I remember a couple weeks back, somebody posted something about Bruce and Tim’s relationship. Specifically, that they believed Bruce cared intensely for Tim since very early on, but didn’t think it was appropriate to express, because Tim already had a father. Once Tim was adopted, it was not just okay but expected, therefor...

And then they mentioned something that caught my attention. The idea that if it was Jack who died and Janet who survived, Bruce would have been much more open about his affection for Tim, because the role of ‘Dad’ was open to him.

I’ve had that running in my head since. Janet living, Tim being Robin, Bruce being an actual parent from the beginning, god I want to write it. With Janet being ‘I am not nearly recuperated enough to deal with this, can’t someone just shoot that man?’ and Tim being ‘Mom, please, homicide is not the answer.’

And Janet starts a relationship with her therapist, Dana Winters, and meanwhile has awkward co-parent shenanigans with Bruce, and starts suspecting her son is sneaking out at night to go on dates with Bruce’s (much, much too old for her son) ward Dick Grayson.

She’s shaken by her brush with death, so she wants Tim close at hand so she can make sure her heir is trained up properly, and at least Alfred appears to be teaching Tim proper manners. Tim is kind of weirded out by his mom’s sudden insistence on family time, and it doesn’t help that Janet wouldn’t know what ‘family time’ traditionally looks like if it danced the cha-cha in front of her, naked. But the ‘learning how to break someone into itty-bitty pieces just by fucking with their head thing’ is proving useful, so Tim doesn’t try too hard to get out of it.