They left Laura to her self-appointed work, gathered what they needed of their gear, and headed back outside. Rebecca was hesitant to leave their heavy firepower behind, but Landry's explanation of a community rule banning openly carried assault weapons made more sense over time as she considered where a large number of the residents had come from. Even in the hands of their erstwhile saviors, the sight would bring back unpleasant memories and maybe even sow comparisons to their captivity, something everyone wanted to avoid.

She couldn't deny that her armor was pleasantly lighter with several of the pouches empty or the ammunition replaced by a few of Sam's tools so they only had to carry one small bag with them. Still, her hand brushed across the familiar butt of her pistol in a habitual inventory check on the way out the door. Radio, gun, flashlight. In another life, that was keys, phone, wallet. Sam's Vector, stock folded and suppressor removed, tucked in small enough across her back to thread a grey zone between the spirit and letter of the law.

Landry whistled cheerfully as they followed him through the neighborhood, and Rebecca took in more of the sights. All of the houses were about the same size, just about right for a small family, but certainly not much more.

"Nick, these houses are all decent enough, but—" She nodded towards some of the opulent mansions she could see beyond the fence line. "Why not move into some of the fancier places? Everybody deserves a little luxury after what they went through, and it would entice more recruits too, no?"

He waved towards the reinforced fence and its occasional crude watchtower as they walked. "I don't disagree, sister, but too spread apart. More acreage to defend. Dense buildings like this would be more vulnerable in the old days overseas, when we had to worry about rockets and mortars. But here, we can watch out for each other better and keep a tighter perimeter. There were some concerns about distance between the houses if there was a fire, but we figure more people getting on scene early with hoses and extinguishers was actually better too." He nodded in another direction. "Plus, the creek makes a good backup water source, in case the municipal supply ever gives up the ghost."

"Mmm. Guess the right stars all do kinda align then."

"Or were made to," he replied with a hearty chuckle.

Rebecca suspected that sounded like Amira's handiwork, but hesitated to voice the thought out of concern for Sam's nerves. However, when she snuck a quick glance, the smirk that was waiting for her confirmed it was a shared thought.

Landry led them to the first of the solar clusters. In an open area wedged between the main street and two cul-de-sacs worth of houses, a dozen panels rested on a scaffolding of fence posts, two-by-fours, and white plastic piping. He lingered while Sam gave things an initial once-over from below, and Rebecca gently teased him about Dylan for a little longer — more as a way of finding out how things were going and being indirectly supportive than to be malicious. She also inquired about a handful of the other refugees that she remembered — by the time she was feeling more or less caught up, Sam made her way back to them.

Landry looked hesitant as she arrived. "So, boss? How's it looking?"

Sam's expression and tone were noncommittal. "The basics are sound but I want to poke at it more. You said the other one's still under construction?"

"Well, it's built. But it doesn't seem to be working properly. Is there anything I can help with by sticking around, or should I sneak away to work on dinner plans?"

Groaning at his assessment of the other location, Sam looked back at the structure and worksite beneath — her gaze pausing at a ladder someone had left behind. "No, I think my lovely assistant can provide what I need. And, if it means we eat better tonight, I definitely think your time and daylight is better spent there."

Rebecca chuckled as he nodded and wished them luck. After his departure, she gave Sam a playful look. "Lovely assistant? I'm flattered, but that's not going to involve sawing me in half... or chaining me up between two lightning rods, is it?"

That got a coyer grin than she expected, and Sam held lingering eye contact. "Chains, huh? I mean, if you wanted to try something new in the bedroom now that your mom's got her own place, I'm open to a conversation about it when we get home."

Rebecca tried to stammer out a flustered reply, but fell quiet when Sam stepped in closer — really close — and then plucked her digital multimeter from a pouch on Rebecca's armor and moved away.

"You should see how red you are. You look like you're already sunburned."

Rebecca seethed a little. "You are an insufferable tease, you know that?"

"Oh, I'm pretty sure you like it." Sam pulled a notebook out of her own pocket and tossed it to Rebecca. "Plus, they'd be Tesla coils, not lighting rods. I'm not about to reward that kind of super basic mixup."

