Cody was sitting in London's warehouse looking at the zip line that Catwoman cut during their fight when Zack and Maddie came walking in; Cody quickly put away the zip line as Maddie said, "You're still awake."
"Yeah," Cody answered completely exhausted, "But I was thinking of sleeping."
"I was thinking," Zack said yawned, "We need a better way to get around the city."
"I agree," Cody replied, "We can only travel so far during the night and it would be easy for people to figure out that we operate in a small space."
Maddie looked at the two of them, "What are you going to do? Get an armored car, call it the bat-mobile, and drive around in it? Where on earth would you park it?"
"Something smaller then," Zack explained, "a motorcycle maybe."
Cody glared at Zack and said, "I'm not driving a motorcycle Zack."
"What ideas do you have," Zack sat down at the opposite end of the table Cody was sitting at.
"Safe houses," Cody answered, "We ask London to get us more warehouses and such across the city; several places with gear to ac t as starting points for that nights activities. So we can cover different sections of the city depending on where we get our start."
"Oh come on," Zack said in disbelief, "don't get me wrong, it's a great plan, but how many abandon warehouses can we find?"
"Zack," Cody replied, "We're in a recession."
Zack thought about it for a moment, "Fair enough, I'm going to bed."
"We don't have beds here," Cody stated causing Zack to stop in his tracks.
Maddie rolled her eyes, "I'll drive the two of you back to the hotel."
The three of them left the warehouse…
…Meanwhile, Bailey was sitting on the floor of her apartment with her back against her bed; she was still in her catsuit, though she had taken the mask off. Her body was sore from the encounter with Batman she had the previous night, an encounter that she only remember in flashes of what her other side did.
She was haunted with images of everything she had done as catwoman; and as she began to breakdown, a voice came from her right side, "Oh, stop being such a baby."
Bailey's heart stop as she looked over to her right to see her reflection in a mirror that was on the wall which smiled back at her and said, "Hi sweetie."
"You're not real," Bailey said shaking her head, "you're not real."
"Do we really have to go through all this again," the reflection asked, "you know damn well how real I am, Selena."
Fear soon left Bailey's eyes and was replaced with anger, "My name is Bailey."
"Is that what you're calling yourself," the reflection asked, "very well then, like it matters; I mean, did you really think you could get away from me by running to a new city and changing your name."
"Why couldn't you just leave me alone," Bailey asked, "You were gone for almost a year."
The reflection shrugged, "I had no reason to come out, after what happened in Kansas, I didn't have any purpose; but now I do."
"And what is that," Bailey asked thinking she already knew the answer, "To get the guy who raped me."
"That woke me up," the reflection explained, "but then I met someone, someone interesting."
Bailey thought for a second before coming to the conclusion, "Batman."
"I like him," the reflection said with a sinister smile, "My perfect match, or my perfect enemy…I haven't decided that part yet."
"You've killed people," Bailey said with new tears going down her face, "innocent people."
"Innocent," the reflection replied, "I'm killing drug dealers, users, sex offenders, thieves; that's who I'm killing, people who deserve to die."
Bailey shook her head, "No, murder is murder."
The reflection smiled, "Well, what are you going to do about it?"
"I'll fight you," Bailey answered.
"You'll fight me," the reflection laughed, "You're weak, pathetic, what are you going to do to stop me? Nothing, you never did anything Selena."
"My name is Bailey," she shouted angrily.
"You're name is Selena Kyle," The reflection shouted back, "that is who you are, a pathetic little girl who sat back and allowed herself to be abused her entire life-"
"Shut up," Bailey said with rage building up in her.
"-and when I came along," the reflection continued ignoring Bailey's pleas, "you complained, you ran, but you never fought back. You didn't fight back then and you won't fight back now; because you know as well as I do, I am everything you ever wanted."
"Shut up," Bailey screamed as she threw the gun she had at the mirror causing it to shatter to a million pieces. Bailey then broke down into tears; she curled up on the floor of her apartment and cried…
…That evening, Cody was waiting in the hotel restaurant for Bailey as it was the evening of their date; he had gotten some sleep during the day but was still exhausted. Bailey then walked into the restaurant and found Cody sitting at the table; she went over and joined him, she had put on a lot of make up to hide the bruises she got from the previous night.
