Holding her cap in her hands, Donna waited for the warden to start talking. The thirty-one women were lined up in the corridor, not saying a word or moving a finger. Donna shifted from foot to foot, feeling a soreness in her knees. The previous day, she had stood for a long time with locked knees when helping do repairs in the shed, and now they were aching.
"Starting today and until you are finished," the warden said, "you will be repainting your cells and the corridors. You will finish painting your cell, and then proceed to the corridor you have been assigned to. If your group is done early, you will be reassigned to a different one. Materials are in the storage cupboard on the second floor. Dismissed!"
"Seriously?" hissed Blatt as they made their way to the bulletin board. "They're making us run up and down the stairs just to get another can of paint!"
Checking the list, Donna found out that she was going to be painting the basement together with Theodosius, Vartha, Li, Katz, Strata, Weiss, and Stein. Donna imagined the directors arguing over who should be assigned to work with whom. Other than Vartha, these were all the people she sat with when crocheting. "At least we'll get to do something else for a change," she said, trying to look on the bright side. "I'm not looking forward to running up and down two flights of stairs, though."
Blatt studied the list. "Just send Li to do everything," she said, backtracking and letting others get closer. "I'm sure running up two flights of stairs is as easy as walking ten metres to him."
For now, though, they only had one flight of stairs to worry about. Donna volunteered to bring down the supplies, and immediately regretted it. Walking up the stairs was bad enough, walking down the stairs with two paint cans in each hand was worse. The gate to the cell block was unlocked, fortunately, so she didn't have to stand and wait for someone to open it. Donna lowered the cans to the ground and straightened up, exhaling in relief and rubbing at her hands. Then, she had to go up again and get more supplies. By the third trip, she was wondering why she had even volunteered. The fifth and final trip left her feeling completely drained and breathing heavily.
"Look at Blues," Donna heard Blatt whisper in a sarcastic tone to several others. "Model inmate, isn't she? Running to and fro at a snap of the fingers?" Donna wanted to point out that the former Peacekeepers approached physically demanding tasks like their honour was at stake and thus her own willingness to do extra work wasn't anything special compared to them, but Grass cut in first.
"You still trying to impress them?" she asked Donna. "Didn't work so well last time."
Unsure of what to say, Donna jammed a brush handle under the lid of a can to open it, revealing white paint. Leta and Kremser were sorting paint rollers and brushes by size into piles even as everyone was starting to take what they needed. Donna placed a paint roller in her pocket, jammed a roll of paper under her left arm, and picked up the can of paint she had opened with her right hand. Cans of black and white paint had been issued with the obvious implication that they needed to be mixed to make grey, but since no instructions had been given, Donna decided to go with plain white and then say it was very light grey if confronted. She stood in the middle of the cell, wondering what to start with first. Maybe the ceiling, get the hardest part out of the way first? Donna went back outside and got a stepladder. Back in her cell, she draped the paper over the sink and toilet and placed a piece on the floor against the wall, wondering if she'd be able to get away with stealing some of the paper.
It made sense that some paper would be torn to fit better, or be used to wipe up spills. Donna placed the paint can on the top of the stepladder, climbed to the top step, and dunked the roller into the can. As she waited for the excess to pour off, she wondered how much she would be able to get away with. Maybe a palm-sized piece or so at a time. But what if they intensified the searches, fearing exactly that? She'd need to wait and see before doing anything. But what if they were trying to lull them into a false sense of confidence?
As Donna reached up to start painting the ceiling, she decided to ask the sympathetic guards if they knew anything. She moved the roller back and forth, drips of paint still getting on her despite everything. After only a few applications of paint, her knees started to hurt. This just wasn't working. Donna climbed down and decided to start with the bottom of the wall instead. Adjusting the paper so she could reach the wall, Donna sat down on the cold floor with her can of paint in front of her and began painting the formerly grey wall a bright white.
