Harrison Wells was sure he lost the love of his life. At least until his team brought in a metahuman with a striking resemblance to his Snow.

It was snowing heavily, S.T.A.R. Labs getting almost completely buried in the white powder, the freezing cold penetrating its walls, fighting the heating system and even causing it to fail at times before the generator would kick back in again.

It wasn't as though the cold mattered to Harrison Wells. He didn't even know what being warm felt like anymore and it had nothing to do with the weather. It had always been snowing in his world, even before the one event that changed his entire life and took it off course. Only back then the word itself carried an entirely different meaning – an oxymoronic heat.

He ignored the umpteenth time the heating system was overloaded, the lights flickering. He was certain that Ramon would soon fix it anyway as he hated the cold. In fact, Wells didn't remember if he'd ever seen the guy in anything resembling a warm sweater. He himself didn't even bother putting his hoodie on, suffering one way or another. The truth was that it was always there, pressing against his chest, sucking the life out of him, making it impossible to breathe. In fact, he'd grown so much older past those three years that one could say it'd been ten. Not that he cared, though. He didn't care about anything anymore. Well, maybe about Ramon and Allen, he sighed, running his shaky hand through the salt and pepper locks. Those two were the only reason he was still standing. Thanks to them he could somehow go on, leading at least a semblance of a life, being useful to them. Ever since the night that had ended his life, he could do nothing but sit in the Labs, working hard, because it was better than being left alone in his house with his thoughts. Having discovered that he'd accidentally given Allen superspeed helped. A lot. Having Ramon there helped as well. He just wished he hadn't wasted or destroyed so many lives in the process, including… No, he couldn't even think of her.

He hadn't had a proper night of sleep ever since that fateful night during which his biggest dream turned into his worse failure, taking away not only his career – that now he would gladly give away for just one more minute spent with her – but what – or rather whom – he held the dearest.

Caitlin Snow, the love of his life was gone and he was a wreck of the man he's used to be.

Three years ago…

This was his favorite kind of a wake-up call.

He was lying in a deliciously warm bed, the curtains on the windows closed, preventing the blinding light from entering the room and causing them to squint unpleasantly. What was most important, though, was the woman lying in bed right next to him, just now gently pressing herself into his back, her hand currently running down his arm as her lips touched his shoulder.

"Wakey-wakey," she teased him when he grunted, not wanting to leave his dreamlands just yet. Or maybe not even that in particular. He just enjoyed lying there with her right next to him, being perfectly happy and together in their warm cocoon as though the outside world didn't even exist. This was his safe harbor – this beautiful, brilliant, kind and simply amazing woman. He never wanted to let her go and maybe he would never admit it aloud to anyone who would ask, but he would immediately abandon his entire career if only she asked him to.

Only she would never do that because she knew how much S.T.A.R. Labs mattered to him. And it mattered to her as well since they both worked there, by now not bothered at all by how the other employees were looking at their relationship. Harrison never gave her any special treatment at work anyway, both because he wasn't that kind of a man and she would never want him to be. Match truly made in heaven as they understood each other perfectly.

"You know they won't start without you, don't you?" she asked while he refused to even open his eyes, but he did turn around and quickly gathered her into his arms, pressing his face into the crook of her neck and breathing in everything that was her, basking himself in her warmth.

Just then he remembered why she was so persistent they got up. Today they were going to launch the particle accelerator.

Now

He didn't even move on hearing the alarm, sure that Ramon would soon hit the console in the cortex and Allen would go out there to save the day. Quite frankly, he felt kind of sorry for the latter. No one would want to run in such a freezing temperature, not even the Flash.

Then again. He stopped giving a damn about anything a long time ago, comfortable enough in his friends' company to just vent and be the obnoxious self while still have them like him. He didn't know what he did to deserve that. Quite frankly, he had no idea what'd done to deserve her once, but the man he'd been back then was nothing in comparison to who he was now.

Now the constant hunger for knowledge, for building new things, for creating; this good man who'd used to smile quite a lot thanks to a certain someone was gone, replaced by a shadow with anger issues.

He couldn't care less. It wasn't like he had anyone to impress anyway. They could take him or leave him. He didn't care.

Little did he know that soon he would start again.

It was Ramon that alarmed him, running to his small lab and informing that Allen caught an unusual meta and she could even have something to do with the weather being so awful.

Ok, Harry had to admit it sounded pretty interesting, so he eventually forced himself to leave his seat and follow Ramon into the pipeline.

He so did not expect what he found there.

"What's so special about this one?" he asked when joining Allen by the glass wall separating them from the prisoner. From a brief look he gave her, he noticed white hair and incredibly pale skin. Just looking at this mysterious woman made him feel colder despite the freshly fixed heating system.

"Anything she touches she turns to ice," Barry informed, scratching his head. "She almost turned me blue when I tried to get closer and then she shot an actual icicle at me."

"Interesting," Harry muttered under his breath, looking over the data Ramon had already put into their system and that was now displayed on the tablet he grabbed.

And then he froze, because the woman spoke in a voice that caused him to shiver. He'd never heard it before, yet there was something nearly painfully familiar in it.

"Well, well, well, we meet at last, dr. Wells. I saw quite a lot of you in my head."

"You know her?" Cisco asked his older friend, clearly interested whereas Wells just stood there, still not moving, still not able to look at her.

But he had to, didn't he? He had to make sure.

He braced himself, taking a deep ragging breath and then he found himself falling to pieces all over again, his emotions waking up and threatening to get out of control when he realized he was looking at the face of Caitlin Snow. Her hair, complexion and especially her eyes were all different, but that didn't change the fact that it'd used to be her once.

The worst was that in that moment he realized this was all his doing. That she didn't die the night of the accelerator explosion, her body being obliterated like he thought. She was a monster now.

It was all his fault and he wished he'd been the one to pay the price for his grand mistake. Not her. Never her.

It all very quickly became too much and before he knew it, he was dropping the tablet and turning around, striding out of the pipeline and into the corridor, his back hitting a wall as he started looking for some purchase; his chest raising and falling, heart beating so fast he was afraid his body wouldn't be able to handle it. It wasn't as though he was a perfect picture of health after he'd lost her, eating way too much fast food. Yes, he'd never stopped working out, but that was merely to unload his frustrations, it was an easy release of his anger that was always there, simmering beneath the surface.

"Harry?" he then heard Cisco's voice as the guy must've followed him. And of course he did. "Harry, I don't understand. Who is she to you? Do you know her?"

Wells kept his eyes shut, but in that moment he opened them and looked straight at his friend, a haunted look there, one that even actually scared Cisco.

"Yes," the heavy and raspy voice replied. "She's my wife."

AN: Following FrostWells' information that the original scrip of the Flash pilot listed Harrison as being 40, I decided to finally go with that here. Also, I've been struggling with this idea a lot, having way too many and too little time and will to put them all down to metaphorical paper that is my laptop. In the end, I decided to fit into this one a few ideas and made it a whole : )