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Willow stifled a sigh as she opened her dorm door. She had spent the morning with Tara at a small faire in town. They’d gotten matching henna tattoos on their left wrists. It was a winding pattern of vines and leaves, they had chosen it together, a representation of their connection to the Earth and each other.
They’d walked from the faire back to campus, but had split up on the path outside Willow’s dormitory. Tara had an interview for a summer position at the college, and Willow was left the reluctant task of cleaning out the last of her room. Buffy’s side of the room was entirely bare, save for the folded mattress over a bare frame.
Earlier this week the entire group, including Joyce and Dawn had converged on the dorm room to help clean it out. They’d managed to get almost everything, but Willow was left with the remnants of her tightly packed closet and a few boxes that hadn’t fit into a vehicle. Today, she would be working alone.
Everything she wouldn’t touch over the summer went into the college’s storage space. The rest of her belongings was scattered between Buffy’s house, her parents’ house and the room Tara was renting for the summer.
Looking back into the closet, she fought the urge to groan aloud. There was close to another box’s worth of belongings left. How the heck had she managed to use the closet for its intended purpose with so much extra stuff in it? She sighed and hauled out the last of the closet’s hidden bits and pieces. There were some odd bits of clothing that must have fallen off a hanger, dust bunnies, a few books, and a small box glinting from the corner.
The clothes and books fit into two boxes that were now overflowing, and left just the box that had been hiding at the top of her closet in a far corner. It was a plain brown cardboard box, sealed with duct tape. She rotated the box in her hands, looking for a label of some sort.
A moment later, her distinctive handwriting came into view. Everything Oz. One hand reached up to trace the letters and surprise flared inside of her. Had she really forgotten? After Oz had called for his things, Willow had taken everything of his she had in her possession, as well as anything he’d ever given her and stowed it away in a box. Then she’d sealed it, labeled it, and shoved into her closet where she wouldn’t have to think about it.
It had everything. Pictures, notes, song lyrics; even her Pez witch, and a small stuffed wolf he’d given her for a Christmas gift. She stared at the box for a long moment trying to decide if she should open it, and bit her lip as she thought. After a moment, she carefully pried open the box and began to look through it.
The notes were all written on notebook paper, crinkled with time and a thousand readings. Willow could feel her heart throb at the reminder of Oz. She loved Tara, loved her more than almost anything in the world. She loved the blonde woman’s smile, her calm, her tenderness. There was a beauty to her soft curves and supple skin that Oz had never possessed.
And yet Oz still lurked at the back of her mind. The initial hurt at his betrayal had faded. She had long ago acknowledged that had he not left, she never would have found Tara. When she was with the other woman, Willow’s thoughts of him didn’t cross her mind for the most part. If it did, it was usually linked to rumors of werewolves or the like.
She loved Tara dearly, but that didn’t mean that there weren’t feelings for Oz. It didn’t happen often, usually when Willow was alone and thinking too much. But they did still linger inside of her. It didn’t take much to remember the body she had memorized long before meeting Tara.
She didn’t regret her choice. She had chosen Tara, and the knowledge that it had been the right thing to do was all that had let her do it. His reappearance had opened old wounds, but it had also brought the closure she’d never thought to find. The pain that had remained after his betrayal with Veruca had finally faded into Willow.
Willow could feel tears at the corners of her eyes and she hated it. She loved Tara, and her quiet reassurance made the young red head more confident than she had been in the past. There were no secrets between them, no demonic overtones to mar their nights. She ran one hand over her forehead and sniffled once.
She looked down into the box, and it was like seeing memory in tangible form. She deftly picked out the small form of the Pez witch she’d gotten in high school. It brought back memories - and not all of them good. Oz’s voice echoed through her mind;
“This is what I do know: I miss you. Like, every second. Almost like I lost an arm, or worse, a torso. So I think I’d be willing to… give it a shot.”
She shook her head, and his voice drifted away. She put the Pez witch down on the carpet and continued going through the box. Some of the pictures of him made her heart ache in a way she was neither unfamiliar nor comfortable with. She could feel tears beginning to form when one of the notes caught her eye.
“I missed you at this last show, but I knew you’d be okay. You always are. No worries, I know you can make it through anything. Even missing out on me for a few days when I’m in the city doing shows…”
She sniffled again, but she could feel herself calming. Oz had given her strength, but when he’d left, in some ways it had gone with him. Now, Tara was her strength. Her eyes wandered down to the henna bracelet and she inspected it for a long moment. The ink had dried perfectly, without a single mar that she could find. She ran a thumb absently on the underside of her wrist, as her eyes drifted further downwards onto the Pezwitch.
She picked the small thing up, and carefully replaced it in the box, along with the single note she’d removed. Then, just as carefully she resealed the box. She would take it to her parents’ home and move it into the attic with some of her other old things. She had loved Oz, still did in many ways. But as far as Willow was concerned now, the taciturn man had been her past.
Tara would be her future. .