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Dick Grayson is born at midnight on the first true day of spring, when darkness finally gives way into light. His parents think he is remarkable in the way that most parents do and ignore any signs that he might be slightly unusual in the way that most parents do. Dick Grayson is their perfect little boy with big blue eyes that study everything they see and a yearning for adventure and a constant smile.
Dick Grayson is also haunted, although no one knows that yet. His ghost is badly burnt in a way that living things cannot be, black and red and charred, bones showing through where muscle has fallen away. He would probably scare the child if the boy ever knew anything different. But to Dick Grayson, his ghost is just part of life. He sings him lullabies when he wakes up in the night, allowing John and Mary to brag that their son has slept through the night from day one, he pulls silly faces during doctors’ visits and whenever anything scares the boy.
As Dick grows older, the ghost teaches him words and games, corrects him on his gymnastics when he’s trying to impress his parents. “What’s your name?” Dick asks one day, two years old and tucked in bed.
“I don’t have one,” the ghost replies, he’s staring out the window at the stars. He looks sad sometimes at night, like he’d rather be out there than safe inside. It will be a few more years until Dick understands why.
“Everyone’s got a name,” Dick insists.
The ghost smiles slightly, teeth showing through a translucent patch of face as muscle pulls it taut. “You can call me… Dil.”
And with that name Dil becomes real, at least in the eyes of one little boy.
As Dick gets older, he discovers that Dil is really smart, even smarter than him. And when his parents don’t have the answers to his questions, Dil does. Dil teaches him all about the stars and the plants and the bugs and how they’re all made from atoms that were made in one big explosion. He teaches him that everything is connected in one big cycle so nothing ever really dies, it just moves on from that form. “Is that what happened to you?” Dick asks.
Dil shrugs. “I don’t know what happened to me, Dickie.”
The circus arrives in Gotham and as the days get closer to their last big show, Dil looks more and more sad. He disappears for periods of time and then comes back defeated. Dick doesn’t get it and Dil won’t tell him about it, so he goes on with the show anyway. Tonight is going to be their best night ever.
John and Mary Grayson do not suffer when they die. The ghost watches them fall and there’s a brief moment of scrambling, trying to get back to their son who they think needs them but then they collide with the ground, backs of their heads taking the bulk of the force. Bone pierces brain and there’s no recovery from that. From above, they look almost peaceful, like they’re sleeping. It will help that little bit of denial keep going for the boy, shelter him from the blood and guts and horrors for a few months longer. His parents fall into eternal sleep and the Bat takes him into a life with little of it.
Dil is the only thing of Dick’s old life that he gets to keep, alone in a bedroom that’s way too big with a foster dad who’s way too distant and a butler who calls him Master Richard and keeps serving him cucumber sandwiches, he freaking hates cucumber sandwiches. “Are you a ghost?” he asks Dil one evening.
Dil nods.
“Will my parents come back as ghosts?”
Dil gives him a sad look. “Ghosts are very, very rare. I don’t even know why I came back as one.”
“Did you die?”
“I did.”
“Does dying hurt?”
“Sometimes,” Dil replies. “Cells, they’re meant to die sometimes, when they don’t die, they become cancer. But it’s meant to be controlled, out of control cell death from catastrophic damage or hypoxia or whatever, the body doesn’t like that and so if it happens for long enough to feel it, it hurts.”
“Do you think it hurt for my parents? When they... ?”He can’t quite bring himself to say the words. It’s bad enough that they’re gone, but he hopes their last moments were just spent in something as familiar as falling. Falling isn’t too bad, it’s the landing that hurts when it goes wrong.
“No.” Dick’s fairly sure Dil’s just lying to comfort him. “It was instant. They wouldn’t have even known.”
The reassurance doesn’t help Dick as much as he hoped. His parents didn’t suffer, but they’ll never get to perform another show, they’ll never get to go on another walk around a new city, he’ll never get to see them again. Some evil person took everything from him and yet still gets to live their perfectly happy life.
The ghost follows the boy out into the night. He keeps quiet, there are somethings that need to be learnt not taught, not by him at any rate. The boy will not listen to the ghost when he tells him that more death rarely helps anyone. He watches helplessly as the inevitable happens. The boy born into the dawn of the light easily fits into the darkness, tricks designed for loud applause allowing for silent and fast movement. The Bat finds him out there and takes him back home, takes him to the Cave beneath. Right now, the boy is a tangled knot of uncontrolled anger and hurt. He’ll carve it into a knife before too long, blade steady, sharp, precise, lined with hope, for everyone. He’s found his path and the ghost will follow him for as long as he can.
