Chioniphobia

Collection

Tooth bobbed her head nervously before zipping in. Grim sighed exasperatedly as she watched the fairy, closing the door as Jack strolled inside.

"I hope you don't mind me inviting her along. I know you two aren't exactly besties," Jack admitted sheepishly.

"Oh, I've nothing against Mordice, verglas. She's spirited, commanding, charismatic..." Grim sighed again, enviously this time. "Beautiful..."

"Sounds like someone has a crush," Jack joked.

Grim smirked and swatted his arm. "Well, you can't find fault with a girl admiring someone with all the qualities she herself lacks."

"Hey, don't be so hard on yourself. Who's more spirited than you? You're collecting souls all the time."

Grim attempted and failed to smother a smile. "You're making it awfully difficult for me to wallow in my self-pity, darling."

Jack tapped his staff on the floor, absentmindedly frosting patterns on the carpeting. "Just saying, you're not exactly a wallflower yourself. Anyway, I think your pity party gave Tooth the wrong impression- she thinks you hate her."

Grim frowned, staring down at her Bunny slippers. "It's not just jealousy, darling. I'm jealous of Tosh's good looks and popularity, but that doesn't keep us from being friends."

Jack leaned on the brightly-painted wall. "So what's different about Tooth?"

Grim's gaze moved to the fairy currently examining the various pictures coloring the apartment. "She pities me."

Jack frowned, brow creasing. "Pities you?"

"Nothing can kill me, dearest, but pity is like poison. I won't give it, and I refuse to take it," the Reaper seethed. "I can see her sometimes, looking at me as if I'm some poor, pathetic monster, scrabbling in the shadows. And why shouldn't she? She's everything I'm not- everything I can never be- and she won't ever understand what it is to be something like me."

Grim blinked, raising her hand to her mouth as she took in Jack's stunned expression. "Oh dear. I didn't mean to say all that out loud, love: forgive me."

Jack shook his head. "It's fine, but- actually, no, none of that was fine. Tooth pitying you? She's terrified of you! Every time you look at her, she thinks you're going to rip her throat out!"

Grim folded her hands, distress creeping over her face. "But...I thought..."

"You were wrong," Jack emphasized. "And I think you need to admit that to somebody."

The Reaper followed his blue-eyed gaze to the fairy fluttering near the ceiling.

Tooth hadn't realized Jack had left- she'd been too absorbed looking at the paintings. There were dozens of them, hundreds if you counted some of the smaller ones, a collection of faces and things and places forever captured in a single moment. One face in particular caught her attention.

It was a smaller portrait, tucked away in one of the corners of the ceiling. Tooth wouldn't have even noticed save for two factors: one, it was much more detailed than many other similarly sized portraits. Two, it was a picture of her.

Tooth didn't look in mirrors too often, but she suspected that if she did now, it couldn't give her a clearer picture of herself than the portrait painted in the corner. Every feather was carefully lined, every color's shade painstakingly selected. Tooth reached up, half-expecting the Tooth on the wall to lift a hand as well.

"Do you like it?"

Tooth shrieked and smacked into the wall. Grim blinked at her languidly from the ceiling beam where she was seated. "Please don't damage it- I worked hard on that one, you know."