Thumeka shivered as she stood by the train station and watched a group of tired officials set up their tables. The sun was starting to rise, letting Thumeka see that the sky was overcast, but not in a way that meant rain. That was good. It was no fun to queue in the rain.

She had been asked to observe the arrival of a large group of returning POWs, who included in their number Chaterhan's cousin. Thumeka had been issued with a photograph of the woman. As the train pulled into the station, she jotted down some observations. The bored officials sitting slumped at laptops - the list of prisoners may have been computerized, but mistakes happened constantly. Two small children were climbing on a large pile of rubble. Workers were clearing away yet more rubble.

People were entering and leaving the train station in ones, twos, and groups. Thumeka watched as a large group of people in mismatched clothes marched out. They were led by a junior officer - the bearing was unmistakable even despite the grey quilted jacket, well-worn trousers, and worker's cap. Thumeka couldn't find Aimee Chaterhan in the crowd.

"Attention!" the officer called out. A few people shot them uneasy looks as they got into a neat formation before the tables. The average Capitolian preferred not to think about anything even vaguely reminiscent of the old ways, even though you'd be hard-pressed to find a family that hadn't had someone wearing the white.

Thumeka was close enough to them to take a few pictures on her phone and listen to what the officer said to the officials.

"How are we going to do this?" she asked.

The official took a gulp of coffee. "You Fira Kentwell, 3950183, last place of registry Whitecliff-21?"

"Yes."

"Uh-huh." The official scrolled through something. "Well, we'll tick you off and give you the demob ticket, and then you can be on your way." Since returning POWs were often dumped all over the place, many of them had to cross half the country to get home. Demob tickets allowed them to board trains and buses as often as they needed. As could be expected, these tickets were widely forged and sold on the black market. "I'll call out names and you step forward."

They were to the side of the train station in an empty lot, and most people passed by without even looking at them - trainloads of POWs arrived every day. It had been a stroke of luck someone had managed to find out Chaterhan was arriving today. A few people were leaning against the wall, waiting for their friends or relatives to be released.

Kentwell stepped back and joined the formation as the first name was called out. "Abukarim, Opal!"

"Present!" A young man who looked to be barely of age stepped forward to receive his ticket.

"Alizadeh, Tiberius!"

"Present!" Alizadeh was around twenty-five and missing an arm.

"Ba, Carmen!"

"Present!" Ba wore an eyepatch over her left eye.

"Caverdinov, Alex!"

"Present!"

"Cham, Juan!"

"Present!"

"Chaterhan, Aimee!"

"Present!"

Thumeka had seen an old photograph of Aimee Chaterhan at a function, in an expensive dress and with long hair in a complicated updo. She looked nothing like that now, in a mix of military and civilian garb and with her hair buzz-cut. Her face looked leaner, and there was a scar on her left hand. Thumeka noted that she looked quite at ease with her position. She shot an informal salute at Kentwell and approached a man waiting by the wall.

"Well, then," he said, broad smile on his face. He was wearing fine clothes rather reduced by constant wear. "I think we need to get you something else to wear."

Thumeka snapped a picture of the two. It was a remarkable contrast - the man with his air of aristocratic hauteur, and Aimee Chaterhan looking like any other returnee. Now, she looked gawky and uncomfortable.

"Is that really the first thing you say?"

"Of course." The man pulled her into a hug. Going off the way they hugged, this had to be her brother. "You're gonna be shocked when you see what they did to the Big House..." His voice faded away as they walked towards a car.

Well, that was that. Thumeka checked her watch. Plenty of time to get back to Lodgepole. She queued for the tram and hopped on. One and a half hours later, she was taking her seat in the mostly deserted press section. Yesterday, Aichele had spent the entire day pleading putative duress and that if Krechet was guilty, so were tens of thousands of other people. The direct examination had been confusing, with Krechet seemingly admitting to everything in a deadpan voice - his line, though unstated, was that nothing that he had done had broken the law, as it had been for the higher goal of keeping the country safe. Today, Krechet would be cross-examined.

Krechet was eerily reminiscent of the sort of student Thumeka had always felt a good deal of disdain for - the not particularly intelligent one who managed to get into university but couldn't be bothered to put in the effort to do well in a difficult course, while also being too passive to drop it. He sat in the witness stand clearly trying to make himself look smaller, but it did not work. He dwarfed the stand, and the microphone had to be extended almost to the maximum to reach him. He was about ten years older than Thumeka but looked like he could tear her in half.

He kept on shooting glances at Talvian that his former boss ignored, and Thumeka revised her analogy. Krechet was the student in a mandatory class who found the material far too difficult and resorted to buying papers on the Web, only to be slammed at the end with an oral exam he had no way to cheat in.

