For the second time, the first one being the first day, the press section in the courtroom where the Peacekeepers' trial was being held was full. Stephen stood by the wall, keeping an eye on things. The audience was more agitated than normal, and a few of the defendants looked extremely ill at ease. In the back corner, closest to Stephen, Holder was fidgeting with the card on his neck. That was just stimming - this time, at least, the witness would have nothing to say about Holder.

Privately, Stephen was convinced that Holder was milking his disability for all it was worth. He may have had difficulty with social interactions, but he was also in his fifties. If he had spent his life in the armed forces, that meant he knew how to cope with stressful situations.

The four judges entered, everyone rose, and the defendants stood up and snapped to attention. There were three judges plus one replacement if necessary; so far, few of the replacements had been needed for more than a day or two.

The session began. The prosecutor called the first witness, Gale Hawthorne. When the youth entered the courtroom, all the cameras immediately focused on him. He was extremely young, and his face made him look even younger than his twenty-one years despite his height. In Twelve, he must have towered over everyone, but many of the defendants were both taller and broader than him.

Stephen knew nothing but confusing gossip and wartime propaganda about Hawthorne. He had often featured in propos and the like, but Stephen had no idea what he had really done other than look impressive for the camera and be sent on dangerous missions despite having very little training. He didn't even know who Hawthorne was for Katniss Everdeen - a friend or a relative.

If Stephen wondered quietly, the press were nearly falling over themselves, the audience was gossiping, and a few of the defendants were cracking coarse jokes. As he usually did in this courtroom, Stephen glanced at Holder to see how he was faring. He seemed to be fine for now.

After the usual preliminary questions, the direct examination began.

"What was the occupation of your parents?" the prosecutor asked.

"Coal miners," Hawthorne replied in an odd accent. "Though my mother had to stop working after she had my younger brother. Her health didn't allow it anymore. She had to take in laundry, things like that."

"How much did your parents earn in a week?"

Hawthorne looked a little bit confused. "I don't know how much that is in today's currency."

"Did you have enough to eat?"

"Only thanks to my father's hunting. Once he died, I had to take out tesserae for my entire family."

"Why didn't you go work?"

"You could only work in the mine once you were out of the Reaping, and nobody else was going to hire a Seam kid - that's the neighbourhood I'm from."

"Did you hunt and gather after your father's death?"

"Yes."

"Did you have a hunting permit?"

"No."

"Why?"

"Nobody but the mayor could afford it."

"What was the official punishment for poaching?"

"Death."

"Did you ever see anyone punished for poaching?"

"Not personally. People would go into the woods to gather mushrooms and apples and the like. During the winter, there'd be starving people looking for something to eat, but winter's when there isn't much to find even if you know what you're doing."

"What implements did you use to hunt?"

"Bow and arrows, wire for snares, fishing pole."

"Where did you get the bow and arrows?"

"My father traded for it from a woodworker when he was a youth. His neighbour taught him how to hunt - she died of TB when I was a baby."

"Was owning a weapon without a permit illegal in District Twelve?"

"Officially, yes, but many better-off people had old guns lying in their attics and they were never bothered. Even the harsher Peacekeepers knew that Twelve wouldn't rise up with all the weapons in the world. But I made sure to keep my bow in the woods just in case - poaching was already subversive enough, but using weapons would have made it even worse for me."

"Was poaching always punishable?"

"No. For the first few decades after the civil war, the richer people went hunting openly with no issue even though everyone knew there was no way they could have afforded permits."

"And that is why they had guns in their attics even decades later?"

"Yes."

"In your time, why were other citizens of Twelve unable to hunt and gather as you did?"

Hawthorne's jaw tensed. "Everyone knew that the Head before Cray was extremely brutal. Under her, people were executed for poaching. Once she left, my father and his friend were the only ones crazy enough to not have been scared into submission." A small smile appeared on his face; some people chuckled. Stephen was surprised by Hawthorne's words - from listening to the prisoners talk, he had determined that hunting had been a common activity for rural people of all classes, with Peacekeepers not caring about who did or did not have a licence, as well as a hobby for the urban upper classes.

