Dick Grayson dreams about a boy.
The boy has red hair, excitedgreen eyes, freckles scattered across his face like stars in the night sky, and a big smile that never falters.
"If you're going, I'm going." The boy says and holds Robin's hand, but Robin doesn't know where he's going, - where they'regoing. - In the dream nothing makes any sense, except for the boy's smile. Robin smiles back at him and realizes it doesn't really matter.
Every night he dreams about the boy. It's a different scenario every time, but he's always there and they're always holding hands.
The boy likes running, he's impatient and anxious and can't keep still for more than a few moments so he grabs Robin's hands and pulls him along the Flash museum, telling and retelling the adventures of his favorite hero better than the people who work there ever could and they are payed to do so.
The boy runs to him, jumps and grabs his hand before Robin can fall down to his death. Robin yells at him to let go, yells that, if he doesn't, they're both going to fall. The boy holds his hand harder.
The boy holds Robin's hand and, when he looks up, he's not Robin anymore. He's not wearing a mask or sunglasses and the boy's smile gets bigger and prettier and it's only a few inches away from Dick's face when he wakes up.
After this, Dick stays awake for fifty hours straight, sharing his time between training, patrolling and Mt. Justice. When Artemis kicks him out of Mt. Justice because you look like a zombie, Dick, go get some restand Batgirl kicks him out of patrol because how long since the last time you've slept? Go home, I got this,he goes to the batcave and accesses the computer. Batman and half the Justice League are on a super secret mission, and there must be a mission he can steal for himself, some supervillain who's acting out that he can punch, anything.It takes some time to access the League's database because Batman changed the access code, but he eventually breaks in and steals the information he was looking for.
Hacking into the Watchtower's computer in three hours is a new personal record and he immediately grabs his cell phone because he needsto tell Wally about it. He laughs to himself just from picturing Wally's face when he tells him, and then he remembers he doesn't know any Wally.
He dreams about the boy when he's awake too, apparently. There's no escape, and when he finally accepts it, he begins a list with everything he knows about him. He lists physical features, personality trails, hobbies, pet peeves, powers, nicknames and even stupid chemistry puns the boy likes to tell. He takes the list with him everywhere he goes and re-reads it when no one's around to question if he's going crazy. He knows it's crazy to hope it will somehow trigger his memory and suddenly start making sense, but he keeps doing it, he does it everyday and nothing changes. Everything about the boy, about Wallyseems exaggerated, made up, unreal; he runs too much, he eats too much, flirts too much and Dick loves him too much.
Dick asks himself when it happened, he asks himself why, where and how. He asks himself how he ended up falling in love with his best friend,someone who doesn't even exist.
He entertains, for the first month, the possibility he's simply going crazy. He lets time pass and hope his feelings will eventually take the hint and do the same, but he would never be so lucky. The feelings stay, the feelings grow. He closes his eyes, holds the boy's hand and feels happy, then he wakes up, grabs the cold sheets on his bed and feels alone, incomplete, like something's missing. Wally's what's missing, something inside of him screams. Wally is missing.
Two months later, a red and white wind makes his list fly right into Impulse's hands.
"Bart." Dick clenches and unclenches his fists and turns to face the speedster. "What are you doing here?"
"I couldn't sleep, so I came here to catch up. It's been a while since you left the team, and we haven't heard from you."
"Did Tim put you up to this?" Dick groans when the speedster nods. "I told you all in the last meeting that me leaving the team is only temporary. I've got some personal issues I need to attend to and..." He freezes as soon as he realizes that Bart's not paying attention, Bart probably got bored of listening to the same thing he keeps telling everyoneand started reading the list. "Bart! Give it back!" He reaches for it, but the kid's fast and finishes reading before Dick can take it out of his hands.
"You're looking for Wally!" He says, and his face goes from confused to superhyperultramega excited, in two seconds. "Crash! You remember him, and now, with your help, I can definitely rebuild my time machine and go after..."
"Bart, stop!" Dick cuts him off, and feels like someone just dropped an entire building on him and he's got a horrible concussion from it becauseWhat. Is. Happening."Do you know who Wally is?"
"Sure, he's my cousin once removed, he was the Kid Flash to grandpa's Flash and one of the founders of the Young Justice Team. He was your best friend and... Hmm... Is it a spoiler if I tell you that you two end up married?"
Kid Flash. KF. Okay, so this explains the nickname. And the whole married thing definitely explains these feelings,but Dick forces himself to shove them aside and focus on the facts.
"Wally told me to never talk about the future, but the future's changed already because we stopped the invasion, so..."
"I don't remember him." Dick talks over the kid again because he knows that when Bart starts speedtalking, it's difficult to get him to stop, and it's probably a speedster thing because Wally had the same problem too, it's on the list. "But I dream about him sometimes." He quickly adds when he sees Bart's face fall. "I have these dreams, but there's just a lot of blanks and I just, I can't really remember. Everything I learned from the dreams is on that list. I thought I was going crazy."
Bart turns to the list and speedreads the whole thing again.
"Well, this list is pretty accurate, and you're not going crazy, Wally is real."
"Then what happened?"
"The crysalid. It was going to explode and destroy everything, so we ran around it, only me and him, because uncle Barry was in space, remember?" Dick narrows his eyebrows because he remembers that, he remembers the crysalid and how Bart ran around it and no one died. "But Wally was slower than me, so he became this kind of an escape valve for all the energy flux and he disappeared right before my eyes. He was sucked into the speedforce and now no one remembers him! It's like he never existed, but he did! He even saved the world, but no one knows, no one misses him or mourns him, but me! Please tell me you remember it all too!"
Dick doesn't. He remembers smiles, puns, fights over the last cookie. He remembers stolen kisses because you ate the last cookie, that's not fair, gimme a taste, come onand hands holding his like they were the most precious thing in the universe. He feels his chest fill with something he hasn't felt in a long time.
Wally is real. Wally is real and Dick is happy.
"Bart, we're going to bring him back."
The End
A/N: yeah I know it was mean to end it there. But I seriously have no idea what to do after this, so I'm ending it there. Please don't ask for more, this fic is complete. Maybe someday I'll write a sequel, but I make no promises.
I'm notagoodplace4gods on tumblr. Feel free to drop by and send me prompts or, you know, just come to chat :)