"Hey," Octavius said. He looked just like he had in his last photo, but his hair was concealed under a durag instead of being in a large puff.
"Hi," she replied. "You changed your hair?"
Octavius nodded. "Decided to get braids," he said without elaborating. Donna remembered the different ways in which Dem had worn his hair before the appearance of small children who loved to pull on it had made him cut his hair short. Donna had always worn her hair short, out of laziness.
Donna realized she was daydreaming and tried to focus. "How is the semester going? Is the class still as bad as before?" This semester, he had ended up TAing for a course he himself had never taken.
"The class is great," he said, tapping his fingers on the table. "All I need to do is mark assignments, that's really not that hard. And the lectures are fascinating."
"That's good. I've had to TA my least favourite course once, that was an ordeal," she said. The course director of Introduction to Control Systems had been a hack who had only gotten her position thanks to connections, and as luck had willed it, she had also been the lecturer for both the section that she took and the section she had later TA'd. "How are the students?" According to his letters, he had to deal with some annoying students.
Octavius sighed and glanced at the four guards and director from Twelve who were in the room with them. The guards were semi-comatose and Hawthorne looked like he wished to be absolutely anywhere else. "There's this one student who thinks that his life experiences are relevant to every single question," Octavius said carefully.
Since Donna had no idea what the course was, that could mean anything from over-eagerness to being the most irritating person in the world. "Is he the 'as a parent' sort?" she asked, recalling several of those. Having been a parent at the time herself, she had never understood what that had to do with differential equations.
Octavius shook his head. "No. It's a course about warfare." He glanced at the guards again.
"You can speak about war in general," Hawthorne said reassuringly, staring longingly at the door.
"It's not that. You see, we often talk about the development of military law, war crimes, things like that. And one of the students delights in starting answers with 'as a convicted war criminal'." He side-eyed the guards, who had all awoken from their stupors to listen closer.
Donna couldn't blame them for their eagerness. "Well, at least that's relevant to the course," she said awkwardly. "How old is he?"
"Early forties at the latest."
That meant he had been around twenty during the Rebellion. "But how can he be so lighthearted about it?"
Octavius shrugged. "I don't know. He's hardly the first veteran I've seen, but he's the only one who is open about having done terrible things. And whenever someone calls him out on it, he just claps back by saying that he did his time. I looked him up, he spent eleven years in prison."
"Still, though, that's almost insulting. Aren't some of his victims bound to be in the lecture hall, too?"
Fidgeting with his sleeve, Octavius nodded. "He was-" He looked at the guards and fell silent. "Yes, that happened once. In another course, someone mentioned a battle they had both fought in. Everyone thought it was heartwarming, until it was revealed that they had been on opposite sides."
The others would love the story, though they'd probably think that the veteran's honesty was a way of mocking the justice he had received. To Donna, it seemed more like he didn't quite understand that the past was not in the past.
Not wanting to continue provoking the guards, she changed the topic. "How are you doing? How's everyone?"
"Nothing new since the last letter, but Joel was caught stealing from a teacher's bag."
Donna sighed. "Did he assault them?"
"Surprisingly, no."
That was a relief. "And what happened next?" she asked.
"They're threatening to stick him into an inpatient program, but for now, they moved him into a separate class for particular trouble-makers." Octavius sighed. "Also, he was diagnosed with fetal alcohol syndrome."
As if the poor boy didn't have enough issues already. "But isn't he doing fine academically?" Given how interrupted his education had been from the beginning, he was doing astonishingly well. Every week, Lars mentioned some quiz or another Joel had gotten a good grade on.
Octavius nodded. "The behaviour issues, though, look like the list from the diagnostic manual." He fidgeted with his sleeves. "Sorry for bothering you with this."
"Oh, not at all!" Donna exclaimed. "It's good for me to think about normal problems for a change. It reminds me that there's still something outside these walls." It also reminded her of her own helplessness in the face of these issues.
"Uh-huh." Octavius stretched out, hands behind his head. He was the tallest of all the kids, at a still below-average metre seventy. "Yesterday, I accidentally stepped on Inky's tail when walking into the bathroom."
Donna couldn't hold back a chuckle. "Poor kitty."
"He clawed up my leg, ran off, and then when I stepped out, he was there, demanding pets. I nearly stepped on him again."
