"Two more years, huh?" Vartha said for the thousandth time that week.

Donna cut an extraneous vine off a tomato plant. "I'm happy for you," she said. Andrews and Torres had been released eight days ago, both of them seething at having served their sentences in full. Now, it was just the three of them counting down to the day the prison gate would open for them.

Vartha tore out a weed. "You don't have to lie for my benefit," he said.

"I'm not lying," Donna retorted. "Two years, six years - what's the difference, at this point?"

"For me, nothing, at this point." Vartha sighed. "But for you?"

"The difference between employment and being out of a job," Donna conceded. "Everyone's rushing into retirement and then claiming they can't help me." She tossed the vine into the bucket. "Do you have anything lined up?" she asked before remembering that Vartha was already seventy years old. "I mean, did you?"

Shaking his head, Vartha used a spade to dig up a weed. "I thought that if I got released early, I'd just be hired by someone or other." The Steelworks he had worked for had been broken up into several smaller corporations, most of them titans of industry in their own right by now. "They all knew me, after all. I thought I'd call a few people at the most and get back to doing what I did before." He sighed again, staring at the sky.

Donna looked up at the sky as well, trying to tell what time it was. Theodosius was being visited by Lars at the moment, and she would get to talk to Primus immediately afterwards. She had spent weeks trying to think of what to say to her new son-in-law, even asking Dr. Chu for advice at one point, and still wasn't sure if her plan was good. "I suppose I'm just too visible," she said. "Especially in this climate."

"As if I'm not, thanks to that movie." The documentary about the Steelworks Trial had been re-released recently (the former industrialists suspected that it had been in honour of Williamson's release), garnering much more attention than before. Aulus had, of course, gone to watch it with his friends, and claimed that everyone had been disappointed by the shortness of the list of the still-incarcerated individuals who had been sentenced by IDC courts. "I'm still waiting for the journalists to mob Williamson."

"Maybe they're waiting for you to get out so they can interview all of you at once," Donna joked, tossing several clippings into the bucket.

Vartha winced. "I'd rather not have to interact with them."

Donna understood him. She had zero desire to ever meet Slice again. It would have been too awkward to talk to someone who had built an entire life for herself while Donna had crocheted, gardened, and learned Spanish. "Same."

Instead of replying, Vartha sat down on the dusty ground and took off his shoes. It was warm outside, and Donna was barefoot and shirtless, but he wore his shirt mostly buttoned up. He attached his shoes to each other using the velcro strips and put his socks inside. "Nice weather we're having."

"That we are." Donna gave the plant a final look-over. Finding nothing, she moved over to the next one, which looked like a hopeless tangle of vines by comparison. She started at the top, breaking off offshoots that had grown in an already existing fork. The vines were covered with tiny green tomatoes. While none of them were as capable as Nitza at coaxing them into being fruitful, Melton and Koy hadn't done too bad a job with them. Donna lifted up the branches to inspect them carefully, determining if they were productive or just took away resources from the rest of the plant.

"The forecast says it'll be even hotter tomorrow." Vartha set his shoes aside and turned back to his weeding.

Before they could start discussing the weather for the third time that day, Theodosius returned, flanked by a guard. He was smiling widely and was already missing his shirt and shoes. "Your son is amazing," he said.

"I'll pass my compliments onto my husband." Donna stood up, brushing off her hands. Her turn now.

Theodosius chuckled. "He does look nothing like you. His personality, though, is pure you."

"I'm glad." Theodosius was lying to make her feel better. How could Lars have gotten his personality from her when she had last been a parent to him when he was eight?

"Good luck with the visit," Vartha said.

"Good luck." Theodosius looked around the tomatoes, quickly finding the point at which she had stopped. "Have fun."

"Thank you." Donna began the walk back to the building, the guard following her. In her cell, she quickly rinsed off, put on her nice outfit, and grabbed the cheat sheet from her table. It was time. Her son-in-law awaited.

Primus looked just as he had in the photos Theodosius had shown her, but now that the young man was a metre away from her, she could see that while his colouring was his father's, the structure of his face was nothing like that of Theodosius. "Hello, Mother," he said in a confident voice, which was slightly deeper than his father's.

