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They bury Tabitha in the churchyard after the battle is done.
It's Miria and five others, and the new generation standing a little ways away, gathered to bid farewell and pay respects. They all know how this story goes, or think they do: this is the life she lived, and the honor she earned, and the only way it ever ends – but though there's a sword to mark her grave, this isn't the story they're used to. She's not the last to be put to rest in the wilderness, in a warrior's grave with none but warriors to mourn her and let her go. They've laid her to rest on holy ground, and outside the cemetery gates, there's a city to mourn and celebrate with them.
Before they leave the walls of Rabona for the world and the hunt, Miria returns one last time, alone. She sinks to her knees in the soft earth, mud staining her uniform, words running through her head that she can't get out around the tightness in her throat. I miss you. I failed you. I'm sorry. None of it is enough.
“You did what you had to,” she says in the end. “You gave us what we needed to win, and we won, and I – ” She knows she must be crying because she can taste the salt of tears and feel them cooling against her skin, but Tabitha deserves more than useless tears and gratitude. “I swear I'll make your sacrifice worth it.”
There's nothing else to say that she hasn't said already, and no one left to hear it anyway, so she pushes herself to her feet and she goes.
*
She comes back.
Every time she passes by the city she comes back, with a flower to lay on the grave and a few words to say to any ghost or god who might be listening. She doesn't believe in either, even now, but that doesn't stop her from settling in to spend an hour talking about where she's been and what's happened in the world since Tabitha left it, and when she leaves, she always feels empty and a little bit lighter.
And one day, when she makes her way through the gravestones to the place she remembers, she sees that she isn't the only one who's been visiting. Someone's left flowers and incense, a small flask of red wine and a painted icon. Her first thought is Helen, but Helen is in the North, rebuilding, and there are no other warriors close enough except Galatea, who doesn't believe in trinkets.
A human left these, she thinks, and bends to touch the cool silk of a crimson petal, vivid as a splash of blood. And she remembers where she's seen the like before – at the feet of statues in the cathedral courtyard, offerings made to fallen heroes who might or might not have ever been real.
They've made a martyr of you, she thinks. Or a legend, anyway. Not a ghost or a monster, nothing to hate or fear or turn away from.
Something worth remembering.