HALF LIGHT.

It wasn't that her father set out with the intention of teaching Breslin to put everything and everyone ahead of herself, but instead his own behavior that led her to the conclusion that this was the proper way to move through the world. Make it better, do what you can for those who can't. If not now, when. If not me, who. It was as natural as breathing, so much that most of the time she missed her brain and body's warning signs that it was time to slow down for a while. It was much the same now, even as Amara shifted to give Breslin her full attention and gently admitted her worries. Now face-to-face, Breslin inhaled steadily and let her eyes slip closed briefly, forehead lightly resting on her wife's.

"You always say you're okay." It wasn't that she doubted Breslin's ability to throw up a flag if things were going south too quickly, but Amara feared that it might happen anyway while her generous, kind-hearted wife continued looking for another buoy to throw. "I'm just worried the line's comin' up on us and we're not gonna react fast enough. Objects in mirror are closer than they appear and all." The other woman's spirit and bleeding heart were only pieces of the entire wondrous picture that she'd fallen so quickly in love with; hell, Amara herself been plucked from relative disaster when Breslin entered her life.

Rachel gave a small hum of understanding, "Yeah, but that's kinda always the fun part. It's like a maze and then you feel like sometimes when you enter a room and barely anyone is in there that it's like entering a secret place" Maybe that wasn't a mutual feeling for everyone, so hopefully she didn't sound like a sappy romantic. Shaking her hand she smiled before realizing that she recognized her as the mayor's wife. "Amara, nice to meet you! I actually think your wife saved me from quite a predicament." She was sure that she got recognized often enough. Her smile faltered a little at the question, feeling a little like she'd been caught. "That's very astute of you. I'm not a detective. I'm a retired journalist, but when I think there's a story there, I still feel the need to...look into it. I'm still a writer by trade, but not working for a particular outlet." Rachel offered, not feeling like she needed to keep the information from the woman.

"Maybe you should think about a career change to poetry." If there was ever a city to indulge in that line of work, LA was the first choice. When her new companion put the pieces together at last, Amara could only smile with latent affection for the true star of the show. "Sounds like Breslin. Always saving somebody, it's in her bones." A retired journalist... bingo. Idly, she wondered how permanent that status was, whether someone with the curiosity of a cat might be coaxed back into the fray with enough incentive. "Hey, look, you don't gotta explain anything or justify it." Her hands rose in mock defense. "Sometimes intrigue wins out over reason, there's no shame in that. Your mission is safe with me, I won't blab." She was absolutely calling Kian in four minutes.

a dozen seemed easy enough. with the right information, with the right amount of weapons. hell, the outlaws stretched beyond a dozen. but did they put themselves into that fight any more than they already were? the family had once come to them, wanting some kind of protection deal. kian had supposed who better to hire than a couple of low life individuals. the expendable kind. the ones that already had rap sheets a mile long. if push came to shove, it stemmed to believe that they'd be the ones thrown under the bus. now kian debated letting the family be picked off, picked clean. let the hollow do the dirty work for the city. but where would that leave them?

Not a rat, but something else entirely it seemed. Concerning enough to rattle Kian into mulling it over and feel that he had to voice the source to her. "Tommy?" Amara blinked, a little incredulous until he elaborated on the subject and then it all clicked into place. "It's been a rough year for him, too much loss and not enough answers. You think it's serious or just an outlet?" One meant far more trouble than the other, although she didn’t particularly like the idea regardless. Call it a protective instinct towards the younger member and what The Family was capable of unleashing upon someone who got caught in their web.

"No," she answered after a short pause. Apparently the three most powerful law enforcement figures in the city were all to be left in the dark lest they somehow ruin an ill-advised, dangerous plan to take out all the major criminal players in the city. All of them relegated to the sidelines while the less competent assumed control using baseless accusations as an excuse. Troy's situation, however, weighed a little more heavily on her mind. Amara was right, of course--if Breslin herself was in his position, she might not make it through the ordeal. A shaved head and an impromptu move to Greece wouldn't be far off.

"Fuckin' insane." Not because Amara placed blame on Breslin for lacking any avenues forward, rather she couldn't understand how absolutely warped the law enforcement hierarchy had become where doors closed in the mayor's face. Hence why she never trusted the system. If it wouldn't even work in the favor of somebody who actually wanted to do right by the world, how the hell was it ever going to back up people like her? Then again, uneven justice seemed a little par for the course when joining a group called The Outlaws.