The two then got started with their date, as they went through the basics of getting to know each other a bit. Cody did his best to hide the fact he was exhausted, doing everything from drinking coffee, which he didn't enjoy, to keeping himself from sitting completely still, which actually made him look a bit jittery.
Bailey, meanwhile, had a lot of trouble focusing on her date; things started off great but she soon started seeing things. There was a moment where she saw her reflection sitting at another table winking at her before vanishing after Bailey looked away for a second to look at Cody. A little later she ended up seeing a hallucination of her three younger sisters, which really got a reaction from Bailey. Cody noticed this and asked what was wrong, a question that Bailey kind of shrugged off.
At the end of the date, Cody and Bailey left the restaurant a bit disappointed with the way they handled themselves on the date but kept smiles on their faces right up until they said goodbye to each other. Cody went back up to his suite to get some sleep but wasn't able to; Catwoman kept entering his mind. Cody looked up at the ceiling and said to himself, "It's a bad idea, it's a bad idea…damn it."
Cody got up and made his way back to the warehouse and got into his Bat-suit; it was supposed to be the night off, so Zack was at the hotel sleeping. This was perfect as Cody, for reasons he wasn't completely sure about, didn't want him or Maddie to know about Catwoman. He finished getting into his suit and went out into the city.
Cody eventually went to the top of the building next to the alley where he and Catwoman fought and just waited; after several hours, a voice came from behind. Cody turned around to see Catowan as she said, "I knew you'd come back."
"I don't know why I did," Cody replied observing Catwoman, the woman was clearly disturbed but there was something alluring about her, something that attracted him to her; he wasn't sure what it was, he just knew it was something.
Catwoman smiled, "Sure you know why, you like me."
"Why do you do this," Cody asked referring to why she put on a mask.
"Fun really," Bailey answered, "Why do you?"
Cody was slow to respond, "To make the world a better place."
Catwoman got a huge laugh from that answer, "You're fucking lying, you do it for the same reason I do."
"What do you do when you're not doing this," Cody asked.
"That's complicated," she replied truthfully, "You?"
"I try to have a life," Cody answered.
"Why," Catwoman asked walking up to him, "You can have the time of your life right here, doing this. You talk about 'healing the world', for what point? What makes the world worth saving? People everywhere are shitty to each other, there's no exception; why live in that world when you can live in this one? We can have so much fun together doing this every night, punishing the wicked and…well, being a guy, I'm sure you figure out what else we can do together."
"I don't get you," Cody said thinking back to when they fought, "One minute you're trying kill me, the next you're trying to be friends; what is it with you?"
"I was never trying to kill you," Catwoman replied, "I'm a complicated person."
She got up close to him and explained in a gentle whisper, "I love it when you hurt me, just like you love it when I hurt you; why else are you standing here right now? That's why you do this, isn't it? Tell me, how does it feel when you slam a criminal's head into a wall? Does it feel good? We live in a world of violence, we thrive on it, we're infected by it; I can't stop doing this and neither can you, we're addicts…maybe we should be addicts together."
She gave a passionate kiss to Cody's lips and began to walk backwards as she said, "Why don't you think about it."
She left the rooftop leaving Cody there alone and as he stood there he felt conflicted; he was torn between being Batman or Cody, between Bailey and Catwoman, between two different lives. He didn't know what to do.
Author's Note:
Here's chapter 9, I wanted to be inconsistent with the way I characterized Bailey's dark side, in that you never know what she's going to do or say and whether it'll be good and bad. I felt that was a good way to display the level of madness Bailey had fallen into.
Trilogy News:
I had previously announced the titles of the two sequels I have planned for this story, but I recently decided to change those names. As I said before, the title 'Dancing with Tears in My Eyes' is from the song by Ke$ha which I thought worked as a good theme song for the story; so, I decided it was fitting to name the two sequels in the same fashion.
SO the NEW Titles are as Follows (Along with the Genres of the stories)-
Part 1: Dancing With Tears in My Eyes (Tragedy/Drama) - from the song by Ke$ha
Part 2: Never Too Late (Adventure/Drama) - from the song by Three Days Grace
Part 3: My Immortal (Angst/Tragedy) - from the song by Evanescence