"Hello," Donna said. She looked carefully at her son-in-law, taking in the cheap but carefully ironed clothes, the curly hair tied back in a neat tail, the casual yet confident bearing. A plain gold band decorated the fourth finger of his left hand, and Donna was once again struck by the fact that two of her children had spouses now. "How are you?"

"Good." Primus glanced sideways. None of the guards snapped out of their stupor. "Lars and I have started saving up to buy an apartment."

"In Two?"

Primus nodded. "Yes."

Donna didn't like the idea of Lars living so far away from her, but there was nothing she could do about it. "Lars told me you are planning on fostering at-risk children," she said. "How's that going?"

"Good. We're attending classes and volunteering in shelters."

The mention of volunteering made her think of her parents. "That's good, but how does Lars have the time for that?"

"His schedule is more consistent now. We find a way." He smiled. "Lars really wants children. He wanted to apply for adoption before the ink was dry on our certificate, but then we decided we want to foster children from difficult backgrounds, so we had to sign up for a bunch of classes."

"Why fostering, instead of adopting?"

"We were encouraged to start with shorter-term placements before actually adopting," Primus explained. "So that we decide if parenthood is really something we want."

Donna shook her head incredulously. "Biological children are so much easier."

Chuckling, Primus laced his hands together. "No, it's usually a much simpler process. The reason for all this fuss is that our wards are going to be severely traumatized and will often have disabilities, and we need to learn how to be good guardians to them when they start acting out or having difficulties."

While Donna was far from an expert in the topic, she had read, courtesy of Dr. Chu, a memoir of a person who had grown up in a Community Home in the Capitol. Dennis Woo had spent twenty-five years locked up as if in a prison with a wrong diagnosis nobody bothered to correct, constantly terrified of doing the slightest thing wrong and being sent to the IGR for cruel experiments and death. After the Rebellion, he had been examined, given the correct diagnosis, found to be perfectly teachable, and now lived in assisted housing, volunteered with institutionalized children and adults, and had a steady job. "I've read about what it's like for these kids," she said. "It's good that you want to help them."

Primus sat up straighter. "Well, it was Lars' idea originally, and I can't say 'no' to him." He smiled slightly, and Donna returned the smile, wondering what it was with her family and community service. Her parents volunteered around the clock, Lars was now becoming a foster parent, and the entire prison was aware of Aulus' participation in a free legal aid organization. Even Laelia was teaching free programming classes at her community centre. She hoped it wasn't some sort of attempt to compensate for her.

The thought of her children having to compensate for her by doing good things made Donna burn with shame. "Strange," she said, changing the topic slightly. "In his letters, he says that he's the one who can't resist you."

Primus turned slightly red. "He'd say that," he said in a fondly exasperated tone. "Did he tell you about how our wedding went?"

"No." Donna leaned forward, interest piqued. Hopefully this would be a good story to tell the others.

"We figured we'd pop over to the office, sign our papers, and be on our way. Unfortunately, that day, he had to stay over time because of a patient." He leaned back slightly in a way that made him look like he was talking to the guards, too. "And I had only rented the tuxes for a day. I'm pacing around the apartment, waiting for him to come home, and suddenly he calls me and tells me to come over." One of the guards snorted. "The situation had calmed down by then, so he was able to get a short break. I get there, still wearing the tux, and a clerk from the office is there." Donna supposed she should have expected something like that from Lars. "We sign the papers, kiss, and he runs back inside." He slung his arm over the back of the chair. "So that's how I married your son in a hospital parking lot. Photographs are on the way. A janitor coming in for their shift took a video on their phone."

Mail would be arriving that evening. She and Theodosius had deliberately arranged it that way, so they could talk to their new sons-in-law and get the photographs on the same day. "That's certainly better than our wedding," Donna said ruefully. "We just went to the office together on a whim, wearing whatever we could dig up from our closet." Remembering the reaction of her parents, she asked, "You didn't want a proper ceremony? With guests?"

Primus shook his head. "No point. Two of the guests we would have wanted the most are unavailable, and we didn't want to go to the Capitol just to sign a piece of paper and exchange rings."

"Strange," Donna said. "I'd have thought most people would be thrilled to have a wedding where the in-laws are safely locked away somewhere."

The guards all burst into laughter, but Primus just shrugged slightly, looking sad. "I think most people aren't forced to wait until their marriage to meet their in-laws," he said. "So what's normal is not quite relevant to us."

