Donna stood in front of the columbarium, unsure of what she was feeling. She was sad, yes. Her parents had been good people, and Inky had been a good cat. They had also all been extremely elderly and had shown nothing but calm about their upcoming end. Was that excuse enough for the lack of grief she felt? Or would it hit her later?

There wasn't much in the columbarium. Bits of their hair and nails (or claws, in the case of Inky) had been incinerated so that the family would have something to visit after the bodies had been sent to universities. Were medical students already cutting into the bodies of her parents? Were undergraduates crowded around Inky, looking at his muscles and insides?

"I suppose one can't ask for anything better than that," Alex sighed. Her brother was standing next to her. "Once you came back, they were happy."

That made Donna tear up. "I shouldn't have left," she said, wiping her face.

Alex shook his head. "You couldn't have done anything else. They were proud of you, you know. They found it confusing. They were so happy you had such a high position, but they hated what you worked for." He sighed. "They fell into line because of your job. They couldn't condemn anything you did. Except Demetrius."

Donna chuckled weakly. "I should have gone to work with him."

"We can't change the past," Alex sighed. "I wish I hadn't provoked them so much as a kid. I could have just slipped out quietly, without scandals. Actually gotten a job and stuck with it, instead of partying all the time."

They stared at the three urns. The little one labelled 'Inky, beloved cat' stood between the two. "When did they get into philanthropy?" she asked. "I don't even remember when they started volunteering everywhere."

"I don't know," Alex said. "Pretty early, though. I think they were just bored at the beginning, and then they grew to like it."

"It's nice that they're doing what they loved even in death."

"Yeah. Maybe I should also donate my body. Do something useful for once in my life."

"So one of my grandkids can chop you into pieces?"

Alex wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. "You so sure one of them will be a doctor?"

"Well, I've got two to-be engineers. Maybe the rest can be doctors or something."

"I'm sure Mom and Dad would be thrilled."

Donna nodded. "They'll haunt them when they do well and whisper congratulations in the middle of the night."

"Haunting people to congratulate them for getting into university? Now that's Mom and Dad, alright." Alex took out a stone from his pocket and placed it in the columbarium. Donna did likewise. She traced the carved letters of the three urns with a finger.

"I miss them," she admitted.

"Same." Alex leaned closer. "It's a bit sad, really, that this is the best you can expect. I keep on wondering when it'll be my turn."

"Already planning your own funeral?"

"Of course. Never too early to plan. When I snuff it, throw a massive party and have the pallbearers dance as they bring my coffin in for the wake." He looked at her with a wry smile. "And have them all be attractive twenty-year-olds wearing almost nothing. You'll be sad enough that I'm dead, no need to depress yourselves further by standing around looking somber in itchy hot clothing."

Of course Alex would come up with an idea like that. "Hear that sound?" Donna asked, cheered up slightly. "That's the sound of parental disapproval."

"Oh, yes," Alex said. "Can't even die like a normal person. What a disappointment." He turned towards the urns. "Sorry."

Donna reached out to touch the urns again, feeling oddly empty.

District Three, or at least the parts they saw from the train, looked just like the Capitol. That made sense, of course, Panem was one of the world's biggest exporters and the Capitol's industrial suburbs were much the same as the port cities of Three appearance-wise, but to someone of Donna's generation, the saying 'The Capitol isn't Panem' wasn't a teasing joke.

"The ocean is cool," Sooyen suggested as they walked down the beach to where the kids and their families were already gathered. The eighteen-year-old who would be starting university in just a month had gone with Laelia to pick them up at the airport.

"It's certainly nicer than Capitol Lake," Dem said, shading his eyes even though he was wearing a cap and sunglasses. By his side, Dusty stepped hesitantly over the sand.

"Grandpa, that's just a water reservoir with delusions of grandeur."

Laelia laughed and waved to her husband Kyle, who was also waving. Donna's youngest daughter had quit her job after having her first child and gone back into industry, working from home as a software engineer for a major corporation - someone in a rich country was paying her a fifth of their salary to do their job for them, and that fifth made Laelia the best-earning person in the family by far. Donna still found it hard to grasp just how much poorer Panem was than many other countries. And back in the day, an engineer married to an elementary-school teacher would have raised some eyebrows, but that was apparently perfectly normal now.

