Author's Note: This is a bit dark and a lot more angsty than one would expect from someone like 2D. But, I wrote it to show that he's not just the happy, bubbly person we think he is. There's a dark side to everyone, and I wrote in such a way that it's still 2D just darker. If you don't like it, you can tell me, fine whatever, but I honestly don't care. I felt that this was experimentive and I love the way it turned out. So, if you want to whine and bitch about how this is totally not 2D and how I should go die in a hole, have a great time doing it.

Disclaimer: I do not own Gorillaz. Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett do. I do not own Massive Attack either. (The Massive Attack song mentioned in this story is called "Saturday Come Slow". Damon sounds amazing in it, I suggest you check it out.)

There's Nothing…

There's never anything to look forward to now, there never really was anything to look forward to. Yea, he might have said we were living the rock star life, but were we really? I didn't feel like we were, I never felt like we were. I always felt like it was just another day to crawl through that dark tunnel that doesn't have a light at the end. It's just a never ending tunnel of darkened sadness that can only be soothed one of two ways, drugs or death. So far, neither I nor he had chosen death, I know we both chose drugs though, who wouldn't? You would too right? I mean, if you still had a reason to continue living for nothing that is. Unless, you're one of those people who can find something important or enough, or are able to force something to be your light at the end. I thought I've had that, many times.

I know I should be happy like I look on the outside. How can I be? I do feel happy, sometimes, not often enough to be considered a happy person. On the outside, I was a pretty boy with a good voice and a dazed expression because I was always on my meds. Always. I can't even remember a time when pills hadn't been popped somewhere in the day. It is for the migraines, it's always been for the migraines, yet, it's also for me. But it's also for everyone else; so that I keep up an image I've been known to have.

Sure, being in a band was great fun and having friends around all day made it that much better, but what do you do when they're taken away? Well, not taken away, but split up. What if, one had been shot down, one went insane and the other just ignored you till you went nuts? You would leave, I left.

You can never fully leave.

I could never leave the band. I could leave physically, I could take myself out of the picture and leave the portrait, but I could never really leave. It always hovered just outside, in the wings, waiting for me to collapse and go back to it. Crawl back to it because it knew it was one of the only reasons I continued to crawl down that dark tunnel. And I managed to stay away; I managed to completely ignore its existence unless someone would ask if I was in it. I would answer, albeit late, but I would answer. I would say, "Yes, I was." Was because that's what it was at the time. It was a past that I had left in order to try and build my own life.

It came back for me, came back for me in the form of kidnapping. I don't hold a grudge against him for doing it. I don't hold a grudge against him for ignoring my decline to come back. I knew I would have gone back sometime anyway; I admired him and that life too much. I wanted was to be a present word, because that was my fake light at the end of my tunnel.

Sure, I thought when I was forced to come back that everything would be the same. That there would be smiles and friends and good times. They weren't here; I knew they wouldn't be here.

I might be slow, but I'm not stupid. I'm just slow, just a little bit behind when it comes to the world outside my own mind. I understand logic, I understand how to think, how to speak. But when it comes to putting all of that into the outside world, it becomes jumbled and incomprehensible and makes no sense to me anymore because it's not mine anymore, it's everyone else's. And if it's not mine alone, it makes no sense to the way my mind works.

Maybe that's why he calls me a "dullard". Because he clearly doesn't understand how I think, or he knows and is referring to act I'm putting on. Murdoc is one of those kinds of people; you never know exactly what he's thinking. You can't even begin to guess, I've never tried, no point; I'd get it wrong anyways.

Murdoc Niccals, that's a name that always feels funny on my tongue and resonates in my head. I know he beats me up and calls me names and treats me like shit on his doorstep. I know he believes I belong to him because I'm in 'his' band, but he knows I don't. I never fucking did, I never fucking will.

Murdoc and I, we both know each other better than anyone else knows us, but we still know hardly anything about each other. We're like best friends who happen to be strangers. He knows why I am the way I am, to a point, a very far away point. Just like I know him up to a very far point. Like shooting a bow at the target and hitting the very edge while every other person seems to miss. It's a fucking joke, the things between him and me. The stuff we know and the stuff we don't.

Every time I look in a mirror I'm reminded of how much Murdoc has fucked up my life. My eyes, those two black dents in my head; his fault. My teeth, the two front ones missing; his fault. The bruises, the ones covering my body and always being replaced; his fault. My migraines, not getting any better long after they should have; his fault. My entire current existence is a result of something he's done to me, yet...

What he's done to me physically has only made me more perfect for my job than what I looked like before. I can't even remember what my eye colour was before the accidents. Or, as other people would say, life-threatening moments. I've never been nearly killed in my life; I've never been nearly dead.

