#Honey - (Epilogue)

Honey looks at herself for the first time in almost two months.

They wouldn’t give her a mirror. She didn’t ask for one. Even after they removed the bloodied gauze around her face and she felt the pull of her tightening skin, she didn’t ask to see her reflection. It all just felt different. Strange.

Like she was in an unfamiliar body, something not entirely the Honey she used to be.

And when she looks at herself through her phone camera, she doesn’t recognize her face.

Half of it at least.

Half she knows, she’s seen it in her posts and in her mirrors and in every reflection she’s ever looked at. Soft skin with a rosy tint, golden hair spilling over her shoulder, brown eye fierce and lovely.

That side is Honey.

The other half she doesn’t know.

Red, mottled skin that bleeds at the slightest touch, stitches holding everything together like a patchwork quilt. It reaches all the way up past her hairline and chisels out a spot in her curly locks, the rest descends down her arm up until her elbow, like tendrils of raw flesh. Healing slowly, puckered skin that stretches taut every time she opens her mouth or raises her eyebrows or smiles.

She doesn’t recognize that side, yet it stares back at her through her screen like it wants her to claim it.

“You alright?” Says Misha who had unpacked a stack of cookies right on top of her hospital bed. He’s getting crumbs all over the blankets.

Still a complete idiot.

Her nose scrunches and although she can feel every cell in her burnt skin protesting the movement, she holds the face.

“I’d be better without the mess,” She huffs and sets down her phone. When she sweeps the crumbs off her blankets, she makes sure they get all over Misha’s pants and snorts when he scrambles out of her way.

“Hey! I brought cookies just for you and-”

“Coffee delivery!”

Elias bursts through the hospital curtains, meant for privacy but to hell with that, bestowing a cup holder full of beverages. Gray trailing behind him, holding a drink in their hands.

“And one hot cocoa for Gray.” Elias adds with one of his prince-like smiles.

Coffee.

Finally, Honey was beginning to expire from all this time in the hospital, staring out windows like a needy dog waiting for its owner to return. There are only so many times she can look at the same scenery before she wants to pull out her own hair. It was driving her insane.

Honey makes a grab at her ice coffee as Elias sets the tray on her bedside table, desperate for the life-giving fountain of bittersweet deliciousness. She’s been starved of it for weeks. Now, even if it’s decaf because of her medication, she’ll take what she can get.

Elias laughs, popping the drink out of the tray, and leans over Misha to hand it to her. When he reaches across the fool who’s currently still trying to get all the cookie fragments off his lap, Elias kisses the top of his head, right above the pink butterfly clip holding back his black hair.

Honey makes a face.

“Are you serious? Right in front of my coffee?”

Now Misha makes a face, tossing a stray crumb at her disgust.

Gray clambers onto the other side of her bed, sitting right near her knees beaming as they hand her a little paper envelope with one hand.

“Honey, Honey I got you something!”

Gray smiles so wide. The day she apologized they also smiled just as wide, trusting her so easily again although she doesn’t deserve it. Shame. Honey learns to accept it a little better now that it doesn’t bring back memories she wants to forget. It stings a bit, but it's supposed to.

Honey looks at the gift.

Her stomach ties itself into a double knot. The SPROUTS exclusive new hair clip, one Honey had meant to get for Gray before...before everything had happened. She scoffs.

It’s orange and red. It almost looks like a miniature fire. How fitting.

Honey had been trying to limit her smiles this past month and a half because they make her painfully aware that she’s still in a hospital receiving tedious medical care. However, she’s probably smiled more in this plain, dreary room than in her whole high school career.

Thanks to these three dorks.

“Oh and your mom said not to be on your phone too much,” Elias sits on the other rolling stool, setting down his cane against the bedside, “but I thought you might want to see this.”

He holds up a picture. The Midnight Fights’ Rankings, all in a neat little screenshot with bold white names running down a list.

Hunnie.bunnie143 resides at the top.

Typed in gold letters.

“It was before they shut down the app, a fan of mine took it and sent it to me recently and although it was for only a couple of days, you were The Midnight King.”

The Midnight King.

The most popular high schooler.

The infamous #1 of an illegal fight club.

What Honey used to think was all she wanted, what she convinced herself she wanted. Now the title makes her laugh bitterly.

The night at the warehouse.

It’s a bit of muddled cloud in Honey’s head, amorphous and unable to take a coherent shape as all she can clearly remember is an indescribable pain and the look in Charlotte’s eyes when she lunged towards the cigarette.

That’s something she’ll never forget. Even if the cigarette burn on her forehead had melted along with her new scars. Even if her hatred, her vengeance against Vainglory slowly begins to fade each time she talks about it with her parents or with those two lovesick morons. Even if the burning blood lust she couldn't contain before becomes a distant ache in the pit of her stomach.

Even if she forgets everything else, Honey won’t forget how Charlotte looked as they both collapsed to the floor while the world caught fire and incinerated around them.

That look.

It was the same look Honey wore the moment Charlotte ignited her grudge.

Desperation.

The face Honey made when she was about to lose the last of her pride, the face she made when someone threatened her reputation, when someone took something away from her that was rightfully hers, when Charlotte had become Honey’s everything when she became worthless.

The reflection Honey recognized.

That was all Honey needed.

Charlotte got what she deserved. And so did Honey.

“What happened to Charlotte?” Misha asks, tentatively, looking at Honey like the question might upset her, but now she feels nothing.

That name is meaningless to Honey.

“She must have dropped out of The Rankings. I heard she and Joshua were expelled from Vainglory, they both moved to a different school in another city.”

“And Joshua’s dad, the police officer?” Honey takes a sip of her coffee. They haven't really talked about this because Honey never asked. She could care less about these people who were now just parasites in her past, but a small annoying piece of her gut pinches her curiosity.

Misha answers her.

“Joshua exposed everything on his own. It meant making an enemy of everyone associated with The Midnight Fights, but he said he was tired of running.”

Honey remembers the look in his eyes and the tears that disappeared with a single swipe of his hand. She didn’t know Joshua well and she doesn’t care to know more, but good for him.

So it’s over.

It’s all over. It took a long, aggravating time for this to end, from her fall at Vainglory to her hospital bed, but it did eventually. And in the rush to get her to emergency, Honey mumbled an apology through the blood in her mouth to the two people who needed to hear it most.

And she apologized to her parents.

And to Gray.

And Misha doesn’t look at Elias with a guilt-ridden expression every time he reaches for his sticker decorated cane.

And Charlotte’s just a fading scar on her life.

And Honey is slowly recovering.

She looks back at her phone screen. Her face is still there, staring back at her as if waiting for something. Honey knows what it is.

With a single tap of her finger, Honey opens her Sinstagram despite Misha and Elias’ warnings. Her follower count has dropped lower than when she started at Godforsaken High. They probably associated her with the fall of The Midnight Fights.

But it doesn’t matter to her anymore.

She could easily build that back up again.

A new Hunnie.bunnie143. A different one.

Honey pins the fire clip into her hair, all its little embedded gems glitter brilliantly in the fluorescent lighting and she decides to make a new post.

“My fans must be starved for content, I’ve been on hiatus for too long.”

Misha rolls his eyes, “Yeah you’re still Honey that’s for sure.”

Still Honey. She smirks and lifts her phone to squeeze the four of them into the picture.

It won't get as many likes or follows or comments, but it doesn't define her worth anymore, because she likes it better than every single one of her other posts.

The side of her face that she doesn’t know, the side covered with spotted red skin, with stitches that cut her features into discolored sections, with darkening scars and a textured surface, aren’t all that unfamiliar as she thought.

Because that side is Honey too.

This is Honey.