Tess isn't the sole source of his distress. It's the knowledge that he'd again failed her. Failed to protect her even though she wasn't his to protect. Zoom had murdered his wife in an act of wanton destruction before stealing away their daughter and in this world a man named Thawne had murdered his other self and turned Tess. Turned her into the very creature he'd hunted on his own world.

He couldn't love her. Shouldn't.

But every time she moved, every time she laughed or solved another complex riddle he saw echoes of his own wife. His Tess whom he'd failed so completely.

Harry had sent them all away that morning. Barry to his rest, Cisco and Caitlin to their own lives and directed them to take a night off. To simply be young people while they could, even if they didn't understand the depth of the gift he was offering them because he would give anything to go back, to tell his younger self to skip the late nights now and then and simply enjoy being married.

All too late now. Tess was gone. Murdered and her body burned on a pyre Harry had built himself in his grief.

The soft weight on his shoulder sends his instincts into overdrive and he shoves himself away, knife landing smartly in his palm before he even realizes what he's done. Ever the hunter on his guard until he realizes it was only Tess reaching out to him. Guilt swamps him as he tucks the blade away again, bracing his arms on the table and closing his eyes against the tears that always seem to threaten when he thinks too long about her.

"They're gone. I've sent them away for a day."

His hand curls into a fist. It seems like everything about him is a clenched fist of late. "I'm sorry."