday did find someone to open up it, it certainly wasn't going to be this stranger and his weird fetish for treating uncooperative patients.

"Letting other people help you isn't a weakness you know."

Growling, she snapped up as tall as she could. 'Well, it's easy for you to say! We don't all have the luxury of trusting others! Living this nice, soft life as a doctor, not everyone has it as easy as you!"

"Soft? Easy?" For the first time in the night the doctor's eyes hardened. "Miruko, what do you think I am?"

"A doctor?"

"No, as in what am I?" He gestures to his face, as if asking her to ignore his doctor robes.

She gave a quick look over his features.

"A woodland sprite?" He shook his head. "An elf? A really good looking dwarf?"

"No, Miruko, I'm human."

She blinked. That was a surprise. "I thought humans couldn't be doctors here."

He chuckled, but the laugh had precious little joy in it. "Well, it wasn't easy." He rolled up his sleeve, and her eyes widened.

Enormous scars crisscrossed up and down his arm, as if he had held them up to protect himself from something, presumably weapons or claws. The only consolation was that judging from their uniformity and the lack of any observable defects the wounds had received top class medical attention.

"Wha-"

"What happened? Well, until you open up to me, I'm not telling you anything about myself." He rolled his sleeves back down. "All you have to know is that some people are willing to get violent with humans. Very violent. And all you need to know," he uncorked a small bottle he had apparently taken out of nowhere, and took a quick sip, the pungent smell of cheap wine filling the air. "Is that without the help of others, I would be dead."

She studied the man. Becoming a doctor as a human... she wondered where he grew up. Generally speaking this city wasn't hostile to humans, even those aiming "above their position" per se, but to have successfully become a doctor of all things, that meant years of enduring bullying, racism and institutional racism at the very least. At worst, it meant any number of anti-human clans coming after you. She had taken him earlier for an idealistic fool, someone who hadn't enough tasted suffering in this world to have a reasonable worldview. But now, he felt more like her, someone who was intensely uncompromising on what he felt was right, which, in his case meant seeking help no matter what.

"I'm not trying to scare you, Miruko." He delicately traced a scar on his palm, how had she not noticed that? "I don't know what made you the way you are, why you're so stubborn. But I'm telling you, seeking help from others, especially help that you can't get for yourself, isn't weakness."

He lunged forward and grabbed on to her shoulders, startling her. "Weakness is dying over nonsense like this! Weakness is refusing help when someone is offering, no, begging to help you!"

This is strangely hot- wait what? What the fuck did she just think? Midoriya took her daze for agreement and let her go, smiling.

"So!" He clapped his hands. "Are you going to let me stitch up those legs, or should I get the saw?"

A/N: So, I've got a Kofi! If any of you are willing, its under ko-fi dot com / grillefirer (just remove the spaces) if you wanna throw me a few bucks. I mostly post progress there like update schedules, announcements for new fics etc. I can't guarantee I'll spend it on coffee, but its a likely possibility! But regardless, hope you enjoyed the chapter :]