During my entire time in my comatose state, people thought I couldn't hear and feel what people were doing outside. A funny thing about coma; they can't hear you but you can hear them. I heard every disgusting thing Murdoc said to me. I felt every hit and kick and punch and slap he delivered to me out of grief and anger that I was his responsibility. I heard and felt it all, it was just muted, dulled somewhat. I did wake in the hospital with more bruises on my body than I would have thought and I did hurt all over. I could recollect why at the time, whenever you first wake up you don't remember much do you? Same thing for coma, it just lasts a little longer. Then, slowly but surely, things come back. He'd hurt me, hurt me so bad.

I remember when I first woke up. First, there was just head splitting pain and warmth running down the right side of my face. My hands, they were struggling to find purchase and I felt so weak, so fucking weak. I wanted to cry, cry that I had waken up, cry that I was in pain, cry that I knew nothing, cry that I felt so weak. I didn't cry, I got to my feet and stood there for moments, counting the seconds that didn't and don't exist to me. I didn't pay attention to the gasps of shock or the footsteps rushing around busying themselves with things I cared nothing about.

Then his voice broke through, raspy but soothing and full of shock. I paid attention. "Stuart! Stuart! Wot the bloody hell r'yea doin' jus standin' there!" I blinked and realised the warm liquid was coming from my eye. I had turned, turned and faced Murdoc to fall into comfort so I wouldn't burst into tears. His eyes, they had widened so much I was afraid that I was more damaged than I thought. "Stuart, wot the fuck 'appened to yea?" he asked, shock laden in his voice. I knew it then; I must've been disgusting looking.

Now, I know everything I'm saying makes Murdoc Niccals sound like some uncaring bastard, and he is; oh he is. But, I still admire him and hold him above everyone else. Despite the beatings and name callings and constant migraines. Because, he was there when no one else was.

So, you still remember that dark tunnel I was telling you about before, well, I thought I was the only one who thought of life that way, I was wrong.

One night, I remember this night quite clearly because it was such a shock to me that it had burned itself into my brain tissues, Murdoc came into my room, rum bottle in hand. I cringed away from him slightly because I believed he was going to beat me in his drunken state. It wouldn't have been the first time, in fact, it would've been almost normal; but instead he sat himself down on the bed next to me looking absolutely dejected and miserable.

"Whot 'appened Muhdoc?" I had asked, voice completely lost in another world. I was still cowering away from him, afraid that my words would cause him to snap and hit me with that bottle in his hand.

"'D, you eva think tha life is jus a dark tunnel with'ou an exit or entrance?" he asked, his mismatched eyes coming to rest on me. I blinked several times and my mindset came crashing down like a boulder, it almost hurt. Murdoc, was asking me, about what I thought? Slowly I nodded and started to relax. "Yea, I fought so. I cause ya so much trouble eh? Not too savvy on mah part. M'sorry Stu, neva meant to make ya life a livin 'ell. M'just, lookin for tha light ya'know? This band, i's mah light, for now anyway. Yew know wha' Stu, I fink, if yew eva left, I would go nuts." He blinked and took a swig from his rum bottle.

Stu, he had called me Stu. Not 2D, not face-ache, not brain-ache, not dullard but Stu. "I, I feel tha same way Muhdoc. Th-This band, iz all i'v got. Yew and Noodle and Russel. You guys are all i'v got," I'd muttered in response. Murdoc had nodded and set his bottle down. I was still in a state of surprise; Murdoc was treating me like a human being with an opinion and feelings. I remember how his head had suddenly fallen on my shoulder and how weak he looked, how dismayed and broken. And then I remembered he was probably drunk out of his mind and had no idea what he was doing. "I don fink I can leave Muhdoc, if I did, if I did..." If I did, I would have no reason to continue on but drugs. But those stupid pills and the stupid weed.

Murdoc let out a raspy sigh and looked up into my black eyes. I don't know what he'd seen, but he'd seen something that he knew I was trying to hide. "Dun worry Stu, everything will be alright from now on, yea?" And he'd kissed me, it was a small peck on my lips but he'd done it. And even after he'd left the feeling had remained, for the rest of that night and the next three days that had followed. After that, I'd accepted that it was a drunken response to my own misery.

After that, I didn't look at Murdoc the same way. I'd given him more of a God-like aura. Like the lyrics I had written for his song 'Murdoc is God.' Mine had been, "Murdoc Is King. Murdoc Is Dead. Murdoc Is God. Trying To Fit In." Each lyric held true to what he had told me then and those times I was in a coma. He never remembered that moment, he probably never would. I would though, I would cherish that memory just as much as I cherished memories of Noodle.

