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Heavy rain thudded against the draped windows of Claire’s apartment.
She sat at the desk in her small room, populated by a lamp, various trinkets she’d found over her travels, and a framed photo of Chris and Sherry. She typed away at her old, run-down laptop, her fingers lightly tapping against the keys. She just needed to finish up this report for TerraSave, then she could call it a night. It didn’t help that her laptop was so damn slow, struggling to even open a single tab. She’d been saving up for a new one for a good while now, but she’d been using the rest of her TerraSave money to pay the bills.
The weather report had said a massive storm was coming that night, and her apartment building was right in the middle of it. She could hear the howling wind outside causing the leaves of the tall trees to rustle loudly, the branches scraping against the windows. The crackling bolts of thunder came soon after, followed by a storm of hail. She was never that scared of thunder, even as a child. In fact, nothing really scared her anymore.
Along with her shirt and sweatpants she called pajamas, Claire wore her old slippers plastered with tasteless, cutesy raccoon faces. They were given to her by Chris years ago at a Christmas party from when he was working at the RPD. Memories of that horrible city still loomed over her life, decades after it had been left to rot and destroyed in that explosion. She kept telling herself that she’d moved on with her life, but she knew that wasn’t the truth.
However, she had been seeing a therapist recently (she wished Leon would do the same). Things had been getting better for her for once. She was able to talk about her nightmares of lickers and zombies more openly nowadays, and she’d even gotten in touch with other survivors she’d never met during the outbreak.
After Chris had left, Claire was used to being alone every waking hour of her life. Sure, she still kept in contact with him, but things were so different now due to his close involvement with the BSAA. She talked to her old friends often, and she had her co-workers at TerraSave. She’d often go out with them for drinks at the local bar, but her relationships with them were just that: co-workers. Nothing more, nothing less. After Raccoon City, she felt like she had become a completely different person.
Claire sighed. Why did she have to constantly think about Raccoon City? She just needed to focus on this report and get it done. Her eyesight had gotten worse over the years, and she squinted at her laptop’s screen even with her glasses on. She made a mental note to set up an appointment with her optometrist sometime.
She hated the quiet of her apartment when she moved in for the first time. She always expected to hear the screeching of a licker or a zombie’s pained moans. Some days she expected to hear Steve’s annoying voice that she missed so, so much. She still blamed herself for not being able to save him in Antarctica. She tried to solve this by blasting her old Queen CDs to distract herself, but to no avail. She expected it to turn out that way.
Now, years later, she didn’t hate the quiet all that much anymore. She’d gotten used to this empty apartment she called home.
The only sounds around her were the pounding rain and the hail, her laptop's keys, and the building occasionally settling.
That is, until Claire heard three consecutive knocks at the front door.
Claire felt herself jump from the sudden noise. Who in their right mind would even be at her apartment at this hour? And in this stormy weather? She knew Chris was off on some mission like he always was, same as Leon and X. Sherry, Rebecca, Moira, and Barry always called her beforehand when one of them wanted to visit her. Well, she hadn’t heard from Jill in a long time. She was still recovering from that nightmare in Kijuju.
She stood up from her desk and rushed to the door. She didn’t have any windows near the front door in order to check who it was, but she never really considered herself that much of a paranoid person anyway, even after Raccoon City.
She slowly unfastened the locks and carefully opened it to find a familiar face that she hadn’t seen in a long, long time.
Black hair, red dress, high heels, unintelligible brown eyes.
“Claire,” Ada breathed before nearly collapsing onto the floor, only to be stopped by Claire’s arms. She’d caught her out of pure instinct. She was still reeling from the shock of seeing her again after so many years. It was like she wasn’t supposed to see her. It was like she had seen a ghost. Like this ghost came back to haunt her.
Wet shoeprints trailed behind Ada down the wooden floorboards of the hall. She was completely drenched from head to toe. She looked like she had just swam her way out of a river. Where the hell had she been? Claire hadn’t seen her since the cold morning after that night at that dingy old motel in San Francisco. Why did she need her now?
