Grim hadn't really intended for things to go the way they had.
She'd avoided Bunny ever since That Incident. She would've kept avoiding him, but then he'd made his way back into her life through the company of Jack Frost. She couldn't avoid him all of the time, not without sacrificing her time with Jack, and after three hundred years of leaving Frost isolated she wasn't about to do that, not for anything.
Still, she'd managed to dance around the subject. Grim and Bunny had talked since their reunion, had some witty banter, joked around, teased and tormented. It was easier than she'd anticipated, to fall back into their old pattern.
But their old pattern had been broken for a reason, and Bunny insisted on coming back to that reason, over and over again. So, over and over again, Grim ran away from it.
It was a new pattern, almost identical to the old, but with one important change to the cycle. Perhaps she could've learned to live with it, at least until it was inevitably upset again. However, instead of waiting for the inevitable, Grim had initiated it.
She really hadn't intended to. She'd stolen one of his funny bent-stick weapons, led him on a merry chase through the woods. She'd set it down for him to find in some clearing, and
(his eyes wide and bright with adrenaline)
he'd come into the clearing, picked up his stick, and-
-it was an instinct, automatic, when she struck. He dodged- her approach was too sloppy for there to have been any other outcome- but she struck again, and she smiled, and she told him (warned him) to run.
He hadn't. He'd stayed there, stubborn and stupid, and she'd wanted to scream at him.
Run, you idiot. Run from me. I'm the reason why someday you will not exist in this world. I am dangerous. I am a monster. Fear me, you fool. Despise me. Hate me.
But he hadn't, because he never had. He feared her, as all things should, but what good was fear if it didn't compel one to run, to hide, to escape? How could he hope to flee Death when he kept welcoming her with open arms?
She looked up at him, her mouth bloody, and sneered.
Can't you see I'm dangerous?
"You'll excuse me, I hope. I didn't get any breakfast."
He stared at her, completely still save for the jerking of his body as it lost more and more blood.
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Tooth gasped and flung the tooth away from her, watching them fall to the grass at Bunny's feet. Bunny picked it up and examined it.
"How'd you get Grimace to hand over a couple'a her choppers anyway?" he asked.
Tooth stared at the small pointed object in her fellow Guardian's paws, then at the Guardian himself. She studied the tenderness in his eyes, clouded by hurt.
"I just asked her," she answered truthfully. "She gave me the teeth and then asked if I wanted anything from her 'collection.'" Tooth shuddered. "What does she collect, anyway? Bones?"
"You collect bones."
"I collect teeth," she corrected.
"Well, Grim collects colors, so ya don't need to keep making that face, sheila." Bunny squinted at her. "How come you turn chook whenever she's around, anyway? What's she done to you?"
"Nothing! She just hates me! I don't know why, but...well...she always has this look on her face whenever I'm around, like she's going to..." Tooth flailed.
Bunny raised an eyebrow. "Kill you?"
She sighed. "I know, I know, it's ridiculous."
"Everyone's a bit scared of the Reaper, mate. Someone tells you otherwise, they're either lying or stupid. Or Sandy."
"Or Pitch?" she suggested.
Bunny frowned slightly. "Eh, maybe."
"He seems to like her," Tooth added cautiously.
Bunny wrinkled his nose and put his ears back. "Don't think Pitch can 'like' anyone. Maybe he 'likes' the fear that comes with her."
Sensing a touchy subject, Tooth quickly steered back to safer waters. "So what did you need the teeth for?"
"A project," Bunny answered cryptically. "Speaking of, I need two teeth for this to work. Where's the other one?"
Tooth brought it out hesitantly. She'd peeked at the memories inside the first, but after the sight that had greeted her, she wasn't certain doing so again would be a good idea. Then again, when would she have another opportunity like this, to have a glimpse inside of Grim's mind, to understand how she felt?
Tooth took a deep breath and closed her eyes.
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Grim woke up in a strange place.
It was dark, which wasn't strange. What was strange was that it was warm and smelled of dried grass and clean fur, like an unnaturally tidy barn. It didn't feel like a barn, however: she felt no wooden floor beneath her bed of straw, and the walls were more like those of a den, with no timbers set in the packed dirt.
She sat up slowly, wincing at her aching head, when a clinking sound caused her to fall back into a lying position. Supporting herself on her elbows, Grim looked to the source of the clinking.
There was a figure- tall, and dark, but not Pitch. The shape was wrong. The figure was holding something, too. A bottle?
A blade?
The chains weren't binding her this time, and so she did what she would've done had her torturer not thought to restrain her with her own devices: she sprang forward and throttled them, squeezing her hands around their neck and
it wasn't them
it was him
she sprang off of him, hands shaking, scars blazing, head spinning from a night of alcohol and centuries of pain. Grim saw him get up, gasping for breath, saw his eyes wide and green and scared
and she ran, and ran, and kept running.
When her legs gave out (far sooner than her wings would've), she collapsed to the ground and stared at her hands, white and trembling.
She'd been born with gloves, black ones with claws at the ends. One day she'd been scratching at what she'd always assumed to be her skin and found that by pulling, her 'skin' slid off to reveal white flesh underneath.
