black blood ❚ bullets like butterflies.
character informationFull Name: Cat ( Catherine Anne Shaw ).
Series: Original ( Black Blood )
Age: 18.
Species: Human | Instrument of the Black Blood.
Appearance/PB: Despite her fragile figure, Cat is nowhere as delicate as she looks. She isn't particularly tall nor short, about 163 centimetres, and she's a bit too thin, but her muscles are defined against pale skin and her hands with long, thin fingers are calloused from the overuse of guns and fist fights with usually scrapped, bony knuckles. She keeps her black hair short and her ice-blue eyes are as cold as the colour they evoke. It's rare to see her smile, which has a bit of an impact in a doll-faced girl like her - a face which has recently acquired a little scar under her left eye. She has a tattoo of a butterfly on the left side of her hip and quite a few markings all over her body, such as small scars and the occasional bruises. Her earlobes are pierced several times in a row. Since she doesn't really care for clothes, Cat seems to wear the same thing all the time, though there's a certain affection for her long black trenchcoat even if its rather tattered at the hem. She wears once white sport shoes which are now an odd shade of a colour that's definitely not white. She tends to wear baggy jeans so she can be comfortable - these also quite old, though Helen seems to buy her a pair once in a while (because Cat can't be bothered to buy them otherwise). As for the white tank top and hooded cardigan, they're comfortable as well and simple, which Cat most prefers. She wears a simple belt and a holster under the cardigan, so her Beretta (a gift from Blackmore) is hidden from curious eyes. She never seems to take off her chain from her neck that holds two dog tags. ( PB: Ciara Nugent ).
Setting: Otherearth
The boogieman is real.
Or, at least, he is around these parts. In fact, to picture this world, all you have to do is to think about horror movies - it is Earth as we know it, an early XXI century world, which means technology and History remains, but much darker, much grimmer and much, much more dangerous, as beasts from our very nightmares are no longer restricted to our imagination but actually roam the world. They're out there to get you, and the big problem is that you don't know they are. The stories of the monster in the closet? They are true, given as many of these dimensions tend to end up in dark rooms, basements, under your bed and in some special cases, under your god damn blankets. The only reason parents tell their children monsters from horror stories aren't real is because more and more the very same creatures prowling in their closets and under their beds are becoming more cunning, adapting so they can rule the night under anonymity.
Otherearth is a mirror of our days as we know them, except for the fact that these creatures, the Others, exist. The supernatural, the wicked, the damned, the angels, the saints. They have many names. Call it a slightly darker version of our Earth, which can be subdivided in alternative worlds. Vampires, werewolves, witches, banshees, monsters, demons, inhuman creatures that feed on human flesh and bone and soul and emotions, they walk among us and we don't even know about them until they have their teeth around our heads or their claws gripping at our still beating hearts.
Souls are real, yet an abstract concept, but only those aware of Others - and Others themselves - are sure of its existence. Human philosophers can go on thinking: does it exist or is it a figment of one's imagination to inspire hesitation in doing bad things? The fact is, they're real. Their purpose is not exactly given, but it does serve as a source of food for Others.
It is called Otherearth since it gathers different dimensions: the Earth and the Otherside, among others that can be accessed through what are commonly called as portals or doors. Usually these doors are closed and common humans cannot cross them unless an Other pulls them in.
Others are not only what we know from the stories as the monster, the children of the darkest hours, but they are also what the Bible tells her: angels, but they are not the forgiving, winged creatures they have made themselves appear to be. They aren't holier than the demon. They are simply more bent to uphold balance.
Unresolved police cases, human brutality, surges of insanity. Not all of them are legitimate. Some of them are the work of the Others. They don't have a name for themselves, but have gained names through the legends. The vampire, the werewolf, the undead and the demon. These are well known figures that evoke one of the most primal sensations in Man: fear. The fact that it exists proves it has a purpose, a purpose of self preservation. Some have it more acute than others, and others were born with a burden upon their shoulders that pushes them to ignore the fear to protect themselves.
Such is the burden of Black Blood, an unwanted heritage amongst those that have it and far more than wished among those that fear it.
History: On the twenty-fourth day of November, a foggy afternoon, the Black Blood found itself an Instrument at last, after centuries of searching for a recipient for itself. It came in the form of a newborn, a being barely able to open her blue eyes with no idea of what the future was holding out for her. Innocent, devoid of the notion of fear - because the Instrument must not feel fear during its first breath - she was but a small baby with a lot of dark hair (the darkest hair you'd seen in a new born). The blood which covered her was washed out of her body and she was held almost carelessly by the woman who had given birth to her.