"I never met my in-laws," Donna reminisced. "I don't even know their names, or if they're still alive."

Taken aback, Primus sat up straighter and leaned forward. "Why?" he asked quietly.

Donna shrugged. "I don't know. He never told me. Before we moved in together, he'd complain from time to time about how they didn't approve of our relationship."

"Didn't your husband first meet your parents after the wedding?"

"Uh, yes. They weren't too happy about that." Primus giggled. "What? They disapproved of our relationship because I couldn't say what his family was like. They shouldn't have expected an invitation to the wedding," she said defensively.

An awkward silence ensued. Primus didn't look ill at ease, but seeing him sit comfortably in that chair and look around casually just made Donna feel even more uncertain. "How's your mother?" she asked. "And your siblings?"

"Mom's fine." He sat back and tossed one leg over the other. "Andrea just moved in with her boyfriend, so Emilia's got the apartment to herself. Nobody knows what Charlotte is up to. Last I talked to her, she had a job, so at least there's that. Cass and Marcus are doing well. If you want to know about Dad, ask him yourself." He smiled lopsidedly.

"I don't have to ask about that last one," she said.

"How are the potatoes?"

Taken aback, Donna took a few seconds to respond. "Fine. Is that what he writes to you about?"

One of the guards arose from her slumber. "No discussing prison conditions!"

"No problem," Primus said breezily. "Lovely weather we're having now, isn't it?"

Donna nodded. "It's that time of the year."

"I love late spring," he sighed. "Seeing everything bloom. Warm, but not hot."

"You don't need to convince me." Donna loved seeing the carpets of multicoloured grasses before all but the intensively-watered meadow became yellowed and brittle from the burning heat.

"We're actually meeting up with Aulus to go mushroom-hunting next weekend," Primus said.

"Just the three of you?" Her parents weren't particularly fond of mushroom-hunting, still considering it a lower-class pastime.

"Yeah. We'll go into the woods together for a day, split the haul, and eat mushroom soup for the next week." He paused. "Unless the pensioners cleaned the forest out already. Aulus says they always appear the moment the mushrooms are grown."

Donna wished she could also go into the forest, see trees that she hadn't seen tens of thousands of times before. "Have fun," she said. "Try not to pick deathcaps."

"Oh, they're very easy to spot," Primus said in a reassuring tone. "There's actually an edible mushroom that looks like a deathcap, but we're not crazy enough to risk it."

"Interesting." Donna wondered how someone had figured that out. Slow starvation had to be better than eating unfamiliar mushrooms. "Have you gone foraging before?"

"Once, but I gave up after I spent a solid five minutes standing next to a berry bush, trying to figure out if it was blueberries or nightlock. That soured me on it." He laughed, but Donna was not amused. Unlike with deathcaps, if one ingested nightlock, there would be no time to get help.

"Does Aulus know the difference?"

"Oh, yes, he's an expert by now," Primus said. "Honestly, if I was lost in the middle of nowhere, I'd trust him to keep me from starving. He's started learning about edible plants at some club of his. I'm half-expecting him to buy a hunting rifle any day now."

"He knows how to shoot?" Donna asked, confused. He had never mentioned that.

"No, I'm just joking."

"With my kids, you can expect anything," Donna muttered. "One day he's writing to you about how he got an A-plus on a Lit test, the next, you're treated to a diatribe about boletes. He could move into the middle of nowhere to live off the land and work as a lawyer remotely, and I wouldn't even be amazed."

Primus smiled. "My brother is an interesting person."

"Says you," Donna reminded him. "On that note, how's work going for you?"

"Good."

"Any interesting stories lately?"

"Nothing I'm allowed to share with you."

Donna wondered if he was aware what throwing fuel on stacks of firewood as sparks flew meant for her. "You are aware of the ramifications of your writing?" she asked sharply.

"Of course," Primus said earnestly, as if he wasn't indirectly contributing to the continued incarceration of his own father. "Do you think I don't understand what it means for everyone? I've got coworkers who avoid me, even now."

"Then why work there?"

"Because I believe in what I write," he said, jabbing a finger at the air, "and I refuse to quit because someone disapproves of my name."

That still seemed unreasonable to Donna, but she couldn't argue with Primus' deadly seriousness.

