The last thing Hunnigan wanted to kick off the year 2015 with was a phone call from Ada Wong, who called to say she wished to meet with Hunnigan. She then proceeded to give her a time and the name of a restaurant, and instructed her to meet Ada in the private dining room she'd reserved for the two of them. All of this without even waiting for Hunnigan to confirm, so certain was she that Hunnigan would clear any potentially clashing meetings and do as she was told.
She was beyond tempted to just stay home and work on the Dungeons & Dragons campaign she'd been helping agent Harding build. But, as nice as being able to figuratively tell Ada to go fuck herself by simply not showing up would have been, Hunnigan was too curious to do that. She supposed that was what Ada had counted on. So, here she was, being escorted into the private room.
Ada was already waiting for her, elegant as ever, having chosen to wear a wine red blazer with matching pants rather than a dress today. While Hunnigan preferred her suits in shades of black and gray, she did admit she rather envied how well Ada wore red. A lot of people liked to think they could pull it off, but they really couldn't. Hunnigan wasn't one of them, she knew better and went with blue if there was an occasion for anything brighter. Considering the implied intensity of the color red, she supposed it made sense that it was the perfect match for Ada.
"Ingrid, so nice to see you. I hope your holidays went well," she greeted the taller woman who reluctantly responded to the air kisses Ada planted on both sides of her face.
In truth, Hunnigan's holidays had gone better than well. Helena had worked through Christmas eve and day, but in return she'd gotten to take New Year's off, which had allowed her and Hunnigan to take a week long trip to Paris, and it had certainly been a New Year's eve she'd never forget; due to some very lucky timing, she'd had the best orgasm of her life just as the year changed and the fireworks went off over the city.
Of course, she had no intention of disclosing this to Ada.
"Thank you, I hope yours did too," Hunnigan said, engaging in the pleasantries despite considering them a waste of time because neither she or Ada were being sincere in their interest nor in their pretence that they didn't already know at least some of what the other had been up to.
Hunnigan knew there were well over a hundred museums in Paris, yet somehow Ada had managed to make an appearance in the one Hunnigan had taken Helena to, and she'd managed to make sure Hunnigan would spot her from the crowd. Definitely not an accident, Hunnigan didn't believe for a second she would've noticed Ada had she attempted to hide her presence. She'd wanted her to know she was personally keeping an eye on her. For what purpose, Hunnigan couldn't say; Ada had already taken everything of interest Hunnigan had on her, why follow her around?
"I had a wonderful time in Paris, saw some old friends."
"What a coincidence, I was there too," Hunnigan said sarcastically.
"Well, not really, I have an apartment there."
"Of course you do."
A waiter came over to pour the wine Ada had already ordered while waiting.
"None for me, thank you. Red gives me a headache," Hunnigan said and glanced at Ada who smirked at the subtle dig at her. "I'll just have an iced tea," she said and he nodded, promising to return promptly with the requested drink. They sat in silence, Ada taking slow sips of her wine until Hunnigan decided she had better things to do than to wait for Ada to state her business.
"What do you want?"
"What do you want, Ingrid?" Ada asked back.
"You mean besides to strangle you after all the trouble you got me in?"
"Well, in that case I commend your self-control. How have things been at the office?" Ada asked innocently and Hunnigan narrowed her eyes, biting her tongue to keep from straight up telling her to go fuck herself.
"I wouldn't know," she said instead.
"Oh? Did something happen?"
"Cut the act and cut the crap, tell me what you wanted to see me about or I'm leaving," Hunnigan said. Ada swirled the wine in her glass and took a slow drink from it then.
"I have a job for you."
"I already have a job," Hunnigan responded. They fell silent while the waiter came by to deliver Hunnigan her drink, and once he'd gone, Ada spoke again.
"Hun, they really don't deserve your loyalty; if the DSO could prove something beyond reasonable doubt and expose you without risking their own reputation, you would be dragged across the coals many times over," Ada said, and Hunnigan wouldn't admit it out loud, but she had a point.
As much as Hunnigan liked to pretend otherwise, the DSO was just like any other institution that resided mostly in secrecy; it was ample breeding ground for corruption. She just hadn't expected to end up being internally made into the poster girl for it, especially since she had not done anything to deserve it. Smoking her out of the agency rather than pursuing a treason charge and opening the doors for scrutiny would be the quiet and easy way to avoid a PR nightmare. It would be what she'd do if she had to make that choice.
"You seem to be under the impression that I was fired. I wasn't."