Despite being alone, it wasn't boring. There was a clear sense of progress, which let her set little goals that were replaced by new ones as soon as she was done with one. She tried to go faster and faster, eager to be able to talk to Theodosius.
Finish up this bit near the floor.
Make it as tall as the bit next to it.
Reach as high as possible from a sitting position.
Add another layer of paint to it, hide the grey fully. And so on and so on.
As she painted, Donna let her mind wander to the District Affairs trial that had recently ended. HIgh-ranking functionaries from that ministry had been tried for their participation in the oppression of the Districts. Theodosius had worked with many of them, as had Donna to a smaller extent.. All of them were in danger of receiving the supreme penalty. She forced herself to stop thinking about it, not wanting to give herself anxiety. Instead, she looked around the cell and out the window, observing the bare branches of the tree that could be seen. It was strange, to be in her cell at this time of day. The brightness of the sun combined powerfully with the brightness of the lightbulb, and the white paint was making it even worse.
"Wow," Donna said, "they're really messing with you, aren't they? This isn't the best use of your effort. You glow when it's light and don't when it's dark - where's the logic?"
You're the one who doesn't want it to be light at night, the lightbulb pointed out.
"That's very true," Donna said, shifting over slightly and moving her can of paint. "You must be upset at this misuse of your abilities, though."
What does it matter to me in what circumstances I glow? the lightbulb pointed out, and Donna could imagine the exasperated tone. All I know is glow, or don't glow. The amount of light already present doesn't have any effect on me.
"But do you notice it?" Donna asked, leaning against the toilet and stretching out her legs.
Why would I? I wasn't given a new task, merely had the old one get easier, the lightbulb explained. I don't have to glow as much, and that's all that matters.
That made sense. The lightbulb hadn't been made to think critically but to glow. To it, nothing outside glowing or not glowing mattered.
Pushing herself to the limit, Donna managed to finish three of the walls before lunch. The floor, her fingers and her clothes were covered in drops of paint, and even her hair had a new white streak where she had adjusted her cap with a dirty hand. Washing the paint off skin with the cold sink water was hard enough, so she didn't bother trying to clean her shirt. Laundry was tomorrow in any case.
Lunch was buckwheat with vegetables, a tiny loaf of black bread that easily fit in her palm, a handful of dried fruits, and tea. Since the tea was actually hot for once, Donna tossed the fruits into it to let them soak. It would improve the flavour of the tea and make eating the fruits easier. Despite the tough crust that cut up the roof of her mouth, the bread wasn't crumbly at all, and the inside was soft. Donna tore off pieces and used them to wipe clean the part of the tray that had held the buckwheat, even though there wasn't really anything to wipe up. Whatever juice the vegetables had released when being cooked must have been absorbed by the buckwheat.
The tea had a slightly fruity taste and the fruits were slightly softer, so Donna was counting it as a win. She nibbled slowly on the last piece of dried apple as she recorded what she had just had in her chart. Then, she climbed onto her cot, trying to put her face as close to the open window as possible. The smell of paint was overwhelming. Donna stood there for a while until they were called for the afternoon walk. The doors were left open, for ventilation purposes.
"How's the painting going?" Donna asked Theodosius, whose cap had a large streak of paint on it. His trousers and shoes were likewise splattered with paint drops, but his jacket hid his shirt.
"Not too bad," he said. "Finished the ceiling and most of two walls."
"I did three walls. Maybe we'll be done at the same time!"
Theodosius scooped up some snow and began to make snowballs. "Here, could you hold these two?" he asked, handing one to her, and then another. Donna reluctantly took them, not wanting to expose her hands to the freezing wind, as he made a third one. Theodosius took them back and began to juggle as he walked. "Yeah, that would be nice. You think we might be done in three days?"
"Probably," Donna said. There would be no painting in the afternoon, as the cells would need to be aired out. Theodosius dropped one ball, but kept on going with just two. "Depends on if the second coat takes more or less time."
