Chapter Text
When Bruce opened the door to the stash house, there was only silence. Then he heard a sound, like water dripping down onto a cement floor.
Drip. Drip. Drip.
He ventured further slowly, turning a batarang over in his hand. The cool, metallic strength of it gave him comfort. That, and the knowledge that he could throw it from a hundred feet away and still hit his target.
It gave him a great deal of comfort.
That night after Jason had been kidnapped, Bruce had sat in front of the consoles in the batcave, hunched over the monitors. He'd been going through hours and hours of surveillance footage, until his vision had started to swim, and the timestamps were beginning to float worryingly at the corner of his vision.
A tray full of empty coffee cups sat on the table near him, and he picked the closest one up to take a sip. It was empty. He frowned, setting it back down.
He'd been trawling through the footage near and around the streets of Selina's apartment block, coming up with surprisingly little. A man in a dark hoodie had crept up her fireplace and snuck out with a large duffel bag, in a space of maybe fifteen minutes before Bruce had done nearly the same thing.
Bruce didn't want to think about what was in the duffel bag.
He'd tried to track the bullet down in his ballistics database, to no success. It was unmarked, and other than the fact that it was a .44 caliber bullet, he knew nothing about it.
"It's Viti and his people," Selina had said, while they were tearing the apartment apart looking for clues. Her voice had been uncharacteristically thin. "It has to be them. They know who I am, where I lived. They must know that I helped Batman take down Zucco."
Then she had sat down on her bed, and put her head in her hands.
"I did this to him," She'd said.
Bruce shook his head. "No, you didn't."
Selina only looked up at him. "Yeah? Who else, Bruce?"
Bruce was silent.
"I have to tell Batman,"Selina said. She was wiping her face. She looked so tired. Bruce wanted to— he wanted to— he didn't know what he wanted. To take her in his arms, maybe. To tell her everything was going to be okay. Instead, he watched her, waiting for what she'd do next.
"I have to tell him," she said, dully.
The stash house was a large building, full of narrow corridors and small rooms, where narcotics were repackaged after being unloaded from ships. There was a lab concerned with testing for purity and contamination, and the office, where all the books were kept. The books were all clean, of course, with records full of fishing revenue and meat packaging and cargo taxes, but everyone knew the truth. The GCPD had raided the place three times, and come up with nothing. The labs were always empty, the books always clean. There were always dirty cops willing to look the other way for the right price.
Upstairs was the large break room where the men played poker and ate cheap takeout and watched skin flicks. There were six windows upstairs, none downstairs. Bruce had staked the place out before, when he'd first back to Gotham. Things hadn't changed much since then.
One exit. One entrance. The narrow, claustrophobic tunnels made for several choke points. That was the way they wanted it, if they were ever attacked. The stash house could essentially work as a fort, locked down to become a defensive barricade against potential attackers. It made him wary. He clenched the batarang tighter in his fist.
Walking through the narrow, poorly lit hallway, something made him pause in his tracks. He tilted his head, concentrated. It was that sound again, of water running.
Drip. Drip. Drip.
He ran his hand against the wall. His hand came back dry. Not the damp from the rains, then. Maybe it was a pipe upstairs, or a broken air conditioner. Maybe not.
He started walking again, checking every room and every nook. There was no one in sight. He could hear a TV in the distance, presumably from the break room upstairs. There was someone there, then. There were people.
Selina had called him up that night, on the burner cell that he'd given her as Batman, a few years ago. She'd never used the number before.
"Something happened," she had said, her voice barely audible.
Bruce held the phone to his ear, standing in the batcave. He'd told her he had to go, that maybe he knew someone who could help her, and he'd been cryptic enough that she'd only been confused that he was leaving her at this time. Hurt , was the word. She'd been hurt.
He closed his eyes. It was killing him, keeping this thing from her. "What is it?" he said, knowing that the modulator on the phone would scramble his voice.
"My– um, a boy I've been looking after for a couple of weeks. Someone took him. They left another bullet. It's exactly the same."
"I see," Bruce said, slowly. He could hear the little spurts of static around his voice, the little distortions in the audio. He hated how he sounded. It was almost… inhuman.
"It was under Dick's pillow," Selina said, and then he heard a sudden sound, like a wet gasp.
Selina was crying.
