Three hundred and sixty-four days. That was how much Donna and Theodosius had left. The one-year barrier had been broken silently, with the exception of Dr. Chu, who had interrogated Donna about her plans. Donna crocheted away, trying to figure out what she was feeling. She would never again experience a February first behind bars. Every single day was a last.

"I hate this weather," Katz complained, sitting down. She shook out her hands and picked up her crochet hook to continue working on a brightly patterned sock. It was hard enough for Donna to work with such thin yarn, she had no idea how Katz did it.

"I think everyone does," Salperin pointed out.

Donna looked at the door, wondering when Theodosius would be back. He was currently being visited by Cynthia for the last time. Since Donna would be visited by Dem in a few days, she was particularly interested in what he would have to say.

As the others talked in low voices, Donna focused on her crochet, not uttering a word. She understood now why the others had withdrawn as their release date had approached. Now that Theodosius was crossing off the numbers one by one, there was nothing for them to say to the twenty-one lifers. In exactly a year, she wouldn't be there, but they would. Donna tried to be encouraging with them, but she knew full well that if there was still no movement on that front, there would never be any.

A single year left. Donna chained four and flipped over the panel, starting a new row. A year was nothing at her age, but it was quite possible that a year from now, she would have another grandchild. Aulus said that he and Helia were trying, with no results. They gave no details, but Donna worried that maybe her son was infertile, or her daughter-in-law kept on having miscarriages.

In a single year, the hypothetical grandchild could go from not existing to being an actual human being. So much could change in three hundred and sixty-five days, but a year seemed like nothing to Donna after twenty-four virtually identical ones. Twelve months. Fifty-two weeks. Twenty-six checkups. She had had her penultimate annual checkup just weeks ago, so now there was only one remaining.

Donna felt like time was a wound-up toy spinning its last. Slowly, it wound down, eventually coming to a stop.

There was a sound of footsteps. Everyone looked up, waiting for Theodosius to appear in the door. When he did, he looked exhausted. "How was that?" Donna asked anxiously as he sat down and resumed his crochet. The sweater in his lap was nearly done.

"Fine," Theodosius said in a voice that clearly indicated that nothing was fine. "Well, it was fine enough," he amended, moving the sweater in his lap so that it would be easier to work on the sleeve. "I couldn't get a word out, I was so anxious, but she gave me a nice monologue about the kids."

"And how are they?" Li asked.

"My youngest son recently broke up with his girlfriend but is already dating someone else, and his twin sister got a full-time job."

Li switched colours. "Good for them. And the others?"

"Fine. I'm a bit upset now that my oldest daughter didn't bring in her kids when she visited, because according to my wife, they're very cute. And also a handful, but that's twins for you."

Katz chuckled. "We defer to your expertise." None of the others had as much as a single set of twins, let alone two. "You should consider yourself lucky you'll arrive just in time to have to chase both of them simultaneously."

Theodosius shuddered. "They already like to run in opposite directions. I have no idea how my wife managed ours on her own. My daughter says that she and her husband go completely crazy on weekends, and neither of them hides out at work like I did."

"To be honest," Donna said, "multiple births scare me."

"So five one after the other isn't scary, but two at once is?" Katz asked.

"Of course. One baby already takes up enough space, two is insane." Turning to Theodosius she added, "At what week did she get sectioned?"

Theodosius scratched his head. "I forgot. I know both of them put together were something like three kilos, so at least there was that."

"When I was little, my neighbour carried triplets to term," Salperin chimed in. "And then gave birth vaginally."

Donna nearly did a spit-take at the mental image. "Did she survive?" Just carrying around that load would have been a massive burden on the body, and there was a reason why both sets of Theodosius' twins had been born by C-section.

Salperin nodded. "I remember our family went over to gift them some food, and her stomach looked like an actual walnut. And one of the babies was crying because it was physically impossible to feed them all at once. They all lived to adulthood, so that was impressive."

"The female reproductive system is truly a marvel of engineering," Donna said. She shook her head, trying not to think about how the woman's suffering had been the result of where she had lived. "How's our mutual grandson?"

