Chapter Text
Ada Wong is nothing short of champagne on a 24 carat budget. From expensive clothes to the finest delicacy, she indulges in whatever flits her fancy. Her career after all supports this. She knows she’s good at what she does, and thus she lives the lifestyle she wants, despite the more macabre aspects of what her job entails.
She loves expensive clothes, finding the softest fabrics, covering herself in rich vermillion any chance she gets. It’s luxury and it’s decadent in its splendor. Ada stays at extravagant hotels that sport feather down comforters with chocolate mints set upon the pillows. She eats expensive food, and drinks even more expensive wine.
She indulges every whim that comes up, spoils herself silly whenever she can. She’s earned it after all, has killed enough, spilt others blood enough, paints her dreams crimson with all that she’s done to get here. She can’t be haunted by her past if she drapes in enough finery, covering the memory of others' anguish and pain. She can’t remember the feeling of their life bleeding out of their body from her own hands if she can feel the one-thousand thread count sheets underneath her.
Flitting from one fancy to another, she’s never tied down to one thing. She stays quick on her feet, spending one night in Paris, Cairo the next, then on to Dubai in the morning. Ada doesn’t stop anywhere long enough for anything to catch up with her. She’s pavloved herself in a way, associating the gore of a man’s insides with the thick velvet bedspread of an expensive hotel. She trades secrets over champagne, buying a new handbag after delivering a man’s ear to his enemy.
The memories always catch up to her anyways, no matter how quickly she moves. The rich hotels despite their grandeur don’t ever feel anything less than lonely. Her quail eggs and caviar taste good, but leave her feeling hollow. The soft feeling of her silky robe feels nothing short of rash-inducing when she’s alone at night.
Ada isn’t running away from anything if her direction takes her to the newest and next best thing. She’s calculated and meticulously put together, every part of her was decided and planned out. She wasn’t filling any sort of gap in her life with meaningless trinkets and finery, and if you suggested otherwise, you’d find yourself at the end of her gun barrel.
Ada Wong indulges every whim because the one thing she really wants, she knows she can’t have.
Her hotel room feels cold, even despite the near boiling temperature of the bath water she ran for herself. Ada bit back a hiss as she lowered herself down below the thick layer of rose-scented bubbles, knee knocking against the edge carelessly. She winced but sunk further below the water, until her nose was tickling the foamy surface.
Her mission had been successful— they rarely weren’t; she was good at her job after all. But tonight wasn’t like the rest. What was supposed to be a quick and easy job—done before ten, and back in her suite by midnight for room service and a glass of wine— didn’t go quite as planned.
It wasn’t hard to track down her target; some eccentric bureaucrat who’d pissed one too many people off.
From what she was told --and what she sluthed out herself-- she knew he had information that those pissed off people wanted, some bioterrorism deal he was working on under the table. He had been trying to negotiate a bigger cut for himself of the deal, using their email conversations as leverage.
She’d been trailing him for the better part of a week, getting an idea of his habits, where he went and who he talked to. She was prepared and knew everything about him that she needed in order to complete her mission.
He was out at some nightclub, like he was every Saturday night. Ada kept an eye on his position in the throng of sweaty dancing people, watching as he participated in all the debauchery he wished. Girls, liquor, coke, you name it, it was here under fluorescent lights. He was making himself weak.
This would be easy, Ada thought.
She sipped at a dry martini, perched on a bar stool that gave her a good vantage point on the man, eyes trained on him in the crowd. She noticed the moment he stumbled towards an exit, a hand over his mouth.
Perfect.
Setting her drink aside, she slipped through the crowd, following the path he took to the door. Most people didn’t pay her any mind, just another drunk dancer trying to get through a crowd. On her way out the door she saw a man leaned up against the wall, arms crossed. Watching her. She ignored him and brushed it off as some sad and lonely horn-dog wanting to catch some tail.
When she joined her target in the alleyway, he was bent over, bracing himself on the knees and gagging into a sewer drain at his feet. Ada slunk closer, staying out of his eye-line. She drew her silenced handgun, taking care to walk through the alley without her heels making a single click.
What she hadn’t been prepared for was him whirling around with a rock in his hand.
His weighted fist connected with her gun, knocking it from her hand and sending it skittering across the concrete. She reacted quickly, but not quickly enough to dodge his drunken attempt to punch her. His knuckles clipped her cheekbone, sending stinging pain through her face and up into her nose. The pain knocked her off-balance, stumbling back one step then two. Her heels clicked loudly in the alleyway and the man let out a drunken laugh.
