Nate sat straight up in bed drenched in a cold sweat. It had been months since their breakup and her good-bye was still giving him nightmares. He looked mournfully at the empty chunk of bed beside him where she used to sleep. Letting Elena walk out the door was one of the hardest things he'd ever done.

He'd never been so hung up on a girl in his life. Elena was just so different from any other girl he'd ever met. Maybe it was due to the fact that she was still so close. All his other ex-girlfriends were either on the other side of the country or in a different one. Elena lived right here in Florida. Some days he swore he saw her filling up her car at a gas station as he drove by or leaving the supermarket just as he walked in. In the end it never was her and even if it was her he'd never work up the guts to approach her.

Nate could still vividly recall the night she left, her tearful good-bye.

This last adventure had gotten way out of hand. He was already two days late getting home. Elena must be worried sick. Pulling his jeep into the parking lot of his apartment complex he shut it down and climbed out. He didn't notice her sprinting across the lawn until she was in his arms.

"Nate, oh thank God!" she said in his ear hugging him tightly.

"Hey, hey," he said pushing her back. It was easy to tell she'd been crying. "What's wrong?"

"What's wrong? You're two days late and you wouldn't answer your phone. All I could think about was you lying dead in a ditch somewhere…" she rambled voice squeaky.

"Elena, calm down," he said hugging her close and rubbing her back. "I'm right here, everything's fine."

She pushed him back, "Why wouldn't you answer your phone?"

"It broke," he said honestly.

"It broke? What on Earth were you doing?" she asked and her eyes went wide. "Are those bullet holes?"

She pointed to his jeep where bullet holes did in fact mar the bumper.

"You were treasure hunting again, weren't you?" she accused.

"Elena, I can explain…"

"You promised you were going to quit!"

"You have to understand…"

"Understand what? One of these days you're going to get yourself killed and what am I supposed to do then? Am I just supposed to wait here until they call me in to identify your body. That is if they even find it. And if they don't am I just supposed to spend the rest of my life wondering what happened to you?"

"Elena, you're over reacting."

"Y'know what, Nate. Just forget it!" she screamed the turned around and stormed back into their apartment.

"Elena!" he called chasing after her.

He took the stairs two at a time trying to catch up with her. She'd left the apartment door hanging wide open.

"Elena?" he asked tentatively stepping inside.

She was nowhere to be seen. He cautiously moved toward the bedroom and what he saw appalled him. Elena had her suitcase on the bed and was haphazardly ripping things out of the closet and stuffing them into it.

"What are you doing?" he asked.

"I'm done," she said darkly.

"Excuse me?"

"I'm leaving!" she shouted over pronouncing each syllable.

"What?" he said unable to hide the shock in his voice. "Why?"

She threw the last of her things into the suitcase and slammed it shut. If her face hadn't been red and puffy from crying already it would be now. Tears were freely streaming down her face. Seeing her like this killed him inside.

"I love you, Nate," she said placing a hand on his cheek. "But I can't just sit around here and wait for you to get yourself killed."

She grabbed her suitcase and brushed passed him into the living room.

"Elena, don't do this," he said following her. "I can change."

She turned on him wiping tears from her face, "No, Nate, you can't. We've tried that already and this is where it got us. Let's face it, you love treasure hunting too much. You'll never be able to give it up, not even for me. I've made up my mind. Don't make this any harder than it already is."

"Elena, please…" he pleaded voice faltering.

"Good-bye, Nate."

She walked out into the hall and gave him one last longing glance. Then with a shuddering sigh she quickly walked away. The door swung shut behind her the sound ringing painfully in his ears…

"Oh, Elena," he sighed.

The memory still hurt. His chest constricted every time he thought about her. Ironically, since she'd left him his life had become utterly boring. The only interesting thing that had happened since she'd been gone was that small adventure with Maggie last month. The only treasure in that was an old diary belonging to Marie Antoinette describing her true involvement in the French Revolution. Sure there were a few nut case French supremacists that tried to stop them but not on the scale of say the El Dorado adventure. They had a good thing going until he accidently called her Elena, just once, and she ran for the hills like he was some sort of pariah. Since then, nothing. No danger, no treasure. Just what Elena'd wanted. Why did he always have to lose something before he knew how important it was to him?

