Author's Notes: One of the very first things I thought about when I sat down to write these fics was an alternate ending to account for the end of Journey Into Mystery. I wasn't sure I was going to take them that far - wasn't sure this would be more than a one-shot - but then I got a comment pointing out what would happen if, post Journey Into Mystery 645, Ikol still didn't believe in Jack, and my heart broke a little. I dedicate this part in the series and the one following to that reviewer. You made sure these got written. :|b

I know the tone takes a sudden shift, here; I honestly couldn't work out a way to ease into it and still cover the part-important parts of JiM I wanted to touch on. Also, first installment that's Jack's pov, so that's a bit different, as well. If I have readers that DON'T know JiM, I tried to give a little background on what's going on here without recapping a very full, very involved plot. Sorry for that. Also, you should read it - it's amazing.

In Which Everything Burns and Our Story Escalates Quickly

Loki tells him one night while they're staring up at the place the ceiling should be, each lying on a pallet on the floor, the stars shining through the hole above them. In the corner, the foul-mouthed dog the boy's so proud of snores like a chainsaw, and somewhere way off, there's the drone of an airplane passing. Nothing else. There's never anything else out here but the two of them.

The story sounds like some kind of fairytale gone wrong: crowns made of fear, and thrones for the taking, and a political power grab it hurts his head just to think about. It's worse when he tries to picture Loki stuck in the middle of it all, stripped of his thoughts and private terrors to make some trinket to be worn by the things that go bump in the night.

When everything's told, and there's nothing left to fill the silence but the way the dog snores, way too loud for such a little thing, Jack turns onto his side so he can look Loki in the face.

"Seriously?" he says. "How do you know they won't just, I dunno, make some kind of alliance?"

The boy beside him waves a hand flippantly, as though to dismiss the very idea, but Jack sees the way he hesitates just a moment too long. The way he isn't quite as confident as he pretends. "The Fear Lords, risk a betrayal? Hardly. Those in power don't stay in power by means such as those."

Jack watches him a moment – watches him bite at his lip and crinkle his forehead. It's not the kind of look that means he's planning something fun; it's the kind of look that mean he's thinking about something heavy, and Jack hates that look worst of all. "What?" he asks. "By teaming up?"

The quiet laugh that comes is mocking someone, Jack's pretty sure, but he doesn't know if it's him or the Fear Lords or whoever's in power – or even Loki himself. "By laying trust where trust is undeserved."

Jack levers himself up onto his elbow. He fixes the boy with a stare that's three-fourths determination and the rest reckless bravado. "Well," he says, "lucky you're not in power. Next time some demon wants to steal a crown made out of your nightmares, give me a call."

In the darkness of the tower, Loki smiles. It's just visible, a crooked curve of his lips. "That you may leave icicles upon it?"

"That I may tell it to keep its greedy hands to itself," Jack huffs, and when Loki starts to snicker, he flops back down onto his back so that he can put his elbow to better use: namely, digging it into the boy's side. It's weird, still, that he's able to – weird that he doesn't pass through Loki like he has everyone else for three hundred years – but he'd be lying if he said it wasn't a good kind of weird. He'd be lying if he said the past few weeks, with someone to talk to and invent games with and notice him, haven't been twenty different kinds of amazing.

He gets a squawk for his efforts, a flailing of limbs, and then Loki is returning the elbow in kind. "And demons are likely to take requests, do you think? I imagine they aren't overly fond of being told what to do."

Jack grins at the boy, careless and wide. "Is anyone?"

Loki starts to answer him. He opens his mouth to reply, but his attention is caught by something else, something near the window. His eyes track across the small chamber, move to focus in the shadows of the tower, and Jack follows his gaze, searching for what he sees.

There is nothing, but Loki stares directly at it all the same. "If I've need of your input," the boy says, voice crisp and clipped, dismissive, "you shall be the very first to know."

And that – that's when Jack starts to worry.

Everything burns, and it's not like any fire Jack's ever seen.

When he dumps a blizzard on Burgess to put it out, it keeps right on going, the flames licking higher and higher, taking everything with them. Jack swelters; he gasps like a fish out of water; his skin is warm flesh tones instead of snowy pale, and that's never happened before.

He stays anyway, makes sure all the kids are out and safe, that the whole town is evacuated. And if he's got burns at the end of it, red strips on his hands from forcing open the jammed window of a burning building to get the girl inside it out in one piece, well – given a do-over, he'd take the burns again.