The family had occupied a large segment of the beach. Dem tied Dusty to a fence and took off her muzzle; the dog was immediately set upon by a small army of grandchildren. Other grandchildren played in the water. Was it her imagination or were there more of them than before? Donna and Daeho were happy with just Sooyen, Lars and Primus weren't going to have more until Joel was living independently, Aulus and Helia had had their third months ago, Laelia and Kyle also had three and wanted to have two more, and- aha. Octavius and Pauline's second child had been born last month, and she had only seen photographs so far.

Not dwelling on the fact that only her youngest children were interested in large families, Donna sat down next to Pauline, who was feeding baby Alex. The plan had been to name the child Alexander or Alexandra after Donna's brother, and when they had turned out intersex, Octavius and Pauline decided to go with the short form.

"So that's the little one," Donna said, running a finger over a tiny fist.

"Yeah," Sooyen said, taking off her shoes and socks. "The baby cousin quota is filled for the year." She lay down on the towel but immediately sat up again. "Whew, it's boiling hot out here."

She was right, it was extremely hot. Pauline was sitting under a large umbrella, but there wasn't enough room under it for anyone else. "I'm going to go swim," Donna said. "Anyone else?"

"I'll go," Dem offered, taking off his sandals. Both of them were already in swimming shorts. "Sunscreen?"

Donna suspected that for as long as she'd live, her first instinct after applying sunscreen would be to hand the tube to Theodosius, who was not there. They may have been siblings thanks to Lars and Primus, but this was not that kind of reunion, like when three hundred guests had showed up for Marcus' wedding. It still felt odd that Theodosius was not sitting next to her and carefully applying sunscreen to every last square millimetre of skin.

The water was pleasantly cool. Donna and Dem watched Jenny, Aulus' eldest at four years old, play with damp sand with Golshan, Octavius' two-year-old daughter, as Octavius looked on. The two children were at the same mental age, though academically, Jenny was a below average though unremarkable five-year-old and read books on her own. Mom and Dad were probably approving from beyond the grave.

Donna thought of Hryb's son, who was still campaigning for his father's release. Usually, she did not dwell on that part of the past, but something would remind her, and her thoughts would go to the Supermax's sole inmate.

"I'll go swim out," Donna said, splashing Dem.

"You do that," he said, splashing her back. "I'll stay here in the shallows."

Donna began to swim away from the shore. Of course, Alex immediately materialized next to her.

"I'm faster than you," he said smugly.

"You want to repeat that on land?"

That shut him up. "Overachiever," he grumbled belatedly as they swam towards a buoy. Alex had gotten her into swimming - he had taken it up some years back, as it was the only sport that was easy on his bad knees. He did not like it when Donna reminded him that his problems had been caused by constantly standing and squatting at work.

"What? I just said I'm faster than you on land."

"I'll have you know-" Alex said before water got in his mouth and he sputtered. "Not all of us spent a quarter of a century training."

Donna wasn't sure what to say, so she said nothing until they reached the large wooden sphere. Off in the distance, large ships laden with containers passed by. Panem, the world's factory. She would never have believed it before. Even in prison, it had been hard to believe.

"So," Alex said, noticing that she had gone distant. "Do we swim back or just drown?"

"Remember how you threw me into that public pool thinking it would teach me to swim but I nearly drowned and the lifeguard had to rescue me?" Donna remembered the sudden chill of the water and the panic of being surrounded by something she couldn't breathe.

Alex's eyes widened. "I did? And Mom and Dad didn't hang me in the staircase?"

"They weren't there. You had gone there with your friends and I tagged along. I remember I folded my T-shirt nicely, put it against the fence with my sandals, and asked you to teach me how to swim."

"And I pushed you."

"Exactly. You all claimed I had jumped in on purpose, and I was too busy heaving up my lungs to protest. But the lifeguard then taught me how to swim, so I suppose the day wasn't entirely ruined."

Alex smiled with one side of his mouth. "Lucky there was even a lifeguard on duty. With how corrupt everything was-"

"Class privilege is not drowning in a public pool," Donna half-joked. "Though I'm sure you'd have pulled me out eventually."

"Of course. Not returning at all would have been preferable to returning without you."

"On that note, do you think we're visible from the beach for the lifeguards?"

"What, you planning on drowning? I can arrange that."

"I outlifted you at the gym last week."

Alex pretended to swim away in panic. After a few seconds, he stopped and laughed, treading water. "Let's get back before Demetrius decides I've actually drowned you. Or you drowned me."

On the shore, Dem was watching the kids and in-laws play volleyball. "Practicing for the triathlon?" he asked jokingly.

