#most of the research i did for that fic was verifying how the various titans' timelines matched up to the destruction of blüdhaven

[flybynightwing]

I loved your Nightwing-It’s a Wonderful Life fic, and I figured that based on your research for it you might be able to answer this. How did raising Dick change Bruce? Logically it must have, and my general idea is that it gave him something to live for apart from his mission, made him more open to working with others, and made him less violent/aggressive— but is there any canon, Post-Crisis evidence for that?

Because Dick and Bruce's relationship (and Bruce's early career generally) was entirely backfilled after Crisis on Infinite Earths, there are a lot of big gaps in the story, and different authors' depictions of their early years are often very contradictory. And then very soon after Crisis, the Dark/Iron Age of comics begins, meaning that Bruce's characterization very quickly becomes a lot more violent and aggressive than it was previously. You can, and many fans and writers do, attribute those changes to the Watsonian cause of Jason's death, but they also happen retroactively. With the Crisis and the beginning of the grim-dark-ification of comics (and some other more complicated factors that I won't get into here) Dick and Bruce's relationship also becomes a lot more troubled than it had been previously.

All of which is to say that there isn't a lot of incredibly strong evidence for the idea that Dick made Bruce less violent and more open to others, even if I do (obviously) think it's a fairly in-character reading of the mess of canon that we get, because even in flashbacks Bruce kind of becomes more violent around that time. There's definitely some evidence that Dick gave Bruce something to live for, though.

The immediate Post-Crisis version of Dick and Bruce's meeting, Dark Victory, portrays a version of Bruce who is incredibly reserved even in his internal narration. The most effusive he gets is thinking to himself, "The boy... shows promise." But the obvious intended implication is that Bruce has very quickly come to be emotionally invested in Dick, and lets that emotional connection overwhelm his reservedness and (sometimes) his good sense.

(Dark Victory #13)

And of course, in the Post-Crisis explanation for why Dick stopped being Robin, we have Bruce's description of why he recruited Jason.

(Batman Vol 1 #416)

Mostly, though, we get the idea that Dick softened Bruce and gave him something to live for through things that other people say. Most famously, there's Tim "Batman needs a Robin" Drake, talking about Batman's increasing violence since he lost Jason.

(Batman vol 1 #441)

But here, for instance, is young Dick Grayson himself, in Batman: Year Three, which is both a reckoning with Bruce's increasing violence since losing Jason and a partial retelling of Dick and Bruce's original meeting:

(Batman Vol 1 #438)

And then there's Alfred, in the aftermath of the War Games arc, speaking to Dick:

(Nightwing Vol 2 #99)

All of which is to say that there isn't a ton of direct evidence that working with Dick made Bruce more open to working with others, or less violent... but there's a lot of evidence that he deeply needed Dick for his psychological wellbeing, and that a lot of people think of Dick as a vital source of hope and connection in his life.