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To her credit, Dana didn't freak out.
This despite the fact that freaking out, in that situation, wouldn't have been unreasonable.
Although, one may have pointed out that the reason she didn't is that she had had more than two decades to get used to Alex being rather... special.
Yes, special. That was a good way to describe him. It encompassed nicely his being a genius at anything virology related, and his being a fucking nutcase.
Now, don't get her wrong, she loved him: he was her big brother, the one who had basically raised her and had given up so much for her sake, taking a beating for her far more times than he was willing to admit- but he was still an antisocial nutcase, and anyone who spent more than five minutes around him could tell.
(You could only listen to so much paranoid muttering and not so thinly veiled threats of horrid acts of violence in retaliation for minor slights before you got to that conclusion, really.)
Still, this... this was a bit much. Even for his standards.
"Alex. Alex, what is that."
He held up an arm, grinning smugly (not too unlike a child showing off his science class project to his parents) at the reddish-black sludge clinging to it, moving as if alive- though, knowing him, it probably was. "Dana, say hi to the Blacklight virus. Or, as I like to call him, Zeus."
"Isn't that the virus you were working on at work? The one that, in your own words, is so dangerous that 'it makes the fucking black plague look like the common cold'?"
"Yup!"
Oh, goodie. He's finally lost his marbles. She took in a deep breath at his cheery tone, abruptly cutting herself off as she remembered that, oh right, her brother was right in front of her holding a volatile bioweapon of mass destruction. She stepped backwards, a hand flying to her nose. He didn't even seem to notice, as he cooed at the... thing.
Bastard.
"Why is... that, here?" She managed to choke out, still covering her nose and trying to breathe as little as possible.
Alex looked up, shooting her a severe look. "I told you I don't trust my employers anymore- and I can't just leave him in the lab, at the mercy of the other researchers. Right, Zeus?" He made a kissy face at the virus, voice going high pitched in a sort of mockery of baby-talk. "I can't just leave you with those evil bastards, right? You don't like them nearly as much as me."
"You're probably the evilest person working at Gentek, Alex."
"The ex evilest. Didn't want to work there anymore. I resigned."
She stormed off to her room.
☣
"The virus is not going to be eating with us."
It was ridiculous. Absolutely ridiculous.
"That's fine, he doesn't need our food anyways."
"Alex, I'm serious. I'm not eating anywhere next to a- it's just- don't you roll your eyes at me, it's not hygienic!" She was babbling, but seriously? The motherfucker was petting the stupid thing! Who the fuck gave scratchies to a virus? Alex Mercer, apparently, that's who.
Freak.
"At least put some gloves on, if you really have to treat it like a dog."
"Oh, Zeus wouldn't infect me. Right, buddy? You would't do that, you're a good virus, yes you are." Blacklight gleefully twisted around Alex' fingers, almost as if agreeing, and Dana shuddered.
"Whatever. At least make sure not to touch the dishes before having washed your hands."
☣
He carried it to bed.
He let it sleep in his bed.
It didn't even need to sleep. Viruses didn't sleep.
Not as far as she knew at least.
But it was the principle of it.
"I'll wash your sheets in antiviral, mark my words."
☣
Karen blinked, eyes running up and down the woman in front of her.
Admittedly, it had been... a while, since she'd seen her. And she could count on one hand the times they'd met in person. So, it was reasonable to assume that the mental image she had of Dana Mercer didn't necessarily match with reality.
But she really, really didn't remember her looking so exhausted.
"You look like garbage."
It'd come out of her mouth almost automatically, but she refused to blush over her less than polite fumble. It was true, after all.
"Gee, thanks. I'm happy to see you too."
"Seriously, are you okay? You look like you got run over by a bus."
"Feel like it too." Dana sighed, leaning against the door and rubbing at her eyes with a hand. "It's been a hard past few days." She shook her head, as if to drive away an unwelcome thought. "Why are you here, Karen? If you don't mind my bluntness, we're not so close that you appearing on our doorstep is something normal."
She shifted her weight, from one foot to the other and back again, feeling rather awkward. "I wanted to check up on you guys. I heard... I heard about Alex' resignation, and I wanted to know if I..."
She trailed off. There was no delicate way to say something like that, and there was no way to make offering economical support anything but awkward. Especially when you were talking to the Mercer siblings- strong, resilient like few others, but also stubborn and prideful to a fault.
"... If I can help in any way."
Dana's lips tilted into a strained grin. "Money isn't the... I don't think there's anything you could help with. But I do appreciate the offer." Then she frowned, seemingly deep in thought.
"... Say, how much do you know about virology?"
Karen frowned right back, but before she could ask about the reason behind such an oddly specific question, a familiar voice boomed from inside.
"Dana? Have you seen Zeus?"
The young woman went white as a sheet, and shot an alarmed look at something unseen inside the apartment. "You lost that thing?!"
She tried to look inside, raising a questioning eyebrow as Dana angled her body in a way that seemed awfully like she was actively trying to block her line of sight. "What's Zeus?"