That was actually the goal, but it would take time to get her swimming and biking to an acceptable level. Much to Donna's surprise, she did well in any endurance activity she tried - but then again, she ran marathons, of course her endurance was good. "Maybe if I want to set the record for 'oldest person to crawl across the finish line after ten million hours,'" she said. If Mom and Dad had been in fine shape into their nineties, why not aim for the record? "What is it? Eighty-five?"

"Oh, great," Alex said as he found a random hat and put it on. "You're actually going to do it, aren't you?"

"My therapist told me it's good to set goals and work towards them. Keeps you from falling into despair over getting old."

Two grandchildren collided with her legs before continuing to chase each other, tripping over the sand.

"You try despairing when you've got an army of little ones keeping you on your toes," Alex said, scooping up a toddler under each arm. "You think you can escape Uncle Alex? Nobody can escape Uncle Alex!"

Dem laughed. "Don't drop them!"

Alex may have never wanted to have kids of his own, but he was a great uncle. Donna sat down next to Dem and put an arm around his shoulders. "Did you miss me?"

"Of course." He kissed her on the cheek. They sat there for a while, enjoying the sunshine. "You know, I can't believe our granddaughter is starting university soon. But I can very easily believe she's studying engineering." Chemical engineering, to be sure, but Dad would have appreciated that the family was branching out. And it made sense - a civil engineer (Donna Jr) + a chemist (Daeho) = a chemical engineer (Sooyen).

"She told me she wants to go abroad for grad school."

"Already planning so far ahead?"

"I suppose that's the better option." And Sooyen was already quite the polyglot, so many avenues would be open to her, even if the horror stories on the Web about labs forcing foreign students to work seventeen hours a day by threatening them with visa revocations really should have dampened her enthusiasm.

"That's true." He put his head on her shoulder. "It's so nice here, isn't it?"

Donna watched her children and grandchildren play. It was, in fact, very nice.

"I can't believe how much more than me you wrote," Theodosius said as they stared at the shelves full of binders. "How are you even going to edit that down?"

"I wrote every single day," Donna reminded him, "even if it was just a single line. And Rafi Dancer typed it all up, remember? I just need to cut out what I can. Though we'll need to make some complete copies for the archives so that Lisiewska doesn't complain." It was humiliating to the highest degree to read her ramblings, but hopefully people would understand that someone locked up for twenty-five years could never be considered sane. According to their therapist, they were both well-adjusted for long-term prisoners, but they were by no means fully healthy.

Theodosius took a binder at random and opened it. "Of course. I'll have to dedicate the entire thing to him, too."

"But then Cynthia will be annoyed."

"Then I'll do what you did and have no dedication but include them all in the acknowledgements." Her memoir had been released the other month, resulting in even more people trying to interview her.

Donna leaned against the wall, looking around at all that remained of twenty-five years of her life. "I read the entry I wrote just after the sentencing," she said. "It was so surreal."

"I can imagine." He read something and winced. "I can't believe I got in a fight with Fest over an undershirt."

Fortunately for her nonexistent mental health, Donna did not recall that, or much of anything, really. Reading her words was like reading the words of a stranger. "What kind of fight?"

"We didn't speak for a month." Theodosius flipped through the binder. "I'm beginning to think this was a huge mistake. We'll make a mockery of ourselves. No wonder nobody else tried to write about the Supermax." He flipped a page again. "Oh, wow, I never knew I was so categorical so early on."

"What is it?"

"Apparently, Dr. Chu and I were talking about the normalization of the Hunger Games, and I said 'Don't let anyone tell you they thought nothing of it, we all knew that it was wrong.' And that's only the eighth year. Oh, wow, and here I have an entire rant about the parliamentary system. Apparently I was very confused by the idea of voting for parties instead of people."

Donna tried to think to back then and failed. "And now it's just common sense," she said. They both voted in elections, the last time - for the Capitol governor. Neither of them knew the governor's name, but Donna's favoured party won. She and Theodosius avoided arguing politics, because with him, she could be honest about how little she truly cared for politics and how hard it was to force herself to do research and then go out and vote. "I don't look forward to the municipal elections."

Shuddering, Theodosius put away the binder. "It's hard enough at the higher levels with four major parties, and now we've got ten trillion interest groups to somehow pick from." He took another binder. "This is completely surreal," he said, putting it back immediately. "Do you want to go plan with our historical consultant? I'm still not sure how to write about my imprisonment."

There was a knock on the door. Before Donna could do anything, Dem put aside the book he was reading and went to get it. The book was in Arabic. Her husband was now thinking of picking up another language, because why not. Donna herself was content with Spanish.

