just something from my ao3 that i felt like posting here~
Ada isn't someone who dwells on lost causes.
She's seen a lot in her years, things that she's almost certain no spy before her has ever had to deal with: Raccoon City, the monstrosities that Umbrella brought into creation. The wild desperation of humanity, struggling against situations that still end up rotting inside of a person long after surviving them. Hell, she's felt it herself.
But she still never lingers, on anything. She doesn't put down roots, casing aside name after name so often she wonders if she can even remember her true one anymore. Remember who she is.
And yet she dreams when she sleeps, of a myriad of images and memories. Clouded visions of a childhood forgotten, alone. The first time she sent a bullet straight into the head of an undead creature, becoming more and more inhuman by the minute. A bloodied, blonde-haired police officer who's too naïve for his own good, and a redheaded college student desperate to find her lost brother.
At least, those were the dreams that plagued her nights. Dreams that came back for years, leaving her laying alone under unfamiliar bedsheets, following her regardless of where she went. She supposed Umbrella followed her for years too, and that was when she knew her life wouldn't return to any sort of normalcy that she formerly had.
If there had ever been any there in the first place.
Once again, she's caught in the middle of a bioterror disaster. Once again, her aims her gun at virus-ridden bodies (so they regenerate now – that was nothing new). Once again, she leaves Leon calling out after her with the name he still thought was who she was.
And the dreams change.
She sees her own face. Like a reflection in a mirror… or a flickering picture on an aged VHS tape.
Everything is hazy – blank and white and endless. The whole world is gone. And something is falling from the nothingness.
A trail of bright red flutters after it, and suddenly it isn't the only thing that's red. Soundlessly, the figure has struck the ground, staining it with red. A stain that is slowly spreading. Ada approaches it, no longer just a spectator in this scene. Everything was slow and fuzzy. Was she running?
Why was she running?
She is the one lying on the ground. Except that it's not her. Ada is still standing, looming over herself, crouching beside her. Her fingers touch the soft red fabric of a scarf, and blood stains her skin. She is stricken. She looks as though she is sleeping. It was the one thing she remembered more than anything else.
It was Carla Radames.
But then it's not Carla Radames. The next night she is the one pooled with blood, body broken and unable to move, claiming to be the real 'Ada Wong'.
Ada Wong. She was a person who didn't exist. She was the name that Leon cried out after her, every time she slipped back into obscurity. She was the one that had died at the hands of the monstrosities of Raccoon City. She was the one that Simmons had loved to the point of obsession.
And, for the fraction of a moment – Carla Radames had been Ada Wong.
She can feel herself fading away, and she wonders in her now strangely sluggish, muddled mind if this was how she had felt. And then she feels the sensation of a hand wrapping around her own.
She somehow finds the strength to turn her head, and Carla is there. Peaceful, angelic, and dead.
Ada is snapped back to the real world, the waking world. The room is dark, and the moonlight coming through the window is delicate and soft.
Carla's name is still bitter on her tongue.