Dick Grayson is Robin. He’s traffic light colours and puns and hope. He bounces and flips and he soars through the darkness like he almost feels he was born to. For a hero community exiting its dark age, Robin is a promise that there will be another generation. He grows and he thrives and he learns. The angry orphan boy becomes the sidekick becomes the leader of the sidekicks, starts to become a hero in his own right. Dick Grayson grows up with friends and mentors and hope and he promises that he’ll use all of it to be everything that Batman cannot be.
The first person aside from Dick that the ghost speaks to is Constantine. “What the hell happened to you?” the man asks, cigarette in one hand.
“Explosion,” the ghost shrugs.
“So, you died and decided to start haunting some kid? Bit weird, don’t y’think.”
“I died, went back in time, started haunting some kid that I knew,” the ghost emphasises, realising how weird the whole haunting situation might seem to an outsider.
“So, you trying to prevent your own death?” Constantine asks.
“Partially,” the ghost says. “Whether the version of me here lives or dies doesn’t change the fact I’m fucked. But if it means other people can lead better lives then I’m just doing my job.”
“You a hero when you were alive?”
The ghost winces, embarrassed. The label of hero has always felt far more Superman-esque than whatever he was. “Depends on who you ask.”
Knowing the future does in fact come with some benefits for the ghost, knowing when lives end and others begin and when to gently place hands on the scales to make stories a little less tragic. Jason Todd turned nine years old two months ago. And as of two days ago, he is officially an orphan, squatting where he can, sleeping rough when he can’t. But the ghost knows that Jason Todd is a smart kid, he wouldn’t have survived three years of this if he wasn’t. This time, he won’t. This time Jason Todd is nine years old and sleeping on a worn-down mattress in his current home of a derelict building, when a much bigger than him Robin appears at his bedroom window. It took some needling on the ghost’s part for this to happen. There are cases to solve that will affect far more people. But that doesn’t change the fact that this child needs help. It doesn’t change what this child will become without help.
The kid is tiny, Dick thinks, malnourished and exhausted and this apartment is way too cold to ever be comfortable. He’s called Jason, his mum died two days ago but she’d been sick for a long time before, addiction. Dad’s in prison and abusive anyway. But if Robin even thinks of handing Jason over to social services, he’ll regret it. Robin spent a brief stint in juvie when there were no foster parents available, he’s not sending this scrap of a kid who’s the same age as the newly orphaned Dick Grayson was anywhere near them. Instead, he tells him about a friend, and he knows Batman’s going to kill him for this, but there’s a warm manor just a motorcycle ride away and this kid has Dil’s every endorsement. Jason is nervous but he’s also hungry and he’s scared. He agrees and Robin takes him home.
Bruce Wayne adopts Jason Todd. This is a good thing. The kid now has a dad who can’t be taken away from him at a moment’s notice and he revels in the attention and the support his own parents never had the coping strategies to give him. The bad thing, however, is that Dick Grayson is still Bruce Wayne’s ward and is currently deeply sore about it. “Talk to him,” Dil tells him. “Tell him that you want to be his son too.”
“He’s just going to grunt and wander off to take Jason to another car race,” Dick is fifteen and aware that he’s jealous of a kid who’s still learning that the adults are around to keep him safe, that he doesn’t have to look after them or be afraid of them. Dick is aware that he’s jealous of a kid who’s never had the opportunity to just be a child. He’s aware of that. It still stings that he’s never mattered as much.
“Do you really think Bruce loves you less?” Dil asks.
“I mean, I’m not his son, am I?”
“Dick,” Dil says like he’s being irrational, which he maybe is. “Bruce- his parents are perfect to him. They didn’t live long enough for him to ever see them as human. No one could ever replace them because no one can live up to the ideals that an orphaned eight-year-old has.”
“Yeah, I don’t need a lecture about Bruce’s psychology.”
“While that logic doesn’t apply with Jason who never exactly got the fairytale parents. He’s putting those same feelings onto you,” Dil informs him. “He thinks that he can never replace John Grayson and doesn’t think you’d ever want a second dad.”
“Well, that’s ridiculous.”
