He let the touch happen for a moment, before he moved away from her and back to the soup that had been put on the... metaphorical back burner, literal low flame. They had to eat, tonight, and it would do as much as the fire blazing in the fire place. It might even do more.

It also gave him a little room to retreat again, after what was a pretty frankly emotional display from him. Maybe not so much more for anyone else but for him-

"It seems like a different life entirely," he agreed. "If I'd known what was coming I would have done everything different." He sounded haunted. He was haunted, if not as literally as Rogue. He was also still, albeit in a controlled way, furious. "I might even have listened to some of what Magneto had to say."

Not all of it. There were things he would have still fought Erik on, mostly his treatment of Rogue, but some other pretty huge things, too. He would have changed over from 'humans and mutants are the same' a hell of a lot sooner, though, understood how dangerous humans could be, and not been so totally unprepared for what he now saw as genocide.

He'd buried too many kids for Charles' idealism to truly stick. What they'd done... it would have been effective in a world that was better than the one they lived in.