It's Loki's place he heads for when he's finished – tells the wind to make it fast, grits his teeth against the way his burned palm protests holding onto the staff, and rushes through the smoky skies. Below him, cities and fields sear and flicker and flame.

By the time he reaches the tower, he's anxious, and it only gets worse when he realizes Loki's not there. Jack calls for him, long and loud – circles the ruins of old Asgard and then the newer spires of Asgardia when he finds nothing at all.

He has a sudden, terrible conviction that he's waited too long. That while he was busy helping others, Loki needed him, too. That now the boy's nothing more than ash and char, because Jack wasn't there when he should have been.

Jack redoubles his efforts – yells Loki's name until he's hoarse. He searches the likeliest places and then the improbable ones, crossing and re-crossing the Oklahoma countryside.

He finally catches sight of the boy by chance, a lone figure in a drift of snow, green and black on white. A bundle of wood is clutched in his arms and he hunches against the wind, and Jack swoops down to land before him with a crow of delight.

"However did you-" Loki begins – but he gets no farther, because Jack bowls him over when he wraps the boy in an impulsive hug, tight and sudden and relieved.

"It's going crazy out there" Jack says when he pulls back, earnestly concerned. "Everything's on fire. Did you see the smoke?"

And Loki – clever Loki, always ready with a quip and a smile – Loki, the most self-assured person Jack has ever known – Loki, his first and only friend – begins to cry, face crumpling like a snowman too long in the sun.

"This was never meant to happen," the boy gasps out, and Jack is so startled that it takes him a moment to react – to step in close so that when Loki slumps like he can't hold his own weight anymore, it's Jack's shoulder he falls against. "I had the very best of intentions," Loki says – or at least, that's probably what he says, because the words are so choked and thick with tears that they aren't easy to translate.

"Hey, calm down," Jack tells him. He puts a hand on Loki's back and rubs, the way he's seen countless mothers do for children over the course of three centuries. "It's gonna be okay."

But that only makes the boy cry harder, and so Jack shuts up for awhile and just holds him, until his shoulders stop shaking and his breathing evens out. It's then that Jack pulls back enough to offer a smile – reassuring and optimistic as he can muster, because it looks like reassuring and optimistic are two things that Loki could use some more of right now.

"I meant that," Jack says. "Whatever it is, it's gonna be fine. You tell me what's the matter, and we'll fix it."

He's not sure what he expects, but it's definitely not this. It's not the flood of words that comes out of Loki's mouth, a tower of good intentions that grows so high it topples itself. It's not war and deceit and demons and fire that never ends. It's not this plan, this awful thing that Loki chokes out like its strangling him, this terrible, wonderful idea that requires him to throw away his brother's hard-won trust. Jack listens, and his skin, still unnaturally flushed from the fires that rage all around the world, begins to pale under the high spots of color. "I thought," he manages, when Loki's finished, "that you were supposed to be good at planning."

And Loki draws himself up – scrubs at his face and is somehow indignant even with his eyes still red, tears still drying sticky on his cheeks. "There has never been a brighter strategic mind in all of Asgard," he proclaims.

"Hey, brilliant strategist." Jack fixes him with a long look and bends to pick up the firewood that's fallen into the snow, forgotten. "What's your exit plan?"

There is silence. A whole beat of it, and the boy's eyes won't meet his, and Jack should be surprised but somehow he isn't, really.

"That's what I thought," he says. "Sounds like the whole getting out alive part could use some work."

Loki's like a statue coming to life, unfreezing a bit at a time as he moves to help collect the wood. "And I suppose you've concocted a clever scheme of your own?"

"Nah," Jack tells him. "Just made a couple of changes to yours." He picks up the last piece of wood and stands, grinning at the boy beside him. "Like back-up, for one."

He's never seen quite that expression before. That almost comically poleaxled, wide-eyed shock. "Your mind," Loki says slowly, "has contracted some rotting disease of dubious origin." The boy inspects him as though he expects to see Jack's brain seeping out his ear. "I speak of traveling to Muspelheim. You shall melt."

Jack snorts. "What," he demands, "you think I can't take a little heat?"

He can't, in fact, take a little heat.

Or maybe it's just that "a little" turns out to be rocks that burn to touch, air that shimmers with the temperature, and pools of lava spread like orange marmalade across the cavern floors. He's sweating in three minutes, and he can't remember sweating – not once in three hundred years. Not ever. By the eight minute mark, he's unsteady on his feet; by twelve, he's light-headed; by fifteen, he's relying on his staff the way a baby learning how to walk leans on the wall. The rock beneath his bare feet is too warm, and the longer he stands in one place, the more the warmth begins to creep into stinging pain, the way he imagines sunburn must feel.

