The nausea lasts for four days. On the fifth day, Myka wakes up sometime around noon, mouth cottony and stomach empty. There's a bottle of water on her nightstand and a note in Claudia's familiar scrawl—Pete and Claudia are off on a ping, Artie is handling the crisis of the week in the dark vault with Abigail, and Helena was called in on some gadgety thing, leaving Steve to work on his paperwork at home.

She's in the shower, the first she's managed in days, when chunks of hair fall down with the water, dropping at her feet mockingly. She doesn't move, staring at the lock of hair by her big toe, and her hands shake.

Fifteen minutes later, she makes her way downstairs. Steve is in the dining room, paperwork spread out across the table.

"Feel like taking a break?" she says, false cheer. "I need to go into town."

"Hey!" he says, fumbling with his pen and struggling to get to his feet without disrupting the stack of file folders. "What—how are you feeling?"

"Oh, you know," she says breezily. "Like I spent four days puking up my guts. Come on, let's go into town."

"Myka, wait, hold on, you need to—"

"I swear to God, Steve, if you say I need to sit down, I will shoot you."

"Okay, one." He holds his hands out peacefully. "That was a lie. We both know you'd punch me. And two, I was just going to say you should eat, since you haven't kept anything down since Tuesday."

"Oh." Her shoulders slump. "Okay."

"Okay," he echoes with a smile. "The kitchen is yours. What do you want? I can make anything that isn't pound cake."

"Pound cake. Really?"

"I know, trust me," he says, grumbling. "It just never works, I don't know what goes wrong, but something always goes wrong and it tastes like salt."

"Salt?"

"I don't know!" He yanks the refrigerator door open. "Anyways. We have leftover shephard's pie from yesterday, Pete's steak burrito that no one is supposed to touch, and any sandwich you could dream of."

"Burrito," Myka says.

"Burrito it is," he says, producing it with a flourish and handing it to her. "Water? Tea? Sprite?"

"I'm good." She shakes the water bottle from upstairs, shoving it back into her purse. "Drive and eat?"

"I'll drive, you eat," he says. "So what do you need in town?"

"I—uh…" Myka falters, steps slowing for a brief second, and she busies herself with unwrapping the burrito. "Just a quick errand."

"Mysterious," Steve says. "Is this where Claudia gets it from?"

"Please," she says with a laugh. "Claudia's personality quirks are 100% Claudia."

"I don't know, I'm pretty sure she has your death glare and Pete's appetite," he says.

"Anyways," she says. "Fill me in, what's going on?"

"Artie is being all hush-hush about something going on in the dark vault, but Abigail let it slip that they're basically just doing inventory and he's avoiding everyone because Pete is bouncing off the walls without you and Helena and Claudia keep taking things apart, including the F.I.S.H., which Helena is currently putting back together and supposedly improving. Pete and Claudia are in Ohio, tracking down a ping of a bunch of people who keep thinking they can fly."

"Ohio?"

"Orville Wright's hat, I think?"

"Oh, right." Myka munches on the burrito in silence for a few moments. It sits heavily in her stomach, and she only makes it through a third before wrapping it back up. Steve glances at her worriedly, and she ignores him, staring resolutely at the passing lack of scenery on their way into Univille.

"Where to, then?" Steve asks when they make it to town.

"Just the general store," she says quietly. He pulls into a parking spot in front of the store, and she motions for him to stay. "Won't be a minute."

It takes more than a minute, though. She stands in the aisle for long minutes, a box containing a set of hair clippers clenched in her hands. It isn't until someone tries to edge past her in the aisle, accidentally bumping into her, that she finally moves, striding to the desk and slapping the box down to check out.

"Get what you—oh."

"Yeah," Myka mutters.

"I—"

"Don't," she says.

"—have a pair already," he finishes. "You could have borrowed them."

"Oh," she says. He smiles, rubbing a hand over his nearly-shaved head, and she laughs tiredly. "I kind of want to symbolically smash these against a rock, though."

"Well, in that case," he says. "Don't touch mine."

"I promise." She sinks into the passenger seat as he starts back towards the bed and breakfast. He's quiet and comforting in the driver's seat, turning the radio to a jazz station and letting the music fill the silence on the drive home.

Pete and Claudia come home just after Artie and Abigail shuffle into the bed and breakfast, Helena trailing behind them with her head bowed over some kind of circuit board in her hands.

