Leland Daubrey
Leland
Portrayed By Russell Crowe
Sex Male
Status Registered Evolved
Ability Telepathy
Age 46
Date of Birth November 11, 1973
Date of Death
Occupation Police Detective
Family
Significant Other(s)
First Appearance
Last Appearance

Leland Daubrey is the same old grumpy jerk he always was. The difference is, he's now an Evolved grumpy jerk who can read your mind. But he really has no interest in what you're thinking.

Also, future Lee enjoys eating bowls of Cheerios outside.


Character History:

After early 2009, life continued in much the same way as it had before for Leland. There are always thugs to track down and pimps and drug dealers to put behind bars. There were of course, all the politics surrounding the exposure of The Company, but Lee's never been one for politics. Nothing substantially changed in his life at all, in fact, until around the time of the Columbia 14. Sure, it was a tragedy, but not one that affected Leland personally. It just so happened that around the same time, Leland's estranged father died of a heart attack. The two men had barely spoken for almost a decade and had never resolved their differences. His father's death was more of a blow to him than he ever thought it would be. It left him depressed, floundering and unable to focus properly. He began to feel like his life had been going nowhere and he very keenly felt 40 creeping up on him. He had no family, no relationship and a sudden desire to be a better father than his own.

It was only a few weeks after both the Columbia 14 incident and his father's death that Leland ran across Elisabeth Harrison for the first time in months. The woman was pregnant, depressed and for awhile, they seemed oddly compatible. Their relationship lasted three months, from engagement to marriage to divorce. It was an extremely ill-advised, poor choice on both their parts, motivated by depression and loneliness.
The marriage might have lasted longer were it not for a sensation in the back of Leland's head that was slowly growing stronger. He had begun to develop a much keener instinct for people. In fact, he seemed to be able to read minds. Leland was a late-bloomer. He was one of the Evolved he had spent so many years resenting - his power just hadn't manifested. This developing power just happened to coincide with him moving in with a pregnant, hormonal, depressed woman. What he did receive from Liz started to drive him mad. At first it was only impressions, but at times, he heard her thoughts so loud and clear that it was almost like they were his own thoughts. That was disconcerting, to say the very least.
Everything all came to a head when Felix came to visit one night. Somehow during the course of the evening, he read that the baby Liz was carrying could potentially be his old partner's.

Somehow that bit of knowledge brought home how foolish the whole idea of the marriage was. A few days later, Lee filed for extended leave from the NYPD (which was granted, considering he had just lost his father and had tested positive as Evolved.) There was some cash, an apology, and a set of divorce papers sent to Elisabeth, postmarked St. Croix, US Virgin Islands. Leland's ability had developed so rapidly that he could barely control it - especially with so many millions of voices packed so close together in a city as large as New York. He spent the next two years working as a chef in a small, upscale restaurant. There were several disturbing incidents where he literally lost his mind inside the thoughts of others, but a chance meeting with another telepath allowed him to get control of the ability. Still, the uncontrolled nature of his power kept him in self-imposed exile.
In the years in between, the tenacious Felix Ivanov tracked him down several times. Every time, Lee managed to send the Fed away. He disappeared to other Caribbean islands, but each time Felix managed to find him again. It was very disconcerting to find himself feeling what Felix felt, especially considering what the Fed had been hiding from him for so many years. He never disclosed how his ability worked to Felix, just that it was difficult to be around familiar people because they were easier to read.
It wasn't until 2016 that he made his way back to New York City. He had managed to suppress his telepathy to the point where he was more of a low level empath than someone who could read minds. He had managed to build up mental barriers that kept him from feeling or thinking like other people. Over the next few years, he returned to cop work, moved back in with Felix and more or less returned to his old life. He had a few occasions to rip down the mental barriers, but it's been rare and usually in extreme circumstances.
What was once an external conflict between himself and other Evolved has now become more of an internal one. He feels like he got shafted with his ability. The last thing Leland Daubrey ever wanted was to know what everyone else thought of him.


Evolved Human Ability:

Leland is a fairly powerful telepath, but the way in which he reads minds makes it less useful than regular telepathy. While he's got several mental 'filters' up, the ability is much more like empathy. He might grab a word here or there, but for the most part he's only gleaning a person's base emotional state. For the most part, he is extremely hesitant to use his ability past this point.
The reason Lee will rarely pull those mental barriers down is because his unchecked ability is dangerous to him. He's got more control over it than he once did, but if he attempts to read more than extremely surface thoughts, he risks losing himself in the other person's mind. When he's reading someone, he's unable to separate his own thoughts from those of the person he's connected to. If he pushes too hard, probes too deep into a person's mind, he can end up thinking exactly like them and even absorbing some of their memories or personality traits. Obviously, he wants to avoid this at all costs. In the past, he has needed the help of another telepath to purge or suppress parts of another person he absorbed.

It is possible for him to project himself so fully into another person that he quite literally enters their mind and sees through their eyes. This involves him acting exactly like the person he's projected into, and thinking that he is them. So there is really no real change in the person he has projected himself into. although they might possibly pick up one or two of Lee's personality traits or skills. While in this state, Leland's body would fall into a coma-like state with intense REM activity. Since he's not aware that he's not in his own body, it would take outside influences to return him to himself. Stimulating his comatose body with a dose of adrenaline is usually enough, but it would take possibly weeks and the assistance of a telepath for him to sort out his own memories and personality from those of the person he merged with. He would have complete recall of events and so would his subject. The process is much more like a melding of minds than a taking over, as Lee would have absorbed his subject's personality and therefore wouldn't be making them do anything they wouldn't have otherwise done. With training, it's possible he could have more control over this ability, but he much prefers to shut this aspect of his power away and instead rely on empathy.


Timeline:


Memorable Quotes:

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