Judging from the reactions I got I finally managed to add a decent cliffhanger. Awesome. I never quite got the hang of them before, but it seems like I am improving. ;-) Sorry, guys, I'm just teasing, because I'm still so happy about the very positive response to the last chapter. I hoped you'd enjoy that sudden twist and I am just so so very excited that most of you did. That's amazing! You are amazing: TygTag, Jessimicah, NorthernLights25, Horsebot3000, Tatungui, cruzstar, CaRiNeSs, sakura-blossom62, lizb1813, farmgirl1964, Yelena89, shellybeee, Phoenix Fangor, foxxandbeanz, onetreefan, Lil5weetie, mysou13, LillyD11, michellemaldonado, ReaderKas, iluvfangs, XboxComicNerd, KillingMEsoftly, Jen, Anna and an unknown guest.

Oh, and – yes – the last few chapters weren't checked by a beta. There might be mistakes ahead; they are all mine, but if you find any, feel free to keep them.

Enough said. Enjoy!

14. Adding pressure and finding reason

In the utter darkness surrounding them their heavy breathing sounded even louder. Oliver couldn't see a thing, but he could hear Felicity swallow hard, and in his mind he could practically see her: how she stood there, her shoulders rising and falling with each breath, her eyes full of worry, her full lips pressed together, the strands of hair that had come loose from her ponytail wild around her face. Any moment now she would say something...

"Fuck!"

That – not entirely expected but perfectly fitting – word billowed around them as it hit the concrete walls and was thrown back at them. The way the echo returned to them showed Oliver that they weren't in a little closed cube of a room. That, he decided, was a good thing that needed to be explored. "Try to reach a wall and feel around," he ordered. One second later Felicity bumped into him, hitting his shoulder with her head. The connection caused him to wince.

"Sorry," came her small voice from his chest. "I thought I'd get past you."

Oliver knew that it wasn't the right moment for this, but he couldn't help but chuckle as he moved his arms to close them around her. "You should know that nothing gets past me."

He had just hugged her to him when suddenly light hit his eyes, causing him to blink. A neon lamp flickered to life to his left. Simultaneously, Felicity's and Oliver's heads turned toward the unexpected illumination that revealed stairs leading down.

"Motion sensor," Felicity concluded and looked up at him. Oliver brought his eyes back to her as well and instantly saw a big bloody spot spreading from her forehead to her hairline. His first urge was to check her for injuries, but then he realized that she had bumped against his shoulder – the shoulder where he had been hit. Felicity now noticed the wound, too, he saw it in the way her eyes grew huge. "You're bleeding," she breathed.

"It's nothing," he tried to reassure her, but she was already taking her sweatshirt off.

"You have to press on it," she said, talking even faster than usual.

"Felicity-" he tried again, but she ignored him. Instead, she brought the balled up sweatshirt against his wound. Telling her that it wasn't the best idea to press that dirty thing against an open wound crossed Oliver's mind, but then he saw how her hands shook and he decided to keep his mouth shut and just do as she asked him to. Covering her hand with his own he pressed the cloth to his shoulder. "Felicity," he said softly, but was cut off by a staccato of loud bangs coming from behind him. The shots hitting the metal door were a haunting reminder that the mercenaries were still out there and not happy.

It also sprung Felicity into action. She pulled her hand from under his and reached for his arm. "Come," she ordered. Her grip was tight around his elbow as they walked down the concrete stairs, which were so narrow that Oliver and Felicity barely fit next to each other. The steps led straight ahead and down until they ended in a platform that caused them to turn right where more steps were waiting for them. Another platform followed after that and more steps. The further down they walked the more neon lamps flickered on above them. They cast a bright and aggressive light against the grey concrete that was all around. The concrete steps ended in a concrete floor that lead them to a huge room with concrete walls ending in a concrete ceiling at least three meters above them.

But Oliver's eyes were glued to the setup in the middle, carefully he took it all in and there was only one logical reaction to it. "Now we know why they are after you."

