Cassidy "Cassie" Cain's Questionnaire

Cassie lives in New York City as of the 14th June 2027, having previously been homeless but moving into a spare room in Edward Graves' apartment. She has lived in New York City for her whole life, originally with her father Donovan Cain and her mother Amara, and then ending up with her father after the two got divorced. Soon after her mother got with her new husband Captain Jackson of the NYPD, she died in a fatal car accident leaving Cass with just her father.

When she was around fifteen, she left home to live on the streets instead of with her father, after dealing with both him and the Mark for a good few years, and then tried her best to survive out there while considering finding Captain, but deciding against close relationships as her control over her abilities was almost zero.

However, she moved in with Ed after meeting him on Contract and got closer to Captain through those NYPD connections, but still waited for months before meeting him. Captain has two young daughters who are his half-siblings who he's met tentatively, but now hopes to either get a place of his own in the future or move out of Ed's flat to try and establish a more secure base.

Before getting a job as a mortuary assistant at the NYPD, Cassie mostly begged and scrounged for what little money she had, as well as stealing for food, occasionally getting shifts as a day labourer for less discerning clientele, but now has a stable income from her paid internship at the morgue. The bulk of his money in the first few months to almost a year of the internship was spent on paying back debts, paying for food, new clothes, any outstanding debts, but right now he's managing to save up to potentially buy or rent something in the near future.

He's very glad to have money for food now, so has gone from malnourished and wiry (and mostly deriving strength from the Mark's magic), to actually having a healthy weight and consistent food supply, which has come with the benefit of the Mark's physical enhancement being noticeable rather than putting him up to normal status.

For most of the last 6-8 years of her life, Cassie's main goal was to get rid of the Mark or neutralise its effects due to the great damage they could cause, and desperately wanting a normal life, but after different adventures through Contracts, making friends and finding family she's now got a secondary goal. He still does want to be able to function in normal society, which his Barrier and better training with the Mark has granted, but an extension of that control is a begrudging, and tentative desire to explore her real capabilities in the supernatural sphere, especially after learning from Captain that his mother was from a line of powerful magic users.

He wouldn't kill for this goal, and namely wants to avoid killing or harming others, and though she's considered death part of the issue is the lack of permanent harm that tends to come to her.

Mateo Ramirez - A magical drug dealer from California who Cassie made friends with on Contract. Hung out when Mateo was in the area, with Mateo providing Cass with Echo, a drug that allows him to phase out and become incorporeal...which allows for some brief moments of peace or to use in panic situations. They have also hung out around New York before, and was one of Cassie's first real friends or potential friends.

Captain Jackson - Her stepfather and now ex-stepfather after the death of his mother, and the father of her two half-siblings David and Amani. Didn't know much about him other than he seemed like a better option than her father, and now has a cordial relationship and have met and shared stories about Amara. After Cassie got a little more confident with his abilities he also met his siblings.

Edward Graves - Cassie's mentor, current boss and one of his first friends and confidants in the city, helped get her out of homelessness and gave her a job. Due to her AvPD she has trouble being confident in relationships with others, but she would confidently call Edward a friend and something between an older brother and an uncle figure. Also gave him his first hug after the Mark activated because he wasn't affected by the contact damage.

His parents were Amara Fisher (then Amara Cain, then later Amara Jackson) and Donovan Cain. Amara was generally kind, strong, confident and thoughtful, while Donovan tended towards being harsher and less emotionally available, but funny and reliable (tending towards more abusive and nasty after Amara's death). 

Cassie did attend school up until she was 12, almost a year after Amara died, but after legal trouble and trauma that came with the activation of his Mark, he was pulled out of school, being unsuccessfully homeschooled until he was fourteen when he then ran away from home, only now recieving an education with her apprenticeship at the morgue in the NYPD.

During school, Cassie didn't tend to fit in, being more introverted by nature, but did have some friends. After being pulled out, his mother's death and the Mark worsening his existing issues with avoidance and closeness he very much retreated away from his social life, viewing interactions with others as dangerous and himself as not worth the risk of knowing. This has been changing in recent years though, but she still has a way to go.

Cassie has had crushes in the past, but no official relationships, partially due to his isolation after the beginning of middle school and the following lack of social interaction. This, combined with having to deal with his father's attitude towards non-straight and non-cis relationships and people brought up a wall of isolation and led to him not considering herself as good for a relationship, which combined with the strong anxieties around touch and closeness led to no further socialisation, even in the interactions he had with others his age while homeless.

This could change in his current life stage, but she does want some sort of relationship, though is content with just having friends for once and leaving that to the future.

Cassie's worst fear, by far, is harming the people she cares about with the Mark. Overall, she fears the idea of harming others with it, but what keeps her up at night is the thought of getting close to someone, or letting them get close to her, and slipping up and hurting or killing them. It's one of the biggest sources for her self-loathing, and she uses it as reinforcement of both her avoidant behaviour and her self-hatred.

Her fear has ebbed in the social sense as she's gained more confidence in controlling her abilities, but she still occasionally has night terrors and nightmares about all those controls suddenly flipping and becoming even more of a danger. Inside, there's still a knot of anxiety that tells her that even this control is a mistake, because if people thought she was completely and utterly harmful they would stay away, and she's inviting even more danger by lying to herself about being in control.

She does also have lesser fears around seeing her father again, and not being enough for those around her, but they are often overshadowed by her thoughts about being a proven and explicit danger to everyone around her.

Cassie hadn't managed to hold onto much in her time being homeless, but a small assortment of baseball caps that Amara had worn were passed down to her (with him keeping most of them secure, and holding onto a few that he wears out and about). He does treasure these, as an opportunity for connection with his mother, but also because he had limited access to fresh clothes for a long time, so there was an attachment to the things he did have.

After that, a growing collection of occult items for the same reason, such as her tarot deck and candles, because of the new opportunities they bring for both controlling his powers and getting access to more closeness with her mother. He doesn't carry it around either, but she also has an old MP3 player with a lot of his favourite music on it, including hits by Blake Brown, who is one of Cassie's favourite artists.