The examiner - or rather, the prosecutor - stood at the lectern. Andrea Zhao of Seven began with the simple facts, Krechet replying in a very heavy working-class accent. This wasn't going to endear him to anyone, with how class-conscious Panem was. The judges were like as not to sentence him for how repugnant he was to them.

Zhao, who was speaking with an equally heavy Seven accent, albeit an upper-class one from the rural northeast, began to ask the serious questions. "How many people did you kill as a member of Unit 3214?"

"I don't know. At least four hundred."

"Did you ever doubt the correctness of your orders?"

Krechet shook his head. "I was never taught to wonder. I had no idea that other viewpoints existed. All that existed was the order, and it was right because the higher-ups were always right." Interesting - that approached an admission of having done something that was wrong.

"You're saying you were brainwashed into becoming a murderer?"

"Throughout my time as a cadet, yes." What? He had said he had done nothing wrong just yesterday! Had Aichele said something to him yesterday? Had he had a sudden epiphany? Thumeka wrote as fast as she could. "In my special training especially, I often had to do things like making the officers tea, polishing their shoes, digging holes and filling them back in, having sex with instructors." At that, everyone started. "It was so that I never doubted an order, no matter how strange or seemingly pointless. I was later told by a commander that the usual building of generals' cottages was because cadets did not have to be paid, but the special training oddities were very deliberate preparation."

"Your instructors ordered you to have sex with them?" Zhao seemed to have been taken aback. Thumeka was not surprised, knowing what she knew about military schools in Panem, but she had not expected that.

Krechet nodded. "The entire time. I remember the first time like it was yesterday. One of them took me away from everyone and made me do callisthenics. He made crude remarks on what I looked like, on my size and strength, looked at me like I was a piece of meat. Then he told me to get on my knees. Then he stepped forward, took out his penis, shoved it in my face, and told me to suck on it. I was twelve years old." Krechet looked up suddenly. "That instructor was Sergeant Amos Willow," he said, words tumbling out almost too fast to understand. "There was also Dr. Ida Smith and Sergeant - oh God, what was his name? He taught ideology when I was fifteen. He always made me stay after class to clean up and raped me right on his table. He then gave me food."

At that, Sanchez said the details were irrelevant because this was Panem vs. Krechet and not Krechet vs. Amos Willow et al., Aichele (probably as shocked as anyone else to discover that Krechet actually had an excellent line of defense) leapt up to protest that it was highly relevant and she would continue along those lines during redirect if Zhao dropped the issue, a boring quarrel on whether Krechet's early life was relevant broke out, and Thumeka posted some observations about the cycle of abuse on her social media. A fight immediately broke out about whether or not Krechet was sympathetic. Someone said something highly classist. The fight escalated to the point where Thumeka turned off notifications for that comment thread.

"Were you aware of the defection of Juniper Kadri and Andrew Levine?" Zhao changed the topic.

Thumeka had no idea who that was, but Krechet nodded, recognizing the names. "It was in my first year there, and already my first thought was that they were evil traitors and that I'd wring their necks when I found them."

"That was what you thought?"

"It was. Within months, I had been transformed into a rabid dog, tearing at its chain and trying to bite everyone it can. And who bears responsibility for a mad dog?"

Nobody did. It was just bad luck for everyone involved. But rabid dogs were put down to spare them and everyone further suffering - perhaps not the best analogy for Krechet to use.

"You said during your direct examination that you have killed five children with your own hands."

Krechet sagged slightly. "I also said that age is just a number when it comes to things like treason. These children had been raised by terrorists - how strange is it to imagine them participating in their parents' crimes? Besides, it was not my job to make these judgments. If my commanders said they were to be killed, then I obeyed, even if I had misgivings. After all, I have children myself, it was always difficult."

"You didn't know that speaking up was an option, or you were too afraid to speak up?"

Krechet looked at Zhao in a way that sent shivers up Thumeka's spine. "Perhaps it crossed my mind once or twice," he said in a mocking tone, "that killing children is bad. But I was taught to be loyal. That was more important to me than anything." He instantly seemed to regret his outburst, running a hand down his face. "I was never cruel," he said quietly. "I didn't want to be cruel."

"We don't really care if you were cruel or not, your job was murder, and that was that."

That flipped a switch in Krechet. He became completely unhinged, cheerfully rattling off names of people he had personally killed and explaining Talvian's role in ordering assassinations with a rictus grin on his face. Aichele sat by silently, unwilling and unable to do anything to stop her client from tying his own noose.

Thumeka wondered if he was even healthy. He tried to act like he felt no remorse but it was obvious that he did. His manic attitude would slip, and his eyes would soften for a fraction of a second before the mask came back on and he continued to brag about how happy Talvian had been when he had told her that a nest of rebels had been covertly eliminated. Talvian did not look very happy now.

