I simply can't stop with the promo overload. The look on his face. It's the stuff they didn't show us, but that we have already seen that makes me want to cry my eyes out. This is quick and dirty. Also calls back Stephen's quote about "All hope is lost" at the end of the second act. Enjoy.

Spoilers for S3 so stop reading now if you don't want them.

Oliver Queen thought he knew what it was to lose hope, but he really didn't understand till that night what "all hope is lost" really meant. Because he had forgotten what real, true, honest to goodness hope felt like.

Since he returned home, there had been moments that he had dared to hope. With Helena, with McKenna, and finally with Laurel, he had hoped for the normalcy of a relationship…of love. But there were always layers of lies and secrets padding that hope, so it had hurt less, somehow, when it had disappeared as fast as it had come in.

As he had watching his mother fall, knowing that his sister would hat him for bringing Slade into his life, he thought he had lost everything….that there was nothing else to pull him back from the darkness. There was no more hope, at least not for him.

But John and Felicity, they hadn't given up on him…they had pulled him back from the edge, stood by him, and demanded that he fight back. They wouldn't lose hope in him, even though he had lost it in himself. So hope had lived on.

This time was different, because for the past few weeks, he had felt like he had everything. Like nothing in the world could stop him. He almost had the company back, although Ray Palmer had certainly put a damper on that. John was a FATHER. That little tiny girl, with her delicate fingers, her mother's eyes and her father's nose was a miracle if he had ever seen one. And he had Felicity….really had her. There were no lies or unspoken half-truths. There were no sins of omission. She had sat across from him at that table tonight with love and understanding shining in her eyes as he had told her the absolute worst of it. She had taken it in and moved on from it without a second thought, and realized he could have it all with her. He could be himself with her, the man that no one else seemed to see between the hood and the mask of his previous life.

He had forgotten what true hope of a future had felt like., until that moment. And in that fleeting moment, he could see it all in her eyes. White dressed, picket fences, and happily ever afters. Saving the city with her forever by his side, and then in his bed. No longer facing long nights alone with his demons.

But then the world had exploded in a ball of flame and fire, and just as quickly as it had come, hope was gone. Because she was laying bleeding and broken before him, and her blood was under his fingernails. She was going to be fine, but he knew now that he could not lose her…it wasn't something he could survive. He couldn't lose either of them-her or John-because they made him who he was. He had never had their blood on his hands before and he knew that it could never, ever happen again. It was made infinitely worse by the fact that he had let the hope in. He knew how she tasted now, knew what they could have had.

But it didn't matter, because when she woke up, he would tell her they couldn't do this. Felicity would understand…she always understood. He would hurt her again, and she would try to hide it (again), because she knew he hurt himself more. She always knew. She always understood. She deserved more. And eventually, some day she would find it, but he understood now more than ever that it couldn't be with him. Because loving him was a death sentence, and he wanted more for her more than he wanted anything for himself. So someday he would watch her live the life he had imagined…but with someone else.

Hope was a terrible thing.