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Shell Bell tries not to think too hard about Tony's sketchy Capitol friends or why they'd send him a train. She stows away for the short trip. She wears her godawful stupid dress. She paints triangles over her eyes and her cheeks, and squares around them, and she irons ringlets into her carefully divided hair, pins it up, and attaches the hat to the heap of white and blue.
She tucks her amulet under her neckline - the chain is fine enough to look like some more conventional piece of jewelry.
She holds her stick in her hand and stuffs her hand in her pocket.
It's early when they get there, barely dawn. The poll workers are setting up, but voters haven't accumulated yet.
She scopes out a starting place.
Leaning on a wall of a building across the street, pretending to be bored, forgetting not to chew her lip and tasting makeup - she finds one.
There are decorative torches, here and there, and that one has a bit of the Panem flag dangling quite near it in the calm. The flag has a cord. The cord touches the arch of the dome. From there she can get everything.
She waits for Sherlock to find where they'll duck when the panic starts. And when she gets the nod...
She assumes control of the torch. Yes, it's real fire, that's useful.
It flickers, it sways, it leaps.
It touches the flag, and maybe it wouldn't have caught, normally, but she makes it catch. The flag goes up in smoke; the cord catches and burns.
She sends the fire a quarter of the way around the circle at the base of the domed roof, first, before letting it climb any higher. She can still see all of the borders of the fire, but it's going to be implausible for her to keep it that way much longer.
People have started to notice - a poll worker, someone walking her dog. They don't seem to know what to do about it.
"Time to duck out of sight?" she murmurs to Sherlock in her best imitation of a Capitol accent.
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she_sells_seashells
she_sells_seashells
"Does it - come apart? Resemble useful analogies? Bear similarities to things I already understand?" Bell asks. She buries her face in a towel and comes up dry, and then picks up her jeans.
sicaria
"I don't know," says Sherlock. "I don't think you feel the same way I do about epiphanies."
she_sells_seashells
"How do you feel about them, then?" Bell asks, pulling her jeans on and fetching her shirt.
she_sells_seashells
"I feel so informed," snorts Bell. Shirt goes on. She looks for the curling iron; it has a flat end she can use to iron out the mess that is her hair.
she_sells_seashells
"Oh well." Flatten, flatten, flatten. It's a slow process. Bell burns her fingers once and has to stop and stick them under the faucet for a minute.
she_sells_seashells
"If you don't mind, yeah, actually," says Bell, popping her burnt fingers into her mouth and handing over the iron. She's harder to understand around her fingertips: "'d go down by isself bu' I don' like i'."
she_sells_seashells
Bell hums happily. There's something that is just so relaxing about having someone do things to one's hair.
she_sells_seashells
Eventually Bell's fingers feel better and she puts her hand down.
When her hair is all straight and the iron is turned off and put away, she flops backwards, head in Sherlock's lap, and peers up at her girlfriend.
When her hair is all straight and the iron is turned off and put away, she flops backwards, head in Sherlock's lap, and peers up at her girlfriend.
she_sells_seashells
"Thank you," Bell chirps. "For fixing my stupid hair. The colors'll probably stay for a week, alas."
sicaria
"You are very welcome," she says. "And I confess the colour is beginning to grow on me."
she_sells_seashells
"Is it? Maybe if it were all one color, all blue like my original idea, but the half-and-half zigzag part just weirds me out," snorts Bell.
sicaria
"It's very striking. And of course your face is in the middle of it. That helps considerably."
she_sells_seashells
"No, just - I dunno. You're making me feel pretty," Bell accuses, grinning.
she_sells_seashells
Bell reaches up and boops Sherlock's nose. "You're pretty, too," she says contently.
sicaria
...Sherlock giggles.
"I love you," she says, and leans down to kiss Bell's forehead.
"I love you," she says, and leans down to kiss Bell's forehead.
she_sells_seashells
Bell wasn't really expecting that!
She's not sure what to do about it, either.
Traditionally it is replied to in kind.
She consults herself.
She doesn't have one of those to give Sherlock. That is sad.
She's not sure what to do about it, either.
Traditionally it is replied to in kind.
She consults herself.
She doesn't have one of those to give Sherlock. That is sad.