"Fights with everyone at the drop of a hat, but at least he's getting A's and B's." Joel was currently in a semi-closed institution, where he could only go home on the weekends. "I don't think that's what your parents meant when they said that anything went, as long as the marks were good."

Katz stretched her fingers. "What if his behaviour doesn't improve? Would he be allowed to continue getting an education?"

"If it doesn't improve, he'll eventually pick a fight with the wrong person and die," Donna said coldly. "Didn't I tell you last month that he got his arm broken after picking a fight with two other kids and being thrown down the stairs?" It horrified Donna that her own grandson was living like that, but there was nothing she could do. His portion of the weekly letters was even scantier than her brother's and was often completely absent, which meant that she had no idea what to write. Donna understood logically that the only reason Sooyen wasn't so distant was because of her interest in history, but it still stung that the only thing Joel knew about his own grandparents was that they were 'some sort of murderers'.

Theodosius ran a hand through his hair. "I forgot about that. I can't believe he's trying to fight the other kids with a broken arm."

"Look on the bright side," Li said encouragingly. "He clearly still cares about his marks."

Donna shook her head. "Won't help him if he gets stabbed to death in an alley somewhere."

"Or if he ends up in prison," Theodosius muttered darkly. "I've written to him over and over that it's no fun to live like this, but he doesn't care." He looked up at her. "I told him last week to shut himself in the bathroom when he gets home and imagine living there. He just said it seemed cozy."

"Optimistic of him." Their own two and a half by three by four cells were actually quite large compared to what most inmates had, but then again, they had been originally intended to hold multiple people. "Maybe you should tell him to go back in, start showering, and imagine that he's standing next to a whole bunch of strangers, with a deceased-looking CO staring at him."

Theodosius nodded thoughtfully. "Especially since he's at an age when he's starting to feel self-conscious about his appearance. We could describe the setup in here. Should you write it or should I?"

"I'll do it," Donna offered. "That way, it won't seem like you're the one trying to scare him."

"Why don't you describe the soap situation as well?" Gold suggested, looking up from the tiny sweater he was making the hood for. "Do they have to beg various cousins to send in decent soap, too?"

"I'm just glad I don't have to worry about my hair anymore," Salperin said, running his hand over his completely bald head. "Do they get actual hair products in that school of his?"

"Far as I can tell, there aren't any complaints with that," Donna replied, wracking her mind for every scrap of information about Joel's life in the semi-closed institution. Lars had written a lengthy clandestine letter about his son's life there, hoping for Donna to somehow provide advice, but that had been months ago. "Some kids bring in their own things from home, and those who don't have one use the money from their jobs to buy them." Joel's one meaningful message about his school was that some kids with no families stayed there over the weekend because they didn't see the point in going from one institution to another. Donna was horrified that there were kids out there with nobody who loved them.

"You know," Li said, "it really is rather unfair that twelve-year-old delinquents get paid for mowing the lawn or whatever it is they do there, and we don't."

Theodosius gestured at the sweater in Li's lap. "Nobody's forcing you to do this."

"Does he like to dress nicely?" Grass asked. "If he does, describe the poor excuse for clothing we're stuck with." She herself was wearing a soft grey sweater sent in by her wife.

Li clutched at his sweater, looking offended. "Have you told him about just how mind-numbingly boring it is in here?"

"Many times," Donna said. "I don't think he gets it."

"He better get it soon," Theodosius muttered. "I don't fancy getting out of prison and then having to go back inside one - as a visitor."

Her husband looked the same as last time. White-haired and with wrinkles on his face and hands, there was still something to him that had always been the same. His eyes sparkled with joy as he looked at her, and his hands crept closer towards hers. How she wished she could reach out and embrace him!

"So," Donna said. "Our last visit."

"I'm counting down the days."

Donna focused on not thinking about the others. It was quite easy to do so now that her husband was a metre from her. "How are you doing?" she asked, wishing she could leap across the table and tear off his clothes.

"Counting down the days." He giggled and propped his head on a hand. "I've already got so many plans. We're going to have the best retirement ever."

