#DefinitionOfWorth - (END)

“Honey! Honey, hang on!”

Charlotte hears an unfamiliar voice.

It’s frantic, hysterical, and desperately afraid for Honey’s sake. Dripping with exaggerated worry and fear, so much so that Charlotte can only assume they are faking it. 

Ha! Pathetic wretch seduced by Honey’s facade of charm and softness, pretending to be her friend only to steal that gleaming crown off the top of her head when they see fit.

If Charlotte could not be the one to bring Honey her deserved betrayal, then let a moronic fan do it for her.

Honey had taken her pride so Honey will be soon taken from. The consequence of their special power, of this high position of control, of being The Midnight King.

Charlotte chuckles in her spot on the floor.

Oh, Honey, Honey, Honey. The naive little girl that loathed Charlotte so much that she became Charlotte herself just for the sweet taste of revenge. For Charlotte’s fall, for her ruin. Charlotte became everything for Honey and that made it all the easier to take it away.

How pitiful!

Charlotte would love to watch her special Honey dear writhe in pain at the feet of a backstabbing follower, of one she trusted to stay her subordinate beneath her feet. To be ridiculed by people less than pests.

Honey is just as alone as Charlotte.

And Charlotte wants to watch Honey realize they are the same.

Greedy with an unquenchable lust for blood.

But something’s strange.

Honey’s lifted by two boys, one with black hair and one with red, each wearing faces that Charlotte doesn’t understand. How awful their twisted expressions look. It isn’t contempt. Or anger. Or disappointment. Or cruelty. What is it?

Why do they look at her that way?

She drags her arms underneath herself to prop her shoulders up. They shake under her feeble weight and when Charlotte opens her mouth to take a breath, she’s met with a mouthful of ashes.

Fire. The world around Charlotte burns and her skin bubbles at the relentless heat. Blisters and wounds and bruises.

And she feels pain.

Honey had gotten Charlotte good. Infuriatingly good. She felt the fist in her jaw and it rattled her tongue against her clenched teeth. Charlotte’s mind went completely blank, in a state between conscious and unconscious where her only thoughts led back to a certain smile. One she told herself to forget, one she’d do anything to be rid of, one that no matter how many faces she pummels or how many people she ruins never goes away.

And Honey incinerates that memory with just one blow of her knuckles.

Charlotte felt the cigarette slip from her hand.

Then the world caught on fire.

For just a second. For a puny little instant, all Charlotte could see was Honey. Honey and her ferocity, Honey and her fire, one part girl, one part blazing brighter than the sun itself, almost too radiant to even look at without squinting or turning away.

But Charlotte stares. She faces it head-on without averting her eyes.

Honey’s flesh curdles and burns, a side of her face covered completely by flames, eating away at her, consuming her, but strangely, not a piece of her disappears.

This is the first time Charlotte has ever looked at Honey as equals, meeting her directly in her fierce brown eyes that burned more than the flames around them. And for some reason, it fills her with a feeling she’d only felt once in her life, except not as profound or as overwhelming as this.

And Honey was the one on fire, but Charlotte feels like she’s been covered with hot coals and roasted on a spit.

This feeling.

Envy.

Honey’s secured onto the black haired boy’s back and they make for the rusted side door, her golden hair no longer on fire, but whipping out behind her like her own personal flames.

Charlotte seethes.

Honey should be just like Charlotte. Alone at the top of this lovely hierarchy, the height of a pyramid that ensured only one person could stand above the rest, where Charlotte never had to look up because everyone, every single person she knew, was below her.

And no one had ever stood beside her.

“Charlotte, stay down.”

Joshua. Charlotte’s jaw tightens.

Ha, how aggravating for Joshua to see her like this. Groveling. Pitiful. Weak.

She forces a smile, “Oh Josh darling, I thought you left.”

Joshua slings one of her arms around his shoulder and begins to rise, but Charlotte doesn’t need his help. Not when there’s a large red welt blooming around his left eye and it matches the pattern of Charlotte’s knuckles.

Annoying.

Irritating.

Charlotte’s done with Joshua, she made that very clear in the last couple of hours, because every time she looks at him, she can’t keep up her smile or her attitude. Because Joshua had never wanted to take anything from her and it makes her sick.

She took The King. 

He should be livid with a desire for revenge.

She had just been waiting for the right moment to strike. The right moment to seize it from his grasp and take, and take, and take. When he was at the height of his power and Charlotte could watch him fall the long distance. 

But the right moment slipped away every time she sees him.

Every time.

Because Charlotte had known that face for too long, from middle school when Joshua offered her the first nervous little smile as she took the seat beside him. Before she knew about The Midnight Fights. Before she met her. Before Charlotte found her materialistic worth.

Charlotte had never tried to take The King from Joshua until today.

And why. Why? She became Queen at Vainglory to keep her reputation and she took The Queen of The Midnight Fights to rule the underground. Two titles. Twice her worth, even if she had to separate them by an identity. One sweet and smiley. One merciless and violent.

Both powerful.

Charlotte should have wanted The King. She did. 

But not from Joshua.

And even when she took it, when she had the glowing golden icon appear on her phone, she felt nothing. It was no different than what she had before, except this time she was alone.

Alone. That’s what Charlotte knows. That is who Charlotte is and she’ll accept the consequences. Let Joshua leave her here in this burning building and watch her suffer the weight of her betrayal, let Charlotte get what she deserves. That is the way her world works.

Revenge and grudges. Taking advantage of weaknesses. Exploiting their insecurities.

Attachment to nothing.

“You pulled your punches earlier.”

Charlotte’s smile freezes. She never could keep her face around Joshua.

“You must be imagining things, what a silly accusation.”

She doesn’t pull her punches. She was The Merciless Queen of The Midnight Fights and she never lightened her blows. Not for anyone not even for...Joshua.

His face contorts like those boys at Honey’s side. Charlotte knows it now.

Worry.

Joshua and his short brown hair and big round eyes. Joshua that never looked at Charlotte like she was a monster. Joshua that always stayed by her side. Joshua that Charlotte keeps close not for personal gain, but for-

For what?

“Charlotte,” He says and pulls her up onto her feet, the smell of smoke and the creaking building. There’s heat at her back. The crackle of fire. The stinging of embers.

And Joshua came back for her.

Charlotte doesn’t want this. Or she tries to convince herself she doesn’t because she leans against Joshua once she stands on her shaking feet.

“Let’s start over. Just as friends this time.”

Charlotte laughs, no longer sweet with sugar. It comes out a wheeze filled with exhaustion and ash.

“What makes you think I still want to be friends?”

Joshua looks at her the way he always had, the way she took for granted.

“Because you were the first person to call me Joshua.”

A multitude of sirens approach from outside and it looks like Joshua has no intention of running. To be caught would mean the end of Charlotte’s reign at Vainglory, the end of her royal status, the end of her reputation, the end of her popularity, the end of The Midnight Fights.

It would be over for good.

Everything Charlotte had made would be destroyed in a single night.

Yet Charlotte doesn’t move. She’s pathetic, but she stays by Joshua’s side. And they stand together, neither one above or below each other, at the pinnacle of this collapsing pyramid that Charlotte never realized had room for more than one person.

Over her shoulder, she watches Honey escape out the back, flames following her path, skates dangling from her feet, and two idiots by her side.

Charlotte laughs.

Honey really was special.