"Myka!" Claudia says, bouncing excitedly. "You're up!" She leaps forward, only to slam to a halt six inches away. "Can I—"

Over her shoulder, Pete is watching apprehensively, and Myka wrinkles her nose at him. "Guys, I'm not going to break."

"Oh, sweet," Claudia says, barreling into her and hugging her tightly. Myka laughs, hugging her back, and Pete grins, grabbing them both into a hug and squashing Claudia between them.

"Children!" Artie says abruptly from the kitchen. "It's dinner time, come on, I'm hungry."

"Alright, alright, keep your hair on, gramps," Claudia wheezes from her spot between them. "Guys, let me out, I can't breathe, Pete is wearing too much cologne."

She squeezes out from between them and darts to the freedom of the kitchen. Behind Pete, Helena catches Myka's eye and smiles gently, head tilting to one side the tiniest bit. Myka swallows, her throat dry, and steps back from Pete.

"After dinner, can I talk to you?" she asks him quietly.

"Sure, what's up?"

"I just need your help with something. It won't take long."

"Does it involve bedpans?" he asks. "Because I don't do bedpans."

She punches him in the arm, and it's far weaker than she cares to admit, but he winces for her sake anyways and she loves him just a little bit more for it. "No bedpans," she promises.

"Cool, I'm there." He salutes her and winks before making his own way ot the kitchen.

"It's good to see you up," Helena says quietly The circuit board is abandoned in her hands.

"What are you working on?"

"I believe at one point it was a cell phone," Helena says, smiling widely. "It had quite the marvelous tracking device embedded in it at one point, I believe, and I'm trying to replicate it."

"Guys! Come on, Artie sounds like a dying whale in here."

Myka shakes her head, laughing in spite of herself, and Helena tucks the circuit board into her jacket pocket. She follows Myka into the dining room and pulls out a chair for her, smirking when Myka flushes delicately at the gesture, the color obvious against her pale cheeks. Her hand presses against the back of Myka's neck delicately for a fleeting moment, cool and comforting, before she moves to her own seat at Abigail's side.

"You're sure about this?" Pete asks. He looks doubtfully at the clippers in his hands, gaze wavering between them and Myka.

"Pete, yes, for the last time," she says. She rolls her eyes and tugs at her hair, a chunk coming out in her hand.

"Ah! Oh my God!" He leaps back, scrambling up onto the counter as it floats down towards his feet.

"Oh, come on," she says, glaring at him. "It's hair, it won't hurt you. It's not like cancer is contagious, and even if it was, you'd be lacking some fundamental parts necessary for this kind of cancer."

"Oh," he says. "Well, when you put it that way." He takes a deep breath. "Okay, here we go."

The clippers buzz to life, and Myka clenches her jaw, squeezing her eyes shut and steeling herself for the first pass of the razor through her hair. His hands are gentle as they manipulate the clippers, and hers migrate from her lap down to skim past her legs and behind her, fingers gripping at the loose denim around his shins just for the sake of contact as he haves her head.

In spite of her resolve, a few tears slip free anyways. She clamps down on her lower lip, ignoring them, and keeps her eyes shut until cool air is brushing over her entire scalp and Pete turns the clippers off.

"Thank you for not sucking at this," she says once her eyes are open. Her head is pale, paler even than the rest of her, and her fingers shake as she slides her hands over her scalp.

"You have a nice shaped head," Pete says, squinting. "When they cut off my hair in the Marines I found out I have this really weird lump on the back of my skull, I looked like a deformed conehead."

"You're surprised that my bald head is prettier than your bald head?"

"A little, yeah," he says. He shrugs, grinning at her. "That big brain of yours, I was convinced all of that crazy curly hair was just disguising a crazy big head, too."

She laughs, the sound coming out halfway to a sob, and elbows him weekly in the stomach. His hand catches hers and squeezes tightly. She slumps back against him, temple pressing into the soft material of his t-shirt, and cries in spite of herself.

"Do you have a—a hat or something?"

"Yeah, probably." He deposits the clippers on the counter and shifts, hands solid on her shoulders as he kneels down on the floor beside her and hugs her tightly. "You look awesome bald, Mykes. Not a conehead at all. And you're going to beat the crap out of this cancer, because you're Myka and your'e awesome."

Her fingers dig into his t-shirt, face buried against his shoulder, and he doesn't move until she does, long minutes having passed. His shirt is wrinkled and damp from her tears, but he just smiles broadly at her and leaps to his feet theatrically, disappearing into his room.