Dr. Chu had warned her about the plans. Already, many of the sessions were given over to Donna monologuing about what she wanted to do when she got out. What she really wanted to do was share them with her family, but the psychologist said it would stress them out too much, to have her constantly sending in changing instructions. "I've also got plans," she said. "Let's not waste the visit on them." Dem nodded. "Did you do anything interesting recently?"

"I gave an interview to Conrad."

Taken aback, Donna took some time to reply. "You're on a first-name basis with Lisiewska?" she asked. Thanks to Livia's support, the book had morphed into a biography of Donna, with the analysis of the Hunger Games industry being of secondary importance. It would be coming out shortly after their release, and Lisiewska also planned on writing a biography of Theodosius later on. Neither of them were thrilled about the prospect, but at least it couldn't be too bad if Livia had oversight.

"He's always around," Dem explained with a shrug. "Whenever I go over to see Livia, he's there." His main reason for going there was picking up and mailing clandestine letters. "We've gotten close."

"What do you think of the book so far?" Donna asked. Since the book would be Lisiewska's dissertation, she didn't have very high hopes for it.

Dem shrugged. "I haven't gotten to see it, if that's what you mean. I enjoyed the interview, though, so that should be a good sign. And Conrad's a pleasant young man. Reminds me of Octavius a little bit."

"On that note, how is Octavius? And the others?"

"Octavius is by now fluent in Swahili. He impressed Sooyen so much, she also decided to learn the language, even though Donna says she's hardly home because of that school play of hers."

Hopefully, theatre and Swahili would be the limit of Sooyen's mimicking of her youngest uncle. There was nothing wrong with being a historian, but Donna hoped her granddaughter would persevere in becoming an engineer. "Languages are a good thing to learn," she said, daydreaming about going to see the school play next year. It would be bare weeks after her release.

In response, Dem said something incoherent. He had recently decided to learn Arabic to keep his brain sharp. "I don't understand you," Donna said in Spanish.

Laughing, Dem switched to English. "I don't understand you," he said. "Laelia's doing well. She's going to coach highschool baseball."

Donna's ambitions for her youngest daughter had long ago crumbled, so she didn't feel upset. "Is she still playing?" she asked.

"Yes, in some amateur league. Last time I visited her, I went to a match. It's terrifying. Half the time, I was afraid the ball would hit someone on the head." That didn't make Donna feel any better. "Aulus is doing fine. He also gave an interview to Conrad. None of the others agreed to."

That wasn't surprising. Out of all the kids, Aulus was the only one comfortable with getting political. Donna was curious to see what her son thought of her.

"Lars is also doing well. He and Primus got a dog."

"That's nice."

"Yeah." Dem leaned forward slightly. "Would you like to have a dog?"

Donna thought about it carefully, and decided she didn't particularly care. She had never had a pet, though, which would pose issues. "I don't know how to take care of a dog."

"I'll ask Lars for help," he replied with a shrug. Donna nodded, unsure of what to say. She wanted to reach out and take her husband by the hand, but it wasn't allowed. Instead, she simply stared at his round dark eyes, feeling like she was going to drown in them. "Um, Donna is also doing well. She won that award for improving workplace safety."

"I know." That had been possibly the most ironic thing that had ever happened in her life. Theodosius had nearly passed out from laughing too hard at the mental image of someone having to talk about Donna Blues' contributions to improving worker health and safety. Donna had not been as amused, and the others, of course, weren't inclined to laugh about it at all. "What did the media say?"

Dem shrugged. "Nothing. They've got better things to write about than some engineer winning some industry award."

There was a pause. "How's my brother?" Donna eventually asked, wishing she could reach out and embrace Dem. It was as if his gravitational field was pulling her closer.

"Can't wait to retire. And your parents are counting down the days until you get home." Donna gulped, worried about having to face them. "I think Inky is excited, too."

Despite her creeping anxiety, Donna laughed. "I can't believe I've only ever seen him in photographs," she said. "He's just such a crucial member of the family."