Dem opened the door. "Hey, Joel," he said as Dusty ran towards their grandson. "Finally decided to visit your grandparents?"

Joel had ended up released from prison early for good behaviour. He had then managed to work his way back to an ordinary school, getting into university along the way. He had not kept his promise to study engineering, choosing instead to focus on math at the last moment. For a few months now, he had been living in a dorm on campus. "Well, yeah." He took off his shoes and walked into the living room, Dusty at his heels. Joel towered over everyone except Primus, his uncle Marcus, and Theodosius. When Donna hugged him, her head reached his chest.

"How are classes going?" Donna asked.

"They're good." Joel launched into a monologue about how much he hated his calculus professor. Donna listened, trying to not let her attention slip. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn't have a proper conversation with anyone for more than five minutes, other than Theodosius, and, for some reason, Sooyen. Even with Dem, it was a struggle. "Grandma? Can you hear me?"

Donna snapped out of her thoughts. "I'm sorry," she said. "My mind started wandering again. What did you say?"

Joel sighed. "I said that we're reading a book in history class, and the author mentions something like 'the twilight between knowing and not knowing'. What do you think of that?" He scratched Dusty on the head.

"What brought this on?" Dem asked, standing up. "I'll make tea."

Hadn't he just been talking about calculus? And since when was Joel taking a history class? Donna took a few seconds to answer. "As my psychologist said once, you can't suspect in a vacuum. I knew - everyone did - but we did not think about it. There are things you don't know that you know. At the time, I did not stop to think about it, but once I was being interrogated, I realized I knew more than I had ever thought."

"Huh." Joel fidgeted with a sleeve. "And, uh, what do you think about that?"

"What brought this on?" Donna echoed Dem. She did want to know the answer to that.

"History class is interesting," Joel said by way of explanation. "Like, they died. Do you-"

Donna looked at the floor. "I've been talking to many people lately. Some are just interested to know what's going through my head. Others can't believe what I'm saying, and expect me to offer justifications. But I have none. No apologies are possible."

"Why?" Joel asked quietly.

"Because they're dead."

Joel looked like all the air had been sucked out of him. "But there's got to be somebody," he insisted, Dusty's head in his lap.

Donna shook her head. "They're dead. I can't apologize to a dead person."

Her grandson looked horrified. "I can't even imagine what it's like for you." How lucky he was that the knife had gone a few centimetres too far to the left, and so he could not understand her.

"Why worry about me? Because of my actions, there is a burden on me that I will have to carry until my dying day. I'm not exactly the sympathetic figure here," she said with a small laugh. Dem walked back into the living room with a platter of cookies.

"So," the middle-aged man said. "I must say, I did not ever plan on visiting you." James Chang, a miner from Six, was a former forced labourer.

"What made you want to visit me?" Donna asked. They were on neutral ground, on the back porch of a coffeeshop not too far from where Donna lived. They were alone there because of the cold and drizzle, which was why Chang had picked it.

Chang shrugged and warmed his hands with his mug of tea. He did not meet her eye. "My cousin is getting married in a few days, so I'm here for the wedding." He paused. "I read your book."

He wasn't the first former forced labourer to confront her, but every time was as difficult as the first. "So you decided to visit me?"

"Why did you agree to visit me?" Chang fired back.

"I am hardly in a position to refuse to speak to you."

"Actually, you very much are. If you sat in your burrow and didn't stick your nose out, that would be very preferable."

"To me, it seems like silence would be as bad as denial."

Chang chuckled, hand jerking abruptly and nearly knocking his cup over. "Silence would mean leaving me alone. I came here because I thought I might as well tell you what I think of your stupid book and hypocritical pleas for forgiveness."

Donna didn't think there were any pleas for forgiveness in the book. "Pleas?"

"You want forgiveness? Go ask the graves for that. I spent the past thirty-odd years not thinking about you even once, and was perfectly happy. I'm not going to let you drag me down. Maybe that'll make you feel better, that some of us manage to be happy despite everything you did."

Donna wished she hadn't agreed to the request for the meeting. "I do regret it, you know."

Chang nearly choked. "So what, that you're sorry? Unless you have a time machine you can use to go back and make me not go through that hell. Good for you, that you feel bad, but that it took you decades to understand you had ruined the lives of thousands of people - it took me years to recover from the TB and the nightmares! I don't care about your apology. Go fuck yourself. I'm not going to make you feel better because you grew a conscience forty years too late. I wouldn't spit on you if you were on fire." After finishing that short rant, he tossed back his tea and stared at the table.

