Chapter Text
The rain tapped against the top of the black umbrella, the worst of it had already come and gone, so all that remained had been the dull murmur of what it once was. If she had pushed on earlier, she might have already been home. The idea of trying to push through the cold harsh rain of London had been less than desirable. Especially after the day that she had. Tucking the black trench coat tighter against her body in attempts to warm her, Catherine shivered as the cold breeze seemingly cut right through her, coat and all. She would be needing a new one, as useful it might have been in the past, it had been used thoroughly to the point that the hem of her main pockets had slowly torn apart and the buttons on the top of her coat had been resewn several times already. She’d have bought a new one if she could, but after spending all of her money on rent and her weekly food, that had only left her with a sliver of her paycheck to last for the next paycheck, and those were small as is. As rich as the canning company that she worked as a Secretary for had been, her paychecks never seemed to mirror in the same way. As much as women were still allowed to remain in the workforce, their paychecks and working conditions hadn’t changed. It hadn’t helped that all the money she had in her savings that she had gotten from her father in his will had already been drained of every cent just getting her here. She was stuck. Forever stuck in a cycle of working, coming home, eating a little bit of food and then resting for the night where she would restart the process all over again bright and early the next morning.
She was tired. So very tired. It hadn’t been any sort of physical tiredness, her job hadn’t been physically demanding, a blessing she cherished. It had been a mental form of exhaustion. Taking in a deep breath, Catherine reaches for the fabric just above her heart and clutches tightly while standing in the middle of the empty streets of London. She needed to calm down, needed to shove it all down in the small hole she had created in her mind when she had been a child. A lesson from her father she would never forget, something that she would have to continue to do perhaps for the rest of her life. Though with the mental stress she receives at her job either from other co workers or customers who complain relentlessly is beginning to make that task more difficult the longer that she stays there. It's not something she can simply stop doing either, ever since she could remember, her father had always told her that if she ever got too overwhelmed emotionally, then it would cause harm to her body. So from then on, she had always hidden her emotions, never reacted, and grew up faster. Throwing away her childhood for the sake of her safety. There had never been any incidents that had caused any harm to her, not that she remembered. Her father had seemingly believed differently. It was the desperation and fear in his voice that she remembered the deepest, how he pushed so desperately to shove the same words into her mind so that she might not forget. She had hoped that he might be proud of how far she had gotten now, for twenty nine years she had been able to contain everything. All the while others around her saw her as someone that could be walked over easily, she had kept it inside. She never pitied herself, never made a show of it nor demanded praise. It was simply something she knew needed to be done.
It had been incredibly hard to do when both her and her aunt had gotten news from the other soldiers about her father’s death. He had served in the first World War, for the two years he had served in the war he had sent countless letters. Given countless gifts of small knick knacks he had found on the field that they allowed him to send over. She had been hopeful back then, that he might survive and come back to them. Catherine could remember the overwhelming surge that had coursed through her fingertips as the grief had seeped in, the familiar tingling sensation in her fingertips that always rocketed up to her shoulders whenever her emotions had gotten too high. But she had not faltered, for the sake of his memory, she had swallowed down the grief and composed herself. After that, she had remained living with her Aunt until she had gotten enough money that she might be able to come here. With her father gone, she felt that it was finally time to confront the one mystery that had drifted in her family ever since she had turned eleven.
The disappearance of her mother.
The disappearance hadn’t correlated with any sort of kidnapping, she had simply abandoned them just a few months before her eleventh birthday. Without saying a single word, she had packed up and left them all behind. She remembered the devastation that her father had felt back then, how distant his eyes had looked, how much he kept to himself for weeks. Catherin’s aunt had been the angriest of them all, though it hadn’t helped that she had always hated her as far back as she could remember. For her, she had only felt confusion. Confused as to why her mother would suddenly leave, neither of her parents had fought the night before, things had seemed just as normal as everything had been growing up. So to wake up one morning and not find her sitting at the kitchen table sharing a breakfast with her father had felt alien. Unfamiliar.
Before she had moved here, she had come across old letters that her father had saved between the two of them when she had left. As saddened her father had been in the moment, the two of them had eventually come in contact again. Though only for a brief time, he would soon be drafted to the war and his letters would grow less frequent. In a majority of her letters, she commonly spoke about how much she had loved London, how she had missed them and had apologized profusely for her sudden leave, that there was something that needed to be done and could not delve any further in their letters. That all would be revealed in good time. So thus she took a boat and made her way to London and obtained the same job that her mother had briefly spoken about having while she had been there. Granted, those letters had been old, so there was no way that she would find her mother there immediately. But the hope that she might grasp even the smallest bit of information from co workers that might have worked there when she had would be more than enough.
