Unnecessarily In Depth Author's Note: I hate cancer storylines in television because they're generally cheap and lame and just lazy storytelling, but also because my family is riddled with cancer so it's a very real issue in my life that's often treated very poorly and with very little respect in television, so I had to do something after 4.17. This is 90% me just trying to just not hate the whole development and to tie some things together from season four, and 10% just being a cynical arrogant asshole who doesn't expect even a show like this to pay the right amount of respect to an issue like cancer. So. Consider yourself warned.
Additionally: the sundry medical details in here regarding surgery and chemotherapy are based on my own experiences with surgery and my mother's and grandmothers' experiences with chemotherapy. It is obviously in no way indicative of anyone else's experience with any form of cancer or chemotherapy.
Also, I stole the title from Neko Case's "I'm An Animal". Let's not pretend I possess half an ounce's worth of her lyricism. FFN limits how long titles can be; the fully intended title is pick up that rock, drink from that lake (i do my best but i'm made of mistakes).
Breaking feels like this: feet melted to the floor, a gunshot in the distance, stomach wrenching in on itself as Sam's body crumples like an empty soda can, screams too loud to be heard but not too loud to be felt as they rip out into open air. It's shock giving way to rage, rage giving way to loathing, and every one of them being utterly eclipsed by overwhelming, consuming failure. It's rebuilding, day by day, finding happiness in unexpected places and extraordinary people.
Breaking feels like this: waking up in a catacomb in Egypt, muscles aching and head pounding, betrayal hot on her skin like a blanket she can't escape, hands shaking with fear and fury and desperation in a national park on the verge of explosion. It's disappointment and disgust and some deep-rooted miniscule seed of love squashed out with a gun to her head. It's finding forgiveness in herself, for everyone, and not shattering quite as completely as she did the first time.
Breaking feels like this: the scratchy upholstery of a suburban sofa, confusion giving way to frustration giving way to resignation, the warm handle of 150 year old brass pressed desperately into her hands in passing. It's walking away with a promise that will never be more than a goodbye and a quiet hole in her chest where someone brilliant once existed. It's smiling through the sadness and finding peace in an honest heartbreak.
Breaking feels like this: it's being 31 years old going from routine physical to it might be cancer to stage II in four days. It's the utter devastation of something so mundane, so separate from tridents and artifact bombs and the ache of unwanted devotion to someone who's never found their place in the world, in any timeline. It's finally, somehow, cruelly, being alone when every piece of herself that she's glued back together splinters along the faultlines that never really faded.
Step one, the doctors tell her after the diagnosis is confirmed, is surgery. She walks out of the room, strides long and powerful and determinedly hiding the fact that her body is betraying her. Her hand is on the door to her car—to go where, she has no idea, but step one isn't surgery, will never be surgery, because step one is her family—when Mrs. Frederic is suddenly there.
"Not now," Myka says. Her voice is flat, her hands shaking as she fumbles with the door handle.
"Myka," Mrs. Frederic says. Her hand is cool on Myka's shoulder. Myka's forehead falls against the window, breath coming in heavy gasps. Mrs. Frederic guides her away from the car, leading her to another, and deposits her briskly in the backseat.
"So, you know already?" Myka says eventually, once her breathing is back under control.
"I do." Mrs. Frederic offers her a bottle of water.
"Shocking," Myka mutters. "Where are you taking me?"
"That is up to you," Mrs. Frederic says. "I understand how difficult this is. You can return to the bed and breakfast, or we can fly you to Colorado, or wherever you want to go."
"Wherever I want to go," Myka says. Her fingers twist and untwist the bottle cap incessantly, her eyes watery but calculating. "I know you like doing this whole mysterious thing, okay, but I'm really not in the mood for it, so if you would just spit it out—"
"A month-to-month lease was signed last week for an apartment in Boone, Wisconsin, to a Miss Emily Lake," Mrs. Frederic says.
"Oh," Myka says faintly. "No, I can't—not like this."
"Very well," Mrs. Frederic says. "The bed and breakfast, then?"
"I suppose so," Myka says. "I don't—how do I tell them?"
