"That would be lovely," says Sherlock.

"Can you get me in and out again? I need a view of it and to be within a few blocks. Ideally it'd be in the early morning or at night, I don't really want to kill random voters."

"Hm," says Sherlock.

"Yeah, we can get you there," says Tony.

"How?" Bell asks.

"I have friends. The kind of friends who'll send a train if I say I wanna visit."

"Will I be stowing away again, then?"

"Yeah. Although how much hiding you have to do depends on who I call."

"...Should I be feeling vaguely sketchy about you calling Capitol friends to get things done? Or should I not even ask that question?"

"If you're talking about how I met them, then yep. Sketch as hell."

"But not so sketchy that you wanted Isabella to curse any of them for you?"

"Nope."

"Okay." Bell is now done asking questions about that. "The train station's at least functional enough again that a train could appear at it and stop and accept passengers. The next question is where to put me. I can do it from a block away, but I won't be able to see as much detail about what I'm doing. If I'm up close I can start the fire near a celebratory torch or a heating vent with something flammable near it, and it won't look as suspicious. Are any of the friends you could call observant enough to find it suspicious that our train station catches fire and then we get on a train at it and then the Memorial Dome catches fire?"

"Some of 'em, but I'm not gonna call those ones."

"Okay, good. Where can we put me relative to the Memorial Dome without getting caught?"

"As close as you like," says Sherlock. "I will take care of that part."

"You're victors, you can show up anywhere and people will just assume you have a reason to be there, but insofar as I'm recognizable at all it's not in a way that has me looking like I belong in the Capitol," says Bell slowly. "I certainly don't look like I live there; I'm covered entirely in colors that are found in nature. You have some place where I won't be looked at and still has a good view out?"

"We can alter your appearance so that you fit in just fine, which will also make you unlikely to be recognized."

"Ah," says Bell. "Uh, do we have specific alterations in mind here? I can live with dyeing my hair blue and painting little white triangles all over my face, but I'm less enthusiastic about cosmetic surgery."

"Superficial adjustments will be sufficient," she says. "Plenty of people who live in the Capitol have no surgical alterations at all."

"Okay. Dye and makeup and one ridiculous Capitol-fashion outfit from Bar, I guess, and then I stand around looking like I'm... waiting for somebody? before I go in and vote? and find a place to start the fire, and then I suppose I have to run away looking terrified when everyone else does - where can I go then? I don't strictly need to see what I'm doing but I can keep the collateral damage down much better if I can."

"I can accompany you if you like," says Sherlock. "I have some leeway to wander around the city by myself."

"Even with the Memorial Dome on fire? You don't think a Peacekeeper will insist on escorting 'you and your friend' to a safe place?" asks Bell. "Even if you can take a Peacekeeper, having to take a Peacekeeper isn't very discreet."

"I am very good at finding places to hide and then hiding in them. I cannot tell you right now from memory a good vantage from which to watch the Memorial Dome burn without being disturbed, but I can find one when we get there."

"Okay," says Bell. "We'll go with that, then. Since Tony can't always find a door - might be a good idea to look for one to Capitolize me starting now? I completely made up the triangles and blue hair thing, does that make any sense or should it be something else?"

"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.

"Were you going to say something else?"

"It wasn't my first choice, I was going to go with something plainer, but I like it okay, and you're, you know, in a position that entitles you to opinions on what I wear," shrugs Bell. Leaving ambiguous whether that position is 'girlfriend' or 'funder of the purchase'.

"Well, if you are pleased with it, then so am I."

"My instincts towards plain stuff are mostly about the fact that manufacturers don't make the fancier stuff durable or sometimes even comfortable. But Bar can," says Bell, kissing Sherlock's cheek. She stretches a finger away from her grip on her pigtails and pats her scalp. All dry; she lets her hair fall.

It does! Kisses kisses.

Many kisses. Snuggly kisses. Lovely snuggly kisses.

The loveliest and snuggliest. They're not even keeping Tony waiting. They're in Milliways. Bell loves Milliways and she is so fond of Sherlock. She is a happy Bell even with her stupid hair.

It is very stupid hair, and Bell is very lovely anyway. Funny how that works.

"I am extremely good at discouraging casual conversation," she says. "Perhaps not infinitely good. But it would be best if you spoke as little as possible; your accent will be incongruous."