Catherine Shaw began her life unaware of every challenge about to happen.
It wasn't until her twelfth birthday that a crazy turn happened. This isn't to say that she had a happy childhood, but she was as protected as possible, considering the circumstances. Alice, the woman that had given birth to her (not her mother, she never once called her as such) worked at a rather shoddy strip bar, until her addiction to drugs became too much for the patron to handle and threw her out. Not exactly the best place for a child to grow up in, but surprisingly not that awful as some of the strippers took a fancy for baby Catherine. It was why she was never dropped on her head nor suffocated to death during her late night cries. The workers of that place took more care of her than Alice would ever care for. One in particularly, Helen, made sure the girl was sent to school as soon as she was old enough so she could have a moderately regular life.
At the age of eight, her mother married an usual of hers. Clearly a bad choice: he had won the lottery and that had been all it took for her mother to move in with him, dragging the young girl with the luggage to a nice little flat with warm water and food. As expected, the money didn't last long. Catherine was far too young to fully comprehend it, but a smart kid such as herself managed to grasp the general idea. Alice went back to the streets at night, came home drunk and drugged, sometimes beaten. The man she had married, he left them after not being able to live with a woman such as Alice when Catherine was ten. From then on, they had to hop from place to place, avoiding bills and law suits though the girl did manage to go to the same school, even if generally tired every early morning for having to take care of Alice once she had arrived home in a complete mess.
It was during her school years that she became passionate about gymnastics. The fact that she had the never-ending support of her gym teacher Tracy helped her getting really into it. Tracy signed her up for ballet lessons and paid for them, knowing she couldn't afford them, and helped her practice gymnastics. All of that, it made Catherine forget about the situation back home. At the age of eleven, both of them had created a friendship that much resembled a mother/daughter relationship, something Catherine had always craved for. The teacher started to look into legal work on how to adopt a child in a situation such as Catherine's and even was aided by Helen. Unfortunately, luck was not on their side for on Catherine's twelfth birthday, Tracy disappeared without a trace, shattering the little girl's heart.
That same night, she became aware of the existence of the Others.
At Tracy's apartment, where the girl had broken into to steal a picture of them as a memoir, she had an encounter with an eerie creature that ended up revealing himself as a vampire. A lot of what happened that night is mostly gone from her memory - maybe she blocked it, maybe she pretends she can't remember, but she doesn't talk about it. All she knows is that after waking up drenched in blood all alone in that apartment, Catherine fled the scene. She knew, after that encounter, she knew Tracy was alive and she had to find her. Had to know why she abandoned her. Why she had shattered her heart.
She got home late, very late and the stench of blood and her revolving stomach were making her sick. She didn't know whose blood was it, but she simply had to get it off of her. In the shower, she broke down and cried for the first time since the teacher had been gone. On an impulse, she cut her long black hair very short, trying to erase the memory of Tracy's hair playing with it, how she liked to braid it. Catherine didn't want to remember that. So, she cut it short, so short, chunks of hair falling all over the bathroom's tiles, floating on dirty red water.
She got dressed and stood in front of her Alice's empty room. She didn't say goodbye nor did she leave a note. Behind, all she left was everything that made her who she was, left all the memories and the sorrows, left behind her hair and her belongings and everything. She only took with her the dog tags that had belonged to Tracy and the photograph she had taken from her place.
And that girl with no home and no name would become Cat, never again acknowledging what she had once been, to fully become what she embraced the moment she left home, for home existed no more.
While years of living with Alice taught her to overcome dependence and how to take care of herself without relying on anyone, Cat was still only twelve. Many times she wanted to give up and go back, to ask Helen for help, but she always fought against it, out of pride and shame. She endured what came her way and learnt how to survive on her own, how to be street smart, how to adapt. As she became more and more detached from human contact, she grew colder and stoic, grew uncaring of those around her and only focused on her purpose, on her life goal: to find Tracy. Nothing else mattered.
Cat mostly lived on the streets, but she occasionally rested in empty houses. The homeless people that observed the daily life of the common man all around them tipped her about when home owners were out. Sometimes Helen, the only person she still maintained contact with from her previous life, offered a room for her to stay in at the strip club, which she by then owned.
