"I met a lady in the meads
Full beautiful, a faery's child;
Her hair was long, her foot was light,
And her eyes were wild."
--John Keats, "La Belle Dame Sans Merci."

Salem Center, New York. His breath comes in quick, cold, clouds as he cups his hands and tries to light the cigarette that hangs from the corner of his mouth. He has to flick the lighter three times before the errant wind lets the tip of the hand-rolled stick catch and glow. And, as he inhales the bittersweet taste of nicotine and clove, he chuckles.

"*Merde*."

He is Remy LeBeau. Gambit. A thief. A mutant. One of the X-Men. And he can't control his powers enough to light a smoke with his fingertips. That isn't the way it works. Kinetic energy...always coiled tight...always ready to explode.

Just as *he* is.

He whispers a long stream of obscenities in his Cajun patois as he tucks away his Zippo in a movement so quick it is very nearly sleight of hand. Perched on the roof, his usual overhang, he can count the stars in the dark night sky. He can hear the bursts of laughter from inside the mansion as wrapping paper is strewn about and eggnog is polished off. And he can feel the silence of the hyper-secure grounds that stretch along Graymalkin Lane.

Sight. Sound. Taste. Smell. Touch.

His senses are sharp. They have to be.

He knows that women are creatures of beauty. That their voices are like bells...and sometimes like the harsh cries of seagulls. That they taste like mint and creme and everything a hungry child of the streets was once denied. That their perfume is sometimes flowery and sometimes woodsy. And he knows that they are soft. Full of hills and valleys and silken caves. Taut expanses of skin...sighs he can feel against his mouth.

Sight. Sound. Taste. Smell. Touch.

He damns them all as he draws another draft of sweet smoke into his lungs and exhales a crystalline fog that hangs in the air.

Rogue's bright green eyes. Her husky drawl. The faint berry taste of her mouth that has never quite faded from his insides even though years have passed since that near-fatal kiss. The pine scent of her shampoo. And the barest brush of her peach-blushed cheeks as she pulled out of his arms and stared, longingly at Hank and Trish snuggling under the mistletoe.

Is it this season, most of all, that makes it unbearable? Or is it every month? Every day? Every hour? Every minute?

Remy has known many women. Has had countless bodies warm his on cold winter nights like this one. Belladonna. Genvieve. Minnie. Curses and blessings. Some before Rogue and some after. All frantic efforts to share love, to wash away the stains of sins on his hands and find something beautiful. But the only true beauty he has ever known, the only true love, is the one he can't touch.

He tries to tell her that he doesn't need touch.

That he loves her beyond and above it.

She flinches and knows that he lies prettily.

What they both know is that he almost died from her kiss.

That she could not bear it if he walked that path again.

And he can't bear *not* walking it.

So he hugged her gingerly as she opened his Christmas present, enjoying her soft, feminine gasp as she lifted the lid off the small box. And then he turned from her sudden tears. He came up to the roof as she cried and wished for what she couldn't have...what she won't let herself have.

Happiness.

Happiness at the price of peril, of peril he probably deserves.

Her gift to him is life.

Something that can't be boxed or wrapped.

Something that can be freely given and taken.

Something that he has never wanted to live alone.

He flicks the spent cigarette over the rain gutter that lines the edge of the roof, knowing that he could hurl himself after it easily. Crash to the snow-covered ground and still not break enough bones to die.

"Je t'aime, *chere*," he whispers to the night, hoping, valiantly, that the cool breeze will somehow take her the words.

It doesn't surprise him when she floats down beside him and sits. When she dangles her legs over the side of the house like the little girl she doesn't want to remember being. When her gloved fingers curl around his shoulder. "Ah know," she replies, eyes wet and dark. "Ah love you, too. Too much." He pulls her head against his chest, accepting the muffled sobs and the hot tears that soak through to his skin.

"*Joyeux noel, mon amour*," he says, hoarsely. "Merry Christmas."

The ashes on his tongue are cold. Bitter.

He thinks, perhaps, that he will outlive all the X-Men.

Every single one.

Because Rogue will never love him to death.

January 2001.