"Ada!" Claire exclaimed, holding her in her arms. She helped her up, directed her hand over her neck, and tightly held her wrist to keep her balance. She then locked the door behind them with one hand. “Come on, let’s get you inside.”
Upon closer inspection, Ada’s eyeliner had stained her cheeks as if she cried black tears. Her red lipstick was smudged across her chin. Her red nail paint was chipped, with grime underneath them. Her knees were scraped. She’d never seen her like this before. Ada had always seemed so perfect, and so cool under pressure. But she was a complete mess, just like Claire.
Claire brought Ada to the living room, and gently placed her on the small sofa. She would have liked to buy a new one soon, as this one was falling apart at the seams, its dark blue color now faded. She grabbed an old green blanket from the closet and gently draped it over Ada, who was staring at her own cold hands like they didn’t belong to her. She looked so out of place like this: a corporate spy who had no qualms with murder and torture sitting on a sofa, completely submerged in water from being caught in the rain.
Not that it bothered Claire, though. She looked like a sad, wet cat that had been rescued from a box in the rain. A cute one, at that.
"Is someone following you?" Claire asked as she sat next to Ada. She knew first-hand just how dangerous her life really was, no matter how much she tried to hide it from her. “Have you gotten yourself into some crazy shit again?”
"No, everything's fine." Ada managed to speak, her voice hoarse. She looked absolutely exhausted. “You don’t have to worry about me so much.”
“Hey, you’re the one who showed up at my door in the dead of night without warning.” Claire teased, earning an eye roll from Ada. She placed the back of her hand against her forehead to check her temperature, like how her brother once did to her when they were children. She was freezing, and she needed something warm to eat. It seemed this blanket clearly wasn’t doing enough.
“Stay here.” Claire said. “I’m gonna get you some hot food. Then we need to talk, got it?”
Ada only nodded, avoiding eye contact with Claire and staring at her hands again. She had long fingers, dexterous and nimble and always carrying a gun. Sometimes even a cigarette, but only on rare occasions, reserved for Claire’s eyes only. A relaxed Ada was like Bigfoot: extremely rare, impossible, and no one would ever believe you if you told them about it.
Claire made her way to the small room she called a kitchen. She grabbed a pot and a can of unknown soup from the cupboard, which turned out to be chicken noodle as she looked at the bright yellow label. She wondered what Ada’s favorite kind of soup was. Did she even like soup? Claire didn’t even know her favorite food in general. Ada was always a private person, even around Claire. She tried to maintain this constant image of a calm, remorseless spy at all times. She hid behind a wall that could never be broken, no matter how hard Claire tried to smash it to pieces with a hammer.
Why did she have to show up at her place, anyway? She had some nerve showing her pretty face around here after that night.
But she knew she couldn’t stay mad at her anymore. It was useless. But it was so strange, though, their situation. Ada had actually come to visit Claire by her own volition. She didn't even invite her. Ada was in danger, and her first thought was to seek her out. Did she have nowhere else to go, no one to turn to? Was Claire really all Ada had left? She had so much she needed to ask her, but she wasn’t so sure if she would even get any answers out of her in the long run.
She poured the soup into the pot after it was done, and it was enough for only one person to enjoy. She watched as the red flames of the stove licked the bottom of the pot, heating the soup up.
Claire had lost her appetite.
She grabbed a spoon and a small blue bowl from the cupboard, carefully pouring the hot broth into the latter after it was done heating up. She returned to the living room to find Ada still wrapped up in the green blanket, but she was staring at the white ceiling with her gorgeous brown eyes this time. She looked oddly pale, and her lipstick and eyeliner were removed. Claire really loved when Ada wore her makeup, but she thought she looked stunning without it.
She wondered why she wore her makeup so often, even when she wasn’t on missions. It was like she could never read her. Her eyes even looked vacant at times.