"Do you think now that what you did was wrong?" Zhao asked at the end of the day.

"Yes," Krechet said. "Shame nobody bothered to teach me the difference between right and wrong at the Academy. They flipped it on its head, in fact."

So what was the line of defense here? Putative duress? Military/state necessity? Brainwashing? All at once somehow?

"I believe this would be a good time to stop for the day," Zhao said.

Antonius had expected some things from Krechet's cross-examinations, but not that. He had thought he would continue pleading putative duress, like during the direct examination, but he had gone completely off the rails. As they were marched back to their cells, Krechet shook visibly. Antonius wanted to comfort the man, but they were not allowed to speak.

The cells were, as always, ransacked. Antonius changed out of his court clothes, cleaned up, and ate dinner, which consisted of pea soup, bread, apple sauce, and hot tea. The gate shut with a clang, and the guard at his door instantly leaned towards Antonius as much as he could.

"Guess what?" he said. He was maybe seventeen or eighteen, still just a boy. "Your cousin's back."

Aimee was back. His dark mood, brought on by Krechet's cross-examination, vanished in an instant. Aimee was back. "How do you know?" he asked, arm frozen halfway to the book on the table.

"Some journalist was there and wrote an article. I bet your family's gonna write about it in their letter."

Which would arrive on Sunday. "Can I see the article?"

The guard shook his head. "I don't have that article. I do have another one. It's bigger, but I'm not sure it's really about that - but it has a photo of your grandmother, so it has to be related."

"What do you mean, you are not sure what the article is about?"

"I can't read," the guard said in a deliberately drawn-out way, rubbing his illiteracy in Antonius' face as if it was his fault. "But the photo of your grandmother is pretty cool. You definitely have her eyes." Antonius expected an insult to follow. "Same colour, same shape, it's uncanny. And I think you have her height, too. Who'd you get the skin colour from?"

"Father."

"That's cool," the guard said again. "Everyone always says I look like my mother - she died in an accident at the factory when I was two, and we've got no photos. I guess I must, since I look nothing like my dad."

"Some traits skip generations," Antonius said. "My uncle is an albino, but there are no records of any of our ancestors having the same condition."

"What's that?"

"He has no colouring. White skin, white hair, pale-blue eyes."

"Huh. Here's the article, by the way."

Antonius got up and took the newspaper from him. It was already folded to show the article, which purported to be a long story about the misdeeds of Antonius' entire family. And indeed, there was a photograph of Grandma from forty years ago. As he looked at the photograph, Antonius realized that he missed her.

The article was awful. The author's main complaints were targeted at his second cousin Cassandra, the former owner of the country's main private health insurance system and also Lee's sister-in-law. After several quips along the lines of 'the nation's top health insurance scam', 'Chaterhan-junior was related to the entirety of Panem's top one percent' and 'pretensions at living in a country that wasn't incapable of providing free rabies vaccines beyond the ring road', Antonius wanted to throw something. He forced himself to read through the rest of the paper, finishing just in time for the walk.

Aimee was back, though, that was more important than any insulting article. Aimee was at home, doubtless with everyone fretting around her, and he was stuck in jail. All of his cousins were back now - save for Andreas, who would never be coming back.

Antonius wondered why that seemed so unfair to him. Grandma had watched ten grandchildren go off to war and nine had come back - many families would have envied them. But this was not just anyone, this was Andreas. Growing up, he had always been the quiet sort. It had been so easy to overlook him. And now he was gone. Aimee's return only served to cement the fact that Andreas was not stuck in a POW camp somewhere, he was officially listed as KIA.

During the walk, he could not stop thinking about Aimee and Andreas. Which one would he be joining after the trial?

Dora sat on the couch, read through a memo from Lai, and wondered whether to accept the offer. The IDC wanted her to stay on for another trial after this one ended, and Dora wasn't sure what to say.

They were promising that she would get a few weeks at least off and implied that it would be possible to bring in Jack. The workdays, too, would be an hour shorter. Despite everything, Dora had to admit the offer was tempting. It wasn't as if there was no job for her back home, but being an IDC judge carried with it some very enjoyable perks. She was currently munching on one of those perks - the Rolands' eight-year-old really liked to bake. And she'd have been deluding herself if she claimed that she didn't want to leave some kind of positive legacy behind. After forty years of pointless work, this might be her last chance to be remembered for something good.

Did she really think highly enough of herself to think she was doing a good job with the key criminals? Dora firmly set that thought aside. What she thought of herself did not matter. What others thought mattered. The other judges often praised her, and given how ready they all were to criticize each other, that meant they thought she was a good judge.