She knew that it would take a long time to find her, but she was more than willing to do whatever it took. There were questions that needed to be answered, and once she found her, she was not going to allow her to slip through her fingers without at least answering a few. Firstly, she would ask why she had left them, and secondly, to see if she had any answers as to why she was never allowed to fully express her emotions. In the two years that she had been already working in this job, she had found out a few things. Regrettably she had missed her mother by nearly three years, seemingly quitting out of nowhere and falling off of the face of the earth for all they cared for. Though not before she left a deep enough impression with the company that her telling them that she was her daughter had helped her exponentially in achieving a job in the company. The current owner had held high regards for her mother, and in return had high hopes for her. Though in two years she had spent in that company, that had been the only information she had been able to receive.
She was growing desperate.
With little to no money now, she hardly had enough to pay for her just to live in the shack of an apartment and place food on her table. With the little to no money in her paychecks and unbearably long work hours, she hardly had any time to herself. Let alone any time for her to look for any outside clues about her mother. Remembering her mothers name had only gotten so far, if anything it had only sparked rumors among the staff when they had heard her mother had a different last name than her fathers, according to them she had kept the first name but changed her last name to something entirely different. Many of them believed that she had left due to some incredible scandal between them, perhaps her father getting too close to a woman at work, or a man inviting her mother off to some sort of date. She doubted every single rumor they had tried to spread. She knew her mother and father well enough based on the letters and the little bit of memories that she still clung onto. The people she read about had seemed like the exact opposite that they tried to paint, they were two people very much in love. Though separated by something large enough that had forced her mother to abandon them all in New York and leave for London.
If luck would have it though, she isn’t entirely alone at her job. In the time that she has worked there, two women have happily outstretched their arms, happily pulling her into their circle of friendship. They hadn’t worked the same job that she had, the two of them had been cleaning ladies. So whenever she had seen them, it had been near the end of her shift. Seeing them had always brightened the very end of her shift, wiped away all of the stress and annoyance, even if it was only for a brief moment. Though with the long hours that she works, it disallowed her from ever accepting any invitations they had given her, countless times she had denied invitations to dance parties on their day offs, or drive in movies. Without a car or bike to take her to work, she would be forced to walk. Which meant she would need to wake up even earlier than she might have with having a car if she wanted to get there on time. And her new boss very much pushed for her to arrive earlier in the day. With the son of the previous boss now in charge of the company, he constantly pushed new ideas on her that he felt might better the company. Which one of them had apparently been coming in earlier in the hopes that she’d be able to work on her files faster and get her out of work all the quicker. Which it hadn't. If anything, she had gone out the same time every night that she had before getting to work sooner. They had tried countless times to push for her to go with them at least once on her own days off, but with the tiredness creeping in every single day, all that she had wanted to do on her day off had been to sleep. Sleep or shop for her groceries. That was all that she had the energy for. She was well aware how pitiful it had made her look, compared to the other girls her age, they had been married off and already having children, living job free lives and having all the time in the world to relax when not caring for their children. But that hadn’t been why she was here. So there was no need to focus on finding a suitor or even attempt romance.
There was one thing she desperately missed about New York. The blue skies. Where she had lived with her aunt, she had luckily lived away from the city and the thick smog that covered the sky in the city. Living here, it seemed that the skies were covered with the same dark grey clouds nearly every day, the snow here had been dreadfully bone chilling cold. Even worse for her due to her having to walk through it every day for a total of two hours. The walk had been far, nearly an hour. So whenever she had left work, no matter how high the sun might have been in the sky, by the time that she would get home the sky would be dark and the streetlamps brightly lit.
A piercing yowl cuts through her dreadful thoughts and brings her back to reality. Narrowing her eyes, Catherine scans the empty streets in her neighborhood. The yowl had seemed relatively close to that of a cat, though at the same time had not seemed normal. Quietly waiting, she stands firm in the middle of the sidewalk, the dull rain now a light drizzle, hardly recognizable. As soon as a secondary piercing yowl echoes into the air, she takes off running, without hesitation. The only thing filling her mind had been a desperate hope that whatever thing had caused such a sound would be something real, something with form. Not just something she had imagined. Growing up, throughout her childhood and even throughout her adult years she had always seen odd things appearing for but a brief moment in the corner of her vision. A majority of the time, it had always been the same thing, men and women rushing through the streets with what seemed to be thick sticks in their hands. There had even been moments where she had seen them suddenly appear out of thin air only for them to reappear somewhere else, some even seemed to walk through walls. When she had told someone about the marvel of it all, they had quickly brushed it off that she had an intense imagination, that she needed to pull her head out of the clouds. Her father and aunt in the past had even considered bringing her to therapy worried that she might have gone insane. After bearing no success in her attempts to share with others what she experienced, she eventually began ignoring them, another thing for her to keep to herself.