She hasn't cried in front of Bruce. Hadn't allowed herself to break. She was supposed to be the strong one, of the two of them. But with Batman, their dynamic was different. He was supposed to take care of her. To be there for her. And he had failed in his one job.
"I'm sorry," She was saying, her voice steadier now. Her voice was still small. "I haven't been sent a ransom note yet. Please let me know if you have any leads on that bullet. It would help a lot."
Then the line had gone dead.
It had been seven hours after Jason had been kidnapped that Bruce got any form of a lead. He'd been going through the footage over and over again. The man in the dark hoodie climbing out of the fire escape with a duffel bag.
Then something caught his eye.
He replayed the video, and paused it at a certain frame. Enhanced the image.
There, onscreen, was proof. The man's hoodie had ridden up on his wrist to reveal the edge of a tattoo. Bruce leaned closer to the screen, his brow furrowed. It was an ouroboros, its body curled around a four leaf clover.
Bruce leaned back. It wasn't Don Viti, it was the Irish that had taken Jason.
Just then his phone started to ring. His phone, not the burner cell. It was Selina.
"Any news?" he asked.
"I got a call, Bruce," she said. It was hard to tell from her voice what that meant. "It was Jason. He said to come to one of the Italian stash houses on dock 15. Didn't ask to bring any money. He said that Don Viti told him to extend his greetings. He didn't sound like himself," a long pause, "I think they're hurting him."
"It's a trap," Bruce said. It's the Irish, he wanted to say. But Bruce Wayne wouldn't know that.
I know, Bruce, Selina said. She sounded weary. "What am I supposed to do? Not go? I have to, if there's a chance that he's there."
"Don't go," Bruce said, his voice low. "Please, Selina."
"I have to," she said. "I tried calling Batman. He won't answer. It's just me now. I–, " she paused. "I had a really good time with you, Bruce. If anything goes wrong, I know you'll take care of Dick."
"Selina," Bruce said into the phone. "Don't go."
"Bye, Bruce," she said. And she hung up.
Bruce looked up at the roof of the batcave, at the stalactites hanging off the cavernous ceiling. His phone was still plastered to his ear. A single drop of water fell from the stalactites, onto his face.
Drip.
Presently, he reached a door that looked different from the others. It was made of steel, and looked like it was pressure locked. It had a rectangular glass panel at the top, and through it Bruce could see that there were rows of worktables, and burners and vials and vats of something swirling inside them. Men in full-body white protective gear were walking around the vats, checking dials and timers and making notes.
This was the lab, then.
He saw three armed guards walking through the aisles, guns strapped to their backs. They were talking to the men in the white suits, nodding and chatting occasionally.
There were no other exits, save the one that he was looking through.
He walked on. The dripping sound became louder and louder as he walked forward, until he reached a set of stairs.
That was when he heard the screams.
It was a woman's scream, loud and desperate, and it was coming from upstairs.
Selina , he thought.
He broke into a run, taking the steps two at a time. There was an icy dagger lodged in his chest, growing larger and larger by the second. The screams wouldn't stop.
When he was upstairs he flung open the first door he saw, and there were Selina and Jason, and someone was forcing Jason's head down into a pool of water and Selina was kicking at the man who was holding her back, still screaming at him. Bruce felt a piercing pain in his side, and when he looked down he saw that there was a knife sticking out of his armour, between its plates.
The man who'd stabbed him was reaching for his gun, but Bruce pinned him against the wall, and stuck the batarang he'd been holding into the man's shoulder. The man screamed. Bruce punched him hard enough that he stopped, and slumped down onto the floor.
When Bruce turned back around, the man who'd been holding Jason under the water was approaching him, his fists raised. Bruce took a quick breath and pulled the knife out of his side swiftly, and lunged at him. It came naturally to him after all these years, the art of knife fighting. He remembered cold days in Tibet, training with Ra's. There is no art in slashing wildly , Ra's would say. You must remain calm. Eliminate all fear, for fear turns into panic, and panic into stupidity, and stupidity into Death.
But Bruce was afraid now. Afraid, even as he feinted to the left and switched his knife hand to lunge to the right, grazing his opponent's arm. The man cried out, surprised, and Bruce could see that his eyes were dilated. He was high.
Bruce grabbed his injured arm and pressed down hard, hoping that the pain would slow him down. He twisted him and shoved him into the wall, and the man stumbled, walking away slowly. He looked at Bruce, and spat out a tooth.
