Chapter Eleven: You Hung the Moon
"My thoughts are stars I cannot fathom into constellations." – John Green
Will startled awake to the sound of a bloodcurdling scream coming from upstairs. He hurriedly grabbed his gun from the safe in his closet before dashing upstairs.
As he raced up the stairs, he could feel his heart in his throat. His mind automatically flashed back to Carlisle holding Tate at gunpoint, and he was only imagining the worst.
He burst through the door of Tate's room, ready to shoot first and ask questions later. However, as his eyes adjusted to the darkness, he could see Tate thrashing around in her bed, whimpering as she experienced what was clearly a horrific nightmare.
Will carefully set his gun down on the dresser before sitting on the edge of the bed. When she didn't wake up to the sound of his voice, he leaned forward and gripped her shoulders, shaking her slightly.
Tate was back in the Moores house. Mr. Moore had just come home from work, drunk and in a foul mood per usual. Mrs. Moore had sent Theo out to the store, so there was no one to protect her. She tried to stay quiet and out of the way, but her foster father found her. There was nothing to stop the hard punches from raining down on her or the sharp smacks of the man's leather belt. She could hear a voice calling her name and eventually someone started shaking her. As soon as Will touched her, she snapped awake, jerking backward and banging into the wooden headboard of the bed.
Tate was breathing heavily, almost hyperventilating, and her eyes darted around the room. Will could tell the girl was still disoriented from her dream, and his heart broke at the sight of the panic in her eyes.
"Easy, kiddo, it's just me alright? Just Will," he told Tate, trying to calm her down. Will went to move closer toward the girl, but Tate flinched when she saw someone coming closer to her. Will stopped and stayed where he was while continuing his reassurances.
"Just breathe, okay? You're okay. You're safe. Nothing's gonna hurt you," Will promised.
Tate could hear Will talking to her, but his voice sounded distant like she was underwater. She tried to slow her breathing but kept her eyes on Will at all times, waiting for him to yell or do something to hurt her. The few times she'd ever woken up a foster parent in the middle of the night from a nightmare, she'd instantly regretted it. After a few minutes, Tate's breathing began to settle down and she grew more aware of Will's presence. He was speaking softly as he told her to keep breathing and that she was okay, but he hadn't moved from his perch on the side of her bed.
Finally, Tate looked up at him, making eye contact with him for the first time since she'd woken up. She'd been watching him to make sure he didn't come closer, but she hadn't dared to look him in the eye.
"You okay?" he asked her. Tate nodded stiffly before glancing at the clock on the nightstand that read 3:14 AM.
"Sorry I woke you up," she said quietly.
"Don't worry about it, chérie. You wanna talk about it?" Will asked. She quickly shook her head, and drew her knees up to her chest, wrapping her arms around them.
What she wanted was to forget about it, but no matter how hard she tried, she never could. The horrible memories followed her, lurking in the shadows and waiting for her to fall asleep so they could come out and torment her again.
Will wracked his brain trying to think of something he could do to help her. He wasn't exactly equipped to raise Tate on a good day, much less when she was like this.
"I'm guessing you don't wanna go back to bed?". Will was almost positive she wouldn't want to, but figured it couldn't hurt to check. His suspicions were confirmed though when she again furiously shook her head.
"Y-you can go back to sleep. I-I'm fine," she said shakily.
She'd gotten used to being alone after nightmares. Tate usually managed to stay quiet during them, never wanting to wake a foster parent up. She never even told Theo about most of them, since they were typically about McClaren. It took her hours to calm down after them while she sat alone in the dark, and she usually never slept after them, but she'd grown used to it.
Will's heart sank at Tate's words. The poor kid was still terrified and yet she didn't want to bother him anymore than she had. She was trembling and her breathing was still shaky, but she told him he could leave anyway so she wouldn't seem like a burden. Will could only imagine her previous foster parents' reactions to being woken up in the middle of the night, and he knew none of them could have been good. He glanced over to the window, remembering something Beck used to do for him when they were kids.
"I'll be back in a minute," he said, flicking on the light as he exited the room. Will headed downstairs and grabbed some blankets from the chest in the hall before going to the kitchen. He quickly heated a cup of hot chocolate and a mug of coffee before carrying everything back upstairs.
"Let's get some air then, hm?". He walked over to the bay window, unlatching the lock and shoving it open. Tate had slowly gotten up and followed him to the window, so he climbed up onto the bench and clambered through the window.
"Where are we going?" Tate asked, voice still slightly shaky from the nightmare.
