You know that au you have where Bruce kept Tim in a basement? Can we see Bruce come back and everyone’s reactions? Or a new au with a not brain damaged Tim who Bruce keeps locked up because he’s so paranoid he’ll lose Tim like Jason? .,,, and Tim doesn’t mind Bruce locks him up like a Princess and Bruce is the dragon?
!!!! it's been a while since i thought of this dark au!!!! in the au where the family takes in tim, who they find out has more or less been a captive pet for bruce for years, they'd 100% be much less warm to bruce when he returns.
without tim having been around as robin, he was never there to be this kind of...gel padding for bruce and his kids. it's sort of implied that bruce and dick's relationship never fully recovered because it was tim as robin that facilitated that healing relationship. but tim was never around here. so that means dick really only returned for jason and damian. since there was no robin after him jason was a little more receptive to reconciliation but he also would've had a pretty split dislike for damian. he'd dislike him deeply because he's robin and because talia blindsided him with it but he'd also be more aware of damian's young age so it would kind of even him out.
so in general, all their relationships are a little fucked. but they did all feel pained when bruce died. they were upset that they lost out on the possibility of ever improving their relationship to him and getting closer. but here, since bruce always had tim one on one and used him as a sort of crutch with the fact that he was a son that loved him unconditionally- i think that would've made it so bruce wasn't exactly in the healthiest state of mind and therefore didn't reach out to his children as much as he could've or should've because he had tim there to fill that void of having a child that loved him and that allowed him to love them in return.
despite tim's more childlike state that resulted from brain damage that was bruce's fault, he is still at his core very much tim. so he sees the beginnings of clues that the rest of the family does not. the portrait of 'mordecai wayne' that tim obsesses over is a portrait of bruce and if the rest of the family had given tim more consideration they would've recognized it. but they don't so bruce isn't rescued for several more years.
a combination of different capes all note how something is off in the timeline, that there are...snags in the fabric of time. one report turns to two turns to five turns to ten.
eventually a common factor is found. evidence of...bats.
capes have come back from the dead before and it shouldn't be such a shock but still....superman orders that no one tell any of the bats in gotham until they're certain. but then they have bruce sitting in the medical bay. emaciated and heavily traumatized.
it's like a bomb is dropped on the family when they're told.
mixed emotions, heavy feelings, struggling with feeling relieved and happy while also being furious and upset because they know about tim.
tim who has become a sweet and beloved member of the family.
a lot of capes still don't know about him, the media definitely doesn't because dick was half certain that jason would bomb their offices if a single bad word about tim was published. and also because...dick feels some odd...shame about tim. he feels an urge to hide him away, to not let others know tim is in his care and is....special.
dick knows it's wrong. he knows it's wrong to feel that way about tim while also...taking advantage of him. dick knows he's scum as jason never fails to remind him, harshly whispering to him in the kitchen while tim is in the other room and saying that dick is a piece of shit for being one of those people that are embarrassed about having disabled siblings.
but the shame never leaves him and dick can never shake it off.
it's dick who goes up to the watchtower to watch over bruce while he recovers.
partly because he has the authority to, he's batman afterall, even though dick as batman has pulled away from the league and focused more on gotham. and partly because...he needs to see this man he thought he knew so well. he's spent years trying to figure out what bruce had been thinking, trying to get in his head, and trying to understand what had been going through his mind when he...he took a child.
a perfectly normal and average child. and yet when tim had been rescued from bruce's care he'd had....several healed fractures and bone breaks.
eventually, leslie had been able to conduct a thorough health examination. that's when they'd found the old injuries. injuries that were years old. a spinal injury, broken ribs, a wrist that had split clean through, the head injury that occurred at the same time that leslie said was likely the result of a drop from a big height.
when she said that dick thought back to bruce's common tactic of dangling people by their ankles from fire escapes. dick had never thought of it before but...what if....what if bruce didn't catch one of them in time?
based on tim's early medical file leslie concluded that tim may have suffered a brain bleed as a result of the fall. that would explain his delay in cognition and rendered child-like state.
it's not the first time that bruce had rendered permanent injury on someone but...but this was a kid. what on earth could tim have done to have earned this kind of punishment? and then to keep him?
to keep him from his family who died thinking he was missing? to chain him up and hide him away like he was...like he was an animal?
it was so much crueler than dick had ever thought bruce capable.
tim loved bruce. it was clear in how he referred to him with so much affection and nuzzled pictures of him. but dick couldn't exactly trust tim's words when tim was so susceptible to manipulation.
jason and damian were still having a hard time with news of bruce's return so dick had made the executive decision to go to the watchtower alone and give the rest of the family time to....come to terms with the fact that bruce was back.
dick does his best to monitor and control his emotions as bruce regains strength. as he talks about how happy he is to see dick again.
dick keeps all the emotions in check. the questions, the shouts that want to burst out of him.
bruce is everything he remembered him as but also...not. there's a new side of him dick had never seen before and now he can't ignore it.
dick talks tentatively about alfred and jason and damian, barbara, and cass and gotham.
