For this Chapter:
Character(s), Pairing(s): Murdoc, Noodle, 2D
Rating: M
Warnings: Language, blood, talk of Hell
Chapter Summary: They find 2D in Beirut a few days later.
A/N: After uploading I was like shit I should have split it into two. Then people agreed with me. So I did. Enjoy my lovelies~!
The Future is Coming on
"If a man has not discovered something that he will die for, he isn't fit to live."
Martin Luther King, Jr.
They find 2D in Beirut a few days later. Noodle clings to his hand like it'll hold it together, though it's long since healed and has no evidence of ever being injured at all. Murdoc does not say exactly how he heals up the way he does without medical help. Noodle doesn't trust him in the least, not that he blames her, and he's just as happy to cling to her hand as she is to his.
After all he did to get her back, to save her, he feels he has the right to keep her close.
He is so busy staring at 2D that he doesn't feel the insistent tugging on his hand.
'What?' he snaps, but Noodle gives him a Look, and he gives her a facial shrug, an apologetic curled-lip and lifted-brow.
'You're going green again,' she whispers to him.
People are staring. He swallows, his shoulders tense. He shudders. His skin, his muscles, his blood, his everything, it all slots back into place, falls back into line, and he feels a little more natural.
He glances at her; she nods, approving. He goes back to staring at 2D.
When Noodle asks, he does not tell her how he found him, how he knew. Beirut seems so out-of-the-way, so unnatural, so random. The boy's almost unrecognisable. He's dyed his hair brown, gotten a tan; he talks to a merchant at a stall a few down from where they're stood, and he has his front teeth again. At the first opportunity that presents itself, Murdoc is knocking the fucking things out again and buying as much Head and Shoulders as he can get his hands on to strip that awful colour from his hair.
Brown hair, for fuck sake! Brown!
The boy – man, he must be thirty now, right? Thirty-something? God, how long has it been? – is standing taller now, at his full height, rather than the stooped, cowering wreck of knotted fingers and stuttering, tripping accent. He's wearing decent clothes. He looks healthy.
Happy.
Murdoc wants to punch his fucking lights out and make him the boy he remembers. But at the same time, he – he doesn't. He takes a breath, squeezes Noodle's hand. She glances up at him, tugs, pulls him close.
'It's him?' she asks, and he barely has to stoop to get his ear in range of her mouth any more.
He nods, and rests his forehead on her shoulder. Tiredness is sweeping through him at the thought that 2D is better off without the band. How can the bastard be happy without them? Without their fucked up little family? It makes him ache in places he'd forgotten he had.
His soul has long since been sold, but sometimes he forgets.
'It's him,' he murmurs back, and straightens, clears any doubt, any hesitance from his face.
Noodle eyes him.
He stomps to the nearest vendor of fruit and hefts an apple in his palm. Noodle watches him, confused. She follows his squint to where 2D is laughing, rubbing the back of his gross, wrong, not-his hair, and digs her nails into the tension-tight tendons of his wrist.
'Don't you dare!' she spits at him. 'Don't you do it! He's had enough brain injuries, Murdoc!'
He shoots a look at her, bottom jaw jutted forward into a grumpy, cat-like pout. The round jaw, the baby face he can't shed no matter how shitty he looks, really it just makes him look a bit monkey-ish.
Grunting at her wide-eyed, pleading face, he dumps the apple back onto the stand, despite the vendor's squawks about bruising, and picks up a peach instead. He displays it wordlessly to Noodle, who glares, but acquiesces.
'I don't see why you can't just say Hello,' she huffs.
'Because I'll punch him in the face, and I don't want to do that,' Murdoc grunts.
The poor girl is so taken aback by this admittance that she fails to react before her – her – what is Murdoc to her anyway? – well, whatever he is, she's still reeling when he rears back and sends the peach flying.
It somehow, by a twist of fate, for once in Murdoc's favour, manages to avoid everybody except its intended recipient, where it hits with enough force to send the stupid bastard staggering back several steps.
