She heard the demonic screams before she could see much of anything - they were the same, mortifying sounds that chased her through the caves before. "It's them," Thor said, equally as aware as she was that the Nightmares knew they were no longer the only ones here. Asgard was nothing but ruin now - a perfect haven for creatures like these, and whatever other abominations may have been brought by Surtur. "We need to be quick."
Dahlia clutched the crystal in her hands before she would drop it to the ground. They were deep enough within the cavern now that this process could be done properly. Thor, whose hammer was at the ready to destroy it, would raise it high above his head before he would bring it down on the stone. What followed sounded like an explosion. The cave's walls shattered from within and protruded outwards, and a bright, green light followed to blind them both in a matter of only a few moments - just a few seconds, but enough to stir chaos in the Nightmares that survived the blast.
The eye-like fiends with tentacles flew into the sky like a flock of angry birds, then came back down towards them. Dahlia lifted herself from the snowy ground that had been solid rock just moments before. Still disoriented from the closing of the portal, she could only dizzily watch as Thor would try to fend them off. Sparks of lightning would take them down one by one, forcing the horde to separate into multiple directions. Then, suddenly, she realized that some of them were aiming their line of flight towards one that could not fight back, and it most certainly wasn't herself.
"SAM!" Dahlia screamed, the syllable escaping into a near-vomit.
But it was too late.
It wasn't as if no one ever died or got hurt in this world of harsh truths, but watching Samantha fall to the ground that night left Dahlia speechless for days.
What more, she didn't even die. Instead, when they rushed her to the hospital, and she took a week to recover from her injuries and the loss of blood, Sam refused to talk to her. She could see the anger - even feel it like a thousand, tiny needles jabbing her in the chest. As if it was her fault - and maybe it was.
Why not? She had been perfectly capable of letting people get hurt in the past, and not doing anything about it.
Thor had been stubborn. He kept insisting that Dahlia had done nothing, but that was just it, wasn't it? She did nothing.
It was a wonder why S.H.I.E.L.D. hadn't booted her then and there, but in reality, they had never expected her to be a warrior when they first took her in. She was a healer, and even when she tried to use that good trait to help Sam even then, she wasn't wanted. Let the hospital take care of her.
As she retreated to the topmost level of parking garage, Dahlia was lost as to what to do now. Samantha had become like a best friend to her - the first person in this mortal realm that she had encountered. She had been so good to her.
We didn't know how bad things were going to get.
Yeah, but you could have taken better precautions.
She volunteered to do this.
You let her get in harm's way.
I tried...
You didn't try hard enough.
It was all my fault.
She landed on the ground, looking up at the night sky above her as she tried to wrap her mind around her flux of emotions. She knew that this feeling of remorse was exactly what had set this entire trainwreck in motion, but how could one learn to simply not feel anything?
"So, it appears that didn't go over so well."
She didn't need to turn around to know who it was mocking her. She supposed she couldn't be too surprised that the God of Mischief might take great satisfaction in her failures.
"Go away," she growled. She dangled her feet over the edge of the rooftop. It was a long way down - starting a feud here might not be the best idea.
However, to her surprise, he didn't. Loki simply stepped up onto the ledge, his hands folded behind him as he looked straight ahead. "You should know... it wasn't all your fault."
"You weren't there," she retorted sourly. "What do you know about it?"
His reply didn't come right away, and for a moment, Dahlia was genuinely curious as to what he was going to say.
"I suppose I don't," he said, hardly moving. Feeling like he was only present to waste her time, and certainly not to help comfort her, she grumbled, throwing a small rock at him that happened to be laying near her. It passed right through him. Why it bothered her that he couldn't even physically be here to give her a hard time, she couldn't exactly explain. She just wanted to be left alone - once she made that clear, Loki vanished.
She was left to her thoughts, and it was then that she began to realize she wished she wasn't. She needed a distraction - something to tear her away from her waves of guilt and the grief of losing such a good friend. After all, it was these emotions that the Nightmares tended to thrive upon, and they were still out there. If there was anything she could do to make things right, it was to help destroy the rest of them. While Thor may have done damage to a great deal of them, they weren't completely out of the woods yet.
