Disclaimer: Nope, I do not own these awesome characters, locations 'n stuff. They're all Marvel's properties and I don't own any kind of business, too. No trademarks and stuff. And Shinedown is a band that I do not own, too. I own this plot idea, though. Awesome, right? -

TW: Mentions of child abuse; parental neglect, depression, suicidal thoughts and self-depreciation. We'll have a lot of cursing ahead, too. And expect some violence in the far future.

AN: Once more I want to thank you, my dear reviewers 3 your the joy of my life. Together with my coffee, of course, hehe :P

This chapter is bigger than the other ones I've posted here, so I hope you don't mind. This is gonna be a pattern for some parts of the story, and yes, the details are here because they're important.

AN2: By the way, this work has no beta, so, if you are or know of someone who might be interested...I'm all "eyes".

Thanks for your support and I hope you like this new chapter 3

Enjoy ^^

Arch 2 - Re:Life

Chapter 2: Ten Thousand Miles To Valhalla

"Seems like I crossed the line again for being nothing more than who I am."

Shinedown - Bully

Mist haunted her vision as her eyes slowly unclosed. There was a fog in her mind that seemed to devour every single memory she wished to replay, and a merciless beeping inside her ears that almost made her stomach empty itself from whatever it was she ate in the hours before.

Cold overtook her body as if ice-forged daggers penetrated her pores. It dried her eyes and burned her face, and trying to clear her head challenged her memory in a battle of difficulties and wills she honestly didn't knew which side hope to win.

Why was it so cold, anyway? She could swear it's intensity numbed her brain. Perhaps even her soul. Or maybe it was an after effect of waking up damp and frozen and with the sensation of being hit by a truck.

It took some time for her eyes to clear up a little and slightly adjust to wherever she was, and even more for her brain to take in her surroundings as something more than a distant and distorted dream.

The cold came from the droplets of rain that cascaded from above. They drenched her clothes with the mercy of a raging bull, and sent shivers through her bones each time they iced against her ribs. There were no winds, thought. Not even a soft breeze to touch her skin.

She wasn't sure if it made it all better or if it made it all worse.

What happened? She wasn't sure. Fragmented memories kept resurfacing in her mind, but their matches could never be found. Maybe they'd mend when her headache dimmed at little. But that could be wishful thinking, too.

The beeping sound in her ears receded, and she was finally able to think clearly. It surprised her how many facts her fogged mind missed since she woke up. From her back being pressed against protruding solid objects - probably stones - to her neck being positioned in a bizarre angle.

She felt like a chicken thrown away by an electric current. Normally, she'd find the situation way too funny for her own good, but it was hard to be amused when pain raced through her core faster than her thoughts could hope to process it.

She tried to rearrange the position of her neck. A loud crack echoed when she did.

Teeth gritted, she slid her hands across the mud and tried to get up. Her arms gave in and she felt her face embed in the ground. If asked, she'd never be able to pickup which taste worse on her tongue right then: the blood from her slit lips, or the dirt she thankfully didn't swallowed on her fall.

The rain still fell and the cold still hungered for her skin. She knew the more she laid there, the closer she got to the hospital. If anyone would be stupid enough to go to the middle of nowhere to search for any "victims of a supernatural storm, who happen to be alive, but fucks know for how long", that is.

Her hands pulled against the ground. Her right shoulder cracked, but she didn't gave in. She didn't want to think about where she'd end up if she gave up. No neighbour would search for her, and certainly no one would miss her soon enough.

She was finally able to kneel, and, ever so slowly, she was able to stand up, albeit on shaky legs. It was better than laying on the ground and waiting for her death, she supposed. And it wasn't like she was one to bother herself about how "graceful" her moves were, anyway.

Her vision blurred and she took a dizzied step back. She couldn't believe how hard it actually was to maintain the food she ate where it should be, and not spread all over the ground. And she had tasted McDonald's before.

One breath.

The hell was she thinking, anyway? She knew there was something wrong about that night, but still she had to go out and "play the reckless girl". Why couldn't she just stay in her bed, warm and safe that blasted storm!?

A pause.

Warm? Safe? She'd be in the same fucking situation if she'd stayed home. Maybe even worse. Damn, she'd have much more lucky in a day than in her entire life if her house was still standing!

Two breaths.

So what? "There was no time to think about what ifs", after all. She just needed to calm down, and get the hell out of the rain. Then she could freak out and search through her head for some "found" memories of her luck.

Three breaths.

Her eyes adjusted themselves to the night. They grew wide with perfect synchrony with her mouth's horrified gasp.

"What the fuck?" she couldn't help but breathe out. She knew the storm had being ugly, and not natural at all, and she might have been slightly exaggerating about her house being crushed by it's force, but she couldn't be so sure any more.

