pick your poison.

Georgie Kingsley-Lockwood
Yesterday, in a mostly cleared out diner with only an interloping kinfolk and a terrified waitress for witnesses, Cameron Hart told his target, Miss Georgina Kingsley-Lockwood, to pull herself together and to call him within forty-eight hours or decisions would be made. Visibly upset by the encounter yet sick to death of everyone else dictating her life choices for her, Georgie called the number given within a matter of hours. They would meet the next day at his hotel to discuss things. That gave her several hours to worry and wonder and fret, things she should be used to doing by now but most definitely isn't. Normally, she'd take out her frustrations (sometimes intentionally, occasionally not) out on her housemates, but to their relief she kept to a sulky silence by herself.

It also gave Cameron time to wonder if she'd actually show, or if he'd need to use a stone and a map to begin his hunt anew.

Fast forward to today, to now. Georgie waltzes into the lobby of the hotel dressed in yesterday's jeans and the same long grey coat and a white button-down shirt with sheer polka dot cut outs over a plain white camisole. Her hair is plaited into a fat, messy braid that falls like a cord over one shoulder, and again, her face is half obscured by a pair of oversized, round-rimmed sunglasses. She looks like the daughter of a socialite or CEO, the kind of entitled and privelged youth who walks into the hotel like she owns the place, or could if she placed the right call to Mommy or Daddy.

But calling home is the (almost) complete opposite of what Georgie wants to do, so though she strides to the bank of elevators with pride, behind her sunglasses she is still watchful and wary, almost paranoid. She's imagined all kinds of scenarios, most of which involve her mother leaping out of the nearest mirrored surface to drag Georgie home by the hair. The elevator ride to Cameron's floor is nearly uneventful. A man in an off-the-rack suit attempts to chat her up, but Georgie pointedly ignores him.

And then she's there, walking through the hall to the hotel number she has written on the back of the card she was given. Once she's there she hesitates, but only for a moment. She's not sure what outcome she hopes for most, but the one that she needs is to stop feeling so damn paranoid all the time. So she knocks three times, and she waits.


Cameron
She has every reason to be nervous and wary. Her paranoid in the moments since her encounter with Cameron are far from unfounded and he would tell her as much if she had bothered to ask. There's no telling if he's called Mommy Dearest or someone in between to tell them that he's found her and that she's too much trouble so they should come and collect her. For all that she knows it could be a member of her family on the other side of the door waiting for her.

Or worst.

The walk down the long narrow hotel corridor is uneventful; the carpet is plush and oriental in type and the small worlds that exist behind each door remain unknown to Georgie. As she closes in on the room number she's been given the weight of her imagined fate looms heavy. The sobering sound of Purcell's Dido and Aeneas breaches the walls and doors of the Silver Fang's room, making the atmosphere all around it heavy with sadness and with thoughts of dying, of dirt being thrown on the coffin of a loved one. The ideas that each soulful vocal reach creates is painted with amazing skill and tenderness. It's cosmic yet real, this great lament filled with long phrases that unfurl from the songstresses heart...each lyric being sturdy and merciful and spiritual.

It's loud, but not a soul complains. Not one.

When she knocks the music drops only slightly in volume and she's met with the same man she met yesterday, though his attire isn't suited for adventures out of doors. His chest is covered by a white muscle shirt that he probably wears consistently beneath the finely pressed suit shirts so common in his closet. His slacks are dark and without a belt, his feet bare. His hair is longer and brushed back and to the side and in his hand he's holding a crystal tumbler half filled with an amber fluid.

"Come in." He says to her, stepping back out of the way to allow her entry. Immediately Georgie is likely to welcome the lack of overwhelming, suffocating Rage that she felt yesterday. It's there, most assuredly, but in a dosage that is more acceptable.


Georgie Kingsley-Lockwood
The music filtering down the hall does little to calm her nerves, in fact it does the opposite. Aren't there movies with scenes like this? A lone figure walking carefully down a hallway to the sound of an operatic lament? Even if she hasn't found herself an unwitting participant in a cinematic moment, the music is too somber, too sad. It puts her in mind of all that is at stake for her, all the things that deep deep down she knows she has no control over. Through the door, Cameron can't see the way Georgie swallows hard before she knocks.