"You hunted alone once your father died?"

"For a year or so, yes. Then, I met Katniss Everdeen, and we became friends."

"Katniss Everdeen was the daughter of your father's friend with whom he hunted."

"Yes."

"Did you hunt and gather only to put food on your family's table, or also to sell?"

"We sold."

"To whom?"

"At the black market-"

"Why not the open market?"

"There was none in Twelve. There were a few licensed shops and that was it."

"Was it dangerous to use the black market?"

"Not in my time. It was more like any other market than something illicit. It was where we bought most things."

"Where else did you sell what you hunted and gathered?"

"Door-to-door in the richer neighbourhoods and at the Peacekeeper barracks."

As one, the defendants who had been in Twelve tensed.

"You did not have trouble with the Peacekeepers?"

"Not before the arrival of Thread."

"Let us focus on the time before that. Did you have trouble with them before?"

"No. The Head himself bought all my wild turkeys. Some were more fanatic than others, but while Cray was there, they went with the flow and didn't do anything. Once Thread got there, they went with the flow and were cruel."

"What did they buy besides food?"

"Company." Hawthorne looked extremely uncomfortable. Stephen braced for yet another round of 'I wasn't the rapist, the witness is misremembering'.

"What kind of company?" the prosecutor asked as if she didn't understand perfectly.

Hawthorne looked even more awkward. "You know. For the night. Cray was particularly fond of adolescent girls."

"And others?"

Hawthorne drank some water. "Once I hit my growth spurt, I couldn't go to the barracks without being catcalled or groped. I was lucky I had something else to offer them. But then again, I was only so interesting to them because I was already taller than most adults in Twelve at fourteen, thanks to eating properly."

"Are any of those Peacekeepers currently in the dock?"

"Defendants, once your number is called, please stand," the presiding judge added.

"Number 48. Jasper Weiss." Hawthorne radiated vengeful satisfaction. Weiss stood up hesitantly, ill at ease at being unmasked as who she was - a vile lecher who would prey on a desperate child. "I wasn't her only target. She bought desperate young men for pennies." His face twisted into a grimace. "She couldn't as much as scrawl her name but acted like she was better than us."

The Chair said that that last part would be stricken from the record. Weiss herself looked far more offended by the remark about her illiteracy than about the accusation of sexual assault of a minor. The IDC had tried its hardest to avoid indicting the illiterate or semi-literate (defendants had to do a lot of reading), but Weiss was simply too infamous for her activities in Nine and then Twelve, to where she had been demoted following an incident where she went after someone whose parents had connections. Weiss was from a village on the very outskirts of the Capitol, had been kept out of school so that she could work in the fields, and had enlisted age nineteen. Nobody had bothered to teach her how to read and write before Stephen. By now, she didn't need to have someone read everything for her.

"Defendant, sit," the Chair said. She complied gratefully.

"Of the other defendants, do you recognize any?"

Hawthorne pointed out who had peddled drugs and who had slept with what demographic.

The prosecutor moved on to Thread's arrival and the war. Stephen zoned out, daydreaming about the date he was going to go on next week. Angelo had found a time when he would have the apartment to himself, and Stephen had arranged his schedule to give himself a day off then. It had come at the cost of never leaving the Justice Building until then, but that half a day or so would be his.

The direct examination ended quickly, as the defendants he had brought in to testify against were low-ranked. He would testify tomorrow against Thread, and that was guaranteed to be an even bigger media circus than this.

"Does the defense wish to ask any questions?"

The usual spokesperson for the defense, a lawyer who was defending three clients at the same time, stood up. "I do."

"Would you please introduce yourself?"

"Of course. Dr. Jason Nelte, representing the defendants Collins, Katz, and Wolf." Only the latter had been in Twelve. The older man had been notorious for his tendency to go after young women, according to Hawthorne. Nelte himself was a brusque criminal lawyer who believed that orders were orders and was not amused when Dr. Nurbeko compared him to the Nelte from their books. He had participated in the last-ditch fighting and lost his hands at the wrist and elbow in an artillery strike. "Witness, what was your job once you were in Thirteen?"

