Handle With Care

By MarqueeMoonGirl

part ONE

I. Without Love – Nick Lowe

Murdoc Niccals was a bastard. Almost everyone he'd come in contact with since his childhood had told him so repeatedly, and they were almost always right. When it came right down to it, he was proud to be a bastard. You got what you wanted, possibly at the expense of others' feelings, but you didn't care. You were a bastard, after all. If anyone didn't like it, they could fuck off.

II. Shining Star – Earth, Wind, and Fire

Noodle was the sole, shining exception. Her presence in his life was sometimes the only thing that had kept him going. He wasn't quite aware how much he needed her wide smile, her gentle encouragement, or the occasional swift kick to the butt when he was being too much of an ass until she had unexpectedly vanished from his life, taking the modicum of joy he got out of life with her.

Worst of all, it had been his own bloody fault. The demons had been after him, and had only taken Noodle because she'd happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. That hurt worst of all.

III. Robot Rock – Daft Punk

To the press Murdoc had boasted that he'd built the Cyborg to replace the original Noodle on the new album. (And he had a lot of material to use on the album. Music was how he mourned.) In reality Cyborg had been his poor man's replacement, built out of loneliness, guilt, and despair during a drunken binge. Her ability to mimic the real Noodle's guitar playing was an added bonus. He'd put too much of himself into the Cyborg's programming. The smug look on her face after she'd been activated was proof enough of that. She may've looked like Noodle and sounded like Noodle when her vocal chords were working, (most of the time they weren't) but she was not the Noodle he'd known.

In a strange way, the Cyborg was like the daughter he'd never had; a twisted, fractured version of himself and Noodle that was neither entirely him or her. Noodle smiled, Murdoc scowled, Cyborg smirked.

IV. Melancholy Soldiers – The Skids

When Murdoc had first spotted a video posted online of a woman with purple hair calmly sitting in a luxury ocean liner's stateroom, it had been during a drinking binge that had gone on for days and intially he thought he'd been hallucinating Noodle from the rum. It wouldn't have been the first time – she had been a popular hallucination of his over the four years since her disappearance/abduction. But once he began to sober up, and the slender woman with purple hair remained in the video no matter how many times he played it, he realized it was really her, alive and free from Hell.

And she was coming to Plastic Beach. To him.

The next day, a check of the news websites showed him a photograph of the same ocean-liner Noodle had been on, decimated to floating debris after a pirate attack. A search of the ocean surrounding Plastic Beach ended in failure and he returned to Plastic Beach, scowling and annoyed. 2D and the cyborg had slipped away from him silently once they'd gotten out of the submarine, realizing that it might be a good idea to stay out of Murdoc's way for the foreseeable future.

V. Always The Sun – The Stranglers

Bits of the ocean-liner and a crashed pirate jet began to wash ashore three days later. No sign of Noodle or Russel. Murdoc was beginning to think they'd abandoned him and headed back to civilization, to move on with their lives without Gorillaz. Both of them certainly had good reason to – Russel wouldn't have been at all happy about being replaced with a drum machine, and Satan only knew what Noodle would think of her cyborg replica. Nothing good, probably.

VI. Stacked Crooked– The New Pornographers

A few crates of alcohol had washed ashore along with the ocean-liner debris, discovered by the cyborg during an early morning patrol of the island. She had no use for alcohol and had silently turned it over to Murdoc, who was attempting to get as drunk as humanly possible off of sixty-four bottles of rum and whiskey. He drank the half of the alcohol straight from the bottle, only stopping once he passed out.

When he awoke, his brain pounding against his skull like it was trying to escape, he moaned, rolled over onto his stomach, and clawed through the air, fumbling for the bucket that the android had started leaving next to his bed after she had found him one morning asleep in a puddle of vomit. He dry-heaved over the bucket for a moment.

"Murdoc."

He twisted his head towards the voice, feeling his stomach tighten unpleasantly. A slender Japanese woman with purple hair and green eyes was sitting on his bed, half of her face covered in bruises.

For a minute, Murdoc couldn't speak. His head was still throbbing from his hangover, and if it really was Noodle, this was not how he'd imagine their reunion would go. He'd give anything to edit the hangover and vomit bucket out of his memory. "Are you real?" he finally croaked out, his throat dry.

The woman blinked in confusion. "Why wouldn't I be?" she said with a thick Japanese accent. He lurched towards her, and she helped him unsteadily to his feet.

"It's been a long time, love, and I've been drunk for most of it. I see weird things when I'm fallin' down drunk. Flying elephants, possessed cupboards, pretty girls..." He touched her unblemished cheek, to reassure himself that Noodle was real. "Cripes, Noodle, I've missed you." She grasped his hand with hers, still covered in soft white leather gloves.

She smiled coyly and leaned into his touch, squeezing his hand. "I have missed you too, Murdoc."

To Murdoc, the kiss on his cheek she gave him was an unexpected but welcome surprise, even after Noodle laughed and said that he tasted like pickled vinegar and rum.

The door to Murdoc's bedroom swung open, and Noodle's laughter died in her throat as she saw the cyborg replica of herself, dressed in a midriff-baring vest and hotpants, standing in the hall.

'Oh, bloody 'ell.'

END: part ONE

MarqueeMoonGirl SEZ: I thought I'd try something different with this one and do a story in short chunks. Originally, it was supposed to be 'write a drabble during a song about your favorite pairing' but I cheated (a lot) and incorporated snippets of things that I've been writing over the summer that didn't go anywhere and strung together into a loose narrative, which is why some of them are longer then others. If anyone's curious, the songs are listed above their respective drabbles.

Thank you for reading!