"Why do you see me?" Pitch asked, looking her right in the eyes. She didn't know what to say. Couldn't anyone see him?
"What, am I the only one who can?" She voiced her thoughts
"The only mortal that I know of." His gold eyes never moved from her grey. His intense gaze, coupled with his existence as an embodiment of fear made her start to stutter and lose her train of thought.
"O-k? I still don't understand."
He sighed at her ignorance and looked away.
"Aside from other spirits like myself, mortals such as you would not be able to see me unless you believe I exist." He rolled his eyes toward her, 'eyebrows' raised.
"There are others like you?" An image of a world that inhabited more than one King of Nightmares seemed very unappealing.
"Yes." His voice was deceptively soft, as if he were trying to comfort her. "The Guardians." The name meant nothing to her, yet he crawled it out like it was am offence to him, but he was trying to hide it. "Do you believe in the guardians child?" He said softly, yet almost accusatory.
"The, guardians?"
"Santa Claus, Easter Bunny, Tooth Fairy, Sandman? Jack Frost too now (if you could believe it)." He listed off their names quickly, the bitterness apparent in his voice now.
He looked over to see her shocked face, the empty mug slipping from her hand. "They're, real?"
His jaw fell a little, the corners of his mouth lifting into an astonished, and slightly incredulous, smile. He gave another bark of a laugh. "Y - you'd sooner believe in the symbol of fear then in the symbols of hope and wonder and all that nonsense?!" He threw his head back and laughed harder, pretending to wipe away a tear.
She scowled, folding her arms and leaning back against the wall.
"Its not the same. I didn't even believe there was actually the Boogeyman when I met you Pitch."
His laughter petered out slowly.
"You didn't believe in me, and yet you saw me, which means that you did believe." He cocked his head to the side, looking at her. "Do you realize how contradictory that sounds?"
"I believed that there was fear in the world. I've dealt with it more times than I would like to admit. I just never put a name on said fear, as I wasn't expecting it to be a person." She leveled her gaze at him, raising one eyebrow. "Yes, I do see how that is a little paradoxical, but it's true. I also belived that hope and wonder and 'all that other nonsense' is real. And now I know that they are people too."
He just stared blankly at her for a moment. "You are very complicated." He turned from her and looked back at the fire.
"Guess that makes two of us." She muttered, pulling a thin blanket out from underneath him and wrapping it around her shoulders.