I know I'm a mean person. As some of you mentioned: I am really not making it easy for our favorite couple. But always keep in mind that I do love them despite everything. ;-) And I love all you wonderful people for everything you do to let me know that you're enjoy this despite all the difficulty. A big thank you to everybody who's following this story or who added it as a favorite. And the biggest thank you to everybody who took the time to write a review. I love that so many of you were here for chapter one and are still around now that we're actually slowly nearing the end. Thank you with all my heart: NorthernLights25, CaRiNeSs, lizb1813, sakura-blossom62, ReaderKas, TygTag, cruzstar, alemap74, Phoenix Fangor, Horsebot3000, JLC, iluvfangs, Jen and KillingMEsoftly!

15. The disappointment of an anticlimax

The word "computer" didn't adequately describe what they were looking at. It was a gigantic machine that reached Oliver's height. He watched as Felicity walked past it slowly, past the many metallic boxes that stood next to each other in two rows creating a passage. She stopped here and there, took a close look at the tapes that were visible behind glass; magnetic tapes as Felicity had told him. They reminded Oliver of old film spools. Involuntarily he had to think of his grandfather and the family movies he had taken with his old camera when Oliver was little. The tapes weren't moving; they were standing still behind dirty glass surrounded by buttons. Felicity now reached the boxes on the other end and stopped at a big glass window. Slowly Oliver headed toward her and saw that there, behind the dirt, were wires and little lamps.

Feeling like he had ended up in a clichéd science fiction movie from the 80s, Oliver stopped next to Felicity. Never had he seen anything like that, such an old, but elaborate electronic system. All of it seemed just surreal to him, it meant nothing to him, but as Felicity now turned around to face him, he saw that it meant something to her. He couldn't help but smile at the excitement that shone in her eyes. It had been too long since he had seen her like that, since she had had a reason to be so elated and it was a wonderful sight. "So," he smirked, "what's the verdict?"

"Do you know what this is, Oliver?" She answered her own question instantly, speaking quickly. "This is the beginning of the computer age. We're standing in the middle of one of the first supercomputers. It's amazing!"

"Amazing is good," Oliver said. "I was fearing that it would be a piece of trash."

"Oh, it is a piece of trash. But it's an amazing piece of trash! Historic trash!"

Oliver felt like all air was knocked out of him. "We can't use this to..."

"…send an e-mail?" she asked, smiling. It was a teasing smile, full of fondness, and Oliver guessed that his question was the equivalent of Felicity asking since when there were more than six bullets in a gun. "No, Oliver, we can't," she said softly. "It's not connected to the internet. It may look huge, but my phone has way, waaaaay more memory than this thing." She saw the expression, the annoyance that caused his face to turn into stone, and gestured toward the box next to them. "You can kick it if you want to. Won't hurt... I mean you might hurt your foot, but the computer won't mind."

For a second he was tempted, but then he chose to rather straighten up. "Felicity, those guys up there are after you," he reminded her, his voice hard. "They want you for something – and I will be damned if they don't want you to operate this computer here. I really don't believe they'd go through all this trouble for something that's basically a huge calculator. So, would you – please – try and figure out what's going on, because you're the only one of us who can!"

"Wow," she blinked at him. "Normally, I'm the one pep-talking. But that was good, very motivational. I mean, you still have some room for improvement, maybe ease up on the annoyance a little bit next time, but..." She nodded, forcefully, "you're absolutely right." Seeming determined, she walked back past the metal boxes, her feet still wrapped in dirty cloth that once was a towel. "I will figure this out." She glanced back at him over her shoulder. "If there's enough power. I would really hate for us to end up in complete darkness again."

That wasn't an idea he liked too much either. He followed her as she walked around the last metallic box and toward the station that stood behind it and that had been the first thing he had seen when they had reached the bottom of this bunker. She studied the display. Huge, chunky buttons surrounded a small screen that reminded Oliver of a very old television. A keyboard that looked more like a typewriter was placed underneath it. Oliver moved to stand next to Felicity like he always did in the Foundry. "And?" he asked nearly instantly, because he really wasn't in the mood to be patient.

"We're lucky only the medicine and the alcohol is labeled in Russian." She pointed at the biggest button positioned in the top right corner. The word "power" was scribbled underneath it.

He glanced down at her, "What are you waiting for? Press it."

Turning her head she met his eyes. Dim traces of worry were visible there and hesitation. The thought that pressing the button might leave them in the dark in the most literal sense caused her to hesitate, Oliver was certain of that. The memory of her telling him that her encounter with Slade Wilson had left her scared of the dark entered his mind. His eyes softened as he looked at her. There was still his blood on her forehead, coating her blond hair that was pulled up in a messy ponytail. She looked tired and worn out, with dirt stains on her nose and cheeks. Her blouse – that had once been a broken white with colorful dots – was covered in a mixture of bloodstains and dirt, which added more dots that really didn't improve the overall look. "If there's a coffee set down here maybe we'll find some candles," he finally suggested.

The tension left her shoulders as she heard this. "Yes," she agreed, "great idea."

Together they walked back to the furnished rooms and searched the drawers and cupboards. They were lucky – in Oliver's opinion it was about time that some things finally worked in their favor. Candles and matches were stored in the kitchen. Two thin, yellow candles were already half-burned; they looked like rolled-up honeycombs with a wick in the middle. Somebody had dropped wax onto a saucer and stuck the candle to it, improvising a candleholder. The faint smell of honey coated the air as Oliver lit them. He glanced at Felicity who had sat down by the table and freed her feet from the filthy leftovers of the towel. She slipped her formerly red and now dirty high-heels back on and got up. "Ready?" Oliver asked.