Rushing down a side street going the complete opposite direction of her route home, Catherine quickly closed her umbrella and strained her ear to hear where it might have gone next. With the distance she had traveled, she could now hear additional voices alongside the terrified yowling. Based on how it sounded, she had quickly assumed it to be men, though it confused her in that moment as she rushed down the dark street; what would a bunch of men be doing with something that sounded like an odd cat? A burning anger coursed through her chest at the thought of them possibly harming it. Straining to hear the arguing, she shook her head, no, it couldn’t be men. They had sounded too much like children, perhaps in their teens if she had to assume. Rushing past the tall stretching homes that connected to their neighbor on either side, Catherine quickly turned into an alleyway, the soles of her shoes skidded on the wet pavement nearly knocking her off balance. Grabbing for the wall, she centered her balance and continued onward until the alleyway opened into a small circled roundabout where a singular tree sat surrounded by shrubs. Just in front of the shrubs, she watched as four teenage boys surrounded what she assumed to be a cat. Though not exactly. Blinking her eyes, she focused back on the shape of the cat once again. Sure enough, she hadn’t imagined it. Not only had the cat been quite large for a cat, but for a split second it seemed as though its form changed. The small blue beady eyes swelled to large blue ones before shifting back wincing in pain from the rocks that the teenagers threw at it.
The burning hot fury coursed through her chest once more.
“Did you see the way it changed?” One of the four boys scowled in disgust. “Nasty ugly thing.”
“It ain't natural,” A second agreed.
A third in their group held a rock in their hand, seemingly the size of a small ball and threw it just in front of the feet of the odd cat. “Is it stupid or somethin?” He called out loud. “It won’t move.”
“That’s cause you’ve been missing you idiot.” The fourth leaned in close to the third boy. “You’ve gotta throw it like the others and I have, you need to hit the ugly thing.”
“Don’t hold back Donavan, It deserves it.” The first boy that she had heard spoke sneered.
“It does deserve it.” Donavan slowly nodded.
“It does, the things a bloody monster.” The second kid added.
In front of them, the terrified black hairless cat curled in on itself, too afraid to move or run. Stepping forward, she watched its large blue orbed eyes open, a look of desperation and hope briefly flooded its eyes. She swore she could feel it crying out for help, for her to step in. based on where she stood now, she could see the deep bruises and gnarly cuts that seeped with blood. One of its eyes had been closed shut with swelling as well. They had been going at this for a long time by the looks of it. So her actions in the next few moments would not bother her, nor would she regret it.
“You’re the bloody monster!” Catherine shouted angrily towards the boys, raising her hand in the air, she angrily swung her umbrella above her head.
Turning to face her, the four of them narrowed their eyes in either confusion or disgust, she didn’t care. The first boy spoke up while pointing to the injured cat, “Are we seeing the same thing lady?”
“What I see is four idiotic teenagers who think its funny to torture a defenseless cat.” Catherine snarled as she took a few steps forwards. She could feel the tingling coursing through her fingertips, but she did not stop.
“Defenseless?” One of them laughed. “Lady, you should have seen this thing an hour ago. The bloody thing was massive, if we hadn’t arrived it could have snatched up a child, or harmed someone else.”
“So because you assume it to be a harmful creature, you act without any proof?” Catherine demanded.
“Why do you care what we do with it?” Donavan lifted his chin in defiance. “Just continue on what you were doing and get out of here. What we’re doing is good work.”
“What do I care?” She half laughed. “I care that you’re attacking what could be a harmless cat. So what if it was larger than normal? So what if it looks weird? If it looks different? Are you so idiotic that you would blindly attack someone because they were different?”
Their silence cried out louder than their words.
“Is it because it’s easier to pick on an animal?” Catherine stepped forwards, now only a few feet away from them. She watched in the corner of her eye as the creature curled further into the shrub. She could see the size of its body beginning to grow larger, seeming as though it was ready to pounce at any moment. Was this actually a regular cat? Surely it was?
“We watched it change, it isn’t natural. It could hurt someone.” The third boy attempted to demand. “You should be thanking us, we’re saving the neighborhood.”