Rebecca rolled her eyes at her girlfriend's back, then followed along. Her part of the work was looking to be as dreary as she'd expected, and her hopes weren't buoyed by Sam's sigh after an initial measurement at the far end of the array. "What's wrong?"

Sam's reply was preceded by a dry huff. "That's the question, isn't it." She looked up at the panels over her head, then down the length of the scaffolding with a dismayed look. "It's hard to pick a good baseline to compare against since solar is so variable, and even if I had gear to measure light or whatever, I don't know the math behind it. Just based on what I've been seeing at home..."

"I'd trust your instincts over someone else's math, Rosie."

Sam made eye contact and smiled before squinting upwards again. "Thanks, sugar. It just feels like there should be more generation given how toasty today is."

Rebecca's faith in Sam's judgment won her the exciting privilege of flipping the main cutoff switch at least a dozen times while Sam peered at her portable multimeter clipped onto different points in the wiring. After that, they made their way down the line of panels, with Sam inspecting and testing specific spots while Rebecca sketched a map of the structure in the notebook, recording Sam's intermittent narration.

She was grateful most of their work was in the shade — there wasn't much of a breeze between the houses like they were. At one point, she even rested her cheek against the cool aluminum ladder, pinning the bottom rung with her foot to keep it steady for Sam. Maybe someday they'd have air conditioning that wasn't in a fuel-guzzling vehicle again.

"Eureka, motherfucker!"

Rebecca lifted her head at Sam's exclamation and grinned expectantly.

Sam hopped down from the final step and nodded back towards the panel they were under. "Something's screwed up with this panel — like, get it back to a workbench at eye level with a magnifying glass screwed up — and it's dragging the whole string down."

"I thought you said they were supposed to, like, bypass each other when that happened."

"Yeah, well. Supposed to. Maybe there's a bad diode or something, but, meh. I only figured it out once I started measuring their outputs in pairs."

Rebecca recounted how many panels they were from the end, circled the corresponding box in the notebook, and drew a sad face on it. The way she replaced each eye with an X made Sam giggle and pull on Rebecca's shirt so she could plant a kiss on her cheek.

On the walk to the next cluster of panels, Rebecca found herself glancing around at the houses, some with an adult or two sitting on the porch or kids playing in the yard, another with an unfamiliar couple loading trash bags into a wheelbarrow. New neighbors, maybe.

She managed to mentally link the extra tingle of alertness to concern about what people there would think of her and Sam, and mentally cursed Walt's backwardness lingering in her memory. She tried to remind herself that most of the settlers viewed the two of them as personal saviors, and, well.... they'd been just a tiny bit too busy and tired to worry about that kind of bullshit back at the farm. 'Hi, I'm the girlfriend' after all.

She shoved the thoughts away with a healthy helping of 'fuck it', and let their fingers brush repeatedly along the way. The little smiling glances from Sam were ample reward for facing down her doubts. They had to go back for the ladder — Sam noting that, obviously, another would have already been there if they brought it the first time.

The second inspection went much the same as the first, until Rebecca could tell Sam's sigh at the end of the row was laden with dissatisfaction, not relief.

Rebecca rubbed her back in a slow circle when she got to the ground. "No Eureka moment, huh?"

"Of course not, why should it be so easy?" Sam closed her eyes and groaned as she curled her shoulders forward under Rebecca's hand.

Rebecca took the hint, switching from a light caress to kneading the muscles above Sam's scapulae. "Well, maybe it'll jump out at you later looking at the numbers all together."

"Hmm." Sam stretched her neck and then straightened out from under Rebecca's hands. "Yeah, hopefully."

This group of panels was in a less enclosed location, and Sam found a patch of grass that hadn't been too severely trodden during construction. She sat cross-legged, leaning against one of the support posts, and started thumbing through their notes. The ground sloped slightly away from the post, and after a few minutes of trying to arrange herself comfortably on the ground next to Sam, Rebecca gave up on fighting the terrain and stretched out, laying down with her head in Sam's lap.

That prompted a quiet laugh. "You're as bad as Sue."

"At least you didn't compare me to Rufus."

"Mmm." Sam chuckled softly again, then turned a page and went back to frowning at it, glaring upwards at occasional intervals.