"I made you some soup." Claire chimed, a bowl with a spoon in her hands. "You've never told me your favorite, so it's chicken noodle for tonight."
“Thank you,” Ada replied as Claire handed it to her. She immediately dug in like she was a starving woman that hadn’t eaten in years. The way she ate reminded Claire of a bird, carefully picking the meat and vegetables and saving the broth for later.
“So, how did you know which apartment was mine?” Claire asked, sitting on the old chair across from the sofa. “And why’d you come here, anyways?”
“Lucky guess,” Ada muttered, idly mixing the broth with her spoon. She stared at the soup, the steam gently kissing her face. "I was in town. I just thought I’d pay you a visit. It’s been a while, hasn’t it, Red?”
"Cut the bullshit." Claire rolled her eyes at Ada's use of that affectionate nickname she used when she wanted to change the subject, or when she wanted to fuck. It was the former this time. "Come on, just tell me why you're really here. It’s not every day the great Ada Wong shows up at my doorstep unannounced looking for shelter and some food.”
“You didn’t have to let me in, you know.” Ada said, dodging the question again. She scooped up a piece of chicken with her spoon and brought it to her mouth. “I wouldn’t have asked you to, anyways.”
"I let you in because I care about you, Ada," Claire sighed. She knew this old song and dance they did together many times before, like a perfect routine. “Don’t you get that after all these years? Is that so hard for you to understand?"
Ada didn’t respond. She stared at the soup again, but she stopped eating. Maybe there was nothing left in the bowl.
“I know it was you.” Claire said, seemingly out of nowhere. She didn't know why she felt like reminiscing on the past. “I know you threw that rocket launcher at me to take out William in the lab.”
“I heard it didn’t finish the job, though.” Ada replied. She didn't seem deterred by her failure to help Claire, though. It was just a fact of life. You can't change the past, after all.
“That bastard just didn’t stay dead, huh?” Claire chuckled, almost sadly at the memory of William’s mutated form mending with the walls of the train carriage until it was made up of himself. “Leon, X, and I managed to kill him on the train, though. Has it really been that long?”
“Sure has.”
Silence again.
A silence between two women that were strangers. A silence between two women who knew each other better than anyone else in the world.
The clashing of the hail against the roof had stopped, and the rain had finally died down a bit. That didn't stop the storm that was ravaging inside Claire's mind, though. She hated the silence. She hated that she couldn't just tell Ada how she really felt about her for once in her life. She was a damn coward. She was normally so open with her emotions, but this wasn't the case when she was around Ada.
She found her eyes drifting to Ada's arms and long legs. They were uninjured now, but she remembered seeing her scars during that night in San Francisco, from when she had fallen to her supposed death back at NEST. She’d traced them all over her bare body, like she was a precious work of art, and she had shivered underneath her touch. Ada's rare displays of vulnerabilities were for her eyes only.
She wished she could tell her how much she loved her. She wished she could stay with her and throw herself into her dangerous world of espionage and murder. But Claire’s world was just as dangerous as hers. Why couldn’t Ada understand that already? Why did she keep driving her away like she was some stranger to her? Was the woman sitting on that sofa in her apartment a stranger, too?
Didn't Ada remember Antarctica? Claire’s mind drifted back to that terrible, freezing winter of 1998 she could never forget, even if she tried. She remembered how Ada held her in her arms after Steve had died. She could still feel her hands running through her brown hair, soothing her and whispering words of comfort into her ears.
She kissed her that winter, her gentle red lips against pink, leaving a mark. Proof she was hers, and hers only. She told her that if she ever needed her, she would come to her, even if they were miles apart. She would hold her and kiss her like she had done once before. But Ada Wong was never one to keep her promises, if she even had any to begin with. Claire had come to understand that much.
Claire wasn't 19 anymore, and Ada wasn't 24 anymore. This wasn't Raccoon City. This wasn't Antarctica. This was just a rainy night in January. This was just the two of them. This was the present. She only hoped Ada knew that now. Maybe she did, but she refused to admit it.