"I worked in weapons design."

Nelte looked skeptical. "Why were you allowed into the job despite having no education?"

Hawthorne looked angry now. "I have an education."

"Surely you understand that more than a highschool diploma, remarkable as one is for someone from your background-"

"Counsel, you are overstepping the line!" the Chair cut in. "Make your point without insulting the witness."

Hawthorne was extremely surprised by having someone stand up for him. He jerked visibly and looked at the bench in confusion.

Nelte sagged slightly. "I'm sure you noticed that your coworkers were much more educated than you. Do you know why you were given the job despite your relative lack of education?"

"Beetee Latier was taken on, more for the propaganda opportunities than anything - he's a computer engineer and a jack-of-all-trades really, but not a weapons designer."

"Do you refer to Bernard-Thomas Latier?"

"Er, I guess? I only knew him as Beetee."

"No problem, witness. So, Mr. Latier was hired to work in weapons design as a propaganda stunt. Where did you come in?"

"Well, he ended up assisting on various projects. At one point, he decided to bring me in because he was curious if my experience with snares would transfer to military applications."

"Did it?"

Stephen knew why Nelte was asking the questions. Hopefully, he would not push too hard, because the last thing the tribunal wanted was yet another rehash of the 'ignorance of the law is no excuse' argument.

"No. I could come up with ideas, but they always turned out to be unoriginal."

"Like the two-stage bombs?"

And there it was. Hawthorne didn't see the trap, even now. "Yes," he said. "Beetee said it was interesting, but it was no novelty, such attacks have been part of wars for a very long time. The top brass refused to consider it because they knew it'd invite reprisals and they did not need it in any case, but Coin endorsed it, said it would be a powerful statement. It ended up only being used once." He swallowed nervously.

"Were you aware that a weapon that deliberately targets medics is prohibited under the Geneva Conventions?"

"Of course not. I never received any formal instruction - Beetee brought me into his office a few times to discuss ideas and that was it."

"Were you aware that it is not good to target non-combatants?" Nelte asked in such a patronizing tone, the Chair threatened to end the cross-examination. "My apologies."

"I had just lost almost everyone I had ever known in a massacre. Everything I was told about avoiding killing non-combatants went past my ears."

"Do you consider that an excuse?"

"I was a mere private who had independently come up with an already existing idea. I did not choose to drop those parachutes. I did not drop those parachutes. I did not ask anyone to use the bombs, and the thought of generals listening to a private, no matter how famous he is, is laughable."

"So you do not bear responsibility for the bombs?"

"I, being the assistant to a researcher and a private in the armed forces, offered an idea that had existed for centuries. The military establishment shook its head, but Coin liked the idea and ordered it to be used. Who bears responsibility - isn't that why you're all here? To determine who is responsible when?"

Hawthorne spoke eloquently, but he was very uncomfortable and clearly not used to speaking. His hands shook and his voice was uneven, though he tried to hide it, and his delivery was not very effective. In Stephen's opinion, he was sincere.

"Witness, I only ask for your opinion." Nelte's glasses began to slip and he struggled to adjust them.

The prosecutor stood up. "The witness is not here to offer opinions, only facts."

"Witness, answer yes or no. Are you responsible for the bombs?" Out of instinct, the lawyer had tried to use his missing arm, flailing it for several seconds before realizing that it ended at the elbow.

Hawthorne looked at the dock, aware that if he was a war criminal, then they all were triply so. "I bear some responsibility, of course, but to lay those dead children and medics at only my doorstep-" His voice rose as he spoke until he choked on his words, stuttered for a few seconds and drank some water. "I reject that," he said in a softer voice.

Nelte finally managed to use his wrist stump to adjust his glasses. "I have no more questions."