He looks better, yes. But he isn't better. He's still a weed with no thorns to protect himself.
Scraping smashed peach from his face and rubbing the bruise where the stone hit his cheek with all the force of a bouncy ball, he looks around, throwing his gaze left and right.
Noodle is shorter than Murdoc still, just. She makes him pick her up so she can see.
Just as Murdoc straightens from the half-crouch so Noodle could climb onto his back, 2D looks straight at them.
For a moment, it's like climbing out of the dirt again. They all freeze. Time slows.
Murdoc isn't sure who moves first. They crash together in the middle, 2D swamping them both in his arms, Noodle's forehead hitting his nose as Murdoc's face is smushed into his collar at the force of the collision. 2D smells of that same god-awful body spray he always used, and Murdoc holds his breath.
'I missed you so much!' 2D is sobbing when Murdoc manages to sort out the various heartbeats and rustling fabrics and wails.
Noodle is gripping 2D's neck so tight it's a wonder she isn't choking him. They're both sobbing over Murdoc's head. He stands there with his hands gripping Noodle's thighs to hold her steady. 2D somehow manages to keep the three of them upright.
'What happened to you?' 2D asks as he slowly lets them go. His fingers linger, too-long and sun-warm, on Murdoc's bare arms for only a second longer than they should, but though the electric spark sends shocks clear up his arm, he seems reluctant to let go, as though terrified.
From this distance, Murdoc can see the wires holding 2D's teeth in. Good, he doesn't have to punch them out. They're just dentures. That's fine.
He's so caught up in the lack of a gap in his singer's teeth that he forgets to answer the question.
2D hesitates, steps back. Wraps his arms around himself.
'We buried you,' he whispers, and Murdoc stares at his mouth. It's safer than meeting his eyes. 'Me an' Russ. We buried you, Muds. We fucking. We put you in the dirt.'
In the silence that falls between them, someone makes a comment about the inverted cross emblazoned in black across Murdoc's bicep. Noodle, still draped across his back with her chin on his crown, hisses like a cat.
Murdoc doesn't hear her. 2D's gaze flickers up, trapped-rabbit. She tugs Murdoc's ear.
He remembers to breathe.
2D visibly relaxes. Just a little. But visible. A slouch in his shoulders just low enough to reinforce that lanky stretch of his neck.
Murdoc looks for a love bite. He doesn't see one. His gut aches. A shadow passes behind 2D, darker than black and taller than any living man, creeping. The sun goes behind a cloud; spidery fingers wrap around 2D's throat. Red glints behind him, the spark of metal in the sun.
The world slows to a crawl, and Murdoc knows this particular taste of fear on his tongue. Whatever was following them in England, traipsing after them as they made their way across the country, it followed them here too. Come out of the shadows to remind him that he is not free.
'We're leaving,' he manages to choke out around the lump in his throat. 'You're coming. Pack your bags.'
2D looks at him, flicks his eyes over his face.
'You're going green,' Noodle whispers against the shell of his ear, her breath somehow cooler than the heat of the still air around them.
The sun comes out from behind the cloud, and 2D's throat is freed, the shadows shortening to glimmers of grey English skies.
He shakes himself back to death-pallor. Noodle spits out some of his hair.
Her boys stare at each other for several long, terrible moments, awkward and too-tense, and then 2D nods, tells them to follow him.
Noodle wriggles free of Murdoc's grip and hurries ahead to walk alongside 2D, her hand slotting into his, swinging a little, like it used to when they – the band, all together, a happy family of convicts and the damaged and the haunted – used to go out for the weekly shop, or to buy Noodle more clothes, because Christ above the girl grew quick. He trails behind, keeping them in arm's reach, watching their backs, their shadows, watches for glimpses of blacker-than-black and post-box-red. After a minute or two, he reaches out and yanks the skirt of Noodle's dress lower. She glances over her shoulder at him, and gives him a beaming grin.
