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It was just a prosthetic leg.
He was still himself.
He was still Kaminari.
A prosthetic leg shouldn’t change anything. It didn’t change his goofy, lopsided grin that she had grown to find reassuring at the end of a long day. It didn’t change his sense of humor that entertained her day after day without fail, though she would never admit that to him. It didn’t change his determination — the years they’d spent training to be heroes.
He was still Kaminari.
He was still a hero. So why was everyone gathered around his bed, acting as if he was dying?
“Once you’re done with rehab we’ll have to do some serious training to catch you up.” Jirou smiled softly, poking Kaminari lightly in the side with her earphone jack. She had never been good at this sort of thing, at comforting people.
“Jirou…” His voice was weak but breathy with laughter, his mouth opened slightly as if he had more to say but she got there first.
“I won’t go easy on you, though, if that’s what you’re going to ask.” She knew that wasn’t what he was going to say, but she was determined to prevent him from saying what she knew he was going to say.
“I’m going to ret-”
“No, you’re not,” She snapped, her eyes welling with tears, “You’ve gotta keep being a hero, Jamming-whey.”
“Jirou,” He sighed again, and she flinched at the way he said her name as if she was a child that wasn’t completely understanding the situation. And perhaps she didn’t understand the situation. Perhaps what would be best for Kaminari is to retire. But she didn’t want to be in the hero world without the goofy stun gun hero. She wanted to get to be a hero with her best friend. “I’m going to retire.”
“Please don’t.” Her voice had dropped an octave as she made the request.
“I have to.”
“And you’ll never consider coming back?” Jirou asked, her voice a bit too hopeful as she sipped at her coffee despite it being too hot for her to want to drink it at the moment.
“I was too behind after rehab to try to catch up with the rest of you.” Kaminari smiled weakly, far too used to Jirou’s usual argument. “I’m happy with my job. I’m an EMT now, you know?”
“Yeah, I think Mina said something about it a couple months back.” She tugged lamely on her earphone jack. “You keep in touch with the others still? It’s been a while since I’ve heard anything from them about you.”
“I haven’t really recently,” Kaminari admitted with a slight sigh. “It was hard enough to keep up with all of them when we were all heroes, but now that I’m not even in the same line of work as them anymore, it’s been even harder.”
This rubbed Jirou the wrong way. It had been a year since Kaminari had finished rehab, she rarely saw him during his time in rehab but it didn’t get better once he had finished.
She had grown apart from Kaminari after he got his job as an EMT. With conflicting work schedules, it just happened naturally. Still, she hadn’t realized the rest of their friends had done the same. After months apart, she had decided to text her favorite blonde airhead to grab a cup of coffee. And of course, he agreed right away, eager to see her and catch up. But now that they were seeing each other after so much time apart, Jirou couldn’t seem to shake her feelings of anxiety about meeting up with him after so long.
Struggling to come up with a reply, she just murmured, “yeah,” and swirled her coffee, just to have something to do with her hands.
“So… How’s hero work treating ya?” His tone had changed significantly. She recognized it as the tone he put on when he desperately wanted to talk about something else but was trying to mask his desperation by sounding overly cheery.
“It’s going alright,” Jirou cleared her throat before continuing, “Just normal hero stuff, patrols, and all that… Nothing that intriguing going on now that the League of Villains is disbanded.”
“I miss hanging out with you.”
“Me too.”
“I miss you.”
Months went by between that day and the day they next met. It wasn’t intentional, these things never are, promises were not forgotten, but pushed to the back of their minds.
But sometimes fate has other plans, and you see people at the times you least expect to.
“Jirou?” The panicked tone was familiar even after months. Even though the voice sounded as if it was echoing across a football field, she would always recognize it. There was no response. Even if Jirou had something to say, she wouldn’t have been able to say it because no matter how hard she tried she couldn’t move. If it hadn’t been for the white-hot pain aching through her body, she would have thought she was paralyzed. She wasn’t even sure what had happened. All she knew was she was in pain.
The world was spinning, and she was being lifted off the gravel by him. That’s when she knew it would be okay. She was always okay when Kaminari was there.
Nothing bad could happen when Kaminari was there.
The morning light flooding into the hospital room was the only indication that time had passed. Her eyelids were incredibly heavy. Each blink and every breath took all her energy. The light of the room was all she could make out. Everything else was blurry as if a film was pressed over her open eyes. Memories of her accident had started to come back to her. It hadn’t been anything special or heroic. She had been in a car accident. Somehow knowing that she had been taken down by something as mundane as a car accident made her feel worse.
Maybe it was a few minutes, maybe it was a few hours, but eventually, she tried to speak. There was no sign that anyone was in the room with her, but she wanted to speak, to know if she could. All that she mustered was a slight gurgle.
Now more than ever, she regretted all the times she’d watched medical tv and complained about how unrealistic it was for people to be able to speak right after waking up from an accident — for them to go right back to their daily lives as if nothing had happened. It didn’t matter that it was unrealistic. She just wanted to be able to speak. If she could speak, then she’d be okay. Or at least that was what she had told herself to continue on.
“Don’t rush.” If Jirou could have jumped at the sound of the voice, she would have. “You have plenty of time to recover. I’ll be here every step of the way, Jirou.”
Kaminari was still there. Even now, who knows how long after the accident, he was still there.
It didn’t matter that she couldn’t speak just yet. He was still there; he wasn’t going to leave her side.
Waking up in the morning got a bit easier each day. It wasn’t long before she could speak again, her head still felt as if it was stuffed with cotton but the film over her eyes had cleared away.
“Okay, so I could tell you were disappointed when the doctor said no solid foods just yet, buuuut...” Kaminari stepped into her line of sight with a thermos in hand. “I made you a breakfast-flavored smoothie!”
