An Explanation

(Once again, "Untitled" is the property of The Cure-that is the actual name of the song by the way, lol. I'm a huge 'Cure-head', and the lyrics seemed appropriate for this fic.)

Nadine stepped back into her apartment, sighing impatiently when she turned around to see Joey still hovering in the doorway. "It's safe to come in, Miss Summerskill." She told her. "Please don't take this the wrong way, but if I wanted to kill you, you would already be dead. Now come in, and shut the door."

For a moment, she actually thought Joey was going to turn tail and flee, but then she finally entered, closing the door as she'd been instructed to, then looking around her in frank fascination.

"Before you ask," Nadine said drily. "No-I don't own a coffin, never mind sleep in one. Another myth, Miss Summerskill." Turning her back to her, walking towards the seat she'd vacated only moments ago, she quietly added, "I can't imagine what you could possibly have to tell me about Elliot. After all, he is dead. In fact, I'm fairly certain he's been dead longer than I have."

"Does this look familiar to you?" Nadine turned back at Joey's enquiry, and when she saw what she was holding out to her, she froze, jaw dropping open.

The box.

The damn box.

Suddenly filled with dread, Nadine hissed, "Where did you find that?" Joey seemed to hesitate a moment, then told her about the guy at the hospital, the one who had been ripped apart, and the witness who had given her the box.

Pointing a finger at the object clutched in Joey's hands, Nadine said, "That thing is evil. I don't quite know what it is, or what it does-I just know it's evil. And I know it killed Elliot." She looked into Joey's face, and with a jolt, registered no surprise.

She knew.

"It did kill Elliot, didn't it, Miss Summerskill?" She said haltingly, heart aching. Was she finally going to find out what had become of her lover?

"Call me Joey." She replied. "And I really think you should sit down. I'm gonna tell you some stuff you might not want to believe."

Nadine, in a daze, obeyed, pulling out a chair for Joey and gesturing to her to do the same, then demanded, "What happened to him, Mi...Joey?" She watched as Joey took a deep breath, and replied, "It's a trick. The box is supposed to offer pleasure-" "A 'gateway to unknown pleasures' ". Nadine interrupted her. "That's how Elliot described it."

Joey nodded slightly, then continued, "But it's not really pleasure. Not our experience of pleasure, anyway. The box is a gateway to Hell, Nadine-that's where Elliot was taken."

Nadine felt the room begin to spin around her, a cold, dead feeling surrounding her heart.

Hell?

The man she loved had been taken to Hell?

But she could tell from Joey's expression that she wasn't finished telling her yet. And while Nadine Jones hadn't begged for anything in a long, long time, in these circumstances, she would make an exception. "Please, Joey," she implored. "What happened to him?"

"Hell's idea of pleasure is a little different to ours." Joey explained. "There, pleasure is pain-and vice versa. They...tear the body apart, take the soul. And they're...tortured, forever."

Nadine felt her eyes flood with tears, Joey and her surroundings becoming a watery blur. The knowledge that Elliot had died alone, and in agony, was almost too much to bear. She had left him alone with that thing.

She had left him to die.

"But that's not exactly what happened to Elliot." Nadine's head snapped up at this remark, and she furiously wiped at her eyes.

Tears would not bring Elliot back to her.

"They..." Joey trailed off, seemingly unsure of whether to continue, but as Nadine glared at her, willing her to go on, she continued, "They...made him one of them. A Cenobite."

Nadine frowned. Cenobite? That sounded familiar. "Cenobite." She repeated musingly, and when it hit her, she couldn't help but laugh. "Aren't Cenobites priests of some sort? Oh, come on-you can't tell me they made Elliot a priest! That's ridiculous!"

Joey shook her head. "The Cenobites are demons." She replied. "Guardians of Hell. They're the ones who...take you, when you open the box."

Nadine couldn't believe what she was hearing. Elliot had been taken to Hell, and turned into a demon? Turned into one of the things that had killed him in the first place?

"How do you know all this?" She asked numbly. In her wildest imaginings, she had never thought something so awful could have happened to him.

"Elliot told me."

Nadine gaped at Joey, trying to suppress the urge to laugh-and failing. "Elliot told you." She chuckled. Strange, how she was laughing-since she didn't find any of this in the least bit funny. "Tell me-are you a medium, as well as a reporter, Joey? Dead people don't speak."

"You do." Joey retorted, and Nadine had to concede at that, smiling slightly. "Touché." She murmured, then added, "Are you saying Elliot spoke to you? If he is in Hell, how is that possible?"

"About five years ago, a girl named Kirsty Cotton opened the box." Joey told her. "She didn't mean to-it was her uncle who first opened it, you see, and...anyway, she opened the box, and that's when she met Elliot. Or, what he'd become. When humans become Cenobites, they eventually lose all memory of their past life, but it was Kirsty who finally reminded Elliot of who he used to be. She set him free, released his soul. But when she did, the demon was unbound from Hell, and Elliot's soul was sent to Limbo. The demon Elliot was, is here, Nadine. On Earth. And Elliot needs us to stop him."

