Chapter One: Horrible Histories

Alexis Vigdis walked solemnly down the steps of the New York University she currently worked at and glared at the dismal weather that greeted her.

"Of course you would make it rain today, Odin." Alexis muttered under her breath to a being she knew wasn't real. "Of course it would be today."

It was an anniversary of sorts, not nearly a happy one though. As she walked towards her 'adoptive' brother Tony, Alexis cringed as she remembered the events that had occurred years ago which had brought her here.

*Flashback*

The bedroom door banged open behind a young Alexis. She turned slowly to see her father. He hadn't been here in five years. He was forbidden by the law to be here now. This could only end one way… and it wouldn't be good.

"How's my sweet sixteen year old? Huh, baby girl?" Her father slurred his drunken state now apparent. Alexis backed away from him slowly, eyeing the door anxiously. Her father's gaze darkened. "Is this the welcome you give your father?"

"You're not supposed to be here…" Alexis whispered, instantly regretting her choice of words.

Her father lunged at her, grabbing a fistful of her hair. Alexis screamed in fear and agony, she knew where this was leading. She'd been told that this pain and humiliation was over, that she'd never be subjugated to it ever again… she had been misinformed.

She hit and kicked at her father as he reached down, tearing her shirt from her body in an attempt to do again what he used to do to her. But Alexis wasn't a little girl anymore. She was a teenager… a teen ager with the attitude and the ability to fight back… to some degree at least.

'No.' she thought. 'Never again.'

Alexis eyed the lamp that stood just within her reach. She flung her arm out and grabbed it and, with a cry of disgust, slammed it against the side of her father's head. He released her and staggered back as he clutched the side of his head.

Alexis dashed out of her room and down the hall to her mother's room. She found her lying unconscious on the floor, a baseball bat just out of the reach of her outstretched arm. Glancing desperately around the room, Alexis heard her father moving down the hall towards where she now stood. Alexis dashed to the door and locked it against his entry. He banged fruitlessly against the door barring his way, however, after a few more failed attempts to break the door down, he chuckled.

"If I can't get in to you, my sweet, I shall make you come out to me." He laughed sinisterly. "I shall smoke you out like the hunter smokes out the fox from its hole of a home."

Alexis froze. She heard the sound of wood shattering and then the crackle of burning wood. Smoke made its way under the door and permeated the air in the room. Alexis choked with each breath she took as she tried to open the door she had previously locked to save herself, only to find it now barring her escape from the furnace that surrounded her and her mother. She could hear her father's maniacal laughter coming from somewhere outside the burning house. Alexis looked at him from the window, but her look of utter defeat was erased when a police cruiser screamed to a halt behind him and he was tackled to the ground. That moment of triumph was short lived. The burning house groaned as its supports were eaten away by the hungry flames. Alexis looked up at the ceiling just in time to see it give way and fall…onto her mother.

This time when she screamed, it was because nearly everything inside her died for that one moment. Even as she tossed away burning pieces of ceiling, dragged her mother away from the inferno, kicked out the window and hauled her mother out onto the veranda roof to drop her into the waiting arms of the fire-fighters below, she knew she'd been too late…she'd been too late even before the fire started. Her father had finally taken everything from her.

As Alexis dropped to the ground the house gave a final groan and collapsed, pushing a still burning beam outwards to fall, seemingly in slow motion, onto Alexis. And that's where the world went black…

*End Flashback*

"C'mon Lexie!" Tony patronised slightly. "I need you back at Stark Tower for dinner. Can't have you wasting away on me now, huh?" Alexis nodded glumly, and he knew why. "Hey, c'mon. The last thing I want is to lose you… you and Pepper…you're all I've got…"

Alexis managed a smile, "We sure are." She replied as Tony pulled her into his red convertible.

She watched as Tony tapped his ear-piece. "Y'ello?" Tony's smile faded and his expression and tone suddenly turned grim as he faced her. "There's someone who wants to meet you." He said, a sharp look in his eyes as he turned back to the road. "You might not want to do anything freaky tonight little darling, and… play nice."

When he wouldn't explain further, Alexis touched a hand gently to the back of her neck and shoulder as she sat quietly in the car, remembering the pain. The metal of the beam imprinted the feather pattern it held onto the skin of her upper back. It was a memory she wished to forget, and one she knew she never would.