Oh no help i’m thinkin about Bruce’s unique relationship with Dick, and I’m givin myself emotions over it

Like all of Bruce’s kids have unique traumas, right? Cass was raised a child soldier by an uncaring father, Jason was an abandoned street kid in the heart of Gotham, Tim was ignored and neglected even before his parents died.

But Dick had a happy healthy family cut short by unexpected tragedy right in front of him. Exactly like Bruce. That was the whole reason he was the first kid Bruce brought home. Batman had seen kids in bad situations before but Dick was the first kid in an almost identical situation to Bruce himself as a child. He thought “I know firsthand exactly what this kid needs and what he absolutely does not need.” Every other ward Bruce has taken in he’s been equipped for by his past experience with Dick, and by knowledge gained from his work as both Batman and philanthropist Bruce Wayne. But Dick is personal. In some ways Dick being okay is a means for Bruce to be okay.

Hence the reason why Bruce and Dick tend to have the most and worst fights. Like yeah Jason is the family rebel but his bone to pick is more with Batman than Bruce, and boiled down is pretty simple: he died on Batman’s watch and he’s pissed about it. Bruce knows this and honestly agrees hence Red Hood doesn’t get the broken bones and prison treatment.

But Dick? Dick is the one who fights with Bruce and Bruce fights back. Because nothing freaks out a parent more than seeing all the ways their kid is primed to make the same mistakes as them, the things that kid learned because their parent went “well they’re just like me, so I’ll raise them like I was” and realizing the downsides to that until it’s too late. But those kinds of insecurities are often subconscious even in people who aren’t as emotionally stunted about their own traumas as Bruce Wayne so instead it’s like every so often out of nowhere Bruce will pick Dick up and try to huck him as far away as possible and of fucking course that confuses and pisses Dick off. And Dick, who was not raised with Batman hero worship, who knew the man under the cowl before the myth and the legend, who was raised equally by both, and is a goddamned adult man, has absolutely no qualms going “Oh absolutely the FUCK not” and either stomping back to get in his father’s face or stomping off to the west coast, depending.

And with Dick having the same deep fear about Not Turning Out Like Batman as all of the kids, even if Bruce says “I just panic sometimes because you’re so much like me, and I don’t want you to make the same mistakes I did” chances are Dick won’t realize the me his dad is talking about is in fact Bruce Wayne, the always witty and fun social butterfly, with the reputation of being a wild child, who never settles down with any of the million people he flirts with, who buries all his pain behind a much more human mask.

And Bruce has to wonder, how much if it is nature and how much is because one fateful day Batman saw a child and thought “he’s exactly like me?”