Funny stories about the cat were easier to listen to than anything having to do with the others. "And then what?" she asked.
Theodosius cringed as she told him about the oddly honest veteran. "You can't joke about that," he said, shaking raindrops from his sleeves. It was raining enough for them to be working indoors, but not enough to cancel the exercise periods. "How can he think it's acceptable?"
"Maybe he thinks that since it's in the past, it can be joked about," Donna speculated. "I also thought that maybe it's his way of mocking his conviction." She didn't like to contemplate that option, as someone being open about their past was rare enough and she didn't want to be tarred with the same brush as him if that was the case, but she had to seize the initiative and show that she was aware of the possibility.
"I'm not going to give interviews when I get out," Theodosius stated confidently. "I'd rather not offend half the world with my words." He adjusted his cap. "And in any case, it's not like what any of us have to say about the world now is valid."
That stung, but she could see the reasoning there. "But what about the past?" she asked. "You wrote your memoirs, after all."
"But I'm not going to talk about it," Theodosius insisted. "I'll publish it, and let them think what they want." He moved a pebble from one pocket to another. "Can you really imagine giving an interview about the Redhill murders?"
She could, but she could also see how that would be a bad idea. "Imagine if they asked me about Garvesson," she said sarcastically. "Wouldn't that be something?" The thought that someone out there had repeated the exact same mistakes as her was still enough to make her feel ashamed.
"Ah, yes," Theodosius replied in the same tone. "Donna Blues about Donna Blues 2.0. The media would love it."
That was not one of Theodosius' jokes. A few of the more radical newspapers were drawing a direct line between her and Garvesson. While they had a low circulation and the average person had no idea who she was (or, indeed, who any of the Supermaxers were), it still worried Donna. The last thing she needed was more attention from historians just as Lisiewska was being dealt with by Livia.
"You make it sound as if the media would love me talking about my daughter," Donna said, wishing that she hadn't let Dem convince her that naming their eldest daughter after herself was a great idea. "Wait, if Garvesson is another me, who's another you?"
Theodosius shrugged. "I'm sure there's got to be gang members out there who decide how much money to extort or what store to rob." He looked around the yard. "I've heard that Tran and Cooper are being considered to be like Dovek and Oldsmith."
Raindrops hit Donna's clothing and trickled down her waterproof jacket. "So who are the other three, then?" she asked, shoving her hands deeper into her pockets. "I can't think of any analogue for the younger two. Everro reminds me of Holder, though."
"In this day and age, a flattering comparison," Theodosius pointed out. A few days ago, Holder had been in the news. He had managed to get a police officer who had been choking a suspect to death in the middle of the street to back off. "First that stuff with the obedience experiment, now he's resisting police brutality - one would think that the administration was focused on rehabilitation." He laughed, as did Donna.
Once, Holder had been the manifestation of Peacekeeper brutality. Had he been ordered to crush someone's chest with his knee and stay there for several minutes, he'd have done it - and he had done much worse. The fact that he was confronting similar situations and reacting differently spoke volumes. His psychiatrist definitely needed a raise. "He's a different person now," she said. "Confronting three police officers on his own - there's a reason why people don't do that, they could have slammed him to the ground, too, no matter that he's in his seventies." Or had he planned for such an eventuality? "I suppose he thought they wouldn't pepper-spray a pensioner. Or maybe he was fine with that happening."
Theodosius nodded. "How else can you atone for murder? Only with your own death." He ran a hand through his hair, droplets of rain landing on bare skin.
Donna didn't like to think about that. She had read books about repentance and forgiveness, and they were tough reading. What she had done was literally unforgivable, because she couldn't offer an apology to the dead. Maybe Holder had hoped that the police officers would attack him, resulting in him dying trying to protect someone he once would have oppressed. Donna couldn't imagine herself doing the same thing. She liked the idea of going out in such a way, but she simply didn't want to die.
As the trial date approached, more and more space in the papers was devoted either to it or to topics that resulted in the offending articles getting blacked out. One of the biggest controversies was that none of the defendants seemed to be going for a plea deal - Donna knew that had she had the option of pleading guilty to lesser charges, she'd have done so and avoided the terror that was a year spent waiting to mount the gallows. In her opinion, the prosecution was simply that unwilling to go for it because of the nature of the case, but some of the others saw something more complicated behind it.
