Author: Taralover
Rating: PG-13 but might change later
Disclaimer: Buffy the Vampire Slayer is the property of Joss Whedon/Mutant Enemy and I am making no money from this fanfiction.
Summary: Willow and Tara are forced into witness protection after seeing a murder.
Chapter Two-Relocation, Relocation
“Let her go,” Tara said weakly. “Remember how angry your parents were when they first found out that you were a lesbian? If you had given into their wishes, you never would have felt happy in your life. If Dawn thinks that her best bet is to hunker down safely with her boyfriend instead of leaving the danger area, let her. She’s young and in love, and if we forcibly take her with us, she will sooner or later escape and try and find her boyfriend herself, which will really put her into danger. Maybe her choice is the wrong one, but it’s her who is going to be the one making it. If her boyfriend turns out to be a prick, it’s her own fault.”
“But she’s so young…what if the people who tried to kill us find and kill her? What if they take her as a hostage to stop us testifying in court? What if her boyfriend gets her pregnant at fifteen?”
“Willow…do it for me.”
Do it for me, you say. Tara, you may not know it yet, but I love you. I totally utterly love you, and what you want you get .If you were to decide not to go into hiding, then neither would I even if I was murdered. My life would mean very little without you, and you have no idea of what I truly think about you.
“Dawnie, if you really want to go and live with your boyfriend then you can. But be safe. Try and wear a tin tray under your clothing when you go out as body armour, which should help make it harder to stab you at least. Remember, as it’s not your house you have to obey the house rules or leave, so don’t do stupid stuff like eating all the fruit in a day. Don’t let him hassle you, and if he hits or abuses you get to the police station and ask to see Detective Taylor, he’ll put you in contact with us if you are willing to change your name. If you’re not willing to change you’re name you’ll have to go back to your boyfriend, I’m afraid. Goodbye and good luck.”
“Thanks, sis, that’s really sweet of you to let me follow my dreams.” Dawn kissed Willow on the cheek and walked outside in the direction of her boyfriend’s house.
“Now that she is gone, you need to choose your new names,” Detective Taylor said.
“My family came from Ireland and I want to stay faithful to my Irish roots,” Tara said. “I’m not happy about having to hide, but if I didn’t I guess they would track me down and finish the job, and I can hardly defend myself with my arm in plaster. How about the name Laragh McManus? Laragh is such a lovely name.”
“McManus is fine, but I think your name should begin with a T so you won’t forget it,” Detective Taylor said. “Otherwise the consequences could be embarrassing at best and fatal at worst. How about the name Tori?”
“Tori it will be, then.”
“I’m not a practising Jewish person, but I want to stay true to my Jewish roots. Jewish people have gone through all sorts of horrible historical things, and it would be wrong to deny my heritage,” said Willow, babbling a bit. “If I were not Jewish I’d pick the family name of Ryan, so I and Tara, sorry, Tori, would become an Irish-American couple, but as it is I’ll pick the name of Rothstien. The first name is harder though…Wilma? Too much like the Flintstones. Wilhelmina is so 1850’s. Wendy? Hey, Peter Pan, Captain Hook is coming.”
“I think we should turn it around and make it an M. Molly. Or Megan. Megan Rothstien,” Tara suggested.
“Megan Rothstien it is then.” Willow managed a smile that she didn’t really feel at all. “How long will it take us have our documents got together?”
“Only a couple of days. In fact there is a joke going around my department that if you want to get a passport quickly, the only way is to enter witness protection. Normally it takes many months to get a passport. And whilst you wait you’ll be drilled in using your new names and given a back-story to tell any new friends you make. In the days before witness protection, witnesses who changed their name of their own accord had none of the documents needed to get a bank account or a mortgage and could not get them without committing fraud and ripping off some innocent person who might suddenly get people coming after them for bills they never owed and have their credit ruined.”
“So will we have to disguise our looks as well?” Willow asked.
“Your clothes and jewellery were destroyed in the fire, and I think we’ll buy you ones that were slightly different. We’ll fly you to California in a small private plane of ours. You’ll be far enough away that you won’t need to dye your hair or wear wigs, what you are going through is bad enough without putting you through that. Now, the rules of the program…”
“Rule one. The most important rule of witness protection is that nobody knows you are in witness protection. To everyone else you have always been Megan Rothstien and Tori McManus. Willow Rosenberg and Tara Maclay have vanished off the face of the earth. If we find you deliberately broke this rule, we can kick you off the program.”
“Rule two is for most the hardest rule not to break. No meeting with family members or former friends, as you will be putting them as well as yourself in danger. There was one girl not long ago who broke that rule, and the police found her stabbed, rotting, swollen body washed up on a riverbank. The killers were found and convicted in that case, and they got the death penalty, but of course it won’t bring her back. If you deliberately break that rule, you are out of the program. If it happens accidentally, by you running into someone by chance who knows who you were, you have to be renamed and relocated all over again.”
“My family hate me anyway,” Tara said sadly. “My mother died of cancer years ago, and my father and brother are homophobic and treated me as their unpaid gofer until I moved out of the house. Even if I didn’t need to hide, I would not be talking to them. If the contract on my and Will…Megan’s life was lifted on condition that I kept in contact with my family, I would turn the offer down.”