Dora's opinion of the Chief of Counsel sank every minute of the presentation until it was at rock-bottom. Granted, it was just not Irons - Wreath had deemed himself an expert in what was and was not aggressive war and complained about every other sentence until Dora wanted to give up and start doodling, or else knock Irons and Wreath together by the heads until they stopped arguing. This wasn't a proper courtroom proceeding, this was nitpicking on a scale Dora had never imagined could be possible.

Why couldn't the prosecution have simply handled the firebombing of Twelve in Count Three? It wasn't as if the Rebellion had made a habit of bombing undefended towns. Were they really so touchy over the bombing of the Capitol that they were afraid of even the slightest hint of tu quoque? Or was it that incident with the bombed children that they were worrying about?

As it was, Dora had to sit for days through a confusing and muddled presentation on a topic that, in Dora's opinion, could not be used to describe a civil war. Most of her fellow judges did not agree with her, and found the term to be appropriate.

The details of the planning of the firebombing of Twelve were gone over and over until Dora could recite them in her sleep. The prosecution managed to shoehorn in a non-aggression pact McCollum had signed before the Dark Days, and the judges were arguing over if it applied. Was it aggressive war to attack a part of one's own country?

Ashley had called the other night, to inform her of how electrification was progressing and that her coworker had been promoted. Dora hadn't had the heart to ask Ashley why she hadn't been the one to get the nod - much younger paralegals were being promoted over her head. Her heart squeezed at the thought of her daughter falling under the radar because she didn't do all the things needed to get oneself a promotion, but what could Dora do?

Getting a call from one of the kids was welcome, but not at three in the morning. Dora was exhausted and wanted to be out of the courtroom, and the prosecutor's droning voice wasn't helping.

Raymond was awake and alert, but Dora could see how strained he was. Going down the row, Meadowcreek was dozing and Drexel was doodling with a vacant expression. On her other side, Rosalinda was staring into space and Taylor was twirling their pencil.

The audience was completely hypnotized. Dora was fairly certain that a good number of them were fast asleep, despite the cool temperature in the courtroom. The press had mostly trickled away, leaving behind a small handful that had neither been reassigned nor sought any excuse to be out of the citadel of boredom.

Dora tried to focus on the presentation. Just this one last count and the defense portion would start (Raymond was dreading it like nothing else), but the time before it ended seemed interminable.

Mary tried to tell herself that it was no catastrophe if Count Five wasn't as good as the others. She had put less effort into preparation than she should have, yes, but it wasn't like she had half-assed it. After the past two counts, where even the documents had often been compelling, this more theoretical case was bound to be boring.

It all came down to the fact that there was no set definition for aggressive war. When people had first been tried for it, that had been an issue, but nothing had been done in that regard for the next few decades, and after the Cataclysm, the only use the term got was in propaganda slogans. What did and did not count as aggressive war was thus still up in the air, which meant that the prosecution could try to convince the tribunal to accept a hereford unprecedented use of the term, and maybe even create a definition that would gain international acceptance.

It was quite simple on the surface. In McCollum's Pact of Seven, the signatories had pledged to avoid aggressive war, with no qualifiers. The pact had never been repealed. And due to the fact that after the civil war, the Districts were de facto treated as occupied territory and not truly part of the country and Thirteen had been left to its devices, the firebombing of Twelve and those first bombings of Thirteen had been aggressive war.

Mary flipped through her papers and wondered when this was going to end. Now that her part of the presentations were over, she could focus on her task in the defense portion of the case - the cross-examination of Toplak. Mary was still irritated she couldn't have nabbed someone more high-profile, but she knew that the trial couldn't turn into a completely Thirteen-run event. The entire front bench would be cross-examined by non-Thirteeners.

The phone rang. Mary picked it up. "Mary Irons speaking."

"Hey!" Rithvik said. "How are you doing?"

"Who gave you my office phone number?" Mary asked, shocked. "And isn't it already night at home?" It was late enough in the Capitol.

"Your older brother gave it to me."

"John knows my office number?" He was a lot of things, but not a schemer. He didn't even like to gossip that much.

"Yeah. I don't know who gave it to him." Probably her younger sister Wendy, now that was a schemer if there was one.