The first time she shot a gun to kill was at the age of thirteen. During a quarrel, she managed to kick the gun out of the man's hand and when he aimed another one at her, she didn't even blink before pulling the trigger. It was a kill or be killed situation, however she wouldn't use the excuse. She shot him right in the face and eyes, guts, blood, it splattered all around her and she couldn't sleep nor eat for days.
That first kill... It brought her more than nightmares. The end of innocence, the blood-spilling of a living being. A couple of nights after said event, she encountered a strange, macabre jester-like figure. He introduced himself as Mister Macabre. Not very clever name, but it suited him perfectly. He was unique - no creature like him existed, or so he said. From him, Cat confirmed that Others did exist, as she had never encountered any clues until then, and they reigned during the darkest hours of the night. He knew she carried the Black Blood within, but he did not explain to her what it was exactly - perhaps he couldn't really understand it, perhaps he wanted to have the upper hand, but it didn't take long for Cat to slowly begin to discover what it did and how it would be used to her advantage.
Albeit she tried to maintain a low profile, by the age of fifteen Cat had already earned a titled through the underground. Among the people that were involved in that kind of life, everyone was aware of "Shadow Cat" (ridiculous, she would call it), some believing it was but an urban myth much like the boogie man. And just like the boogie man, she was real - and the Others knew it. Some of them knew she was the one that carried the Black Blood, but few knew what it was. Macabre, for his own benefit, shared information in regards to the Others and their activities. Not because Cat was concerned about the well being of humanity but because she still pursued any leads that could bring her to Tracy, though more and more they were hard to find.
Months later, Cat shot down the culprit of a series of murders, who turned out to be a rampaging Other possessing a policeman's body. Cat was nearly caught by a private detective, Lawrence John Blackmore. This man wasn't sure (couldn't be sure) of the existence of Others, but he let her go. From then on, Cat sometimes helped him and his friend Nikki, a photographer of Asian heritage who gained, during sleep, the extraordinary power of the Vision, where she could see things happening behind the dimensional doors.
Even so, Cat mostly worked on her own for.
As she began to discover more about the Black Blood, she began to understand that around her, the Others lost their immortality. She was able to make them half-immortal, sharing with her their never-ending life, giving them a zombie-like resistance. The head and the heart would become vulnerable spots for the Others around Catherine. In return, she was able to become more resistant to their powers, immune to the control of the soul, the mind and the body, regenerating fast from wounds and able to shake off their corrosive "magic" from her soul. But she did not know its cost. As she killed them, she offered them to Macabre, who would feed on their flesh to become more powerful and in return, he would give Cat any information he needed. A quid pro quo kind of servant.
When she was sixteen, she met a French reporter who was investigating peculiar case. Yvette Theuriau didn't know she had ran into something much more than what she had bargained for. While the case seemed to involve the kidnapping of women, it was more than just that. A vampire lord was involved in this and Cat was tracking him down and both ended up meeting when Cat infiltrated in an art museum, having followed a lead that his next victim would be there. Though it proved to be a fake lead, the reporter spotted her. Thinking she was a thief, Yvette caused a scene but Cat managed to flee; the persistent French woman followed right after her. After much ado, Blackmore came into the whole investigation and they ended up resolving the case which would lead Cat to another discovery regarding the vampires reign. While each House had their own Head, all of them reunited to discuss several problems in front of the Prince, one of the most powerful figures of the Otherside. After months of waiting and researching, Cat managed to figure out a set date so she could infiltrate and learn about Tracy's whereabouts. Because no matter how long ago it had been, Cat never really forgot her real intentions, why she was still alive, why she was doing what she did.
Able to infiltrate in the Prince's mansion with a little help of Macabre, Cat found out that many were worried about the Lady in Red (the Dame), who apparently wasn't going to attend the gathering. While many took that as an offence and tried to convince the Prince (a character that always kept himself in the shadows so Cat never got to see his face), a servant of said vampire made herself present not long after the discussion had started. The internal affairs of the vampires could have been important for humanity's sake, but Cat didn't care about them. She was following a lead on Tracy and couldn't care less about what happened or didn't with the Others - that was what they mostly discussed, on how to overcome Others by being a supremacy, thus able to claim a bigger number of victims, of power and of territory. However, the servant of the Dame brought to the table a subject that directly interfered with her, since it revolved around the Black Blood. Wary of this, Cat decided that perhaps the Lady in Red was worth some sort of investigation. Getting out of the gathering wasn't easy. Nearly out she was spotted but managed to escape barely alive, with the help of Blackmore.