Well, they'd see what kind of judge she was when they began to discuss sentencing. Krechet's case was, on the surface, very simple. Despite frequent calls for a moratorium, the punishment for murder was still death. But he was no simple murderer, there was the issue of putative duress to consider. Krechet could have very easily thought that disobedience or refusal would have nasty consequences for him, even though there were several incidents when operatives had gotten a transfer of their own volition and then quietly disengaged themselves from the NCIA entirely. It was plausible that someone who had spent his life in that atmosphere of death could have thought that that was the price of refusal. Krechet's history of abuse tore her heart into pieces, but it was not relevant for the same reason his intense ideological preparation was irrelevant.

"Juan?" she asked.

"Yes?" Juan looked up from his own reading.

"What do you think of the putative duress defense?"

"When it comes to Krechet - I'm willing to have that discussion." He had refused to consider it for Bright. "Do you think it applies?"

"I am sure it applies. The question is if it's enough to serve as a mitigating factor." They had worried they would have to seriously consider the fact that he had been brainwashed, but fortunately, there were examples of people leaving or even defecting despite receiving the same education as him. Dora was very grateful to every last one of them - allowing that defense would have made convicting Peacekeepers extremely difficult. "And in my opinion, no. Hundreds, even thousands of others were treated just as badly and did not become killers in the end."

"There's something I've been thinking," Juan said. "We say that Krechet is a murderer. But we don't say that Talvian is a murderer, because she did not kill people personally. The issue is, which one of them is worse?"

"I don't think you can make value judgments like that. We are trying them relative to the law, not each other."

Juan shook his head. "Like it or not, this is a didactic trial. The sentences we impose will be pored over by half the world. What sort of message will it send to string up someone with the rank of corporal next to Talvian?"

"He was not part of the usual hierarchy," Dora pointed out. "He reported directly to her - well, when Stonesmith was unavailable, that is." Even the judges tended to forget that Krechet had been the deputy commander and that the commander had disappeared without trace, ironically enough.

"True," Juan conceded. "Still, though. It seems to me that you can't consider them deserving of the same punishment."

"That's the problem with crimes of this calibre - if Talvian deserves to die a hundred thousand deaths and Krechet - only four hundred, they both get the noose." Dora set aside the memo. "What do you think should happen to Krechet?"

"He should have been tried in the Death Squad trial," Juan said irritably. "He's so out of place here. Everyone else is an organizer, but he was the one committing the crimes on the ground. He conspired to commit murder, not crimes against humanity."

"Murder can be a crime against humanity," Dora reminded him.

Juan tugged on his hair. "What happened at his Academy was a crime against humanity." Dora had known Juan would be very affected by that. "At least now there'll be an investigation."

"What a way for the other victims to get recognition." After Krechet's testimony, several other veterans had spoken out, resulting in the alleged perpetrators being detained. Many were pointing out how odd it was to see these representatives of a highly brutal system complaining about having been abused as adolescents. But then again, when a youth who had been beaten and raped for years was themselves put into a position of authority, they knew no other way to act than what they had experienced.

"I now wonder if that officer who raped me had herself been a victim once. It would be no excuse, of course, but it would be an explanation." Juan sighed. "What do you think should happen to Krechet?"

"So far, I think I will vote for death. He was no ordinary corporal, he was an elite NCIA operative. And even an ordinary corporal would be executed if they admitted to so many murders, I think. This was still murder, and carries the same punishment as anything from civilian life."

"I need to think some more about this," Juan said, flopping back in his armchair. "This is like having a gang leader and a random enforcer in the same dock. But in gang trials, it was all pre-decided. What did you do?"

It always made Dora feel good about herself when the fact that she had never obeyed instructions was brought up. Perhaps she really was who could be trusted to make judgments. "Hanged everyone who had committed a capital crime. Though I never gave allowances for putative duress back then."

Envy flickered over Juan's face. He wished he had made his own decisions instead of always complying. "By that definition, we'll have to hang everyone."

"Then we'll hang everyone," Dora said. "Is that not the definition of a capital crime?"

"You're the one who said you won't vote to hang Oldsmith."

"We're not even halfway through the defendants," Dora reminded him, leaning back against the soft cushions. "I'm sure there will be some serious mitigating circumstances at some point."

Juan took a deep breath and let it out. "Well, we knew what we were getting into."

"That we did." Did Dora really want to continue living with this pressure? But then again, they weren't even halfway through the defendants. There was plenty of time to decide.

Stephen was warm. Very warm. Angelo was hugging him from behind and Feather - from the front. As he watched, Feather stood up and headed for his water bowl, sides heaving like aspic. He needed to take two breaks on the way there, but he eventually reached the bowl, drank some water, and wobbled back.