Rebecca let her eyelids droop and let out a deep breath, then smiled, eyes still closed, at the sensation of Sam's fingertips lightly brushing her forehead in looping figure-eights. "You're going to put me to sleep if you keep doing that."

"I reiterate my comparison to the cat."

Rebecca opened one eye to squint upwards. "I'm cuter though, right?"

"Heh. I suppose I'll give you that by a narrow margin. Better house-trained too."

Rebecca harrumphed quietly, but contentedly resettled and enjoyed Sam's idle caresses, even punctuated as they were by occasional rustling pages or disgruntled sighs.

**

Every time Sam grew too irritated with the unhelpful figures on the pages in her right hand, she looked down at the lovely gal under her left, letting the sight bring her temper back below the threshold of rationality. The view was such a far cry from the early days, when they'd first met and 'Bex' had been such a hardened, brittle, fragile and withdrawn wisp of herself.

Speaking of wisps, Sam lifted her fingers away to shift a wayward strand of honey-colored hair. Instead of returning her hand to the same place, she brushed her knuckles across the side of Rebecca's face, then cupped her cheek in her palm. Rebecca leaned into it with a smile, which drove a fluttering pang into Sam's chest, equal parts adoration and heartbreak. Not that we haven't all been through the wringer. Here I go again obsessing over her tragedies instead of my own.

Sam doted on Rebecca's tranquility a few moments longer before willing her attention back to the puzzle literally looming overhead. This wasn't a three phase setup, so that simplified things a bit. Each panel's output matched up with the specs printed on the underside. And yet, there wasn't enough wattage to wake up the inverter and charge controller. The little 12 volt battery those depended on for gridless startup tested fine, so they were just sitting there waiting for enough power to actually do anything with.

She thunked her head against the pole behind her and flipped to earlier pages in the notebook, skimming Rebecca's notes from the first array. How absurd is it that I still think her handwriting is cute? Jesus. Sadly, there were no clues to be found there either — at least none she could pick up on.

Rebecca shifted and looked up inquisitively at her latest disgruntled muttering. "Rosie?"

Sam's eyes met Rebecca's briefly but turned back to the puzzle irking her above them, useless beyond providing a little shade and a pole to lean on. "I've got nothing, sugar. Short of tearing the whole wiring harness down and putting it back up again. And I hate to ask you for help with—"

"No."

"Huh?" The finality of Rebecca's tone had confused Sam. Sure, she always took painstaking care not to pressure Rebecca into helping her with things, but usually any reluctance manifested as hesitation, dithering, sometimes suggested alternatives.

Rebecca sat up and turned to face her, clothes and shoes rustling and scraping on the ground. "We came over to check stuff out, maybe tweak a little, and then visit with friends. Not completely overhaul things someone else put together that didn't work out."

Sam sighed. "Yeah, true. But people need it and I've got the most experience. Plus Amira—"

"Wanted to know your take on things, not told you to fix everything. Is it really better in the long run, you being the only one who can work your wizardy and burning out trying to be in three places at once — burning fuel getting back and forth too? Gotta let go a bit so other people can step up, let someone else try again and learn to get it right. Plus, we've already been here something like two hours, and I was promised tasty food and relaxing by a pool."

Sam scoffed with a fair amount of derision. "Shit, honey..."

"What?" Rebecca's eyebrow rose. When it was her right, that usually conveyed intrigue and curiosity, but today it was her left, which always meant she was digging in to continue an argument if she needed to. But, she didn't.

Sam laughed wryly and shook her head. "That just sounds like something I would be telling you a year ago."

Rebecca's posture eased. "Well. I guess that just means I'm finally listening."

"And how lame of me would it be to not return the favor."

"Mmm, indeed." Rebecca smiled, taking the notebook from Sam's hand with what had to be an intentional brush of her fingers. "And really, do you think it's best for us to be leaving three single moms, when one of them is mine, together unsupervised for so long? God knows what they're coming up with."

Sam chuckled again and rose, using the pole to pull herself up and then reaching to help Rebecca. "Okay, but I'm pretty sure Dylan shouldn't entirely count as single anymore, y'know?"