"I can try to talk like a TV personality," says Bell, doing a vaguely passable job of shifting her vowels around. "But yeah, I'll default to shutting up, I'm not that good at it and could forget."

"Handily, shutting up is an easier skill to cultivate," Sherlock jokes.

Bell snorts. "It is. Maybe it's just because I've been coming here so long, but even the accents from other worlds don't sound as weird to me as Capitol accents do." She pauses, thoughtful. "Did you notice - well, of course you noticed. Do you know why your alt and Tony's have different accents?"

"Yes," she says. "For much the same reason I can speak flawless Capitol and Tony cannot, I think. They formed their speech habits in different contexts."

"What do you mean?"

"I was frequently in the Capitol as a child. The other Sherlock spent much of his time with someone whose accent differed from the local one. The effect is similar."

"Oh. I wonder why. He obviously didn't have your reasons."

"Evidently not," she agrees.

Snuggles. "Lemme know when you want to go home," she says. "I'm liable to just fall asleep if it's not soon, fair warning."

"I would not mind if you fell asleep."

"Quite so," Sherlock murmurs.

"Yes," agrees sleeping Bell. "Boots brightness pencil."

Sherlock laughs softly.

Sherlock would not dream of interrupting.

Halfway through pronouncing "incandescent", Bell yawns awake. "Hallo there," she says, presenting Sherlock with a kiss.

"Are you aware that you speak nonsense in your sleep?"

"...Huh? Nonsense? What kind of nonsense?"

"Completely arbitrary words without any syntactic structure."

"Oh. That's weird. I wasn't even narrating my dream? In my dream I had a daemon like Isabella's except mine was a dragon and, for some reason, named Sponge."

"No dragons, daemons, or sponges were featured."

"How strange. I wonder why I do that. And how the words are chosen."

"I have no idea," says Sherlock.

"It just occurred to me that I forgot to add a section in the Belltower guestbook about the power a lot of us seem to have in common, which I don't have - the immunity to psychic stuff. I'm not even sure if Isabella has that," frowns Bell. "I should go add that as long as I'm here. And buy the bra." She stretches and sits up; a tendril of white hair falls in front of her face and she frowns at it and brushes it aside before wadding up all her dyed tresses and sticking her stick through them as usual. "Then home? Or is there anything else we should do here?"

"No—home, I think."

Sherlock awaits her downstairs.

Shell Bell comes down with the box of unicorns, discreetly solicits the selected bra from Bar, and links elbows with Sherlock on their way out.

"Aww, you got a present!"

"Yeah, Matilda left us a bunch of extra unicorns," says Shell Bell. (The box now also contains the bra.) "Also, reportedly, I talk in my sleep."

"Well, that's adorable. Love the hair, too."

"Really? I hate it, but," she shrugs, "must blend in by looking as ridiculous as possible. On the day of it will also be curled and under a stupid hat." She transferred her Capitolish clothes to the box too and some ruffles are poking out. She produces the hat and holds it up.

"It's ridiculous, but it's a cute ridic—oh my god that hat."

"I know, right? It's a tweaked version of what the District Four escort wore this year. More lace, less other crap, different colors. The dress is worse." She pulls it out.

"...When you take over the world," Tony announces, "I am going to call you the Empress of Ruffles and no one can stop me."

"I regret showing you this thing," groans Bell. "See if I grant you an imperial title, so there."

"My humblest apologies, Your Ruffliness."

Bell laughs. "I wouldn't wear anything like this if I weren't trying to go undercover in the Capitol!" she protests around helpless giggles.

Tony finally cracks up.

"Seriously, I'm going to rule in jeans and a t-shirt and a crown made of coral and abalone and pearls," says Bell. "And everyone will take their fashion cues from me, too, because I will be in charge, and then maybe people will stop wearing this kind of eyesore nonsense." She hefts the box. "I'm gonna haul this upstairs and make sure everything fits. Back in a minute."

"Okay, Your Ruffliness," giggles Tony.

Sherlock glances after her, waits a beat, and then sits in Tony's lap and kisses him. Because he is a glorious impossible creature and she loves him transcendently.

"...Yeah?" Bell says, blinking. "Do you now."