"Come at me, Batman," he grinned. There was blood in his mouth. He beckoned Bruce forward with an outstretched arm, "Let's dance."
Bruce lifted his knife again, about to lunge, but the man fell, swearing. Jason had crept up from behind him, kicked out his shin from under him. Bruce pinned the man to the floor before he had a chance to get up, grabbing him by his throat and holding him there. Then he took his tranquilizer gun from his belt and shot a dart into his neck.
The man slumped down, his muscles relaxing.
He turned to see that Selina had come out on top of the fight she'd been in, except she was holding her left arm close to her body. She was breathing hard, wide-eyed. Jason ran over to her, plastering himself against her side.
"We need to go, there's something you don't—"
"It's an ambush," Selina said, "they were talking, Bruce, before I tried to sneak up on them. I heard them say–"
Drip. Drip. Drip , he heard. He tilted his head again, listening for it. That sound. It wasn't water at all. It was getting hard to think. He wondered why. He felt so tired. So tired. Maybe if he closed his eyes for a second.
"We walked into a trap, Batman. Did you hear me? It's a trap! They were all in it together. They knew we'd come for him, both the gangs. The Italians wanted to do it in their stashhouse, to kill us off once and for all, but the Irish want to get rid of us and their competition. Are you listening?"
Drip. Drip. Drip.
Bruce looked down at his side. There was a puddle of blood on the floor. It seemed to be coming from where the knife had been. He sat down. Or perhaps he fell.
"Batman," Selina hissed, shaking his shoulders.
"Do you smell that?" Jason said, suddenly.
All of a sudden Bruce knew what was going on.
"It smells like gasoline," Jason said.
Drip. Drip. Drip.
"Run!" Bruce yelled, and then the whole place exploded, and they were thrown back in a wave of fire, red and yellow fangs licking up and down the edges of Bruce's vision. And then it was blindingly dark.
*
That day when Selina had called him over to fix the tap in their kitchen, he'd been sitting on the floor below the sink, trying to fix a leak, when he noticed that Jason was watching him from the table.
Bruce looked over at him. Dick was still away at gymnastics class or after school track meets or whatever he was doing, and Selina had gone to meet a dealer about some gemstones she wanted to put out on the market.
That left the two of them alone.
Bruce knew that Jason felt uncomfortable around him. He thought of how he looked, a six foot two inch tall man weighing two hundred pounds. And smiling did not come to him naturally. He had to say something non-threatening, something to put the boy at ease.
"Pass me the 10 inch wrench, please," he said.
Jason looked at him like he was half sure that Bruce was about to murder him.
Bruce sighed. He looked back at the pipes. This was hopeless.
He got out from under the sink, wiping his hands with a cloth. There were grease stains all over his t-shirt. It really said something about Gotham's real estate prices, that a woman who carried out high-calibre heists for a living couldn't afford more than a fifth floor walk up with a shitty sink.
"You're giving up?" Jason asked. He was still watching Bruce warily.
Bruce looked at him. "No, I'm just taking a break," he said.
"You're stuck," Jason said.
Bruce blinked. "Momentarily."
Jason smiled the tiniest smile. "You have no idea what to do."
Bruce walked over to the fridge, taking out a carton of milk. He sniffed it. "I… am not a plumber."
"No, I guess you're just a CEO," Jason said. His smile was broader now. Well. If making fun of him made Jason more comfortable… Bruce was fine with that.
"Owner, actually. I'm the chairman of the board. Lucius Fox is the CEO."
Jason shook his head. "So you're even richer than the CEO." He looked like he disapproved.
"Yes," Bruce said.
Jason leaned forward, looking at him curiously. "You could just hire someone to fix the sink. Or buy her a new house."
Bruce took a sip of milk directly from the carton. It didn't taste spoiled. "I tried," he said. "She said no."
He took a mug from the cupboard. It was chipped, and the handle was broken, but it said 'Cat Lady' on it. Probably a present from Dick. It made him smile.
"Milk?" he asked Jason, pouring out the carton into the mug.
Jason crossed his arms, shaking his head. "So what's your deal?" he said.
"The deal with what?" Bruce said. He slid the mug over to Jason. "Have it. Calcium is good for you, especially at this age."
Jason made a face. "The deal with how come you're slumming it with us when you could be running around your mansion making out with supermodels and riding dolphins in your swimming pool?"