"Then why did you come here?" It was rare that anyone got so harsh with her. The ones who felt that way typically wouldn't have talked to her for all the gold in the reserves.

"I guess I'm just curious." Chang stared at her face, still not looking her in the eyes. "You know, I'm happy. My life is good. But seeing you again is bringing me back to seeing people get strung up, and you passing by like it was nothing. Why did you lie about that?"

"I was on trial for my life," Donna said honestly.

"And what makes you think you matter more than any of them?"

"Selfishness?"

Chang laughed out loud. "I change my mind. This isn't ruining my happiness. On the contrary, it is a relief to know that my enslaver is a washrag of a human I can forget about and live my life to the fullest."

Donna hadn't been sure about going back to the courtroom. It had felt wrong, somehow. As if she was there to gloat that she was still alive. Eventually, though, she had been convinced by the director working on the movie about their trial. She, Theodosius, and Slice would show the actors playing them around and give advice. It was all for the sake of historical accuracy. She and Theodosius had watched some movies about the trial (though she had to leave the room if the executions were recreated, and Theodosius literally hid behind Cynthia), and it always galled when mistakes were made.

The woman who would be playing her did look a good deal like a younger Donna. She was an overweight woman in her mid-thirties with more or less the same skin, hair, and eyes, though her face was, of course, different. "Hello," Donna said, offering her hand to shake. They had corresponded a little bit, but had never met before. "It's very nice to meet you."

"Very nice to meet you, too." When Donna had been arrested, Kira Flowers had barely been born. How time flew. Next to her, Theodosius and Slice were also chatting to their actors. It was strange that she was important enough for people to be playing her in movies. There was even an entire biographical miniseries about her and Theodosius in the works, though so far, they were still going to their relatives and interviewing them. Someone had dug up an interview Primus had made with her parents over a decade ago - Donna feared to even look at it.

"So," the tour guide asked, "how does it feel like to be back?"

The Justice Building still looked the same, though now, it was called the District Court. Even the bullet holes still pockmarked the walls.

"It feels nice to be outside it," Theodosius said.

That was true. This was the first time she was standing out here and looking at the building. She had spent so much time inside of it, but she had only known what the exterior looked like from photos.

"This should be interesting," Donna said.

Slice said nothing at all.

"Let's go in," the tour guide said. The place was apparently a moderately popular destination. There was another group in the building Donna could see, which must have been a pain for everyone who worked there. Their courtroom had been supposed to be turned into a museum decades ago, but it kept on getting pushed off for later.

"Wait," Slice said suddenly, "how are they going to film in here when there's people working?" She must have been thinking along the same lines.

The actor who vaguely resembled a younger Theodosius, a paunchy tall man in his mid-thirties, shrugged. "They'll just borrow an office or the courtroom for a while, do all the filming there, and then give it back. I've heard that the staff is really keen on being extras. Some have actually worked here back then."

"That's interesting," the tour guide said. "Now, there's a few people here who enjoy giving interviews to tourists, but given our contingent, I think it is best to skip that part. Now, you three might be wondering how, exactly, did it come to pass that the Lodgepole Three became who they are now."

"You forgot the other trials," Theodosius muttered.

The tour guide politely ignored that. Given the poor guide's job, it probably tested her patience enough just to be in the same room as them. Donna, too, stayed silent, as did Slice.

"As soon as I was cast," the actress playing Slice said, "I read anything I could get my hands on." Her braids were just like Slice's, even though they'd probably only be on her head for a few scenes. She was forty-five, about the same age as Slice back then, but she was shorter and had a youthful face that would probably do a great job of conveying that what-am-I-doing-here attitude Slice had had back then.

Even now, Slice looked a little bit confused as she looked around the corridors. After her retirement, she had switched to wood-carving, and almost nobody recognized her as she peddled her wares at a market. She gave interviews nobody cared about from time to time, usually together with Donna and Theodosius, and her memoir of the trial was widely read in narrow circles, but that was it.

The tour guide described the history in an amazing amount of detail, pointing out things about the courthouse Donna had long forgotten. She took them to the former 'yard' where they had once taken their walks. The current prisoners of the jail all used the real yard beyond it, but apparently tourists really liked to take pictures in the concrete cylinder.

The actors all appeared shocked. "This is all you got?" Kira asked, craning her head to see the metal bars. Donna had thought she'd react more, but it had all faded away, leaving behind only a vague feeling of befuddlement.