Very slowly Felicity nodded before she grip tightened on his elbow tighter again. "There," she said and looked toward an opening leading into another room to their right. "Keep pressing," she ordered with a voice that was full of tension and pulled him past the very impressive set-up into the next room, where very old, very used, very dusty furniture was waiting for them. "Sit," Felicity said as she pointed at a wooden chair.

Dutifully he sank down on it and instantly a clang sounded through the room as the uneven legs of the chair hit the hard ground. Felicity was already heading through yet another door which lay opposite from where they had entered. "Really, it's nothing," he called after her, but didn't get any reaction from her.

A minute passed until she returned with a metal box in her hands. The light beige thing had a red cross painted on top of it. Felicity dumped the worryingly old-fashioned first aid kit onto the wooden table next to Oliver. With trembling hands she opened the lid. She blindly reached for a vial that lay inside and checked the label. "It's Russian," she said and held it up for him to see. "Can you read that? Was is that?"

Oliver only glanced at it shortly. "Whatever it is, it's thirty years past its expiration date." His left hand was still pressing the sweater to his wound, but he brought his right up to reach for her hands and still her fumbling fingers. "Felicity, listen to me. It looks worse than it is."

"John told me to press on the wound. Are you pressing on the wound?"

Oliver frowned. "When did he tell you that?"

"The night I found you in my car. When your mother-"

She didn't finish the sentence, but swallowed heavily and tore her eyes away from his. Right then everything clicked into place for Oliver. He tried the faintest smile. "This is different," he said, his voice soft. "Back then the bullet barely missed the carotid."

"I know. It was a zone two wound."

"O-" he bit back a smile, "okay." His hand tightened around hers. "Then this is a zone one. We just need to take the bullet out and clean it and I will be fine."

Felicity's eyes snapped back to him. "Zone one sounds worse than zone two."

Sending her a pointed look he said, "then it's a zone four. I don't know the military expression. But I do know that it's nothing to worry about." His hand left hers only to settle on her cheek. "This is nothing like the night I crawled into the backseat of your car, I promise." He pulled her to him and kissed her. "Believe me."

Leaning against his hand, she whispered, "I believe you." She closed her eyes for a second before she opened them again and appeared to be a bit more collected. "That night you were much more snappy with me."

"Well, back then I was seriously hurt."

Slowly she nodded and he could practically see her pulling herself together. "Okay, let's get the bullet out."

He shook his head. "We should just patch it up and prepare for the Germans bringing down the door above."

"No!" Using her very determined voice, Felicity continued, "There's a bullet in your shoulder and we will get that out." She turned and his hand fell from her face as she reached for the first aid kit. Lifting up a clamp she said, "I guess this isn't exactly sterile." She let it drop again.

Oliver made a move to get up. "Fel-"

"NO!" Her index finger flew up and pointed at him in determination. A clear warning was visible in her eyes. "You will sit here, wait for me and not move. You hear me, Oliver Queen?"

Amused, he looked at her, "I do, Felicity Smoak." He watched her turn toward the wooden cabinet that stood next to the door to Oliver's right.

"You can make fun of me all you want, but we'll do as I say." She opened drawers only to slam them shut again. "My first aid training might only be rudimental, but I know that foreign matter should not stay inside one's body." She peaked behind doors, whose glass was covered with lacy curtains from the inside. "Was somebody living down here? There's a coffee set in here." She slammed the door shut again and turned around to walk to a second door and a room she hadn't yet entered. Oliver looked right at it and saw something that looked like a very old-fashioned kitchen. "We should really brush up on our first aid training," Felicity stated as she started checking the cupboards. "Roy, too. We all need to beco-" She didn't finish her thought as a triumphant "aha" escaped her lips. She reached into a cupboard. When she returned to Oliver she had a bowl in one hand and a bottle of vodka in the other. Noticing the look Oliver sent her and interpreting it correctly, she defended, "It's better than nothing!"