She could relate the forest - what was left of it, anyway - to one of two perfect scenarios, and she wasn't particularly happy about either of them. Who would be, when they had to choose between Godzilla taking a walk through the woods and a bloody big bomb exploding right next to their faces?

Trees had fallen down in all directions across the landscape. Some were twisted in ways that, if she didn't knew better, she'd say Godzilla really had his way with them. But the most disturbing sight was the perfect, untouched state of the woods just a little up ahead.

Good news were her house was probably untouched, too. Bad news were that, whatever the hell that storm was, it was directed at something, and she really hoped it wasn't her. She really, really hoped it wasn't her.

Something warm slid down her forehead. She didn't needed to touch to know exactly what it was. Instead, she took in all the damage done to the ground. Holes were dug in random patterns, and she was sure that some of them were made by the abrupt way the trees were probably ripped out of the ground.

A strange high-pitched sound came from her side. It startled her enough that she stumbled on her own legs and had to lean against the remains of a tree to keep her from falling down again. She could hear her heart drum in her ears and threaten to escape her chest, and she was certain that her legs were trembling that much before.

"Fuck!" she exclaimed as she took calming breaths. It was embarrassing how much time she needed to calm herself down, let alone notice that the strange sound came from what she believed to be her phone. It was in pieces, though, and there was no way it should be able to even switch itself on, let alone make that kind of sound.

The hell was wrong with her life!? First aliens, then an alien invasion, then another fucking alien invasion, then a supernatural storm she was now apparently able to remember being hit by last night - was that even last night? - and then a bloody phone who made sounds all across the place, from where it's damnable little pieces where thrown across! The hell would come next? More aliens? Another alien invasion!?

Because of course there would be a "next". There was no way she'd let herself be taken away by a mere rain when she had survived much worse shit.

She took another deep breath, closed her eyes, and again forced herself not to puke. She wasn't sure how many more of those close calls she'd be able to escape, and she honestly had no desire to discover.

Shaky step after shaky step, she approached the destroyed phone, and, the more she walked, the more it's tune blasted, unaware of the sheer impossibility of doing so. At least the music played itself normally, and not in some creepy slowed down shit. If there was something about that whole situation she was thankful for, it was that small fact, of that she was sure. And maybe the fact she wasn't as dead as she could've been, too, of course.

Darcy was almost close enough to see it's lightened screen when she heard a loud crack. The sound echoed amidst the forest's remains, and it's wooden successor made obvious it's ominous intentions.

Luck seemed to be playing in her team - or maybe not exactly -, for as soon as her head turned around, the mud beneath her feet gave in and she fell backwards to the ground. Her back and ribs already hurt before, and, after that, she was certain her butt would hurt, too, but she was thankful that the only thing the tree crushed was her already broken phone. It shut the hell up, at least.

And she couldn't bring herself to keep her laughter at bay.

She smiled, giggled, and laughed so hard her ribs started to hurt, this time not only from than physical damage. And, if anyone was there to hear it, it wouldn't be so hard to realize her laughter lacked anything but mirthless despair. Not when she could hear it herself.

It took her some time to calm down and stand up, and, when she finally did, she wasn't sure if the liquid she could almost taste against her lips leaked from the clouds above, her forehead or her eyes.

The mist still clouded her vision, but, as her eyes danced across the landscape, she knew that she was lost. She had spent much of her free time in the woods to know that, wherever she was, it wasn't close to the cliff she used to sit. And she wasn't about to think how distant she might be of her house.

Her head still hurt, but the pain seemed to tune down from time to time. She wondered if that was why she could remember last night so clearly, when she was unable to hold onto any shattered glimpse not long before.

She could hear a distant clatter of water. It came from the unlucky part of the forest, though, but she was no way near a stable enough mental state to made the decision not to follow it. She knew it was the sound of a river, and, if she was lucky enough, she'd be able to get back to her house with no more supernatural shit.

A deep breath was all she could muster up to mock the very notion of luck favouring her two times in the same lifetime. But, as her legs started to move and her arms to support herself against the trees that were still around - and hopefully wouldn't fall down after being touched -, she knew there was nothing else to do. She had to keep going.

And so she did.

So, maybe following the possible sound of running water wasn't the best of her ideas so far, after all. It wasn't even a matter of finding the bloody thing or not any more, but of penetrating more and more into the devastated section of the forest - the same one that seemed to get worse the more she kept her walk.

While earlier she only found trees and holes to be amiss, now enormous stones were thrown all over the place. Some of them were trapped beneath the bizarre roots that protruded from the ground.

