Author's Note: This is yet another challenge issued to me by Kateydidnt. I had nothing to do this week, so she asked me to write about the war crimes trial of Katniss Everdeen. Because I'm a masochistic nutjob whose longest fic was the Darth Vader war crimes trial, I took on the challenge. Because of my muse, it may take a bit of preparation before we get to the trial itself.

Chapter 1

Haymitch

Haymitch had been assured more than once that Alma Coin was a smart woman. Most of these reassurances were uttered in an attempt to gain his cooperation. Some of them were protests against his sometimes-sober diatribes against the woman who led District Thirteen.

That she was a smart woman could not be denied once the war had informally ended. Within hours of the capture of the Capitol, she had set up shop; while others were searching for survivors in the rubble or treating the burn victims, the self-appointed President-Elect was taking a tour of President Snow's mansion. This was no victory lap or gloating promenade; she had wanted to look on what was hers and how much opulence she could philosophically hold against the fallen tyrants of Panem.

While the surviving rescue workers and soldiers stepped carefully through the ruins of what had been the City Circle, President-Elect Coin had been the first District 13 citizen to voluntarily set foot in Snow's rose garden in seven decades. On a tour of the administrative offices, she had stopped at the senior staff's first aid station and stared for a long time at anti-histamines and laxatives.

One of her guards confided to Haymitch that once Coin came to the Presidential Archives, Coin refused to leave. They were not just the repositories of state documents, but also the home of the confiscated Library of Congress. While her escorts expected her to reflect on the carefully-preserved first draft of the Report of the Committee of Five of the Federal Convention from 1787, Coin hunted down the manuscripts from the Federal Writers' Project. She read a few pages in which a Mrs. Clara Fergusson detailed her Harvey's aspirations to go to Washington and Lee University like his father had. She moved on from that interview to Elam Franklin Dempsey's accounting of his social standing in something called college. She ran her hands wonderingly over the maps of fifty states. She spent an hour proving to herself that there had been a life before the Districts.

And then President-Elect Coin had searched the electronic database for anything having to do with constitutional law. She had gone to bed at her staff's urging, but she had also ordered them to bring certain documents to the room that she had acquired in the mansion's West Wing.

Haymitch had arrived in the Capitol two days after the capture of Snow; it had taken a full day just to secure the city itself and another to get the "priority" visitors transported there. Now that the war was over, he wasn't an advisor or a soldier. They had let him into the Mockingjay meetings under the title of "mentor" and "analyst," but with Snow captured and the districts in control, he was a displaced person. He was only given priority because his Mockingjay hadn't sung since her sister's death.

On the second and third day, he spent a few minutes blaming himself for the condition of his victors and a hell of a lot of time blaming District 13 for putting them anywhere near the front lines. He was sober in case they needed him, but also because he might say something while drunk that would get his head blown off by one of his fellow patriots. Neither of them was lucid enough to even care.

On the fourth day, he was summoned to a meeting with Coin and expected it to take place in Snow's office or maybe her quarters, but Matella, Coin's newest bodyguard, escorted him to a reading room in the cavernous Presidential Archives.

"Soldier Abernathy," Coin greeted him with her usual reserve.

"Haymitch," he corrected-he wasn't letting her give him a title that she might expect him to honor.

"If you insist," she said calmly. "Won't you have a seat?"

He followed that request and resisted the urge to put his feet on the table. He risked a look at her reading material and found A Student's Guide to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure.

"You're in for a bit of light reading?" he grunted.

She set the book aside with an indifferent shrug. "The only people familiar with democratic law are the history buffs," she pointed out. "I thought I would join their ranks."

It wasn't idle curiosity. The woman made no secret of her visits to the Archives and with the number of prisoners in custody, she also made no secret of what she intended to do with them.

"Figured out where in there it says the Capitol bastards don't need a trial?" he asked dryly.

It was the sort of thing that he should have only said with a bottle of white liquor in hand, but it was going to come out either way. Coin gave him a sharp look that reminded him that she didn't have to like it.

"Oh, I intend to give them a trial," she growled. "If I have to take my cues from the film archives, I will, but I will make sure every one of them is put in their place in as public a manner as necessary."

He could have also pointed out that this was the function that the Hunger Games were supposed to serve, but thought that comparing the leader of the newly-free world to a gamemaker would have been bad form. Effie Trinket would have been proud of his self-restraint.

"Even Snow?" he challenged.

"No." Haymitch didn't bother to hide his smirk and Coin didn't give him a chance to argue. "Even before the rebellion, there were times when the verdict was in long before the criminal was in the hands of their victims. Some were even killed on capture."

Haymitch snorted out a laugh and saluted his fearless leader. "Well, it's good to know we have precedent for our barbarian tendencies."

She leaned in and sniffed deeply. "You're drunk."

"Sober as a priest," Haymitch answered. "I'm a mean drunk, but I'm told I'm an absolute terror the rest of the time."

The woman knew that. It was half of why he'd been allowed in the Mockingjay meetings. He was the kind of terror who could get things done.

"How is our hero?" she asked.

She also knew that. She probably had cameras on the IV lines stuck into Katniss Everdeen's arm.

"You didn't bring me here to talk about her blood pressure," he commented. "What do you want from me?"

Coin's hand reached out and straightened the stack of books. She tapped the top volume idly for a moment before looking up to meet his gaze.

"I don't want Peeta Mellark to speak to her," she said.

"Peeta Mellark is in no condition to speak to anyone," Haymitch said.

