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Ash likes your hair. Likes running her fingers through it, likes tugging on it to make you moan and gasp in bed, likes idly twirling a loose strand around her fingers as she talks to someone else at dinner. You wake up to find her brushing it out of her face and laughing, her own short ringlets bouncing as she tosses her head back in delight.
"It's grown so long," she says, voice soft with wonder, making you sit in front of her as she weaves it into a loose braid. Her fingers brush the back of her back of your neck and you try not to shiver at the touch, not wanting to look ungrateful by pulling away. "Like Rapunzel."
"Now all I need is a tower," you say, and she laughs that sharp, ringing laugh of hers that you missed so much. You laugh along, while behind your eyes you see the meeting hall, the benches, the looming shadow of the woman in her hazmat suit. You wonder whether that counts as a tower in Ash's world, in yours.
Ash brings you crackling autumn flowers to weave into the strands of your hair, their crinkles and rustles accompanying you as you walk. Once she talks you back to the honeysuckle field and shows you the berries that have sprung up, gleaming red on the spilled vine.
"Hold still," she says, and you do, letting her pull and tug at the top of your head. She weaves you a scarlet crown, gleaming like a ring of blood as the two of you walk home together. You can feel the others staring at you even harder than usual when you sit at her side that night, their jealousy making you squirm with nerves and pleasure.
She rips the berries roughly from your hair that night, bouncing across the floor, making a mess before she shoves you to the bed. You let her turn you back and forth, let Ash straddle your face and pull your hair so hard you can feel tears come to your eyes. You come as you weep, spasming, a puppet girl rattling on her frame.
When she slips beside you that night, pressed to your side like a limpet, you can reach down and feel the loose threads in her fingers. That night you dream of her pulling your brain out instead, placing loving kisses against your slimy writhing, eyes bright with reverence.
But it's not you that Ash reveres, of course. You're reminded after that day in the woods, that slaughter, her demon. You stop fucking after that (except for one or two frantic, shameful nights that leave you aching for days afterward, pain like a talisman under your skin) but you're still enough of a self-destructive freak that you end up sharing a bed with her anyway.
And so you pretend to be asleep when you feel Ash stroking your hair, again and again. Knotting her fingers into it like a horse's reins, or stroking it like the fur of a prized pet. You wake up to find it twisted into a little girl's double braids and stalk to the bathroom, undo them with shaking hands.
It's tempting to cut it off, shake your head, go butch like Indigo. But then everyone assumes that you were copying Indigo, desperately wriggling into the skin of the last stupid girl to share Ash's bed.
You're too tired to pretend that you don't care about what they think, that a part of you quietly hungers for a world where they accept you as their second queen, where you and Ash can build trans girl utopia together. If only your crown was made of something stronger than berries and lies and fucking demon good.
Besides, it's your hair. Your body, your choice, like the old chants say, prayers for freedom in another world. You can feel how much Ash has taken from you, you want her to take more, but you will not let her take this.
So you go back to bed, then back into the world. You listen to Legion's cackles, feel his hands raking through your hair in place of Ash's, touching you with a vicious cackle. You play with infidelity, with escape, trying to imagine running far enough that the wind rips every trace of Ash out of your skull.
This is, of course, an impossibility. You know this. Even after everything, after Herculine is no more, after you find your way back into New York and a bed of your own and we'd like to publish your novel and new queer horror title from an up-and-coming trans author and your and Ash's story vomited up to the world in a wedding train of fake names, you know this.
Still, you dream some nights of her fingers stroking your hair. Still, you hear faint rustling, humming, whispers of mockery and apology. You wake up with berries and flower beds on the pillow, hair woven into a braid and pointed at the window. Sometimes you expect to hear her calling from the street below, but she never does.
You wash your hair with holy oil, walk down the street with silence ringing in your skull. The sun beats down on your head, a crown of light and warmth that you wear entirely alone.