Felicity hesitated before she reached for the nearly empty vodka bottle. Throwing her head back she took a huge gulp. She swallowed while she noisily put the bottle back on the table. Oliver knew what would happen next: As the strong alcohol burned down her throat she couldn't help but cough. Her eyes watered behind her glasses and she wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. "Okay, now I'm ready."

Her heels clicked on the grey cement floor with each step she took toward the operator's station. She stopped in front of it, bent down slightly and pushed the power-button. Oliver held his breath.

Nothing happened.

He waited for another second for something, anything to happen, and another and another. Still nothing. Noisily, he let his breath out again. He felt strangely let down by this, by this nothing, this complete silence that was going on around them.

"Okay, that's very anti-climatic," Felicity commented. Taking her eyes off the dark display, she turned to look at him and added, "that sucks."

It more than sucked, Oliver thought, that was complete bullshit! Anger started to collect in his stomach as his jaw started to clench. If that were the reason they had been brought here, somebody would most definitely pay for it! They had been abducted and dumped on a sadly not completely deserted island, they had jumped down cliffs and dodged bullets, they had been hunted and hurt, they had nearly downed and frozen – for THIS?!

He turned around forcefully, away from Felicity's searching eyes, hiding his angry stare and his features hardened by rage. On the other island he had at least had some closure, he had stopped Fyers and Slade – at least at the time he had thought he had stopped Slade –, he had accomplished something. It had been hell, but it had been good for something – even if it had only been the barest something. But there was nothing to accomplish here. There was no reason and no sense, there was just this huge piece of fucking tech-shit that was thirty years beyond being helpful and all he and Felicity had suffered had been a waste.

"Oliver," Felicity spoke up soothingly from behind him. He had turned his back to her and he knew that by saying his name she was asking him to look at her, to face her. But he couldn't. Instead, he took a few more steps away from her, keeping his back to her. He didn't want her to witness the utter despair he was feeling, didn't want her to see him breaking down like that, he didn't want her to see the immense rage that was slowly filling him. She had witnessed all of that before, he knew, she had seen him at his worst on very different occasions. She was the woman he loved, she knew him better than anyone and he knew he couldn't hide anything from her anyway, but somehow he didn't want her to see him falling apart right now. Not when she was handling everything much better than he was. "We will find another way off this island," she assured him now.

"I didn't find a way off the other island either." His voice was quiet and harsh. "I told you. Amanda Waller got me to Hong Kong."

"Yes," she admitted, "you told me. But you also said that this stay on an island was different-"

"YES!" he yelled now and shot around to face her, "it's WORSE!" He gestured toward the metallic boxes he stood next to. "At least I knew how I got to Lian Yu and why I was there. But all of this here, it makes no sense. And now we know that there's nothing to do here anyway. We are here for a whole lot of NOTHING!"

She looked at him, how he stood there, breathing heavily, his posture stiff, his face twisted by anger. She just looked at him and said, calmly, "I think we did achieve something since we've come here."

"And what's that?" he asked, pulling himself together and ignoring the pain in his shoulder and spreading from his ribs, which had intensified in the last seconds.

"Us."

It was a small word, but it shut Oliver up. She softened her words with a smile. "Who knows if we had admitted certain things, if we hadn't been stuck here with nowhere to go. We talked about some things, and despite all the awful things that happened in the last weeks, we are a good thing."

Emotion was clouding his features, softening his face, his eyes. "Yes," he admitted, "you are the best thing that could happen to me."

A smile lit up her face. It lightened his heart and warmed him. "You're pretty awesome yourself."

"No," he objected, "I'm a mess. You were right before. Being on an island again affects me more than I would like it to. I apologize for not handling it better."

"You're a human being, Oliver," she walked toward him. "You're allowed to have feelings and be affected by shitty situations. And I agree that this really is a shitty situation. But we didn't die in that crappy cage we first stayed at and we will not die down here, in this bunker."

She sounded so sure that he couldn't help but smile, "because you believe in me."

"I do." There was no doubt in her voice and it elevated him. Her voice continued to sound strong as she said, "This piece of trash won't stop us." And then she kicked the metallic box they stood next to.

Suddenly a whir filled the room that picked up in intensity until it turned into a constant buzzing. Stunned, Oliver turned and saw the magnetic tapes starting to move. Certain buttons suddenly blinked, others were steadily lit while some stayed dark. "Holy crap," Felicity gushed and rushed toward the operator's panel. "I should have known that would work. After all that's how I always fixed my grandma's TV. Slamming it is the old-fashioned equivalent of the modern turning it off and on again." Her eyes were fixed to the screen where orange letters were appearing. Oliver moved to stand next to her as she studied the monitor. An "oh, wow" escaped her lips and she brought her hands to the keyboard. The keys were very noisy as she pressed them with amazing speed.

The commands she typed, the things that were visible on the screen meant nothing to Oliver, but he could feel a certain excitement coming from Felicity. "What?"

"I was wrong before. This computer was seriously upgraded, it isn't just a too big calculator. I think I might be able to tweak some things to connect to a satellite and-" Suddenly the lights flickered. The display was the first thing that switched off, the lightened buttons followed. The buzzing stopped in the next moment as the tapes came to a halt. A groaned "noooo" left Felicity's lips just as the lights around them went out. Thank God, they had lit two handles whose flames now casted their flickering shadows against cold concrete walls and a dead supercomputer that had caused them to get their hopes up only for them to be thoroughly squashed again.