He stands in the snow, no jacket, no boots, just his normal everyday clothes. His eyes wide and panicked. As the wind picked up and the snow started to hurt his face with every flake, he hurried back into the academy. He couldn't do it. The cold, the snow. It was all so horrifying. Everytime the temperature dropped every year, his mind was flooded with flashbacks of his mother dropping unconscious beside his child self, him dropping to his knees beside her and yelling for help, screaming even. The hypothermia not even bothering him anymore, but almost losing his mother, the only person he had left. Both him and his mother survived with all of their limbs, but that didn't make it any less horrific.

He paced the hallways and watched the snow only get worse. Watching his coworkers walk out into it like it was nothing, he knew Viktor would be sleeping in the lab tonight, but he couldn't. He had to be at his mother's in the morning, make sure she was okay. He had to. His phone pinged with an alert, "trains and trams down due to ice"

He couldn't get home, not unless he walked. He couldn't do that, shifting through 7 inches of snow? Nope. Not happening.

His assistant walked over and tapped his shoulder, holding up a large winter coat, seemingly his size.

"I can't. Thank you. But I can't."

Unfortunately, his assistant was very persuasive, and he was about a block down the street when his fear caught up with him, he stopped dead in his tracks as he almost slipped on the ice, his breathing picking up, his face hurting from the cold, his hands shaking, his chest heaving, nose running, cold sweat. He was panicking, so so much. He crouched to the ground in fear

"No- Why did i do this!? I can't do it.."