"Okay, we have hats," he say. "Jester hat. Trucker hat. Stolen cap from the corp—don't tell them about that. Toboggan. Beanie. Another trucker hat. Fedora. Hey, you should totally wear the fedora."

He pops his head back around the corner, brandishing a gray fedora.

"No fedoras," she says sternly.

"Right." He disappears again. "How about—here." He reappears, a dark blue beanie in his hands. "It shrank the last time I washed it, but it should still fit over your big brain."

She slips the hat over her head, the worn material soft over her sensitive skin. It fits down over her ears and covers down to the top of her neck, just enough that she could be hiding a full head of hair under it without being grossly hot.

"This works," she says quietly. She avoids her own image in the mirror. "Thank you."

"What's a little head-shaving between friends who have woken up naked with each other?" he says with a smirk. "Now come on, your TV is super cool and I want to watch McLintock! on it."

"John Wayne again? Really, Pete?"

"Forget about Wayne," Pete says flippantly, dragging her towards her room. "It's all about Maureen O'Hara. You know what they say about redheads."

"What's that, exactly?" Claudia calls from her bedroom. "Before you answer, remember exactly who keeps the Pete Cave from getting demolished by Artie."

"Ah," Pete says. "That they're…all extremely smart and terrifying?"

"Who's smart and terrifying?" Helena appears at the top of the stairs, eyes shifting to Myka immediately. Myka shrinks into Pete's side, her hands going to the hat self-consciously. She slips behind Pete and into her room, leaving him to argue with Claudia.

"Myka," Helena says softly, shutting the door behind her. "Are you alright?"

Myka drops down on the foot of her bed, shaking her head helplessly. Helena moves swiftly to her side, her leg pressing gently against Myka's as she sits.

"In several instances of my research, I read about family members who, in a symbol of solidarity for those going through chemotherapy, also shaved their heads—"

"Don't you dare!" Myka interrupts. Her fingers tug at the tips of Helena's hair. "Don't even think about it."

"Are you sure?"

"It's not even an option," Myka says firmly. "No way."

"Well, the offer stands. It would be something of an adventure," Helena says. Her thumb skims along Myka's cheekbone. Even after only a week, it's more pronounced than normal. "Now, are you up for another movie tonight?"

"I had one in mind, actually," Myka says with a small smile. She detaches herself from Helena, fingers trailing through her hair as she steps away. After a moment of rummaging in the trunk, she produces a movie and tosses it to Helena, whose face lights up.

"Oh, my, they made a movie out of this?"

"They did," Myka says, swallowing a smirk as Helena's bright expression traces over War of the Worlds and Tom Cruise's face.

"This is rather wondrous," Helena says. "Also, I believe I've gotten the hang of this fantastic contraption." She slides past Myka, managing to deposit the disc into the player with much less effort than the first time. Myka curls under the covers on the bed, and Helena joins her as the movie starts.

Myka settles in, eyes locked on Helena as the movie progresses. It takes barely five minutes before Helena is raging at the movie, and Myka just watches, laughing hard enough to forget that half an hour earlier she had her best friend cut off all of her hair.

"I can't do this," Helena declares halfway through. "This is—it's not just a travesty, it's a tragedy, and an insult. I'm going to track down whoever let this happen and—"

"Yeah, yeah, yeah," Myka says with a yawn. She yanks Helena back down from where she's pacing and fumbles with the remote, turning the TV off.

"It's all wrong, Myka," Helena says petulantly.

"Calm down," Myka says, yawning again. "You can laugh or you can cry. I suggest laughing."

Her yawn catches Helena's attention, drawing a small smile from her. "Perhaps you should sleep, darling," she suggests.

"Maybe," Myka mumbles. She slips down on the bed sleepily, tugging the covers up to her shoulders.

"Probably," Helena says. She fidgets with the blankets, pulling them more fully over her. Her hands pause by Myka's shoulders, fingertips brushing against the material of her hat. "Do you want to take that off?"

"No!" Myka says, eyes snapping open. "No, I just—not yet."

"Alright," Helena says quietly. Her fingers smooth over the hat once, and Myka yawns again. "Sleep well, then."

"Night," Myka says, half-asleep. Her fingertips catch Helena's before they drift away, tangling together. Helena says something, quiet and kind, as Myka slides the rest of the way into sleep. The last thing she hears is Helena settling into the chair at her bedside, fingers on one hand still caught between hers while her other hand flips open a familiar leather notebook and sets to writing.