"Enough to make it worth it, obviously.. But hey, win some lose some.." the cant of her head suggests she's not quite done yet, the curvature of her smile reaching, "I'll just have to win a few more to make up for the embarrassing loss." Milena wasn't surprised by Amara's tactful admittance to the temptation, the woman was – after all, as much a spider as she, weaving web after web. "Of course you do, you're as fluent in manipulation as I am." Neither a dig, nor praise, she let the comment fall whether it landed, perhaps only to see how she'd respond. "Nasty business, hers. I can't imagine how exhausting it must be." Fighting the inevitable at every turn, and then some, especially here. "You should take her away, did you two ever have a honeymoon? It could be a belated celebration," the glimmer in Milena's eyes only begged to know more about the situation; how many lies she must have spun. "I hear the Maldives are rather popular right now."

"An optimistic gambler." Spoken as if it were a novelty rather than the default setting. Manipulation was a bold word choice from the other woman and not necessarily incorrect, but she could easily feign offense with a teasing smile. "Hasn't anybody ever told you it's not nice to call names?" With a quiet snort, she took a sip from her glass. "Yeah, well, that's politics for ya." The least appealing career path in Amara's opinion, although she lacked the drive for justice and reform that seemed to course rather naturally through Breslin's bones. Skipping right past the invasive marital question, she nearly chuckled at the image of her wife on a glitzy vacation like the one being suggested. "She's not a Maldives gal, more like the holing up in a cabin in Maine without cell signal type."

"That's what I think too." Expression brightened at their shared mentality. "What better time to reach for comfort food than after all of that." There was a reluctance to talk about it, her just as happy to pretend as though it hadn't happened and so she was relieved when the conversation was turned to something else. Even if that placed the focus on her. "Oh, okay. Just getting through, y'know." It was an answer that had fallen from her lips too easily for too long, especially in the aftermath of Greg's death. But Amara wasn't just anyone and so she carried on, even if it was more of a rambling of feelings that an actual account. "My roommate was in hospital but she's all good now, kinda just business as usual. Which feels weird in its own way but -" She shrugged, as if to say what could you do. Their lives always seemed to be one bad night away from setting alight. "How about you?"

"Amen. Pretty sure Breslin had to re-buy the Halloween candy because I ate a quarter of it after things went down." Not that she had been anywhere close to involved, but with her friends and fellow Outlaws in the crossfire, it was easy to feel peripheral stress on their behalf. Her face tilts to the side at Gracie's easy dismissal, not believing it for a moment and watching that instinct reach confirmation when she reveals the news about her roommate. "Woah, a hospital trip sounds serious. How long was she in?" The if you don't mind my asking went implied and unspoken. "Nothing new, just holding it down while my wife saves the city one day at a time. Y'know, there's never any recognition for us Lois Lane types."

a hand lifted to smooth across his face, along the length of his jaw. for the most part, it seemed that the hollow had focused its eyes on the family. for whatever reason, they appeared to be its main target. but how long would that last? were the rest of them simply collateral? pawns to be used when the family wasn't obeying, wasn't following the path that the hollow had painted for them. or was there something bigger happening, beneath the unknown of what any of them had determined?

"One man would be easier to kill than a dozen." To that end, they didn't even know how many people were spinning this web. Or how deeply it ran throughout the criminal underbelly of this city. How many of them were friends? Acquaintances? Neighbors? Fucking strangers on the street? At any point another branch of that damn shadow organization could waltz right into the bar and they'd be none the wiser.

She let out an understanding laugh at late-nighters not being a part of her lifestyle any longer considering Rachel was the same unless her thoughts were flooding her mind. And those weren't late nights she enjoyed by any means. "It did, it was...chaos I mean. I mean I don't even know where they all came from!" Rachel gave a small shake of her head as she tried to pinpoint all the memories she did have. "I'm glad you were at least on your way out, maybe that was for the best." She shared with a small smile as she played with the strap of her purse as she felt the need to fidget with something. "I'm Rachel, by the way." She extended her other hand out to shake the other woman's if she wanted of course.

"Well the gallery is extensive, I'm pretty sure we could've stayed all night and still not visited every single wing." It wasn't the Louvre by any means, but well constructed museums had a quality about them that made the interiors feel endless. Her hand clasped the other woman's without a breath of hesitation, more than happy to make a new acquaintance. "Amara." No last name right out of the gate, sometimes it was easier to make headwinds this way. "So are you a journalist or a detective?" Asked with a matter-of-fact smile. "I figure nobody else returns to the scene unless they're trying to solve it... or they work here, but you don't have a name tag on."

