Title – Yield Does Not Mean Stop
Author name – jen rose
Email Address – brendcat@aol.com
Rating – PG for now, will change later
Disclaimer – These characters do not belong to me. I just checked them out of the Mutant Enemy Library to have fun with. I’ll try to have them back on time.
Summary- The aim here is to have a happy, little AU where Willow and Tara meet and fall in love. It takes place about four years in the future and way, far away from Sunnydale and any Hellmouths or demons. I thought about calling this The Predictable Story, because there aren’t many surprises. Willow works with computers, Tara is still kind of shy, the girls meet, form a connection, fall in love and so on. Hope the lack of originality doesn’t send you running for the hills.
Notes- Thanks to all the great writers who post on this board. You inspired me to give this writing thing a try. I hope no one feels cheated or that they wasted their time. If so, refunds are at the door on the way out. By the way, first fic so be warned.
Yield Does Not Mean Stop
Chapter One
“Come on, come on, dammit,” the redhead cursed at a big yellow polka dotted airport shuttle bus.
“Let me in.” She grumbled as her highway entrance came into view, two lanes over to the left. With a flourish of signals, expletives, and aggressive maneuverings, Willow jumped in the left lane and gunned the rental car to scoot up the highway entrance ramp. This time smoothly merging over into highway traffic, she settled back into her seat a little more. This is the last leg on the trek to parts unknown and new beginnings, Willow tried to romanticize to herself. She didn’t want to face that it actually was the long, three-hour drive to her next job location in the middle of nowhere, which as far as she could tell was in the middle of nothing. Now that St. Louis was behind her, all she could see was countryside, not that is wasn’t pretty, she admitted. It was green, lots of trees and woodsy looking hills. It was a lot different from where she grew up and used to call home.
Don’t be thinking all nostalgic about home, the redhead told herself. I have no home; I am definitely homeless, as in lacking a house. I am road warrior girl. I come to your town, I conquer, and I move on.
Willow bent over the passenger seat to retrieve her CD case and distractedly paged through looking for something to listen to as she zoomed down the highway. She couldn’t decide, really, and finally chose a jazz collection hoping the mellow vocal stylings of Dinah, Sarah, and Ella would help her wind down. Her flight from LA had been a bit bumpy and crowded and worse, late. Enough to have her car rental representative tell her the convertible she had reserved was gone and offering her the lovely, dirt brown Taurus she was driving now. This car looks like piece of s*** on wheels, Willow mused to herself. No, maybe a Baby Ruth candy bar without the nuts, or, hey, a 100,000 Grand bar without the rice crispies. Wait, I know. It really looks like a Milky Way left out in this summer swamp heat too long and stepped on at the end. Yep, that is def. how I would describe this car. She made a mental note to remind her travel agent to have a back up reservation in place for her next trip. Something fun to make these business trips a little more bearable.
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“Hey Tara.”
“Hey Tara! What are you looking at that has you looking like that?” asked Bobbie as she peered around the corner into Tara’s office.
Tara hurriedly clicked and closed the window on her computer and looked up guiltily with her shining blue eyes. “Oh, nothing. Uhm, just checking the quarterly sales reports from Jack before I give them to Mary.”
“That good or that bad? It was hard to tell by your look?” Bobbie inquired curiously.
“Oh, its all good,” Tara assured her as she got up from behind her desk and gathered some folders. “Whatcha up to? Need help with something?” Tara paused to look at Bobbie as she came in and sat down. She noticed Bobbie wearing a new pair of slacks and her shiny black shoes, the ones she wore when the managers all went out for lunch with the boss or if she was expecting important visitors.
“Oh, there must be something going on you haven’t told me about yet,” Tara quickly surmised. “What’s up?”
“Got a three o’clock with the computer consultant for the preliminary work ups,” Bobbie explained. “Man, you always know when there is something going on, even when I forget to tell you. How do you do that?” Bobbie loved to tease Tara and joked that sometimes it seemed as if Tara tapped into the power or ESP or something since her instincts were always so on target. She was a hard person to hide things from.
“Aha, that’s right. Your nefarious scheme to make my life miserable and supposedly upgrade the system. You know I just finally figured out everything I needed to know on this one,” Tara played along.
“Yeah, right. Who does Mary come to whenever she needs help and then made me look so good in front of the board giving me the idea to streamline the ordering system?” Bobbie volleyed back.
Tara cracked a crooked grin, “That must have been me and don’t you ever forget it. You still owe me dinner for that.”
Bobbie got up to leave and replied, “Like you’d ever let me forget.” She smiled warmly at Tara as she looked back from the door, “I’m outta here. Gotta bow down to this expert who will tell me how when this system is up it will be bigger, faster, and able to reinvent how we do business. Whoopee! See you later.” Bobbie waved at Tara as she left the office and Tara sat back at her desk.