Watching as Felicity dumped the camp in the bowl and poured alcohol over it, Oliver studied her and realized that she needed this. She needed to patch him up right now, even though he could do it himself. It was a distraction from the fact that they had fled into an old bunker, had locked themselves in here, with little water, no food and angry men trying to get it. And they would get in. Oliver knew. If they had explosives, they would literally bang down their door sooner than later. There was nothing she could do about any of these things, but this here was something she could do: She could treat him. Oliver pushed down his own anxiousness to snap into action. He would give her those five minutes.

Oliver scanned the contents of the first aid kit she had spread out over the table. They were lucky; he saw mull and bandages, both unused and wrapped in plastic, also a needle and thread. She noticed what he was looking at and reached for all these things, readying them, dropping the needle into the alcohol, too. "Okay," she said then. "Let's do this." Slightly lifting the vodka bottle, she asked, "Do you want some? Might help..."

"I pass," was all he said as he lifted the sweater of the wound. The whole shoulder area of his shirt was soaked with blood. The thing had been dirty before, but now it was beyond wearing. "Cut it open," he told Felicity, who reached for the scissors laying on the table. With the first cut it became clear that the scissors had seen better days. It was no use. Felicity just dropped the scissors onto the tabletop noisily, reached for the hem of his shirt where she had left the barest cut and ripped the shirt open. Oliver knew that it wasn't the right time or the right place and that it definitely weren't the right circumstances, but something about her doing that seemed strangely sexy to him. That thought was pushed from his mind when her unsure and questioning eyes met his. Realizing that he had to talk her through it, he tried to reassure her with a small smile and told her to take the clamps and get the bullet out. She hesitated for a moment; then she went to the backpack and got her glasses out. Since one lens had been cracked she had stopped wearing them, but now she slipped them onto her nose, reached for the old-fashioned medical instrument and went to work.

It hurt like a bitch. She tried to be gentle, he knew, she was very careful, but she was just sticking something into his shoulder to pull a bullet out and there was just no painless way to do it. The fact that his right shoulder hurt while his left ribcage was bruised combined to an overall hurting upper body that made him wish he would never have to move again. Oliver was just glad that she managed to grab the bullet at the first try. Afterwards, her hands were surprisingly steady when she put the thread through the tiny hole of the needle. A strange pride at how calm she was filled Oliver, but that was forgotten as soon as she started stitching his wound. Biting back a curse, he reached for the vodka bottle and took a huge swig. He had been wrong before: He did need alcoholic assistance for this.

The huge gulp he took and the second one he added instantly caused Felicity to halt and look at him. "Can you still see me?"

He frowned, "what?"

"Just checking that the vodka doesn't cause blindness. I heard some stories while we were in Moscow, you know."

"Don't worry. I can see that you're making your 'about to hack'-face perfectly."

"No, this is my 'sewing up my boyfriend's bloody wound'-face. I always make that while I sew up my boyfriend's bloody wound."

"Those two faces look really similar."

She forced a smile. "Thank you for trying to light the mood, but this is a really difficult moment to make better."

"I know," he whispered, "but you're doing great." He saw her smile, but couldn't return it, because she continued pushing the needle through his skin and he had to bite his lip to keep from yelling out in pain.

By the time Felicity had bandaged his shoulder Oliver was practically drenched in cold sweat. He blew some air out between his lips shakily.

Felicity looked at him. "I'm sorry."

"You have nothing to apologize for."

"I hope it will be a small scar," she said and hurried to add, "not because your scars are ugly, which they are not. But because I don't want to be responsible for another big scar. Even though," she glanced at his shoulder, "it's right above your first scar. I'm pretty sure it won't be as big as that. I hope..."

Trying to anger his right shoulder as little as possible while still aggravating his bruised ribs, Oliver brought his left arm up to place his fingers on her cheek. His thumb brushed over her skin. "It will be fine," he said. This time it was her leaning to him, placing her lips on his. When they finally parted, Oliver smiled dimly at her. "Okay, now that we patched me up, can we please get to the important stuff and check out the gigantic computer next door?"