"A judge more concerned with when dinner is served than logic and a deep, abiding stupidity," she answered flatly. There were so many variables with a raid like this, surely they knew if they'd tried to ask herself or Safiye to help with it, they'd have been laughed out of their respective offices. The mention of Troy brought her out of her thoughts and she shifted to peer up at her wife's face before she frowned and shook her head. "He's dealing with something else," she said after a pause. "He said it hurts to be alone at his house." If their positions were reversed, no doubt Breslin would feel much the same. Ten years was a whole lifetime, and to lose Amara after so long would break her in the same way it had broken Troy.

"Anything you can do about it? Or no?" This bit of the legal system was lost on her. Hierarchies, loopholes, complicated paperwork that was written in a variation of English she'd never learned. "I was wondering what you two were talking about when he tumbled in here the other night." Not that she needed to eavesdrop with Breslin's penchant for open book antics in their marriage, but Amara figured a little privacy between best friends was more than warranted. The same way that nobody should overhear the garbage she spilled to Kian on a daily basis. "It's a fuckin' miracle he's even in this city after what happened. If I were in his position I'd probably shave my head and move to Greece." Or worse. Definitely worse.

"Stacks upon stacks of bureaucratic bullshit," she confirmed with a long, heavy sigh. Amara was right--no doubt after ten years of listening to Breslin talk about work she'd gleaned more than a surface-level understanding of the legal world just as Breslin had her wife's industry. This required a judge to sign off and be willing to hear the case, an army of competent officers and detectives, a district attorney willing to prosecute the intended high number of arrests, and no small amount of safety measures in place to ensure the well-being of the uninvolved at an event like this. Instead, it blew up in their faces and even landed a detective in the hospital.

"So how does the entire LAPD get past that?" Or perhaps not the entire force, but a large enough subsection that they were able to fully coordinate a raid, complete with tactical gear and enough preplanned knowledge of the vault's layout to think it might be a roaring success. Despite the myriad of variables at stake and civilian lives in the crossfire. "And how is Troy handling it? I'm sure he's also seething, this undermines his authority almost worse than yours." Considering he'd settled into their spare room after a recent night out, she had to imagine not well.

"That's so true, I didn't feel like I took anything fully in." She felt a sense of a lead of some kind when the woman shared she was also at the art opening. If anything it meant that even though she wasn't in the thick of anything that she experienced it. Perhaps the knowledge of her also being there sparked a sense of familiarity to Rachel, but there were so many other people that night so who knew if that was just a placebo effect or if she had actually seen her. "Well that's good, did you leave before it all happened? I was, yeah. I mean just the aftermath was what I saw. I still have no idea the extent of really anything that happened that led up to it." It was possible that expressing her confusion and obliviousness would open a door for explanation or it would lead to her agreement she knew nothing too.

"It all happened pretty quickly, didn't it?" Despite having been at her wife's above board side all evening, Amara did know what occurred in the vault when half the party came running in an absolute frenzy. Not a public discussion topic, nor one she particularly wished to share with a complete stranger. "We were on our way out actually. Neither of us are late nighters anymore, that's a young person's game." The amusement she derived out of feigning as if they were both already seventy-two years old couldn't be understated. "Just a lot of chaos from what I could tell."

"A woman after my own heart," the chaos brought into the world, religious courtesy of Eve herself, Milena couldn't surpass the opportunity or the shared enticement of inflicting it upon the world around her. "Though if you ask me, the woman in the third row would have pitched a far larger fit if you'd forced another ten thousand out of her." Something something, all proceeds that charity. Of which of course, was likely just as much a lie as the facades each attendee admonished.. Businessmen certainly were as vile as the rest of them." How's the wife?"

"And exactly how much did you bet on her having a complete meltdown?" Not that she felt opposed to sweetening the odds, but her companion's eagerness to elicit chaos obviously veiled greater intent. "Because if we're gonna push people to the brink of sanity tonight, I want a cut." At the mention of Breslin, she offered a noncommittal shrug. "Busy. Stressed. The life of a politician, y'know?" Especially with recent events looming over her entire office and the city's law enforcement.

@bloodnglorystart / open (0/5)

Bidding wasn't her usual scene. At least not without explicit invitation, usually from an old friend or colleague who wanted to catch up and keep her orbiting the same glitzy world she'd once resided in. And Amara accepted wholeheartedly, unwilling to break the charade that kept her above water for nearly a decade. So rarely did she actually attempt to win, more accustomed to stoking the fires and competitive spirit between others when the room went dull. When a woman approaches with surface level affability, she returns it in spades. "I'll let you in on a little secret," her voice drops conspiratorially. "Sometimes I like to throw my hat in just to watch them scramble."