Faithful

“What do you mean it’s been five days?”

Loki sighed. “Time is different in our realms. Since I was here last it has been five days in Asgard.”

“Oh…that’s a long time. It was just a few hours for me…What did you do?”

So the questions were back. Maybe the crying had been better. “I performed the duties I am obligated to.”

“You talk weird.” April muttered, digging her bare toes into the dirt. Before Loki could answer she gestured at the plate in his lap. “You liked the carrot cake, huh?”

“For piteous Midgardian cuisine it is astonishingly tolerable.” Loki was the picture of distaste, but in his mind he was cursing the fact that this food did not exist in Asgard. Such a wonderful combination of spices, slightly savory and tingly on his tongue, topped with tangy white cream that perfectly complicated the more pungent flavors.

April wrinkled her nose at him, pausing in the process of building a mound of dirt. They had moved from the bush at the multiple complaints from Loki, now sitting behind the shed on the grass. Loki tried not to dwell on the fact that he was sitting on the ground. The girl was talking again, and it was a welcome diversion.

“I can get you another piece.” offered April, brushing her hands off on her dress. “Mom made a whole bunch for her book club but they were all on a diet.”

Deciding not to question about book clubs or diets, Loki only shook his head. Honestly he wanted more, Midgardian food didn’t begin to fill him up as quickly as Asgardian food, but he didn’t want to ask for it.

The girl shrugged and abruptly moved so she was sitting directly in front of Loki, facing him and mimicking how he was sitting. Legs folded criss-cross, hands on knees, back impeccably straight. Loki quirked an eyebrow at her, but she only made her own face very serious and looked into his eyes.

“What would you do? If Odin and Frigga stopped loving each other?”

To hear this mortal speak of his parents as if she knew the, was worthy of saying their names, was jarring. Yet he didn’t feel the need to shout at her. Or destroy her. It was remarkable how patient he was with her, especially to him, since he had been so short with every other being he knew. Loki considered the question, drumming his fingers on his knee. April did the same.

“They will never cease to care for one another, making yours a quite redundant inquiry…but I understand what you mean. You wonder why this has happened to your parents.”

April looked away from Loki, at the fence that separated her yard from the neighbor’s. “They always fought. But now I think they hate each other. Is it my fault?”

“I don’t see how a child could instigate such a thing, but I don’t pretend to understand the romantic customs of mortals.” Loki’s face puckered a bit at the thought. “Unless a child was not what they wanted.”

Her dark eyebrows rose, an epiphany in her eyes as they went back to Loki. “Papa told me I’m his dream come true, but Mom doesn’t say that. Do you think Mom didn’t want me?”

“I do not know what your mother thinks, but it is a possibility.” Loki glanced towards the house, a bit troubled that the girl’s parents didn’t seem at all worried about their young daughter’s whereabouts. “Not all are meant to be mothers or fathers.”

April nodded, pondering. After a rather long silence she addressed Loki again in what was almost a whisper. “If I left would it help? Maybe I don’t…belong here.”

The words pinged off a sensitive chord inside Loki. The girl continued to astonish him with her maturity and ability to perceive adult concepts. Feeling as if she was the outcast, a pariah in her own home. Loki knew this feeling too well. For the first time he felt wholly empathetic towards the small creature who had drawn him in with prayer and kept him there with her strangeness.

“From what I know of parenthood they would be obligated to find you. And where would you go, you mad infant?” Loki bit the inside of his cheek so he wouldn’t smile.

Seemingly offended at being called a mad infant, April puffed out her chest. “I could go anywhere I wanted to!”

“Oh, you could? Where would you go, then?” Loki was condescending, sure that she would concoct some tale about magical lands made of sugar or whatever went on inside her tiny head.

Instead she pleasantly surprised him again. “I want to go somewhere I can be alone and read.”

Loki wasn’t sure, as he wasn’t sure with anything to do with Midgard, but he had an idea that young ones did not usually want such things.

“Why?”

April scrunched her face up. “There’s always stuff to do. Sometimes I don’t want to do them, I only want to sit and read. But Mom says that’s lazy…and that’s all that Papa does.”

Before Loki could find something to say in response there was a voice calling ‘April?’ from the house, and he made himself unseen to everyone but the girl. April jumped up, frantically brushing the dirt off her dress.

