As they neared the halfway point of their loop, Rebecca had an idea. Maybe a terrible one, but maybe not.

"Hey, I want to try something. Walk behind me for a sec?"

Sam looked at her askance, skeptical. "Are you sure?"

"Yeah. I'm experimenting."

"Ooooookay." Sam slowed her stride and dropped in behind Rebecca, following her along one of the tire tracks worn through the grass. There was plenty of gravel, so her footsteps were quite audible. After crunching away for several of them she asked, "Anything?"

Rebecca thought for a moment, paying attention to any sensations she could pick up. "No... not at all. Not that I'm complaining, but what the heck?" She stopped and Sam almost ran into her.

"Hey! Did you do that on purpose?"

Rebecca didn't turn around; she kept her eyes on the road ahead. "No, sorry. But, put your arms around me."

"Again, I say, ooooookay..." She felt Sam's hands slide around her waist and head lean against her back. "Still nothing? Not that I'm complaining either."

Rebecca closed her eyes and steered her thoughts back to that night. Advancing through the darkness. Epstein getting hit. The guys she cut a swath through. Seeing that dang kid standing up, the blood on Sam's face — an upsetting thought all on its own. Running towards her, falling somehow, crashing into Sam. The confused alarm of seeing the table coming at her, the fuzzy ringing before she passed out, even the vague memory of waking up on the couch.

"No, nothing. Okay, I'm confused."

"Mmm." She felt Sam's head move against her back.

"Screw it, I want to take advantage of this, come on." Rebecca slipped out of Sam's arms but tugged at her hand, gesturing her to sit against a nearby tree, then sitting down in front of her and reclining. She pulled Sam's arms across her like seatbelts and closed her eyes, waiting again for some sign of unease to come creeping up on her. Still nothing. "I'm not about to look a gift horse in the mouth."

Sam kissed the top of her head. "Me neither."

Rebecca stopped trying to guide her thoughts and just let go, hoping to drift and relax snuggling with Sam just like she was used to. God, it was nice after the days they'd had. Her breath gradually slowed over the span of several minutes while she listened to a few birds, the murmur of voices off in the distance, even a few puffs of wind through the trees.

The last of the hot dusty smell of the day lingered, joined by a hint of something floral, maybe from the woods behind them. As her head gently rose and fell on Sam's chest, Rebecca distantly knew she was floating right on the fringe of dozing off. She tried to cling to that bliss and stay in that balanced haze as long as she could — it was so nice to feel safe again...

A raspy mechanical roar made her jump and yanked her back to the full consciousness with a flood of adrenaline. She sat up halfway and looked around with her heart pounding before realizing it was probably the chainsaw they'd brought with them, getting used at Epstein's demolition project.

"Ugh... what crappy timing."

She felt Sam tug her gently back and yielded, resting her head back and letting out a long slow breath. She felt like she'd just woken up from a good dream and was trying to doze off and return to it — for all she knew, that might have actually been the case.

But something was different this time. Sam's arms felt like steel beams pinning her down, like the metallic skeleton of the burnt out offices Rebecca and Ronnie skulked through to rescue Pat and Chris. She lifted her hands to Sam's wrists, desperately fighting the urge to pull them away from her chest. A prickly heat started somewhere near her stomach and started to spread slowly, inevitably.

"Hey." Sam's voice sounded worried. "You're breathing really fast, I can feel it."

Rebecca bit her lip and nodded but didn't say anything, squeezing her eyes and mouth shut in frustration. Yup, that had definitely set a spark to a fuse — but that's what she'd originally wanted anyway; to trigger whatever unease lurked below the surface. She could beat this thing. It was all in her head. It was her damned mind and body. She was stronger, she was safe. Sam wouldn't hurt her again and would protect her. This was just some silly subconscious thing she could....

She grimaced and rolled away from Sam's lap with a whining growl of frustration, crawling several feet away, panting. She even dry heaved once, but managed to control her stomach once she felt cool air across the sweat on the back of her neck.

"Damn it." She clawed at the grass and dirt, clenching fistfuls beneath her as she gasped for air. "God fucking damn it." Still on all fours, she looked back over to Sam through the hair that had fallen over her face. "I thought I could... I wanted to beat it. I'm sorry."

Sam was up on one knee, but had stopped herself from moving any closer. "Sugar... that's nuts. You can't just power your way through a panic attack. You just... work around them, get through, survive them. You can't fight them head on."

"I had to try, Sam." Rebecca hung her head as she tried to catch her breath. "I had to try."