Jirou watched as he sat down next to her and popped a straw into the opening of the thermos, holding it out in front of her. Before taking a sip, she voiced her concern. “What does a breakfast flavored smoothie taste like?”
“Breakfast!”
Jirou attempted to shake her head but took a sip of the smoothie anyway. It was the worst smoothie she had ever had. It took all her self-restraint to swallow it. “What did you put in that?”
“Banana, syrup, brown sugar, cinnamon, some coffee-flavored chocolate, orange juice, a pancake-”
“You actually thought to yourself ‘Hey putting a pancake and some orange juice in a blender is a good idea’?” She interrupted, repressing a painful laugh.
“It is a good idea!” He nodded vigorously, taking the thermos back and sipping at it. He made a noise as if he was about to choke and then set the thermos down. “Great idea!”
“Did you make pancakes just to put them into a blender?”
“Maybe.”
Somedays waking up was harder, the more time that passed the more angry she became that she couldn’t get out of the hospital bed.
“I should be able to stand up by now,” she grumbled when Kaminari brought her a bagel that morning.
“Everyone moves at their own pace.” He had to be getting tired of having to tell her that. It was practically a daily occurrence by now. “When I lost my leg, I thought I’d never stand again.”
It was times like this that Jirou regretted their time apart more than anything. It wasn’t just that she missed him anymore. It was that now she knew first hand that she should’ve been there for him like he was there for her now. “How do you not hate me?”
“What?” Kaminari shook his head in shock, his eyes wide. “Jirou, why would I hate you?”
“I wasn’t there for you like this after your accident.” She reached a shaky hand out to him. “How can you be there for me like this when I wasn’t there for you?”
“I don’t see it like that.” He shrugged, taking her hand in his. “Plus, I’ve been where you are now, and I want to help you through it because I’ve been where you are now. You’d never been where I was when I lost my leg. You didn’t know how to handle that either. None of our friends did. And everyone handled it in their own ways.”
“You’re not mad?” She chewed nervously on her lip, unable to meet his eyes.
“Never.”
The first day of physical therapy was the most exciting yet also the most challenging day. The doctors had finally decided she was ready to take the next step towards recovery, literally. She began with one exercise: walking from one side of the room to the other, with the help of support bars.
Kaminari wasn’t kidding when he said he’d be there every step of the way. Every step she took across the room was met with him cheering and standing right next to her with his hands ready to support her if she stumbled.
It was sweet but also a bit annoying, just like him.
“Ten steps away! You can do it!” He whooped as she gingerly took another step forward, flinching as pain shot through her legs.
“Ten steps away from punching you,” she grumbled under her breath.
“If that’s what it takes to motivate you, then you can punch me, but only ten steps from now.” Kaminari grinned, adding under his breath. “And not just because I think you’re too weak right now to hurt me.”
That comment earned him a sharp jab from her earphone jack.
“Good job, Jirou! That’s the sharpest jab you’ve jabbed me with yet!” He teased, sticking his tongue out at her but still sounding like an over-excited child. “At this rate, your quirk will be even stronger than before the accident!”
“Raise your left hand when you hear a beep in your left ear and raise your right hand when you hear a beep in your right ear,” Kaminari instructed her. He had set up this exercise with help from her doctors after he found out she had been complaining about waking up with ringing in her ears.
“I get it. I’ve been to elementary school. I know how a hearing test works.” She chuckled and slipped the headphones on. She managed to hear most of the beeps but still missed a few, which — for a hearing hero — was highly embarrassing.
“It’s okay,” Kaminari slipped the headphones off her and set them down on the table, he pulled her into a hug. “You’ll be back to perfect hearing soon, I just know it.”
“Looking good, Kyouka!” Kaminari whistled as she did her fifth lap around the rehab center. The laps were slow and met with frequent stops to catch her breath or rest after a slight misstep made her trip.
“Not looking so bad yourself,” She laughed as she watched him resume his exercises. He had recently decided that if he wanted to support Jirou in her rehab completely, he would do her rehab exercises with her.
“Yeah, well, I’m a professional rehab-er” He said with a grin making her roll her eyes. “I’m a rehab alumni!”
“Rehab king?” She suggested as she finally sat down next to him, stretching to cool down from her very slow jog.
“Only if you’ll be my rehab queen!”
“You might just have a deal.”
“You sure you should be wearing those? What if you trip and break both your legs right in the middle of the-”
“Look, Denki, I’ve been practicing walking in heels for three weeks now, and I just don’t have time to find a new pair of shoes.” She pointed her earphone jack threateningly at his throat. “You are not going to stop me from wearing these heels. If I break both my legs, then we have a good story to tell, but at least my shoes will match my dress.”
“Okay! Okay!” He put his hands up, surrendering to the argument that had resurfaced at least four times this week already. “But I’ll be making Kirishima video tape it so that if you do fall, it’ll be documented forever, and you’ll have to watch it every time I decide I want to remind you that I was right and you were wrong!”
“Oh, I’m so glad that Kirishima is filming it just in case I fall.” She rolled her eyes and slid her heels back off, setting them next to her purse.
“Yeah, why else would he film it?” Kaminari teased.
“You look amazing.” Kaminari’s grin was wider than she’d ever seen it. “And your walk was perfect.”
“Well, it had to be perfect. It would be bad luck to trip on our wedding day.” She smiled back at him, barely aware of the eyes of all their friends and family settling on them.
“I meant it when I said I’d be with you every step of the way,” he said as he slipped her ring onto her finger. “I love you.”
“I could never have made it here without you,” she murmured as she put his wedding band on.
“Well, without me, you wouldn’t be marrying me, so you’re not wrong.”
“You know what I mean.”
“I do.”