“Stay here.” she held her palms out at him like she was commanding a dog, grabbing his plate before spinning on her heel and darting through the screen door into the house.

Naturally Loki sneered at the order and followed her, standing in the kitchen to watch April speak to her mother.

“What were you doing outside, honey?”

April stood leaning against the bottom cabinets of the counter, looking innocent as could be. “Playing.”

“Oh.” her mother was washing dishes. She saw the plate and fork April had set near the sink and frowned in confusion. “I thought you didn’t like the carrot cake.”

Noticing that Loki was in the room but invisible to her mother, April shrugged. “I changed my mind.”

“Good. We’ve got too much of it.” the water shut off and the woman wiped her hands on her jeans, turning around to rest her back on the counter much like her daughter was doing. April looked little like this woman besides her gray eyes. “Hey, I have a great idea.”

April perked up, eyes like saucers with excitement. “What is it?”

“Why don’t we spend the rest of your summer vacation at Grandpa’s lake house?”

It was like a small explosion had gone off inside her little body. Loki watched, perplexed, as her hands flung up to cover her mouth and she made a small noise like a teapot going off. April looked up at her mother like something earth-shattering had just been said, but all Loki had heard was something about a lake house, which sounded very ordinary.

“Really, Mom?” April asked in an undertone. “For the rest of the summer?”

Tanya grinned down at the enthusiastic girl, nodding. “Three whole weeks. Sound good, then, April?”

“Yeah! When are we going?”

“First thing in the morning.”

April squealed again, running over to Loki and grabbing his hand, jumping up and down with it. “We’re going to the lake house!”

“April…who are you talking to?”

Loki had frozen the moment April looked at him, but now the girl was horrified as well. She immediately let go of his hand, lips parting as she floundered for a quick explanation. “Uh, it’s just my – imaginary friend.”

The god standing invisible in her kitchen made a face at her. Imaginary friend indeed.

“Your imaginary friend?” questioned her mother, the set of her jaw concerned and her eyes positively panicked. “How long have you had an imaginary friend?”

Deciding that honesty was the best route, April put on her best guiltless face. “Only last night. He showed up in my room and we played in the back yard. It was actually him that ate the carrot cake.”

Loki glared at the child so hard he was certain she could feel it, but she only batted her eyelashes at her mother, who was suddenly rather pale. “I see. B-but you know he’s not real?”

“Yeah, Mom. He’s just my pretend friend.” April beamed.

Appearing to feel less unnerved, Tanya nodded and wiped her brow. “Okay…”

“I’m going to go pack!” exclaimed April, beginning to skip past her mother and Loki to get to the stairs. But she skidded to a halt, turning to look at Tanya again with a stern expression. “Are you and Papa packed yet? ‘Cause you should so we’ll be ready.”

Loki rolled his eyes at her eagerness, but Tanya cleared her throat uncomfortably. “Well, April, the thing about that is--”

“I can help you pack, so it’ll get done faster.” April was practically dancing. “All we need is just a few changes of clothes ‘cause we can wash them in the lake and wear them over again, and our swim suits, and some toys, and books for me and Papa to--”

“Honey, Papa isn’t coming.”

April’s mouth stopped moving like it had been frozen in time. Her excited hands fell limp at her side, and a betrayed look entered her eyes. Loki went rigid, hoping she wouldn’t cry again. “Why?”

The woman in the kitchen ran a hand through her hair and grimaced. “It’s hard to explain, April. There are things that you won’t be able to understand until you’re older.”

“I want to understand now!” shouted the girl, startling both god and mortal with the passion in her voice. “Papa has to go!”

After being stunned into silence for a moment Tanya flushed in anger. “April Louise, you do not get to talk to Mommy like that!”

“I won’t leave Papa.” April shook her head, backing away from the kitchen. “He won’t be here when we come back.”

How had she known? Loki saw the same bewilderment in the mother’s eyes as his own, but hers also held fear and guilt. “April, I --”

April didn’t stay to listen, sprinting up the stairs as fast as her short legs would carry her. Papa hadn’t been in his chair, so she knew he was in the bedroom. He didn’t go into his office on his bad days. The door was shut, and April pushed it open without knocking. Papa was on his back, still in pajamas, halfway covered by a sheet. His eyes looked blankly up at the ceiling, the only sound in the room the whir of the fan directed on Papa. The only evidence that he was even alive was the steady rise and fall of his stomach.

