Days dragged to weeks, and weeks to months.
Frigga wept. For days she would not so much as speak to him. Then she came again to his side, and she wept, and she told him that she did not understand, but she was not willing to lose him also, in her grief.
He asked her if she yet blamed him for their son's death.
She said no. She told him wearily of how Loki had been, that last day. She blamed herself, she said. For not catching him. He'd fallen long before he let go of that spear.
Odin promised her that the fault lay not with her. If with any, it was with him. He ought to have heeded her long ago.
She sought him, he knew that. Using the ways she had learned as a girl. They ways of her people. She sought him in the reflections on pools of water, through the fractured truth of mirrors, in fire.
They did not speak of it, but he knew by the lines on her face that she did not find him.
For a long while, Thor did not speak to him either. He rarely left the confines of his room. Then, finally, one day and utterly without warning, Thor came to him and he told Odin that he knew he would never be as wise a king as he, nor would he ever be a better father.
But that was only half the task. Two sons Odin had.
Then, in the dark, Odin found him.