Lightning mom's turn!
This is my personal head canon/idea as to what happened to Jay's mom.
I don't own Ninjago
Libber, or Libby, as she liked to be called, was beautiful, inside and out.
She had long, blonde, wavy hair, was short and had faint freckles. Her smile could chase the frown off your face in seconds. Her heart was pure and she believed in everybody.
She embodied the element of lightning perfectly. She was known for her random bursts of banter, able to talk everyone's ears off in a matter of seconds.
She was an extremely talented fighter, and she did all she could for Ninjago and the Alliance. She made some really great friends in the Alliance, and became apart of a family, happily and openly treating everyone as such. She even met her best friend in the whole wide world, Terra, the Master of Earth. Those two were inseparable.
She had a great sense of humor, always making people laugh, and the mood in the room would immediately brighten when she walked in.
She was young, a good four years younger then the next older master, but that didn't stop her.
It's no wonder Cliff Gordan fell for her the moment he first saw her.
He met her in the line of fire. She saved him from a falling piece of debris. Cliff knew, at that moment, that this was the girl he wanted to spend the rest of his life with.
They bumped to each other lots of times after that, in the market, out in the street, and even while she was fighting (which Cliff had absolutely nothing to do with), but eventually, after four months of "accidentally" running into her, Cliff finally asked her to go out with him.
She very excitedly accepted.
The two hit it off on the first date.
They complemented each other perfectly. Her humor kept him sane, and his determination kept her focused.
Cliff was an aspiring actor, still struggling to get started and book gigs. But Libby didn't care, she supported his dreams 100%.
And Cliff supported her when she had to leave for battle. It was hard, having to be away from each other for so long, but they worked through it.
Two years of dating later, right after the Serpentine War, he proposed.
Libby was ecstatic. She said yes.
While managing her relationship, Libby fought alongside the elemental masters, her family, with pride. She trained under Wu and Garmadon, like the rest of the Masters. She helped defeat the Time Twins and fought in the Serpentine War.
She and Cliff were just about to go on their honeymoon before the Time Twins betrayed the Alliance and she had to go fight again. When the Time Twins we're defeated, she and Cliff finally got to go.
She supported and helped her friends whenever she could. She gushed over Terra's new little boy, even helping pick the name, Cole. She also helped Maya with her baby, Kai, when he was first born.
She was great with kids, which made it all the more exciting when she revealed she was pregnant a year later than Maya and Terra. She showed off her auburn-haired, baby boy with freckles, Jay, to everyone proudly after he was born. When Cliff heard a scream one morning and, 'My powers are gone, Cliff! Jay's got my lightning! Terra owes me ten bucks!'
He had never seen her so happy.
But she definitely wasn't happy when half the Alliance decided to quit. She couldn't understand how they could be so close, and then suddenly just, leave.
Only her, Ray, Maya, Wu, Garmadon, Nicolaus, and Terra were left.
She promised to never leave the others. She made them promise to each other that they would always stay close and raise their kids together and teach them to control their elements when the time came. She was so adamant that they all agree, which they did.
Which made it all the more devastating when she went missing.
No one knew what happened or where she went.
She was gone. No note. No clues. No lead. Nothing.
She was home one night, and gone the next morning. Cliff nor the rest of the Alliance knew anything.
There was no sign of a break-in at their small apartment, nothing was missing, nothing moved or out of place.
She was just, gone.
The night she disappeared, there was a huge storm.
Roaring, ear-splitting thunder could be heard all the way across Ninjago. Blinding streaks of lightning danced in the sky. Pouring rain kept on falling.
It was a freak storm.
It couldn't be explained how such a storm came out of absolutely nowhere. But Cliff knew.
Wu and Garmadon, Ray and Maya, Nicolaus, and Terra all knew.
Libby was the cause of that storm.
They just didn't know how, or why.
They were all devastated at their friends' disappearance.