"I don't want Peeta Mellark feeding her reasons to turn against us," Coin snapped. "She was the girl on fire and a fire burns anything in its path. We need that fire contained."

He had seen the damned feeds. Coin had made sure that when the Capitol went to hell, it was well-documented. He had looked through the battlefield for familiar faces, so he had seen his girl on fire in one of the rooms where they had planned the propos. He could never unsee what became of the ones like her sister.

"Peeta has nothing to say to her that she doesn't already have a response to," he commented. For good or evil. "But I'm not making her see anyone who might cause her stress."

It wasn't a promise to keep the Capitol's favorite lovers apart, but it was goign to have to be good enough. A moment later, he got the courage to ask a question that she might avoid answering.

"Why?"

"Because we don't want her to have a second's pause when she is asked to do her duty."

His mind immediately recalled her comment of a few moments ago. "Even before the rebellion, there were times when the verdict was in long before the criminal was in the hands of their victims. Some were even killed on capture."

He could see it now. He could almost hear her prep team trying to talk her into a wig. He could see the tight-fitting Mockingjay armor that would chafe against her skin grafts. He could almost see the arrow.

"You want her as a firing squad," he said.

"She's one teenage girl," Coin scoffed. "Hardly a squad."

"She's your symbol and you want her hand on the bow and arrow that kill Snow."

"Yes." She clasped her hands in front of her and he saw something like a smirk on her lips before she pulled a straight face. "I told her we would flip a coin for the honor, but I am satisfied if she kills Snow on my orders."

More likely, this was a way for the Mockingjay to prove that she answered to the new leader.

"What else?"

At that, she moved the books aside to free a sheet of paper. It was covered in neat, almost fussy handwriting that listed some of Snow's best servants.

"I understand that you, as a mentor, have had some contact with the accused," Coin said mildly. "Consider this your order to appear for the prosecution."

He couldn't say that any of these people had ever been friends or even what could be called allies. They were some of the officials that he had dealt with every year; one of them had discreetly funded a pot of broth for District 12's tributes during the 74th Hunger Games.

"I don't know that I'd have much to say, ma'am," he muttered.

"We both know that to be a lie," she chided, sounding more like a parent than a head of state at this point. "While you may not have the delicious secrets of the late Finnick Odair, you have your own reasons to hate every person on that list."

It still didn't mean that he was interested in sitting in some staged scene and talking about Cicero Mellencamp's rumored history of embezzlement. He had kept some of these people's secrets and they had kept more than a few of his own over the years. He wasn't afraid of what they might say in retaliation, but he did have his own warped sense of honor to consider.

"It's not up for discussion," Coin added.

"I'm not sure what you expect me to say," he responded.

The smirk returned and stayed this time. "I'm sure we'll find something."

As it turned out, the trials were mere formalities. Once Coin's people had slapped together a tribunal-a jury of peers couldn't be trusted-and two people who could grandstand enough to be considered lawyers, they had moved quickly. Haymitch had come out of duty to the first one, but it had required a sub poena and the under-the-table offer to put something other than water at his disposal once he was off the witness stand.

Someone who knew their arcane law had dug up the term "hostile witness" and slapped it on him during the first trial. It had been against Juno Bell, a middling, bureaucratic and pettily vindictive person who had been Snow's Director of Victor Relations. Haymitch had been able to confirm nothing more than the fact that her department would have been responsible for the food shipments that had been tainted before the fall of District 12. Coin had insisted on his involvement to send the message that the prisoners could be held accountable for anything, even so much as mold on a loaf of wheat bread.

After that, he wore "hostile witness" as a badge of honor. It won him no favors from Coin and he returned every bottle sent to him until they got the message. He sat on the witness stand and told the truth as he swore to do, but never let them have hearsay. He never let them get a rumor out of him. They could use him, but they couldn't have him.

And at night, when the verdict was handed down and the people he had once cajoled into sponsoring coal miners' daughters or shared ten drinks with were sent to the gallows or the cells, he would return to his victors.

Peeta, for all Coin's suspicions that he would still be working for the Capitol, was interested in little but Katniss. He wanted to know if she had spoken yet, if they had taken her off the morphling yet. He occasionally asked who Haymitch had been expected to prosecute that day, probably just to change the subject.

Katniss wouldn't even look at him for the first week. She never pretended to sleep, but turned her back on him and breathed as quietly as possible.

When a week had passed, he tried to make her talk to him. He told her about Gale's recovery. He listed off the people who had asked about her. One day, he gave up on sense and recited every children's rhyme that his mother had taught him.

On the day that they concluded the first round of war crimes trials, Dr. Aurelius announced to Katniss Everdeen's "family" that her mind was causing her muteness and it would be a matter of time before that wound healed. It was nothing they didn't already suspect, but it was something they could work with.

After the 74th Games, Peeta and Katniss had been his chaperones. They had made sure that he bathed and ate and let Gale's mother in for the occasional dishwashing. In the Capitol, Haymitch made sure that he was there when Katniss needed to be forced to stay alive. After one day, he left his comm on at all times in case another guard found the Mockingjay wandering aimlessly through storage rooms. She never found her way through security checkpoints-some part of her mind still abhorred soldiers-but he found her everywhere from the old Minister of Defense's office to a vast room where they had stored the couture items seized from the American people on their way to the poverty of the Districts.

Katniss had, for a time, made sure he was alive and fit for human contact every day. In the wake of the war, he returned the favor.