Alex' head peeked from a side door, and he blinked at her, face as placid as Alexander J. Mercer's face could be, in that sort of detached and mildly apathetic curiosity. As if he idly wondered what she was doing there, but would cease to care the moment he spotted something shiny and more interesting. A look she'd quickly grown accustomed to, in the time before they broke up. "Oh, hi Karen."
"Alex!" Dana's voice was becoming rather shrill, bordering into hysterical, and Karen felt a cold shiver running up her spine.
"Can somebody please explain what is going on?"
Alex opened his mouth, but Dana beat him to it. "Zeus is our new pet. Hamster. Our pet hamster." She spat out the words like they tasted bitter on her tongue, lips stretched into a thin line.
Alex slowly closed his mouth, eyes narrowed at her in an unreadable expression, and Karen raised an eyebrow. "You seem excessively worried if you're really talking about a hamster."
Dana's face twisted in a grimace. "He bites."
☣
"So, let me get this straight."
Karen was smart. Scratch that, Karen was very smart, as much of an expert in her own field as Alex was in his, and with more common sense to boot. Dana hadn't expected to be able to fool her with such a shoddy excuse, but she also hadn't foreseen her idiot brother forgetting the virus inside a cupboard and loudly announcing to the whole neighbourhood that he'd lost it (holy shit, had that been intentional?), so here they were.
Sitting at their dinner table.
Having the most surreal conversation she'd ever partaken in, even beating the time one of the kids at her school had thought that trying to piss on a wasp nest from the classroom's window was a good idea.
"You stole the more virulent variety of an already extremely dangerous, semi sentient virus. You stole it from the government of the United States, or even worse, from Blackwatch. And then you brought it home?!"
Alex glared back, a no small amount of irritation in his eyes. "If we're being pedantic, I have reason to believe he has a degree of sentience, so if anything that's kidnapping, not stealing."
Karen shot Dana a glance, exasperated in the way only someone dealing with a stubborn beast such as her brother could be. "Was he like this as a child too, or did he lose his marbles sometime at some point before I met him?"
He huffed, leaning back in his seat. "You may think me an idiot, but I know what I'm doing. I trust you know I wouldn't just put my sister in danger for no reason. Zeus won't hurt us."
He paused, a calculating frown on his face and eyes darting around, as if tracing invisible figures on the table's surface.
"... Probably."
☣
"See, this is why I dumped you."
As expected, Alex didn't even look up from his microscope, but his mouth quirked up into a darkly amused smirk all the same. "I thought you dumped me because I am, as you put it, 'emotionally stumped'."
"I think that feeding Zeus your dead cells in hopes of having it turn into a clone of yourself scores a little higher than that."
Atonishingly enough, Alex's face actually softened at that, in an expression she'd only rarely seen on him when he was feeling slightly more charitable towards the rest of humanity. "Hmm. You say that, but you're already getting around to liking him too."
She scoffed. "Nonsense."
Finally, finally he looked up, and for a second she could see in his face a glimpse of the man she'd once decided to date. "And yet, you stopped calling him 'the Blacklight virus'."
She narrowed her eyes at him, speechless and somewhat angry at the fact that she couldn't deny that, before storming out of the room.
Alex' cackle followed her on the way out.
☣
"I know a guy", she'd said. "Don't worry about it", she'd insisted.
(Obviously, Karen had just worried more at that.)
(Of course Dana would be just as crazy as her brother, in her own way. Of course she would be capable of getting in contact with someone like that.)
(Why was Karen even surprised? The surname Mercer was clearly more like a brand name for a very specific breed of madness.)
The "guy" looked like he really didn't want to be there, and she felt like she could hardly blame him.
Lieutenant Robert Cross, Blackwatch specialist and one of the most lethal people in the world, was currently sitting in Dana's dingy living room, looking hilariously uncomfortable and out of place on the faded, flower patterned couch.
"This" he grumbled, stiffly "is not what I expected when I received an email from a mysterious contact about a danger to national security."
Alex snorted.
☣
When one took false humility out of the picture, Cross could guess rather easily why the Mercers had decided to contact him, of all people.
A high position in both the army and Blackwatch, being generally held in high regard by his peers and superiors, and a healthy dose of controlled Redlight in his bloodstream that essentially made him Captain America's edgier cousin made him the ideal candidate as an inside man, and he liked to think he had a strong enough moral code that he would absolutely betray the shit out of his employees if he ever found out they didn't adhere to his principles anymore. Such as in that case.
That did not mean he had to like any of the people in the little ragtag group of rebels that had recruited him, though. Alexander may have been the one who had more clearly lost his marbles, but...
"He never looked at me with that much love when we were dating" sighed Karen. Cross shot her a look, before moving his gaze to Guy-Mercer, who seemed to be busy coddling the virus like it was his own child.
