After Jamie had gotten over his wonder and awe (and gotten all the stories he could remember in one setting out of Katherine), he had been as good as his word, as Katherine and Nightlight felt through the surge of power over the next few days that signaled children beginning to believe in them, personally, as opposed to drawing on the belief of all the Guardians together.
Katherine in particular was fascinated by the Internet once Jack had explained how Jamie and his friends were using it, had already used it to help increase belief in him and were even now using it to spread belief in Mother Goose and Nightlight alongside Jack Frost.
The stories were a little confused at the moment, but Katherine was confident they would settle with time.
For now, they left her and Nightlight and Jack a little unsettled, as belief waxed and waned and different theories were put forward and dismissed or expanded upon. It made their powers grow stronger and weaken, made them feel off or unsettled physically, as people argued and debated and stories were passed around about what they had done and what they looked like.
Tooth was there to soothe when Jack complained, perched on the windowsill of one of the many rooms of the Tooth Palace, where he had stopped for tea.
"Katherine mentioned it, didn't she?" Tooth said, pouring a cup for Jack. "How I used to have different wings? And how the stories changing, how people saw fairies, changed me once the story had settled?"
"Yeah, but...things happened and she didn't really get to explain how or why or anything like that yet," Jack said.
"Things will settle soon, you'll see. You two...are getting along alright?" Tooth asked anxiously. "And you and Nightlight?"
Jack's smile was small and a little nervous but genuine. "Yeah, we're taking it slow, but...yeah."
Tooth's answering smile was bright and relieved, faltering when Jack continued, "I...uh...I usually wouldn't say this, but...Katherine kept talking about how important it was to tell each other things, so..." he took a deep breath, not looking at Tooth, his hands twisting on the staff and the windowsill under his bare feet frosting over despite the heat.
Now truly worried, Tooth fluttered up from her cushion to join Jack at the windowsill. He glanced up at her through his bangs, little smile still in place, and said, "It's...it's silly. But I keep thinking about what Katherine said, so..." He looked out the window again and said, in a rush, as if he both wanted the words out there, purged from his system, but also wanted them locked away and never to see the light of day. "I saw how similar Nightlight and I are not just in how we look but in how we act, because we're both really a lot alike, and I was scared one of us was supposed to replace the other, and I was scared I was just supposed to be a stand in for him until he got back."
It took Tooth only a brief moment to understand the words Jack had used, though longer to understand their meaning. She sometimes spoke like that when excited, so she had a better chance than some to understand it quickly.
Her eyes went wide and she reached for his shoulder, hesitating before finishing the gesture, taking to the air to flutter outside the window so she could look Jack in the eyes.
"Jack, I...we..." she said, faltering for words as he looked up at her, all big soft eyes and vulnerable, open face. She took a deep breath, brushing the bangs out of Jack's face, and tried again. "I know you and Nightlight look similar in coloring, but so do you and North." Jack snorted out a laugh at that, and Tooth let her own out as well. "It's true. And I know you're both similar in a lot of ways beyond that, but we would never try to replace one of you with the other. We care too much about both of you to do that to either one."
