Moon City
Summary: He was always in the background, in the sidelines. Always there. Always there if you needed someone to lean on. So...he sits, and he thinks, waiting for when he is needed again. Jericho character study.
AN/ Yes, my obsession with Jericho has returned with a vengeance.
Oh, and a special story (plot of their choice) dedicated to anybody who gets the title of this fanfic!! And why I called it that.
Hint: It has something to do with his superhero name.
Jericho always helped.
No matter what the problem was, big or small, Jericho helped.
Because he enjoyed being needed.
Because he knew that soon enough he would not be needed anymore, and dissapear into the background once again.
A light sketch on a canvas.
He relished peace.
It was not something he had had as a child.
He remembered screaming and fighting and sobbing.
All of that was before he was six.
When he was eight it all got worse.
That was when he was kidnapped.
That was when he found out his daddy's dangerous occupation.
That was when 'daddy!' said with joy turned into 'you' thought with enough hatred to bring down a city.
That was when he lost his voice.
That was when his father and mother...split.
With a bang, literally. It always made Jericho happy to think that Slade didn't have his eye because of his mother.
It made him feel guilty.
He had always thought that it was him who put the strain on their relationship. Who made it snap, along with his mother.
Adeline was currently in an insane asylum.
Though she wasn't really insane. She just went into such a rage that she shot out a man's eye.
He had fucking deserved it.
And he really had, over the next few years, until Jericho ran, all the way to Tibet.
You couldn't expect a father to be very kind to his children if he was a killer.
Jericho remembered why he had chosen his name.
He wasn't Christian, he was Buddhist, he had always been.
Well, he had started out Christian, like his mother, but he had never really caught on.
He remembered that it had been spur of the moment. It had been sudden, choosing his name. He remembered that Adeline had told him the story of the city of Jericho in the Bible. And how it's walls tumbled down. At the time, he had been young, so, instead of figuring the walls as tumbling, he pictured them breaking. Cracking, and then shattering. Scattering stone and dirt all over. Killing.
And, well, at the time, Joseph (who he was, previously) had run away from home to a mountaintop of all places. And the moon had been shining, shining so hard that he barely believed it could be the moon. And he was feeling pretty broken, pretty shattered, pretty dead.
Just like Jericho.
Jericho was gentle, and kind, and most of all, he was silent. So much silence, that it was a wonder he did not go mad. That was why he learned how to play guitar, so the quiet would not consume him.
He was gentle, only because hurting other people did not appeal to him. He admitted, he was hippie-like, but...that, believe it or not, was why making bad people go away was so appealing to him. Because, he reasoned, it took away the hurt for others, even if you had to hurt the bad people in the process. He never did hurt them very badly, though. Just knocked them out, bruised them a little, nothing big, nothing serious.
Which was why it came as such a shock to him when he first killed.
It had not been a human, one he knew well.
The man had vaulted to Jericho.
"Hey...Joey...been a long time. Hope you aren't as weak as you were when you were eight."
It had been the Jackal. The man that ruined his life.
And he saw red. (He hated red).
He hadn't even killed the man with his powers. His bare hands, and the dagger he always kept at his golden sash.
He had hurt the man beyond repair, felt him stop breathing. And then he felt hands pull his away forcefully. They couldn't take the dagger out of his hand, though. He was crying, that he was sure of. Sobbing. The hands tried to shield his eyes from the horror he had done, but he saw it, the mangled and broken man. And that made him break down.
He had cried, more and more. He hadn't believed it was him who could have done that.
That was when he began to be afraid he was like his father, he wasn't, of course.
And the Titans had found out about the relation between Jericho and Slade after that. They did not hate him for it.
For that he was glad.
And, well, Jericho had always been only a sketch on a canvas.
But, he was a pretty damn important sketch, if he did say so himself.
AN/ Oh, and if any of you want to have a full story of Jericho's first kill, you can ask me, and I'll post it.
I DON'T OWN TT.