Outside, Donna was struck by the heat. She pulled her cap lower to cover her face and took off her shirt, undershirt, shoes, and socks. As she walked towards Theodosius and Vartha, who were still working on the tomatoes, the path was almost burning-hot under her feet.

"That was interesting," she said. "And awkward."

Several plants had been pruned in the meantime, and Vartha was working on one as Theodosius weeded. "Same," he said. "Our conversation was very stilted."

"Well, it is the first time you've talked to them." Vartha used a pair of scissors to cut off a small vine. "I think everyone feels awkward the first time they talk to the parents of their significant other."

"Yes, but this is worse." Donna stood next to Vartha and began to work on the neighbouring plant. "I think your daughter's approach is the better one. A single half-hour visit - that's nothing. I just talked to him, but I don't know his personality or anything like that." On the ground lay a tiny green tomato. Donna picked it up and threw it into the bucket. "And he said that the reason they didn't have a proper wedding with guests is because we're in here. Though I doubt they'd have wanted to wait until we get out."

"Really?" Theodosius asked. "I'd have thought that a wedding with only half the number of in-laws would be anyone's dream."

Donna chuckled. "I already made that joke. The guards laughed, but he didn't."

"I've got two years left, so I'll say nothing." Vartha tore off a dessicated leaf.

"You just did," Theodosius pointed out.

Vartha sighed. "I guess a part of me can't get used to the fact that I'm next in line." And after him were the two of them. Just two more years, and they would be the ones waiting eagerly for release.

Unsure of what to say, Donna focused on the tomatoes. There was something satisfying in cutting away all of the extraneous vines to reveal the plant, letting the tomatoes come into full view instead of hiding behind a thicket of leaves.

They worked in silence for a while until Salperin and Metteren walked up to them, each carrying a bucket of weeds. "So," Metteren asked. "How are the sons-in-law? Do you approve?"

"Yes," Donna said. Mentioning her reservations about Primus' choice of workplace would just result in the former Peacekeepers going on a rant.

"And you?" Salperin asked Theodosius.

Theodosius raised his eyebrows. "How can I disapprove of my son marrying a doctor?" he asked.

Metteren laughed. "How delightfully middle-class." That was probably meant as an insult - Theodosius, the son of a senator and a deputy minister, had been the opposite of middle-class.

"By the way," Donna said before Theodosius could realize he had been insulted, "they're going mushroom-hunting with Aulus next week."

"Is that their idea of a honeymoon?" Theodosius asked.

That possibility hadn't even entered Donna's mind. "I wouldn't be too shocked if it was." She rubbed her fingers together, trying to get rid of the black stains on them. Tomato plants were impossible to work with without getting dirty.

"Your children never cease to amaze," Vartha said.

Suddenly, a gunshot rang out, startlingly loud. The two former Peacekeepers threw themselves on the ground while Donna only had the presence of mind to crouch awkwardly. Vartha, who had already been sitting, had simply stayed frozen, as had Theodosius. "What was that?" Vartha whispered.

Heart beating madly, Donna listened carefully for sounds. She sat down next to Vartha, waiting for something to happen. Her field of view was blocked by the unpruned tomato plants, but she could still see that the others, inmates as well as guards, were lying on the ground or crouching, looking around at each other.

A guard checked their communicuff and stood up. Others did likewise. "Maybe a sentry saw a ghost again?" Donna suggested, climbing to her feet. She felt no relief. Now that the acute fear had passed, she felt extremely anxious. She took careful stock of what she was feeling, as Dr. Chu would want to know.

"Very funny," Metteren snapped as he dusted himself off. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to go lie down. I didn't come here for this." He marched off in the direction of the nearest guard. Salperin watched him go for a few seconds before scrambling to his feet and running after him.

Vartha looked around the ground, trying to find the scissors he had dropped. They were small and dull, but he still thought they were usable. "Makes sense that a former Peacekeeper wouldn't like gunfire," he said, running his hands over the ground.

"Remember when the sentry saw a ghost in the middle of the night and tried to shoot it?" Theodosius asked. "Nobody seemed to have issues then."

"Because it was the middle of the night," Donna pointed out. "By the morning, they had probably calmed down somewhat."