Mary put down her pencil and sat back in her chair, kicking her feet lazily. "Well, then, so now you're going to call in when I'm at work?"

"Only if it's fine with you," Rithvik rushed to reassure her. "Am I distracting you?"

"In a good way. I don't mind if you call, it's just that if someone else picks up the phone, they'll end up with the wrong idea." Mary huffed. "They're still whispering about that phone call behind my back. At least they've stopped asking me to my face about it."

Rithvik smiled. "Same. My parents were like - good boy, that's how you cure your spouse's wandering eye! I tried to explain there was nothing to cure, so now they're just winking. Oh, and they want to know when we'll be adopting."

That was not new. As soon as both of them were diagnosed with infertility, the demands had switched from 'are you pregnant yet?' to 'when are you adopting?' "I don't want to discuss this on the phone," she said.

"Me neither. I told them we'll talk once you're back." There was a pause. "So, what are you working on?"

"Cross-examination."

"Tell me the time when it gets closer and I'll be watching with popcorn."

Mary chuckled. "You'd watch me walk a witness through some boring meeting?"

"Why not? I was there at all your mock trials. And I watch the trials every day, I don't see why everyone calls them boring."

"To be fair, everyone calls your job boring, too, and I don't see it."

"Maybe we're just really boring," Rithvik said, as if realizing something important for the first time. "Is anything interesting happening in the Justice Building?"

His hunt for juicy gossip took precedence over hers, as gossip straight from Lodgepole was more important in Thirteen than Thirteen gossip in Lodgepole. "Not really," she said. "One associate prosecutor is in hospital with a heroin overdose, but that's about it."

Rithvik gasped. "What's going to happen to them?"

"They won't be arrested, if that's what you mean. The MPs don't have the time to chase after drug users, especially since they're the sellers half the time."

"I guess that's good. Never saw the point of imprisoning people for possession myself." Mary had no idea if there had been a black market in Thirteen. There had been more than a few people who signed up to bring trade goods to Ottawa specifically so that they could sample a normal city's vices, but she didn't know if they had brought any back with them. Most likely they had. "I read in the papers that they're planning to decriminalize possession in small amounts."

"Now that it's possible to complain about prison conditions, the less crowded they are, the better."

Rithvik nodded. "Since we're on the topic - do you know what's going to happen to those sentenced by IDC courts to prison?"

That was a good question. "I'm sure everyone who pays attention is aware that some of the former Peacekeepers will be sent to prison, so I think I can tell you. There was actually an IDC meeting about this, and they don't want to put them in a normal prison."

"Where, then?"

Mary didn't know herself. Most of the labour camp-type prisons had either had their conditions drastically improved or were converted into conventional quarries and workshops. "Probably a former secret prison - I can't think of any other option."

"A prison for just a handful of people?" Rithvik didn't sound convinced. Neither was Mary. "Ugh. I don't want to think about this. How's that associate doing?"

It took Mary some time to switch gears. "Nobody suspected anything."

"Will they be alright?"

"Hopefully." Mary opened her eyes and looked at her computer screen. "Is anything interesting happening back home?"

"I know people are looking forward to seeing Hawthorne at the key criminals trial."

So was half the damn country, it seemed.

There was a knock on the door. "Come in!" Miroslav said.

Gale Hawthorne walked in. "I was told you wanted to see me, Doctor?"

"I did. Please, settle down." Hawthorne perched himself on the armchair Miroslav and Mallow used for napping. "Now, I just have a quick question. Is your full name by any chance Sweetgale, like that of my colleague?"

Hawthorne smiled faintly. "Nobody's asked me that since I left Twelve. It's not. I was named for the gale that happened the day I was born."

"Poetic. Now, may I record this conversation, or take notes? Nothing will be made public unless you expressly tell me you are fine with it, and if I ever do write about you, you will read that segment first and tell me if you are fine with it."

"Is that what you told the key criminals?" Hawthorne sat relaxed in the armchair, but there was a readiness around him, as if he was waiting for a fight to begin.

Miroslav shook his head. "When I began the project, I did not think any of the key criminals would be around to give their consent."