Later on, as she investigated the Lady in Red, Yvette got into trouble and disappeared, having left no trace behind. Moments before, she had contacted Blackmore telling she was going to meet Cat back at her hotel room. The detective quickly suspected something was up, since the girl didn't meet up anyone ever, so he asked for her help to solve the case of the missing reporter. Cat confirmed his doubts when she said she hadn't asked anyone to meet her ("Especially not the nosy French," she would say) and while she didn't seem interested in rescuing the woman, she helped him and tried her very best to find her. After a month working with Blackmore, both finally found a lead on Yvette and Cat didn't hesitate to follow it due to a sort of a bad feeling clenching her gut. Cat seemed to give into those sort of impulses many times and it ended up being a deadly trap. She would die if the mastermind behind it wasn't someone who didn't want to kill her - not yet, at least.
What happened was that Cat would end up discovering something she had not even once thought about, not even regarding the why Yvette would meet up with Cat when she hadn't requested for it. The moment she met with the person was pretending to be her she discovered that her mother had had a premeditated birth in exchange for money. She was to be given to a rich couple, but she hadn't not because they had backed out but because they just wanted one child, and not two.
And that child they had received was today the Lady in Red. Her twin sister.
It wasn't a sibling bond that had brought Mary and Cat together, but the fact that the vampire twin had learned about the Black Blood and was surprised to find that her sister carried it. She was quite enraged because she herself had not been picked as the heir, which meant she had felt fear during birth, but she found herself a far better suitable candidate to carry such heritage than her human sister, who seemed to make no use out of it. She left her with a warning, saying that there was a way of killing the Black Blood heir and absorb it inside herself. The only reason she was still alive was because she was useful to Mary, who was searching for a way to gain her power. Although she should have felt frightened, the new discovery of having a twin sister - identical, without counting the vampire's hair which was long like Cat had once had - had completely got to her.
As expected of her, Cat never told anyone about the encounter. She was able to find Yvette nearly dead in an abandoned mirror house. She took her to Blackmore, who drove the wounded reporter to the hospital. Since then, Cat disappeared for quite a while to gather her thoughts.
Only after a long time did Cat appear again. By coincidence, that very same evening she was going back to gather information - now about both Tracy and Mary - she ended up getting into a fight with a Purged, an Other exiled from his home for having brought disgrace to his family. He managed to catch her off guard and stabbed her, but the proximity he risked exposed him to her and Cat was able to kill him. However, the wound was worse than she expected and she had to take shelter in what she thought to be an empty basement. It turned out to be a shelter for an empath that was running from the rain, a Brazilian emigrant called Carolina.
Carol took Cat to an old orphanage where she and other kids lived. There, she helped her recover from the wound. While it wasn't exactly a friendship - the British girl refused to allow herself to get any friends - a certain bond was formed between them. Her recovery was fast and Cat soon left teenager Carol with her kids to go find leads on Tracy.
Blackmore found her during one of his cases, while patrolling late at night, and informed her Yvette was recovered and was living near his block, travelling back and forth to France. Nikki had gone to America and apparently was pregnant. Lastly, it seemed that there was a new file open on "Shadow Cat" at the police, led by a new transfer, a woman called Parker Mullen, Blackmore's niece. None of this was exactly information she cared much for, but she took it in. Helen was the next she visited, for she needed a place to stay. The woman gave her quite the scolding out of concern, which ticked off Cat - to feel concern for her was to make oneself a target and she couldn't have that again.
The following month, Cat spent a lot of her time learning more about Mary than Tracy and, indirectly, about the Black Blood. It seemed that only humans were able to inherit it.
Mary was becoming a bit of an obsession of hers. Perhaps because she felt threatened by her. The twin held a certain power over Cat and the girl didn't like that at all. However, she wasn't the only one investigating and Mary ended up slowly making connections and through that, she got to Carol. To get under Cat's skin, something she clearly found pleasurable, she sacrificed the empath and killed her while making sure the short-haired girl watched all of it. This got to Cat so bad the girl put a hold on Tracy's footsteps to avenge Carol. She went on a manhunt for every vampire family that was useful to Mary, slaughtering as many as she could. It wasn't a most intelligent move, but Cat was far too tenacious to care by then, glass heart broken again by the heavy guilt of Carol's death upon her shoulders.
