Snezhnaya did not so much welcome Dottore as it did attempt to preserve him like a specimen, packing frost into his lungs and biting through layers of fur and fabric with surgical precision.

Dottore moved through the palace corridors with a stiff, economical gait, one gloved hand pressed to a stack of notes clutched against his chest, the other trembling faintly from a mixture of cold, sleeplessness, and irritation. The mask hid most of his expression, though the lone, keen red eye still burned with restless thought, already dissecting problems that refused to stay dead.

By the time he reached the laboratory doors, his patience had worn thin. Ink-stained pages slipped from his grasp and scattered across the stone floor like shed feathers. He stared at them in silence, jaw tightening beneath porcelain and scars, mind racing faster than his exhausted body could follow.

“…Detestable conditions,” he muttered at last, bending to collect his work with care that bordered on reverence. Even frozen, even fraying at the edges, the Doctor endured. After all, the cold had never been the thing most likely to kill him.