"I guess," Theodosius said, scratching his head. "I thought the bars were lower down. I must have shrunk." He turned to face his actor. "Hey, Adil, what do you think?"

Adil looked up, clearly ill at ease. "I don't think I'll have any issues pretending to be uncomfortable."

After that, the guide suggested visiting the reproduction of a cell they had in there, but the actors said no, because first being in it when shooting began would make it easier to be pretending to be in a completely new space. It turned out that they were rehearsing in their bathrooms so that they could act as if they had already been in small spaces for months. Donna envied them a little bit.

"Did you know," she said as they walked to the courtroom, "a small room is so much easier than a big one in some ways. You can reach out and grab anything you need. Even now, I'm constantly annoyed because I have to get off the couch to grab a book."

Theodosius nodded. "But if you're tall, you'll be able to touch both walls with your hands. That happened to me in my first cell when I was arrested."

"You already told me about yours," Slice's actress said to Slice. "It's terrible." Slice just shrugged.

In the courtroom, a hearing was wrapping up as they sat down in the audience section. The courtroom was just as it had been, except that the journalist section was long gone. Instead, there was just a patch of empty floor. Only a single judge was sitting at the raised bench, and only a small handful of people were present. Two lawyers were arguing about something to the judge, two more sat at their respective tables, and there was a small audience gathered - locals interested in watching trial proceedings.

It was all so prosaic, so normal, that it was hard to believe that in this very courtroom the trial of the century had occurred. Had Donna once sat all the way over there on the benches that had stood there before being replaced with a single one? Had this courtroom once been packed to the rafters? Was this lectern where Irons had once stood, about to make the most devastating opening statement in the history of Panem?

The last time she had been here, it had been to hear 'Defendant Donna Blues, on the counts of the indictment on which you have been convicted, you are sentenced to twenty-five years' imprisonment.' Thanks to the publication of the diaries of one of the judges, she knew that there had been four votes for her death - the judges from Two, Three, Six, and Ten. There had been five for Theodosius. Nobody had called for their acquittals, but it had taken days to reach an acceptable compromise. Slice was acquitted with barely even a hint of protest. A few judges said that she deserved prison but easily agreed to acquit, which was ironic, given that Slice ended up in prison for nine years. They had been sentenced relative to each other, not relative to some sort of guidelines.

Donna couldn't summon up anything other than a vague discomfort at the thought of people saying that they wanted to have her hanged. Of course they had wanted her death. Anyone would have, after reading those documents. She felt no guilt at lying, though. Could someone really be blamed for what they did to save their life?

The judge called a recess until next morning. Slowly, everyone left the room, not looking twice at the little group. And then they were alone.

"Nice to be back," Theodosius said sourly. "My back hurts just from looking at that bench, and it's a whole lot nicer than ours. How did Best do it?"

Slice shrugged, running a hand along the solid wooden railing. "I remember being glad to be in the back corner," she said. "Do you think it's a coincidence?"

"Maybe," Donna mused. "But you had the death row almost next to you. The front row actually had more varied punishments." She looked across the courtroom. Carefully, she hopped over the railing and sat down in her old place. How many months had she spent, seeing the room from this angle? Dr. Fisher, still the drab mousy man he had been then, had sat in front of her. And next to her had been the long-dead Chaterhan.

For so many, it would have been better if she had entered that now-dismantled gym immediately after her neighbour. But it wouldn't have been better for her. At least she could admit that.

Theodosius and Slice walked into the dock as well and crouched down behind her, as if sitting in the back row. They, too, had decided that they mattered more than their victims. That was why they were still breathing.

The actors sat down on the bench next to Donna. They didn't seem to be upset by the thought of playing the century's worst criminals. They pestered the three of them for little details about life during the trial, eager to be as accurate as possible.

This would be her legacy. Donna would appear not in engineering textbooks but in documentaries about trials for crimes against humanity. And the worst thing was, she was jumping out of her skin to help out with that.

"So," the interviewer asked, "Hryb's son recently spoke out against his father's continued incarceration. Would you like to comment on that?"

"I think it's an outrage," Theodosius said. The two of them were sitting in soft chairs in a studio, with bright lights shining on them.

"Exactly," Donna agreed. "A prison that once held a thousand now holds one harmless old man." She paused to gather her thoughts. "Even if they want to continue detaining him - fine. Life means life. But why waste all those resources on this cavernous building that's practically falling to pieces?"