"I'm sure he'd agree with that," Dem said with a chuckle. Donna watched his hands move as he clasped them and held them under his chin. "Infernal creature thinks Octavius exists exclusively for his pleasure. And you should see how possessive he gets when Laelia visits. As if her sole purpose in life is to scratch behind his ears." He looked at his hands, confused. "What are you looking at?"

Donna realized she had been staring. "You," she said, meeting his eyes.

"Ten months, and you'll get to look at me as much as you want," he replied.

The longing was an almost physical pain inside of her. Donna looked at her husband, wishing more than anything that they could finally be together. She wanted to take his hand, to hug him, to kiss him. She wondered if he still felt the same way, smelled the same way, tasted the same way.

Donna desperately tried to think about something else. There were still ten months to go before any of that could happen. "Uh, yes," she said, still distracted by his hands. "Are you going to take a day off when I'm released?"

"Two months, actually." Donna drew back, shocked. "What? I've saved up some vacation time here and there. It'll be like a second honeymoon."

That didn't help her with the thoughts that were running through her brain. "We never had one in the first place," she reminded him after a lengthy pause during which she tried very hard to not imagine what Dem looked like without that shirt. The only thing they had done after marriage was put the certificate with their other documents.

"True," he conceded. "We'll have a late honeymoon, then."

"How romantic," one of the guards said sarcastically. Given that she was aromantic she was far from an authority on the matter, but Donna didn't want to talk back to a guard.

"That's a plan, then," she said to Dem. "I can't even express how much I want to be out of here." She tried to sound confident, but there was no getting around the fact that the prospect often terrified her. She would lie awake at night, imagining herself struggling with technology and unable to do anything. Dr. Chu, however, had reassured her over and over that she would have plenty of people to rely on, and Donna tried as hard as she could to believe her, because that was the only thing that stopped her from being furious about how her life had been ruined.

Dem rested his chin in his hands and smiled at her. "And I can't express how much I want to be with you."

"I can't express how much I want to be with you." Donna swallowed, suddenly feeling nervous. "I was reading something a while back, and there's a line that made me think of you."

"What is it?" he asked, curious.

"Doubt thou the stars are fire/Doubt that the sun doth move/Doubt truth to be a liar/But never doubt I love."

"Aww," two of the guards said.

Dem's eyes crinkled with something Donna couldn't quite catch. "Hamlet Act 2 Scene 2," he said.

"I don't remember what act or scene it was - I just liked the quote. Wait, how do you know that?"

Dem chuckled. "You mentioned you were reading it, so I also read it. Though there's another quote that got my attention. One of my coworkers is starting chemo soon, and he's an expert in Shakespeare, so thought it'd be nice to embroider it for him."

"Which quote is that?"

"Diseases desperate grown/By desperate appliance are relieved/Or not at all. Act 4, Scene 3."

"I suppose that fits."

Dem's soft smile was the most beautiful thing Donna had seen in her life.

"You have got to be kidding me," Donna said, reading the newspaper headlines. All of them were focused on one thing - the discovery of someone who had gone missing before the Rebellion. Aurelia Kessin's disappearance had not made headlines back then, but her reappearance did. For the last quarter-century, she had been locked up in her uncle's basement, first alone and then with the children she had been forced to bear him. The eldest was twenty-three and the youngest - just three. Kessin herself was forty-two. She had spent the last twenty-six years locked up.

Since the lightbulb did not reply, Donna quickly ate her breakfast, cleaned her cell, and carefully read and reread the articles until she thought she understood what was going on. As the situation had heated up in the aftermath of the Seventy-Fourth Hunger Games, Kessin's uncle had gotten into his head that the world was ending and he needed to somehow protect his niece. Why he had thought that locking her up in a basement was a good idea would now be discussed by psychiatrists. One day, as she had been coming home from school, he offered to give her a ride to his house. Their relationship had been distant but normal, so she agreed. She was lured into the basement and the door locked.

As Donna thought, she couldn't help looking around her cell and comparing their situations. For a few weeks, she had been held in the basement of a onetime mansion, or something else along those lines. She hardly remembered those days due to the deep depression she had sunk into. But she had always known why she was being held, and she had been allowed to go outside regularly. Kessin hadn't seen sunlight for over a quarter of a century. Donna looked out the window, which was open to let the cool morning air in, and shuddered.

