Bell snuggles up unhappily. "This is screwed up," she says. "I'm straight. I tried to not be straight for a while and it didn't work."

"I am not reliably attracted to either gender," says Sherlock. "This is bizarre. And upsettingly pleasant."

"Reliably? What's that mean?" Bell asks, seizing on the distraction from what madness has overtaken her brain.

"It means the set of people I am attracted to is very small."

"It does seem very... couple-y in here," says Sherlock. "More so than usual. But without the degree of alarm I'd expect if everyone had been drugged like us."

"Maybe they got stung a while ago, before I woke up?" hazards Bella. "And have got used to it."

Sherlock closes her eyes and listens to the surrounding conversations.

Bell sits quietly in her arms, sorting out genuine unhappy from alien but sincere happy.

"The holiday seems to be in celebration of romance," she reports. "At least some of these people are experiencing it as such in the context of previously established relationships."

"Oh." Beat. "What mad person decided to drug people into falling in love as a celebration of romance?"

"If I knew," Sherlock says flatly, "I might decide to kill them."

"That would be lovely," sighs Bell, and then she smacks herself sharply in the forehead.

...Against her better judgment, Sherlock snorts.

"It would be funny if it weren't so intrusive," grumbles Bell. "It's in my head. Why couldn't they openly offer me a syringe of whatever this was when I was trying to like girls? But, hm." She glances around the room. "Okay, it's not girls, it's just you, so that wouldn't have helped then particularly unless I'd had one in mind and I didn't."

"Why were you trying to like girls?"

"Because having children in Panem would be ludicrously irresponsible, I don't especially want to be alone forever, based on how many married couples wind up with children I don't think most men would be adamant as I am on the subject of avoiding risk, and if I liked girls I could at least theoretically wind up with one and never have to worry about bringing a small important person into a terrible world. I guess now the plan is to take over the world and then do whatever I please." Pause. "Do... you think... that this stuff lasts?"

"For your sake, I hope not."

"For my sake?" queries Bell.

"It makes you so uncomfortable," she says. "I don't have a strong opinion on it that way."

"You don't?" Bell says. "And I mean - the specific alteration - as alterations go - if someone's going to do something to my brain this isn't the worst thing - I just didn't want anything done to my brain. But now they've gone and done it already."

"It's confusing," says Sherlock. "I dislike it on that level. But if we are to be taking over the world together I suppose it is convenient to have you enshrined in my priorities."

"If I had to be forced to fall in love with somebody - if for some reason that were a logical necessity," says Bell, shrugging minutely. She doesn't finish the sentence.

"...Thank you," says Sherlock. "I think."