After winding through several streets, 2D leads them up a set of steps and into a block of flats several stories higher than Murdoc thinks he has ever seen. 2D, naturally, lives on the highest floor. Biting his tongue and tasting blood, Murdoc keeps thoughts of it being the furthest to fall to himself. It's a small, pokey little apartment. Noodle delights in it, comparing it to the capsule hotel she stayed in. Her first concern is making sure 2D's fridge contains everything she feels he should have in there, though Murdoc suspects this is more for her to get decent food than it is concern for 2D's health. They haven't eaten right in days, Murdoc having not eaten at all.
He peers over her shoulder at the food.
'Are you eating that?' he asks, giving 2D a sidelong glance.
Levelling a look, 2D shoves his arm out, wordlessly. He's flushing a little, but he accepts the doubt being aimed at him, given his track record with things like food.
Murdoc wraps his fingers around 2D's bicep, the way he had done for months after they moved into Kong, measuring the width. It had, admittedly, started as a request from his mother, to keep track of his health following the coma. Then, somehow, the chore had become a habit, and Murdoc had become invested in checking 2D's weight. His arm has more fat on it than it did last time he felt it; his thumb and middle finger don't touch, a good inch or so between them. This is enough of an improvement for him, and he grunts, pulls a beer from the fridge, and shuts it.
Now that Noodle is assured of her not-brother's health, she asks about the bathroom, and clean, running water. 2D points at a shut door. She disappears inside, and very firmly locks the door behind her.
Murdoc waits until he hears water running before slamming the bottle onto the counter and backing 2D into a wall. The bastard is still so tall, but his slouch is returning, bringing him down close enough to meet Murdoc's eyes without heads tilting.
'Look,' he says, quiet, not meeting 2D's eyes, or his face in general.
He's pressed so close that 2D can feel the rapid beat of his heart against his chest, count every fleck of grey in his hair, see the faintest tremor in his hand as it rests next to his head, knuckles pressed into the plaster, but it's not a fist. 2D thinks about gorillas, the monkeys, not their band. Is that why Murdoc chose the name?
2D looks where Murdoc is looking, but sees nothing except the same four walls and standard-issue paintings.
'Promise me you won't ever leave my sight,' Murdoc whispers. 'Facea – 'D, Stuart. Promise me.'
2D stares at him. Murdoc glares into a darkened corner of the room, but though his face is turned away, his head is angled enough that 2D can still see his eye. Though he isn't looking, he keeps 2D trapped in place, knuckles pressed, weight-bearing, against the wall. His other hand is clenched into a tight fist at his side.
He panics. Murdoc has not called him names or hit him this entire time. Now he's asking something 2D hasn't heard anyone ask him since his dad took him to Clacton Pier in '85.
So he laughs and laughs and laughs, and says, 'you're not scared I'm gonna die on you, are you? Ha-ha-ha, don't be silly! Ha-ha.'
Murdoc says nothing. The tendons and veins in his neck stand sharp as his jaw tightens, his bottom lip bitten but still trembling. Then he swallows, and his neck relaxes. They both take a shuddering breath or three.
'I'm not going to die,' 2D promises, quieter now, frowning as he watches Murdoc's gaze flick, agitated and bothered, across the room, lingering on every dark corner and black shadow, 'I mean. I don't mean to, and if I do, it's an accident, right? An' – an' you got Noodle back, yeah? You can – can – you can come and get me, too!'
At this Murdoc laughs. It's not a very nice laugh, but his laughter has never been very nice. 'No, pet. No, I can't. I can get into Hell no problem.'
2D doesn't get it. He tells Murdoc this. 'I don't get it? I mean, I'll just wait by the door, it'll be fine! You always tell me to wait at the door when I get lost. So I'll just wait. You'll find me.'
The faith the boy has in him is astounding. It makes his throat tighten. He looks up at him – finally, finally, 2D thinks. Not being looked at was almost worse than the staring had been – stricken, the expression so unfamiliar and so sad that 2D feels his chest ache. His throat burns, his eyes sting.
'I ain't gonna follow you,' Murdoc whispers, and he sounds so tense, so strange, like there's something lodged in his throat. 'I can't.'