“I’ll miss my family, although they have nagged me a bit at times,” Willow said. “If it were just my life at stake I might not agree to enter the program, but it’s your like at stake too, Tori. I would hate to be without you, knowing what you would be going through.”
“Rule three, the last one, is that whilst we will give you an emergency number that you can use for the rest of your life, in the unlikely event both that they track you down and that you survive long enough to use it, we will only give you benefits for three months after relocation. After that you have to have got jobs or you’ll be in financial trouble. America is not a place for the lazy that cannot be bothered to work, unlike Europe. If you can’t get jobs, you’ll end up doing community work in exchange for food stamps, or even in the worst situation, homeless. Tara, your ninety-day stipend will last longer, because we can’t expect you to get a job with an arm in plaster, but when the plaster comes off your ninety days starts.”
For the next three days, Willow and Tara were drilled on their back-story and their new names, so that they could use them us their own without hesitation. New clothes and jewellery were brought for them that were subtly different to what they normally wore. Then they were taken to the plane when their documents came through and flown to their new house and their new lives.
****
Willow looked around the house. “It’s not as big as our old one, Tori, but it will have to do. Tori…NO!”
Tara had found a long wooden ruler and was about to slip it down her cast to scratch, before Willow snatched it away from her. “You can’t scratch or you’ll cut yourself, and the cuts will get infected and you won’t be able to treat them and you could end up losing your whole arm.”
“But it itches like crazy…” Tara moaned, before Willow suddenly cut her off with a big kiss on the lips.
“W…Megan, why did you do that?”
“Because I love you, I’ve loved you since I was old enough to understand love and realized that I loved girls instead of boys. I love everything about you, everything.”
She leaned in for another kiss and Tara didn’t pull away. “You know I feel the same way about girls, but I’ve never had a girlfriend before so I want to take things slowly. I was in love with Emma before and was on the verge of telling her when…he killed her…”
Bad Willow…or should that be bad Megan? No, bad Willow, I can call myself Willow in my own mind, they can’t spy on me now and find out that I broke the rules and it’s not their damm business anyway. Bad Willow for reminding my girlfriend of Emma’s death and making her cry. Girlfriend? She’s not your girlfriend; you have to be a hangaround first. Yes, just hanging around…sweet. Then it’s time to do some prospecting time, yes, what a prospect. Then I can be a full patch…hey, you’re getting a girlfriend, not joining an outlaw biker gang.
Hey, they both need commitment. Yes, but getting Tara for myself is good whilst the other thing is all evil and skanky and hey, Tara is kissing me with passion…
Tara pulled away softly. “I love you too.”
The weeks went by. Willow was sure that Tara used pencils to scratch when she was not looking, but did not make a big deal of it, whilst Tara for her part was careful as to how hard she scratched and when, and somehow managed to avoid infection or worse. When her cast came off she had a really good scratch and her temper greatly improved, and when she and Willow cuddled she was ready to almost go all the way, but not quite, as she said she wanted to know she totally loved Willow before she went all the way. Willow went out and got a job on her sixtieth day in hiding as an office worker. It was boring at times but she paid the bills.
Tara meanwhile scarcely slept at nights, first because she was still mourning Emma, then because of her cast itch, and then because she was just used to it. She tended to be up all night online, then slept away much of the day, and when her cast came off she showed little interest in looking for a job.
“Tori, baby, your stipend ends in ten days, and then I’ll be working my butt off at the office to support both of us whilst you just swan around at home all day and get fat. You’ve become a drone. You stay up all night and then sleep most of the day, you need to fix your sleeping pattern and I think pills are the answer. Just for a few days until you can sleep like me and then go out and get a job.”
Tara’s blue eyes blazed with a rush of sudden anger. “I have lost my friend, my house, my name and identity, my entire life, and now you want to put me on pills? To turn me into a junkie? Sorry, Megan, no can do.”
“Tori…Tori, please don’t get angry, it’s for your own good. You need to go out there and get a job.”
“I am not taking drugs, never, and that's final.”
They slept in separate beds that night.
The next day Willow managed to get some powerful prescription sleeping pills, by pretending that she was not able to sleep and saying some of Tara’s symptoms as if they were hers. Two of these crushed down into her milk, should make her fall asleep quickly and I can cuddle up beside her. And then ten days or so will be enough to get her to sleep like me. And then I can get her to find a job so I won’t be supporting her whilst she acts the part of the grasshopper, the sloth, and the outright lazy bum.
As she crushed them down she thought Am I doing the right thing? What if it does turn her into a drug-addicted zombie? What if she finds out and dumps me for controlling her? What if she has a freak reaction and dies and they put me on trial for murder and I get life, and end up with some thuggish, butt ugly bulldyke who makes me into her sex kitten by beating me up if I say no to her? Am I really doing the right thing here, or am I just being selfish and putting my needs ahead of hers?
OOC-You readers/feedbackers get to vote again if you feel like it-should Willow drug Tara to try and get her sleeping patten back to normal? Or should she accept Tara the way she is and risk the fact that Tara might not find a job and will reley on her to be the breadwinner?
Laragh,here is Chapter Two, dedicated as before to you, I hope you like it.
Chosenone-Dawn is gone at least for now.
Last edited by Taralover on Sat Jul 18, 2009 9:25 am, edited 1 time in total.
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