Under the dead of night, Samantha Davidson was driving on a bridge crossing the James River. She was heading home from a long day at work, her head clouded by all things pediatrics. She rubbed her eyes, and as she glanced towards the water, she had seen a small shape moving along the side of the river. At first, she was certain she had to be seeing things. However, as she focused in on the shadow, she realized it was another woman, and no one else seemed to be around.

Samantha parked the car on the side of the road as soon as she reached the other end of the bridge. She had weaved through trees and muck to get to the bank of the river, and soon, she spotted a muddled girl walking along the water. She had to be in her mid-twenties. She was soaked, and she looked lost and hurt. Samantha wondered if the girl might have been running from an abusive husband or something, but as she called out to her, the girl didn't respond. She seemed completely incoherent, dazed as she lazily walked along the ground.

"Hey! You okay?"

Then, the girl collapsed to the ground, as if all of the energy had been taken out of her. Samantha hurried over to her, falling beside her only to try and help her up. No one else was here, but she still wondered if maybe this poor soul was running from something. She helped her back to the car, carefully aiding her into the passenger's seat, though she still seemed too far out of it to really say much of anything.

After a minute of driving down the road and dreading how much cleaning it would take to get the mud out of that seat, Samantha spoke.

"What happened to you?"

The girl just leaned her head back against the seat, her platinum hair half-covering her face as she stared out through the window. She looked traumatized by something, though Samantha wasn't about to push it any further. Once they got back to the house, Samantha texted her husband, Jerry. There was no doubt he would raise questions if he came home to see some strange woman, but she wasn't about to leave her stranded out there. As a person in the medical field, her heart bled if she saw anyone in pain.

She started up a nice, hot bath for the stranger, even heated and stirred up some leftover spaghetti for her. As the girl bathed, Samantha was getting ready to throw the dirtied, though strange dress in the washing machine when she found a handwritten letter in its pocket.

It was addressed to a Dahlia, though most of it was unreadable, as the ink had been smudged beyond recognition by the water. She wondered if that was the name of the girl she had brought here.

Eventually, she heard the bathroom door open, and the girl with the silver hair looked much better than before, dressed in some pajamas that Samantha had let her borrow. Compared to the strange garb the girl wore before, cute owls suited her better.

"Are you hungry?" she offered her, leading her into the kitchen. "I have some leftover pasta."

"Thank you..." Finally, her first words came, though Samantha wasn't sure she recognized her accent - some sort of European descent, she imagined.

"Sure," she said, setting down a bowl of spaghetti with a fork and a napkin. "Is your name Dahlia?"

At first, the girl appeared as if she had to think about it. If she had memory loss, Samantha certainly hadn't seen any blood that indicated she might have been hit on the head or anything. "Yes."

Good, at least she got something out of her. Before Samantha could ask any more questions, however, she found herself gawking as Dahlia started eating the spaghetti, using her fingers to pick the noodles out of the bowl. "Uh..." Did this girl forget how to use eating utensils, too? "Do you remember what happened?"

As the other girl stopped, she seemed uncertain again, but her face expressed that she was trying to recall. Finally, she shook her head. "I don't remember..."

Samantha supposed she might have to take her to the hospital, but she seemed perfectly healthy. She had no injuries that she could tell, and she certainly had a healthy appetite. It was then that the doctor noticed that Dahlia had an interesting necklace around her neck, the likes of which she'd never seen - it looked like a set of wings, and in the center of them was a symbol that almost resembled the shape of a key. Maybe bringing that up might trigger a memory?

"That's a pretty necklace you have there," she pointed it out, sitting down at the table across from her. Dahlia looked down at it as she slurped down her spaghetti, though she still seemed generally confused about the whole situation. Dahlia would then look over to the television, which was on the news channel that had been reviewing the events of New York City and the wormhole that had materialized above it. Samantha wondered... Would this stranger have anything to do with it? Was she even of this world?

That was definitely jumping ahead on assumptions, but in this day and age, with gods and mutations making themselves known to the world, what was it to say that wasn't entirely possible?

When Jerry came home, he seemed relatively uninterested in the unexpected visitor. He had a long day at work, too, trying to help his organization clean up more of the mess from New York City's massive disaster. That was part of what S.H.I.E.L.D. did, after all. Her husband usually had a story or two to tell about The Avengers, but today, he was just exhausted.

Samantha took Dahlia to the hospital the next day to do some exams on her, though kept it a secret from her colleagues. After all, she was supposed to be off today. Her CT and MRI scans seemed totally normal, as did everything else, except her blood pressure was a little high. Aside from that, she was as healthy as she ought to be for her age. Dahlia was cooperative through the whole thing, and though she still seemed somewhat lethargic, she did talk a little, though her speech seemed kind of...formal, maybe?

It was hard to explain.

Finally, she raised some of her questions up with Jerry, who took some time to communicate with her. He thought he might have been getting somewhere when, on the third night, tragedy struck. Samantha was upstairs when it all came down. She heard a glass window shatter, followed by her husband yelling from the living room. At first, she thought perhaps Dahlia might have snapped, but as she ran down the stairs to see what was happening, she saw two, strange, yet terrifying creatures that looked kind of like floating eyeballs with tentacles. She would have screamed, had Dahlia not already been using a fireplace poker to take them out...and with the skill of a freaking ninja, at that.