"I think he's slimmed down," Stephen said. He couldn't feel his right arm. Maybe they had been napping for too long.

"He better have," Angelo replied in a sleepy voice.

Feather lay back down next to Stephen, demanding cuddles. Stephen obliged, patting him one-handed. The cat's purr sounded like a hovercraft taking off. His paws were comically short, like toothpicks sticking out of a bowl of aspic.

Angelo had made that comparison on their last date and now Stephen couldn't get the mental image out of his head.

"What does aspic taste like?" he wondered out loud.

"Evil."

"If it was so bad, surely your aunt wouldn't make it every New Year's."

Angelo chuckled. Stephen could feel it in his bones. "Come over for New Year's, and you'll see."

"Won't your relatives turn me into aspic?"

Angelo laughed out loud. "They know I'm with someone. They've gotten to the stage where they just want to know who it is. Since I'm not getting any younger and all. Just yesterday, my grandfather pulled me aside to remind me that chasing after small children is very tiring, especially as one gets older."

"Not very subtle."

Angelo stiffened. "I just realized. With your interrogating skills, you won't let my grandparents lead you into a trap." He relaxed, hugging Stephen tighter.

"That is not why I spent four years in training," Stephen joked.

"Meow!" Feather said, upset that the pets had ended. Stephen scratched him behind the ears.

"You need four years of training to stand up to my grandparents' questioning," Angelo said lightly.

Stephen had never met any of his family members. "What would happen if your grandparents walked through the door right now?"

"Are you Protestant?"

"No." Dad had never particularly tried to get Stephen into religion, and Stephen had never particularly wanted to.

"Then it's to the nearest registry office they'd drag us within the minute," Angelo predicted grimly. "Have you decided if you want to keep your name?"

Stephen felt his face heat up. "I assumed we'd both keep ours." He had never cared for how people overanalyzed each partner's position in society to decide who 'ought' to take the other's name, and since he was only interested in men, his children would already have names given to them by their biological parents.

"Sounds great," Angelo said, resting his head on Stephen's shoulder, unaware of how much the question had freaked Stephen out. Were they moving too fast? Stephen tried to imagine waking up next to Angelo every day for the rest of his life. It was a great mental image. But was it too much too fast? Did he even have the luxury of slowing down? He had to admit that at his age, if he wanted to settle down and have children, he could not wait for who knew how long.

Feather stood up and began to crawl over Stephen for some reason. It was extremely painful - he may have been made of aspic, but when all nineteen kilograms of his weight were leaning on a single little paw, having that little paw standing on your thigh was agony.

"Maybe we should have called him 'Aspic'," Stephen said.

"The next obese cat my cousin rescues, we'll go with that," Angelo replied, chuckling. The chuckle turned into an agonized moan as Feather stepped on his side. "Ow! You fucking hellspawn-"

"Hellspawn wants scritches," Stephen said, smiling. He craned his head to see better what was happening.

Angelo reached out a hand and turned on their little radio. The channel 'Thunderstorm' was the only one Stephen could stand listening to, because it didn't shy away from the recent past and actually covered the trial. Its tendency to praise how life had been in Thirteen before was rather odd - Stephen would have been the first to say that the strict regimentation had been horribly stifling for many people - but he was willing to tolerate some eccentricity for proper news. For his part, Angelo was interested in educating himself about what things had really been like - yet another reason to love him, if Stephen needed one.

Currently, the channel was playing a semi-popular recent song, an ostensible romance song that was in fact a thinly veiled contemplation of what it meant to be from Panem. Most people resented it for 'not letting us move on', but some had written effusive fan-mail to the songwriter to tell him that he understood them perfectly. The line 'One can love you and want to damn you' was quite popular in certain circles.

"So," Angelo said. "How's work going?"

Stephen didn't want to discuss work while in Angelo's arms. "Are you going to laugh at me if I say I pity Krechet?"

"Of course not." Angelo kissed him on the neck. "Of them all, he's the most pitiful. Lowest-ranking, worst-educated, abused for years. He, of all of them, was actually just following orders. He didn't kill or hurt people of his own volition."

"I didn't know you're keeping up with the trial so closely," Stephen said, surprised.

Angelo chuckled. "Our overseer has us listen to the trial while we're working - thinks it'll re-educate us."

Feather meowed sadly - he didn't like that his human wanted to cuddle with someone who wasn't him.

"Yes, yes, you infernal creature, you can get cuddles, too." Angelo took away one arm to pet the cat.

"That's not very subtle," Stephen said, wishing Angelo wouldn't waste his arm on Feather.

