#like Im a sucker for time travel fics where young bruce realizes he has kids in the future and cant imagine

[redrobin-detective]

There’s something about the inevitability of Bruce Wayne becoming a father that gets me, of him finding love, balance and family in the faces of children who need him. Because Bruce never expected it. At eight, he probably wasn’t thinking of having a family but even that faraway notion was destroyed the night his parents died. He never seriously thought about dating while training and children even less so. That wasn’t the kind of man he was, not anymore.

That said, he was good with children, had deep empathy for the things they went through. In many ways, a young Batman was like a child himself. He saved lives, saved families night after night and he told himself it was enough. Until the circus, until the fall, until he met tear stained blue eyes across the tent and realized that only he could really help Richard Grayson.

It was a split second decision, one with all heart and emotion and not one lick of logic. In the days that follow, he’ll curse his soft nature. In the years that follows, he whispers thanks for the best decision of his life. It takes him a long, long time to consider himself Dick’s parent. First he was just a traumatized child, then a vaguely homicidal hindrance, then a confidant and partner. And pretty soon he’s fussing over his ward’s scraped knees and engaging studiously at parent-teacher conferences and teaching then shamelessly beatiing him at chess.

Friends and coworkers called him a father long before the title felt right on him, like a too large sweater he had to grow into. Because he had to grow up in order to care for Dick. He had to address something of his own traumas to help Dick with his. He had to learn and make mistakes and try again over and over. He had to admit he was wrong in so many words, he did need a partner as batman, he did need to be more involved as wayne, he did need love. One day, he looked at himself in the mirror, still a young man but one who has seen and done many ridiculous and incredible things. And one of those was being Dick’s father.

And every time, he thinks it’s the last! He thinks he has enough kids, enough of parenting reckless and amazing young children. And yet every time he’ll be confronted with a new child and he’ll open his heart and door once more. It boggles me that people think they can excise Robin and Bruce’s title as a mentor/father from him but it arguably the most quintessential part of his character. Bruce was dying before Dick, both in story and in his early comic sales. He was just a man in a suit beating other people up. Dick and the others gave him light to his life, light he didn’t think he deserved. It prevented him from going down a darker path.

Bruce is a dad, he will always be a dad. No matter how amazing and cool and important his children are, he still straightens their coats and tells them not to slouch. He tells bad jokes just to hear them groan and listens with genuine interest to their hobbies. From the moment Dick came home with him, Bruce Wayne found his own home. I’ve wandered off topic, shocking, but just. Bruce was always going to end up with a houseful of crazy children driving him mad and yet young 20 something Bruce never could have imagined it. But who he is as a person, what he does, he would never turn his back on a child in need and that is why the character endures.