Then the door opens and there stands the doorway to her fate, one way or another, clad in muscle shirt and slacks and no shoes. Behind her sunglasses Georgie's eyes widen slightly. Has she ever seen a male of their tribe dressed so casually? Not likely. She frowns at his offer but doesn't refuse it. As with everything else in her life, she's come too far to turn back now. Keeping her chin up, she breezes in past him and is indeed pleased she doesn't feel suffocated by Rage closing in on her from all sides of an enclosed space. She looks around once she's inside, looking at his room with envy as well as wariness. She hasn't been in a place half so nice as this in almost two months, but she is still on edge, still wary of the unseen who might have joined him here to ensure the runaway princess was carted back home safely.

"Nice place," she says, trying to sound cool and detached but not quite able to hide a quaver in her voice. She removes her sunglasses and slips them into a pocket of her coat before shrugging out of it. It is a courtesy, but also she remembers yesterday. Without her coat there's nothing solid but the girl herself to grab onto should she decide to run away again.


Cameron
There's little concern for formalities at the moment, so far as Cameron is concerned. He seems far more calm than he had been yesterday, less likely to wrap a ever powerful maw around a slender throat and snap it ... sealing both of their fates. He has no reason why this music, any music with such a sombre and sobering timbre, puts him at ease...but it does. Georgie has no idea that she is both completely safe and utterly vulnerable at the same time right then. There's no threat of a stray remark or errant comment raising his ire just enough to send him spiralling over the edge of control.
And there's no way he could protect her in that moment if he had to either.

The door is shut and after he takes a healthy drink from his glass he meanders back over to a chair situated neatly in the corner of the room. This suite is one of the more expensive the hotel has to offer and the furniture says as much. The music is turned down a little more before he turns and eases the whole of his weight back into that chair that looks almost as comfortable as the bed or the smaller chair she's offered with a wave of his hand.

For a series of long moments Cameron sits quietly watching her. Thinking. But soon he speaks, slow and careful as if every single word spoken was mulled over and considered.

"What is waiting for you back home?"


Georgie Kingsley-Lockwood
She tries not to show it, but she's not calm. Her heartbeat beats a rapid percussion in her veins that does not match the music that fills the room, but it's not so rushed that she trembles with it. She's nervous, yes, and afraid, of course. However, she's not trapped in a vice grip within arm's reach of a towering wall of Rage. The sense of comfort that alone gives her is paltry at best, but it's better than nothing.

Carefully, she folds her coat over the back of the smaller chair and brings it around to face him. Not head on, of course, but obliquely, and far enough away he'd need to rise up (or Change) to reach her. That, too, is a comfort.

When she sits, it is with a sense of grace in her slender figure. Whatever she's been through the last couple of months, whatever changes those things may have wrought in her, she is still a Lockwood of House Wyrmfoe. And for the moment at least she isn't desperately trying to escape her fate. She leans back in the chair but retains a sense of poise, with her knees together and her hands folded over her lap. Her fingers tighten when Cameron cuts straight to the heart of things, but Georgie refuses to fidget.

"My mom for one," she says after a moment's thought. "She'll kill me when she gets her hands on me. She's making me get married."


Cameron
The man questioning how sound her reasons for fleeing are is older than Georgie by almost three full decades yet there are similar in ways that the young kinfolk can't possibly understand. She believes her fate to be sealed, written in some book somewhere that dictates the path for all Lockwood or Kingsley kinfolk and Cameron is well aware that his own path is set in stone as well. Hers, however, is not as bad as she would like to think it to be ...at least not to him, not at that moment.

Another drink and he's relaxing a little further into the chair with long legs spread open and stretched out comfortably. Arms rest where they should on such a kingly chair and his brow furrowing is the only real hint at confusion the Ahroun offers her.

"Your mother will do no such thing." He says calmly, confidently. "Why is marrying someone such a terrible fate?"