Jerry had been injured in the fight, but after the two nightmares had fled, the girl instantly took to healing him, and she used magic.

So cool!

"What are you?" Samantha asked in disbelief, though she knew she probably should have been thanking Dahlia for saving her husband's life. Yet, she watched as the woman fell to the floor in heavy breaths, as if what she had just done took everything out of her. At the same time, her face took on a look mixed with horror and confusion.

"I... I don't know..."

Jerry realized right away that something else had to be done with Dahlia. Doctors visits and hospitality was not what this woman needed. He explained to Samantha that he wanted to talk to Fury and see what he thought of the situation. It was evident to him that those monsters had come for Dahlia, and they only attacked him because he was in the wrong place at the wrong time. What they were, he didn't know, but he was willing to bet that they were also the reason that Dahlia wound up here in New York to begin with.

She most certainly was not human, and with healing and combat skills like that, with a little bit of work, she could prove to be a valuable ally for S.H.I.E.L.D.

He just had to talk to the big guy first, and that in itself would take some time.

Samantha saw more and more of what Dahlia was capable of as the weeks passed. The woman stayed in their home with them, and on occasion, Samantha had a client that needed help with their child, though they were more or less friends that chose to come see her when she was off the clock, though they really should have been making appointments.

The doctor found herself dumbfounded when she witnessed her house guest heal a child's infected spider bite - one that would have been quite gruesome if he hadn't been given antibiotics. Right there in front of her, there was a blue glow and a swirl of light - something that Samantha had never seen in her life.

She told Jerry, and finally, with this news, Jerry was able to get Nick Fury's attention.

Since then, things hadn't exactly been simple, even though she almost never got to see her friend once she was recruited by S.H.I.E.L.D. Jerry, who worked closely with the director of one of their subdivisions, Pandora Peters, and Ms. Peters had been the one to approach them with what they found out.

She was the daughter of a Norse goddess. The details hadn't been worked out yet, but the runic symbol on the necklace, along with her abilities, was strong evidence enough to point to that. Samantha was awestruck by the fact that she had helped a goddess get back up on her feet, but that still didn't explain a number of things, like how Dahlia got to earth, and why couldn't she remember who she was?

"Are you really that surprised?" Nick Fury inquired, standing across from Dahlia as she sank into the chair behind her. She didn't know what to think. Sure, she knew something was strange about her, but...

"A goddess?" she repeated, stuttering slightly. "Not me... I'm a nobody."

"So far, you've proven yourself wrong." Even after a week of visiting the organization and Fury for questioning, she had a hard time not staring at his eye patch, and her curiosity as to how he lost his eye had yet to dissipate.

She said nothing.

"That necklace you're wearing... You've never taken it off, have you?"

"This thing?" she asked, looking down at the chain around her neck. Samantha had made mention of it before. She couldn't remember where it came from, or who gave it to her, but she always kept it close. "No, I guess not."

"It's a Norse rune. I certainly don't know what it stands for, but I bet I know someone who would." He was dialing numbers on his phone now. Dahlia watched tensely. Over these past, few weeks, she had seen Samantha and Jerry use similar devices to contact people that were far away. They called it a cell phone, apparently.

"Send him on up," Fury said into the device before he would hang up. He sat down in one of the chairs across from the dumbfounded recruit, watching her expression for a moment as it changed from surprise to confusion, then to disbelief. "This happens more than you'd think," he said, and she wasn't sure if he was trying to comfort her or just state a fact. "If there's one thing we seem to be good at, aside from saving the world, it's helping people like you learn who you really are."

Soon, behind him, the elevator doors opened, a man with short, blond hair and an eye patch walked in. The shining armor and red cape that waved in his wake seemed oddly familiar to her, but for some reason, she couldn't place it.

Instantly, the unnamed man stopped in his steps, looking a little unsettled the moment he set eyes on her, as if he already recognized her.

"Dahlia, this is Thor."

Though she felt a little weak in the legs, Dahlia stood up from her chair. Thor. She remembered the name. Why couldn't she make sense out of it?

As Thor accepted a handshake, his eyes cast to the necklace that had been earlier discussed.

"That symbol there," he nodded to it. "Do you know of its meaning?"

"No. I don't."

"It belonged to Freyja."

It was as if a little light had turned on in her head, though there were still many shadows cast by unseen objects. Freyja was the Goddess of love, lust, and healing. Dahlia was her daughter...

She served well as a healer, and though without much purpose, she aided S.H.I.E.L.D. when she could in that field. After some time, she was able to acquire her own house in Newburgh, New York. She still felt out of place, to say the least, but Thor aided her where he could, even came to visit her when she wasn't working.

Then, one night, about four months down the road, it hit her. In the middle of the night, it was like waking up from a nightmare - except that wasn't what it was at all. There was this feeling in the pit of her stomach - something that told her that she had woken up from a terrible memory.

The corpses of dozens of Valkyries were sprawled across Asgard. Dahlia had retreated to a cave close by as Hel struck down Agnethe. Her sister by blood... she had thrown herself in front of another Valkyrie, taking the Spear of Death and sacrificing herself.

At first, it was only fear that drove her deeper into the cavern. It was only until she realized that she was safe from Hel that the guilt finally hit her. That was when the Nightmares came. She had been a coward - instead of fighting to protect her sister and fellow warriors, she had fled to protect her own hide. She had truly believed that it was a battle that could not be won.

But was that really any good excuse for what she had done?