Such events eventually led her to her own demise. It seemed that Mary had far more influences than Cat was aware of and she was able to summon a gathering with the Prince to request his permission to form an alliance with a particular Other, a figure quite known in the underworld. He took Emil as his human name, an ancient Romanian shaitan who ruled over a small part of the Otherside. Somehow, he agreed in executing Cat. So one night, after a brief encounter with the police officer Parker, Cat was ambushed by Emil. Macabre, the Other she still kept around for information, apparently vanished when she most needed him. The shaitan took the girl to a deserted space, where a textile industry had once been active, and they fought. Emil was so ancient that he had grown powerful enough to influence the Black Blood running through Cat's veins against her. He was able to twist it against the vessel and dragged out this long execution, making sure it was as excruciating as she could take without letting her pass out, before delivering the final blow, ripping out her heart. He dropped the still beating muscle and the dead girl to the floor and left.
Her soul survived with the Black Blood cursing her forever by not allowing her to cross over. A war went down until someone could claim her as theirs, but by either luck or misfortune, the Arcadia salvaged the girl's soul. Amongst human stories, they were known as angels, however they were nothing like the Bible told. They were strict and austere, far from stories of forgiveness. With an authoritarian discipline, they made Cat one of their Omens, a prestigious role among them, upholders of truth and justice, but it was short lived. Because of the Black Blood she had and the corruption it had withstood throughout her years of fighting against the Others crawling on Earth, part of her soul was far too rotten and damaged to handle the "pure" essence of an Omen. Like most of them, she was to gain wings, but instead only managed to grow a deformed black wing. As soon as she was allowed to go back to Earth, she immediately went to seek for revenge and drunk in her power, killed Emil cold-blooded, something an Omen should never do without fair trial, thus leading to a trial of her own. She was Judged traitor and expendable to the Arcadia, even if she held a power that would be very convenient to them. They ripped her wing out and Punished her by sending her back to her body.
Regrettably for them, the Black Blood always took something it had been in contact with, so Cat was able to recover from a dead, rotting corpse due to the very few minutes the Black Blood carried the virtue of an Omen. This, however, came with a price. Not only was it painful like her bones, flesh and skin were made out of needles and nails, her ability to quickly recover from wounds nearly vanished, though she seemed to still have more stamina than a regular human. Her ability to identify an Other was muted to the point where she couldn't be certain, yet there was still a fickle remain of that power. And where once the broken wing had been was now a tender spot, a scar that would never heal - the only spot on her skin that would never withstand any touch of the skin of an Other.
Upon her return, she learnt that Mary had gone missing, so she went to focus once more on Tracy. That would soon prove to be impossible due to Parker's pursuit of the urban myth that "Shadow Cat" was - a name was sounding more and more pathetic as the girl herself grew. By that time, the myth had already faded, giving place to new urban legends of the underworld since Cat's feats were becoming increasingly more obscure as time passed. She was eighteen by the time she met with Parker again. The tempestuous detective was resolute in accusing Cat of all charges, but she was proven half wrong as they were caught by a famished ghoul, a lost Other that would feed on any kind of human being. While Parker nearly lost an arm, Cat strained herself far too much in trying to finish it off while protecting the confused officer, since it was too soon for a "recovering corpse" to exercise too much. When she woke up again, she noticed she had been taken to Blackmore's place by the young woman, who later closed the file on "Shadow Cat" for good after finding rather plausible evidences that most of what had been archived in the file were merely urban myths.
Time went by. Cat searched relentlessly for anything that could relate to Tracy and every little thing was precious to her, even if it meant endangering her life - she was used to that after years of doing so, but through those years, she had met all those people and slowly figured out that she wasn't made neither of stone nor ice and she did need the occasionally human contact, for she went to them when they didn't come to her. Her relationship with Blackmore was strong, the detective acting very much like a protector. Helen was a haven for when Cat needed rest, while Yvette made her feel like a teenager she had never been. The slowly developing affinity with Parker proved to be almost like the one she had had with Carol, an odd kind of friendship where Cat felt almost safe again.
And then there was Khel, the fallen Other that had once stabbed. She had a sort of... carnal relationship with him. He fed off of sex, she sometimes needed to "scratch an itch". She was not a little kid, she was a woman and she was no innocent. While it wasn't a great relationship, she would consider him an ally rather than a friend. More on neutral grounds. Then there was Audrey, a vampire who had turned very powerful after Cat's killing spree. She risked a lot when she aided Cat, but she gained a lot as well. While she wasn't good by any means, she did not see all humans as sheep like most of her kin. And she had a sort of affection for Cat. Just as with Khel, on occasion, they would share a bed. Besides, it wasn't everyone (anyone) that could feed off the Instrument of the Black Blood. But Cat seldom had encounters as those and she rarely gave in to the wills of others.
