This question has been haunting me and the anon asking about Dick, Jason, and Bruce's attitudes in the Tim fic has finally given me enough of a nudge to write an ask:
It's based on a few lines -- at the very end of The Fawn Instinct, when Fawn!Reader says, "I don’t want to do this, Jason," and his verbal response is, "Welcome to the family, sweetheart," and then a line from Stephanie in The Flight Response when she's sugarcoating Fawn!Reader's feelings and says, "It took us all a little while to come around to family life."
What has family life been like for these people? I imagine that, similar to the other ask, these lines were written to be ambiguous enough for readers to be have to have fun interpreting them in whatever direction, but I'm so curious if you had anything in mind for the various BatFam members' dynamics pre-Reader and/or "off-screen" from the main narrative, so to speak.
Separately, I'm also curious about how much Barbara and Alfred knew in regards to Fawn!Reader's experiences, what they thought about things they may have seen or heard, and what they might have been telling themselves about it all.
This feels like a big ask, but I know that you simply won't bother with it if it doesn't interest you, which is reassuring. Either way, thanks for sharing your thoughts and writing in general!
ohhhh no wait i actually have a concrete answer for this one - in my own headcanons, at least. i don't think there were any pseudo-incest shenanigans going on between the batfam members before the reader was introduced (no more than what's already in the comics, at least), but there's always going to be a strong undercurrent of "you do what's right for the family and you do it no matter how it makes you feel" in that house. they all care about each other, and no one would ever explicitly put another person under that kind of strain, but lives on are the line, here. there are people who have to be kept safe. the same logic is applied to the reader, albeit on a more domestic level. you don't want to do what's best? you're afraid it's going to be uncomfortable, that it's going to hurt? pull yourself together. you're part of the family, now.
as for barbara and alfred, i think alfred's full aware of what's happening but. unfortunately cannot put the reader's safety over the well-being of his family. innocent lives are often collateral damage in times of war, etc etc. barbara is in the same boat as damian, duke, and the other members of the batfam that are either too peripheral or too young to be aware of you as anything more than a relatively unstable civilian that the others tend to act Strange around. the ending of flight response definitely doesn't help with this - you're sweet and you're nice, but you need to be watched. you mean too much to too many people they loved to be released into your own care any time soon. if that means ignoring the way jason tenses whenever anyone says your name, never asking why tim has an encrypted folder on his laptop with hundreds of thousands of pictures of you, then so be it. anything for the family.