When the Rebellion had begun, the uncle had decided that all of his fears were coming true. Then, Kessin's parents were killed in an artillery bombardment, making him even more convinced that what he was doing was right. He regularly told Kessin that the world had ended, and as soon as she turned nineteen, he began to rape her. In his twisted mind, that made it alright. The result of that were six children who were now twenty-three, nineteen, thirteen, ten, six, and three. The uncle had never touched the children, convinced that Kessin was his wife and they were a normal couple.

Kessin hadn't been allowed any access to information except for old books. She had taught the children how to read, write, and do math, but since she herself had been just sixteen when locked up, there wasn't much she herself knew. There was no escape from the basement - there were no windows, and, of course, the uncle had made sure that she had no idea how to open the door. When she tried to disobey him, he beat her brutally. Nobody else lived in the house, and nobody visited.

Since the uncle went to work during the day, Kessin, and later the kids as well, tried to scream for help, though she concealed the fact of their imprisonment from them. A few of the neighbours started whispering about ghosts. In the end, the next-door neighbour got into a spat with the uncle over where the fence between their properties lay and decided to get even by complaining to the police about suspicious noises coming from the basement. They investigated, and found Kessin and the children.

Donna struggled to wrap her mind around the entire story. If not for the neighbour's pettiness, the uncle would have died at some point, and his captives would have starved to death. She couldn't feel outraged about the inaction of the neighbours, though, not when she knew she would have done the same thing. The Peacekeepers back then had been more concerned with chasing down geriatric graffiti artists than solving crimes, and plenty of people had gone missing during the fighting and their whereabouts were still unknown. And she couldn't imagine giving birth and raising children in such an environment.

Her thoughts were cut short by the guard calling them to go outside. The only topic of conversation was, of course, the Kessin case. Smith was convinced this wouldn't have happened if the Rebellion hadn't started and Grass was more concerned with how often serious crimes were being written about in newspapers. Even though the original kidnapping had occurred before even the Quarter Quell, she still thought that it was the result of the current government being "too soft on crime".

"You know what I noticed?" Donna asked as they approached the exit. "The only reason this was even discovered was because someone denounced their neighbour over a petty dispute. I bet the Districts are laughing their heads off at this."

Katz shook her head. "We had denouncers in Two, too," she pointed out. "And everywhere else - that's how we caught most Rebels."

"Still, though, it's firmly associated with the Capitol."

"Well, yes."

As Donna jogged, an unpleasant realization struck her. She and Theodosius would be getting out either shortly before or during the trial. She thought of how untimely the Redhill murders had been for Vartha's release, and wondered if he had had any issues because of that. In the past few years, there had been no news of Vartha. There had in fact been no news of anybody, except for the death announcements of Mitman and Nitza.

No wonder Theodosius wasn't interested in talking to the media. She imagined journalists asking her what she thought of the Kessin case and could only wince. Journalism was much better now than before, but journalists always liked sensation. Donna hoped they'd have the presence of mind to understand that she wasn't the person to ask.

"The poor kids," Theodosius said as he lightly hit the stake with a hammer. They were planting beans for the very last time. "I can't even imagine what it's like for the oldest. There's no way they'll be able to live a normal life."

"Yeah." Donna pushed the seed into the ground and covered it up with soil. "It's horrifying. How can someone even decide to do such a thing? He was keeping a person in his basement, that's something he must have been constantly aware of."

With a final tap of his hammer, Theodosius finished with that stake and picked up another one from the small pile on the ground. "He must have normalized it somehow," he speculated. "You can normalize anything. Like when I visited the Districts."

"Didn't they only show you the nice parts?" Donna asked. She herself had visited Six a time or two, but she didn't like to think about that.

Theodosius nodded. "They specially got ready, cleaning up and chasing out the child workers. Anyone with eyes could still see that things were worse than in any Capitol factory or agro-town." He ran a hand through his hair. "No, even the eyeless youth could have seen that conditions were atrocious!"