“Papa.” said April firmly, though her voice quivered a little. “Get up and pack.”

Loki stood in the doorway, his eyes riveted on the girl as she marched up to her comatose father and put both hands on his shoulder to shake him. A memory came to him suddenly, like whiplash, of himself as a child watching his father in the Odinsleep. The terror that gripped him like a cold hand as he sat at the Allfather’s bedside, unsure if his father would ever wake up again.

He was sure that this mortal felt the same way he had.

Her hands twisted into his shirt, pulling. “Up, Papa! Get out of bed!” a little sob slipped out against her will, and she sucked it back in. “Please, Papa?”

A strange pain in his chest made Loki step forward, his hand gently cupping April’s shoulder. She jumped, looking back at him with shining orbs brimming with sorrow. He began to guide her away from her father. “Come. He cannot hear you.”

“He has to…” she was letting Loki lead her, but she seemed to continue to reach for the motionless figure on the bed.

Shaking his head slowly, Loki removed her from that room, moving towards her own. “You mustn’t think about it. There is nothing you can do.”

“But my Papa--”

“Your Papa is not there now.” as he went into April’s room behind her and shut the door, Loki remembered the words that his mother had said to him when she found him fretting over the sleeping Odin. “All you can do is live happily, which is what he wants for you. Until he returns.”

His mother had ended her soothing by laughing and tousling his hair, telling him ‘He will always wake from the Odinsleep, son’. But now Loki wasn’t so sure that was true of his own father, and he felt little hope for the lifeless man in the next room.

April stood near her bed, looking to Loki for answers. “Will he come back?”

For once, Loki had the notion that he should lie to the child. “Yes.”

“Don’t lie.” she muttered immediately. “I can tell.”

Loki nodded, discarding that foolish notion. Of course she would know. “I do not know if he will or not.”

It was clear April was distraught, staring around her room like she had never seen it before. Taking pity on her again, Loki scooped her up under her arms and set her down on her bed. She didn’t seem like she was going to lunge at him again, so Loki sat down beside her and clasped his hands on his thighs. There were a few long moments spent in quiet, but neither party felt uncomfortable. Eventually April verbalized her thoughts faintly.

“How come this is happening to him?”

He didn’t know the answer, which was rather upsetting to the god. “I do not comprehend the workings of human minds. I could not say.”

April shuddered, hugging herself tightly. The fabric of her tiny world was unraveling, and Loki was impressed she wasn’t focusing on herself. By nature he was a selfish beast, and he knew that mortals were the same way. Yet this inconsequential, accidental combination of flesh and water did not mourn for her own loss. She mourned for her suffering mother and father.

“Can you help him?”

He had been dreading this question. Loki frowned and shook his head. “I cannot. My powers on Midgard allow me only to change things which are physical…” so far as he knew. Loki was no longer sure of his abilities in this realm, and he did not want to give the girl false hope.

The pair of petite shoulders at the side of him slumped, and April started tugging on a strand of her long hair. Loki noticed she did this hen she was upset. “Then…will you come with me?”

“Where?” Loki was confused.

April twisted her hair around her fingers. “The lake house.”

Loki debated inside his head. What was he gaining from staying here? Why had he stayed as long as he had? Something about watching this girl’s life like a phantom or an audience member at a play entertained him, fascinated him, and possibly even invigorated him. He felt some unexplainable camaraderie towards the whelp, though she could talk enough for three people twice her size, and she was constantly either shocking him or disrespecting his authority as a god.

It was new. And he liked it. Damn.

“Please, Loki?” she begged him, surprisingly non-whiny for a five-year-old, unaware he was already going to say yes. “I don’t want to…be alone.”

He raised an eyebrow at her. “I thought that was what you wanted.”

“Only sometimes.” admitted April sheepishly. “Not this way.”

If he was going to say no, he would have changed his mind when she turned the full force of her dove-gray puppy dog gaze on her.

“Fine.” Loki tried to seem irritated and did a good job.

Her sad grimace transformed seamlessly into a giant smile. “Thank you, Loki!”

Mortals were really much more complicated than he thought they were.