Theodosius tossed the snowballs to the side and adjusted his scarf so it covered his ears better. "I suppose we'll just have to wait and see. By the way, how did you figure out the ratio of black to white paint? I just gave up and used white."
It hadn't even entered Donna's mind that others could have had the same idea as her, though in hindsight, it was an easy thing to think of. "Same!" she said. "It's so much easier this way."
"Oh, wow, really?" Theodosius asked, eyes wide above his scarf. "I thought I was going to be the only one."
"Do you think the administration's going to be upset?" she asked anxiously. "If all of us paint our cells different colours, it won't be uniform like they want."
Adjusting his scarf again, Theodosius echoed her words. "I was thinking about that, too. What if Thirteen kicks up a fuss? We'll just have to repaint it all over again." Only his eyes were visible between the scarf and the cap, wide and dark.
The prospect of having to redo everything made Donna's heart clench. "I hope not," she said fervently. "I just don't want to work alone," she added in a softer tone. "Whenever I'm in my cell, I can feel my mind going."
"Don't remind me!" Theodosius said lightly. "We're outside. Why are we talking about being inside?"
A powerful gust of wind blew, hitting them in the face. It often seemed like the wind was always in their faces, no matter in what direction they were going. "I am ready for spring," Donna grumbled. Her toes were starting to feel numb.
"Same. I can't believe I ever managed to go without my scarf," Theodosius said for the tenth time since getting the scarf. "This winter has been just terrible."
Donna chuckled. "Don't let them hear you say that," she said, referring to the former Peacekeepers who had been stationed in the coldest Districts.
"I'm sorry, Ms. Hope," Theodosius said as he turned around to face Hope, who was right behind them, "but I am very, very cold."
Hope looked at him with an unimpressed facial expression. She wore no scarf, but Donna knew she had gotten a pair of warm socks through Aslanov's helpful brother. "It could be worse," she said.
"Could be better, too," Donna said, pulling up her own scarf.
Painting was so much easier when you didn't have to rush. Now that most of their little group was gathered in the basement, Donna and the others could go as slowly as they wanted. She crouched next to a large bucket, mixing one part white paint and two parts black with a small wooden dowel.
"I just went one-to-one," Stein said, scratching his head. "This is going to look downright eclectic."
Katz disagreed. "As long as the corridors all look the same, they won't care. When you've got a lot of people living in total uniformity, they need to be allowed some individuality, or they'll start acting out in an attempt to differentiate themselves from others."
"I don't think Thirteen uses that manual," Strata pointed out as she put together the long roller. No positioning buckets on top of stepladders here. "Also, do any of you men know when Li will deign to show up?" she added in an irritated tone. The former Peacekeepers never antagonized Li when he was even potentially in earshot, but he wasn't here now.
Theodosius, Vartha, and Stein all shook their heads. "Last I checked, he still had one and a half walls left," Stein said. The former Peacekeepers exchanged dark looks. Peacekeeper solidarity battled with the universal loathing for the Death Squad, both attitudes incomprehensible to Donna as, ironically enough, she got along better with Li than with any other former Peacekeeper.
Even now, Katz was trying to antagonize Theodosius about something, and he was giving back as good as he got. The argument seemed to be about the scarf he had given to Vartha, who was mixing another portion of paint and ignoring them. The seven of them were being watched over by a solitary guard who was sitting in a folding chair and handwriting an essay.
The paint had by now become an even grey. "This part's ready," Donna said, pouring half of it into another bucket. Vartha echoed her.
"All right, then," said Katz, breaking off her argument mid-sentence. "We'll split off into pairs - two at this end of the walls, two on the other. I'll start alone." Strata, Weiss, and Stein seemed to sag slightly, eyeing each other. After a moment's deliberation, Weiss moved towards Vartha. Donna wondered why. The only thing she could think of was that Weiss' sentence was three years longer than that of the two others.
