break you right back

about.

laurel was born in austin, texas, and she's country girl at heart even if she won't readily admit it. they've always got a patsy cline or dolly parton record going at home, but that's the extent of what they'll let other people see in terms of their southernness.

(alcoholism, neglect tw) her early home life was bad. her mom left at an early age and her dad was a functioning alcoholic who just worked, drank, and slept, and he just couldn't take care of her. they went into the foster system when they were six, after a CDC call when their neighbor noticed they was alone for more than 48 hours once. her dad got visitation and she spent the occasional weekend at home.

foster care wasn't good either. the homes were always underfunded and crowded, even when the parents did what they could. laurel learned quickly that there was a hierarchy in these places, and they learned to sleep with a metaphorical shiv under their pillow. they grew up with no sense of home or family, and it really fucked them up!

but she was always smart. unlike many of the kids around her, she stayed in school and focused on her work, cutting out any extra noise to do so. to cope, they just buried everything deep, deep down. she got into texas a&m for college, which wasn't her first choice, but she went for the in-state tuition. it's a party school, so they indulged occasionally and made a few friends for the first time ever, but they grinded all the while.

undergrad finished, and they went straight to law school — nyu, their first choice, which was also completely free and gave them a nice stipend, but they still took part time jobs through law school to chip away at their student debt. after getting her JD and passing the bar in new york, she got a job as public defender.

she stayed for a few years, until she was 28, but the work was starting to bog her down quickly. the complete lack of choice she had over who she represented often clashed with her morals, when she found herself advocating for people she knew were guilty of sometimes pretty heinous crimes.

so, with a good amount of money saved by then and nothing keeping her tied to new york, she quit, packed up her life, and moved to montana, specifically to the blackfeet nation, where her mother was from. they'd never known their mother, but they knew of their indigenous ancestry and had done a lot of their own reading into it. going there was a huge leap for them emotionally and spiritually, having spent almost 30 years feeling disconnected from any kind of heritage, but they eventually decided they could have a lot more to gain than to lose.

she settled in and opened a practice out of her home, though she was frequently working for pretty low pay or pro bono outright. she was sort of a one-stop shop because she was sometimes willing to work for free, able to flex a lot of different muscles outside of her speciality in criminal law.

they were there for a long time, almost ten years, and had really started to feel like they were making a life. they felt connected to the people and them and the land they were living on more than they ever had before, and life was quiet in a way it'd never been.

but then one day, laurel heard a knock on her door and answered it to someone who introduced themself as their half-sibling through their mother, and it was sort of comical how fast laurel ran. she'd managed to reconcile a lot of things with herself in her adulthood, but her relationship to her parents and her upbringing was never something she let herself confront.

they chose aurora bay basically by just putting their finger down blindly on a map, moved, took the bar in california, and quickly set up an office out of their home again, using some of the connections they'd made throughout their career to get contacts and clients early and get things moving from the get go. life's been quiet since then.

laurel is spiky, very slow to trust, and doesn't know how to take care of herself at all. they live in a big house in seabrook quarter that they maintain immaculately, has taken the batteries out of all of the smoke alarms so they can smoke inside, and has nothing but basics in their fridge. at her best, she's jocular and witty, and at her worst she's explosive.

family.

mother: minnie hudson (unknown)

father: jonah jacobs (estranged)

tidbits.

she's not very up front about her not-cis gender identity and use of mixed pronouns, but it's really because she has no interest in having a serious talk about her identity with everyone she meets, most of whom she doesn't really care to know past an initial conversation. if someone asks directly, laurel's happy to tell, and if they're ever in a situation where the need to be referring to themself in the third person, they'll switch out the pronouns. if others catch on, they catch on, but she's not incredibly pressed about it herself

a little bit of a jock, though she would never admit that. loves baseball and hockey, plays softball in a rec league like the little lesbian she is

(alcoholism tw) laurel has a complicated relationship to alcohol; on one hand, they know what it did to their father and know that being his child probably makes them predisposed to the same tendencies, but on the other they're entirely sure that they're different and smarter and actually they could stop whenever they wanted to.

connections.

ex-girlfriend of @katrinaxbeauford

close friend of/don't make her think too hard about it she'll have a crisis @margaretxalexander

went to high school in texas with @benj-hyun

bar regulars/frequent drunk debate partner w/ @clint-bennet

softball teammates w/ @cassidyxcooke

employed by @willxmeyers, @colexwalters

friend of @delilahcarreno

forever trying to steal @cricketcampbell away from her clients