"And in any case, aren't the towers only haunted at night?" Vartha glared at the ground. "Where are the scissors? How could they have disappeared?"

Donna looked around. They weren't anywhere. She checked inside the plants. Nothing. "Maybe the ghosts decided to switch it up?" she suggested.

"Or maybe the guards are just hallucinating." Theodosius stood up to see more of the ground. "Where did you drop the scissors?"

Vartha sighed, gesturing with his palm to the ground next to him. "I was sitting. Then I realized I wasn't holding the scissors anymore. They have to be right here." But they weren't.

"Unless a ghost took them," Donna joked. She stepped closer to Vartha before freezing. "Wait. We're all barefoot. What if we step on them?"

Theodosius leapt to his feet. "Odds they take us to the hospital?" he asked hopefully. "With how dull the scissors are, they'd rip through everything and cause infection."

"Please don't," Vartha said, running his hands over the ground with a desperate expression on his face. "They only just allowed me to handle them."

Donna looked inside a tomato plant, unsure of what she was planning to find in there. "At least we didn't lose that giant knife."

"Or a saw," Vartha snarked. He picked up a handful of dirt.

"You think they're underground somehow?" Theodosius asked.

"I don't know!" Vartha snapped, digging his hand deeper. "How could they have disappeared?"

Alerted by the shouting, the guard approached, the three of them reluctantly climbing to their feet and doffing their caps. As they looked on, she crouched down and picked up the scissors from where they had been lying just centimetres away from Vartha's foot. "Is this what you were looking for?" she asked.

Vartha sat down and lay on his back, hands over his face. Donna took the scissors from the guard, wondering how they could have missed it.

"I can't believe it," Theodosius said, running his hand through his hair. "How did we manage to lose a pair of scissors when it was right there?"

"You'll be interested to know that the gunshot you recently heard was caused by a sentry firing at someone who had thrown eggs at their tower," the guard said instead of replying.

They had had powdered eggs for breakfast that morning. "What a waste," Donna said, longing for fresh eggs. The last time she had had any had been when Dem had sent in the food for their anniversary. She still remembered the exact taste of the little egg roll.

"I wish I could have fresh eggs," Vartha sighed, still lying on the ground. "Haven't had any for two decades now. And they waste them on nonsense!"

Theodosius just looked like he was plotting to ask Cynthia to send in eggs. He stared at a tomato plant, hand clutching at his hair, cap askew.

"I agree," the guard said. "I myself don't like hearing about food going to waste." Given that the woman from Nine was in her early twenties, Donna hadn't expected anything different from her. She would have been a child during the run-up to the Rebellion and the ensuing food shortages. "In any case, the thrower and their accomplices have been detained." Vartha sat up, eager to hear details. His cap lay on the ground next to him, and Donna hoped he wouldn't lose it, too. "They were a group of six teenagers armed with two cartons of eighteen eggs each."

"Thirty-six eggs?" Vartha complained. "If they had wanted to support us, they'd have been better off boiling them and sending them on to us!"

"And what of the extra twelve?" Donna asked.

"Use them as a bribe, obviously."

The guard laughed. She was one of the more sympathetic ones, so they could speak freely with her. "They all targeted the same guard tower, but since it was relatively far away, they mostly missed. The sentry fired a warning shot and they tried to run, but were caught almost immediately."

"Not very smart of them, to do it in the middle of the day," Theodosius remarked. "What were they thinking?"

"You think they were thinking?" Donna retorted. "I doubt there was any of that going on."

"What's going to happen to the kids?" Vartha asked.

The guard shrugged. "We'll see. It probably depends on if it hits the headlines." With that, she walked away. Donna realized she was still holding the scissors and gave them to Vartha, who put on his cap and resumed pruning.

"So," Vartha said. "Now that you've met your sons-in-law, are you glad to have each other as siblings?"

Over the next week, there were only four topics of conversation in the Supermax - the weather, the egging incident, and the marriage of Lars and Primus, as well as a sudden feud between Stone and the other former Peacekeepers.

They had already gone over it when they had actually gotten married, but now everyone wanted to say their congratulations all over again and ask pointed questions about the recently acquired son-in-law. "It's ironic," Stone said as they walked around the path, "that the children of you of all people could get married."

That was something new. "Why? Because of what we said at the trial?" Donna asked.