“It is, and he has the emotional intelligence of a brick. He won’t realise this until you talk to him. Or at least get Alfred to talk to him.”
“You really can’t just let me be angry.”
“It’s a waste of energy,” Dil smirks slightly, laughing at the punch that goes straight through him.
Dick Grayson becomes Dick Grayson-Wayne with a second father’s proud hand on his shoulder and a little brother bouncing around his feet. They celebrate with a family dinner and then a small party with the Teen Titans the next day. Jason insists on coming along and after a brief conversation with Dil, both of them smirking slightly, the boy almost becomes ‘Duckling’. “I don’t wanna be Duckling!” the nine-year-old protests.
“It fits the bird theme,” Dick tells him, “And you’re the size of one.”
The boy shoves him, and Dick cannot ethically fight back against a kid who’s half his weight and is only in the very basics of combat training.
“I’m gonna be Cassowary!” Jason insists, designing the world’s least practical costume overnight.
He shows it off the next day when they’re about to go, a full cowl in blue with a greenish crest arching over his head, a red, dangly neck and strange claws on his boots. Covering all of this is what might as well be a giant feather boa which makes it look like Jason doesn’t have limbs when he puts his hands by his side. There is no way the costume is usable in combat, being far too much of a risk around fire or getting weighed down by water or even just someone picking Jason up by the weird head. It is, however, one of the funniest things Dick has ever seen. “I love the feathery cape,” he smirks.
Jason glowers at him, looking even more ridiculous with a scowl on his face.
Dick breaks at that, laughing harder at Jason’s indignant squeak of “I hate you.”
Dil looks ever so slightly pained and Dick isn’t sure what that’s about.
Jason gets his revenge the next day by hiding six thumb tacks in inconvenient spaces in Dick’s room and leaving a note saying there are seven of them. Now Dil laughs at him as he gets stabbed trying to lift the toilet lid.
Dick Grayson is sixteen and fairly sure he’s in love. She’s called Barbara Gordon and the last name should maybe be a problem right now, but he doesn’t care. Barbara Gordon is perfect in every possible way, kind and funny and intelligent and driven. She doesn’t care what Batman tells her. She’s going to fight crime because it’s the right thing to do. Dil teases him mercilessly about this crush, and Dick squabbles with him before getting an odd look from Jason who’d walked into his room
Dick starts to spend more and more time with the Teen Titans and less and less time in Gotham. The knowledge that Bruce is in his life for good means that he doesn’t have to cling to him quite as much. Besides, they’re starting to have disagreements and he needs his space before he’s smothered. The Titans grow and change in members, they’re all getting older, all hitting that awkward phase of not quite adulthood, not quite childhood that comes with leaving high school and moving out and starting college or other careers. Dil keeps warning him about things and Dick’s starting to become convinced this guy just spies on his friends in his spare time. But he makes sure to go easier on Roy, to listen when he wants to talk about stuff. Then come the times when Roy starts to wear long sleeves all the time and sometimes his pupils seem just a little bit too big and he’s off and he’s high. They’ve all been sometimes, codeine is a pretty vital part of the hero first aid kit if only to keep people’s blood pressure down a bit while they’re stitching up wounds. But this doesn’t seem like that. They talk and Dick has some difficult conversations with people that Roy can’t face himself. “You did good today,” Dil praises him as he crashes in his bed, exhausted. “You were a good friend and a good team leader.”
Dick isn’t sure but he’s too drained to argue otherwise.
Their team starts to change, life starts to change for everyone. Garth, Roy, Mal, Karen and Lilith leave for various reasons. Kori, Gar, Raven and Victor join instead. Terra and Joe too. Robin has grown too big for his little wings and he passes his mother’s name onto his little brother. Nightwing rises to his first betrayal and his first nemesis. They endure and he learns and he grieves and, perhaps, in a way, he becomes a better leader for it. He’d trade all of that knowledge to save Terra though.
Jason desperately wants to join the Titans and Dick, knowing he’ll say no, tells him to ask Bruce. Jason’s a sweet kid and Dick adores him, but he does not need his little brother hanging out with his friends all the time. And Jason could do with friends his own age. Bruce holds him back for a while, until Jason helps save Dick from Brother Blood and suddenly his little brother’s living in the room next door to him on alternate weekends. This is not what Dick intended, even if Dil seems happy about it.
