Snow was falling gently, draping the city of New York in a light dusting of frozen water. The ruins that made up the now ragged isle of Manhattan gave the disaster zone the appearance of being cloaked in a soft blanket.
It was coming up on the second year two since the breakout in the summer of 2009, and the city was rebuilding. Despite the wrecked skyscrapers and the still red-stained streets, New York managed to carry on. Blackwatch, an elite and secretive government force charged with the containment and disposal of large scale infections and outbreaks had pulled out almost a month before that November, leaving in their wake both terror and relief.
Now, SHIELD and the Red Cross were in the area helping local volunteers and other organisations - Free The Children and UNICEF being only a few - and the city was slowly being cleared of debris and gore. Members of the Avengers and even Spiderman were often spotted around the more ruined areas passing out food and navigating the ruined buildings for stability and assisting displaced residents with the recovery of their belonging.
The holiday season was in full swing, and the survivors of New York found themselves embracing the spirit of the holidays with a vigour they had thought they had lost. But with the absence of heavy military presence and the visible improvements and repairs taking place around the city, hope was quickly becoming a near tangible force, bouying people up and bringing happiness and joy back to a place and a people that done with so little for so long.
Alex Mercer was not exempt from the joy that was spreading through the city. His eyes were clearer, his complexion a shade livelier than 'corpse pale' and he could feel his skin and facial muscles contorting away from his usual grimace into what could only be a smile.
A very faint, very demented looking smile - but in this case it's the thought that counts.
Dana, his sister in everything that mattered - even if this was no longer true in a biological sense - had awoken from a ten month coma following the events of the outbreak and was finally through enough physiotherapy and immune system restoration therapy that she could be safely discharged from the long term care ward in the hospital and return home.
In preparation for her return he had tried to be a good older brother; did some tidying, stocked up the fridge, and scrounging around to replace furnature that had been wrecked during that night all those years ago when Blackwatch had come calling. These tasks were not difficult. He held within himself a plethora of memories of tidying living rooms and grocery shopping. And with the city in recovery, and himself believed to be dead by the authorities he didn't even have to take another shape to do errands unmolested.
Dana hated to be reminded that he was a killer, and for her he would risk discovery over wearing the form of one of the many casualties of his mad personal crusade almost two years previous.
And she was coming home. It was difficult for him to visit her in the hospital; to him the multitudes of the sick, injured, and the infirm registered as prey, his instincts calling him out to cull the weak, to remove weakness wherever he found it. Dr. Ragland had visited for the most part on his behalf, and once she had become conscious his rambunctious sibling and the laid back coroner has formed a fast and strong friendship almost overnight.
It would be one of the first times she would be seeing him for more than a few minutes at best since they had begin to work through her fear of what he was before she had been taken by Greene's leader hunter. Everything had to be perfect. And it was Christmas.
From what he could recall from his patchwork fragments of memories from the human Mercer, they had never had a real Christmas, and that Dana had always wished for one. The sociopathic geneticist had never deigned to celebrate the holidays, preferring instead to spend the holidays holed up in the lab or his home office. And anything the man he was now could do to distance himself from the monster the human who created him had been...well, it was worth a try.
So...Christmas dinner in a little over 26 hours.
This could be tricky.
Doctor Bradley Ragland was resigning himself to a Christmas on his own for the second time in two years. After breaking off with GenTek shortly before the Penn Station disaster and the subsequent catastrophe, it seemed that the Christmas season of 2010 had passed the isle of Manhattan by. At the time there was still a heavy marine presence ranging throughout the metropolis purging the remaining hives and infectious hot spots, as well as closing down and confiscating what remained of GenTek.
It was a troubled time, pulling long hours in the mortuary, double checking the bodies for the virus, making sure there were no new cases. Not to mention the stress put on him by the occasional appearance of Alex Mercer, terror personified. During the outbreak itself it had been easy to get over the raw animal part of himself that urged him to flee in Mercer's considerable presence and to focus instead of finding a cure for what had been shaping up into some kind of mad zombie apocalypse. But once it was over - a nuclear device detonating only 15 miles off shore - he had interned Dana Mercer into a local hospital where she would be well looked after.
He had figured it was over. And then almost three weeks later a middle aged man has wandered into his workspace with a casual, "what's up doc?" in a voice he had hoped never to hear again. Codename Zeus, asking him for help once again.
After a time the terror he felt in the virus's presence diminished - the very obvious care and concern for his sister helped immensely. And once she had recovered from her coma he had found her sheer humanity in the wake of his experiences with her distant and socially inept brother to be extraordinarily refreshing. And now she would be leaving the hospital in time for Christmas Eve, and he would not intrude on her and Alex Mercer's reunion, leaving him, once again, on his own for Christmas.
The phone on the wall rang twice, and he picked up the receiver, cradling it between his shoulder and ear as he washed his hands in the office sink.
"Hello? Dr. Ragland?" It was the front desk of the hospital. "There's a call for you on line three."
"Ah, thank you. Merry Christmas."
"Merry Christmas, Doctor."
He wiped his hands on a paper towel and dialed into line three with one hand, idly reaching up to hold the receiver, rolling his freed shoulder to work some stiffness out.
"Hello. Dr. Ragland speaking."
"Ragland." A shiver went down his spine at the low growling voice on the other end. There was only one person who had a voice like that.
"Ah. Alex. Did you need something?" Please, he thought, say no and hang up.
"I..." Ragland raised an eyebrow. He could practically see the grimace that the virus was sporting on the other end. Alex Mercer, Lovecraftian anti-villain himself, was beeing hesitant. His other eyebrow decided to join the first in a race to his receding hairline.
"Christmas dinner. Tomorrow. Eighteen hundred hours. For Dana. You are invited. You will be there,"
Mercer grit out in staccato of deep breaths and low growls, as if the words themselves were putting up a titantic effort towards beating him into the ground. Or as if he had a severe case of indigestion - the speech pattern Mercer was exhibiting could easily be an effect of either one.
"Of course. I'd be happy to."
A sudden thought occured to him, regarding just what a dinner concocted by Alex Mercer would consist of.
"Alex, will you need any help putting this together?"
"Probably. But this is something I need to do on my own...Thanks..." he gritted out.
Ragland smiled to himself as he hung up the phone. It seemed he wouldn't be spending Christmas on his own after all.
What did people have for Christmas dinner? Wracking the collective memories of a thousand different Christmases (and at least six different recollections of Hanukkah) he came to both a conclusion and a headache soon enough. He went to the notepad on the side table next to the sofa in Dana's apartment and began making a list.
Meat. Either a turkey, a ham, or a beef roast. Make gravy? No to the gravy. Ham it was. They usually came pre-cooked, so the risk of food poisoning was minimal.
Potatoes. Mashed or baked? Both, he supposed, just to be on the safe side.
Vegetables. Green beans if he could swing them. With the way things were right now, a frozen medley would probably do just fine.
Cranberry sauce. In a can or from scratch? It would depend if he could get his hands on some sugar.
Dinner rolls. Those would be easy enough. Hamburger buns from the corner store would suffice in a pinch.
And Christmas pudding. With either rum or brandy.
Alex nodded to himself looking at his list with a slightly smug smile. He had a plan of action.
Operation Dana's Christmas was GO.