reverse robin damian could be such a fucking tragic child if you think about it. like, it completely takes away bruce's choice to be a parent. in the original universe when he takes in dick first, he does it because he watches dick go through exactly what HE did, and he sympathised enough that he didn't want dick to be alone. with damian being the oldest instead, bruce is just a stupid twenty-something year old who had a fling with talia and now has no choice but to live with this kid because he has a biological responsibility.
i want to see an eldest son damian who grew up smart enough to know that bruce never wanted him, and that learned to be batman's partner not to serve justice, but to try and make up for his own presence in gotham. who fights simply to make himself useful to his father who is far too obsessed with his mission to give a damn about getting to know his biological son.
it would get even worse when bruce grows up a little; when he matures and realises how much he fucked up with damian. because you can't take back those early years, and bruce can't fix what he broke. even worse, he doesn't even try. he's too ashamed and emotionally constipated to try and muddle through the emotions needed to try and show damian that he DOES want to be his father, so he just... awkwardly brushes past it. as damian grows bruce treats him as a friend, which sure, is better than the whole soldier/ignored-unless-needed deal damian had when he was little, but still isn't good. he relies on damian too much while not providing an ounce of parental support because hey! as long as they aren't actively screaming at each other then they must be doing ok, right? bruce just tries to crack an occasional joke and have a beer with him every now and then to try to prove to himself that he can't have fucked up that badly; because if he had then why did damian still stick around???
but damian didn't stick around for bruce, he stuck around for his little brothers. i think it's universal that every first-child of bruce wayne will have eldest daughter syndrome no matter who it is, and i think with reverse robin damian it could be STRONG.
the thing about damian is that at his core, he is kind. the league and the life he was born into fucked up his morals and understanding of some things at first, yes, but even then it bleeds out of him in the way he cares for things. his love and eternal protection of animals, creatures supposedly lesser than him; and the way that regardless of his upbringing, when given the choice between what he learns from bruce about protecting people and what he learnt from ra's about the opposite, he always chooses to follow his father.
reverse robin damian grows up disillusioned to his father's merits of being, well, a father; but he's still kind. so when tim drake's parents die and bruce takes him in, damian decides he needs to be there for tim when he knows bruce wont. the most painful part would probably be that damian has to watch bruce be better at parenting tim that he was damian; because by the time tim comes along bruce is older, wiser, and again--he has that shared sympathy with what tim's been through. it was his choice to take tim in. so although he's still far from being considered a paternal person he does give it his all this time, and damian has to watch as his father casts him aside only to later apparently deem a collection of other random kids more worth his effort than damian ever was.
but bruce still isn't a perfect man, and damian is still so kind. so he steps in where bruce falters and sticks around even as he gets old enough to leave. when tim is adopted, then jason, then dick; damian stays so he can be for them what bruce never was for him.
to his brothers and to bruce, damian is an amazingly patient, forgiving, loving, and powerful person. he's bruce's first true partner, the golden child, the prince of gotham who will always help out if you ask for it. he picks his brothers up whenever they call, no matter the time or inconvenience. he cleans up after them on patrol, protects them, works himself to the bone, and still manages to show up in their personal lives as well. to them, damian is perfect.
but to damian? to damian, he is just the biological defect that bruce didn't want. the one who was needed as a soldier, not a son; and the one who will always work himself 10x harder than the others so that he can prove himself to be nothing like his father; the man who somehow managed to be a deadbeat while still sleeping in the bedroom right down the hall.
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