Bruce paused midway through pouring himself a glass of milk. "I don't own any dolphins. That's animal cruelty."
Jason glared at him.
Bruce sighed, scrubbing at his face. He looked at the broken sink. "There's no one I've met like her," he said, "or Dick. I'm fixing the sink and painting the house because it's the only thing I can think of to repay them for what they've done for me. That good enough for you?"
Jason tilted his head, just watching him. After a while he took a sip from his mug, holding it with both hands.
"Maybe," he said.
Bruce shook his head, crouching underneath the sink again. Maybe if he checked the main guage he could figure out why the pressure was off.
"Do you want to know a secret?"Jason said.
Bruce looked at him. " What?"
"I have secret powers."
Bruce cleared his throat in an effort not to laugh. "Do you," he said.
Jason nodded solemnly. "I have abilities. Like Superman, you know?" He came around the counter, shooting on the floor, next to Bruce.
"Really," Bruce said, scanning the plumbing joints in front of him, squinting, "what are they?"
Jason leaned forward a little further, so that his head was almost up against Bruce's. "I can make people go away," he whispered.
Bruce looked at him. "What do you mean?" he asked.
Jason shrugged, leaning back. "I sent my dad away. I didn't mean to do it, but I secretly wanted him gone." he said.
Bruce felt his amusement fade. "Jason, that's not–"
"It's not something I'm sad about," Jason said. "It's just something I can do. I made my mom's boyfriend go away, too. He was her dealer. This was after Dad died."
"What did you do?" Bruce asked, curious.
"I put vaseline in his shampoo. And on the tips of all his ballpoint pens. And I might have pissed in his laundry."
Bruce looked at him. Then he started to laugh.
It was a belly laugh, deep and loud, and it made his shoulder shake.
Jason grinned, innocently sipping more of his milk. "He left in two weeks," he said.
Bruce held up a hand, unable to talk. "Jesus Christ. Maybe I should tell Selina to start double checking the laundry."
"Not happening," Jason said. He stood up, walking over to Bruce's tool kit. He reached into it, and dropped something into Bruce's hand.
"Here's your wrench," he said, and he smiled at Bruce, but only a little bit.
*
When Bruce woke up it was because of a persistent tugging on his shoulder. He opened his eyes, and turned his head. Jason slowly came into focus. He was saying something. No, he was yelling. He was still pulling on Bruce's cape.
Bruce stared at him. And his memories slowly started to come back.
When he looked around them again, they were inside a room that was on fire. The stash house. Selina lay slumped in a corner, a few feet from them. There was a slow trickle of blood coming from her mouth.
"We need to get out of here!" he heard Jason say faintly, over the loud, high-pitched ringing in his ears. "The walls are gonna collapse. Bruce. Bruce!"
Bruce looked at him. There were sounds of smaller explosions, from downstairs. Presumably the vats of chemically cooked drugs that Don Viti was manufacturing. The fire had reached the labs, then.
"Bruce!" Jason said, shaking at his shoulders again. " Bruce!" His voice sounded louder now. Clearer.
The fog in his brain was beginning to dissipate as well; well enough to know that they were in deep trouble.
Bruce turned over to his side, and instantly a tremendous wave of pain went through the entire left side of his body, like a large meat cleaver was steadily slicing through him.
"Hnn," he said, swallowing, "can you walk."
Jason was nodding rapidly. "I sprained my leg, but I think–"
Bruce looked at Jason's leg. He was sitting on the floor next to Bruce, but it was clear enough that it was twisted at an awkward angle.
"That's not sprained," Bruce managed to get out. He tried to get up again, but the pain nearly had him paralysed. He's landed on his wounded side, and maybe he'd broken something. It was hard to tell.
Jason was silent, save his shaky breaths. It was starting to get hot inside the room. There was a thunderous crash from downstairs. Jason flinched.
"Are we going to die," Jason said, and now Bruce could hear him perfectly, even though Jason's voice was very quiet.
Bruce turned his head to look at him. Selina was still lying curled up in a heap next to them, like a ragdoll. He tried to reach for her, but he couldn't move, and she was too far away.
"You could still try to run," Bruce rasped, and Jason's face began to crumple.
"I'm not going anywhere without the two of you," Jason said. His shoulders were shaking.