“Who the hell sent you, lady?” He grunted, wiping his mouth off onto his sleeve. Ada bit back a cringe at the idea of bile on her clothes. The man squared his shoulders as he lifted his rock-filled hand again. “The CIA?” the man questioned her, “The mob? Or was it the Russians?”
Gaining her composure once again with a roll of her neck she put her hand on the hilt of the knife strapped to her thigh. The feeling of the grip in her hand grounded her. Ada couldn’t help but remember something someone had said to her once. Knives are better for close encounters. How ironic, thinking of that at times like this. She didn’t deign the man to answer his question.
“Someone was bound to come for you eventually,” she caught sight of her gun, having slid underneath a dumpster diagonal from them, “does it matter who?”
“Drive?” The man laughed loudly, taking a step forward. His movements were less drunken than before, something was off. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” He feigned ignorance, but the way he shifted his weight and tilted his shoulders told Ada exactly where he was keeping it.
“The one in your breast pocket,” she drawled, bored of this back and forth already, her cheek smarting as she drew her weapon, blade shining in the pale moonlight.
“I can pay you- more than what they’re offering!” The man tried again, face red and eyes wide at the sight of the knife in her hands. He took a step back-- closer to where her gun laid. She hoped he didn’t see it.
Favoring actions over words, she was quick to dash into his space once again, leg sweeping out to kick his legs out from under him, knife primed in her grasp to cut deep. The man fell on his ass, the back of his head smacking against the metal grate below. Ada followed him down, a heel placed onto his chest with her body weight behind it, knife held to his throat.
“Now, now, let's make this easy, shall we?” Ada purrs, eyes sharp.
“I-I don’t have it! I swear!” He wheezed, vision unfocused, looking somewhere behind her. She didn’t pay it any mind.
This was the second time she underestimated her target that night.
Cold steel pressed against her back, pinning her in place between her shoulder blades. Ada froze, how had she not heard them approaching.
“Easy now, miss, stand up slowly,” a gravely voice spoke, grabbing her by her left shoulder, digging the gun into her back harder when she didn’t move. “Now.” He insisted.
Fuck.
And so she did, slowly standing up, holding her knife out to her side. But, now that she was paying attention-- as she clearly hadn’t been before-- she glanced over her shoulder. It was the man from inside, the one she had to pass by to get into the alley. Ada cursed herself for being so careless.
“So, was the rock your first plan? Or were you stalling until beefcake here showed up?” Ada purred, feigning indifference to her current situation. The bureaucrat, Lionel, stood up with a grunt, brushing himself off, thanking his wall of meat that was currently manhandling a very expensive cashmere sweater. He didn’t answer her.
“Quit talking.” The body guard or whatever he was grunted, pushing her forward to press against the cold brick wall in front of her. It dug into her cheek where she’d gotten hit earlier. This wasn’t good. Ada’s heart kicked into third gear, but she kept a tight lid on her panic despite herself.
The two men exchanged words, Lionel turning and walking away down the alley, presumably to make a break for it. He’d be harder to find again after this. Think, think, think Ada!
As Lionel left, his grunt loosened his hold on her shoulder.
Mistake.
Ada dropped down out of his grasp, shoving her weight back against the man, causing him to stumble backwards with a shout, hearing his gun hit the concrete with a clatter. She stumbled too, her heel catching in a sewer grate, wrenching her ankle in a way that couldn’t be good. She bit back a cry of pain, gritting her teeth as she dove for the dumpster.
Her fingers brushed against the handle of her handgun, not nearly close enough to grab it. She scrambled, crawling forward before she felt the larger man grab her ankle. She let out a curse when he yanked her backwards, slashing backwards with her knife. She managed to cut his arm, letting her scramble away and onto her feet.
“You bitch!” he shouted at her, scrambling to his gun. Ada ran after him, using the firescape above her to swing herself onto his back, wrapping her arm around his throat. She locked her other arm over the previous, cutting off the man’s oxygen supply.
Her own blood was thundering in her ears as the man tried to buck her off. He clawed at her hands before just slamming himself backwards against the wall, Ada getting the air knocked out of her. Her vision spun as she gasped for air, coughing violently as she let go of him, knife clattering to the ground.
