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"Papa! Papa!"
Loki opened his door, peering out into the town. Across the way, Emma's voice carried, and he could see his youngest emerging from the woods. Some townsfolk who knew Emma were looking out windows at the commotion, watching as the girl hurtled towards her father.
"Child, what is the matter?" Loki asked as she wrapped herself around his waist, sobbing into his stomach. His hand was gentle on her hair, sifting through strands as she clung ever tighter. "Where's your brother?" Loki looked around for his son, but couldn't immediately spot Jack. Stretching out his magic, he could feel him among the trees, either. "Where is he?" He asked again, lower, worried. Jack would not leave Emma alone in the woods.
"Emma, dear?" Abigail asked, coming from the market and reaching for her husband's arm. Loki was preoccupied, kneeling in front of the little girl and taking her shoulders under his palm.
"Look at me, Emma," he said, chasing her watery eyes as she choked through sobs. "Emma, where is he?"
"Jack? What's happened to Jack?" Abigail asked shrilly, and neighbours started to exit their houses, drawing nearer to listen in to the drama unfolding before them. "The lake," His wife realised as Loki saw the skates Emma was wearing. "They went to the lake."
Emma hiccoughed, cheeks streaming with tears. "He told me it'd be okay!" But Loki hadn't the time to comfort the child, picking her up and passing her to her mother.
"Don't follow me." He ordered, pressing his hand against Abigail's terrified face. "I'll get him back." And leapt onto his horse, riding recklessly through the trees. "Jack!" He yelled into the forest, hoping to Odin he'd be heard by his son. "Jackson, answer me!"
When he reached the lake Abigail spoke of, he didn't dare try to navigate over it with the horse, nor with his own body weight, because as solid as it looked he knew well the treachery of ice. One wrong move, and that would be the end.
Cursing the boy for thinking it clever to put him and his sister in such peril and cursing him for disappearing as he had, Loki's eyes cast around. Where in the nine realms was he?
Loki noticed the gaping crack the middle of the lake, as it was hard not to: it was a hole just wide enough to pose a serious threat to anyone idiotic enough to wander so far over the frozen water. The lake was calm beneath the frost, still and unmoving, unforgiving and black. Nothing was likely to survive a trip beneath the icy depths.
Loki stopped thinking when his eye caught on the staff he'd crafted for his son. Jack had always had a problem with his leg, and Loki had made the staff to help him walk. It held Loki's magic within it, protecting the boy and making him grow stronger. And there it lay, in the middle of the lake, without its owner in sight.
"Jack!" He cried out around him, helplessly looking for the boy snickering in the trees, hoping it all to be just a mean trick - Jack was so fond of them; the son of Loki indeed. "Jack!" But there was nothing bar the rustling of the frozen breeze on the leaves, and a strange taste to the wind.
Loki looked back to the lake, clenched his fists and dropped to his knees at the edge. He put his hand over the ice and pushed his will to the water beneath.
"Where is he?" He asked the empty air, and the magic found him an answer swiftly: naught but a hollow shell lay at rest on the bed of the lake, void of the spirit of his son. It danced as he made the water swirl, but Loki let it drop. He broke control of the magic and fell back to his haunches in the snow.
He sat there, mind shaken and body numb, unaffected by the cold and unresponsive to the world, until his horse, Sig, nudged his head against Loki's, whinnying in the winter air. Loki stood sharply, aware then of what he had to do.
Sig hurtled through the portal as it opened, familiar with the magic and perfectly content to believe it was as safe as any of the others, until the gates of Helheim caused him to reel, jerk back and attempt to return home. To the south, many miles away, the echoes of Gjöll flowing thundered, sounding like an earthquake in the deathly silent of the lands, seemed too close, too frightfully enclosing. Loki, too raw to withstand the thought of drowning, urged his horse on ruthlessly, pushing the creature into his oldest daughter's domain without heed to its comforts.
"Father," she greeted him with surprise as he burst into her hall, having stampeded through the courtyard and knocked down many a servant who had tried to block his determined path.
"Is he here?"
The woman was startled by his appearance, and stood from her perch to take his hands in hers. He looked worn thin, pale as if he belonged in the Underworld with her, his eyes hollow with pain and resignation.
"You're cold," she breathed, clenching his unresponsive fingers under her own. She smiled thinly, "You'll catch your death."
He didn't have time for her games. "Where is he?"
"Of whom do you speak? I'm unsure if anyone has died these past days which would be of interest to you."
His eyes blazed, fury and grief getting the better of him, and he ripped himself away. "Where is my son?"
Confusion painted her expression, and her eyes narrowed as she tried to puzzle out his words. "You mean Jackson." She spoke lowly, encouraged when Loki did not move to correct her. Sympathy overcame Hel in a great sweep, and she went to embrace him.
"Oh, my father, you keep on losing them." She whispered, not letting him free of her cold comfort despite how he did not return the gesture. Beneath her, she could feel him stiff as a statue, frozen like ice, and the only sign he did not belong in her realm was the shaky breaths steaming the air by her ear, shifting her hair with each difficult exhale.
"He must have died a hero's death," she explained, still not drawing away from the mournful man, inconsolable in his numbness, unreachable and absent. "For he is not with me."
"I cannot reach him if he is in Valhalla." He said after many minutes, slow and defeated and empty, and Hel gathered him closer.
"Then you must do as you have always done," she advised, knowing he would not take the counsel well even as she spoke. "You must let him go."
"I did not let you go," he spat, tearing away from her and backing off accusingly. "I did not let any of you go. I will find him," he vowed, spinning on his heel and tearing down the hall. "I will find you all."
Hel watched her father's return to Midgard from the arching windows of her hall. She saw clear as day the vicious gleam in his eyes, the determination to save his children, the hopeless mission of a man who had too much stripped from him too soon. Rationality fled her father the more he lost, and every time his children were torn from him he clawed at his own psyche that bit further in another fornlorn attempt to get them back. She knew as well as Loki did that nothing short of Ragnarök would reunite their family in its entirety for the first and last time, but that would not stop him, and he would bring about the end trying to bring them all together.
Hel looked to the rising moon, surprised to find the Man within it waiting to talk to her.
He's safe, he said, speaking of Hel's young, lost brother. He will be returned.
Hel felt uneasy, knowing nothing would ever be so simple as little Jack waking upon the grace of the moon and returning to his human mother, his tiny sister and his godly father, but it was more of a comfort than being left ignorant as to where the soul had been taken.
One day he will be a Guardian. The moon elaborated upon prompting, but didn't say anything further than that. The moon stopped talking to her then, and Hel feared for her brother. She knew of the Guardians and the clauses attached, and she would never wish that upon her own blood. Not the loneliness and the isolation, nor the endless days trapped by their own immortality in a mortal world, nor the reliance on faith and belief and love to stay alive. She wouldn't wish it upon her enemies, never mind her kin.
More than that, she feared for her father. She knew that only children ever believed in the Guardians.
Only children would see little Jack ever again.