Sighing he threw back the blankets and crawled out of bed. There would be no sleeping after that nightmare. Luckily it was already five thirty in the morning so he wasn't losing that much sleep. Walking out to the living room he grabbed the remote off the table and plopped down on the couch. Flicking on the television he began channel surfing until something caught his eye. It was the opening sequence of the cable show Discovered.

"I know that voice," he muttered.

"Hello," the voice continued. "I'm Elena Fisher and this is Discovered."

"Ugh! You're already in my head!" he growled. "Get off of my damn T.V.!"

Just as he was about to change the channel when something she said caught his attention.

"Today's show is about the legendary explorer Sir Francis Drake and his search for the lost treasure of El Dorado."

"Son of a bitch," he muttered to himself. "She still had the footage from the island."

He sat there and watched the whole show ignoring the nagging throb somewhere deep inside of his chest. The footage from the boat, the reveal that Sully was alive, even him tearing the page out of the ship manifest. She had it all. But not once during the show did she reveal what truly happened to Sir Francis or the idol. She'd kept their secret and that's probably why she never told him about it. The only thing he wondered now was how in the hell she'd managed to salvage the footage from the island. They'd never gone back for her camera.

"Now I bet a lot of you are wondering how all this footage survived since I lost the camera and a good chunk of my story," Elena said.

"Uh… yeah!" he answered aloud.

"Well it turns out I had luck on my side," she continued. "Because just before I lost the camera I had to change tapes and the full tape somehow managed to survive the rest of my adventure in this plastic bag in the pocket of my cargo pants."

She held up the bag displaying the formerly lost footage. His jaw dropped.

"Well I'll be damned…" he said climbing up off the couch.

The T.V. played in the background while he started a pot of coffee. It was going to be a long day especially since he was going to have her stuck in his head for the rest of it. He leaned back against the counter and watched as the coffee maker slowly dripped black liquid into the pot. Suddenly over the T.V. and the coffee maker he picked out an urgent buzzing noise. On the counter across from him his cell phone lit up.

"What the…" he mumbled picking it up.

Who on earth would be calling him this early in the morning? Only a number showed up on the screen, a number he didn't know. Cautiously he pressed the talk button and held the phone to his ear.

"Uh… hello?" he asked.

"Hello, Nate," a deeply accented woman's voice answered.

"Who is this?"

"What?" the voice asked coyly. "Don't you remember me, cowboy?"

He knew that voice. Granted he hadn't heard it in years but the memory rang true. Only one person he knew could have an Aussie accent like that.

"Chloe?" he asked hesitantly.

"Bingo," she answered. He could almost hear her smiling.

"How did you get this number?" he asked.

"It doesn't matter. What matters is what I have to offer you," she said dodging his question.

"And what would that be?"

"It's been seven years, Nate. I've grown up. I'm not the naïve little girl I once was. And the word on the street is you've grown up too and become quite the accomplished treasure hunter no less."

"Oh really?" he asked. "What streets have you been hanging out on?"

She laughed, "Well, let's just say, if you're up for an adventure you'll meet me at Sullivan's bar in one week. That is, if you think you can handle it."

"Oh, I'll see you there," he said accepting her challenge. "And I look forward to it."

"Mmm. I'm sure you do."

"Sully's bar. One week," he said repeating her instructions. "I'll be waiting."

"With baited breath…" she whispered and the line went dead.

Nate stared at his phone heart thudding madly inside his chest. For the first time in months he found himself not thinking about a fair skinned Floridian with golden hair but of a deeply tanned dark-haired Australian with challenging eyes.

"I've gotta call Sully," he said to himself urgently dialing the number.

"Hello," a gruff voice answered.

"Sully, you're not going to believe this…"


Ok so this is the actual first chapter of this fill in the gaps of the story thing I've got going on here. This is how I think Nate and Elena broke up. It seemed plausable. He's always risking his life, nearly getting himself killed. She just couldn't handle it anymore and left. Then enter the Chloe. Oh, and all that information about Nate's past girlfriends and past with Chloe. That was all based on information from Nate's Journal. I found a high resolution image of it on the Uncharted Wiki and was able to lift the names, contries of origin, year and even month of when Nate met them. According to that Nate first met and assumably had a relationship with Chloe in 2002 at age 20. Ok... I'll stop rambling now and get to work on the next chapter.