Georgie Kingsley-Lockwood
It is an effort not to roll her eyes, but Georgie manages. Despite the seeming calm of the ahroun before her, she keeps her gaze no higher than about his chin. It seems deferent, and it is, but is at odds to the way she keeps her chin aloft. The blood of kings and queens past flows with less strength through her veins than it does his, but it's there, and to make matters worse she has the brash boldness of youth about her. Georgie has already learned that too much pride can lead to trouble, but that doesn't mean she's learned to temper it.

He doesn't know her family, though, or her mother, not really. Not even those closest to her, even Georgie herself, know the secrets that her mother keeps. No one knows of the indiscretions of Starfall's youth or just how far she'll go to secure power and prestige for her bloodline. And besides, Cameron is a man, and Garou besides. Mateship, marriage, whatever one calls it, it's not the same for him as it'll be for her. There are many kin out there who accept this. It is their duty to the tribe and to the Nation. Georgie is not one of them.

In her incredulousness at his question she looks him in the face before quickly looking away. "I haven't even met him," she says bitterly, fighting an urge to surge to her feet and begin pacing the room, perhaps gesticulating wildly with her arms as she begins the rant she's kept locked inside her all this time. She allows herself to sit up, to lean forward, to clench her hands against her knees.
"The worst is it wouldn't even matter if I did, I don't have a choice. Yesterday you kept going on and on about my duty and whatever, but what if he's awful?" She shrugs her shoulders helplessly and looks again at his chin. "What if you were me?" Soon as she says it she seems to startle. "Oh my god, it's not you, is it?"


Cameron
He listens to her as patiently as a man his age - a man suited up with all of his Rage - possibly could. Her words, the careless way she shrugs off her responsibilities, brings his drink to his lips once more. Cameron is a handsome enough man despite the scar that mars his cheek just beneath one eye. His body is fit despite his years and the grey threads that run through the darkness of his hair, he's not a mangled spectacle the way most Ahroun's can be ...but he's an old man compared to Georgie and the idea that she might think he were her intended mate makes him laugh. Makes him push the fingers of one hand back through his hair.

And it's that hand that he holds up for her, the left hand with his ring finger intricately tattooed with flowing intertwining swirls and sharp angles that make up glyphs if one is skilled enough to notice such things.

"I'm already taken." Is said in a rumble. "I didn't know her either. It happens. You're assuming the worst about a man you do not even know. You're young, perhaps you should reconsider the situation...I'm sure whomever your mother has selected for you she did so with your best interest at heart Georgina." And with that the man stands slowly, as if his bones hurt, and moves to refill his glass with what she can now see is a fine bottle of Scotch.


Georgie Kingsley-Lockwood
[don't throw a tantrum, kid]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 3, 8, 10) ( success x 2 )


Georgie Kingsley-Lockwood
This news is greeted with a sigh of relief that could be considered offensive if Cameron had a mind for it. It's true, he's not bad looking all things considered, and what hot-blooded, straight young woman wouldn't want a strong man to call her own? But he is a stranger to her, an unknown variable. And there is all. that. Rage. A marriage is through sickness and health, but when it comes to kinfolk sharing their lives with Garou there is a risk that comes with trying to weather out the bad days.
It's something he can't understand from his side of the divide. Maybe he did once, before, but whatever came before his Change is gone for him.

"It's Georgie. And you don't know her," she says, to the assertion that her mother has her best interests at heart, and there she does roll her eyes. Because he doesn't know, and wild as she seems to be she's not inclined to talk about her family with a total stranger. This is not Pour Your Heart Out hour at L'Hotel Fangs Argent. He wanted to know what was waiting for her back home and she's told him. A furious mother and a fate he obviously can't comprehend.

He rises and she tenses, lifts her chin a little higher. He moves like he's decades beyond his prime but Georgie figures he could move fast if he wanted to. He just doesn't want to for whatever reason. She watches as he pours himself another glass, nose scrunched at the second drink. The look is gone before he turns back to her, replaced with her usual stormy expression of pent up frustration.

