the robin & the canary; young justice

o17: Disordered

M O U N T  J U S T I C E
October 23, 17:05 EDT

Rhysalin Queen was a quiet person by nature.

Most people who didn't know her, and even some people who did, would classify her as more than a little bit shy, and she was generally distrustful of new people.

But, when you did get to know her, you'd realize that there was a lot more to Reese than met the eye. Yeah, she was still a bit quiet and didn't generally want to speak unless she wanted to, and really only spoke to people she really trusted, but she was more outgoing than she was during a first meeting.

As of right now though, six days after the training simulation that turned out to be far more disastrous than Batman had meant, Reese had been sitting in front of Dinah in the room where Black Canary was doing her "assessments" (i.e. seeing how thoroughly traumatized the Team was) for the last fifteen minutes, and she hadn't said a word.

Reese hadn't spoken much during the last week in general, not willing to talk about what had happened, even though she had "died" before the full brunt of the Team's grief had hit her, since she had been the second person to get disintegrated after Artemis.

She and Dick had been joined at the hip ever since they had all woken up, not willing to part if only to make sure the other was still there. Dick had even stayed over in Star City the past couple of nights, and Oliver hadn't been able to find it in himself to complain about it.

"Baby bird..." Dinah's soft voice made Reese glance up at her. "We need to talk about what happened,"

But, Reese only shook her head, bringing her knees up to her chin and sinking deeper into the armchair across from Dinah. 

She was the first one to "talk" to Black Canary, mostly because Reese had wanted to get it over with, rather than letting the experiences of what had happened stew inside until they finally exploded.

Now she wished she had waited. Dick and the others were outside in the common room, waiting for their turns, and right now, Reese wished she was out there, rather than in here, with every fiber of her being.

"Fine then," Dinah continued, as Reese's fingers began to tap against the arm of the chair in rapid succession. She wished Dick were here with her. "If you won't talk, I will. Reese, you haven't been sleeping. I've noticed it, your Dad's noticed it, and I'm pretty sure Dick's noticed it too since the two of you always end up pacing the living room around midnight,"

Not a lie, but Reese couldn't stand to sleep. All she saw whenever she closed her eyes were Green Arrow and Black Canary getting disintegrated by that alien cannon in Taipei, and then Artemis in the arctic, and there hadn't been anything for Silverbird to do.

She hadn't been able to save them.

So, instead of facing her nightmares head-on and potentially getting rid of them, Reese did the opposite. She ran away from them, staying awake as long as she could without making herself sick, and had used up another thirty-five pages of her sketchbook trying to distract herself.

Her recent drawings had been pretty morbid, and Reese was planning on burning them when this was all over, so she'd need a new sketchbook before long.

Maybe for her birthday...

"Reese!" Dinah's voice made the twelve-year-old glance up at her and judging from the look on the blonde's face, she had been trying to get her attention for a while.

"What?" she asked finally, and Dinah gave a small smile, seemingly pleased that she had finally gotten the brunette to speak, even though it was only a single word.