Life continues on and as he turns twenty-one, Bruce accepts that Dick is not going to go to college. He’s got Jason begging to let him just finish high school now and start college at fifteen to deal with anyway. “Little Wing,” Dick says, having awkwardly listened to one of these arguments for long enough. “You skip three years of high school and everyone’s going to realise that you are weirdly smart. They already know I ‘was’ an Olympic level gymnast. It’s going to be pretty easy to work out where the Robins are coming from.”
“Especially seeing it doesn’t take that much detective work to realise Batman has to be someone with money,” Dil adds.
“Bruce’s wealth also puts us in a difficult position.” Dick rephrases, “Pretty easy to work out that Batma’s rich,” Dick explains. “I know it’s easy to want to be the star student and the prodigy, hell it’s easier to get full marks on tests than it is to work out the exact right way to fail them. I’ve been there. But we need to minimise the chances of anyone working out who we are, understood?”
Jason glowers but nods, he’s going through an irritable phase at the moment. Wants to do more, be more. The inevitable delayed trauma response is finally hitting the poor kid and Dick wishes he could do more to help.
This year, the ghost dreads the beginning of spring. He forces a smile when Dick celebrates his twenty-first even if it’s not his happiest birthday. Jason’s running into more problems and everyone is a little bit stressed. They don’t know what’s yet to come, the ghost hopes they never will. The ghost can never change as much as he hopes.
Garzonas falls and his father dies, and Jason insists on apathy and unrepentance. Dick arrives just two minutes too late to save Barbara from the Joker. He keeps the blood inside of her as Jim calls an ambulance. They don’t need to know the future to know the damage the bullet will do. There’s a thick layer of dread and grief and worry and anger over everyone in their little group right now and the ghost insists, then begs that Nightwing take Robin off world with him. “Please, if you leave him in Gotham, everything will get far worse.”
“And it won’t if he’s in space?”
“I don’t think so.”
And so, Jason goes off-world, apparently on an exchange program in France as far as his school’s aware. And, when he returns, he sets off on his mission to find his mother. The Titans follow, cautious for the safety of their youngest member. Dick and Wally chase after the Joker, Donna and Kori stay near Jason. The moment the warehouse door suddenly slams shut, they break down a wall instead. The Joker had prepared for a lot, metas were not one of those things. Jason has a broken arm from a nasty blow from the crowbar and he’s more than a bit shaken that the woman who might be his mother sold him out so easily. But he’s able to talk Donna through diffusing the bomb before getting flown back to a hospital in Gotham. The ghost slumps with relief in the warehouse that should be ruins. Jason’s still alive. He’s fixed something. Even if there’s still so much left to do.
“What would have happened to Jason if he hadn’t gone into space?” Dick asks.
“He would have died in an explosion,” Dil tells him, and Dick looks properly at Dil’s scars for the first time in years. It’s easy to forget that the ghost wears all the signs of what killed him when they’re just part of him as far as Dick’s concerned.
“So did you,” Dick comments. “But you’re taller than Jay. Older.”
“I am,” Dil agrees.
“Who are you?” Dick asks.
Dil shrugs, “No one who exists anymore.”
Things go differently to how the ghost expects after that. Tim still makes his way into things, not as a new Robin haunted by the death of the old one but as Oracle’s apprentice and soon her man, or well, thirteen-year-old boy, in the field. Jason finds it hilarious that the teen worked out their identities via Dick. Or at least he finds it funny until Tim starts listing various ways Jason could improve in his own vigilante work. Just like last time, the kid’s a natural and just a little bit too cocky about it.
Bane’s attempts to break Batman fail and Azrael somehow ends up a particularly dangerous rogue instead. This is not what the ghost had intended but he hopes with some work that they can appeal to Jean’s morality and bring him to the side he should be fighting on. Dick makes the horrible decision of sleeping with Babs to announce his engagement to Kori and the ghost is honestly not surprised when he ends up single by Christmas. He does however cringe as this results in the brief No Man’s Land fling with Helena of all people. “You know this will end in heartbreak,” he murmurs to himself.
Dick Grayson has never been good at being single. This is something that apparently all his friends are very aware of as Roy has decided that they’re going out to a bar as completely different identities, so no one asks why Dick Grayson is friends with Roy Harper, more publicly known as Arsenal. “Also stops me from having an unfair advantage with the whole superhero shit,” Roy teases as Dick does his makeup.