"However you want to," Mrs. Frederic says. "This is about you, after all."
Artie is first. He curses and fumbles and his hands shake, and it's barely two minutes before he's trying to reach Vanessa on the Farnsworth, mumbling promises to Myka that everything will be okay.
Pete bursts into the office just as Artie reaches Vanessa, munching on a croissant, and skids to a halt to see Myka sitting in Artie's chair, hands in her lap and shoulders folded in on themselves.
"Mykes, hey, what's—"
"Can you sit down?" Her voice is weak, embarrassingly so, but she's too tired to muster up any energy. "I need to—I have—"
"What?" Pete sits in front of her cautiously. "Come on, you're freaking me out, I need you to talk to me."
"It's about my physical," she starts. "I—I didn't want to say anything until I knew, and they had to run some tests, but they did and now they know and they got a second opinion and—" Her voices catches, stopping in a sharp hiccup somewhere between her stomach and her throat, and her eyes start to overflow. "Pete, I have cancer."
There's a loud crash behind her before Pete can react. Claudia is standing in the doorway, a now-broken laptop at her feet. The stricken look—the same one from an empty hangar and Steve's cold body— and the way her hand is covering her mouth and her entire body is recoiling from the words is enough to break past the remainders of Myka's resolve, and she starts to cry.
Pete grabs her into an awkward hug, too-tight and painful, but she just cries into his shoulder.
Her parents are even harder. Her mother cries, her sister starts talking shrilly and uselessly, but her father simply stands up and walks away. Her mother's iron grip on her hands keeps Myka from following, and it isn't until the middle of the night that she wakes up and finds him methodically pounding his fist into a concrete wall in the basement.
When she leaves for home—because Colorado hasn't been home for years, because home is the middle of nowhere—his hand is in a cast and she hugs them all goodbye only after making them swear to let her go home and handle this—because this is so much less threatening than cancer, because handle is so much less intimidating than surgery and chemotherapy—without them.
She hasn't been a part of their lives for years, anyways. It should hurt, leaving them, leaving her childhood home, for what could be the last time, but it doesn't, not as much as she expected. Cruelly, harshly, that hurts more than leaving.
In 31 years, the closest Myka Bering has ever had to surgery is getting her wisdom teeth and tonsils removed, and there's nothing in those memories to prepare her. There's the pre-op and forms to sign, dates and times to coordinate, a bag to pack for the hospital stay afterwards. There's the stringent reminder not to eat or drink after midnight the night before, and gentle addendums that most people set an alarm for 11:45 and eat one last—the nurse bites down on her tongue when Pete's hand clenches his empty coffee cup enough to crumple it at the word—meal and drink before the restriction sets in.
There's the prep room and needles in her arms, nurses bustling around and an anesthesiologist and so, so many papers to sign still. There's Pete and Claudia being almost forcibly lead away, and Myka digging her fingernails into her leg until she can fake a smile for them. There's being alone in a flurry of people who are about to cut out the parts of her that are trying to kill her, a stranger tucking a cap over her hair, and the world blurring around the edges until there's nothing left but the sharp, burning cold of the operating room.
Then there's a mask and a backwards ten count. She's almost made it to seven when she drifts off wishing hazily for the same sky Helena had given her life over to once upon a time.
She wakes in the middle of the night. Claudia is a blurry form curled into a recliner, dead asleep. She's snoring softly, and it mutes the edges of panic rising at the needles hooked into Myka's arms, the ache in her throat, the ungodly pain radiating through her entire abdomen.
A nurse slips into the room quietly, offering a smile.
"Please don't wake her," Myka says, raspy and pained.
"I don't think an earthquake could wake her up," she says. She fiddles with a set of machines, all wired into some part of Myka's body or another, and smiles once more. "How's your pain?"
Myka wants to say something clever, something funny, something that would get her a wink from Claudia and a high five from Pete, but all she can manage is "Bad."
"You've been out of surgery for about nine hours," the nurse says. "So the anesthesia is fading. I have to keep doing rounds, but someone will be in in a minute to give you some pain medicine."