Angelo snorted. "I shudder to think what you'd have done."

Feeling adventurous, Stephen turned his head around and said "This" before kissing him on the mouth. Angelo reciprocated enthusiastically, grabbing Stephen and turning him around. Stephen always forgot how strong his boyfriend was. They sat up, continuing to kiss, hands roaming around each other's backs, until-

"Meow."

Angelo broke away, breathing heavily and smiling. "Ah, so that's your evil plan? Seducing me away from the values instilled in me by our wise great leader?"

Stephen watched Feather wobble across the mattress and lie down right between them. "Yes."

Patting Feather on the back, Angelo nodded. "So. You up for round two?"

"Definitely." Stephen wasn't sure when he had begun to need a nap to recharge. It wasn't so bad - being in Angelo's company was always great, no matter what they were doing.

Lightly, Angelo took Stephen by the neck. The soft touch felt like it burned. "You think you're in charge," he said in a seductive low voice, "but you're not."

Feather was literally lying between them. "How about we relocate to the other room?"

"Yeah, that sounds like a good idea," Angelo said in a normal voice, glancing at the happy creature. They got up and went there, making sure to close the door securely. Stephen checked his watch - plenty of time. It was odd that nobody had noticed he was actually using his time off now.

Angelo pinned his wrists against the wall. Instinctively, Stephen tried to wiggle out, but his boyfriend was too strong. "Nuh-uh," he said playfully. "And I thought you were in shape."

Stephen was in shape, but he only knew some basic self-defense techniques, and Angelo was bigger than him. "I'm in shape," he said, bringing his forehead to Angelo's. In reply, Angelo spun him around by the wrists and tossed him onto the fold-out cot, narrowly missing two other cots. Before Stephen could open his mouth, he was being crushed with eighty kilos of Angelo. How was he so skinny and yet so heavy? "You and that cat are a great set," Stephen wheezed. "Equally heavy."

"How dare you insult the cat like that," Angelo said, removing Stephen's clothes with one hand while keeping him in a headlock with the other.

"Can we stop discussing the cat? You're killing my mood."

"What should we discuss, then?"

"The fact that you wear out before I do. Who's out of shape now?"

Angelo crouched down, straddling Stephen's back, his head next to Stephen's. "Is that a challenge?" he whispered. "I'll fuck you until you have to call your deputy and make up an excuse about why you can't come in for your shift."

"Go ahead and try," Stephen said, wiggling against him.

"Good afternoon, Lieutenant," Miroslav said as he entered the cell block. "If I may say, you look much better now than in the morning."

"Thank you, Doctor," Lieutenant Vance said. "I took a nap."

"Maybe I should take more naps, then." Miroslav looked around the cell block. "Krechet asked to see me."

"Of course."

The guard unlocked Krechet's cell and Miroslav stepped inside. Krechet relocated from his chair to his cot, his head nearly brushing the ceiling. "Hello, Doctor," he said in a passable middle-class accent with only tinges of the militaristic tones he had used before.

"What is it you want to talk about?"

Krechet crossed his legs and rested his hands on his knees. The cot was too small for him. "I'm sure you're wondering why I never mentioned the way I was treated before."

"If you are willing to share-"

Krechet huffed. "I'm not the only one. Far from the only one. Always thought it was normal. So many talked about running away from cruel relatives, but they ended up putty in the hands of cruel instructors. I was the same. I never thought it was somehow bad. When I had kids of my own, I waited and waited to see when I'd become a maniac, but I never did. I thought it was normal for spouses to hit each other, but I never felt the desire to hit Helena, and she never hit me or yelled at me. Then I realized that something had been wrong. I couldn't admit they had been bad people. I told myself - they were poor, stressed, unhappy, so they acted like that."

"I am very glad that you were able to break the cycle," Miroslav said sincerely. "I'm sure your wife and children are very proud of you, now that they know where you came from."

At that, Krechet laughed. "What, proud that Talvian's chain dog didn't maul his own puppies?" Miroslav had to admit that that was scant consolation. "They're going to hang me, aren't they?"

"Why do you think so?"

"I admitted to murder. How can they not execute me?"

"It is possible to be found guilty and not be found deserving of the maximum punishment, or any at all. That's what it means to have mitigating circumstances."

Krechet snorted. "Maybe in Thirteen that's how it went, but it says in the Criminal Code that anyone found guilty of murder is to be put to death."

"There's no such thing as crimes against humanity in the Criminal Code, either," Miroslav pointed out.

"I wouldn't get optimistic." Krechet tapped his fingers against the table. "Did I sound convincing?"

Miroslav had not been convinced. "You sounded completely unhinged."

