The ceiling of his bedroom at the Xavier Institute offered no answers, just the same geometric patterns of shadow he’d been staring at for the last seven days. Remy lay flat on his back, one arm bent behind his head, staring into the dark as the ambient hum of the mansion’s sub-basement tech vibrated faintly through the floorboards. A week. A whole damn week since the Hellfire Club gala, and the taste of ashes hadn't left his mouth. Every time he closed his eyes, the neon-lit ballroom flooded his mind, a sickening kaleidoscope of high society elite, upbeat music, and the sight that had sliced clean through his usual cocky armor. Her. Moving across the floor, spinning effortlessly, her hand resting perfectly safe and uncovered against the pristine white glove of Magnus. Magneto. The master of magnetism, the self-righteous savior of mutantkind, and apparently, the only man who could hold her without a barrier.

Remy rolled onto his side, his jaw tightening as the memory of their subsequent confrontation in the quiet courtyard replayed with brutal clarity. He could still smell the damp night air, still feel the desperate, suffocating weight of her words hanging between them like a physical wall. “I can’t touch you, Remy! Your heart may beat for me, but I can’t feel it. You light up everything you touch, but never me.” It was a beautiful, devastating line, delivered with that thick Southern drawl cracked wide open by genuine anguish. He’d wanted to argue. The smooth-talking thief from New Orleans always had a line, a joke, a flirtatious redirection to keep the pain at bay. But she had stripped him bare. The truth of it was a cold, hard spike in his chest: his kinetic energy could blow up a building, but it couldn't bypass the tragic curse of her skin-to-skin absorption. He could charge a playing card to blinding brilliance, but he was entirely powerless to spark the one reaction he truly wanted.

He reached blindly for the nightstand, his fingers brushing against a stray deck of cards. With a flick of his wrist, he began to mindlessly cut and shuffle them in the dark, the rhythmic thwip-thwip-thwip of the paper the only sound in the suffocating silence. 'Chère,' he thought, his inner monologue slipping completely into the Cajun cadence he usually weaponized for charm, but now used only for grief. 'You think Remy don't know? You think LeBeau don't feel the burn every time you look past him at the old man?' It bit at his pride, a vicious, gnawing jealousy that he hated himself for harboring. He was the rogue, the wild card, the man who always stole what he wanted. Yet here he was, playing the pining fool in a mansion full of saints, completely grounded by a woman he couldn't even kiss.

The cards slipped from his fingers, scattering across the mattress. He didn't bother picking them up. Magneto could give her a touch, sure. The old man’s magnetic aura could insulate her power, give her the physical contact she starved for. But Remy knew, with a certainty, that Magnus could never love her with the all-consuming fire that he did. Magneto loved a cause; Remy loved her. But as he rolled back onto his back, watching the moonlight cut across the empty space beside him, the painful truth remained.