"You think he should remain behind bars?"

Theodosius shook his head. "I do not think anything. It is not my place to say these things. But it is clear that the arrangement is a huge money sink."

Donna disagreed. "Let me put it this way," she said. "As an expert in long prison sentences, trust me when I say that at this point, Hryb is lucky if he's capable of choosing what to have for breakfast. He is extremely isolated, no matter that he's got the guards and the television. He has no peers to talk to, nobody he can have a normal conversation with."

The interviewer nodded. "Some describe him as the loneliest person in the world."

"I would not go that far," Theodosius cut in sharply. "I am certain that everyone who is currently locked up in their country's version of total solitary is much, much lonelier."

There was an awkward pause. "And what of worries in some circles that moving Hryb to a normal prison may result in his early release?"

Donna leaned forward slightly. "Then they should look at how rare it is that a criminal against humanity was let go after the Redhill case. Look at all these ninety-year-olds in those secure retirement homes the DOC's put up. Even humanitarian arguments are unlikely to work." Technically speaking, they were prisons like any other, but everyone's physical condition and health needs were such that they were basically retirement homes with barbed wire and aides who doubled as guards.

The interviewer nodded again. "Good point," she said. "Good point."

Donna and Theodosius sat at a table piled high with their books and watched photographers and journalists crowd around. "Why did you take on Conrad Lisiewska as your historical consultant after he published scathing biographies of you?" someone asked.

"It's a good biography," Donna replied. "Even if I would rather he hadn't included that photo of my brother holding me upside-down when we were kids." A ripple of laughter passed through the room. She had not included that one in her first book, preferring to start with one of her and Dem when they were twenty - a much more flattering portrayal. Including side-by-side photographs of the last time the family was together before and the first one after had hurt like a stab to the chest. From little Aulus holding on to Dem's hand to a confident young man laughing as he stood next to her, all in the span of a centimetre on the page and a quarter of a century she missed.

"Mr. Coll, do you agree with Mr. Lisiewska's analysis in your autobiography?"

Theodosius nodded, but Donna knew his main desire in life was to throttle Lisiewska. "Yes. I have done some edits on my draft as per his suggestions." Theodosius had written a straightforward memoir of his life, whereas Donna had edited her diary entries starting with her sentencing into a more compact prison diary. She had doubted anyone would want to read her inane ramblings about mole-crickets, laundry soap, and Snow, but the crowd gathered was massive. "And it is not just Mr. Lisiewska, but the entire historical establishment - aside from the revanchist wing, that is. I hope that people will be able to rely on my writings when learning about the past."

More questions in that vein followed. The journalists seemed confused about why their memoirs were so accurate, unlike what their fellows put out. Donna did not have the heart to explain that it had been the only available option.

"Are either of you planning to write more books?"

"Yes," Donna said. "In these published books, we naturally had to trim down a lot of things, and the first to go were the various strange or amusing stories about life back then. Many of them were second- or even third-hand, so we decided it was better to get rid of them for now. But we are planning on co-writing a book of just these stories."

"Why did you dedicate these books to an anonymous person?"

Theodosius ran a hand over his head. "There were several people involved in the process, all of whom are thanked anonymously. Our letter-carriers, the secretary who typed this all up - and their friend, who was, in many ways, the soul of the operation. We kept them anonymous, as we often wrote less than flattering things about them even as we used them to keep an entire network of communications going. It is better for them if nobody knows their name for now."

"Mrs. Blues, why did you choose a diary format for the story of your life in prison? Why not a second book like your first, or even keeping it all a single book?"

Donna tapped her fingers against the table. "I thought the format gave it a dramatic irony," she said. "Diaries are usually an insight into a life lived. This one stands in place of a life."

A/N: The only thing that kept me going with this story was looking forward to this title-drop.

To everyone reading this, thank you so much for staying with the story to the end. I commend you for having gotten through half a million words of, as Donna puts it, inane ramblings about mole-crickets, laundry soap, and Snow. This is gonna be a long note - a too-long A/N for a too-long story!

First, in case you're wondering what will happen to the characters after this: Donna and Theodosius will live pretty well for a few more decades, their families will prosper, and Alex will end up hiring strippers for his wake. Hryb will remain in prison past his hundredth birthday and eventually hang himself with twine in the garden shed out of sheer hopelessness, launching a thousand conspiracy theories. Dusty will remain the goodest girl. The end.

