Sara found Maya sitting alone by the remains of the evening fire, small hands moving through familiar gestures - the ones Tom had taught her for the freedom song. She was doing them wrong.
"That's not-" Sara stopped herself, the words catching in her throat. How many times had she heard Tom say those exact words, always with that patient smile?
Maya looked up, tears streaking her dusty face. "I can't remember it right. He showed me, but I can't..." Her hands fell to her lap. "I'm forgetting it already."
Sara's first instinct was to walk away. The songs were too fresh, too painful. But something made her stay - maybe the way Maya's fingers kept twitching through half-remembered movements, or how the evening silence ached for familiar melodies.
"Like this," Sara found herself saying, kneeling beside the girl. Her own hands shook as she demonstrated the proper gesture. "Breaking chains, then choosing freedom. He always said the order mattered."
"Why?"
"Because-" Sara's voice cracked. She could hear Tom's explanation in her head, clear as crystal: 'Because you have to break the chains before you can choose freedom. Every movement tells part of the story.'
Other children drifted closer as Sara worked with Maya. Soon she had a small audience, all of them trying to learn the gestures Tom had never finished teaching them. Their small hands moved through the patterns, clumsy but determined.
"What comes next in the song?" someone asked.
Sara started to say she didn't know, that she couldn't, that these weren't her songs to teach. But she did know. All those nights by the fire, all those battles with Tom's music weaving through her shields - the songs were part of her too, whether she wanted them to be or not.
Rica found her there later, surrounded by children practicing the gestures while Sara taught them the words Tom had carved into their memories.
"He'd be proud," Rica said softly.
"I'm not him," Sara replied, watching Maya finally get a sequence right. "I can't replace-"
"No," Rica agreed. "But you can continue. There's a difference."
Later that night, alone in her tent, Sara finally made herself look at Tom's bow. It lay wrapped in cloth, the void-marks along its length still pulsing faintly. Her hands hovered over it, not quite touching.
"I don't know if I can," she whispered to the empty air. "I don't know if I'm strong enough."
But she could still hear Tom's voice, that mix of humor and certainty: 'Strength isn't about not breaking, Sara. It's about what you do after you break.'
Her fingers brushed the bowstring, and for a moment she swore she heard a note - like a strand of music caught between moments, waiting to be continued.
She didn't pick up the bow. Not yet. But she didn't wrap it away either. Instead, she began humming softly - one of Tom's simpler tunes, the kind he'd play during quiet moments between battles. Her guardian-marks swirled with the melody, protection and memory becoming something new.
It wasn't about replacing him. It was about making sure what he started didn't end with him. The songs, the stories, the defiance woven through every note - they were too important to let die.
The bow could wait. For now, there were songs to remember, children to teach, and a legacy to continue.
One gesture at a time. One note at a time. One memory carried forward into something new.