Terra was absolutely crushed. Her best friend was missing. And she didn't have a single clue as to where she went or where she was heading. She left the remaining masters in the Alliance and went back to her husband, Lou and her son, Cole. She couldn't take the stress anymore and needed to spend time with her family. She eventually lost contact with them. She hated herself for breaking the last promise she made to her best friend.
Cliff's career finally took off. He landed the lead role of a upcoming comic book and movie series. The only reason he kept his acting going was because Libby told him to keep following his dreams no matter what.
Well, he had, but she wasn't there to celebrate his big break with him. He bought a real nice house, a mansion, taking advantage of his newly acquired wealth, but he wasn't happy. He lost connection with Wu and the others. He was confused. Libby loved Jay and him, there was no reason Cliff could think of that would make her leave her new family.
By the fourth month of investigation, the police gave up on her case.
Libber Gordan's case had officially run cold.
There were no leads, no directions, literally nothing to go off of. They just brushed the whole situation off, saying that she probably just didn't want a family or a child and couldn't face Cliff to tell him.
Cliff shot that theory down immediately.
He knew his Libby.
All she ever talked about was having a kid and starting a family. She picked their baby's name, Jay, saying she's always liked the name. And she would never do anything like this by her own choice.
She loved Jay too much.
After the fifth month had gone by since Libby's disappearance, Cliff was a mess. He couldn't take care of Jay. He could barely take care of himself.
He wasn't suited to raise a child on his own. He couldn't do it.
He never knew what Jay wanted. He cried all the time, he fussed. He didn't have anywhere to leave him when he had auditions.
Cliff couldn't take it.
He made a decision to give Jay up for adoption. He just couldn't take care of their child in his own. He consulted Wu about the situation, who heavily discouraged it, but he couldn't convince the new father otherwise.
Cliff decided he would leave him with a very sweet, older couple in their 50s, Ed and Edna Walker, he'd become good friends with. He'd actually met them when he saw Libby for the second him at the market. He'd gotten to know them quite well, they mentioned they couldn't have any children of their own, but so desperately wanted one. They owned a junkyard in the middle of the Sea of Sand. Cliff knew Jay would have a much better life with Ed and Edna than with him.
Before Cliff cut off contact completely and dropped Jay off, he made Wu promise, 'When he's ready, help him become a ninja in her honor.'
Wu nodded.
Tears were in Cliff's eyes the entire ride to the Walker's. Jay was sleeping soundly in a basket, hugging the blue bear plushie Libby bought, wrapped in a bright blue blanket.
Cliff pulled up to the junkyard. He placed a key to his mansion and a note in the basket that read,
"He needs a home. A good one. And that's something I can't provide for him right now. Please, take care of him. He has something incredibly special inside him. His name is Jay. He's five months old, born on November 23rd. I'm leaving an address and key, in case there's ever a time he wants to know where he came from.
Thank you, C.G."
As he placed the items in the basket, Jay looked up at him innocently and yawned. He had those dark, sapphire blue eyes, exactly like Libby's. He placed the basket on the doorstep and rang the doorbell. Thunder suddenly echoed and a loud crash of lightning struck in the distance.
Jay started crying, Cliff drove away, crying himself as he heard the door creak open and a soothing voice lulled Jay to sleep.
Cliff had regretted his decision everyday since.
Many times, he wished he would've just kept Jay and raised him for Libby. For 14 years, Cliff would lay awake at night, wondering who his son became, if he knew where he came from, if he knew the great powers he had inside him, if he knew who his parents actually were. He wished Jay could've gotten to know his mom. He wished he would've gotten to know Jay.
But when he turned on the tv one night, and saw the loud, blue-colored ninja, along with three others, dressed in black, red, and white, flash across the screen, 14 years later. And when the painfully recognizable element shot from his fingertips, Cliff knew he'd made the right decision.
He followed Jay's ninja career since he and his team defeated the Great Devourer. He had every news clip of Jay, pictures, and even a replica of the first ninja suit he wore out saving the world.
Cliff couldn't be more proud of his and Libby's son.
And Cliff was sure, that wherever Libby was, she would be so unbelievably proud of their son too.