Noodle, my lil' luv. I couldn't live without her; she was my rock, my little angel that brought real light into my life. She was like a brilliant sparkling star shoved into my tunnel, not at the end, but always right out of my grip. Her light added to lights of the band and Murdoc had nearly blinded me, but gave me reason to keep going, to keep moving.

She, she was like a drug you could never get enough of. I would smile every time I saw her and I would feel better every time she was just around me. Noodle brought a brilliance with her that no one should have possibly had on their own. My lil' Axe Princess luv. With her around, I didn't feel the need for the drugs anymore, but my body was and is more powerful than my slow thoughts. For the five years she was with us, I felt happy and free to be happy.

Then that day came when those helicopters shot at her floating island and my heart was split entirely in two. My lil' luv, my Noodle was gone. Her brilliance was gone, dulled, completely obliterated. There was still light, still the lights that Murdoc and the band and the drugs gave me, but her blinding light went with her. I'd cried for weeks, I'd died for weeks. I'd wanted her back and I'd wanted that dunk Murdoc from so long ago back. I didn't stop crying for a long time.

That was when we all had to go, that was when we had all broken away from each other. It was as if Noodle's absence had left a gaping hole in us that we couldn't handle together. When I left, it only got worse. The drug abuse got worse, the darkness got worse. It got so bad that I had practically stopped trying to reach the fictional end. I just wanted to die, some crazed part of me started thinking backwards on my life, started going down my tunnel the way I came.

I'd like to think my smoking started up because I saw everyone else doing it so I blamed my slow and follow-ish mind on the habit. But that wasn't it, that was never it. I'd purposely chosen to start smoking. I knew the side effects and what would happen to me, three minutes on my life per puff, big deal. What was the point of slowing down death if you were going to die anyway? I read the front of those packs every time I pulled it out of my pocket and every time I would ignore it and put the fag in my mouth anyway.

That part slowed down and came closer to my present, but it paused in several places. Those times I'd gotten so high and 'out of it' and had gone looking for trouble. This time, it wasn't myself showing me how badly I wanted to end life earlier, it was showing me the times I had begged for someone to notice me, Murdoc specifically.

I would go looking for him and I would willingly say things that I knew would piss him off. Blow his fucking top off to the point where he couldn't ignore me anymore. The pain I didn't like, but it was the fact that he was paying any attention to me at all. Deep down, I was one of those twisted people who begged for attention from the single most important person in their life, mine was Murdoc. I didn't care what kind of attention it was, as long as I was getting it.

I mean, even though the attention was abuse and mean words; I was getting what I wanted. Because, if you really didn't care for something you wouldn't waste a minute of your time on it. Even if it pissed you off and made you angrier beyond relief, you wouldn't turn and look at it and yell at it and beat it up. You would keep going and ignore it because you don't give a shit about it at all.

Murdoc's beating me up let me know he cared about me in some way. It was like those words I'd sung for that other band Massive Attack.

Do you love me?
Do you love me?
Or is there nothing there?

Murdoc didn't have to love me, he didn't even have to like me. He just had to g ive me something, anything.

After my suicidal moment, I got that call from him that he wanted me back. Four years after we had last spoken he wanted me to go back. I fought the urge, I said no. I got kidnapped, I was brought anyway. Some part of me became really happy with that, he had brought me here; he needed me more than I had thought. Even if it was only to sing, he had still done what he had to, to get me to come back.

That was when I first met her, she…it. At first, my heart felt like it was going to explode into a million tiny pieces and come back together again. That was, until I saw her follow Murdoc's every order like some sort of devoted lap dog. It wasn't my Noodle, it wasn't my lil' luv. It was some demented fucked up version of her.

Noodle couldn't be replaced by some machine, couldn't be brought back through circuitry and DNA. I knew, under that skin and hair was a machine with no pulse, no feeling, no warmth. It was just a cold soulless excuse for the one person who had once blinded me with light. Sure, it looked like her, when Murdoc let her roam freely she even acted a bit like her, but she wasn't her. She didn't have the same sparkling sun-like aura. The robot's was dark and menacing and left crawls on my skin. There wasn't even a speck of my Noodle in there, not a single drop of my sunlight.

So, deep down in this room, still crawling through that dark tunnel with the smallest amount of light; Murdoc/Band/Drug light, I'll keep going. I'll keep hoping that Russel, our backbone comes back, and that my lil' luv comes back. I keep hoping that I'll get to meet that Murdoc again, the one who spoke to me with such kindness and looked to me for advice.

There's nothing…I want more.

Author's Note: Tell me what you think, I believe I'm going to write more of these in the other band memeber's perspectives. I think I might have Murdoc's planned out but I'm not too sure. Noodle's and Russel's will be hard but I'll be able to pull through now won't I?

Read. Review if you want to.

I send you luv.

Anah~