They sat in the living room, the beeping of the tablet puncturing the silence like blows to the psyche. Cass and Luna sat on the couch, near to each other but not touching. They had the half-mile stares of soldiers experiencing shell shock. Tess sat in a chair opposite them, her body tensed in worry. Zavier pushed off the edge of the couch and repeatedly jabbed at the tablet in anger, finally silencing the noise. He walked to the middle of the room and sat cross-legged on the carpet in front of the couch.
"Kids, how are you doing?"
Luna looked up slowly. "I feel it dad. What mom felt. I feel like I'm 10% closer to the next level. Actually," her face screwed up in concentration, "a little less than that I think?"
Zavier nodded in understanding. "Makes sense. Your mom killed one all by herself, but you had help. Let me check," he looked inward and felt a small increase. Not a lot, but something. "I think I got a chunk of it for helping. Cass, did you get anything?"
Cass continued to stare at nothing, rocking forward and back. His hands were bone white where his fingers intertwined. Zavier reached up and placed his hands gently on top of Cass.' "Hey bud, can you look at me please?" He rubbed his thumb over Cass's hands in a soothing motion.
After another minute of silence Cass focused on Zavier's face and nodded. "I got a little something, even though I don't fucking deserve it!" He pushed Zavier's hands away and ran to his room, the door slamming behind him. Everyone watched him go in silence, all of them worried but none of them surprised.
Later that evening Zavier had plates piled high with spaghetti and garlic bread, everyone except Cass sitting around the table eating.
"He needs to come out," Zavier said, his normally bottomless well of patience sounding frayed.
"He'll come out when he's ready," Luna was always ready to jump to his defense.
Zavier started to say something but Tess put her hand on his. "He'll come out when he's ready, Honey. It'll be harder on him if you force it."
Zavier shook his head in frustration and forced a big forkful of spaghetti into his mouth, barely tasting it. He had no plan for this. He couldn't think of a way to make Cass stronger - he wasn't even sure if he wanted to risk it again. He knew he had to - whatever was coming was much worse than these fucking squirrels, but that had gone a lot worse than he'd expected. There was no way to keep his family safe and make them stronger at the same time. The frustration of not having any good options and the crushing realization of what that would mean for his family made him feel like a rat in a cage that was slowly flooding with water. He wanted to rush outside with Tess's gun and start blasting everything that moved until he was strong enough to protect them all himself.
Tess could always read his body language, even when no one else could. He felt strong arms slip around his neck and her head rest against his. Hopelessness and comfort flooded into him in equal measure and tears burst from his eyes as he started crying. His shoulders shook as Tess held him tight, and the tears came even harder when he felt Luna's arms encircle him too.
Zavier was cleaning up dinner when suddenly his face lit up. Tess saw the change just before he rushed off to the garage. She shook her head and smiled as she walked over to turn the faucet off. One of her favorite things about him was that no matter how hard the situation, no matter how vulnerable they were, at some point inspiration would strike and he would be off on another plan. She knew better than to interrupt him. Without warning he was back in the house snatching the tablet off the table, then rushing out.
"You staying safe, Babe?" she yelled.
"I promise!" was the distant sound as the door slammed shut again. She heard the garage door open and one of the cars start. She ran to the garage just as he was running back inside to back the sedan out next to the SUV. He'd parked the cars just outside the garage door so nothing could get in. He sprinted back in and hit the garage door button, watching it close. When it slammed home he looked at her with a boyish grin on his face.
"I have an idea!"
She cupped his face with one hand and kissed him on the lips. "Don't stay up too late, okay?"
He gave a distracted nod and started pulling out tools.
The sound of tools, saws, and hammering could be heard for hours. Occasionally they'd hear the small man door to the outside opening and wood panels being dragged inside. She assumed he was using the tablet to check for threats so didn't worry. Well, not too much anyway.
Cass eventually came out of his room and microwaved a plate of spaghetti. They expected him to retreat back to his room but he sat with them in the way that he used when he wanted to talk but didn't know how to start.
Tess muted the newly-replaced TV and looked at him. "You okay, Love?" she asked.
He nodded then looked at Luna with shame in his eyes. "I'm sorry Luna," he choked out. Luna rushed to him and hugged him. "I mean it. I froze up just like I thought I would. I had the bat and I didn't even use it! Dad had to jump on top of it and you could have died. All because I'm so fucking weak!" Light sobs burped their way out of him.
Tess's tone was a mix of stern motherly love. "First off, what's the rule about how we speak to ourselves?" Her tone brooked no option for not answering.
"We don't talk about ourselves like we wouldn't talk about each other."
"Good," Tess said. "Do you think anyone else in this family is 'fucking weak'?"
"You guys aren't," he said.
"WE aren't," Tess corrected." Now say it."
Cass took a deep breath then sighed. "We aren't weak. I'm not weak."
"That's right," Tess nodded. "You got scared. It happens. Veterans get scared and freeze up too. It's a normal biological reaction and you have to accept that it's normal."
"Now, that being said, we need to figure out how to stop it from happening in the future. This family is going to survive off of teamwork. So, tell me your ideas on how we can do it."
Cass and Luna thought for a moment. "Think back," Luna said, "what made you freeze up?"
"I… When the shield went down I thought I was dead. I could have swung the bat but then everything went too quick. There were too many things happening at once and I froze up."
"Decision paralysis," Tess said. "It's normal. Your brain isn't like everyone else's. You see a lot more than normal people. You notice details most people don't. The risky part of that is that when there are too many decisions and you can't decide on the right one, you freeze up. Combine that with fear of dying and it's the perfect storm for locking up."
"People think that there are two reactions to danger," Tess continued, "Fight or Flight. But there's a third everyone ignores: Freeze. We're all animals and some animals fight, some run, but others freeze. Deer, rabbits, squ… other animals. They freeze as a defense mechanism, trying to convince whatever is attacking them that it's already dead and that they don't need to keep trying to kill them. Then, when the predator thinks the prey is too dead to run away they get distracted, letting whatever they were chasing flash away in an instant. What you experienced was normal. The issue is that it's only a successful response when you're alone. When you're in a group it makes the rest of the group more vulnerable because they have to protect you."
"So what do I do?" Cass's voice was laden with frustration and impotence.
"I don't know. What DO you do?" Tess asked.
After a few moments Luna spoke up. "Is there a way to turn that fear into an action? Plans don't work, obviously, but if the reason for freezing up is to get away can we just speed into the 'getting away' part?"
Cass mulled this over. "I could… what if instead of feeling like I have to attack it, I can just guard? If I only have one job, to protect, maybe I could just keep doing that?"
Luna started bouncing in her seat in excitement. "Like what if you had both shields? You block with them and if one falls you block with the other? Then instead of a bat you have something long, like a spear or something, and you keep everything pushed away from everyone? Then mom and dad can beat its ass!"
"WE can FIGHT it together," Tess said, correcting the language. They weren't the strictest with bad language but she was much less lenient on the overuse of it than Zavier was. "Cass can block and defend and the three of us can beat it."
"But what will that do to my leveling, if I'm not killing things?" Cass asked.
"The System said that there are more ways to advance than just killing, and we already discovered that we can share the experience from a kill. I think that if you get really good at defending you'll be able to level from that. And when we're all working together we'll all share the gains. It's not like it's any faster for one of us than all of us anyway. If we're all planning on reaching level five together it'll take the same amount of time doing it together than if we were each doing it alone."
They shared hopeful looks at that and the house suddenly felt a little warmer for it. Then they all jumped in fright as the garage door slammed open and Zavier yelled "Come look at this awesome thing I just built!"