She began scratching at her hands, her wrists, tugging at her skin as if it might come off and reveal something new underneath, something brilliant and wonderful and not ugly ugly ugly
Her white skin peeled away under her nails, but there was no new layer of skin, nothing beautiful hiding underneath. Just wet black muscle and tendon and vein, clustered together in an imitation of a mortal's flesh. No pulse in the veins, no blood flowing through, just cold liquid metal and the sense that whatever she was was natural, yes, but abhorrent all the same.
Grim screamed and grabbed at her face, feeling her skin rip under her fingers, feeling pain pain pain as she pulled, gripping her face and dragging it away as if by getting rid of it she might somehow become beautiful. She threw pale skin wetted by liquid black onto the ground in disgust and began clawing at what was left of her face, tearing off the last of the skin clinging to her cheeks, picking away her eyelids, hissing at the sting of the tears leaking onto raw flesh.
Grim knelt there for a long time, staring blankly at black not-blood and thin white skin scattered over the grass at her feet. Gradually she became aware of a sensation besides the pain lancing through her and the disgust churning her stomach.
She reached up with not-bloody fingers and plucked Pitch Black's hand off of her shoulder. "What do you want?"
His hand placed itself on her opposite shoulder. "Why do you do this to yourself?"
"I owe you no answers."
"And I owe you no questions, but I gave you one anyway."
"That doesn't mean I'm obligated to answer."
His grip tightened, and a chill accompanied the next wave of pain in her scars as Grim realized he was prodding at the fear in her not-beating heart, pulling it to light.
"Stop that," she spat.
His grip loosened, released. "You're afraid of being alone."
"And you're afraid of feeling like you don't exist, but that won't stop it from happening."
He slid back into the shadows, his voice ringing around her. "You're afraid that the nature of what you are will always lead to tragedy for anyone you love."
"Am I wrong?" she asked dryly.
"No."
She scoffed, rising to her feet and touching a hand to her face, feeling the skin grow back little by little even as she spoke. "Then what else is there to talk about?"
"I'll always be here," he reminded her. "I always have been."
"Hm. Strangely, I'm not looking forward to the day where you, Mim, and me are the only ones holding dominion on earth," she sneered. "As much as you try to hasten that day's coming, I'm afraid you are the only one eager for it to arrive. Besides, its arrival is inevitable: why try to speed up the process?"
"You're afraid of getting your heart inevitably being broken, so you break it yourself before anyone else can. I think my logic makes more sense than that, at least."
She growled. "Fine, so we're both idiots. Now if you're done psychoanalyzing me-"
"You're afraid I'll grow bored of you," the Boogeyman interrupted. "You're afraid that I put up with you because I find you challenging and therefore interesting. You're afraid that I see you as an annoyance who's occasionally amusing, and once you cease being amusing, I will no longer tolerate your company."
"Again, am I wrong?"
Grim sensed that Pitch reappeared, but she couldn't tell where he was. Nevertheless, his voice was close by as he replied.
"Your nature will always lead to tragedy for those you love, but not for the reasons you think."
"Oh, so my being Death has nothing to do with it? Pray tell, what other reasons are there?"
She flinched as his breath tickled the side of her still-healing face.
"It isn't your nature as the Reaper, Grim. It's your nature of being cruel to yourself so that you're hurt less when the world is cruel to you."
She turned, nose to freshly-healed nose with the Boogeyman. He moved his head back just enough so that they were no longer touching.
"And by the way, that particular coping mechanism does nothing but wound you more in the long run. If you want my advice on the matter, I'd suggest ridding yourself of the self-persecution. You're not the only one it's hurting."
She screamed and swiped at his face, only for her hand to cut through shadow.
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Tooth gasped, her eyes flying open.
"She ripped her face off?" she cried, dropping the tooth.
Bunny plucked it up nonchalantly. "She does that sometimes."
Tooth touched her cheek empathetically. "She really hates herself, doesn't she?"
Bunny sighed, tucking the teeth away in one of his leather pouches. "Yep."
Tooth fluttered to the ground, wringing her hands.
"I wish..." she began, then stopped, swallowing hard. "I wish I could help."
Bunny snorted, crossing his arms. "Grim's not a charity case, Tooth. She's had issues for a long time, and she's been learning how to deal with them for just as long. Sometimes she gets crook and ends up a bit backward from where she was going, but we all do that sometimes."
Tooth frowned. "Speak for yourself- I've never ripped my face off because of self-loathing before."
"...Look, she's not just a problem to be solved, okay?" Bunny emphasized. "She's a person, same as you and me. If you really want to help her, try being her friend before telling her how to magically fix everything, m'kay?"
Tooth winced. "But she hates me."
"Hey, not my problem, sheila. You work on that," he gestured to the pocketed teeth, "and I'll work on this. Be seeing you."
He tapped his foot to the ground, and a tunnelopened up beneath Tooth. Her descent downwardwas sudden enough that she didn't have time to scream before emerging outsideof Tooth Palace.