It's the way he's always pictured hell, that promise of doom and gloom and fiery torment that was so popular in the God-fearing 18th century. And it's not just the flames, though there's a fair share of those, too. It's the way things seem to fall down like dominos, all in a neat line: betrayal after betrayal, lie after lie, a denunciation of the world so filled with raw pain that Jack can't quite bring himself to disbelieve it entirely, even when he knows it's for show. Even when he knows it's part of the plan.

Watching it all, Jack thinks: this was supposed to be the end. He thinks: there wasn't supposed to be anything after this.

And when the time comes for that new exit plan – for the only exit plan – Jack grabs the boy, glad for once that he's unseen, and pulls him in close. He flies them toward anywhere but here, and he tells himself that no one's tale is going to end in this place where devils would be at home.

The future's full of crisp, fresh air and second chances, and when Jack gets them there, they fall onto the snowy ground and gasp in lungfuls that don't taste like smoke and sulfur.

There is a single night to recover.

They sit up long into the early morning hours eating leftover fruitcake and salt pork, smoked herring and slow-cured lamb – the things they've left for last, because they keep the longest. Loki catches sight of the soles of Jack's feet, the skin gone red and blistered from the hot stone of Muspelheim, and he consults one of his books for the ingredients to a salve. He mixes it with mortar and pestle, and when he has finished he applies it liberally, wrapping his handiwork in strips of cloth cut from the blanket.

They talk for a long time, about the stern girl Loki cares for – about his brother, who very nearly died – about the dog, whose absence in the corner is conspicuous. The tower is much quieter, without its snores.

They lie side by side on the pallets on the floor, staring up at the stars through the hole in the ceiling, and as the fires go out all around the world, Jack's skin fades from its strange flushed tone back to the usual pale. He's almost asleep when he feels Loki's hand slip into his own, cool and tentative. It closes there and squeezes, and Jack smiles up at the night.

He squeezes it back, and he doesn't think about what he almost lost today.

The day comes and goes and comes again, and Jack returns with the sun, swooping in on the wind to land like a tightrope walker on the edge of the crumbled wall.

"Looks like Burgess is in one piece," he announces, hopping to the floor with an easy grin. "Couple of houses aren't so pretty anymore, but no one's hurt."

Loki doesn't answer. He's sprawled across the floor, a book open in front of him. He's the picture of a boy who's stayed up too late reading and fallen asleep at the task – but sweat stands on his brow as though he's run a race, and there is tension in his jaw and a crease in his brow. His eyes are closed, but he says, very clearly, "A single crown for seven heads, and seven minds who'd never agree on who that should be."

It is a scholarly tone, dry, as though recounting a history lecture, and for an instant Jack thinks the words are meant for him – but Loki carries on, still seemingly asleep. "Unless something came from the outside."

"Loki?" says Jack – but the boy is still speaking, tone clipped and smug and not at all his own. He weaves a tale of a lord of hell ascending, and Jack feels a shiver of dread start in his spine. He reaches for his friend's shoulder to shake him awake. "Loki!"

The book, he sees, is a tome – hand-written in calligraphy, with thick, cream-colored paper. "Why did Loki do it?" asks the page that is open. "No-one knows."

"The crown is of your thoughts and dreams," says the boy, self-satisfied and strange, in that tone that is not his. "If they ceased to be, the crown would, too."

Jack remembers being told of the crown of fear. He remembers the power struggle that was supposed to be infinite, and the shiver trickles down to pool in his stomach. It settles at the base of his throat and catches the breath there – makes him feel like he's choking.

He listens to a play of words against words, to that insinuating, matter-of-fact condemnation. He listens to Loki speak in the tone he does not know – listens to replies in the one that he does. He hears the desperation when the boy insists, "There must be another way."

"Yes," comes the answer. "Alas, you don't have the time to find it."

Jack does not wait. He does not hesitate. The thought springs into his mind fully-formed, a strategy that the boy on the floor would have been proud of. He lifts his staff into the air and calls for the wind, and it sweeps into the broken tower, snatches him up and tumbles him end over end, but there is no thrill of flight, no rush of joy. There is only a sick, tight knot of fear clutched in his chest; there is only the desire to push farther, faster, now.

Maybe, Jack thinks, that other voice is right. Maybe there wouldn't have been enough time to find another way.

But Jack – Jack doesn't have to look.