bruce is still quite weak. confused as well. dick has entire conversations with him but then two minutes later bruce will completely forget about it.
bruce gets cleared to return home. dick receives care instructions and a bunch of medication for bruce.
dick does not mention tim. does not breathe a word of him.
he's not sure what he's expecting bruce's reaction to be when they walk through the front door of the manor and tim, who'd been sitting quietly playing with toys, is suddenly up and squealing and running to bruce with jubilant calls of 'daddy!'.
dick was maybe expecting shame. guilt. shock that his dirty little secret was out and blowing in the open.
he doesn't expect bruce to muster every bit of his strength and lift a giggling tim up like a father greeting their toddler after a long day of work.
tim wraps his arms and legs around bruce, clinging and laughing as bruce spins them around. tim's mouth is stained purple, likely from a popsicle, though bruce doesn't appear to care, leaning into tim's kisses to his cheeks.
dick feels a wad of cotton fill his throat as he tries to ignore the memory of tim's sticky, candy sweet mouth on his, little tongue pressing against dick's while dick is pressing him into the bed and softly fucking him while the rest of the family is out.
it's quite a flip on what dick had been expecting. that bruce is the one basking in a happy reunion while dick stands nearby swimming with guilt and self-hatred.
the rest of the family follows quickly behind tim's bubbly giggles that usually only happen when jason blows rasberries into his tummy.
dick can see the split among them. the tense feelings for bruce knowing about tim. and the affection for tim and seeing him so happy in bruce's arms.
bruce knows that they know about tim. he might be a little slow at the moment but the league doctors said he should be much better in a few months. there's no way that bruce doesn't remember how he'd left tim.
there's no way he's unaware how tim could've died a slow, terrifying death by starving to death in that bunker because what if dick had never found that key? what if he'd just brushed it into a garbage bag? what then?
tim didn't even know how to use the can opener! he'd been so hungry when they found him. he'd eaten two grilled cheese and half a sleeve of oreos. or worse. what if he'd hurt himself all alone in that bunker? dick had gone back down to get some of tim's things and found a dulled paring knife in one of the drawers. none of the knobs on the little countertop stove had been childproofed. what if tim had cut himself? what if he'd turned the gas on? granted tim was very good at following rules and had never once tried to touch the stove but alfred had insisted on proofing it just in case.
so many things could've happened to tim before dick reached him. a million things could've happened to tim if dick had never found that key by chance.
by chance, he always repeated to himself hysterically. it was pure luck that tim was rescued in time and dick thinks he just can't shake that off.
dick thinks about that sometimes. he has nightmares of finding that bunker years too late and only finding a skeleton. he thinks about bruce returning and being disoriented and confusing his family with his strange words and calls for 'tim' and his insistence to visit his bunker and only then do they find about his secret other son.
and even now tim is still a secret. aside from his own internalized struggle, dick couldn't just waltz into a courthouse and adopt a missing child who had been presumed dead. if anyone...if the gcpd or the media ever found out about tim there would be a lot of uncomfortable questions they'd need to answer that bruce's 'eccentric billionaire' persona wouldn't have gotten them out of.
they're tough thoughts made worse by dick's own guilt that had only grown over the years about what he's been doing to tim.
jason hates him for never having accepted tim as a little brother. damian had even tentatively broached the topic about it once.
but how could he? how could dick think of tim as his little brother when dick violates him on a weekly basis?
it used to be nightly. but then dick learned to resist. learned to stop going somewhere alone with tim and fucking his pretty little slit.
sometimes jason would force dick to take tim out for ice cream. some attempt to get them to bond. but dick would inevitably pull over to the side of the road, some patch of woods, and he'd fuck tim in the backseats, watching him squirm on his cock and make little keens and noises of pleasure.
then dick would pick up ice cream for them and it would be so much worse because he felt like a predator buying his victim a treat to keep him quiet.
over the years it became clear that jason had not been participating in these...acts. not like dick was.
and that's when dick figured it out. what bruce had likely done with tim in the bunker (dick was made certain when he made a third trip to the bunker and found the nearly empty box of condoms in tim's little bathroom right next to his toothpaste).
bruce was the reason tim knew how to ride a cock, how he knew a cock in his pussy felt good and why his little hole ached to be full.
it was his fault. it was yet another thing that was bruce's fault. it was his fault that dick had become this...this type of man.
dick wants to hate him. despite him.
but aren't they the same now?
maybe that's why dick isn't as harsh on bruce when he returns. why he isn't as cold as the rest of the family, why he doesn't have a screaming match like jason does asking what the fuck was wrong with bruce.
because if bruce was fucked up then so was dick.
the two of them are two fucked individuals. two people swallowed up by batman and made more twisted for it. the father and the son made in his image.
when dick walks into bruce's room in the middle of the night to find tim naked and on top of bruce, sweet body grinding and whining as bruce's cock pumps in and out of him- dick can't find a single shred of him that is horrified.
the only emotion he feels is relief.
relief that he's no longer alone in the horror that is being himself.
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