Catriona "Cat" Fraser

Character Information

Gender		Female
Species		Human (Ichorborn lineage, undisclosed)
Age		27

Physical Appearance

Height		5′6″ (167 cm)
Weight		135 lb (61 kg)
Hair Color		Dark brown
Eye Color		Brown (faint gold filigree visible under harsh light)
Physical Description		Lean runner’s build; deliberate economy of movement. Plain, well-kept suits with practical shoes until she reaches the lobby; a braided leather bracelet in muted tartan on her wrist. Keeps her hair in a simple tie for scenes. Voice is steady and low with traces of her gran’s Glasgow vowels. Tends to “disappear into the job” on site—minimal gestures, sharp tracking eyes, and a notebook always to hand. Under stress, those close by sometimes notice a clean, metallic gold-ozone scent.

Family

Father		Unknown (records list “—”), identity withheld/unknown; suspected Olympian in mortal guise.
Mother		Moira Fraser Senior Case Officer with the Meridian Commission (cover: inter-jurisdictional liaison). A loving but secretive presence across Cat’s childhood; long “work trips,” hushed calls, and carefully edited answers.
Other Family		Isla Fraser (Grandma) A scattering of Fraser relatives in the mid-Atlantic; cordial but not close.

Personality & Traits

General Overview		Relentless pattern-spotter with a controlled exterior and a quiet, often disarming calm. Cat meets gossip with results and pressure with procedure; she would rather burn the midnight oil than ask a favour she hasn’t earned. Keeps her circle tight. Trust, once given, is bone-deep.
Strengths & Weaknesses		Strengths: • Pattern discipline — threads links others miss; tidy scene craft with Office of the Chief Medical Examiner (OCME)/Crime Scene Unit (CSU). • Interview control — lets silence work; escalates without theatrics. • Urban footwork — knows Baltimore’s alleys, tunnels, and cut-throughs; hard to box in. • Emotional containment — steady hands when rooms run hot. Weaknesses: • Authority allergy — bristles at being handled, especially by deniable feds. • Isolationist streak — carries weight alone; burnout risk. • Legacy shame — rumours around her early promotion can rattle her judgment. • Family blind spot — “for your safety” from Mum is a red rag.
Ambitions		Short-term: keep victims centred; run tight, ethical casework under rising political heat. Medium-term: re-earn her reputation by output, not rumour; build a homicide bench that trusts itself under pressure. Personal: decide who gets the truth about her lineage—and on what terms.
Hobbies & Interests		Dawn runs along Jones Falls; black coffee and too many notebooks; low-fi playlists on long drives between scenes; sporadic boxing gym sessions when sleep won’t come. Keeps a small collection of found keys and old city maps.

Personal History

Early Years — South Baltimore Cat split her childhood between a narrow rowhouse and the care of Gran Isla Fraser while Moira was on “work trips.” Gran taught her quiet structure—lists on index cards, walking “ways home” mapped through alleys and bus lines, and the habit of solving problems by changing the angle, not the volume. Scottish touches lingered (a braided tartan thread Cat still wears; New Year salt at the door), along with a few of Gran’s rules: learn two routes, let silence do work, keep your notes tidy. Cat wasn’t loud at school; she was exact—winning small map quizzes and library hunts, and learning the feel of a street before it turns. One childhood scare (Gran slipping on the stairs) became a lesson: treat bad moments like scenes to make safer. By the time Moira’s absences started to mean something, Cat had a runner’s rhythm, a clean notebook, and a city she knew block by block. Subtle Glasgow vowels surface when she’s tired; they disarm people more than she realises. Why the Badge A hit-and-run outside her block when she was a teen fixed her direction. The officer who handled the scene remembered names, kept the crowd calm, and came back three days later with an update because he’d promised to. That keeping of promises imprinted. Cat decided the job was a set of tools you carried so other people didn’t have to. Academy & Patrol (Years 0–3) Cat wasn’t the loudest recruit; she was the one whose notebook had arrows between notes. On patrol she gravitated to partners who liked tight radios and clean hand-offs. She collected “edges” the way some collect pins: which alley cameras were actually live, which deli owner always knew when a fight was brewing, which block had the bad lighting after a power sag. A pattern emerged—she showed up minutes before things tipped, snatched people out of worsening situations, and wrote reports that made supervisors’ jobs easier. She chalked it up to pacing and knowing the route home. Major Crimes Track (Years 3–5) Cat’s transfer wasn’t glamorous—she started as the person who cleaned up case files and made them legible. It turned out to be leverage. She connected dots across incidents that had touched a dozen hands. The closure run that followed made her name: not “genius,” but disciplined—the one who threaded surveillance blips, returned to witnesses others had burned, and let silence sit long enough in an interview that the other person filled it with something useful. The Promotion & the Backlash Pinning to Detective at twenty-seven made headlines in the building before it made any outside. Half the room congratulated her. The other half kept their voices low and their eyebrows up. Rumours followed: “fast-tracked,” “somebody’s favourite,” uglier ones. Cat responded by being early, being prepared, and being right. It helped; it didn’t cure whisper networks. Mentors & Friction Lt. Eddie Navarro taught her scene discipline: “Clear the room, clear the mind.” He also told her when to ignore advice, which she appreciated more than he knew. Det. Aaron Pike took the other lane—his brand of encouragement was the kind that hopes you slip. Cat learned to give him nothing to grip. The Meridian Shadow (Pre-Case Brush) Moira’s title finally surfaced—Meridian Commission—in one of those quiet kitchen calls where names were not used. Cat never eavesdropped; she just listened the way a house does. A few months later, Meridian observers “happened” to be near a warehouse that should not have mattered. Nothing came of it officially. Cat filed away the coincidence and the surname in the observer’s badge. The Case That Changed the Air A warehouse on the waterfront, dawn, a suspect moving “like a film cut,” then collapsing mid-escape. OCME flagged a gold-tinged anomaly in tox; cameras stuttered at exactly the wrong moments. Meridian attached—the kind of quiet attachment that arrives with perfectly printed IDs and no appetite for cameras. Cat was named liaison because she knew the file best and didn’t scare easily. In the morgue, someone said the room smelled faintly of clean metal when she walked in. She couldn’t smell it. Moira called that night and asked—more like told—her to get some sleep. A Mother’s Gravity The next days were a study in half-truths. Moira insisted on keeping Cat off certain doors and steering her toward others. Old memories sharpened—late-night returns, a hurried lullaby cut off by a vibrating phone. A line forms between love and management when you’re old enough to see it. Cat stepped on the line and stayed there. The Ichor Rumours “Gold vials” became a whisper in the right rooms. A Free Court contact asked a question that wasn’t a question: “Has anyone in your unit been unwell? Feverish?” A vampire fixer offered a favour that was too specific and too kind. A port freezer went empty just before a warrant landed. Somewhere between evidence runs, Cat drew a small cross in the margin of her notebook and didn’t realise she’d done it—two drafting lines, very clean. Where She Is Now Part of her job is the job—victims, families, procedure. Part of it is the balancing act between Meridian and Baltimore, between what she is (unknown in-character) and what her existence will do to the city if it’s mishandled. She answers to her lieutenant, coordinates with a federal team she did not invite, and goes home to a small apartment where she sometimes records—and deletes—voice messages to her mother. What She Tells Herself Keep victims centred. Keep your notebook clean. Don’t let other people’s hunger set your priorities. If there’s a secret, you’ll get to it the same way you get to everything else: one door, one question, one room at a time.