He looks like he's going to be sick.
Quieter still, he adds, 'not where you're going.'
The bathroom door opens, and Murdoc steps back, still looking sick. Noodle looks at him. He shoulders past her and slams the bathroom door hard enough to rattle the Monet on the wall.
2D waits as long as he can, but hours pass, and his bladder hurts, and he tries the door. Unlocked. So he enters, and peeks around the door to find Murdoc crouched behind it, head between his knees and arms folded over the top. His fingers dig into his arms, sun-red skin scraped white by the pressure.
'Murdoc? What, um, what are you – you okay?'
In the broken fluorescent strip light above their heads, he seems to flicker, in and out of reality like some kind of horror movie. A chill crawls along 2D's spine, and his fingers itch. A pain begins creeping up after that chill, settling behind his eyes. He hasn't had a migraine for months. Over a year. Murdoc is green and grey and then not anything at all. And then he settles, his skin flushing a little, back to that familiar pallor, and he shoves himself upright. There's no trace of emotion on his face. His eyes look sore, red and wet and sticky. 2D wonders how long conjunctivitis lasts.
'I'm fine,' he says, with a resolute nod, a firm tone.
Then he's gone, leaving 2D alone with his full bladder and a throbbing pain creeping into that one corner of his eye.
They leave in the sundown chill, 2D taking as little as he cares to take. They've lived on nothing before, haven't they, they can do it again. Noodle seems fascinated by 2D's possessions, the things he's accumulated. Murdoc watches with an amused crook to a brow as 2D shoves almost everything he owns into two suitcases. Clothes, books, shoes. Watches, CDs, a collection of toiletries. Murdoc catches a glint of burnished gold between folds of a T-shirt, but it's gone before he can see what 2D wasted money on this time. A stack of DVDs almost fill an entire suitcase. Murdoc almost tells his singer to make a list of the bloody things and they'll get replacements back in England, but he's seen 2D's handwriting – and spelling – and decides against it for his own sanity later.
Noodle clings to Murdoc's hand as they leave, 2D taking one last glance at the place he'd lived for the last year or so. Another chapter of his life has closed, but another is opening, and he's eager to see, to retread a forgotten path.
The streets are still heaving, nightlife and the closing-up of the market keeping the streets thick enough to hide them. A young girl recognises them, or recognises Murdoc, who is, despite the greenish, sickly tint to his skin and the hollowness to his cheeks, the only one who still looks like he does on the posters.
Noodle and 2D share a glance as Murdoc brushes straight past her fumbled attempts to ask for an autograph, tugging Noodle along behind him. Before Hell, Murdoc would have stopped and preened and made a great big song-and-dance. But now he is ignoring everything except his goal, which they're assuming is the airport he and Noodle arrived in.
They make a quick pit-stop, and Murdoc disappears into a parking lot, returning with a car. Noodle frowns at him. He pointedly ignores her, and tells them to get in. They get in, 2D's suitcases in the boot, and the younger band members in the back seat. He says nothing, and they say nothing in return.
In the car, whilst Murdoc grumbles to himself about how he hates hot places and why does 2D always seem to end up in sandy, shitty hellholes when rainy old Blighty is so much better, Christ alive, 2D, Noodle sprawls across the backseat with her head in 2D's lap. He pets her hair, absent, finds his fingers measuring the proportions of her face as she dozes.
She's grown so much.
They drive across long, congested highways towards the airport. Murdoc said something about a private plane, but 2D hadn't been listening, he'd been too busy looking.
'Murdoc?' he whispers, and immediately hopes he hasn't been heard.
Glancing up from the depressingly beige-and-headlight view out of the windscreen, Murdoc meets his eyes in the rear-view. 2D meets them as strong as he dares. He barely manages to hold it for a second before flinching and ducking his head.
'You've changed,' he mumbles, and Murdoc snorts.
'Been to Hell,' he says with a shrug too idle to be nonchalant. 'Changes you.'
2D gnaws at his lip; he'd taken the dentures out, and it feels better to gnaw with his canines and premolars.