The man followed her down the ground, pawing at her deftly as he coughed himself. His hands found purchase on her arm and shoulder, pinning her to the ground. He was as heavy as he was tall, and she growled angrily as she struggled against him. He only grinned through his wheezing, a wild look in his eye as he grabbed her throat, hands wrapping around it and squeezing.
Ada felt as if her eyes might bulge out of her skull as she kicked and shoved at him, struggling to move him as her head throbbed and lungs ached. When she felt deftly at the filthy ground underneath her, her fingertips felt something round and heavy.
The rock.
With as much strength as she had, she swung the rock at the man’s temple, connecting with a sickly crack. He reared back at the hit, hands instinctively letting go of her throat. He crashed onto his side with his own momentum and cradled his bleeding head.
Ada scrambled up after him, chest heaving as she brought her hands above her head, swinging the rock back down into his head. There was a splash of blood that shot out onto her face, a wet squelch coming from his skull. Ada let out a shout of just pure adrenaline as the man let out a wet shout, muffled into the sewer grate under his face. Ada ignored his cries, trading her rock for a fistful of his hair, and slammed his head into the grate.
“P-please-“ he gargled through a mouth of teeth and blood. The sound his skull made against the unyielding metal was a sickly wet crunch. He choked on the blood that spilled out from his nose and mouth, sagging in her grasp. She spotted her knife on the ground beside them and grabbed it. A quick pull of the knife against his throat and he spilled his blood out into the sewer grate below their feet.
Her lip curled in disgust as she watched the life literally drain out of him, washing away with all the other piss and shit of this wretched city. Ada didn’t realize how hard she was panting until the man fell silent.
Ada let go of the man’s hair, finally, when she did she frowned, finding one of her nails had broken off, pulling her nailbed raggedly. It must have happened sometime in between losing her pistol and getting slammed against the wall. Ada slumped to the ground with a groan, wiping the blood off of her face. Once she caught her breath she dragged the man off the grate so she could open it and promptly throw him through the hole and into the sewer. The biohazardous vermin would take care of his body.
Limping from the pain in her ankle she retrieved her gun and sheathed her knife. Looking down she saw her hands were covered in his blood, staining them crimson red.
She wasn’t sure how much she liked the color red anymore.
Ada had spent the rest of the night tracing down her target again, and it wasn’t until midnight that she shot the man in the leg and finally took the drive from his jacket. It wasn’t until two in the morning that she made it back to her hotel room after dropping off the drive to her employer.
Ada looked at her hands now, covered in rose scented suds. She kept her nails longer than she probably should, shaped and painted in her signature red polish. It made some things more difficult, sure, but she loved the way they looked and felt, making her stubby fingers appear longer and more elegant. It was just another part of her performance, her costume, the femme fatale.
Her middle finger, now lacking its acrylic nail, looked odd and out of place. Her natural nail was now showing, left flakey and thin from the damage. It felt oddly sensitive when she pressed on her nail bed, despite the softness of her own touch. Lacking her nail, her hand seemed lopsided. Her other nails were stained underneath with the body guard’s blood and she began to pick at their undersides under the sudsy water.
It was a crack in her facade, hairline thin, but slowly spreading. She frowned, eyebrows knitting together in irritation as she picked at her bare nail, biting at her cuticles she found that it stung. She didn’t care, continuing to pick at it until she rendered her finger red and bleeding. Ada dunked her hands under the suds that were already dissipating, hissing at the soap getting in her now open wound.
It was silent here in the bathroom of her hotel room, every sound she made echoing off the white stone walls. Every little huff, every single sigh, amplified in the silence. She could hear the water splashing whenever she moved and it only served to make her more and more irate. She picked at her other nails now, the proverbial flood gate opening. Every little imperfection was bitten at and chewed away. She felt off balance, knocked out of her mind and hurtling back towards the ground where her body was, the events of the night catching up to her in the quiet.
Ada didn’t stop until her nails ached and each perfect little red nail was flung across the bathroom, ping, ping, pinging against the mirror. When they were all picked off, nails throbbing, she finally noticed how quick her breath had become.
The sound echoing back to her sounded scared and vulnerable, like a cornered animal. Ada let out an irritated growl, getting out of the bath. The water was growing cold anyway.
When she put her left foot down onto the bath mat it shot a bolt of pain up her leg, making her catch herself on the counter of the sink. She winced in pain, hissing as she adjusted her stance, using the lip of the sink for stability. Her ankle had become bruised and swollen at this point, definitely sprained. Ada huffed, scrubbing her hand over her face, and wincing at the pain in her cheekbone.