Catherine’s scowl deepened. “All I see are children doing something incredibly foolish. Now get out of here before I report you to the police.” She angrily waved her umbrella at them. “It’s late, so you shouldn’t even be out this late to begin with.”
The four of them looked at one another, a couple of them still clinging to the rocks in their hands tightly. Had they believed so heavily that they were in the right? That they should be deemed heroes of the neighborhood? They were insane! So what if the creature looked different, looked as if it might cause harm. Those children had no way of knowing whether or not it’d actually be a threat, so they had taken matters into their own hands.
When they did not move and remained standing in front of the terrified cat and still held onto the rocks Catherine closed the rest of the distance waving her arm holding onto the umbrella wildly. Yelping as they ducked out of the way of her wild swings, they quickly dropped the rocks they held in their hands and slowly dispersed.
The fourth kid that had spoken in their group had been the last to leave, his eyebrows had been creased into a deep scowl. “You’re insane lady.”
“At least I don’t harm random animals.” She countered.
“I’m going to tell my mother you threatened to hit me.” He scowled.
“Go ahead, just don’t forget to add why I stepped in. That you helped harm an innocent animal after dark. I’m sure she’ll love that.” Catherine laughed.
Without replying, the boy spat to the side onto the ground taking off into a direction another one of the boys had gone. When they had finally left, Catherine slowly kneeled down to one knee ignoring how wet her work pants were going to be. The black hairless cat shivered from what she assumed to be the cold and fear and stared, unsure if it should flee or attack. Holding out her hand, Catherine lowered her body closer to the ground to show she would be no threat. Something she always did to the alley cats she tried to have them come closer. The smaller she was to them, the lesser of a threat she should have been. By the look on its face as well, it had seemed to work. Though not fully, it would not trust her immediately, not after what they had just done.
“It’s alright, I’m not going to hurt you. Those bad kids are long gone, it’s just us.” Catherine smiled sweetly, her hand still extended for it to sniff.
\
Reaching out towards the strange shaped cat, the creature stiffened its eyes still wide with fear. she swore she saw its pupils disappear, a trick of the light she assumed. Taking the risk so that she might get closer to the poor thing, Catherine slowly shuffled a few inches forwards towards the creature. A mistake on her end. Reacting to her getting closer, the cat let out a hissing yowl extending its clawed paws scratching the side of her pale forearm. Wincing, Catherine halted her pace, daring herself not to move. As terrified as this creature was, she would have to wait for it to be willing to come towards her. Its trust in humans had already been incredibly low due to the boys attacking it the way they had, so it was safe to assume this wouldn't be an experience that would end with it immediately rushing into her arms.
Watching the black cats eyes as it slowly looked towards her bleeding arm, it looked back towards her, almost confused. "You're scared, I can understand that. What those boys did to you was awful, and I'm sorry I hadn't gotten here sooner. Gosh, I wish I really could have. Then perhaps you wouldn't have suffered the way you have. You can trust me. I won't hurt you. I know it sounds silly after what you've experienced; I've always been told growing up that animals as much as people believe to be unintelligent can be the exact opposite. I hope the same is for you, that you might be able to understand me, if not by words but at least through the sound of my voice." She calmly tried.
She swore it looked at her as if understanding her words, a look of intelligence deep behind those bright blue eyes. After pondering for a moment, she watched as the cats form slowly shrink to the size of a normal feline, though still hairless, and begin to creep forward and calmly sniff her hand. Elated by the fact that it had been willing to sniff her, Catherine did what she could to reign in her excitement. She couldn’t scare it off. Not when she was so close.
Within a split second, the black hairless cat pulled back from sniffing her hand and without hesitation lept into her arms curling tightly against her frame for warmth. With a yelp of surprise, Cathrine quickly enveloped her arms around the cat and sat there on the wet pavement listening to the soft broken purrs that thrummed against her chest. In that moment she not only felt victorious for saving said creature, but also because this cat had been real. It hadn’t been just something in the corner of her eye. But something real and in front of her. She watched as it changed sizes, its eyes as well. This feline had been no ordinary creature. And it was real. Surely this was enough evidence to prove that she wasn't crazy, that it wasn’t just her imagination. And if she saw this creature, then perhaps all that she has seen growing up had been true as well.
A/n: and thus ends the first chapter where we introduce the main character of this plot ;p this story will follow the plot line of the second Fantastic Beasts movie with some added scenes of my own as well. I hope you enjoy it and continue to read!