"Well, c'mon and you'll find out," Will said teasingly. The roof of the LaMontagne home was flat in the back with a short fence lining it, making it completely safe to be out on. Will sat down on the roof and patted the spot next to him for Tate to sit down. He wrapped the blanket around her still shaking shoulders, and handed her the mug of hot chocolate.
It was an unusually cold night in New Orleans, with the temperature just reaching 50 degrees. From the roof, the house had a fairly good view of the Mississippi River, something Will had always loved. It was a quiet out and it was the night of a new moon, so the sky was pitch black, allowing the stars to look brighter.
"Beck used to take me up here late at night when we were kids. He always loved space and the stars. Pretty sure he still has a telescope somewhere in his closet," Will explained to Tate, looking up at the stars. "He even wanted to be an astronaut till our mother told him he needed a more realistic goal".
He saw Tate glance over to him when he mentioned his mother, but she didn't say anything. On the bright side, he'd noticed the trembling starting to decrease.
"Course that was Beck, he was always the smart one. I can barely figure out which one's the Big Dipper".
"Well, it'd help if you were looking in the right direction," Tate finally spoke up. Will breathed a sigh of relief, before looking over at her.
"Oh, then do tell. Where is it?".
Tate pointed further to the right than Will had been looking.
"Right, gotta find the North Star first. Been a while since I had a lesson with Beck," Will joked.
"What's your favorite?" Tate asked him.
"Maybe I don't have a favorite," he replied.
"Like Beck would let his little brother not have a favorite constellation".
Will cracked a smile at that, finding it funny how well Tate already understood his big brother.
"Fine. I always liked Orion, I suppose".
"Interesting," Tate said as she pointed out Orion to Will.
"What's interesting about it?" Will asked.
"Maybe it says a lot about you," she teased.
"Uh-uh, I get enough profiling from JJ, no analyzing my favorite constellation". Will took a few sips of his coffee and looked over at Tate, who had gone silent. She clearly had something she wanted to say, so he waited patiently.
"It was about one of my old foster fathers," she finally said.
"What about him?" Will asked quietly.
Tate paused for a moment, fiddling with a thread of the blanket.
"He got drunk, a lot. And whenever he did, he'd be too lazy to put his cigarette in an ashtray, so he'd put them out on our arms. Then when he was sober he'd find the energy to use his belt," she whispered.
"Where is he now?" Will practically spat out.
"Jail," Tate said quietly. "Bill made sure of that".
"So, he checked in on you and Theo then? Got you out of there?" Will asked, wanting to be sure his father had done everything possible to keep his word and protect them.
"He tried. I just don't think he counted on there being more," Tate assured him.
"More what?" he asked, almost afraid to know. It was hard enough reading through the little information he'd been able to get from Tate's file, but hearing it from Tate herself was enough to make his blood boil.
"People that like to use their kids as punching bags," she whispered, avoiding Will's gaze.
And for once, Will didn't know how to respond to that.
They had stayed up on the roof for another hour and a half or so before coming back inside. Will could tell Tate still didn't want to head back to sleep, and since it was already past 5 AM by the time they made it back in, he decided they could just relax on the couch in the living room for a while.
Most of the TV channels had started playing Christmas movies, so he put a random one on in the background, neither one of them really paying much attention to it. Will figured they must have fallen asleep on the couch soon after that because the next thing he knew, he was being woken up by his phone ringing and Tate was fast asleep.
He quickly checked the time before answering his phone and saw that it was half-past seven. "LaMontagne," he said quietly, moving into the kitchen so as not to disturb Tate.
"Hey, did I wake you? You're usually up by now," JJ said over the phone, clearly able to tell he was still half asleep.
Will relayed the events of the early morning to her as he set about making himself some coffee and some breakfast for Tate and him.
"Poor kid," JJ responded when he was finished filling her in. "Do you think maybe she should see someone? Like, professionally?" JJ asked.
JJ had known this was coming. Even without Carlisle almost killing her and holding her at gunpoint, the girl's CPS file told JJ that Tate had enough trauma to last a lifetime. She knew this probably wasn't the first time Tate had had a dream like this, and she could guarantee it wouldn't be the last.
"I've been thinking about it," Will answered honestly. Beck had mentioned it to him a few days prior, and once he considered it, it didn't seem like a bad idea. Tate had been through more trauma than most adults had their entire lives, and while Will was trying his best, he knew a trained professional would be able to help in ways he couldn't.
"Maybe you should ask her if she'd be willing to go, then you could look into finding someone," JJ advised him.
Will told JJ he'd look into it, and they talked for about 15 more minutes until JJ had to go to work on the case. As he looked over at Tate fast asleep on the couch, Will swore he'd do whatever he had to do to help her, no matter what.
"Only in the darkness can you see the stars."-Martin Luther King Jr.