"That would be adequate but perhaps not optimal," she says. "Geometry is good... I will think about it."

Tony gets up and opens a door.

"Nice, first try," says Bell, getting up. "May as well start with the blue hair. I know blue hair is a thing. Unless it became terribly last season when I wasn't looking."

"Painting your face in angular high-contrast abstract patterns would be both fashionable and an effective disguise," says Sherlock.

"High-contrast. So not white, but maybe more blue? Shades of blue? Blue and red?" Bell asks, going through the door.

"Blue, red, yellow, and black," Sherlock suggests, following.

"Quartering my face centered on my nose and a triangle of the opposite color in the middle of each section," suggests Bell. "Half my hair navy blue and half white, curled into obnoxious ringlets and with a stupid little hat pinned to it. And stick me in a dress with enough ruffle to it that no one can tell I'm a skinny District kid. My own parents won't recognize me. Which, come to think of it, could be important."

"A fine plan," says Sherlock.

"You will look like a disaster," she says. "But not a recognizable or a memorable or a notale one."

"That's the idea, yes. Ugh, Capitol aesthetics. We should do my hair here. No point leaving evidence around the house we don't strictly have to." She heads for her room.

Sherlock follows.

There is a bathroom in her room. Bell reads the instructions on her hair dye, takes the stick out of her hair and sets it aside, and starts combing out minor tangles with her fingers in the mirror.

"Do you need any help?"

"Yeah, actually, this stuff gets combed in," she points out a little comb attached to each package of dye, too small to effectively detangle but decent for incorporating a substance, "and I can't see the back of my head." She's smoothing out her hair and making a zig-zagging part down the middle with her fingernail. "If I hold the left half out of the way can you comb the dye into the right half and vice versa?"

"Yes I can," says Sherlock.

"Swell." Bell double-checks the neatness of the part. A Capitol person would have had this done by a professional stylist; she only has to stand up to casual scrutiny, and there'll be a hat, but she really shouldn't half-ass it. Finally she gathers the right side of her hair into a pigtail, smooths down stray wisps on both sides with drops of water from the faucet, and says, "Okay, start with the blue on my left?"

"All right," she says, and there she starts.

"Not yet," says Sherlock, just as dryly. "But we are certainly headed in the right direction."

There's not a hair dryer in the bathroom, but there's an exhaust fan; Bell flicks it on with her elbow to speed up the process. "As long as I'm here I should probably get a bra. I don't have one yet, but it might be a good idea now that I'm eating regularly and everything. Didn't get one last time because Isabella's friend was in the room when I was picking stuff."

"You may as well, then, yes."

The catalog is around here somewhere. There it is, sitting on the bed. Hands occupied, Bell manages to flip it to somewhere in the middle of the bra section with her feet and peers at the pages.

"That one's pretty," Sherlock comments.

"It's all right -" begins Bell, when it occurs to her that Sherlock's opinion on her underthings could actually become relevant at some point during the life of this garment. "Yeah. It's pretty." It is, and as long as she gets it sized right it won't be impractical, either, she doesn't have to get the plain-looking one just because human makers of such things tend to compromise between usefulness and appearance.