Some mundane thing were mixed in the debris, too. They ranged from tarnished clothes and pieces of paper to broken windows and chunks of wood that were clearly part of a house. She supposed some cabin must've been built on the storm's path. Or maybe it was a piece of her house's wall - who's to know? And was that a hello-kitty watch dangling from a tree branch?

She flinched a little as she supported herself against the same tree it dangled from. Her back was a little better, even though it still hurt to move around. The rain was just as merciless as before, though, and she wasn't sure how much more of it she'd be able to take.

Not much, that's for sure.

What the hell had happened back then, anyway? She kept referring to it as a "storm", but she had no idea what it really was. She might have studied political science, but any half assed high school student should know that clouds weren't supposed to fall down from the skies so fast, not to mention twirl around like a fucking hurricane!

The closer shit she could compare to the "storm" was when that blond asshole suddenly fell down from the skies in New Mex...

Well, shit.

There was zero doubt that it wasn't Thor. He said something about a search and whatnot the last time she saw him. And, all the other times in which he visited after the initial "desert fiasco", there weren't big news about entire landscapes being laid to waste, anyway. Not by his sole arrival, at least.

And, as far as she knew, Loki was dead for some time now. She didn't knew any detail, but Jane said something about a heroic death. It was extremely hard for her to picture the words "Loki" and "heroic" in the same sentence, with no "anti" in between, that is.

But that was probably because she didn't knew him that much, anyway. She had seem him really few times in the past, and none of them was in person. And she knew damn well that there was only too much appearances could give away about someone.

All that made things so much worse for her, though. If something non-earthly had fallen down from the skies, then she was in for a shitload of problems, regardless of which direction she walked to. She just hoped the "new alien invasion" thing wouldn't come that soon...or at all.

Damn it all to hell! She had moved out of city to distance herself from these kind of craps. But she it seemed she was s crap magnet! And she wasn't even talking about love life or some other mundane bullshit normal people worried about. She was talking about fucking aliens!

Was she fated to suffer through such things? All she had wanted was to complete her studies. But then she applied to be Jane's assistant, and everything was fine for some time. Until shit hit the fan in the most colossal way, that is.

There was a sudden pain on her left leg, and she had to rearrange herself against the tree. She pressed her back against it's bark and hissed when they hurt, too. Not nearly as much as when she first woke up, thought.

And then there was that warm feeling spreading through her right hand - the same one she relocated on the tree seconds before. She closed her eyes and took in a heavy breath, just as a dark shiver uprooted from the bottom of her back.

She knew exactly what it was going to be, and exactly where it didn't came from. But to open her eyes and see for herself it's red shape slid down between her fingers made burn a whole new sinister feeling through her core.

Her heart sped up again, and she wondered for a brief second if she'd need to find a doctor for more than physical pains and unhelpful climates. But, if she was being honest with herself, she wouldn't search for one, anyway.

She looked around and saw blood marks all around. They weren't excessive, but they seemed to make a straight directed trail in the woods. One that led farther and farther away from the river she thought she could hear.

Alright, so maybe her past misfortunes didn't hit the fan in the most colossal way. But this was too bad luck even for her own standards. And that was saying a lot more than she would ever be proud to admit.

She knew she should just turn around and flee away from that trail. To follow the river sounds and forget all about the blood on her hand. She knew she should just find a hole and escape from the rain until it was safe enough for her to find a way back home.

And who the hell could ever blame her for running? That was what she always did, anyway. From her mother's words, from Ian and what he represented, from Jane and Erik and all their crazy sci-fi stuff...

But something lured her to follow that trail. It was like she was young again and her father warned her not to open the closet's door, but she did so anyway, because the thrill it gave her was better than being laid down somewhere doing absolute nothings for no reason at all.

She wondered if that was how a moth felt when it's eyes focused on the flame. If they knew nothing good would come out of touching it, but the desire to do so was so overwhelming it shut every single one of their survival instincts.

It was, for her, almost like an upgraded version of reading an "electrified fence" warning and having that stupid impulse to touch it to see if it really worked, even though it's buzzing sound gave out the answers to all questions one's curiosity might ask.

At the time she didn't knew how, nor did she knew why, but the feeling of her back separating from the tree's bark almost felt like cold hands pushed her ahead - urging her to move. It was gone so fast her feet had no time to touch the muddy ground she would have to move onto.

Should she even care, anyway? The reasons why seemed so inconsequential for her back then - as if they held no weight on her decisions, even thought she knew the weight they held ripped jealously out of a ton.

When her legs started moving, she knew she wouldn't turn back. There would be no more river chasing or home seeking for a long time, and certainly no more shitty and desperate ideas for the time being.

It was funny, ironic even, that, after all that crap, she did get what she wanted to begin with: to get away from her home - away from her mother's words. And, as her body shivered through the fog, she hoped her darker desire wouldn't come true, too.

At least not that night.