Under the pretext of a knee massage, Tia snuck her various articles and other bits of information, as well as the usual snacks from Dem.
"I never knew your lawyer was so lively," the orderly said as she handed Donna two paper bags that turned out to contain small jalebis.
"What?" Donna asked, nearly dropping the bags. 'Lively' was the last word she'd have ever used to describe Dr. Fisher. "Since when is he lively?" She remembered his uninspiring drone at the lectern, his vacant stare with which he had regarded the courtroom.
Tia shrugged. "I saw an interview he gave. He was very cheery. Smiled a lot, was confidence itself."
"Are you sure it's the same lawyer?" Donna asked half-seriously. "I don't think he ever gave an interview during the trial." She couldn't imagine the timid Dr. Fisher doing so at all. If a defense lawyer could be meek, he had been it.
"Positive," Tia said, smiling slightly. "The interview was great, by the way. Everro's in good hands."
Envy coursed through Donna as she wished that he could have been like that during her trial. Maybe he'd have done better if he had spoken forcefully, not just convincingly. Half the time, he had appeared to be on the verge of collapse, as if he was still afraid of being punished for being too good at his job. "Lucky him."
The orderly nodded. "Must be odd for the lawyers. They've spent decades working in the field, but this is something new."
All of the kids were going to be tried for crimes against humanity, as what they had done was similar enough to the Hunger Games to fall under the definition - the former Peacekeepers were furious when their fellows were slapped with that charge, but they had been approving here. Since they would all be tried as adults, they were all looking at life imprisonment. At least now, minors could not be incarcerated together with adults.
Donna hoped they wouldn't actually all be sentenced to life, as that would make a mockery of her own sentence. "I just want this all to end," she said. "Our trial didn't take nearly as long to prepare."
"Your trial had a huge staff of researchers working round the clock," Tia pointed out.
"That's true." Donna opened the smaller bag and counted the jalebis. Ten. She took out two and ate them one after the other, savouring the sweetness. Then, she put the bags in her coat pockets. Despite what the guards wrote down in the log books, they seldom bothered to even enter a cell.
Winter gave way to spring, and Vartha's usual irritability was heightened to an almost paranoidal state. He snapped at everyone over the smallest things, refused to work together with anyone, and often broke down crying. The rest of them were more concerned with the trial that would be starting in less than a week, but Vartha had his release to worry about.
According to the guards, interest in the past had soared to indescribable proportions. University courses focused on the Games regime were being planned. Historians who had once written for a readership consisting of their tenure committee and three overenthusiastic grad students were now national bestsellers, much to their surprise. Octavius reported that discussion groups such as the ones Aulus had attended were now practically mainstream among students, even if the general public wasn't interested in going quite so far.
Nobody was sure how long the trial would last, but the Supermaxers were confident it would be relatively quick. After all, they were being tried only for a double homicide, wording of the charge aside, not on ill-defined charges of conspiracy to commit everything under the sun.
When the day came, Donna had no idea what to expect. So far, she knew that Tran blamed everybody but herself, Cooper blamed the victims for not fighting back, Garvesson was insistent that all she had done was put up a few stakes, Everro seemed to be sincerely remorseful, and Jackson and Cutner were simply terrified by the prospect of a life behind bars.
"Is anything happening?" Donna pestered a guard who was lying under a tree, nearly invisible earbuds in both ears. Since she was being reassigned in a few weeks, she cared about the rules even less than usual.
The guard shook her head. "They're going to be pleading not guilty in a few minutes."
Donna went back to tearing out weeds, wondering why she was so worried about the kids. Next to her, Theodosius pulled weeds out of the ground with unsteady hands. They were all clustered in small groups close to guards, spread out to minimize the amount of fights. Nobody wanted to be distracted from the news, even if nothing of importance would be happening today.
"Two of them aren't even of age yet," Theodosius said with a sigh. "Did they ever even have a chance?"
That made her think about Joel. No matter what anyone did, he still made all the wrong choices, fighting with everyone and stealing everything that wasn't nailed down. In their letters, Lars and Primus sounded like serenity itself, but it was obvious that they were struggling. "Did any of them?" she asked, nodding in the direction of a cluster of former Peacekeepers.
"I wouldn't go that far," Theodosius replied. He poked listlessly at the ground. "These kids had a much better chance. Still, though, it wasn't much. Not with the sort of families they had."