"Sure you weren't, but after the hits your reputation has suffered, do you honestly think anyone would ever want to work with you even if you were reinstated? Why would you ever want to go back there?" Ada smirked and drank from her glass.
"Because it's my life's work. Because I believe in the mission. Because someone else would get it wrong."
"And what a marvelous impact you and your Messiah complex have made," Ada drawled sarcastically, and Hunnigan had to swallow another wave of fury that was bubbling within her. What she hated more than Ada's tone was the fact that Ada was not entirely wrong. It was the same thing Helena had said when she'd quit the agency; the work didn't feel like it ever accomplished anything, there was always something more headed their way.
"Come work for me instead."
"You expect me to come work with you after you set me up?" Hunnigan scoffed, emphasizing the word "with" because Ada had said "work for her" and while Hunnigan might have remotely entertained the idea of working with her out of necessity, she would never work for Ada.
"Set you up?" Ada laughed. "I never made you do anything, you did what you wanted, like you always do."
"I seem to recall you coercing me into going to Dulvey."
"Did I do that? Or did I just let you know that you might want to consider it?" Ada shrugged innocently and Hunnigan sighed in exasperation.
Now that she thought about it, sure, maybe Ada could say she hadn't directly said anything that could be considered coercion, but the implication had been there, very clearly so, Hunnigan refused to believe she'd imagined it for the sake of justifying to herself why she needed to go there...because if she had imagined it, that would mean she'd endangered Helena and Hawke's lives and landed herself in the mess she was in currently, and that wouldn't do, it was easier to blame it on Ada.
Stop second-guessing yourself, you did everything right, she mentally told herself.
"I'm still not hearing a convincing reason to join forces with you," she said out loud then.
"I won't try to tempt you with something as banal as money, but let it be said, it pays well. The money I deposited into your account to reimburse you for the safe and the laptop"—
"Speaking of, don't bother stealing my laptops in the future, they won't contain anything you'd be interested in," Hunnigan interjected.
She didn't elaborate that in the future, she would work strictly from encrypted thumb drives she intended to keep on her person at all times rather than ever store anything on her laptop ever again. Not doing things like so sooner had been an oversight on her part, and on the DSO's part. She'd fix it when she got back to work. If she got back to work.
—"was pocket money," Ada finished, ignoring the comment.
"Pass."
"How about something better, then. Something you've always wanted."
The waiter came by to inquire if they were ready to order, and truthfully Hunnigan wasn't hungry in the least. On the contrary, she was growing rather nauseous with Ada's audacity. She let the waiter know she would skip appetizers, and thankfully he knew better than to try and convince her otherwise.
"I seriously doubt you have anything I'd want," she then told Ada once it was just the two of them again.
"Everyone can be seduced by the right woman, the trick is figuring out who she is, then becoming her."
"Yeah, that might work with Leon, it's not gonna work on me, you're not my type."
"I didn't mean 'seduce' quite that literally," Ada laughed quietly. "You and I both know that with your abilities you could work anywhere else, you could have a job in the private sector and make two-three times the money you're making now, I had to ask myself why do you waste your time as a government stooge, and as far as I can tell, the only thing the DSO can offer that's not available elsewhere in such quantities is the liberty to do what you want without being prosecuted," she continued, and Hunnigan let out a bored sigh, not bothering to comment; she believed the tone of her sigh would let her feelings be known.
"As inefficient as I think the DSO is at its designated function, it's still something that offers some semblance of meaning in your work. But what I'm offering is the real deal, a chance to make an actual impact. What we found at the tanker is just the beginning."
"That so?" Hunnigan said, keeping her tone still as bored as she could manage it, but Ada wasn't fazed.
"I am offering you a chance to do what I do; change the world in a hundred different ways every day, I'm one of destiny's agents."
"You're an agent of chaos."
"You say that like it's a bad thing. Chaos is beautiful. It unsettles and disrupts, does away with the old. It purifies and clears a path for something new."
"None of what you just said makes the idea of working with you any more appealing."
"How about the chance to do what you want? Unlike the DSO, I will never tell you something is impossible; I will give you resources and tell you to go get it done."
"Why me?" Hunnigan asked, shrugging one shoulder. "Since you're being so generous, I would imagine there'd be people lining up to work for you, why come to me, you must've known I would say no."
"Because I only accept the best," Ada smiled and paused once more to drink from her glass.
"Flattery won't turn me into your slave."
"I'd be disappointed if it did, but you'd be amazed at how often and how easily that usually works," Ada chuckled.