Bruce raised a hand to Jason's cheek. His fingertips came back wet.
"This is all my fault," Jason said, sniffling, "if you two hadn't come looking for me, none of this would have happened."
"I'd have done it again," Bruce croaked, "and you know she would have."
Jason crawled over to Selina, dragging her by her hand towards them. Once she was close enough, Bruce pulled her towards him by her shoulders. Selina's eyes were closed, her face serene. She looked like a painting. Bruce would never be able to see her eyes again. Or make her laugh. Or see Ace drool all over her, and piss her off. He took her hand in his, and watched the flames engulf the walls around them.
Jason lay down between them. He was still crying. It reminded Bruce of another night, of another time. Another life. He closed his eyes.
"Go," he said. "You need to run. You could still make it."
Jason had burrowed his head into Bruce's shoulder. He was shaking his head.
"Jason, go," Bruce snapped.
"Shut up, Bruce," Jason said, except he was still crying.
Bruce froze. "What did you say?" he said.
"I said for you to shut up! I'm not going anywhere, not—"
"You called me Bruce," Bruce said.
Jason looked up at him, his face tear-streaked and red. "Your cowl's all torn. You were having trouble breathing. I took it off."
Bruce felt his face with his hands. It was bare skin.
"I always knew something was up with you," Jason said. He was glaring at him. "But you hid it really well. You're Batman, aren't you? You can do anything."
Bruce looked at Jason, his eyes wide.
"Remember how you said Selina saved you? It's your turn to save us, you stupid dork . Dick's still waiting at home. He can't have a second set of parents die on him."
Jason was right.
"I'm Batman," he breathed. The smoke was starting to fill the room now. Jason coughed. Bruce tore off some of his cape, and tired it around Jason's mouth. Then he closed his eyes. He was an idiot. He hadn't been thinking. The pool.
He rose slowly, probably making some awful animal noise and swearing up a blue streak. The pain flared up all across his side, nearly eviscerating him right there. He stood for a second, before his vision turned dangerously dark and he nearly stumbled. Jason stood up slowly, limping to give him a shoulder to lean on.
"What're you doing?" he said, coughing.
Bruce walked over to the shallow pool, limping and coughing, and detached his cape. It was probably a cooling water bath to put heated slabs of narcotics inside, but right now Bruce didn't give a shit.
He dipped the cape into the pool, and then he picked Jason up. "I'm gonna dip you in this," he said.
Jason looked at him, wide-eyed. "What?"
"Hold your breath." Bruce said, and he submerged Jason inside for a few seconds, until he was sure that every part of him had been wet. He splashed himself with the water too, metallic tasting and brackish as it was.
Then he picked him back up, and walked over to Selina, draping the wet cape around her. He picked her up too, even though all his muscles screamed in protest at it. His ribs were definitely broken, and he was still losing blood at an alarming rate from the knife wound.
Try not to breathe in," he said to Jason, "There's smoke everywhere."
Then he walked into the fire.
*
He remembered getting them outside vaguely, and that Selina woke for a few seconds of it, her eyes wide and terrified, and he remembered Jason curling into his frame. He remembered dropping them both onto the grass outside the stash house, and sitting down and looking up at the smoke filled night sky, and not feeling any pain any more. He remembered smiling.
After that he remembered nothing.
*
When he woke up, he was in his bedroom, in the manor.
His throat felt raw, and every other part of his body hurt, so he decided to close his eyes and go to sleep. He could feel a little body snuggle closer to him, and he pulled it closer, ruffling Dick's hair.
Then his eyes shot open.
"Morning, sleepyhead," Dick said, grinning a toothy smile. His head was on Bruce's bare stomach, and he was smiling up at him adoringly. There was a large stretch of bandages wrapped around his side and chest.
"Alfred said you cracked two ribs. And you got stabbed. And you're Batman!" Dick said, animatedly. Then his face took on a concerned expression. "You're not in pain or anything now, right? He said that if he didn't take you off the meds quick you'd become immune."
Bruce opened his mouth to speak, but nothing came out. His voice was gone.
"Alfred said that can happen sometimes, with smoke inhalation," Dick said, helpfully, "you'll be okay in a few hours! He made you lemon tea. It's on the bedside table."