The guard stretched out her legs, splaying them out and wiggling her feet. "Don't you ever stop to think about the poor kids they murdered?" she asked in an irritated voice, looking at another tree. "You've got more sympathy for the killers than the victims."
"No, we don't," Donna protested. "It's not easy to talk about that stuff."
"Of course not," the guard replied sarcastically. She paused. "Alright, Cooper's pled not guilty to all charges." They were being called up in order of age. Apparently, they were sitting in a bulletproof glass cage due to the risk of someone trying to shoot them.
Donna went back to weeding half-heartedly. The weather was mediocre, sunny and cool. Both she and Theodosius were in boots and light jackets. How weeds could grow in this weather was beyond her, but sometimes it seemed like they were capable of growing in the middle of winter.
"Tran pleads not guilty." Who had been the real ringleader of the gang was still a mystery. Tran and Cooper kept on pushing everything onto each other. Emails had been found that showed that it had been Cooper who had organized the murder, but Tran's apartment was a veritable revanchist lair with boxes of literature and a small typography set up in the living room. "Now Garvesson."
"Can you become a doctor while in prison?" Theodosius asked. Donna took the spade from him and used to dig up a stubborn root.
The guard nodded. "Doesn't say anywhere that committing hate murders makes you ineligible to be a doctor." The same went for engineers, but given that all of her acquaintances were retiring or otherwise bowing out made that very unlikely. "Though she might have to wait a few years until she's eligible for work release to go to uni. I heard she was planning on majoring in biomedical sciences."
Donna had heard that, too. Thanks to Garvesson's ambitions, half the country now knew every detail on how education worked in prisons, and debated about it endlessly. In normal prisons, people could get educated all the way to a highschool diploma, and there were also workshops where inmates could learn trades and earn money so that they'd get out and have a higher chance of becoming productive taxpayers. Anything beyond that - college, university, and the like - was an option the same way that working outside the prison was an option. While Garvesson could do some of her studying through correspondence courses, she would have to prove herself to be well-behaved to be allowed to attend medical school.
"What are you thinking about?" Theodosius asked, looking at her.
"University in prison," Donna said.
Theodosius nodded. "All that effort, and it still costs less than what the system cost way back when." Recidivism rates were so low now, prisons had to be closed and personnel - found new jobs. Theodosius turned towards the guard. "What's taking so long?"
The guard held up her hand. "Shh." They waited, feeling tenser and tenser. Had something gone wrong? Donna thought about Stonesmith's dramatic suicide and worried that someone had tried to imitate her. The guard looked up with a disbelieving expression on her face. "Everro pled guilty to accessory to murder."
"He took a plea deal and we only find out now?" All around the yard, the others were likewise reacting with disbelief. Donna could hear their agitated voices. "Isn't this the kind of thing that's revealed in advance?" Theodosius asked.
"I have no idea."
Unsure of what she was feeling, Donna tore out a weed and tossed it into the bucket. If she had tried that, she'd have been executed within the week - all the charges against her could have been capital. But there was no more death penalty now.
That afternoon, the nine of them stood in the corridor, waiting for the guard to say what the sentence was.
"It's in," she said, putting her phone away. The nine women leaned out of their cells. "Ten years' imprisonment." The prosecution had demanded fifteen, the maximum.
Lucky boy.
"You should have tried that," Blatt said. Donna didn't need to turn around to know it was targeted at her.
"You joking? They'd have just thanked me for making their jobs so easy, and strung me up the next day." Donna shuddered at the thought.
Blatt chuckled. "True. You only admitted what you couldn't deny in any case." Donna wasn't sure how that was worse than stonewalling the prosecution on something that had been long-established by witness testimony, photographs, documents, and even a video that had been secretly taken just in case.
"Anything else?" Melton called down from the other end of the corridor.
The guard shook her head. "Court's adjourned for the day."
The three former industrialists left their cells and walked towards the other six. "Did anyone see it coming?" Xu asked.
"They had to," Grass said. "The way a plea deal works - I'm shocked it was so concealed." She glanced at Donna.
"That doesn't mean I knew. Fisher hasn't contacted me for months."
"That's not what I meant," Grass sighed. "I just looked at you because he's your lawyer."
"Ten years, huh?" Hope said, leaning against her doorframe. "Is it with time served?"