“I guess I just wanted to see you.” Ada suddenly said, breaking the silence. She looked away from Claire, in an almost shy manner. “It’s been too long. I guess you could say I missed you.”
Thank God Ada finally had spoken up for once. The silence was becoming too much for Claire to handle.
“I thought you’d never say that.” Claire smiled a bit. “I missed you, too.”
Ada returned the smile, another rare sight. She always had a focused, emotionless line for a mouth. However, when she did smile, it was to hide her true emotions. She always seemed so, so sad when she did. It was a kind of sadness that Claire wished she could understand. She wished Ada would let her.
“You know… I’ve been meaning to talk to you about something for a while now.” Claire said with a heavy sigh. “You never really gave me the chance.”
“What is it?”
“It’s about us.” Claire looked around the room, unsure of what to look at. “Look, you’re always running away from me. You act as if things are always gonna be the same, like we can’t change anything. But we’re so much older now. Things could be different. We don’t have to keep living like this.”
Silence, terrible silence. Ada stared at Claire, then at her soup bowl with much consideration and thought. She fished through the broth and placed a piece of vegetable in her mouth, chewing it. Claire awaited her response.
“Is that all you needed to say?” She asked after swallowing.
“Why do I even bother? You’re still living in the past.” Claire sighed. “It’s like you never even left in the first place.”
“I’m just trying to keep you safe, Claire.” Ada replied. “I’ve been trying to ever since we met. My job’s much more dangerous than you think it is.”
“Look, I don’t care what happens anymore, Ada,” Claire said, reaching out her hand. “But it doesn’t have to be like this anymore! We could be together! So if you’d just let me-”
“Would you stop it?” Ada finally turned her head, and her brown eyes stared into Claire’s blue ones with an emotion she couldn’t decipher. “You just don’t understand, do you? You’ll get killed if you follow me. We can’t play house, and I can’t be some wife to you, if that’s what you’re thinking. It’s too late for any of that.”
“I’m not a child!” Claire practically yelled, finally reaching her breaking point. “Yet you keep treating me like one! We might not go through the same shit, but both of our lives are on the line, even when I’m not with you. This isn’t Raccoon City, and this isn’t Rockfort or Antarctica anymore. And you know I love you, more than anything in the entire world. Hell, I would give the world to you if I could, Ada! Isn’t that enough?”
"You were too young!" Ada shouted. But she suddenly lowered her voice, and looked away from Claire, like she was surprised by her own behavior. She'd never heard her yell like that before. "I didn't know how to love you."
Claire was stunned. She didn't know how to respond to this. Her blue eyes widening in surprise, she only stared at Ada. Was she still that nervous college student that had found her injured in the lab all those years ago? Still a prisoner searching for her brother, with Steve tagging along behind her like a lost puppy?
"I'm so sorry." Ada finally said before Claire could open her mouth. She looked mortified by this sudden showing of vulnerability. "I should’ve never come. I can leave if you need me to-"
“No, it's-" Claire paused. She thought for a moment. "You can stay. I really want you to. But it’s getting late. You can take the guest room. There's warm clothes in there for you.”
Claire stood up from the chair and approached Ada. That little blue bowl of soup was still on her lap. The steam had long since died, leaving only small puddles of broth against the fine porcelain. She handed the bowl to her, and their fingers touched for the first time that night. She was warm again.
Then why did the room suddenly feel so cold?
She walked to the kitchen and placed the bowl in the sink, uncaring of the dirty dishes piling up. She’d just do it in the morning. What time was it, anyway?
When she returned to the living room, Claire found the green blanket left on the sofa. Ada had stood up, her hands at her sides. She looked weak, defeated. She looked completely out of her element like this. Claire just wanted to reach out and hold her for the rest of the night, for the rest of their lives, but she just couldn’t.
“I’ll see you in the morning.” Claire sighed, refusing to look at Ada as she retreated to her bedroom. “Good night, Ada.”