"You haven't answered my question," Hunnigan said after Ada's appetizer of crab cakes had been delivered. Ada once again took her sweet time taking a bite from her food and chewing it thoroughly before speaking again. She seemed to be enjoying getting on Hunnigan's nerves by dilly-dallying needlessly, but Hunnigan tried to not let her annoyance show on her face. Either she was failing miserably or it didn't matter to Ada because she kept doing it.
"I could hire a dozen people who might technically be about as good as you are, but it won't matter if they don't have the passion to do this. I want you because this isn't just a job for you. We're actually very alike, you and I."
"I doubt that," Hunnigan scoffed.
"Obsessive, ruthless when necessary...living in moral relativism. If I had your Electra-complex we could be the same person, professionally speaking."
"I will be very disappointed if this outdated and half-witted homespun psychology is all you've got. Let me spare us both the time, I can already tell you that you don't have what it takes to manipulate me into forgetting where my loyalties lie."
"With an agency that abandoned you at the first sign of trouble?" Ada asked, raising her eyebrows innocently.
"They didn't abandon me, but even if they had, I'd take that over not even knowing who I work for. Do you know who you work for? Do you even care?" Hunnigan questioned and Ada laughed softly.
"Do you know who you work for?" Ada asked, all mirth now drained from her voice; she had stopped playing around with Hunnigan like a cat would lose its interest in playing with its food. Likewise, Hunnigan had lost her interest in having this conversation with Ada.
"Thanks for the offer but it's a hard pass for me," she said and stood up to leave.
"You know what your problem is, Ingrid?"
"Right now, it's a bitch in a red suit."
"You don't know what is good for you."
"Says the woman who just asked me to come work for her."
"Ingrid," Ada said, and Hunnigan didn't really want to, but at the same time she had to stop and turn to look back and hear what Ada had to say.
"I'm saying this as a friend: watch your back. The DSO is afraid of you because you are relentless. You're their best asset but you're also one of the biggest threats to them. They can't keep you but they can't let anyone else have you either."
"Personally, I think I'm worth more to them alive in disgrace than dead and buried," Hunnigan commented.
She wasn't concerned because she knew better than to assume the DSO went around assassinating their problematic agents. If they did, she and Leon would've been killed or tried for treason long before Tall Oaks. Hunnigan was convinced Ada didn't actually know much more than Hunnigan did; she knew bits and pieces and bluffed the rest. Granted, she was very good at bluffing and performed a very convincing act, but Hunnigan wasn't buying it. As the saying went, it took one to know one, and Hunnigan was no stranger to bluffing herself.
"You're a coward and a vulture, Ada. You feed people scraps of information and expect them to do all the hard work for you while you hide in the shadows only to conveniently swoop in and steal the fruit of everyone else's labor. That's what you did to me with the data from Dulvey, that's what you've done to Leon for as long as you've known him, and undoubtedly to countless others before and after both of us."
"Feel better now?" Ada smirked, and Hunnigan didn't bother answering. She hadn't said it to feel better, she hadn't said it intending to hurt Ada's feelings; she'd said it because it was true, based on everything she knew of Ada and her way of operating.
"I don't care if the DSO fires me or disgraces me, they can do whatever the hell they want, and I still will never, in my life, ever, knowingly and willingly work with you because you're a spineless liar whose moral gas tank is about two drops away from bone dry, and I still have my integrity."
It was at that moment that the most wonderful realization came over Hunnigan. She realized she truly, genuinely didn't care. Ada and her buddies could do whatever the hell they wanted. The DSO could do whatever the hell they wanted. The Family and the rest of the people responsible for whateverthefuck it was that they were playing at could do whateverthefuck they wanted, Ingrid Lee Del Rey did not give a good god damn anymore.
She'd dedicated her life to this work and what had it gotten her? Reprimanded, mostly. Sure, there had been moments of triumph and good times, she'd met good people through the DSO, some had even become friends, but overall? She'd given more than she'd ever received.
She'd known from the beginning it was a thankless job but it hadn't mattered, she'd dedicated herself to it, and she didn't regret that devotion, on the contrary, it had served a purpose, it had given her purpose. But sadly, that had not been the case for a long while now. They'd gone from trying to save people to fighting corrupt officials and their schemes. The job had become an insanely difficult game of whack-a-mole; put one crooked player away and ten new ones popped up to replace them.
Generals drooling over the possibility of having a new weapon no other nation had. Small men desperately trying to make themselves important. Lobbyists for pharmaceutical companies making generous offerings to certain people within the government in exchange for the right to do things like test vaccines and potential bioweapons on prisoners, on the homeless, on the mentally ill; so much faster and easier to do it that way than to wait around for the FDA's approval for human testing.
