Leslie Dean

*"Once you take a person's life, there's no going back. Whatever reason you tell yourself, however you rationalize it, nothing can take away the ghosts. The people that I've killed, the things that I've done, I carry that with me every day, and the weight is heavy. I don't wish that on anyone. Especially you."*
―Leslie Dean to Molly Hernandez[src]**Leslie Dean** (née **Ellerh**) is the leader of the Church of Gibborim, and the former leader of PRIDE. She is the wife of Frank Dean and the mother of Karolina Dean, a daughter she actually had with Jonah. For fifteen years, Leslie managed both the Church of Gibborim and PRIDE in order to provide sacrificial victims for PRIDE's Rite of Blood meant to periodically revive Jonah.

In 2017, Leslie selected Destiny Gonzalez to be the next victim. However, while bewildered and worried by the fact that Jonah did not feel better, Leslie later learned that the sacrifice had failed due to a Dematerialization Box malfunction. Leslie urged her fellow PRIDE members to find someone else, which they eventually did. However, Leslie still had to overcome several ordeals: Victor Stein suffering from a violent brain cancer, an affair between Janet Stein and Robert Minoru, Frank trying to ascend into the ranks of the Church of Gibborim and discovering her affair with Jonah, and Jonah seemingly undermining her authority within the Church. Eventually, upon witnessing Jonah assaulting Karolina and discovering that he had kept her in the dark regarding his plans, Leslie decided to turn on him. She secretly helped the Runaways to release Karolina from Jonah and gathered PRIDE in a secret plan to murder Jonah.

Leslie struggled to maintain a delicate balance between her wish to kill Jonah and her duty to keep a friendly face to him in public. Having lost the leadership of the Church of Gibborim to her husband Frank, and with the reveal that Karolina had been meeting with Jonah, Leslie feared that Jonah, whose extraterrestrial origins were well established, could take Karolina away from Earth. However, her worries disappeared when Jonah was apparently killed during the Battle at the PRIDE Construction Site. Leslie then attempted to dismantle the Church of Gibborim for its teachings were nothing but lies, but was stopped in this endeavor by Frank, who managed to have her sent into the Crater. Nevertheless, Leslie was able to reunite with her long lost mother Susan Ellerh, and was eventually saved from the Crater by Karolina, who decided to provide shelter to Leslie in the Hostel.

Leslie became aware that the baby she carried, who had been fathered by Jonah, would be targeted by the Gibborim. Indeed, Leslie was soon abducted by the Magistrate's Son, who planned on delivering the baby to the Magistrate in exchange for being allowed to stay on Earth. However, Leslie was able to alert Tamar, who in turn informed the Runaways. With help from Tamar, Leslie then gave birth to her second daughter Elle. Remembering a prophecy made by her father, she decided to leave the baby in the care of Xavin, who took Elle to accomplish her destiny. Months later, Leslie decided to restart the Church of Gibborim without any extraterrestrial influence. She then rejoined PRIDE when the group was reassembled by Geoffrey Wilder and helped save Molly Hernandez from the Coven.

1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 Cite error: Invalid `<ref>` tag; no text was provided for refs named `R104`
2. ↑ Cite error: Invalid `<ref>` tag; no text was provided for refs named `R210`
3. ↑ Cite error: Invalid `<ref>` tag; no text was provided for refs named `R211`
4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 Cite error: Invalid `<ref>` tag; no text was provided for refs named `R212`
5. ↑ Cite error: Invalid `<ref>` tag; no text was provided for refs named `R213`
6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 *Runaways: 3.04: Rite of Thunder*