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There were times he thought he was hallucinating.
Or perhaps one could call them specters - now emerging from long-forgotten pockets of time and space after millennia meticulously hidden in the most far-flung quarters of the universe - since they were a little bit too vivid to be the products of his (admittedly) limited imagination.
He once told Timothy about them.
Timothy, for as precocious a teenager as he was, just cracked up: "Pffft, no. It seems that according to Alfred's memos, you are long overdue for a check-up with Zatanna. Better safe than sorry, brother, we never know when will you be shackled up with some shady voodoos, AGAIN. Based on your track record with the magical community, I wouldn't be very surprised if things all go to hell in a handbasket sooner rather than later."
The whole cosmic ghost shebang had almost slipped his mind when Wally came back from the Speed Force.
He was back, and Dick remembered, and then he pondered.
Because Wally had been one of those silhouettes.
"They could be memories." He regretted ever boarding that train. Utterly ridiculous. If he had ever had a daughter, he sure would have remembered! He was absent-minded, not spiraling down into Alzheimer hell, thanks for your "concerns", Jason.
But he had forgotten Wally, hadn't he?
Her name was Lian. L, I, A, N. Six and a half, hair a luminous black, the shade of Gotham's rainy nights that brought out drops of green eyes which sparkled with mirth. Proof that they weren't blood-related as blue eyes ran in his family, yet that shade of green was oh-so-familiar. He still didn't know why he knew that.
Timothy came to him.
"I must sound like I'm going haywire, but sometimes I feel as if Clark did have another child. But I can't remember his name. I can't."
Glancing sideways, he contemplated. There was Roy, methodically cleaning his arrows. Red hair, so red it gave off the illusion of burning embers. Suddenly he couldn't breathe, and all in a split second the air was doused in a metallic tang of blood mingled with an overwhelmingly charred taste. It cleared as fast as it came, so fleetingly it reminded him of something important once upon a time, a missing piece he had fought so hard to remember just to promptly forget.
(Lian was not his daughter. She called him Uncle Dick, then contentedly buried her tiny little face in her dad's squishy abdomen. Afternoon light streamed into their shoebox apartment, drenched every single surface in liquified sunshine. Red.)
"Do you have kids?"
Roy looked at him as if he just sprouted mini bat wings. Except when their eyes met, his (blue, blue and full of mischief and maybe a bit of surprise) were wrong.
They were supposed to be green, why were they blue?
"Your sugar high is such a menace. Cut down on those Froot-Loops, they are nothing but processed sugar."
Shortly after that, Red Robin (along with Teen-Titans-we-tried-to-be-original-for-once-and-failed-spectacularly) had a run-in with Superboy. Tim called him Kon ("Conner." - said a voice in his head).
"Clark gave him that name, you know."
"How come? They surely haven't met yet."
"Not our Clark. The other one."
Two in the morning. Patrol ended earlier than usual.
She was so quiet tonight.
He joined Jason and Roy on an abandoned rooftop in a seedier part of Gotham. Jay snorted, "Oh, look! This an unofficial "Dick Grayson's Hot Redheads Club" meeting or what?"
The joke fell flat due to the glaring fact that Jason's hair was indeed, not red.
"Yours is like, tar or whatever the comparison is for black hair, Jason."
"Nothing a good dying job can't fix, brother o' mine."
A blast of white-streaked crimson locks briefly blocked his vision.
Jason excused himself early.
Smirking, Roy explained: "Dude is a big sit-com fan. Probably rushing back to catch up on "The Good Place" now."
He laughed until his stomach cramped.
Roy was drunk. His breath stank of booze, warming Dick's skin from where his face leaned on his shoulder. It had been. A while. Since Roy's last encounter with alcohol, that is. (He dreaded the way vodka seared his throat, a blazing dry heat that burned as bright he himself had been. Once upon a time.)
Dick just sat there as soft morning light washed away remnants of the night.
Suddenly, Roy broke the spell. "I went out for supplies the other day, came back with these... sparkly fairy princess scrunchies. Didn't even notice them until the receipt fell out during laundry. Weird, huh. As though I had a daughter or something."
.
.
.
.
.
He had never liked long dreams. They stoked a simmering fire of imaginary regret in his chest and put cotton in his mouth, but that wasn't nearly as disorienting as the light stupor which lingered for days after. But now he remembered. Enough to know, because this universe could only take so much abuse before it shattered into nothingness. One may call that a gift from God (though the controversy surrounding her existence never ceased), an incompleted gift, but a gift nonetheless. There would be things he probably would never get back, and that's fair. While they shared the same soul, he was not the one who was gone forever. He had no right regarding memories which had never been his from the start. Well, to be exact, they didn't belong to the "Richard Grayson" of this world.
Because turned out, the multiverse was a thing.
Lian had been the light of Roy's life. And now when he had gotten his memories back, how could he not recognize those eyes? He had fallen in love with them, once upon a time.
Then there's Bruce, not Batman, not yet. Cass, Dami, Steph, Tim. Kon (OH GOD THEY WERE DATING). But Jason and his festering, never quite-closed wounds hit him the hardest. (Dick had always found red hair captivating, but at the same time unsettled by the fog of miasma which lurked below all that resplendence. He wished he had been wrong.)
The end of the world was nothing in comparison.
Rivulets of memories that were not his own continued to trickle in through the chasm between universes.
He let out a deep sigh.
Wait, was that the doorbell?
Roy mumbled: "The multiverse is such a bitch."
He hummed in agreement, and smiled.
Epilogue:
As November chases October away from this city in a manner resembling a hellhound on its rampage comes the bone-deep chill of the nights. Halloween is drawing near, cue Roy's help with patrolling. You could never know when shit will go downhill on a night when civilians in costumes along with supervillains (also in costumes, very festive) flock to crowded streets.
"Don't you have unfinished jobs to tend to in Star City?"
"Need a breather from the old man."
God, at this height the wind is even worse. Evaporation in the air turns each gust into merciless knives which tear into vulnerable skin and blister their lips. As usual.
Roy turns to him.
Oh, no, no, no. He recognizes that glance. That is Roy's "I'm about to do something incoherently dumb and possibly brilliant" glance, and it means TROUBLE--
And gently tucks Dick's stray hair back into its proper place. Time freezes for three seconds, then he hastily retracts his hand.
Dick is stunned into silence.
Somewhere in his head, a small voice whispers amusedly: "This must be how people feel when they see ghosts, huh."
The month of the spirit, indeed.