"Huh." He looked around the office. "Write what you want, but no recording." Miroslav took an extra clipboard and put a sheet of cheap recycled paper in. "What do you want to talk about, Doctor?"

"What do you want to talk about?"

Hawthorne shrugged. "I don't know. I thought to drop by since you're the one who treated Katniss and Peeta."

"Ah, so it's a social call?"

"I guess."

That was perfectly fine - everyone stood to benefit from a relaxed confidential conversation about something or other. "How is your friend doing?"

"Katniss says she likes her new therapist."

"That's good. And how are you doing?"

"I'm an army captain, but I'm considering quitting the armed forces." Hawthorne's uniform was not quite as tidy as Miroslav had kept his, once upon a time. He clearly ironed his clothes and shined his shoes, but he was not from a background where precision and discipline was utmost, and it showed.

Miroslav jotted that down, if only to give off an impression of attentiveness. "What do you plan on doing?"

"Working in a toolmaking factory. I'm not qualified for anything that's close to where I live, and there are some heavy unskilled jobs there that pay more than being a janitor or anything like that. Plus, it's where my boyfriend works - he's a lathe operator."

"Oh, so you've met someone? That's very nice!" Hawthorne smiled bashfully. "How did you meet?"

"He and his sister - she's a turner, too - were selling things by our barracks. We got talking, and-" He smiled again and looked at his hands.

"That's very nice. Do you think you could become a lathe operator as well?"

Hawthorne shook his head. "Maybe in the future. For now, I just want to be earning money. Even if it's mindless work."

He said that without a trace of emotion, but Miroslav suspected there was something buried deep down. "How do you feel about that?"

"I'm fine with it. It'll be back to normal."

"What is normal for you?"

Hawthorne stopped to think. "Normal is gone," he said eventually. Miroslav wrote that down and jotted the direction he wanted the conversation to go next to it. "But at least I won't be in the limelight anymore."

"Are you currently in the limelight?"

"Sometimes. When I'm introduced, everyone knows me." A heavy burden for a small-town twenty-year-old.

"What about in the army itself?"

"I like it. I'm just another captain there." He ran a hand over his head.

"You want to be normal," Miroslav stated.

"Yes."

"When was the last time you felt normal? When you didn't have to think about who you were?"

It took Hawthorne some time to think about that one. "Before the Seventy-Fourth," he said eventually. "After that it was - look, it's poor Gale Hawthorne, his best friend's in the Games."

That made sense. Hawthorne had had a defined position in his family and community, but the Games upended that and put him on television for the first time. "Now, before I was the therapist to the key criminals, I studied how young defectors adapted to Thirteen, so my choice of questions is going to be influenced by that. Did you feel normal in Thirteen?"

Hawthorne shook his head. "Not at all. I felt lost. There were millions of people there, and Twelve had had ten thousand. And everyone was looking at me like an authority because I helped save the others."

"You didn't like being an authority?"

"Of course not! I was just a miner, barely of age, and all of a sudden I was being treated like Twelve's representative. Most of my friends were dead and they were going on about my heroism. It drove me round the bend."

Miroslav nodded. "Do you blame yourself for not being able to save more?"

"Not anymore," he said curtly. "I did all I could. I accept that now."

That was good. "I'm glad."

Hawthorne said nothing.

"Aside from the size of Thirteen, what else did you struggle to adapt to?"

"The discipline," Hawthorne said immediately. "The schedules drove me nuts."

Miroslav pulled back his sleeve to reveal the purple marker. "I can't live without schedules," he admitted.

Hawthorne laughed out loud. "You draw your own schedule every morning?"

"Yes."

"You Thirteeners are crazy."

Miroslav decided to leave it at that. "I'm sure you hated how little time outside you got."

"I did. Doctor, are you trying to get me to list off everything I hated about Thirteen?" he asked, confused.

"Go right ahead," Miroslav said with a small smile.