Donna picked up a bucket and moved towards the cell block gate, right next to the guard who didn't even look up from his clipboard as they unfolded the small ladder. While they did have paint rollers with telescoping handles, those were only two metres long, and the ceilings were all four metres. They laid out the paper and set up their supplies on top of it. Donna glanced at the guard's essay as she put down the bucket of paint. The man from Ten was too engrossed in the economic consequences of free trade to notice her.
"How long do you think this will take us?" Theodosius asked as he dipped his roller into the bucket. "I calculated how much time it takes to paint a square metre, but I was rushing when I painted my cell."
"No idea," said Katz from behind them. "There's no time limit to this, so why worry? Just do what you ought, and what happens - happens." Donna agreed with that sentiment, though probably not in the way Katz had intended it.
"For the millionth time," Katz snapped, "I did not choose to be promoted to Head! It was dumped on my head!"
Vartha was unimpressed. "Then why didn't you turn down the appointment?" he asked. "I know the person being originally considered for the position turned it down without even giving a reason."
"Because if I turned it down, Command would have started asking questions about why everyone was disobeying," Katz said coldly. "One person is happenstance. Maybe they've decided they're more useful staying in the populated area where they're already known." She stretched out to reach the ceiling, knees braced against the top of the stepladder. "More than that, and it starts to look more like serial insubordination. If you had turned down your promotion, what would have that led to?"
"There was a difference," Vartha insisted.
Katz stopped painting the ceiling and lowered her paint roller. "What difference?" she asked, staring straight at him. "Tell me, were the military and civilian authorities truly so different that something as simple as turning down promotions was not handled in similar ways?"
"Actually, it was," Theodosius spoke up as Vartha scurried off to rejoin Weiss, though they were close enough to overhear without straining. "The first time I was being considered for promotion to minister, I refused, citing a lack of experience. It was accepted, someone else was selected, and when they were forced to retire, I was offered the position again. That time, I accepted." He fiddled with the roller, struggling to shorten the handle.
"And how old were you when this happened?" Katz asked.
"I was thirty-three when I accepted the post," he said, trying to remember. Everyone pretended to work as they listened, even the guard. "That means I was in my late twenties when it was first offered to me."
Vartha's eyes nearly fell out of their sockets. "What did you do, save Snow's life or something? When I was in my late twenties, I was an intern making minimum wage!"
Theodosius scratched his head. "I have no idea why so absurdly early," he said. He had, in fact, been half the age of the next youngest minister. "Maybe Snow wanted to replace the old crowd with young blood, realized just how terrible of an idea it was early on, but didn't see any reason to get rid of me." Donna had once heard that he had been set up to fail by someone. "The same thing happened to Mrs. Blues, by the way," he pointed out. "We were actually given our high posts in the same month."
"Yes, but I actually climbed the career ladder, though quickly," Donna corrected him gently. "I got an internship already in undergrad, so even though I had to work during grad school, I was able to join a firm immediately after graduating through the connections I got there. I was assigned to on-location work when I was twenty-seven, so a year later. Six years on location was enough to get noticed, especially since I didn't participate in political intrigues."
"Didn't your father help out when you were applying for jobs after grad school?" Theodosius asked.
Donna shook her head. "He hated the Games. I doubt he would have helped me get a job with them."
"Alright," said Vartha. "I understand what happened with you, Mrs. Blues. But what about you, Mr. Coll?"
Before Theodosius could answer, Li cut in. "Thirty-three is not much older than twenty-nine, and Head Engineer was a position equivalent in prestige to that of a minister."
"I just explained to you, I did go through every step of the career ladder, though very quickly," Donna said, feeling like she was being forced to defend herself. "My non-participation in politics paradoxically helped me, as when the deadlock over potential candidates could not be solved through compromise, I was held up as someone who had no hostilities with any of the main players."
Li stared at her, brows furrowed in confusion. Donna shuddered to imagine what sorts of things he could have read in the NCIA files.
"In any case," Theodosius rushed in to say, "I am certain that the true reason of my appointment died with Snow. Like many other things."