I have made it sort of obvious in my previous author's notes what this story was inspired by, but I will make it clear here. The story was born in summer 2019, when I reread Albert Speer's Spandau: The Secret Diaries (where I got the title from) and rewatched the Hunger Games movies around the same time. Somehow, something clicked in my mind, and I was inspired to hammer out the first chapter of this story, giggling to myself the entire time. After I wrote a few more chapters, I started publishing every few days, eventually morphing into the schedule my long-time readers know well.

Frankly, I have no idea why I decided to write about the Hunger Games version of the 'seven men of Spandau', but you have to admit it's a unique idea :) I'll explain what I've been referencing all this time here. After the Nuremberg trial of the major Nazi war criminals, the seven sentenced to prison were transferred to Spandau prison, which was located in the British sector of West Berlin. They were the only inmates in the cavernous prison, guarded by a Four-Power contingent that was one of two places where the USSR worked together with the West during the Cold War (the Berlin Air Safety Centre being the other). Many zany things happened there (yes, including gardening), and the fact that four of the seven prisoners served their sentences to the day was a very rare case of justice served.

There was also the Tokyo trial, and Sugamo prison made about as little sense as its German counterpart (someone got work release and managed to conceal the fact that he was a prisoner from everyone at work for a year - what?), but I'm not as well-versed in the Pacific theatre of war.

If you know your Nazis, you probably already suspect who is based on whom. Slice is, of course, a Hunger Games Hans Fritzsche, except without the early death from brain cancer. Chaterhan is an unluckier Alfried Krupp. Hryb's antics and his status as a prisoner in solitary confinement by default were inspired by Rudolf Hess. The ever-bickering admirals Best and Verdant are very loosely inspired by Erich Raeder and Karl Doenitz. Theodosius' vague platitudes about accepting responsibility are based on Albert Speer, while Donna shares some of his background (apolitical professional, my ass) and her original narrow admission of responsibility is like that of Baldur von Schirach. The friendship between Donna and Theodosius was made up because Donna had to have someone she could interact comfortably with or the story would be even more boring than it already is. In reality, the imprisoned Nazis all hated each other's guts. I mean - imagine being locked up with six ex-coworkers you never got along with! With only each other as company for ten, fifteen, twenty years!

Of course, most of this fic is pure wish fulfillment. I have the Inter-District Committee hang on for a few more trials, giving me a cast of characters of a size I could not handle, nobody is released early in my story (even though I personally think it is right to let the terminally ill die at home or in a real hospice, not behind bars), and, of course, there is no Cold War making the policymakers decide that trying industrialists is Communism, so no amnesty fevers (and lots of industrialists behind bars or in the noose). Matthias Schmidt is fifteen years younger in this book (that's Conrad Lisiewska to you), and Donna realizes she has no option but to take it (Speer died before the scathing biography of him was published). Her admission of responsibility is thanks to the endless presence of Dr. Chu, and I originally did not intend to have her actually admit it, but then I was like 'suffer, you asshole!' and gave her the Franz Stangl treatment, but since she works out and eats well, she didn't have a heart attack, only a panic attack.

You might be thinking why I consider a story about criminals against humanity in prison to be wish fulfillment. It's a long and personal story, so I won't get into detail, but suffice it to say that as a young child reading the news, I was very impressed by the concept of the ICC - imagine, a court where evil dictators are tried! Ironically, reading the news also made me very cynical about justice as a concept - too many examples of police brutality and judicial arbitrariness and bias, and that's not even getting into the bajillion issues that plague the ICC.

Much later, I learned about the history of modern international justice. Tokyo and Nuremberg set a precedent (not followed up on until Yugoslavia and Rwanda, but remember, Robert Jackson couldn't gaze into a crystal ball and see My Lai), and it still serves as an ideal to this day. That made me realize that the law is just a tool that can be used for both bad and good, depending on the wielder, and launched a fascination that still persists.

So here it is - a half-million-word epic about transitional justice from the bad guy's point of view. If you're reading this, you liked it, so maybe leave a comment? Just a '3' would be great. My stats are rock-bottom compared to other stories of this length, so help me out here :) A special thank you to my reviewers, who make me feel like what I am writing is legit. Check out my other fics if you want, they're much shorter than this abomination (from a 1K oneshot about Not!Bruno Dey to a 40k short multichap about Not!Otto Kranzbühler). A prequel to this story, another longfic but one from the point of view of ten other characters (called 'The Sword and the Scales') will be posted starting next week same time, look out for that on AO3 and FFN.

And thank you again for reading! I commend your patience. Have a good one!

-quietwraith