Ada Wong doesn't mean anything.
She built it as one vessel among many made to hold empty promises, brittle half-truths and waspy, willowy lies. It's a shield, one of many made to curl around a life left behind but that's still worth keeping safe- to protect a small, run-down apartment in Brooklyn whose rent is never payed on time, a little Chinese girl who dreams so big that it overwhelms her, and parents whose smiles and support never quite reach their eyes because they don't know enough to really believe in their daughter's lofty ambitions.
Ada Wong is a cloak woven from sounds and syllables, a decoy meant to cover and take bullets for the memories of something that's long since been lost. Ada Wong was meant to be discarded when she had drained the forsaken city dry of everything it had to give her and replaced with another name, another face that's just as expendable and just as empty, but that had fewer holes in it.
But the most dangerous kind of person is one who doesn't know they're being lied to.
He was given Ada Wong, and without knowing he filled the vessel. He filled the name with breathy sighs, tender murmurs, emphatic declarations, choked sobs. He filled it with anguish, frustration, fascination, depression, loneliness. He filled the name with love- the kind of love that keeps you awake all night and catches you unawares when you're trying to live, that strikes you in the chest and makes you fall to your knees and pray for it to leave you, that you could never really want to give up no matter how much it hurts.
And Ada Wong does not dissolve into the smoke of the nuclear strike and lie abandoned in the wreckage of the city, a relic to be thrown in the landfills with the rest of the rubble.
She holds onto Ada Wong, as a novelty. Because it's interesting to see them spit it out with disdain and grudging respect, she thinks. Because for once, a reputation might not be so bad to have. Because it's easier to pick up jobs when someone can actually recommend you by name.
But as she lies awake at night and stares at the ceiling she searches for every possible path around it, every possible dance step she could learn to waltz around the truth.
That she's holding onto Ada Wong because he makes it sound so sweet.
Because he makes Ada Wong sound like someone she'd like to be one day.
After China, she uses a different name during a small-time assignment. Something brittle and lifeless- Eva Cho or Lana Liu, she forgets- that is thrown away into the wind the minute she hits her mark.
Because now, Ada Wong is overflowing. Ada Wong is filled with high-flying adventure and daring escapes, wicked smirks and witty one-liners, incredibly near misses, insane luck and stolen moments of peace with the one responsible for all of this. Ada Wong is a vessel for a life in full technicolor motion and he is the anchor, the reality that keeps it from floating away from her, robbing her of their future and leaving her with only a past she'll never be sure is worth holding onto.
Ada Wong means something.
Ada Wong means everything.