Yeah, those sales numbers sure made it hot in here. Or was it the multipart romance story she was addicted to that she found on the internet. Thanks, Bobbie, for interrupting me when I got to the best part, Tara frowned to herself. It was good, though. She didn’t realize how late it was and Mary did want those numbers before she left today. Tara clicked on her incoming emails and got back to work.
**********************************************
Oh my God, 200 miles down and how many to go? Where the hell am I? Willow was getting a little bit antsy. She’d been driving almost three hours and still wasn’t in Springfield yet. The car surged ahead and picked up speed as Willow put her metal to the pedal. Or was that pedal to the metal? Which was it, and which one would make this candy bar car go faster? She only had an hour to go before her appointment at the offices of Pro Sports Warehouse, one of the largest sporting good retailers in the country. Lucky for me that such a big, juicy client has their headquarters in the middle of the Missouri Ozarks and not somewhere more convenient like…Timbuktu, Kansas, Willow pondered.
Finally she could see a highway sign coming up on the right. Springfield - 25 miles, it read. Woo and hoo, she was almost there. If she didn’t get lost, she should arrive at the appointment with time to freshen up and prepare her demo materials. She would get there with perfect timing, no need to worry. Plus, Pro Sports had already committed to Willow’s company the purchase of updated hardware to support the sophisticated, new inventory, ordering, and reporting software they had bought last month. It was quite a coup getting this order and then telling her team about it. As she crowed to them, “Thanks for all your hard work everyone, they bought the works!” there was much applause. This was the company’s biggest install of their system yet. And, of course, the biggest paycheck.
Yep, big business deal to do and no pressure at all. Well, maybe a little pressure. A little pressure like it takes a ton of coal to be compressed into a diamond, that’s all. Maybe, I’ll buy myself those nice diamond earrings I saw at Saks if this all goes off OK. If not… well, I guess if it doesn’t go well…no diamonds for me, just a lump of coal. I bet there are still coal miners burrowing under the ground out here in these hills and I wonder if they still keep a canary to warn them of gas and…
“Dammit, tour bus. Let me over. This is my exit,” Willow warned the bus driver she was cruising past immediately on her right. Too bad he couldn’t hear her as she sharply swerved in front of him and did a controlled careen down the exit ramp. Pulling to a stop at the light, Willow checked her dashboard clock and breathed a sigh of relief – 2:30pm. Now all she had to do was turn right, follow her preprinted directions to the Pro Sports offices and her new adventure would begin. New adventure or another job with another satisfied client that would be the client before my next one and the client after my last one. Willow tried to organize her thoughts into the more professional manner she would soon adopt. Hey, liven up here. This is a big job, a great opportunity to get a major reference and totally unlike the last ten installations in the other out of the way places I’ve been. For months at a time. As she made her way through the streets of Springfield and pulled the brown bomber into the Pro Sports Warehouse parking lot, she told herself, “Buckle up, Buckaroo. It’s Showtime.”
***********************************************
“Tara.”
“Tara! Are you listening here? I’m going to need you to review these figures with Jack.” Mary, Tara’s boss and Vice President of Operations, locked eyes with Tara across her desk. She had noticed those baby blues were staring off unfocused towards the window and Mary was surprised she had to request Tara’s full attention back to the spreadsheets she held. “Everything OK over there?” she paused again, slightly concerned.
“O-Oh sure, I’m s-s-sorry Mary. I don’t know what’s wrong with me today,” Tara responded quietly. “Which numbers do I need to check with Jack?”
Mary considered Tara for a moment but then continued, “The first month of the quarter…
Tara couldn’t really hear Mary. She was trying to understand what just happened a moment ago. She was looking over Mary’s shoulder outside toward the parking lot when she saw a flash of red and the strangest feeling came over her. She didn’t think she could describe it if she had to. Something between a constricted breath and a burning between her nerve connections. That was the strangest thing ever, she thought. My ‘impressions’ don’t usually come with Technicolor accents. I don’t know what, but something is definitely up.
…and I don’t think he took the upcoming charge we are going to take with the computer upgrade into account when he was discussing these projections,” Mary finished. “Just check with him on that and let me know what he thinks.”
“OK, no problem. I’ll ask him and let you know in the morning. I think he already went into the conference room for the meeting with the computer people.” Tara pushed back a long strand of golden hair behind her ear and got up to leave Mary’s office.
“Right, and remind him that it is not the number of numbers that counts…” Mary called to Tara as she was headed out the door.
“I know, I know. It’s the number at the bottom that counts,” Tara interrupted, laughing back in Mary’s direction. “Don’t worry, I’ll tell him,” she assured and headed back to her office relieved that she had a little time to herself to analyze her latest impression and steady herself with a couple of sips of Sprite. I’m guessing someone is trying to tell me something, I hope it becomes clear soon. Tara hated having a jittery stomach. And after what happened just now, there were definitely jitters.
l 
those are the stories that actually get me drawn into em'. Love it and can't wait for more! 