"Look," she says, taking a breath to try to find some kind of calm. This obviously isn't working out to her favor. She can't make him understand why the archaic notion of an arranged marriage would be abhorrent to a modern era teenaged woman. "You wanted to know what was waiting for me in New York and I told you. Just because you don't get it doesn't mean you should make me go back there."


Cameron
"Of course it does." He says simply and plainly, drink drawn up to his mouth. This time he doesn't return to his seat. This time he moves to where Georgie is and as if separating his thoughts required it, he takes another drink. "Do you believe that every single day of my life I want to go kill things? That I want to risk dying every time I leave wherever it is I lay my head at night?" A brow perks up and he squats in front of her smoothly. Cameron moves like a man aged and though that he might be, he could move frighteningly quick if the need for him to do such things presented itself.

"Or that I simply have no desire to be around my child? Or my mate? Do you think there is any of this life that I have wanted or that I have chosen....or that is fair?" With his drink in one hand and the other lying loose on one thigh he peers at the young kinfolk with a quiet intensity, right down to the marrow of her bones.

"This isn't a fair life. I know that. And I also know that I'm no Philodox or Galliard. Words aren't ....my strong suit. If it weren't for that music I wouldn't even be able to have a conversation with you...Georgie. But we aren't so different despite how different we may seem, I get it. But what's waiting for you in New York isn't half as bad as what's waiting for you down the road if you keep running..."

With that he stands and paces to the window, eyes perusing a City that has no ties and no promise for him. "I guess you have to ask yourself...which storm would you rather weather?" She has his back, her freedom and a very difficult decision to make.


Georgie Kingsley-Lockwood
He squats before her and she watches him do it, daring to meet his gaze at last because what else can she do when he puts himself below her eyeline like that? There is a stormy intensity in her blue eyes as she looks at him, a potential for strength. Maybe someday she'll temper her attitude to some great effect. Maybe someday she'll make someone a good mate, or show herself to be worthy of her bloodline. Maybe that day is soon, but it's not today.

For a moment she stares at him, lips pressed into a line as she searches his face for something, some sign that he could be made her ally. But then he's gone, up and away to show her his back and she knows. Whatever he is to her mother to have been sent after her, he is no friend to Georgie.

"It's not the same," she says quietly, hands clenched to white-knuckled fists on her knees because she can feel it. She can feel the hopelessness and the frustration rising up and she can feel the tears that'll come with them. "It's not the same," she says again, more firmly. "I'm not talking about killing things. You like your mate, but you're not married to you, and you didn't have to have your kid." She rises, not to go, though she really, really wants to go. She rises and she twists her fingers together and the tears, they pull in her clear eyes but don't spill over yet.

"Please," she says, imploring. "Please. Don't take me back there. It's not what you think it is."
[manip (compelling) + empathy + PB: trying to tug at his sympathies? maybe?]
Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (3, 4, 5, 5, 6, 6, 7, 9, 10) ( success x 5 ) Re-rolls: 1


Cameron
He doesn't want to look at her. Something nags at him, complains incessantly in the back of his mind the way the idea of whether or not you turned off the stove or locked the door does. He can't place it or quiet it and it bothers him in a way that he can't properly explain. She goes on and on and his shoulders lift with a deep in take of air followed by a slow exhale. "I didn't like her. I don't know if I like her now. I didn't want children with her but that is what is expected of me. There are so few of us now that it's my duty. My obligation...just like it is yours."

"If it isn't me...it will be someone else." He says matter of factly." Another drink of his scotch and Cameron rests the palm of his free hand on the cool glass of the window. "I'll check into this guy. If he's a good and decent man there's nothing I can do. You will have to make a decision...either you obey your Mother and do what is expected of you or you leave your family. Completely. And that is if she will allow you to denounce them so easily. It won't be easy...our enemies will know you in the same way that any Garou does. They will try and claim you, drop you in one of their breeding pits in the hopes of making more...insane wolves but it'll drive you insane too."

Cameron drops his hand from the window and turns around to look at her once more. "If your Mother allows you to leave the fold Georgie...I can't - we can't - protect you."