Nadine couldn't speak for several moments. She was finding it extremely difficult to absorb exactly what Joey was saying.

Elliot was here, on Earth?

Only, it wasn't really Elliot.

"Elliot brought me to Limbo, after I had a dream about my father, who died in Vietnam." Joey continued. "He told me where to find you, told me that you'd help."

"He told you all that, did he?" Nadine couldn't keep the bitterness out of her voice-she couldn't comprehend all of this. She didn't really believe Joey was lying-but if she wasn't...

After all these years, Elliot needed her.

But she couldn't...she couldn't face him.

"You've had a wasted journey, Joey." She said regretfully. "I can't help you. I'm sorry." Joey made no effort to mask her obvious surprise. "But, Elliot..." She protested.

"I can't!" Nadine tried hard to bite back the tears, but they still flooded her eyes. "After all this time, I...it's too late. He's gone."

"He's out there." Joey's voice was growing in volume, and apparent desperation. "At least, his demon side is. And he has to be stopped. Do you understand? The world is..."

"I don't care about the world!" Nadine hissed, her anger, frustration and heartache overwhelming her. "I no longer live in it, anyway." Resolutely, she stood and turned her back on Joey, uttering a silent apology to Elliot:

"If you can hear me...by some miracle, if you can hear me...I'm so sorry. But I can't do this. Not even for you, darling. I just can't."

"Go." She told Joey coldly. "You'll have to find someone else to help you."

Nadine waited until Joey left, the door slamming behind her, and then she sank onto the chair, tears spilling down her face. It was like losing Elliot all over again. But after all these lost years, she couldn't face the thought of meeting him-or, what was left of him-again. She was too afraid to look at him, too afraid he had changed too much.

Or that he hadn't changed at all.

Boxes, Hell, Cenobites...it was all incomprehensible, and yet, all made perfect sense.

Shoulders shaking, crying as if her heart-long dead, but still able to feel pain-was going to break, Nadine stood again, shakily and walked over to the old, upright piano in the corner. She wasn't really a fan of 'modern' music, but she did like some British rock, like Depeche Mode, David Bowie, The Eurythmics...and especially, The Cure.

And there was one song she'd learned by heart.

Sitting, she began to play a melancholic tune, and finally, in a slightly quavering voice, began to sing:

"Hopelessly adrift in the eyes of the ghost again;

Down on my knees, and my hands in the air again.

Pushing my face in the memory of you again,

And I'll never know if it's real...

Never know how I wanted to feel..."

Eyes closed now, tears still streaming down her face, Nadine got to the chorus:

"Never quite said what I wanted to say to you;

Never quite managed the words to explain to you.

Never quite knew how to make them believable,

And now the time has gone...

Another time undone..."

It wasn't until she heard the soft buzzing that Nadine's hands stilled on the piano, and her eyes flew open, widening considerably when she saw the pulsing orange light that had suddenly flooded her apartment.

As if pushed by an unseen force, Nadine glided across the floor on legs she seemed to have no control over, right over to the door Joey had exited from only minutes ago, and acting completely on instinct, flung it open.

And came face-to-face with her past.

Well, not quite face-to-face. Her past was sitting on a dirt floor, apparently frozen in time-but what he held in his hands did not escape her attention.

The box.

Still in his uniform, still looking exactly the same as he always had...but Nadine quickly realized that this was an illusion. He wasn't moving, head down, fingers locked around the puzzle box. Those exquisitely long, skilled fingers, Nadine remembered with a shudder.

Only an illusion...and yet, her own fingers were reaching out, not of their own accord, to touch. Only for them to glide through what felt like a curtain of silk, her hand disappearing into blackness.

With a yelp, Nadine withdrew her hand, and stared at it for a moment, then stared at the image of her lover, still frozen. "What the Hell?" She muttered, her grief forgotten for now, her curiosity piqued.

"Good question."

Nadine wheeled around at the unexpected, but agonizingly familiar, voice, and landed on her backside. Only to realise that she was no longer in her apartment, but sitting in a grassy field.

A grassy field littered with corpses.

She knew this place, knew it only too well. All the suffering and death witnessed and endured here.

Flanders field.

And then, a pair of boots appeared beside her, and somehow, she knew before she even looked up, who was standing over her. Slowly, she tilted her head back and looked up into a pair of pale blue eyes, a smiling face. And everything around her faded, until he was all she could see.

"Hello, Nadine." Elliot said...

(OK, apologies for the severe lack of quality here-haven't been doing very well, health-wise, lately, and inspiration escaped me. Hope it's ok. Anyway, next chapter, we find out if Elliot can persuade Nadine to help Joey save the world and send him back to Hell.)