Born and raised in a small town in rural Michigan, Leon's early life was fairly plain, he had two older brothers and a younger sister, hung out with his friends, went to school (most of the time anyway), and was quite ordinary. The one thing that made him stick out however, was his art. His teachers at school were always astonished when their below-average student sketched an object's likeness or painted up a masterpiece. Leon however much preferred to practice his talent out on the streets, painting the town with graffiti as soon as he was old enough to swipe spray paint from his brothers.
It was this talent that would bring about his downfall. Leon had made it through Junior High and into High School proper, when one day he was distracted from his work by a sense of being watched. He made to bolt, but halted immediately when he spotted the source of the gaze he'd felt; an unearthly beautiful girl, perhaps a few years older than the 15 year old. Though he had a girlfriend he didn't hesitate to approach her, and when she smiled... He followed her into the park, the trees thickening, crowding together around him, and he was gone from this world to the land of Faerie.
His time there is something of a blur, full of sweet pain and terrible ecstasy, nights of passion and terror, of painting vast, incredible vistas where his brush was made of the quills and fur that began to grow from his back, and the paint was mixed from his own blood... He was her plaything, and he both loved and hated her, craved and feared her. His escape remains unclear, what prompted it, and how he fled her realm he remembers not, but he recalls thrashing through the hedge, years older than when he had entered, a man now in his prime, but wracked with confusion and uncertainty.
When he finally stumbled from the thorny hedge he fled to the only place he could think of. It's safety may be dubious but return home he did, only to find not his parents, but a strange woman in her mid twenties, heavily pregnant. His confusion only grew, but as he watched her he realized he knew this woman... it was his girlfriend from before he was abducted! Clear thought fled him, and when it returned he found himself standing over her prone form, hands covered in blood; her blood. Her still cooling skin he had covered with intricate patterns and designs, all in her own blood and... it was beautiful. He fled in terror from the scene, at what he done, at what he wanted to do.
It was a few weeks later that things finally started to clear, at least a little... He was discovered by a member of the spring court, a kindly Ogre who brought him to Detroit and helped him understand what had happened. He had been gone almost ten years from the mortal realm, though his body was but 4 years older; he had been replaced by a fetch, and that fetch and his highschool girlfriend had become sweethearts. The old family house had been a wedding present from his parents, and now after what he had done, his fetch was being sought by the police.
The past months he has spent learning the ways of Spring, a philosophy he has heartily embraced, though it is yet an escape more than a true motivation, but given time... Greg, the Ogre who rescued him has been more than kind, helping Leon to establish a new identity (albeit a rather flimsy one), and find him work. With a grin he had suggested Leon give tattooing a try, and the suggestion seemed to click into place like it was the last missing piece of a puzzle. He found again that wonder of creating art on the canvas of flesh, but without the mind-shattering horror of taking a life...