As the English Autumn rain began to fall, Cat received a little visit from someone she hadn't seen in a long time: Macabre. The Other seemed rather changed, more powerful, but still comfortable in acting as a servant to the Instrument of the Black Blood. He carried a valuable information that held the answer Cat had been searching for years and years: Tracy whereabouts. However, for this piece of knowledge, Cat had to give Macabre something in return, something he had also been searching for a long time. While he didn't tell her right away what it was, he did tell her if was she to accept this she should know it involved a trip to the Otherside. It was known that humans couldn't live more than one hour there, but he assured that, because she carried the Black Blood, she should be safe for at least three hours, which were about two weeks in the human realm. Before she accepted it, Macabre disappeared for one day to let her think about it, knowing the pressure wouldn't let her sleep. She decided to tell Blackmore about Tracy then, making him vow not to ever say anything about it to anyone. He told her that if she was sure she would come out alive, then she should go ahead and do it, but in the end, it was her call. Audrey told her not to dwell in the Otherside. Khel told her she was strong enough if she wanted.
Cat ended up agreeing to Macabre's preposition and the moment he appeared, she told him to take her to the Otherside. She nearly regretted it as they got there, a trip only achieved by an enormous strain on her body as she had to dive in a lake that was skin cutting cold - the door was beyond depths of the lake. She had to use all of her willpower to pass through it and all of her stealth to sneak through the Otherside unseen until she reached the place Macabre wanted her to. It seemed like the ruins of a once beautiful mansion with a fountain that instead of water spat blood. As they got there, Macabre presented to her what he needed her to do. He needed her to rip the soul of a Herald, a promising Arcadian, a to-be Omen, so that he could feed on him. The Arcadians had Judged her and Punished her, but Cat held little against them and the fact she had to kill one of them made her nauseated, especially one that reminded her so much of one of Carol's kid - only to later discover he had been one of her kids.
Macabre held the last piece of information she needed to find Tracy. And she had very little time left to return to the human realm. Against everything she had build herself to be at that point, Cat ended up doing what the Other told her to and fed Macabre the wailing Herald in return to what she would forever regret.
It was Macabre that took her to the place he had said Tracy last track led to. Still on the Otherside and with very little time left to return, Cat forced herself to endure the pain that realm caused her so she could see what this lead was. Macabre wasn't allowed to go near the place. It was pitch dark and she couldn't see a thing, but guiding herself by hearing and touch, she managed to reach a garden, dead silent and empty. At first, she thought Macabre had tricked her, but as she walked further into that seemingly endless darkness, Cat began to notice a woman laying on the floor, naked. She was sure who it was. Cat rushed to her side and gently turned her while calling her name. And she wasn't wrong, it was Tracy. Only a changed Tracy. A Tracy that had been corrupted by the Others, for she had turned into one of them and didn't recognize her. As a succubus, she had tried to simply attract a lost human to herself and as soon as the girl was near, the once human lunged at Cat and tried to devour her soul.
Barely escaping the encounter, she ended up crashing against Tracy's owner, one of the very first Others ever spat into the universe, a shaitan as ancient as the Otherside itself. Time was running out and she would soon crumble under the darkness of the realm. It was pure luck Cat escaped the unnamed shaitan, narrowly managing to find another exit back to Earth.
Because the time in the Otherside worked in different way, the three and a half hours she had been gone had given enough time to the human realm to turn into Winter, so when she returned, the lake was frozen. It was a shit load of luck, but the fact that lake was the one near Parker's new place was what saved Cat from drowning. The detective was just returning from work when she heard some odd sounds coming from under the frozen lake. Then, she saw blood and a struggling hand coming from beneath the ice. Parker set the girl free and took her home to ensure she wouldn't die of hypothermia. However, the fact that Cat couldn't stop crying worried her far more than the fact she had been gone for nearly one season.
It took a while for Cat to recover emotionally and physically. Her body had been pushed to its very limits to endure her stay in the Otherside, so it took her weeks to improve. Parker took care of her, although she told Blackmore that Cat was back the moment she had found her. During her rebound, she tried to make the girl live a somewhat regular, steady and normal life, though she seemed to have shut herself even more from everyone after the day she had been found in the lake. Slowly, however, Cat began to search for a new motive, and as obvious as it was, bringing Tracy to salvation was what she then decided to do.