Bruce turned to look at the bedside table. There was a thermos there, with a post-it that said to ring on the intercom if he needed anything. Other than that, there was no one in the room. No indication that anybody had– that they had–
"Are," he rasped, clearing his throat, "are they–"
"Selina and Jay? They're okay. Jason's got a broken ankle though, and Selina had a concussion. But they're fine now, and they're watching TV. I asked if we could watch Gremlins again, but I think they're pretty strongly against that idea, considering we've see it already like, five times. So they're watching Coraline. Which is okay, but it's not Gremlins, you know?"
"Grem—lins?" Bruce managed to say.
"Oh my gosh, you don't even know, do you! It's Halloween today! You've been asleep for like, three days, Bruce. We've been staying here all this while because Selina was spooked because she kept thinking the Irish guys might find out that you guys are still alive. So anyway, we're not going trick or treating because of Jay's leg, but Selina went out and bought a ton of candy for us, so we're just sitting around and eating Reese's pieces and getting fat. Do you eat candy if you're Batman? Is that allowed? Are there any rules to being Batman and is not eating candy one of them?"
Bruce smiled. It seemed like Dick was really enjoying that Bruce was unable to speak, and that all he could do was listen.
He was about to try and say something, when someone knocked against the open door.
"Could you give us a moment, Dick?" Selina said. She was leaning on the door jamb, watching him with a cool expression on her face. She had a black eye, and a stitched up gash on her right arm.
Dick looked between the two of them. "Um, okay," he said, jumping off the bed. "I'm making Jason change the movie to Gremlins, though." He ran out of the room.
Selina watched Bruce. She was quiet for so long that Bruce had started to wonder if she was going to say anything at all.
"I know you can't really speak," she said, "so now's the time that you listen up, you douchebag."
Bruce blinked.
"We're not breaking up. Not even close. I know you well enough to know that you did this out of some sense of stupid fucking honour and self-sacrifice, and that you probably thought that keeping me in the dark for eight months, eight months, was the right thing to do, you asshole. Except guess what, I was in danger anyway. It's my whole thing, Bruce, being in constant danger, because of the part where I'm a criminal. By the way, the sheer volume hypocrisy of you, trying to arrest me by night and getting in my pants during the day. I can't believe you, Bruce. I can't believe you lied about this. Of all things. I told you about my drug addicted now deceased mother, and you couldn't tell me you dressed like a bat in the night time?"
There was a long pause. Selina stopped leaning against the door jamb.
"Okay," she said, "I'm done. Let's go watch TV."
Bruce stared at her.
Selina shook her head. "I think a part of me always knew. No one gets bruises as often as you do, and definitely not by playing polo."
Bruce thought of telling her that he'd never claimed to play polo, but reconsidered quickly. Perhaps not the wisest thing to say.
"Sorry," he said, instead.
Selina was scrubbing at her face. "Sorry," she muttered, "he says sorry. "
"I am sorry," Bruce said, "I don't know how else to say it. It's not easy for me to– to say things," he was determinedly studying the edge of the bed now, looking anywhere but at her, "I was going to tell you that night after you said… what you did. And I," he paused again, "I uh, I was going to tell you that I. I feel it too, what you were–"
"Oh my god," Selina said, "that's a whole lot of talking for someone whose throat's fucked up from smoke inhalation. I get it, you love me too. Let's just go watch TV. Dick's gonna try and make us watch Gremlins again and I have to try and stop it."
Bruce looked up at her. "Okay," he said.
They went downstairs to the TV room where Jason and Dick were sprawled on the sofas like kings, bickering over the remote. When Jason saw him his face broke into a giant smile.
"The Dark Knight comes out of his coma to stop Dick from watching gremlins!" he announced, launching himself at Bruce. Bruce laughed, ruffling Jason's hair. His leg was in a brace that had already had bats and pumpkins drawn crudely all over it. Dick's handiwork, most likely. Bruce set him down.
"The Dark Knight isn't supposed to be doing any heavy lifting right now," Selina said, pushing Dick over to sit next to him. Except she was smiling. And she didn't tell Dick to change the movie back. And when Bruce sat down next to them, she put her hand in his.
You love me too.
Bruce looked over at her. She was staring at the TV, but she gripped his hand tighter.
"Okay, after this we're watching the sequel," Dick announced. Everyone groaned.
Not Bruce though. He was happy. And there were no more smudges on the greenhouse glass. He smiled, tentatively.
"I quite liked the sequel," he said.
Selina sighed.