“Uh-huh,” billionaire’s son Dickie Grayson-Wayne with the perfectly symmetrical features and the hair that somehow always looks at least passable is never exactly starved for attention. He tries for a while to tone things down with the makeup but instead he just looks like an attractive person in bad make up. Accepting failure, he goes all in on making himself look a little bit ethereal.
“Ready whenever, Daffodil,” Roy says, filing his nails for lack of anything better to do. Dick can admit that he’s maybe gotten a little bit hyper-focused on contouring. Pretty much any hero with a secret identity to keep gets good at doing make up but it’s fun to actually get to try some new techniques and styles too.
He then processes what Roy just called him. “Daffodil?” he asks, quirking an eyebrow.
“You’ve been staring at your reflection long enough to turn into one,” Roy teases.
“I am not self-obsessed,” Dick throws a mascara wand at him.
“Sure you’re not.” Roy laughs. “Come on, before I have to explain why Nightwing’s been added to Poison Ivy’s collection.”
The night is spent drinking club sodas and redirecting various women to Roy. Dick doesn’t exactly click with any of them although it might be from lack of trying. He can’t form a relationship with them based completely on lies and he’s been hearing about the whole drama that Tim’s ended up in with Spoiler and Darla. He’s also maybe still pining over Babs a bit, but he walks a girl home even if he doesn’t step inside and then skulks back to his room at Titans Tower alone, Roy being off at some girl’s apartment. “You know Bruce was training to be Batman by my age?” he grumbles to Dil as he washes his face.
“Yeah, and you’ve been a vigilante for almost as long as he has,” Dil argues. “Besides, we both know he was going through so much relationship drama back then too.”
“Does it ever get easier?”
Dil shrugs. “Sometimes? I mean look at Lois and Clark. Who’d’ve thought Superman would get the life with the kid and the dog.”
“I don’t want to end up like Bruce,” Dick says. “Sleeping around for the endorphins but mostly alone because I can’t actually let someone into my life because,” he does his best Batman voice, “The mission needs me.”
“I don’t think you will,” Dil says.
“You know the future, right?” Dick’s not sure at what point in his life it became normal for him to just be haunted by a precognitive ghost. “What happens with me and Babs?”
“I really don’t know,” Dil answers. “A fair few things have changed from my time.”
Dick huffs slightly. Dil’s answered a lot more questions with “I don’t know” lately. It’s like… “You die soon, don’t you?”
“I did,” Dil replies.
“Who are you? Is there anyway I can save you?”
“We’re working on it,” Dil promises.
Young Justice and the Titans end up meeting for a brand sponsorship disrupted by a robot. The young heroes are about to leap into action, ready to save the day when Dil tells Dick to grab onto Bart now. He does and Donna and Garth take his lead and grab onto Kon and Cassie before they can strike. Jason, who’s gone through one hell of a growth spurt lately, grabs Tim by the scruff of his costume, enjoying finally being taller than the slightly younger boy. They then wait in suspense for Victor to calm the robot down and it is all, mercifully, a false alarm. That said, restraining a speedster is a horrible idea, especially when they try to fight back. Garth also looks a little worse for wear for even trying to help Donna with the two kids with superstrength. The kids get one hell of a lecture on assessing the situation before Victor suggests that he, Gar and Kori take them on, as well as a few other hero teens as the new Teen Titans.
“What would have happened, if I didn’t catch Bart?” Dick asks Dil that night.
“Donna and Lilith would have died,” Dil says simply. Dick isn’t sure what he’d do if that happened.
By eighteen, even if he has a year of high school left and thus a year of living at the manor left, Jason has decided that he has outgrown the title of Robin. Tim, despite being sixteen and thus theoretically only having a few years in it, takes it anyway. They don’t exactly have a better option anyway. Jason instead tries out a few different titles, the Cardinal being dismissed as a bit too religious, and Jay as being a bit too close to his actual name, even if Tim insists that Drake would be a good name. “Batboy,” Oracle heckles on the comms.
“I am not going by Batboy at eighteen years old,” Jason huffs, indignant.
“Flamebird?” Dick suggests earnestly. If anyone is going to be the counterpart to Nightwing, he’d want it to be his brother. “Bludhaven can have Nightwing and Manhattan can have Flamebird.”
“You sure?”
“We’ll have to ask Clark but yeah, I’d be delighted to have you as my counterpart.”