She just needed to find a way how to bring back an Other to their human souls again.
And the Black Blood would play a vital role. She just didn't know.
Personality: Catherine was born without fear. Because of this, she is the Instrument of the Black Blood. However, it is not because of this that she has not learned what is fear. She knows it. She lives in it. They have became acquaintances, and so has death, misery, and pain. She is the prerogative of determination and of perseverance. But most of all, she is the shell of a butterfly - the armour around a glass heart. A swarm of butterflies appeared and the people were frightened - thinking they were an omen of coming evil.
Lafcadio Hearn
➡ FROM THE BEGINNING;
The life of the Instrument of the Black Blood is not easy and requires a metamorphosis. Catherine was not always like this. She was once a sweet, smiling girl with long dark hair and a special sparkle in her eyes, dreams and aspirations she was willing to chase. Her life fell to pieces when the one person that could help her through her difficulties disappeared - from Catherine to Cat, she built and impenetrable shell around her glass heart, a fragile thing she never shows. Instead of sweet, she became sour, stoic. Instead of chasing dreams, she hunted down nightmares. And instead of a smiling face, she became expressionless.
➡ BENEATH A SHELL LIES A GLASS HEART;
Don't be fooled. Cat has a lot of trust issues - in fact, it's almost unhealthy the amount of fear she has of letting herself get close to a person, a fear masked by stoicism as a way to save herself from suffering. Just like any other person, she hates to suffer and will avoid it at any cost. Of course, this is about inner torment, for she doesn't seem to think much about her physical integrity, which has earned her quite a few crazy wounds. This is not because she has some kind of death wish, like some have wondered, but because she will go through any pain to achieve an end. Cat doesn't back down, even if it's her life on the line, but it's mostly because she knows she has to take chances to be able to get something done.
Nevertheless, because Cat has forced herself to grow up so suddenly, she still has difficulties in establishing relationships and just like a child, her heart is like made of glass and can be easily wounded, even if she doesn't show it since she doesn't seem to ever take off that mask of impassivity, the aloof, apathetic way she deals with people. Honestly, she won't admit it, but all she needs, sometimes, is to feel safe again, to fall asleep without her gun under her pillow and be alright with it.
Sometimes, when she closes her eyes, she can see the remaining of the smiling Catherine whose dream is to become a ballerina.
➡ SIN: PRIDE;
Because of her pride, she doesn't like running away from anything unless it involves the life of someone she's loyal to. Although she will risk herself for others, she can be quite selfish and cold; killing Others is not a task she takes because it ensures the safety of humans, but because it's a lead to Tracy, something she alone wants and really couldn't care less about what other people may say or think of her.
Don't try to do anything for her. She won't like it unless you have known her for years. It's hard for her to let go of things, especially revenge. She will not rest until she can calm the anger ticking in her chest.
➡ PEOPLE ARE PEOPLE;
It's no secret that Cat's people skills are poorer than the lonely weird kid in high school, so small talk is something she very much detests and can't even grasp. Cat is so bad at it that she's hurtful even when she doesn't mean to be and sarcastic when she's trying not to - she can have terrible, vicious remarks and a biting sarcasm that put off the most friendly of people, but with time, people get used to it because it's very evident that she doesn't mean it most of the time. In fact, she can be a... somewhat amiable person once in a blue moon, mostly by gestures she'd rather not acknowledge than by words, since she has never been good with those. It's probably due to that fact that she can't help but to be bluntly honest and sometimes a little brutal in her speech, but in the end, she's not much of a talker and doesn't like to talk about herself the very least. Sometimes a thing or two will slip from her tongue - after all, she is only human - but mostly, she keeps her mouth shut and kicks away anyone that sticks their noses in her business, because, yes, she does have an ugly temper, even if she's hard to actually aggravate. She'll often resort to violence if she's feeling suffocated by the intrusion of her privacy (which is easy to do, to be honest, given how wide the personal bubble she has around her is bigger than an elephant).
➡ NEVER BACK DOWN;
Perseverance. Perhaps indirectly related to her pride, Cat has the sort of determination that many people can't seem to get. She has been through so much shit that it's somewhat incredible to see that she holds on to hope as if it has never been shattered and kicked and diminished and ridiculed. She is stubborn and clings to her ideals and to the ideas she sets in her head like a vicious little thing.