The guard nodded. "From the day of arrest."
That was ridiculously unfair. "So it's more like eight and a half, then," Katz pointed out, clearly thinking along the same lines.
"He'll be twenty-eight when he gets out," Donna said. "What a waste of a life."
The guard sat down at the table and put her feet on it. "I defer to the expert." Everyone laughed at that, and after a few seconds, so did Donna.
Donna barely noticed the passing of the days, but Vartha did. With every hour, he became more and more unstable, swinging between apathy and rage until he had to be sedated. Not only was he too used to living in prison, but with the situation being the way it was, he was afraid of the world.
"Sorry I haven't been helping you two," he told Donna and Theodosius on his last day as the two of them worked on the potato patch.
Theodosius shrugged. "We'll be on our own after you leave. A few weeks more isn't going to make it any worse." He tore out a weed with both hands.
"I feel like I'm abandoning you," he whispered.
"It's just four years," Donna pointed out. "What's that compared to twenty-one?"
"Besides," Theodosius added with a smile, "now we'll be next in line." Donna didn't share his optimism. She didn't want them to be the only ones in the prison who knew without a doubt that they were going home eventually.
Pushing up soil to make a mound around a drooping plant, she asked, "What are your plans?" All of them knew them by heart, of course, but talking about them made Vartha feel a little bit better.
Vartha took an empty bucket, flipped it upside-down, and sat down on it. "First of all, sleep. Wake up. Eat breakfast. Kiss my wife." He sighed, running his hands over his face. "I just want these nightmares to end. I keep on having dreams where I'm about to be released, but then something happens, and I have to stay."
Donna was suddenly glad for her dreams, where she was usually outside and doing normal things. They were unpleasant to wake up from, but at least they weren't that bad. "At least you can wake up and feel better," she said.
"It's stressing me out, though!" Vartha snapped, angry all of a sudden. "I keep on thinking - what if? What if something does go wrong somehow? I-" he paused to wipe his eyes. "It's irrational, but I can't do anything about it."
In the end, everything went off as planned. The next morning, the men were all whispering about how Vartha had broken down in tears when a director had arrived to hand him his papers, and Donna and Theodosius were now next in line for release. Understanding the ramifications of that, Blatt fell into a deep depression and didn't speak to anyone that entire day.
As the trial wore on, Donna was glad for the multiple layers of defenses shielding her from the outside world. Opinions had been split on Everro's plea deal - some thought it was a ploy to avoid life imprisonment, others thought he had been sincere. Now, they split further as the nation debated the true causes of the murder together with the prosecution and defense.
Some people thought it was a one-off, others thought it fit into a larger pattern. Some even went so far as to blame the entire Capitol for it, much to the irritation of onetime Rebels from the Capitol. The tent city was bigger than ever, revanchists fought with anti-revanchists in the streets, the new Capitol chief of police was a liberal and a onetime displaced person from Ten, and the president had been ousted following the revelation that she had been a high-ranking civil servant under Snow. As if that wasn't enough, the Liberals pulled out of the coalition for an unrelated reason, toppling the government and causing elections to be scheduled for next month.
According to Aulus, teenagers were asking their parents uncomfortable questions. Sooyen was looking forward to meeting Donna for the first time because she wanted to brag to her friends about it. Donna had no idea what there was to brag about. Lars was at wits' end trying to think of what to do with Joel during the summer. Letting him stay at home alone was out of the question, but given his tendency to skip classes he considered unimportant (the fact that Donna also considered them unimportant was scant consolation), it was doubtful that enrolling him in summer programs would help. The other kids were trying to keep their heads down, as were Theodosius'.
In the Districts, the situation was even more complicated. In Two, collaboration was still a fraught topic, and in the other Districts, nobody talked about it at all. The Redhill case had given them an excuse to continue staying silent. The former Peacekeepers categorically rejected any similarities between themselves and the killers, and Donna suspected that the same held for the rest of their former colleagues.
Donna and Theodosius stood in the shed with a guard who was scrolling through something on his phone. The others seldom interacted with them when outdoors now, so the three of them were alone in the cramped space.
"Is it in?" Theodosius asked impatiently. The five had been found guilty two weeks ago, and now, they were waiting for the sentencing.
The guard nodded. "Cooper - to life imprisonment."