Myka has nothing to offer but a tight smile. Her body wants to curl in on itself, to wrap itself into a tiny compressed ball until her nerves stop working and it stops hurting, but instead she tries to focus on the slow, meditative breaths Steve taught her once.
A phone buzzes, and Myka's eyes snap open as Claudia jerks awake and yanks the phone out of her jacket pocket, murmuring a curse as she presses it to her ear.
"I swear to God, it's two in the morning," she hisses. "What are you—what?"
"Claud," Myka says, and Claudia's eyes snap over towards her.
"Just a second," she says fumbling to end the call and shifting her attention back to Myka, leaping out of her chair and over to the bedside.
"Hey," Claudia says. Her hands wring around one another. "How—how are you feeling?"
"Okay," Myka lies. "A little thirsty."
"Right," Claudia says, fumbling for the water pitcher and pouring a cupful for her. "The doctor said your throat might hurt for a few days because of—of the breathing tube. Also, we were all here, but we got a ping and they had to, y'know. We did rock paper scissors to see who got to stay."
"Oh," Myka says. She takes a small sip, wincing when the lukewarm water hits her abused throat. "Okay. Do you have my glasses?"
"Oh, right, yes," Claudia says. She yanks her bag over, foot hooked in the strap, and produces Myka's glasses with a flourish.
"Thanks," Myka says, closing her eyes as Claudia carefully places the glasses on her face.
" Who were you talking to?" she asks once she can see.
"Uh—just Abigail. She's an insomniac. Who knew?"
"Just because I'm on drugs doesn't mean I can't tell when you're lying," Myka says drolly, even as Claudia's hand comes down to grip at hers.
"What? No!"
Another nurse bustles into the room, a syringe in hand, and Claudia flinches at the sight, fingers tightening around Myka's.
"What's that?"
"Just morphine," the nurse says. "The anesthesia will wear off soon, it's best to stay ahead of the pain."
"I asked for it," Myka says. Her fingers grip weakly at Claudia's, and Claudia's shoulders relax minutely.
"Have you ever had a morphine injection before?"
Myka shakes her head, her throat hurting the more she speaks, and the nurses nods briskly. "For some people, the morphine burns for a few minutes. It's nothing to worry yourself over, and it won't last very long, but don't freak out about it, okay?" Her eyes crinkle with a smile, and Myka nods, gripping at Claudia's hand a little tighter.
The morphine slides through her veins, tracking up from the IV in her wrist towards her elbow and leaving a blurry line of reddened skin in its wake as it burns from the inside out.
"The pain should go away within a few minutes," the nurse says. She checks the series of machines once more, and offers a last smile. "Someone will be in for rounds in another hour or so. Holler if you need anything."
"Thanks," Claudia says belatedly, as the nurse is almost out of the room. The door has barely swung shut behind her before it slips open again, and Claudia's eyes widen. "What are you—"
"What?" Myka says, drowsy and slurring. Her head lolls towards the door, to where Helena—not Emily, but Helena, the difference palatable—stands apprehensively. "Oh." She swings her gaze back over to Claudia. "Knew you were lying."
"To be fair, I did surprise her," Helena says softly. There's not a trace of humor in her eyes, her mouth set in a thin line.
"I called her yesterday," Claudia says. "I—I just wanted her to know, I thought she should be up to date."
"Oh," Myka says. Helena stands at her bedside, opposite Claudia, looking down at Myka solemnly.
"I'm going to—go to the vending machine," Claudia says. She presses a kiss to Myka's cheek and waves awkwardly at Helena before disappearing out of the room.
"Why are you here?" Myka mumbles. Helena's hand covers hers, fingertips following the fading red burn up her arm.
"For you," Helena says simply.
"Oh," Myka says, faint as she drifts into sleep. "Okay. Good. I think I'm high."
"Sleep," Helena says. Her hand presses against Myka's cheek for a brief moment, trembling but real, and Myka sighs into the touch.
"You'll be here when I wake up?"
"Of course," Helena says. "Right here." She hooks a foot into a chair and slides it over so she can sit, not letting go of Myka's hand.
"Okay," Myka mumbles. Her eyes slip shut, but Helena's touch burns through the fog of the morphine, warm and strong.