"I wonder what the eyeless youth thinks of this," Donna said. "And the other mutts. They also grew up under lock and key."

"I was actually talking about those people a while back with Dr. Chu," Theodosius said. "She says we shouldn't call them mutts. It's dehumanizing."

Dr. Chu, as always, had a point there. The general impression of mutts had been that of animals, so calling a human a mutt would have been just like calling them a particularly dangerous animal. The term had been phased out in society, with the more formal 'genetically modified organism' trickling down from academia to replace it. It seemed strange to Donna, but if those genetically modified humans didn't want to be called mutts, they had every right. "In any case, I wonder what they think of it."

Theodosius shrugged. "I think they've got better things to worry about."

As far as Donna knew, the genetically modified humans were living normal lives. The eyeless youth was a researcher studying medical ethics, with an emphasis on the modification of the human genome in embryos to prevent heritable diseases. "Still, though, when the slightest thing goes wrong, the Games regime is brought up. Here, the perpetrator was directly influenced by events. They'll probably start talking about the past all over again."

"They better not." Theodosius hammered in the stake with more force than necessary. "Not when our release is in nine months."

According to the newspapers, things calmed down slightly in the ensuing weeks, but they did not do so in the Supermax. Everyone was outraged by the horrific crime, but they could not agree on who really was at fault. The guards had had a good laugh about the petty neighbour who had accidentally saved Kessin and her children, and Donna wasn't sure if they were amused or disappointed by what they perceived as a facet of true Capitol culture shining through.

Donna had never shied away from the news, but now she found herself constantly begging guards for updates, spurred on by the knowledge that she would soon be rejoining the world where these things happened. It sat like acid in her chest, never letting her forget for a single second that her release date approached with every passing day.

In some despairing moments late at night when she was trying to sleep, Donna wished she didn't have to leave. She had no idea what she was supposed to do and where she would go. She tried to imagine herself getting in a car and driving, and nearly had a panic attack. So many normal things she had no idea how to do. She wasn't sure how to use a fork, browse the Web, or go to the doctor. According to Livia, her old coworkers would deposit a lump sum into Dem's bank account (Donna had no idea how to add her name to it) once she was released, so that she wasn't a burden on him until the book royalties came through, which was scant consolation. There was no getting around the fact that nobody wanted to hire her.

The book was another thing that concerned her. Livia was taking care of it all, but Donna would still have to go through and actually write the entire thing, as she didn't trust anyone else to be able to do it. Donna had no idea how to take the mass of notes she had sent in over the past quarter-century and put it together. Just thinking about it made her feel anxious. She had gotten so used to existing in the prison, she had forgotten how to live like a normal person.

Livia had been able to get confirmation that while the assets confiscated by the Depuration tribunal would not be returned under any circumstances, neither would she ever be prosecuted again, no matter what evidence came to light. Given how historians were poking around in the past, that was very welcome.

Everyone was scurrying around preparing for her release. Livia was handling most of the load, Dem had re-decorated the apartment several times, as had Cynthia for Theodosius, and Sooyen and Joel were both very eager to meet their grandparents. The older kids were excited, the younger kids nervous. Lisiewska was looking forward to defending his dissertation and using the media hype around her release to sell more copies. Dancer was dancing with joy at the thought of never having to transcribe a diary entry again. Her parents were counting down the days, and even Inky was apparently excited. And Donna and Theodosius were still digging in the dry ground and carrying cans of water back and forth. Theodosius' daily walk had lengthened to span entire mornings and Donna struggled to not let her jogs lengthen similarly. Being active was good for the body, but heavy manual labour was not.

Donna looked around the yard as she finished one lap and began another. She was seeing the green leaves and fruits for the last time, and it made her feel oddly melancholic. Being aware that that was natural did not help her feel any better about her muddled feelings.

A/N: The Kessin case is inspired by the Fritzl case. Fritzl was born in Austria in 1936, and during his trial, the Nazis somehow got dragged in.

It says a lot about the situation that Lisiewska is looking forward to defending his dissertation.