"Thank you for the food." Ada only said before she left for the guest room, like a ghost among the walls. "Good night."
Ada sat on the neatly-made bed of the guest room, observing the small space.
It was a tiny room, in an even tinier apartment. It was oddly cold. But it was comforting and neat, but still small, small like Claire’s little world. It was far too plain for her liking, though, with muted colors and a book on the table by the bedside. The alarm clock flashed one in the morning on the dot. A single window was in the room, the moon staring back at her absently. The small bed was as freezing as ice, as if it hadn’t been touched in a long time. She assumed Claire didn’t get many visitors that often anymore.
Maybe Ada was the first one she had in a while.
She looked down at her ruined red dress. Why did she even bother wearing it today? Her blank brown eyes found their way to the closet at the end of the room. Claire told her about warm clothes being in there for her. She walked over to it and opened the small mirrored doors. Inside, she found an old Queen band t-shirt and a pair of red pajama shorts that showed quite a lot of skin. Ada chuckled at the sight.
How cute.
She could just imagine Claire in them, her brown hair messy and tangled, sleeping by her side…
Without much thought, she hesitantly brought her nose to the t-shirt. Even though it was clean, it smelled just like Claire. She thought about why it was fresh. Either she hadn’t worn it in years, or she kept it just like this, just in case Ada would come to visit her. She took off her dress and put on the shirt and shorts, and it felt as if Claire had wrapped her arms around her. She would never admit it out loud, but Ada yearned for her touch, or just any touch at all, frankly. She would take such a thing to her grave.
She laid down on the bed, over the covers, and stared at the gray ceiling. Ada had been sleeping on her back since her teenage years, always on alert and ready in case of any danger. She sighed, her thoughts drifting back to Claire.
Claire was cute when she laughed. Maybe because it sounded like she was crying. They were both interchangeable actions to her, like two sides of the same coin. Sometimes Ada thought she’d forgotten how to do either after all these years. She should’ve just closed the door on her as soon as she saw her face. She had no obligation to help her anymore. She’d already paid her debt to her back in Antarctica.
She didn’t understand why Claire even let her into her apartment. She didn’t have to make that bowl of chicken noodle soup for her, her favorite kind, or wrapped her up in that green blanket. She should’ve kicked her out when she had the chance. Ada knew she was a terrible person. Claire could remind her everyday, and nothing would change. She had to hide her job from her, no matter how much she wanted to be with her.
She always felt this constant, aching need to protect her. But she wanted to end everything and just stay with her, leaving behind her world of corporate espionage and bioweapons and death. She’d grown numb to all the suffering over the years, as it was a fact of life. She found it disturbing that she did. She wanted to change things, but she knew she never could.
Ada would never admit such things to Claire, though. She didn’t tell her everything, but she was different from the other people in her life. Claire would confide in her, and she would do the same. She would let her feel her scars, feel her body, feel everything. But Ada wasn’t so sure if she could do the same.
She’d always wanted to move back into her childhood home in San Francisco, a cramped apartment in Chinatown, or at least pay it a visit. It was the only thing in her life that was devoid of suffering. That was just an unattainable dream, though, and it was probably long gone by now, anyway, replaced with office buildings or some tourist attraction. The closest she’d ever gotten to it was when she and Claire went on that date in San Francisco.
Ada never had a home to go back to anymore. Every dingy motel or five star hotel she stayed at, depending on her paycheck, was what she called home nowadays. She was always on the run, always on some job for whatever corporation that hired her. Of course, these jobs came with their dangers. It came with murder. It came with pain. She was used to it. People died all the time, and the world of corporate espionage was no different.
But when she was in the rain, Ada’s first instinct was to head to Claire’s apartment building.
Was Claire her home?
Perhaps she was all along, and it took her twenty-one years to realize that. She’d given up. Just this once.
Just for Claire.