Those "other things" included everything from the systematic abuse of the Victors to whether there had been meaningful communication with other countries to the budget of the president's many residences. Snow had kept a lot of things in his head, and the Rebellion hadn't bothered trying to get the priceless information out of him, preferring instead to quickly find him guilty of the Hunger Games and execute him. And what others knew of these things tended to be less detailed, not to mention their reluctance to admit they knew anything at all.
"That sounds very likely," Li said. "The Rebellion, they were too scared he'd say something bad about them, so they tried to off him quickly." Given that not a single file folder had been burned and neither had a single hard drive been destroyed, Donna had also wondered if he had intended to twist the information in a way favourable to him. The Rebellion, however, had chosen to focus on the Hunger Games, which nobody had been willing to describe as anything more than a good idea originally that had gone on for seventy-four years too long. Even Snow had found himself unable to give a coherent explanation of why he had chosen to continue them.
"Maybe at the onset," Donna conceded. "I don't know about you, but for us, they were willing to tolerate quite a few 'you too' arguments, as long as they were phrased in an indirect way. I'm willing to bet that once Coin was gone, the reorganization they had in Thirteen led to priorities changing. They spent hours interrogating me about one-on-one conversations I had had with Snow, trying to figure out anything useful. I remember once, they spent half the day trying to get me to admit I knew about what had happened to the Victors." That had been one of the most unpleasant interrogations, and there hadn't been even a tiny kernel of truth in that accusation!
"Of course you didn't know," spat Vartha. "None of us knew. Because there was nothing to know. Nothing had been done to the Victors without their consent. Why has nobody been prosecuted otherwise?" Donna cringed, hearing that argument.
Due to the lack of documentary evidence, the case had fallen apart in the early stages of planning. The only accusation to name concrete names and dates had been Finnick Odair's propo, but the people named simply denied everything, and due to the lack of evidence and Odair's death preventing him from testifying in person and facing cross-examination, the cases against them had been quickly though reluctantly dismissed. Many other Victors had also stepped up, but they also had no better evidence than their words, and many struggled to remember details and even names due to having been drugged at the time or simply due to many years having passed. "You are aware," Donna snapped, "that if a rape case comes down to what the victim and perpetrator are claiming, it gets dismissed due to lack of evidence? Surely you do not believe every single one of these defendants is innocent."
"There's a difference," Vartha said, holding up a finger. "For over a year, Victors crawled out of whatever holes they had been hiding in. Not a single one of them managed to win a case against an alleged rapist, even though nearly thirty of them tried to do so. Seems strange to me." At the end of the fighting it had seemed like only seven Victors were still alive, but as the months went on, over thirty more had come out of hiding. One turned out to have had escaped to Japan, where he was now playing semi-professional baseball.
The former Peacekeepers looked extremely confused, having only heard scattered snippets about the issue. Li, who had mysteriously regained his knowledge of everything after his sentencing, proceeded to explain the situation in detail, starting with the very first Games. Donna turned back to painting the wall, the guard - to her organic chemistry reactions.
"Wait," Katz asked, "you were given your positions in the same month? I had no idea."
Donna shrugged. "Not that many opportunities to bring it up."
"Still," she insisted. "That's an amazing coincidence. It's like there was this connection between you!"
Theodosius stared at her like she was spouting nonsense, which, to be fair, she was. "My wife would disapprove of that phrasing," he joked.
"Exactly," Donna added. "I don't think my husband would like me to have had 'connections' with other people. You do know that he will be very sad if the guard over there lets this conversation get out without the context?"
The guard looked up and made an exaggerated motion of turning a key over her mouth before continuing her battle with aromatic rings.
"Never mind," Donna said.
Katz watched her contemplatively. "I know that was a joke," she said, "but how do your spouses deal with the rumours about you in the press? Then and now."
