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"Slade, are you okay?"
Oliver noticed that Slade had walked away from him and Sara, so he passed baby Laurel back to her and followed the older man through the woods. Suddenly, Slade stopped in his tracks. "Where are you going," Oliver asked.
Slade turned to him. "To the plane, to get geared up."
"For what?" Oliver asked obliviously.
"Ivo is still out there," Slade said as anger built inside him, "I'm gonna find him and when I do, I'm going to cut pieces off of him."
"You can't," Sara said as she walked up behind them, a sleeping Laurel laying in her arms. "Ivo has a ship full of men, of killers. And I don't care what you did before, you can't take them all out. Your only play here is to find safe ground and wait him out."
He walked up to her in a threatening manner. "Well, of course you would say that. You were working for Ivo." He started to raise his voice. "You're probably still working for him."
Oliver stepped in between them and pulled Slade back, "HEY, HEY! She's not."
"Get out of my way, kid."
"You just need to take it easy." Oliver tried to push him gently back away from Sara and their day-old daughter, but Slade took him by the throat and started to choke him with one hand.
"I said," he said as he lifted Oliver higher, "get out of my way."
PRESENT DAY…
Mei skipped down the sidewalk next to Laurel as she licked the chocolate ice cream Laurel had just purchased her. Laurel was still trying to get over the shock of how similar Mei was to Sara when she was that age. Once they finally reached the park bench that sat near the playground area, they sat down and watched the other children that were running around the swings. Laurel was lost for words as she tried to think of something to say to the child, but luckily, Mei spoke up first.
"What was my mommy like?" she asked as she casually licked her ice cream.
Laurel wasn't sure what to say. She still had conflicting feelings about both of the girl's parents, but she also didn't want to say anything negative about a four-year old's mom. "She was… smart, and not book smart, more like she always knew what to do when others didn't. She was also compassionate. She looked out for me, even when I didn't want her to sometimes." Laurel could see Mei's eyes fill with wonder and cheerfulness. "She also was really good at designing clothing. She wanted to be a fashion designer when she was in middle school. She mostly did dresses. A lot like the one you're wearing." She noticed the way Mei scrunched up her face as she looked down at her dress, kicking her feet underneath the bench. "What's wrong?"
"My dress," she said with a grunt.
"You don't like dresses?" she asked.
Mei shrugged. "No, I like dresses, just not puffy, bright pink ones. glupoye plat'ye," she whispered under her breath.
"What?" Laurel questioned.
Mei's eyes widened as she remembered she wasn't supposed speak Russian around anyone but her father. "Nothing," she said quickly before shoving the ice cream in her face and smiling innocently.
Laurel decided not to get into it, so instead she asked, "What kind of dresses do you like?"
Mei smiled as she breathed a sigh of relief. "I like sundresses. My daddy said that when he got married to my mommy, I was wearing a his t-shirt that Mommy turned into a dress."
Laurel dropped her ice-cream.
"Wait, what?"
FOUR YEARS AGO…
Sara didn't want to set Mei on the ground, but she had to in order to save Oliver from being murdered from Slade. She gently sat her down far away from the fight, then picked up a log and hit Slade in the back of the head with it, making him stumble and drop Oliver. Slade stood there for a moment staring at Oliver, then it seemed as though he realized what he had done, he looked at his fist, then down at the infant still lying on the ground.
"I'm sorry," he apologized, then fell to his knees.
Once Sara made sure he was calm enough not to attack Oliver again she said, "You're not well, Slade."
"Hey, it's the Miracuru," Oliver told Slade who was sitting against a tree, "It's messing with your head."
They sat in silence for a few minutes while Oliver rubbed his neck and Sara shushed a tearful Mei, who didn't take too kindly to being placed on the ground. When she noticed the sun making its way behind one of the mountains, she said, "It's getting late, we need to make camp."
Slade just stayed sitting against the tree while rubbing his hand, trying to remember why he attacked Oliver. Oliver was about to walk over and talk to Slade, but he stopped himself, and instead turned and took Mei from Sara's arms.
PRESENT DAY…
Once Oliver was done spending the entire day trying to make a suitable place to run his 'business' out of, he realized it was getting late, and decided to go pick up Mei from Laurel's, but not before taking one quick pit stop. When Oliver got home the first day, he realized he was missing a few things he had come back with from the Island. His mother told him she didn't have them, so he figured the doctors or EMTs might have taken them without him noticing.
He walked into the hospital and asked the lady at the front desk, and luckily for him they had a lost and found where he found what he had lost. He thanked the lady then climbed back into his car, where he emptied the bag on the seat next to him.
He reached down, and through the small pile of miscellaneous stuff such as his stone arrow head or his picture of Laurel, he found the most important thing he owned. He picked up the thin leather string that he had worn everyday for the last few years, ever since Sara had passed, and looked down at the handmade rings that hung from it, that they'd exchanged back when Mei was still a baby.
Oliver had made her engagement ring and their wedding bands and all three sat on the thin string that he had purchased in Hong Kong. He kissed the wedding band he knew was Sara's, due to the thinness and inscription that read, "Till my last day…," while his read, "…Till my last breath." He looked up at the sky and even though he wouldn't consider himself to be very Christian, he spoke to her. "She's okay Sara. We finally got home, and I know I told you I didn't want to return home at first because I feared all the corruption, but I can protect her now. I promise. The only thing that would complete our lives now is you. I love you, Sar."