She caught sight of herself in the mirror and paused, eyes drawn to the sight. Her cheekbone was beginning to bruise and turn mottled purple, same as her ankle. She had a scrape on her knee, and bruises littered the rest of her body in shades of sickly yellow and red. It just made her think of how she had been caught off guard, how he’d gotten the jump on her. She lost control tonight.
Was she losing her touch?
Was she getting careless?
Her hands were balled up into fists, weakened nails making crescent shaped dents in her palms. Her breath was labored and frantic, mind running a mile-a-minute. She couldn’t stop from spiraling through her own thoughts, staring down a body she didn’t recognize in the mirror.
It wasn’t her own, not the real her. It belonged to the persona of Ada Wong. The scars were the only part of her that felt like they belonged to the real her.
The woman whose name wasn’t Ada reached up to feel the puckered skin of the bullet scar on her shoulder, the one that matched a certain someone else. She jolted at her own touch despite the years healing the wound twice over by now. It felt raw and achey. Maybe that was just her heart and not her skin.
Shaking her head, as if it would clear away the thought she left the bathroom, pacing around the bedroom irritably. She didn’t want this stupid empty hotel room. It was hollow and fake and gaudy for the sake of gaudy.
She didn’t want the insanely soft sheets, or the stupid mint on the pillow. It never made her feel fulfilled, never made her feel any happier than she had been before she spent the money that didn’t matter. Even the towel she laid out was softer than any towel ought to be.
Ada could buy herself every new purse, new clothes, buy food no one could ever afford to eat every night, and she would still not be satisfied. The empty feeling gnawed at her gut and she realized now, that she was clenching her teeth so hard it felt like her ears were rattling with the force.
Her entire body felt flighty and sore, vibrating with the force of her anger and discomfort. She ripped a pillow from the bed, hurling it across the room with a garbled cry, raw and angry.
As if a dam had broken she screamed, loudly and without care. It made her throat sting but she couldn’t stop herself, grabbing anything in her path and throwing it just as quickly. She was an open wound leaking out into the suite, her hurt and rage lashing out. Every little thing she held back and kept inside was expelled.
When the rage finally began to fade, it left her empty, chest heaving, head pounding. She’d torn the bedsheets off of the mattress, the curtains from their rungs. The pretty vase on the night stand was sent hurtling across the room and laid broken on the floor. Her hands at some point, she had finally noticed, had come up to her own head, pulling at black strands until her scalp stung like fire.
Once the burning anger was gone she was left feeling cold and small. Sinking to the floor with her back against the bed, she wrapped her arms around her legs, knees pulled tight to her chest. Her face was wet, she finally realized, reaching up to touch damp cheeks. She didn’t stop herself from crying, not like she usually would. She was shaken and angry, still so so angry. At what, she didn’t really know. Herself, maybe? At her employers? The world?
Ada squeezed her arms around herself tighter but it didn’t make her feel any better. She hated the touch of her own hands on her skin, fingertips sore and bleeding. In this quiet vulnerable moment she didn’t stop her train of thought, the one that drifted to blonde hair and hopeful eyes. He always knew what to say. How to comfort. How to make her feel grounded in her own body. She grit her teeth at the idea, toes curling in the annoyingly soft carpet. Every time she was alone and out of herself enough to let herself, her thoughts drifted to him, him, him.
He made things make sense, with his plucky optimism and can-do-attitude. She felt safe when he held her, his hands felt right against her skin. She would give up everything to hear his voice, hear him tell her it was alright. She hated herself for it. Hated him. He made her feel real, and she spent decades running away from it, in fear of what she’d learn if she got too comfortable.
She crawled up into bed, pulling the duvet off the floor and up over her naked body, burying her face into the pillows. She couldn’t even watch as she slipped her hand out from under the covers and wrapped around her cellphone on the night stand. It was easy to click speed dial.
number one.
It rang, once, twice.
“Hello??” answered the tired voice on the other end of the line.
Ada didn’t answer as she brought the phone under the blanket with her.
“Who is this?”
Bringing the receiver up to her ear she couldn’t hide how her breath shook even if she wanted to, couldn’t if she tried. There was a beat, the other person on the phone pausing as he listened to the sound of her breathing.
“Ad-?“
click.
She hung up the second she heard him begin to say her name. She couldn’t bear it.
She didn’t feel anything but shame as she buried her face into her hands and cried.