'You don't have the red eye anymore,' he tries instead.
Their eyes meet again. A car flashes past, hits Murdoc's eye with the headlights just enough to make it flash gold. It passes in the same second. Both eyes turn black once more.
'I've still got conjunctivitis from all that dirt,' he scoffs, looks at the road.
It wasn't that noticeable. 2D never really notices though. That's how Murdoc liked him best. Just going with it. Not really asking questions.
'Been a while since you went without sleeves,' he offers. Third time's a charm.
'Yes, well. It's too bloody hot.'
He's still sleeveless, in that same torn-shouldered tank top he'd been wearing since he dug himself out of his grave, not that 2D knows that, the one that shows off the tattoos on his arm, just enough hair to show that there is hair. By the time they're on the plane, it'll be long sleeves again. 2D almost decides to savour the occasion.
Murdoc cracks his neck. The sound echoes through the car. 2D flinches. They crawl through the traffic in silence for another hour.
'I kinda miss the red eye, y'know?' 2D says.
Murdoc snorts.
'You look.' 2D pauses, considers his words. Murdoc shoots him a warning glare in the rear-view. 2D flinches, but doesn't back down. 'You don't look as old as I thought you would.'
'Eh?'
'I mean, it's been. It's been a long time.'
Murdoc pauses. 2D watches his face shift in the lights, the tug of a frown forming a crease between crooked eyebrows. He looks old in that moment, more than his years should be. 2D is reminded of the man he was when they met, properly, in that Tesco car park with smoke still coming off the wheels of the Astra. Early-thirties, still unable to grow a beard, still with that just-too-long haircut. He'd looked good then. But something is wrong now.
Little things. 2D is good at the little things.
'It's been two years,' 2D says, quiet.
'Two years,' Murdoc repeats.
2D nods, harried jerks of his chin, and Murdoc runs a scabby-knuckled hand down his face.
'Fuck me.'
They're quiet for a while. 2D watches Noodle sleeping. Murdoc drives in a daze, cuts across lanes and commits enough offences to be arrested three times over by the time they reach the airport, but 2D is too used to the madman's driving to even worry.
'I'm supposed to be forty-two,' Murdoc murmurs, ducking into the backseat to peel Noodle out of 2D's lap and heft her onto his back. 'Forty-fucking-two. Where did my life go? I was supposed to be a superstar.'
'You look about thirty-five,' 2D smiles, and tumbles out of the car. He doesn't comment on the whole superstar thing. He'd thought they were superstars, and Murdoc had gone out in a blaze of glory, after all.
Murdoc asks if he's alright with his shit.
2D grabs his suitcases, and hauls them as quickly as he can. He has longer legs than Murdoc, always has, but the man's on a mission, and it's hard to keep up.
'What about the car?'
'Oh, fuck the car. Stole it anyway.'
Of course he did.
On the plane, Noodle finds a handheld game console, shoves earbuds in, and sprawls across 2D's lap to play her game.
Murdoc sprawls on the other bench, limbs akimbo, an arm over his eyes. 2D thinks he's gone to sleep.
'I barely remember the red eye,' Murdoc says eventually.
2D jumps; he'd been watching Noodle's attempts to catch a blue blob thing. He looks up to find that Murdoc hasn't moved.
'Your left,' 2D says, taps his own. The dark circles under it aren't as sore as usual. 'I used to think it was a – a con – contact.'
Murdoc lifts his arm to peer at him with one eye. 2D catches the flash of tentacles coiling around his inner arm, a flash of an empty eye peeking at him from the shadows. He shudders.
'I'll buy a contact,' he promises, and drops his arm again. 'Like the fake teeth.'
2D is about to open his mouth.
'The fangs,' Murdoc interrupts before he has chance to explain the dentures, still in the flat he abandoned. 'Back in two-thousand.'
2D has not really considered Murdoc's teeth. His eye was more important. In the harsh overhead lighting of the plane, he can see, when Murdoc's arm moves, what he means about the conjunctivitis. It must be quite painful. But when Murdoc opens his mouth next to groan and shift, 2D looks.