No. She wasn't completely out of the woods yet.
This was her mess to clean up, not Thor's.
After talking to a couple of people within the organization, as well as Fury (who may have given her an earful, but was at least accommodating), she managed to find someone who could help her locate the remaining Nightmares. It took a while for her help to find some free time to see her, but once he did, Tony Stark gave her the device she would need - a radar of sorts that gave explicit details as to the location of her target. She was instructed that she would have to find a spot of DNA - a weird name for 'a piece of it' to insert into the device. From there, it would do the rest of the work once hooked up to a USB port of a computer.
Thankfully, she had learned the basics of how to use one of those, even though she needed some guidance over the phone in order to go through it step by step. She imagined the notorious Tony Stark was far too busy to pay her a visit just to help her get accustomed to technology. Once she learned that the updated device would use a radar to show her how to locate the Nightmares, coordinating with GPS on her phone, she made sure to get a good night's sleep.
The next morning, she woke up to a text message - one from a number she didn't recognize.
It gave her an address - one in Norfolk, but there was nothing else - nothing to indicate who it might be that was trying to lure her there.
While S.H.I.E.L.D. hadn't provided her with any weapons (she didn't anticipate that they would, either), she had been given a couple of dual daggers to get her by. Hunting hadn't exactly been easy. In fact, she was only successful in finding a pair of Nightmares further down in Hampton. These things could be anywhere on earth by now, and though she was certain there were others in the world that might be just as able to help take them down, the thought of anyone helping her to clean her own mess was humiliating.
Around thee o'clock, she happened across the text again. She really wasn't far from that location - perhaps a thirty-minute drive. She drove further south, though the rush-hour traffic she had to fight on her way was absolutely atrocious. She couldn't possibly fathom how mortals dealt with this every day.
Music helped maintain a little of her patience - during her time here, while experimenting with the different genres, she came to enjoy metal. The chaos of the sound reflected her own, inner feelings.
As she finally arrived at the location, which appeared to be a Pawn Shop, she felt quite out of place. She was the only girl here in this place, surrounded by dangerous-looking people that she was pretty sure didn't work for S.H.I.E.L.D. She felt tense as she looked around - the place also seemed to be a gun shop, but as a man approached her, he seemed pleasant in doing so.
"Dahlia, right?" he said, offering his hand to shake. "I'm David. A friend told me you might drop by."
"A friend...?" she asked suspiciously. She wondered if this friend might be the same person who sent her the message.
"He made me promise not to tell. I have something of yours. Come on."
David, a heavy-set, middle-aged man with a beard and long, dark hair, led her to a hallway that seemed to be off-limits to the customers. He used a key on his chain to unlock a side door, one that would lead into a dark room before he flipped the light switch on.
She stood by the door, watching as the man took a moment to locate a large box in the corner of the room. It sat with other boxes of various sizes, and instantly, Dahlia wondered what this stranger might have that belonged to her, or how he would have even gotten it.
Then, as he set it on a nearby desk, he waved his hand to usher her into the room. "Same guy brought these in - got a pretty penny for it, but he told me he owed me one if I returned them to you." She stood close by as he would open the brown box, and the contents inside instantly struck a chord. She tensed, staring at a pair of shiny sickles that looked as if they had hardly been touched. On the leather-wrapped handles, there was a symbol stamped into them - the same one that matched the pendant hanging around her neck.
They were her weapons of choice as a Valkyrie - considering the intricate design carves into the blades, there was no way they could be duplicated. They held a lot of memories, some much less fonder than others.
Carefully, he would hand the box to her. "Probably should keep them in there. Don't want to flash them around and make my clients think I'm selling blades now," he said with a smile.
As Dahlia left in her vehicle, the box sitting in the passenger's seat, her mind was a thunderstorm. While it was a relief to be reunited with her blades, the memory of her final moments on Asgard left a sour taste in her mouth. She had crawled away without them when she abandoned her warriors and her sister behind.
I don't deserve to have them, she thought to herself. Instead of continuing down the highway, she made her way towards Yorktown. There was a beach there where she could be rid of them once and for all.