We still have no idea how he got back or under what pretenses, and I can't really say if I'm happy to have him around or not, but I will say that Elliot is more loyal than most men I've met. He rarely knows if he's coming or going, and it's unbelievable how little he understood when I first took him in, but I guess the world would be alien to someone who supposedly died in 1921. Christ, he's a pain in the ass a lot of the time, with the way he wanders around, scaring people with his sometimes spacey behavior and nervous laughter, but it doesn't change anything for me. It's weird to consider, since there's no doubt that he's fucking crazy, definitely not human, and can sometimes be more of a liability than anything else, but if I ever need him, he's always there.
I was terrified at first, when I saw him again ( and who wouldn't be after all the shit he put me through?), standing there in that alley over what looked like a crazy old derelict's body. I dunno what the crazy old fuck wanted with me, but I know that he was trying to hurt me and the next thing I knew, Elliot was there and crushed his head like it was a grape. My first instinct was to run, since I already knew what seeing Captain Elliot Spenser meant, but something stopped me. He was different, and at the time, I had no idea how different. He looked like he hadn't eaten anything in like forever, and couldn't even speak, as he seemed to be trying to remember how to move and act in a human body. I didn't know how bad it was until I finally got my courage up, deciding that he wasn't his "unbound" self (whatever the fuck that means, because that prick was still trying to kill me after Elliot interfered), and brought him up to my apartment to clean the blood off him. I don't know why I did it. Maybe it was because I felt sorry for him, or maybe it's because I felt like I owed him or something. I mean, yeah, he was kinda obligated to save me the first time from his demonic half, but he did save me a second time from what I came to find out was a Puzzle Guardian, and it had been pissed off about what I did with its box. I'm not sure why it was so pissed either, since I've been past what used to be that construction site and have seen the building. If anything, I sorta did Hell a favor.
Anyway, getting back to Elliot. I couldn't believe how many scars were on his arms alone once I helped him peel the blood-soaked sweatshirt off (and by the way, I'm not used to seeing him in normal clothes either), and since then, I've seen just how many scars cover the top half of his body, and trust me, it's not like Dumbledore says in the Harry Potter books. Elliot's scars aren't a good map of Hell's labyrinth, and they don't serve any purpose except to remind him of what he used to be and still is partially. Once he started speaking again, which wasn't until a couple weeks later, he told, or rather rambled to me about everything, or at least what he could remember, leaving me to translate it into understandable English. From what I could get, time in Hell makes no fucking sense and up is down. I guess his worse half got bored and decided that there was nothing better to do than beat the shit out of himself on a regular basis per se, because that's what it seems like to me, and it had to be going on for a really long time, because the Elliot I remember from our first meeting wouldn't have broken so easily. He still won't tell me exactly what happened to him, but every now and then he'll let things slip. Like I'll ask him to pass over a jar of jelly beans I have on the side table while we're watching TV and he'll randomly comment "Y'know…kidneys look a lot like these…at least mine did…when they fed them to me," before laughing nervously and actually handing me the jar. By that time, my craving for jelly beans is dead anyway.
Then again, what bothers me more is the fact that he can look into a person's eyes for just a second or two, and immediately know everything about them. I'll never forget the time he accidentally bumped into this guy at the grocery store and calmly said to him, "Is that the same knife you threatened your wife with? Pity you didn't clean it…it makes the blood on your hands easier for me to smell. The other me will be seeing you soon."
Low and behold a year later, something killed that guy. The details are pretty slim, but after being caught trying to dispose of said wife's body, the guy pulled out some kind of wooden cube and disappeared, only for his skin to be suspended on chains between the some trees in upstate New York. When I asked Elliot what he thought, he simply replied, "…I can only give the thought…not my place to think."
The funny part is, I'm perfectly okay with all of it. All the random comments about being tortured (although I know for sure that Pinhead's eviscerated him least ninety times – don't ask how that came up in conversation, I just know), or the two times he tried to kill himself, an, or the fact that he flips out every time I open the drapes because he insists that there's things there I can't see, and even the fact that he reverts to what he really is when he gets angry – I can handle all of that. It's been over ten years since I stepped through that window (or door – whatever, I don't know what it was), and since coming back from Hell, Elliot's made sure that anything that comes after him never gets to me. The cleanup part of the job is a bitch, but I guess no relationship is perfec
To get something straight, I didn't know how to react when Elliot first told me he loved me a year ago. I mean, c'mon - the guy's over a hundred years old if you really think about it, he's obsessed with demons and puzzles, and if you piss him off badly enough he can kill you by just thinking about chains with hooks and broken glass. When he told me there was "a monster out there and it was him," he hadn't been kidding. The fact that he can rarely control these abilities makes him dangerous enough, and that's without all of the wakeup calls in the form of Puzzle Guardians or other supernatural shit that comes around once in a while. All I know is, that was the first time I'd ever seen Elliot smile.
I know he's never going to be normal. That would be pretty hard with all of the above considered, with the addition of the fact that I get nervous every time he goes anywhere near the knives in the kitchen (To this day, Elliot is the only person I know who laughs hysterically when he "accidentally" cuts himself while slicing up a fucking apple, and that was after being pushed off the roof by what he says was another demon in human skin. To me, it was just some crazy slut in a black dress who wanted to know where the box I put in the cement was). It's just that when he looks at me with those black eyes, I'm not afraid. I don't even know and don't think I'll ever find out if he's the real Elliot Spenser I met in limbo that night years ago. I guess he's just good enough for me.