Krechet nodded, satisfied. "They called us Talvian's chain dogs as they whispered in their kitchens. Let them see what a rabid dog has to say in its defense."

"You're not a dog."

"I see no difference between myself and a dog. Talvian said 'bite!' and I attacked. You heard the prosecutor. They know I was just following orders." He gnawed on his thumbnail. "If they knew I had a brain, they'd have never believed me," he said beseechingly. "I had to pull off that masquerade with the code-switching."

"It's an outrage that having a different accent makes a person be perceived differently."

A small smile appeared on Krechet's face. "That's really nice of you to say, Doctor. But I really am not very smart."

"You were able to hold your own in a cross-examination."

"Yeah, by sounding like I was completely out of my mind." He leaned against the wall and stretched out one leg. "Maybe they'll understand that I was nothing more than a weapon. A sapient weapon, sure, but you don't punish the weapon together with the one who used it."

"And that person is-" Miroslav sat back a little bit, providing Krechet with more space.

"Talvian, of course. Well, Bradford was the one who decided I would be the perfect little tool to destroy his enemies, but he's not here." Talvian had engineered his downfall. "Why am I in the same dock as Talvian? It's absurd. And to have me sitting next to her - do they really not understand that I never had a choice?"

"No," Miroslav said simply.

Krechet sagged. "I suppose that makes sense. But I was never cruel! I only killed when I was ordered to!"

"But - a baby?"

Krechet ran a hand over his thinning hair. "I hated it. I wish I never did it. I can't even explain what went through my mind. I thought it was a danger. I was convinced of it. No matter if that makes no sense."

He had said as much on the witness stand. The question was whether that would have an effect.

"You said that you didn't want to ask for a transfer because you were afraid of looking weak?"

"Exactly."

"What do you think about that decision now?"

"Seems crazy in hindsight," Krechet said with a shrug. "I wish I had left." He looked at Miroslav. "You happy now, Doctor? I admitted it, just like you wanted."

"It's not a question of what I want," Miroslav said. "It's a question of what you think is the best for you."

Krechet raised his eyebrows. "You don't have any ulterior motives here?"

"I want to know what made you the person you are today. You, of all the defendants, are the easiest one in that regard."

"I'm glad," Krechet said with a smile. "Does this mean I'll get to be in psychology textbooks?"

"Maybe."

"It'd be great, to be in a textbook. It's like you get to live forever." His face fell and he gnawed on his thumbnail. "I guess that's all I have left now."

The witnesses Talvian called did nothing to help her. They saw the chance to make themselves heard in court and spoke as if they were the ones on trial here. Talvian showed less emotion than her lawyer, who grimaced openly when a witness said something particularly damaging.

Thumeka had heard somewhere that Talvian had contemplated suicide but ultimately decided not to, convinced that everyone would accept she had just been doing her duty and keeping the country safe. Fortunately, kidnapping people out of their homes and throwing them out of hovercraft (one person had managed to survive that - the experienced cliff-diver had been thrown into the open ocean not too far from shore) was not how most countries kept themselves safe, and so Talvian was where she was.

Out of the entire dock, she was perhaps the most visually striking. The sheer ordinariness of her face made it hard to believe she could have headed the dread secret police, and her extreme shortness added a touch of absurdity to the entire situation. Back when Talvian had been a simple agent, her first assignment had been to pose as a highschool student and spy on an alleged ring of dissidents. The twenty-five-year-old Talvian had struggled to convince people she was sixteen, not twelve.

Thumeka, like many others, had had high hopes for this part of the defense case, but it ended up extremely underwhelming. The defense lawyer muttered something about national security, the witnesses all testified in their own favour, and then Talvian took the stand. She spoke like someone who hadn't prepared for the exam, didn't care, and was now going to spew whatever nonsense came into their head in the hopes that sounding certain would get them better marks.

Back in her billet, Thumeka lay on her cot and talked to Yemurai. "How are things going?" she asked.

"Fine. Miss you."

"I promise I'll take a week off when the trial's done."

Yemurai pouted. "Just one week?"

"You knew what you were getting into," Thumeka said, a little sharper than she intended. "Sorry. But I miss you, too." Unlike most people, Thumeka didn't get homesick. She never got fed up with the food or the weather. But Yemurai? She missed her. A lot. "I wish I could pack you into my luggage and bring you with me."

"Luggage?" Yemurai asked. "Do you have anything to declare? -Yes, one wife."

Thumeka laughed. "How are my parents going?"

"Crossing off the defendants one by one - that's the closest they can get to a countdown."

Ten down, fourteen to go. "They'll be counting for a long time." Thumeka wished she could reach through the screen and embrace Yemurai. "This trial is going to last forever."

"I've been thinking," Mallow said suddenly.