Ada walked out of the guest room and to Claire’s bedroom, the apartment bathed in black. She was never scared of the dark, even as a child. The moonlight from the windows guided her.
“Claire?” Ada stood in the doorway of Claire’s room. Of course she’d leave it open for her. She knew she would come back. She knew her all too well. “Could I speak to you?”
She was met with silence, until she heard her voice, a voice that could make her melt into her arms just by the sound of it.
“... Just get in here already.”
Ada stepped inside and crawled into the bed next to her, a domestic sight she knew she could never have. Of course Claire was still awake, still waiting for Ada like she always was, ever since she found her injured in Raccoon City.
Before Ada could speak, Claire promptly kissed her on the mouth, almost violently, like she was burning for her. Ada eagerly returned the kiss, placing her hand on the back of her head. She missed this feeling more than she realized, Claire’s plush lips against hers, drinking it like she was a dehydrated woman. She moaned when she felt her slipping her tongue inside her mouth, the two of them breathing heavily. She never wanted to let go of her ever again, wishing this moment could last for eternity.
“Just shut up, Ada,” Claire pulled away to breathe, then kissed her again. “You’re so damn obvious.”
She finally broke away from her, a trail of saliva between their mouths. Ada uncharacteristically whimpered, surprising herself by the sound.
“I’m sorry, Claire.” Ada said, her chest rising and falling. “I’ve been a real asshole to you.”
“I know you’re just trying to protect me, you know that?” Claire replied. “I’m not as oblivious as you think I am, Ada.”
“I’m just terrified. I’m terrified of what’ll happen to you if I lose myself.”
“Hey.” Claire gently placed her hand on Ada’s cheek, staring into her brown eyes. “We’ve been through worse. You have me, and I’ll always be yours, so stop denying it. Alright?”
Claire probably couldn’t see it in the darkness, but Ada smiled, a smile that wasn’t artificial this time.
“I love you so fucking much, Claire.” Ada said quietly, like she was afraid to admit it out loud. Like she was fearful that someone would hear her. She would never say those words to her again, though. Just this once.
"And you're tired," Claire teased, and she imagined a big dopey smile on her face, seemingly admiring her lack of grace. She normally tried to be so suave and confident around her, but she had her wrapped around her finger tonight. It seemed she didn't have any plans of letting her go. “I love you, too.”
The two women laid there, wrapped up in each other’s arms, a quiet contentedness washing over them. Ada wouldn’t leave Claire this time. Maybe she was sick of playing this game over and over again, unsure if she was the winner or the loser. Tomorrow, she would be Ada Wong, the cold, calculating spy again. But tonight, just for Claire, she would put that persona away in the closet until she was needed.
“Do you ever think about it?” Claire asked amidst the silence in the bedroom.
“Think about what?” Ada responded, absentmindedly tracing a small scar on Claire’s forearm with her finger. She wondered where it came from.
“Oh, you know, starting over.” Claire sighed. “We could just move on with our lives. We could just quit our jobs and move to San Francisco.”
“Claire…” Ada replied. “I hate to say it, but you know it’s too late for that now. There never really was a time for it, either. Lives like that just aren’t for women like us. Maybe in another life. I can’t stay here forever, Claire. You understand that, right?”
“I know that,” She said. “I know this, us, just can’t last forever. You made your choices already. But you’ll stay the night?”
“Of course,” Ada smirked. “You know I’ll do anything if I’m asked nicely.”
“Could I ask you something?” Claire asked, almost nervously. “It’s a little bit personal.”
“This is the most personal I’ve ever been with you, Claire. Just say it. I don’t bite. Mostly.”
"I remember when I met you again back in Antarctica. You still had all those bandages from the fall. You looked like a mummy." Claire mused, gently stroking Ada’s black hair, a feeling that she hadn’t realized she missed so dearly. “Why’d you go there, anyway? I know it was because of the virus, but you were still recovering. You shouldn't have pushed yourself."
"I knew you'd be there. I just couldn't stay away from you."