It was ridiculous and moderately disturbing, and not for the first time he wondered what she'd seen in the guy to make her want to date him in the first place. Sure, he guessed he was good looking, but she didn't seem like the kind of person for whom looking nice was enough.
Before he could say some rehearsed comforting line ("you deserved better than him" or "he's a fool for choosing that thing over you", the usual platitudes), however, she grinned wickedly. "He did call me a good girl once or twice, though."
... Yeah, case in point.
☣
The first time he saw Zeus do the thing, he hadn't even realized it on the moment.
It was only after he'd registered that there was no way Alex could've moved from his room to the kitchen so quickly, and without him noticing, that he'd screamed a furious: "Mercer!"
☣
"How- why-"
Alex barely even heard his sister's horrified babbling as he excitedly circled Zeus, his own face, his own eyes staring back at him in evident confusion.
"Fascinating- I was starting to believe it was a lost cause without an actual human body to consume, but I'm glad to see that the genetic material and biomass I provided were enough."
A surge of fondness and pride shot through him. He'd always known that the Blacklight strain had a lot of untapped potential, and there it was, proof of his unique abilities right in front of him.
He wondered if normal parents felt like this about their children.
"A few details are off, but that's no big deal. I'll just have to teach you how to act like a human, and we'll tell people you're my brother."
Dana grunted, breaking him from his reverie. "Alex, you're my brother and I love you, but you are approximatedly the last person I would trust to teach anyone how to be human."
He thought about it, then shrugged. "Yeah, fair enough."
☣
In a way, having the virus around was a bit like being in close proximity of a very young kid at all times.
A shy, awkward kid that didn't emote much and looked in his late twenties, but a kid nonetheless, with all of the related curiosity and lack of boundaries.
"Why is she crying?"
"Because he lied about not loving her, and that hurt her feelings."
"Why did he lie about it?"
"Because he knew her parents wouldn't approve of their relationship."
"Why wouldn't they approve?"
Cross' eyelid twitched, and he looked away from the TV to glare at Zeus, his gaze meeting creepy, washed out blue eyes.
"Zeus."
"Yeah?"
"I'll explain later. Now please shut up."
"Okay."
☣
"- his primary learning source is food. The biomass he gathered from humans is relatively minor and it all comes from me, so it's not surprising he's a bit... lacking, in certain areas. He'll eventually learn things on his own, but it would take far less to-"
Dana glared at Alex, moving between him and Zeus as if to shield the latter from her brother. "We are not feeding him people."
The man shrugged. "I wasn't suggesting we do."
"Sure thing."
☣
"You're a geneticist, right?"
Karen looked up. Zeus wasn't looking at her, gaze trailed on the computer's monitor instead. She huffed, in what wasn't amusement but also wasn't not amusement. "It's a bit weird, how you know what a genticist is but don't know who George Washington was."
Zeus just shrugged, a trace of an apology in the offhanded movement, and Karen's fingers started nervously drumming a rythm on the desk. The virus' gaze followed the movement absently. "Just tell me why you're asking, will you?"
"I just. Wanted to understand what you do, exactly. Alex tried to explain it to me, but it was..." he paused for a second, as if looking for the right term, "... not the best explanation."
"So, you're... curious?"
Zeus nodded with all the gravitas of a five year old who really wanted to know how Santa got into their house when they didn't have a chimney, eyes pale and creepy and honest, and she sighed, making space near her for him. "Alright, come here."
☣
"Oh my god" breathed Ragland, horrified gaze landing on the three (three! One was more than enough already!) Mercers sitting on the couch, then moving to a very sheepish looking Parker and a deadpan looking, "this is my life now, feel my pain"-face wearing Cross.
"Oh my god" he repeated, after a moment of atonished silence. "You've all lost your marbles."
☣
Ragland refused to leave them alone. No one was surprised, but no one was happy about it either.
(He tried to tell everyone it was just to keep an eye on the virus, to make sure none of them did something even more egregiously stupid.)
(Nobody believed him, not even himself. Curiosity, and worry, and fascination were harder to hide than he thought.)
☣
"Wait, people actually do say grace before eating? I thought it was just a thing people in christmas movies did, like caroling."
Karen snorted as she put down another plate (the shitty, gaudy red-and-green ones Dana had bought a few years earlier at a christmas market), and Cross rolled his eyes. "Even if anyone in this house was a practicing christian, we've got three abominations against God" Alex looked ridiculously and inappropriatedly smug at being included in that particular club, and wasn't that a testament to his character, "and just as many enablers in here. If we did try to say grace, we'd get smited on the spot, mark my words."
"To answer your question, Zeus," piped up Ragland, helpful as always, "some people do, but not all." He paused, brow furrowing. "And some people do go caroling, it's not just a movie thing. What has Alex been teaching you?"
Dana made a triumphant noise as she finally lit the candles on the table, the warm glow making the cheap decòr in the room look far more welcoming than it should've, and looked up. "Alex is a terrible dad who doesn't teach his baby virus about caroling, we already knew all of that. Can we start eating now?"
They did.