Miroslav looked up from his writing. "About what?"

"Radan is gunning for my job. I was thinking that after the big trial's done, I can give it to him, since he wants it so much, and move back home to work on the book."

Miroslav had no idea what his psychologists were up to. As far as he was concerned, they did their own thing and he did his. "Where will you work?"

Mallow shrugged. "There's still a lack of cadres. Any hospital or clinic will take me."

Miroslav thought about it. He was making good progress on his portions of his book. His contemplations on what made people into monsters were inconclusive ramblings, but nobody was expecting him to answer that question - he just needed to provide data points. And with how focused he was on the key criminals, there was no way he could continue as chief psychologist once they were gone. And he was fairly sure he had promised Rody that he'd quit after the trial ended.

"I'm sure one of mine's crazy enough to want this job," Miroslav said. He looked back at his screen, wondering how to collate the bullet points and random quotes into something coherent. Right now, he was describing Krechet's feelings of guilt and his skepticism about if the man was feeling true remorse. He had made the tentative analogy that Krechet was like a middle-school bully who was unable to grasp that their words were hurtful. He was regretting being caught and wished he had never been in that position to begin with, not feeling any sort of sympathy for his victims.

"Great." Mallow half-heartedly pressed a key on her keyboard. "What does it feel like to be internationally published?" she asked after a pause.

Miroslav smiled. "There is no better feeling in the world. People from countries I had never heard of were reading what I had written. Newspapers wrote about me. For the first time in I don't know how long, people were taking note of Panem because of something good."

Mallow nodded, entranced. "Weren't you worried you'd have problems?"

"I really don't think Snow spent his time reading psychology journals from India. Besides, it's to you that the government lied about Thirteen. Everyone else knew full well what was going on there. And they had economic interests in us."

"You know," Mallow said, "I think that's the only reason why they didn't actually nuke you. Too many countries traded with Thirteen. No offense, but I don't think McCollum was actually intimidated by your out-of-date nukes."

"That is the absolute truth," Miroslav replied, flapping his hand to show that he wasn't offended. "The one true way to not get invaded is to sell to all of the Great Powers at once. Which we did." Being only in his early forties, even his parents did not remember the Rising. His grandparents had told him about how, under the threat of saturation bombing, underground housing had been built for the entire District in a matter of months - one of the greatest feats of engineering in modern history. The saturation bombing had still come, but by that point, everyone had either left or been safely underground.

Mallow smiled sadly. "And what are we going to sell to the Great Powers?"

"Whatever they want. Since you were self-sufficient for so long, you can produce quite literally anything."

"'You'?"

"Thirteen imported food," Miroslav reminded her. "Guns for grain."

"I still can't get used to the fact that Thirteen actually exists," Mallow said. "It's just - from our standpoint, you came out of nowhere just in time to help us win. But from yours, you've been waiting for a chance to swoop down and knock over the regime in one blow."

Miroslav wondered what that must have been like. "What did you do once Swan Lake began to play?" he asked. Once the arena had been destroyed, the televisions had switched to showing a performance of Swan Lake on all the channels.

"We just sat there shocked," Mallow recalled. "Then, the phone rang, and an acquaintance of mine said that there was a protest downtown. I thought I was going to have a heart attack. We live in a good neighbourhood, so we had to go quite a while to get to the big rallies. There, I heard that Thirteen was still around and supplying us. Biggest shock of my life."

"May I ask you a question about the past?"

"Go right ahead."

"What did you think of the propaganda that claimed Capitol superiority?"

Mallow chuckled. "Oh, we all believed we were not like 'those others'. But yes, everyone fell for it hook, line, and sinker. My own uncle told me once to pray I would be Reaped, because it would be such an honour. All my relatives who had fought in the Dark Days acted like the Games were an opportunity to do the same thing as them. In hindsight, it's absolutely insane. It wasn't even a class thing - poor Kielce's friends and family were so sincerely convinced he was going to die for a greater cause. It's hard to wrap my head around understanding I believed all this not that long ago."

"That's propaganda for you."

Looking at the document he was working on right now, Miroslav noted that Krechet considered himself superior to any District person despite the fact that he was lower-class. This was closer to nationalism than anything else, though with a touch of racism - perhaps like the attitudes of a metropole towards its colony? Not everyone in the Capitol shared that - most were willing to bow and scrape before anyone who was well-dressed and addressed with 'Judge X' or 'Director Y', no matter if their accent was Capitol or Ten.

So many interesting things about society. There was probably enough material for ten books, if Miroslav wanted. He found himself looking forward to the trial ending and being able to go home and write. This was all just so interesting.

A/N: 'Swan Lake' on every channel is a meme dating to the 1991 GKChP putsch.