**

Sam knew that on top of Rebecca's own emotional fallout from her failed experiment, she'd be worried about having renewed Sam's own feelings of responsibility and shame about her injuries and the lingering effects. Sam didn't want to make things harder for Rebecca, so she made a genuine effort to tell those feelings to stay in their own little corner and shut the hell up.

They'd stayed where they both were for several minutes, Rebecca eventually flopping to sit cross-legged on the ground. Sam waited until Rebecca looked her way again and slowly did the same.

When Rebecca finally nodded to her, Sam rose carefully. "Can I help you up?"

"Yeah, I think that'll be okay."

Sam walked over to her and extended a hand, waiting for Rebecca to take it and then helping her stand. Damn if she didn't want to hug her comfortingly — but knew she had to override that counterproductive impulse. "You good on your feet? Steady?"

"Gimme a sec."

"Yeah, of course. I wish you'd told me you were going to try that. I'd have told you it was a bad idea."

Rebecca put her hands on her hips and tilted her head back, taking a few deep breaths, probably still getting her respiration back in a steady rhythm. "Sorry. I thought things were getting better."

"They were, but... the more times you go through that, the more it's going to... I don't know. Reinforce the undesirable programming in your brain? Something like that?"

Rebecca lowered her head, stretched her neck, and then looked at Sam. "I'm not going to give up, I won't stop fighting for us."

"Okay... but for now, let's maybe stick to judo or something, not tae kwon do, huh? Not so much with the high impact brute force tactics."

Sam saw Rebecca's shoulders sag a little. "Yeah, okay. You're right."

"Of course I am. See, we're moving back towards normal after all!" Sam strove to intone her words similarly to her gently relentless teasing from their early days at Broadway. Oh, that seemed such a lifetime ago. Then, much more tenderly... "We just gotta find the right pace, sugar. Tell you what. I will do everything I can to be kind to myself about this, if you do the same damned thing. You say you're letting go of doubting your decisions, but I can tell you're beating yourself up emotionally over this as much as I am about doing it to you physically. The way your subconscious is responding to unexpectedly being attacked by your lover is not. Your. Fault."

Rebecca closed her eyes for the duration of a slow sigh, and then reopened them, looking into Sam's from a couple of feet away. "Okay. I promise. Telling myself to shut up and do it for you... I guess that's a good way of turning my inwards guilt around and using it."

Sam nodded. "Yeah. I bet that'll be the case for both of us. You told me just a few hundred yards ago to remember who I am, right? We're both the same people. Things have happened to us, and they impact us, change some things, but we're still us, okay? And you know what? Fuck Mags. Surviving this, figuring out how to move on and still be true to ourselves, that's how we give her the biggest middle finger."

Rebecca must have found something funny because she chuckled.

"What?"

"Or we could bring Rufus back and have him pee on wherever they buried her."

Sam closed her eyes and shook her head, laughing. "Oh, that's my girl. There you are. So, yeah. We get past this, we leave that bitch to rot, and then we just deal with me and my parent issues."

"Sounds like a plan."

"Good. I need my compassionate thoughtful psychologist back."

**

They opted to cut across the fields after that, giving the loud chainsaw, revving engines, and cracking din of house demolition a wide berth. Once they were well past Epstein's project they cut towards the remaining house on a diagonal, hopping over plowed rows in the bare spots between growing crops.

Climbing over the fence felt like a serendipitously juvenile and lighthearted act that somehow improved Rebecca's mood a bit. She appreciated the way Sam had pointedly stayed ahead of her, and despite — or perhaps because of — Sam's repeated concerned glances, she did her best to not fall into a spiral of guilt about it.

As they neared the house, they both laughed when Jack ran by at an exuberant sprint and did a simultaneous double-take at the familiar cap he was holding onto his head with one hand as he ran.

Sam spoke first when they turned from looking over their shoulders at the rapidly distant sight. "Was that... Landry's hat? The one he had on in the car with us?"

"I'm pretty sure it was, or we both need glasses."

Sam raised her eyebrows and shook her head as they kept walking. "I guess he would make pretty good 'cool uncle' material."

"You may be more right about that than you think." Rebecca tilted her head pointedly to the porch as they approached it, where Landry was swaying in his hammock with one foot hanging out and Dylan leaned against the window. Both seemed in good spirits, laughing as they conversed. "Aww. For the love of god let's not tease him about it. If they're hitting it off, I don't wanna screw it up."

"Oh please. I'd hope you expect better from me. Your aspersions upon my tact aside, Sergeant Snuggles will be sad she missed out on playing matchmaker."

Rebecca sputtered and glared at Sam accusingly. The only reply she received was a smug grin that indicated yes, Sam had intended to provoke that reaction by referencing their old joke about Ronnie's curmudgeonly meddling.