Stone shook his head. "Well, there's that, but it's more general. I think it's funny that there are so few kids of you key criminals, and two of them end up married."

"Well, they did grow up together," Theodosius pointed out. "I don't see what's so strange about it."

"I just think it's funny," Stone shrugged. He scratched his deeply-lined face and looked around aimlessly. "Have they mentioned the egging incident so far?"

Fortunately, it hadn't gained much traction. There simply weren't any good ways to spin it. Even the newspapers hadn't covered it. "No," Donna said. "They haven't."

"Mine have," Grass said, cutting into the conversation. She and Blatt caught up to them and walked next to Stone. "They say it's linked to a rush of similar vandalism. Like with the attempted attacks on the military bases in the Capitol. Some people think it's tied to general revanchism," she said in a tone that clearly expressed what she thought of these people.

"What is it tied to, then?" Stone asked in a tired voice.

Grass didn't bat an eye. "Just because someone wants to strike back at the government doesn't mean they're tied to a specific movement," she said. "Surely you don't think that every teenager painting slogans is affiliated with the Rebirth Movement or whatever else they're calling themselves now."

"Of course not, that's patently absurd. But you can't deny that if they share a common ideology, there's a connection there."

"So what?" Blatt demanded. "These youths and your son both want our release, does that mean there's a connection there?"

Aulus campaigned for equal treatment and not for release, but Donna didn't want to get into that. "I suppose so," she said. "'Connection' is a vague term, after all."

Blatt threw her hands in the air. "Then what's the point of saying there's a connection in the first place?"

"All she's saying is that there is one!" Theodosius said. "She didn't say how strong or weak."

"In any case," Grass cut in before the argument could heat up, "the courts will understand that this was just youthful hooliganism." Despite the depuration of the judiciary, they still tended to drift towards sympathy for right-wing revanchism. Aulus claimed that those sorts of perspectives had been pushed in his classes, but he had never spoken about his reaction to it.

"And what of the stone-throwing?" Donna asked.

"That's an entirely different story," Grass replied calmly. She glanced up at the sky and pulled her undershirt away from her body. "Wow, it's hot out here."

"Yeah," the rest of them muttered.

"Can you believe it's almost summer again?" Blatt asked. "I swear, it's like I blinked and another year has gone past." She shook her head sadly. "Honestly, if they don't let us out soon, I'll just sit down and die." Blatt was nearly eighty, which made that threat an all-too-likely outcome. Donna suspected that if they weren't released with her and Theodosius, the oldest ones would simply give up on life that very day.

"Lucky Vartha," Grass grumbled. "I bet he's counting down the days." He had been doing so since the previous year, when the thousand-day barrier had been broken. "This fine weather seems almost insulting. You said your sons are honeymooning in the forest?" She stepped over a small pothole.

Donna had to hold back a laugh at the phrasing, as Blatt was not in a mood to listen to anyone else's laughter. "Not really. They just went there with my middle child for a day, to gather mushrooms." Donna awaited mushroom soup any day now, as did Theodosius.

"I hope they're not going to peddle them on a bus stop," Grass said seriously.

"Oh, no, there won't be any left over for that." Theodosius took off his cap and fanned himself with it. "I'm sure they'll all be devoured eagerly."

Grass sighed. "I'm sure it's nice in the forest," she said. "Wouldn't it be nice to stroll down a shady path?" she asked nobody in particular.

Donna didn't have the heart to reply, and neither did Theodosius. Grass, Blatt, and Stone began to discuss their experiences with forests, but all Donna could think about was that she knew she would see one someday, but all they had was hope.

A/N: The edible mushroom that looks like a deathcap is the paddy straw mushroom. The two are native to different parts of the world, but there have been cases of immigrants mistaking the former for the latter. Young specimens of deathcaps and the closely related destroying angels (their names say a lot about their lethality) can also be mistaken for puffballs, so if you want to pick a puffball, make sure you know how to tell the difference. Donna underestimates the danger of deathcaps - in order to get help early, you have to know you ate it, and symptoms often only start to appear by the time that the liver and kidneys are irreversibly damaged. So do your research before picking and eating mushrooms!

In case you missed it the first time around, the movie about the Steelworks trial is perceived in society similarly to how the 1961 movie 'Judgement at Nuremberg' was received in real life.