'Then,' he starts, and taps at his own crooked and missing chompers. 'They're real now?'
Murdoc gives him a lazy, half-hearted thumbs up and rolls over, back to him. His shirt rides; the elaborate PRIDE tattooed on the back of his hip peeks through in a brilliant shade of red on the sheet-white of his skin.
Pride. Of course.
He tries to watch Noodle play her game, but his eyes keep drifting back to where Murdoc is sprawled across the way, his hip hitched and his waist curving more than 2D has seen it curve. He looks more underfed than he ever has. 2D supposes this is because he's been dead for two years. It's hard to look good when you're dead.
Gaze turned back down to Noodle's screen, he misses the moment Murdoc slips from doze to sleep, but when he looks up again, the older man's body is totally still. There's no rise-and-fall at all, just still-and-still. 2D watches, and his pulse climbs, a heavy drum against his ribs. Russel has broken his sticks before, but 2D is sure this hurts more.
'Check his pulse,' Noodle whispers. 'He stops breathing sometimes. I don't think he needs to.'
2D slides out from beneath her and creeps across the few feet. His shadow stretches long against the far side of the plane, a hunched, long-fingered monster. It startles him, and he almost falls. Nosferatu, he thinks as he calms down, that old black and white film Murdoc loves. It's the only one they can watch together without him complaining.
Murdoc's pulse is slow, but steady under his fingers. He's sure his hands are cold, but his – his – his friend doesn't react the way he would have back at Kong, back in the beginning. He doesn't grab his wrist and hiss and snarl and curse. He just lies there, sleeping like the dead, 2D's fingers on his neck.
Sleeping like the dead.
2D stumbles back to his seat, and collapses into it with a choked sob. Noodle presses into his side, wriggling to fit under his arm and wraps hers around him, her legs over his lap. They sit like that for the rest of the ride, both watching Murdoc's still, definitely-not-breathing sleeping body.
They land in Stansted. Murdoc had wanted them closer to Kong, but their pilot is some by-the-book chap who, Noodle tells 2D in a whispered tone, has been more trouble than he was worth. Murdoc paid a fortune though she has no idea where that fortune came from because he tried to access his bank account, and it kicked him out, and she says he suspects they've – the police – have burnt everything. 2D tries to assure her this is not the case, but cannot find the words.
2D grabs his suitcases, and they make their way through customs. One of the guards recognises Murdoc, recognises the black-eyed and toothless lanky giant with him, though the hair's different, sees the Japanese girl sticking close to his side and assumes, based on dates and presented evidence.
'Hey, man!' he says, as he lets them through. 'I thought you were dead.'
'All part of the show,' Murdoc gives him, and slaps 2D in the back to make him keep moving. Noodle hurries after them and takes one of 2D's cases. It means they walk faster, and Murdoc's knuckles are pulling tight with every step.
'I thought you liked being famous,' 2D says, glancing across at him.
Murdoc shoves the glass doors to the lobby open, smashing it against the wall and cracking the glass. Security makes noise, but he ignores them and marches on.
'I do like being famous,' he replies, and gives 2D a shaky, but present smile, enough to pacify him. 'I've been dead for two years. Forgot how clingy they were, 's all. Takes a bit.'
2D accepts this, and says that's why he got dentures and dyed his hair.
'Yes,' Murdoc sniffs, 'well. We'll have to do something about that. No singer of mine is having brown hair. What a disgrace to the Gorillaz name.'
Content with this, 2D ambles along without further question or complaint. They leave the airport, all three of them breathing in God-blessed English smog, and take a moment to admire the grey clouds forming overhead.
2D keeps eyeing him, and though Murdoc makes every attempt to glare at the daft sod, he has to watch where he's going. There are cracks in the pavement fucking everywhere and he can't be tripping over them. His reputation, from what he understands, is in shambles, dismembered by the press post-mortem, but he has to preserve the last of it.