That had been expected. "He shouldn't have said those anti-District things," Theodosius said with a sigh. "Basic politeness goes a long way. Though I guess there's not much that can be done in mitigation when you're found guilty on two counts of first-degree murder."
Donna thought of the hateful firebrand Lark and the quiet Slice. One propagandist had been executed, the other was free and enjoying life.
"Tran - to life imprisonment."
"Both considered the ringleader, both to life," Donna mused, resting her arm on a shelf full of tins of screws and nails. Only they had been found guilty of first-degree murder.
"Garvesson - to forty years." She had not been found guilty of murder, but she had been found guilty of conspiracy, accessory to murder, and crimes against humanity.
Theodosius ran his hand through his hair, nearly hitting his elbow on a rake. "I guess they need doctors in prison," he joked.
There was something strange about the sentences Donna noticed. "How are they happening so quickly?"
"They're all in the dock right now," the guard explained. "They're being sentenced in front of each other." He focused on the screen. "Jackson - to twenty years." She had been found not guilty of conspiracy due to having taken zero part in the preparation.
Donna thought of Vartha's twenty-year sentence. "It's not fair we can't apply for parole."
"And the endless petitions for clemency your lawyers filed?"
Theodosius shook his head. "That's different."
With a huff, the guard looked back at his phone. "Cutner - to twenty years."
Given that parole was an option- "You think they might be released early?" In normal prisons, that was a possibility after one-third of an inmate's sentence or seven years, whichever was shorter. Jackson and Cutner would be eligible in six years and eight months - less, if time served counted. Everro would need to wait even less, and the other three would have to wait seven years.
The guard shrugged. "He was barely sixteen when the crime was committed. Out of all of them, the two youngest are the only ones I think can be reformed." He put his phone away. "Well, that's that."
Donna had seen photos of the youths. She couldn't be upset that they had a chance, if they behaved well and pretended to feel remorse, and she didn't. They were all so young, it was hard to imagine them growing to maturity in prison. "It's still hard to believe," she said. "Children murdering children." But then again, for seventy-five years, children had been forced to kill each other. This was just a new twist.
"I wouldn't have wanted to be sentenced in front of everyone else," Theodosius said ruefully. He leaned against a shelf, hands in his pockets.
Donna tried to imagine that. "I think Dovek would have throttled me before Sanchez even finished pronouncing my sentence."
The guard laughed. "Well, there was no throttling here. Move along now."
The two of them walked out of the shed, eyes readjusting to the bright light. They walked towards the meadow, where the tall grass was soft despite the scorching heat. Donna lay down on her back, savouring the feel of cool grass against bare skin. "Two kids are dead," she said, "and six are in prison. Doesn't seem like the sort of thing to cause societal upheavals, if you take it out of context."
Theodosius rubbed sunscreen on his back and lay down on his stomach. "I feel sorry for the people in the tent city," he said. "They're going to have to go back."
"I'm sure they'll find a way." Donna closed her eyes to the bright sunlight and turned to face it, letting the sun's heat hit her face directly. "I feel sorry for Vartha. I hope protesters don't try to crash his daughter's wedding."
Theodosius said nothing, running his hands over the soft grass. Donna, too, stayed silent. She wondered if the five just-sentenced kids would be surprised to find out that grass was just as green and soft behind bars.
A/N: According to the wiki, the epilogue of Mockingjay takes place around this time. Katniss and Peeta have built a life for themselves and their children by now, but the one who built the slaughterhouse they nearly died in is still behind bars - as she richly deserves.
Note that Donna worries so much about the killers and not at all - about the victims.
Panem has a parliamentary system of government (due to not wanting to have a powerful president ever again) where parties make coalitions and agree on who will lead the country. The obvious drawback of the system is that if a coalition can't be formed, things get interesting. The president doesn't do much aside from saying the wrong thing in speeches and getting into scandals when their past is dug up. This is yet another nod at West Germany.
Even murderers like Tran and Cooper are eligible for parole - another echo of the past, where after the Rebellion, many people wrongfully sentenced to life without possibility of parole had to be pardoned even though they had committed crimes because the system didn't have the resources to go through a re-trial.
In honour of the 100th chapter (! ! !) I will be giving back to my loyal readers. Ask me whatever questions you want, whether about the story itself or my writing process, and I will answer :)