When she was a child, Emma thought that her blonde hair was the key to a good and loving family. She wasn't stupid, wise beyond her years, and so she knew – knew her blonde hair and green eyes melt parents' hearts, knew they noticed her because of her mane.
(And maybe they were besotted with her hair, maybe women would brush and pin and braid it, but it didn't matter much – it never was enough for her to stay, they always found other reasons to give her up. Her hair was a decoy, golden and shiny to hide the rotten little girl beneath it, the one parents could never bring themselves to love.)
When she grew older, she learnt the harshest truth in life, learnt that men only ever see you as a piece of meat and legs to spread. Her body is an object and, with the job she chooses, her body is a weapon – there is strength in the curve of her ass, in the swell of her breasts. There is strength in her hair, playfully toying with it and tucking it behind her ear, the scent of her shampoo many a man's undoing.
(She learnt that men never care much about her brains anyway. It is a decoy, once again, a trap to get what she wants – sex or someone behind the bars, depends of the day. Her body is a weapon, and sometimes she doesn't feel human at all.)
She grows wary over time. Affections don't come easy with her, and she bares her teeth at anyone who dares touching her. Old ladies patting her pretty curls and perverts tugging a strand – she hates them both alike, snaps at them with an equal fury. "Rebellious," the write in her file, "cold-hearted bitch," they spit at her face.
Her body become a guarded temple, her hair a safe garden.
Affections don't come easy, with mile-high walls around her heart and a steel armour above her skin.
It takes a snow queen with a featherlike touch for her to stop shivering at the brush of fingers against shoulder, for her not to be startled when skin meets skin. It takes a broken queen for her to trust, body and soul, for her hand to reach, touch, feel.
It takes an orphan, as broken and vulnerable as she feels, to run a comb through her mane and to carefully braid heavy strands of golden hair. Elsa hums under her breath, some foreign tune in an unknown language – it sounds like winter and winds and mountains, like ice and light and warmth – and it soothes Emma as much as the fingers massaging her skull. She closes her eyes, the ghost of a smile at the corners of her lips, and lets herself enjoy this moment of peace. She closes her eyes and only sees love and affection, tight embraces and butterfly kisses.
"It will be better that way," Elsa says, words slurred by the bobby pin stuck between her teeth.
She's forced Emma to sit down on the bed after too many a complain – hair getting stuck in low branches when she runs through the forest, or eating a mouthful of it in climatic moments – and kneeled behind her on the mattress with promises of making it better.
Emma had tensed at first, all too wary of the intimacy of such a moment, all too scared of the meaning behind it. But now she allows herself to enjoy it, to appreciate people taking care of her the way she does them. She enjoys Elsa's fingers in her hair and her breath on her neck, the warmth of her at her back and the singsong voice to her ear.
"I could have just pull it up in a ponytail, you know."
"All the women of Arendelle wear their hair in a braid," Elsa replies, her voice not leaving any place for a comeback.
(Those are the moments Emma remembers she is a queen, she rules people and they obey. She sees glimpses of the royal figure in those moments, the charisma and the kindness that comes with such a title.)
(She could have been queen, too.)
Elsa's fingers are quick and efficient – she has a sister after all, Emma guesses hair braiding is something sisters must do during their bonding moments – and soon Emma's hair no longer fall on her beck but delicately circles her head. It is a crowd of its own, the gold of it reflecting the light as she looks at her reflexion in the mirror. Elsa clasps her hand even as she doesn't move from her kneeling position on the mattress, and Emma smiles at her in the mirror, stomach in knots when she receives a smile back.
She goes back to the bed, looming over Elsa for a second or two before she leans forward, her hands resting on each side of the other woman's legs.
"It's gorgeous. Thank you."
The words are whispered against Elsa's lips, and she swallows the little gasp of surprise with the press of her mouth against Elsa's. She always gasps when they kiss, and Emma finds it endearing, this little sound of surprise at such open affections.
(She's surprised, too.)
The kiss is soft, barely lingering, and Emma smiles into it as Elsa's hand toys with a tiny strand of hair at the nape of her neck. There is love in the brush of Elsa's fingers to her skin and, for the first time, Emma's body is worshipped, not used.
She quite likes how it feels.