"Before?" Theodosius asked. "Before, it was rather obvious to her that everything about my private life being written in the tabloids was a lie. Now, she just avoids everything that mentions me, because it's too stressful for her." Donna nodded along, agreeing with every word.
Planting her paint roller at her feet, Katz nodded. "What was it like, to have people write about you and reading it?" she asked. "I know my trial was the only thing Nine talked about for the entire time it lasted, but I wasn't given newspapers."
"The first time, it was surreal," Donna said. "I was so angry at a lie they told, I forced them to retract it. That just made everyone else bolder." She leaned against the unpainted part of the wall, trying to remember how she had reacted to that. "Eventually, I realized that the people I interacted with regularly were aware that it wasn't true, and the sort of people who believe what the tabloids say don't really affect my life. I wasn't someone they wrote about often, though. They knew I was in favour."
"Same," Theodosius said. "I was more likely to have issues with a newspaper sensationalizing a speech I made or distorting its meaning. The tabloids had easier targets for their articles. I remember once, though, I was accused of cheating on my wife with my secretary because I was barely home at that point. My wife just joked that I was cheating on her with my job." Donna chuckled. Dem must have felt that, too. She did not recall gossip mongers ever implying she was cheating on him, but there was nothing they had loved to do more than imply that happy families had dark secrets. Odds were, there had been something of the sort, she had just managed to overlook it.
Katz tried to dip her paint roller into the bucket at the same time as Li, and they got stuck. Li crouched down and pulled his out with one hand while stabilizing the bucket with the other.
"Smooth," Strata said appreciatively before turning back to the ceiling. Katz pressed her roller against the edges of the bucket to get rid of excess paint. They had just removed the paint from their clothes the previous day, and now they were covered with grey splotches and streaks all over again. As Donna tried to shift the bucket over slightly, her hand came in contact with a patch of wet paint. She tried to rub it off on the paper, but it was mostly futile.
Weiss was arguing with the guard. "Thirty seconds?" she asked incredulously. "I'll have to run to make it to the cell block gate that fast!"
"Wait, what?" said Li, who was probably the last person to have to worry about this. "But it was two minutes last time!"
The guard did not move a muscle. "The administration deemed letting you out of sight for two minutes is too great a security risk. You have thirty seconds per floor." Then why had they started stationing guards alone? Surely they weren't suffering from a shortage. Weiss chose not to argue, though, and dashed up the stairs.
"This is just pointless," Donna said. "If we could escape in two minutes, we could probably do it in half of one." Theodosius nodded. "I don't want to have to sprint just to go to the bathroom," she added. "At least Rodriguez is working in his cell block already." The man was approaching eighty-four, and would definitely have been incapable of this running. Would the guards actually discipline anyone who was unable to run up and down a flight of stairs that fast?
The guard looked at her communicuff and resumed her practice problems. Weiss must have reached the gate to the cell block in time and checked in with the guard stationed there.
"As I was saying," Theodosius resumed, "by the time of the trial I was more amused than anything by the inaccurate reporting. Of course, it's very unpleasant to think of people all over the world having a skewed idea of me, but-" He shrugged. "Can't do anything about it, can I?" He motioned at the corridor with the paint roller.
"In any case, now that we have no access to the news, it's paradoxically easier," Donna said. "I can just pretend that nothing's happening, even though it's obvious that it is." The occasional clandestine letters Livia and Dancer sent often made Donna wish she was actually in a cocoon of nescience. While she hadn't been mentioned by name often in the past year or so, there was still enough to seriously freak her out.
Katz nodded. "I can see why that would be the case. Me, though, I hate not knowing what's going on out there. What people are saying about me. The drips can't be the full truth." Was Katz also lying for the benefit of the guard? That was almost certain. But was Katz aware that Donna was lying? She wished she could somehow send a signal, communicate that she knew more than she let on. It was impossible, however. While she could sneak in a piece of news and claim a guard told her, anything more substantial was impossible. The two of them were standing just a metre and a half apart, and yet they were completely cut off from each other and isolated.