#okay this also turned into drabble length let's goo lmao

[iobartach]

He always hated the cold, loathed the way it seeped through every layer of clothing, bypassing any barrier that he attempted to put. It wasn't just a passing chill; it was penetrating, in a bone-deep sort of way, that gnawed at a frail belief he clung desperately to. It declared that he was fine, fit and healthy by measures that purposefully excluded a large swathe of determining factors, such as the glaring truth of what he had become. But the lie peddled was quickly bought, digested and believed, so that he didn't have to confront the truth; that the cold was punishing him in ways that a regular human couldn't conceive of, let alone comprehend.

Caught out in below-zero temperatures, the frost clung to him, refusing to let up. It gnawed at him more severely than it would anyone else caught in below-zero temperatures. Strangers could thaw themselves by a fire in minutes, reclaiming a sense of warmth and relief. But not him. For every second he sought comfort, the ache refused to relent, as though the cold had conspired with the other miseries that already riddled his body, multiplying his ailments instead of alleviating them.

But not him. In seeking the same comforting glow, the clawing aches that riddled his joints persisted, the cold finding a co-conspirator, that nefariously added to his list of physical ailments, rather than detract from them.

And it only got worse from there.

Gooseflesh pricked across his arms and neck, raising fine hairs that prickled constantly, agitating his perceptions of his surroundings. His clawed fingers too ached in a similar fashion, each digit requiring more focus than needed to move. His height, too, devolved into a disadvantage, that left him fully exposed to the brunt of every polar gust faced, the icy breeze carving through him like knives, relentless and unyielding. His muscles, always taut with a readiness that bordered on instinctual, also began to ache under the strain of simply keeping warm, one more complaint to add to a symphony of unspoken troubles.

Changing positions elicited fresh soreness, but he did so anyway, to flex and test the sharpness of his numbed talons against the cold steel of a nearby railing. Metal that was still faintly covered in a layer of early morning frost as he easily pierced and sliced off a section of the railing with a single swipe, a fast motion that shook off the sluggish that the near arctic temperatures imposed upon him.

And right there, for a brief, crucial moment, he carved out a crucial victory, shaking off the effects of the persisting frost that seemed less like an external force now, and more like a reminder. A constant, corrosive whisper of what he was; something both more than human and less. A contradiction, tied together by sinew and mutation, left to grapple with complexities he had never conceived of, in all of his time spent working in a laboratory, in the past.

But for now, he could rend steel like paper, he could move, he could endure. And if that was all that he could manage for now, then it would simply have to be enough.