Leon brought the axe down with a smooth swing, splitting the half of a log into two smaller pieces. He threw the two new pieces of firewood onto a slowly growing pile.
"I'm starting to suspect you called me out here just to do your chores," he huffed, setting another log on the block. It had taken him a few tries to get it right. He was going on ancient boy scout knowledge at this point.
"You've got to pull your weight at the cabin, that wasn't in the letter? Huh." Ada was leaning comfortably against the old truck, a cup of steaming tea in her gloved hands. "You wouldn't want little me to freeze to death up here, would you?"
He gave her an unamused look before going back to splitting.
"So I guess my first question is…why did you try to kill me in China, or why was there someone who looked like you trying to kill me?"
Ada hummed, mulling over her answer. She took another sip of tea, and answered through the steam.
"I should have known you'd ask the hard questions first. To put it simply, I wasn't behaving so Simmons tried to clone me into a version that would behave. She behaved even less than I did."
Leon looked up from his work to listen, tossing two more pieces of wood on the pile blindly. Ada just stared at the leaves on the ground while she continued.
"That's who tried to kill you. Tell me, did you trust her even after that, when you thought she was me?" She tilted her head in curiosity.
His side-long look and silence as he returned to chopping wood answered her question.
"You'd vouch for me even if I tried to kill you, huh… that's not a good move, you know."
"Everything was confusing in China. People I knew were coming out of the woodworks and I had no idea what was going on. I figured you had a good reason."
"Well now you know better."
"Yeah, but not enough to not drive up a mountain when you send me one vague note…"
She smirked slyly and went back to sipping her tea. Leon took a break from chopping, sweat starting to bead on his brow.
"Why did you come here, Leon?"
"What do you mean? You invited me."
"I mean what do you want from me. You're always telling me to wait. To come back. I'm here now and not going anywhere, so what is it that you want?"
It was Leon's turn to stare at the leaves, putting together his answer.
"That's a good question… you've been around at the worst, most dangerous times in my life so far, and I guess…I just want to know who you are."
"You'd better be careful with that. Are you sure you don't just like chasing a mystery?"
He huffed.
"Not sure if I know the answer to that yet…"
Ada pushed off of the truck lightly, looking towards the forest, and the mountains she could see peeking between them.
"Well you'll have plenty of time to figure it out. The weather's going to pick up tonight, and you'll probably be trapped up here for a few days if the road gets snowed over. So you can either leave before tonight with the answers you've got, or stay a while and see what you can figure out." She ambled past him, her boots crunching on the dry leaves as she stepped back inside.
Leon watched her go, very aware she was straight up leaving him to do her wood chopping while she sat in the cozy warm cabin. He shook his head and put another log on the block.