at the memorial dome

[she_sells_seashells]

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.

Comments

[she_sells_seashells]

Poll workers pour out of the building. None of them, even after they've slowed to include only stragglers, seem to be worrying about anyone left behind.

Hotter, faster, the fire helicopters are here now and Bell slams on the heat, it has to make sense for the suppressants they're dropping to do no good. Burn, burn, burn, they have to be unable to use the dome. Wreckage starts falling; there are gaps in the burning roof now, and she can't control non-contiguous parts, so those behave as fire naturally does inside, burning booths and ballots and the roped-off indicators of where to stand in line and the insipid little cheese platters. Bell presses the fire down, to ground level, so if any of the separated pieces get overexcited and spread, she can regain control.

There is no longer any conceivable way that there will be voting accomplished in the Memorial Dome today.

But it's not yet implausible for the fire not to have spread.

So she goes on just a bit longer before she lets it succumb to insistently sprayed suppressants, and lets out a breath, grinning.

[sicaria]

Sherlock kisses her.

[she_sells_seashells]

Mmmm, Bell approves. Her stick stays in her pocket so she has her arms both free to wrap around her girlfriend.

[sicaria]

Happy snuggly kissessssssss.

"You are a delight," Sherlock informs her.

[she_sells_seashells]

Bell snickers. "Iiiii just burned down the entire Memorial Tower," she whispers.

[sicaria]

"You did," Sherlock agrees. "It was very impressive. I am very impressed."

[she_sells_seashells]

Kisses kisses kissses kisses, only 90% of the reason Bell currently wishes to be out of this dress involves it being stupid. "How long should we hang out here?" she murmurs.

[sicaria]

"Not very much longer, perhaps," says Sherlock. "I find myself very much inclined to go home."

[she_sells_seashells]

"Lead" kiss "the way" kiss "whenever you're ready."

[sicaria]

"As you like, then."

Kiss!

And off they go, not the way they came in.

[she_sells_seashells]

Bell trots after her, trying to gawk more at the fire behind them than at what should be unremarkable Capitol scenery to who she's dressed as.

[sicaria]

It is not very long at all before Sherlock has brought them back to where they are staying with Tony. A closed door indicates that Tony is up to something technological and would rather not be disturbed.

Sherlock is quite content not to disturb him. They have their own room.

[she_sells_seashells]

Goodness. A room.

Whatever could they be expected to do with that?

"Are we liable to get sketchy-Tony's-friends capitol visitors or can I change out of this stupid dress?" Bell asks.

[sicaria]

"By all means, exit the stupid dress," says Sherlock. "And perhaps also the stupid makeup. If there are visitors, we need not see them."

[she_sells_seashells]

An ensuite bathroom, how perfect. Bell exits the stupid dress, unpins the stupid hat, and, standing in her underwear and twisting her ringlets out of the way behind her head as usual with her stick, starts rinsing away the makeup.

[sicaria]

"You are a continual epiphany," says Sherlock, studying this process.

[she_sells_seashells]

"...What d'you mean? Did I do something unexpected?"

[sicaria]

"No," she says. "An epiphany is not the same as a surprise."

[she_sells_seashells]

"I was thinking it was like a revelation of some kind. What do you mean exactly?"

[sicaria]

"I mean that when I look at you I feel as though I have just understood something complex and fascinating."

[she_sells_seashells]

Bell tilts her head. "I like that," she decides.

The last of the makeup swirls down the sink. "Still not sure I get it, though. Does this feeling have moving parts?"

[sicaria]

"I am not sure what you mean."

[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.