Hunnigan didn't even care to count the number of times she'd dealt with outbreaks engineered by pharmaceutical companies who had wanted to see how well their brand of plague could spread, and how well their vaccine would work. At the end of the day, what was even more valuable than any biological weapon was immunity to them, and once you were the only one who had something so many people would want, its value became immeasurable. If you had the power to render the enemy's biological weapons useless by creating a vaccine for it, governments would be fighting over the chance to buy it from you exclusively.
Or if that failed, you could just sell a disease to an arms dealer and swoop in afterward with the vaccine, same modus operandi, charge the NGOs and the governments for it. What are they gonna do, not pay and let the disease spread? After a while, the people would revolt.
Then there were the governments willing to offer immunity and a testing ground to legitimate evil scientists who committed atrocities in the name of science. The U.S. alone had always been happy to harbor those kind of people, all the way from the Nazi scientists to the monsters who worked at Unit 731, why would any of that have changed, especially now when it was becoming clearer and clearer that the nation ruling the world was not the one with the strongest army of the bravest soldiers, it was the nation with the greatest scientists.
On one hand, Hunnigan felt that she should keep fighting because she was in a position to do so, she was able to do things that could potentially make a difference, your average citizen wasn't. They could riot and write petitions all they wanted, but at the end of the day they alone had very little chance of truly changing something at the core. They were given token sacrifices, scapegoats who had certainly done enough to deserve being blamed, but who also didn't ultimately matter enough to the people who really ran the country; they could be tried and sentenced to make the people happy, to make them believe a difference had been made when it hadn't.
On the other hand, Hunnigan felt that nothing she could do would permanently fix anything, she was wasting her time with this when she could do literally anything else. Maybe focus on doing things that made her happy instead of continuously diving deeper into the cesspool of corruption her work had become.
Hell, if Ada's not-so-subtle implications had any basis in truth, it seemed Hunnigan was on her way to becoming one of those scapegoats for the DSO, and it seemed she was fighting for the right to become one; no wonder Ada seemed to think her a fool. The more Hunnigan thought about it, the more she, too, began to think herself a fool.
Hunnigan was about to simply walk away when she heard Ada get up and then felt Ada's hand on her forearm. She didn't know what came over her, what odd instinct she didn't even realize she possessed took over in that instant, overriding her usual behavior. Instead of simply stopping and turning to look back, Hunnigan found herself throwing excess force into her movement as she leaned toward Ada, headbutting her.
The impact took them both by surprise, and after several seconds of stunned silence, Ada started to laugh as Hunnigan rubbed her forehead which had hit some part of Ada's nose judging from the blood dripping from her nostril.
"That's not how you do it properly," Ada said and before Hunnigan could move out of the way, Ada had ducked a little and taking advantage of their height difference, she drove the top of her head against Hunnigan's throat. The impact caused Hunnigan's teeth to click against each other so hard one of the lower front teeth chipped.
Ada had learned to control her body language so well it was near impossible to predict her movements, only to react to them. If it had been anyone else who headbutted her, she would've known to duck because they would've been unable to keep that small angry frown from appearing on their face broadcasting the intent before the action took place. But Ada just looked as calm as ever, before and after the hit.
"Sucker punch me, will you?" Ada chuckled. "This is incredibly stupid, Ingrid. You're not the brawling type, and even if you were, do you honestly think you have what it takes to beat me in hand-to-hand combat?" she then asked as she backed toward the table and reached for her wine.
"Of course I wouldn't win, I wasn't trying to win, I just wanted to land one hit because you're such a frustrating dick," Hunnigan responded, picking up her glasses that seemed to be still intact despite having landed on the hard tile floor. As she picked them up, however, one of the lenses fell out and cracked in half as it landed, and Hunnigan sighed a little.
Cost of headbutting Ada Wong: a pair of glasses and a chip of a tooth.
Totally worth it, Hunnigan thought, running her tongue over the small gap on her tooth. One of the staff approached to undoubtedly question what the hell was going on, but Ada waved him off, and despite looking like he would've wanted to say something, he swallowed his comment and turned on his heel, walking away. Hunnigan decided to do the same. She pocketed her glasses and straightened her jacket.
"Goodbye, Ada. I don't ever want to see you again."
"Don't worry, you won't," Ada smiled and raised her glass in Hunnigan's direction. "But I'll find a way to keep in touch," she added, muttering the words into her wine as she tilted the glass and took a drink.