"The awkward thing in question would be that we have been fucking since we were sixteen," says Sherlock.

"Ah-huh," says Bell. "I'm guessing that you didn't plan for me to find out at all and if I hadn't fallen on the stairs there would have been several feet of distance between you by the time I got down here. That's swell." She doesn't even muster a sarcastic tone for that last remark; it's as deadpan as the rest of it.

"We did not know how to tell you, or when," says Sherlock, extricating herself from Tony's lap. "Or how strongly you would disapprove."

"Well. It wasn't any of my business before the other day. But 'since you were sixteen' incorporates a period of time between us getting together and having that perfunctory monogamy conversation. And I'm under the impression that even when people are not being monogamous they're at least entitled to information on the subject of how they're being not-monogamous. So there is some disapproval. Yeah. The 'when' should've been 'before saying you wanted me to hack my brain so I could date you'. Sometime before then."

Bell plants her elbow on her knee and her forehead in her hand. "I don't know what to say," she says. "Did you think I'd care that you're siblings, is that it? I didn't kick up a bit of fuss about the alts thing; if you didn't expect calm sanity from me on the subject before that you should've after."

"Look," says Tony, "right now, you are the only person that knows. Because people in general would care that we're siblings, they would care a lot, and it would be a whole big disgustingly public problem. So we just—don't. Let anyone find out. Ever."

Bell leans back against the stairs. "And that would be fine if neither of you were trying to date anyone else. Except maybe your alts and each other's alts, I suppose they'd understand."

"I don't really date," says Tony. "I fuck a lot, but it's kinda not the same thing."

"I did not think of it," Sherlock says quietly.

Oh, that stings. If she'd been actually planning to cheat on Bell that would have been better; Bell would have felt like something about her presence in the situation even mattered. Bell looks away, biting her lip.

"I did not think of Tony, during our conversation. And then we just... didn't," she says, gesturing between herself and Tony. "Until the other Sherlock."

"Yes," says Sherlock.

Sherlock regards the floor with intense expressionlessness.

"You guys," says Tony, "you are so sad it hurts me, please just like - have feelings at each other or something."

"My full name's Antony," Tony offers.

"I'm sorry," says Sherlock. "I don't feel like that is enough, but it is true."

That's... well, that's actually the sweetest thing anyone has ever said to Bell, as far as she can call to mind. She is momentarily too stunned by how sweet that is and does not say anything at all.

"That's sweet," says Bell aloud, after the silence.

Bell smiles back, ever so tentatively.

"I am very fond of you and I do not want to do things that make you unhappy," says Sherlock.

"I'm very fond of you, too," says Bell.

"And I'm fond of both of you," Tony chimes in. "And now you're less sad! I feel good about that."

Bell laughs. "Okay then," she says.

"Hugs?" he offers, holding out his arms.

Bell is willing to receive a hug. In fact, she's even willing to get up and go across the room for it.

This is extremely snuggly! And everyone approves of it! Best hug.

"...Yes?"

"Tony is very lovable," says Sherlock. "And he likes you."

"This was recorded a while ago," Bell says, tucking the recorder into her pocket and ducking her head. "By now I have the idea that he pretty much likes most people, including a vaguely dismaying fraction of Capitol-dwellers."

"That is true," Sherlock agrees. "I predict a near certainty that if he heard this recording or a summary of its contents, he would want to hug you."

"Well, that would be embarrassing, that's why I waited for him to go away."

"Well, I still have a crush on him, or I wouldn't have thought this relevant. I haven't killed it, yet."

"He likes you," says Sherlock. "Not just in the same way he likes anything that has recognizable emotions."

"...As in the relevant sense, or as in I am at least marginally distinct from a puppy or the next-door neighbors?"

"I don't know how to translate. You and he have very different experiences of the world. If you told him this, he would think it was sweet, and want to hug you and tell you that he likes you. If you asked him to kiss you he would say yes."

"That... does indeed fail to translate into something I know how to label," muses Bell.

Bell hugs her back, tight.

"Thank you," she murmurs.

"You're welcome," Shell Bell murmurs back. "Um, if you could tell me which things you're listening to, that would be - good. And I'll want it on me whenever I'm in Milliways and whenever I need to work something tricky out."

"Yes," she says. "Yes, of course."

Nuzzle nuzzle.