Tim loses Robin almost immediately after getting it. Jack Drake storms into Wayne Manor and is all threats that don’t exactly go well. Apparently, some people have to be explicitly taught that pulling a gun on Batman is only a good way to end up pinned to the ground by a confused and somewhat outraged Flamebird who just got back from school. “We could just kill him?” Jason suggests as Jack and Tim talk it out. He twirls the hand gun he confiscated from Jack on his finger. “No one would know about it.”
“But young Tim might talk, I’m afraid he has to go too.”
“There are two bullets in that thing, two shots, not a problem,” Dick adds, looking at the handgun.
Even Dil is smirking at all of this, Dick just hopes that Jack cannot hear any of this or he’s going to think they’re being serious.
“That’s a lot of bodies though, leaving us all eternally suspicious of who may turn on each other. Eventually one of us will act. But the question is, will Master Bruce think to strike before I poison his dinner.”
“Now we know where Tim got the arm breaking joke from,” Bruce deadpans, all of them snickering. The moment of humour breaks, “As you have all pointed out, we don’t really have any options at all.”
Dick really, really does not like any of this. There are far too many people who know their secret. Far too many ways that their lives could be compromised.
Bruce talks about how disposable all of their identities are, and Dick hates him a little for it. It’s easy for him to say, he is Batman. Bruce Wayne is a front put on to keep the public happy and the illusion going. But Jason deserves the right to go to one of his dream colleges and Dick should get to live a life as his parents’ child. He can’t imagine throwing all of this away. He glances to Dil, a risk considering the number of people around him, it’s a miracle already that he’s gone more than a decade and a half without Batman noticing that he’s seeing ghosts.
Dil looks nervous but not panicked about the whole situation. It’s probably going to turn out okay.
Tim quits as Robin and then Steph becomes Robin and then suddenly Gotham is burning again and Black Mask nearly takes over the city. Dick is at his breaking point after Blockbuster but he keeps fighting and when Dil tells him to run, he runs. He gets to Steph and Dil tells him to not take her to Leslie. Which is ridiculous. He takes her because they don’t exactly have any other options and Dil yells at him to stay in the room, but the city still needs him and Steph’s injuries are treatable until they’re not. Until she dies in Bruce’s arms and the world knows that Batman let a child die. The heroes are not trusted anymore. Matters only get worse when Diana snaps Maxwell Lord’s neck.
The multiverse is falling apart, there are multiple planets and multiple Supermen and people coming back from the dead. Everything is going to shit and yet Dick has a city to protect. Dil asks him to stay in Gotham, tells him that he cannot win against this threat. For now, Dick is corporeal and that means he can fight and maybe save someone. If he is to be light and hope and justice in the darkness, then he can’t abandon his city, even if it kills him to stand with it. Dil understands, it’s the choice he made too.
So, Dick Grayson-Wayne leaves Gotham and his family that should be broken with goodbyes that might not be needed. He fights foes he cannot beat until he watches the green mass that is Chemo fall from the sky. In that moment, it feels like he’s the one falling, in mid-air with nothing to grasp onto, looking at everything he failed to protect. The swiftly incoming landing does not scare him, it’s the ruins that will be that would bring tears to his eyes if he had the time. The world erupts into green and for a moment everything burns and then nothing.
Dick Grayson is haunted, although no one knows that yet. His ghost is red and black and charred, burnt teeth shining through gaps where flesh gave way. He’d probably scare him if he’d ever known his absence. But for the toddler, his ghost is just a part of life. A good part of life even. He’s a source of lullabies and fun stories and facts about the world. “What’s your name?” Dick asks one day.
“… You can call me Dil,” his ghost replies.
Twenty-Two Years Later
While neither man nor ghost know this, in most universes there is a monument on the edge of where Bludhaven once stood, celebrating all the victims of Chemo’s attack. In most universes, Nightwing stands proud on top of it, in his death immortal. It is here that people celebrate the dead, talk about Bludhaven’s heart and character and all its redeeming features that were buried under talk of pollution and crime and cruelty in life. It’s an odd little quirk of humanity, that the dead are almost always seen as better than the living. But among the rubble that should have and will never be, a young man who is haunted-no-more plants daffodil bulbs at the side of a pond. He catches his reflection in the water and smiles sadly. He misses his ghost but even echoes have to end some day.