Four years! That is how long it took me to learn absolutely nothing about myself and where I came from. For years of cheap dirty hotels and even dirtier bars. Four years of fighting my own body. Of fighting my mind and even my soul. Struggling from day to day just to find a scrape of who I was before these things were done to me. Struggling to find peace. Knowing that the only peace I ever felt was in the presence of a slip of a girl with deadly skin that I was afraid of.

Oh, I wasn't afraid of her touch at least not the touch of her skin, but I was afraid of her feelings. Hell, that ain't right either. I was scared shirtless of my own feelings. Scared by the peace she filtered through me. You wouldn't think it to look at me, but I hate emotional connections. I know it is hard to believe. I can understand your shocked, but it is true. I Logan am afraid of being connected to anybody or anything. What scares me even more than emotions from someone else or toward someone else. Is being scared. It hit me what I have been doing for the last three years. I can tell anyone who asks in one word what I have been doing for the last three years. If I felt inclined that is and I don't. One word that hit me square in the gut this morning when I picked up my bag and headed to yet another dead end place. Searching for yet more dead end clues to my past. Hiding. Yeah, that is right H-I-D-I-N-G!

Big bad Wolverine has been hiding and running from something that, if I had been smart would have known, I couldn't get away from. I can't run far enough to get away from myself and I can't hide from my heart even in the darkest pit. Believe me I tried. It always ends the same. I spend a few days in a ratty hotel. Make a pretense of asking around about my past, but it always comes the need to move farther. To go faster. It has become my driving force. The need to escape.

I have tried to get her out of my mind with other women, but they all seem so jaded. They are harsh where she was always so - gentle. They are all so worldly wise and they cannot hold a candle to her innocence. So for four years I have not been able to touch or look at another female without Her face floating into view. I can not look at them and see anything, but empty shells. I see them with her eyes.

Marie's eyes are brown and they look at them with pity and sadness. I think she pities them their willingness to pander to any man, but I think the sadness is in that she sees they do not appreciate the things they can have. A touch so gentle. A lover's caress firm and needy. A touch rough on their smooth flesh. So, I look at them and I can not want them, because in reality I can only want one person and she is the only thing I will never have. I woke up this morning after yet another impossible dream and the desire was there again. To leave this bug infested hotel and find the illusive, but it was different. As I strapped my rucksack to the seat I realized that this need was not to find myself, but to find the other part of me. The part that would make me whole enough to survive. It wasn't my elusive past I was searching for. It was belonging.

It was need, and desire and want and it was waiting for me back in Westchester. It was love and companionship and it was sweet smiles and glowing brown eyes. It was destiny and its hope. Hope jaded by time and hardened by disbelief.

That is why I find myself here watching Marie as she pats rich soil lovingly around tiny saplings. Saplings tender and young. She has many little seedlings close to her fingertips and they are all young and tender. Yet there beside her is a rose bush. Once tiny and innocent. Young and tender yet made even more beautiful by the jading of time.

She is like that bush. Her flesh bared to the kissing rays of the sun. Her hair flows freely around her and I am taken by her beauty. I stand and stare as she caresses the tiny plant before her. Yes, she is still there. The innocence Marie not jaded by time as I have been.

I am unsure of how this day will end. If I will be able to deal with the things that have so recently become clear to me, but I know one thing with a surety. We will be friends. The innocent and the jaded. Something even time could not cure.