➡ OF DESIRE;
If you come up with the concept of sexuality, Cat will look at you funny. As one gathers, she is out of touch with society, but not so much that she doesn't know what sexuality is. She simply isn't deep enough to even care of what others think. She isn't a lustful person by nature, but sometimes there is that need - and once it's there, she doesn't beat around the bush much. She doesn't talk much, but she is rather ardent when it comes to passion. She has never been rejected because she has never branched out much, but she hardly takes initiative when it comes to this. It's not that she is coy nor inexperienced, it's simply because she has zero social skills, so she will probably just stare at the person until said target learns how to read her mind.
➡ TALK LESS THINK MORE;
Most people notice how Cat usually grunts, hmphs, hms, shrugs, nods, glares and tends to mutter only monosyllables. She hardly speaks. But that does not mean that she doesn't think. She is not booksmart - she was an okay student, but she never really liked the more theoretical classes. She is, however, hardly ever not thinking. She tends to do a lot of introspection. And she listens. She listens to things some people aren't even aware of. She's patient yet tempestuous and that tends to throw off people. She may seem impulsive, but she has simply learned to trust her instincts and bad feelings, given as they have saved her life more than many times.
Because she hardly voices her thoughts, she tends to pass by as an enigmatic and even mysterious person - most of the time, secretive and rather unsympathetic. But really, she is simply reserved and antisocial.
➡ BULLETS LIKE BUTTERFLIES;
Cat is not sure of many things and has many doubts, but in her heart, she knows it she will die sooner than she wants. And instead of taking this a permission to do crazy things, she takes it as a warning. Although she dives head first into stupid situations, she usually is sure she will come out alive. Or sometimes there is no other way to achieve an end than acting like so. But she has no desire to die before she can save everyone she loves.
➡ WEAR LOYALTY AROUND YOUR NECK;
It's not every day that Cat lets someone come close to her, but once you are within her "okay" group, you will have her undying loyalty. She will go out of her way to make sure those she is loyal to are not harmed.
She's scared to death that she will lose them - even if she doesn't show it. She can't even think about a "what if" situation of someone else dying because of her again. She still carries the heavy burden of Carol's death and she will never forgive herself for not being able to protect her when she needed her most.
She tends to beat herself up a lot for the misery that happens around her. She thinks she is a magnet for bad luck, which is the main reason why she pushes people away. But the more she pushes them away, the more she wants them close. The more people close in on her, the more frightened she is - frightened because she's afraid her glass heart won't be able to withstand one more loss.
Abilities: She's proficient with handguns, knives and unharmed combat. She doesn't know any martial art, simply experience with street fight which isn't, not by a long shot, an exquisite martial art of any kind. She's always been quite the acrobat, given her talent with gymnastics, a talent she has been refining ever since she was a child, thus she is extremely agile and can improvise during the many situations she gets into, putting parkour artist to shame. She also had some lessons in ballet, and though she has retained them, she does not have a good technique.
She has always had a lot of pain tolerance, which helps her get through accidents she might get involved in.
Although she can no longer use the Black Blood to identify Others, her life experience has given her the instinct to know that certain creatures aren't human. The Black Blood gives her some other abilities; she can no longer recover quickly from fatal wounds because of her death, but still has a stamina beyond human levels. The most precious gift she has been granted with is the fact that her soul can't be corrupted and her mind can't be controlled, though a powerful Other aware of the Black Blood in her veins might be able to pull on some strings. On the downside, she seems immune to what one could consider "pure" powers, which makes healing all up to her own body.
Of course the most useful power is that anyone around her become only half-immortal. She can kill those that possess the gift of immortality with a precise shot to the heart or to the head.
Possessions: Besides her clothes, she has a small knife, her dog tags, a photography of her and Tracy when she was about eleven and her gun, a Beretta.
Anything else: The Earth Cat comes from is in almost every way equal to the one we're living now, with a major difference: on this Earth, creatures called Others exist. The Others are what we commonly know as "demons", "vampires" and these obscure creatures many fantasize about. The year is 2004, not 2010, but everything that has happened until then on this Earth has happened in Cat's Earth. As a mark of the vessel of the Black Blood, butterflies, creatures with a short life span, seem be attracted to Cat and vice-versa, perhaps a bit of a symbolic sign, like a bad omen or the indication of her condemned soul.
IMPORTANT!!
Cat does not have a soul. Her soul has been scattered in tiny pieces throughout butterflies - past, present, and future butterflies, that will keep on living on until the Black Blood can completely take over her.