Hawthorne seemed knocked off-balance by that offer. "The time outside was the biggest one. I got none because I was in basic, so my training was officially my time outside. I was so happy when I was able to go hunt with Katniss. Just walk through the forest, like back home. I know my siblings hated it even more - they didn't like being inside in the middle of summer."

"And your mother?"

Gale chuckled. "Having the time of her life. She also lost people, but she was not new to loss, so she recovered faster than me. She worked in an armaments factory and made a heap of new friends. Whenever I visited, she'd tell me about some performance she went to or the book she was reading or how she beat someone at chess - she used to play with my father until he died." He shook his head. "Back home, we didn't have clubs like you do in Thirteen. People would get together to sing or play soccer, but when I think about it, there wasn't that same trust. People knew that you couldn't really trust anyone."

Miroslav had noticed a similar atomization in the Capitol. Individuals had only participated in clubs because they were seriously interested in the activity, not for the company. Now that there was no more NCIA, surveys reported that people were finding clubs and associations more fun than ever before. Political associations were springing up like mushrooms, too - the rest of the country had lived without that staple of Thirteen society for decades. "Thirteen's government knew its way around keeping morale high."

"That's one thing I liked about Thirteen. Everyone ate the same rations, wore the same clothing, and had the same haircut. I was impressed that a president could eat semolina for breakfast just like me, wear the same jumpsuit as me, have her hair buzz-cut like me." He settled back in the armchair, relaxing slightly. Since Hawthorne had begun to open up, Miroslav let him continue unprompted. "I liked that everyone was on the same level. I liked that nobody was abandoned to starve just because they couldn't work."

"So Thirteen was good," Miroslav said. "Just not for you."

"Yes."

"What about the political freedoms it offered?"

Hawthorne chuckled bitterly. "I had no idea what freedom of speech was and what to do with it. When I heard a squadmate criticizing Coin, I told her to be quiet - I was so afraid for her, and she looked at me like I was crazy."

"That's normal," Miroslav said. "If you live in a cage all your life without knowing it, you won't know anything changed when it's removed."

"I guess." Hawthorne put his hands on the armrests. "My siblings are having an easier time of it than me, that's for sure."

"How many do you have?"

A soft smile appeared on Hawthorne's face. "Three. My brothers are fourteen and eleven, and my sister is eight."

"The youngest adapt the faster," Miroslav agreed. "How did they take to Thirteen?"

"They hated the discipline so much," Hawthorne said with a laugh. "They were used to being able to run around and do whatever, but now, every minute of their lives was scheduled. But they got used to it fast. My sister didn't want to return to Twelve, she was so used to it."

Miroslav nodded as he wondered what to ask next. "It must be odd for you, to be away from your family for the first time."

"It is," Hawthorne agreed. "I was always responsible for the others."

"Hardly surprising, with an age gap like that!" Privately, Miroslav wondered what was the reason for it - a succession of miscarriages? a deliberate decision to not have any more children for a while? or perhaps there was another live birth, but the child died early enough for Hawthorne to have no memory of them, or he did remember but did not wish to speak of it?

"Yeah. Even when my father was alive, I was expected to be a parent stand-in. If I wanted to go play, my parents would tell me to mind the baby, so I'd be stuck taking care of my brother all the time instead of doing homework or playing with my friends." He chuckled. "Not like I ever did homework. It was made clear to the Seam brats that we were only in school so that we didn't get under everyone's feet in the streets. They sabotaged themselves there by imposing that age limit on the mines. I was just thinking about that a while back. If the mines had employed kids like in the rest of the country, Katniss would have been just yet another beaten-down worker by sixteen, with no thought of volunteering for her sister. And none of this would have happened. So Snow screwed himself over there."

Hawthorne was not exactly right there - by the Seventy-Fourth, the kindling had been laid and was waiting for just a spark, any spark - but he was clearly an intelligent young man. Miroslav looked forward to his testimony at the key criminals' trial.

A/N: The Nelte from Chee's books is Otto Nelte, who defended Wilhelm Keitel at the International Military Tribunal.

Sweetgale, or myrica gale, is a plant native to various parts of the northern hemisphere, including North America.