(Were the press actually allowed to get their hands on his criminal record? Because he isn't sure they are, but it hasn't seemed to stop them, given the way a woman he half-remembers from a night that was too-dark and too-drunk looks at him.)
Without a word, 2D falls into stride beside him and takes his hand. Murdoc glances at it. Doesn't move it. Matches the grip.
The three of them walk in silence for several more streets before Murdoc finally manages to focus on street names and tugs them onto the road back to Kong.
2D does not think Murdoc remembers Kong, remembers the way he died. They've not talked about it, but the way he walks suggests he expects nothing less than to see their home base as he last left it.
Noodle won't let Murdoc steal another car, because Noodle is a killjoy. He elects to ignore her and steals one anyway. 2D is the only of them with legal money now, but no one in their right mind would let him drive. (Murdoc, for a joke, has him listed as legally blind, and 2D has made no attempts to change this, even though he can quite clearly see.) Sat beside Murdoc with Noodle pouting and huffing in the backseat, they drive the last way to their house on the hill, their rising sun, and 2D watches Murdoc's eyelids grow heavy, his blinks slower and slower until he's barely keeping his eyes open.
They drive under a tree, and he snaps awake once more, puts a white-knuckle grip on the gearstick. 2D's fingers itch to rub the jutting bones. He traps those itching fingers between his knees, not trusting either them, or those white knuckles.
'You know,' 2D murmurs, and Murdoc glances over at him. 'I, um. I. It was funny, y'know? There was a. The fire. The fire at Kong, it.'
Murdoc has five names and a dozen ways of telling him to hurry up on his tongue, ready to be spat out, but he bites, gentle to not bite it off, and waits, alternating between watching him and the road. 2D puzzles over how to explain, fiddling with his fingers, picking at his nails and scratching sun-dry spots between his knuckles.
'The camper survived,' he murmurs, eventually, and Murdoc grunts. 'It got impounded by the police, but they let me keep everything in there, once they were. Done? With it. They gave me everything, I think. I didn't. I don't really understand.'
'You were the last one standing,' Murdoc sniffs, in the sort of tone that outright says, rather than implies, that he'd not thought that this would be the case. 'You were the only one to give it to. I disowned my father and brother as soon as I realised I had you lot.'
2D stares blankly, 8-balls looking a little more bloody than normal. Sometimes, Murdoc thinks he used to be able to see a bit of blue poking through the black, but no. No, it's just black voids of utter vacancy.
'I listed you as my next-of-kin,' he says, quiet, and changes gear. 'I wanted to. To. I don't know. I figured, if anything happened to me. I wanted you to have all my shit. I knew you'd appreciate it most, and do what was right by it.'
'El Diablo survived,' 2D blurts out then, and Murdoc gapes.
'You what?'
'It survived. The police don't know why, but it survived the fire, and I have it in storage. I didn't. I didn't take any of your things with me. But I kept them all.'
Murdoc knows 2D well enough, likes to think he does, to know when he's lying. He's always been awful at it, from what his mother said. A sweet boy, but positively thick.
'I see,' Murdoc says, and wonders if he cares at all.
Does he need the Devil's guitar? A bass guitar is a bass guitar, and he's played others before, and since, being in possession of it. He can play any guitar, and they're good musicians, all of them. They don't need the devil's help. Not anymore.
He thinks about the fingers around 2D's throat, the post-box-red and darker-than-black.
'Should I not have?' 2D asks, and Murdoc starts out of his contemplation.
'Thank you,' he says, genuinely. 'It was great of you. Nice.'
2D flushes, and his hands settle nice and calm in his lap. He turns to look out of the window, done with the conversation now that Murdoc is happy.
And he is happy. 2D was lying about keeping or not keeping something, but his shit is in storage. That is half the battle already. They aren't starting from nothing.
'They should have transferred all of my money to you as well,' he says, 'or at least given you access to the account.'
He doesn't expect much from Barclays though. They didn't let him cash that cheque from the record deal.
2D nods. 'They did. But I don't understand that kind of thing! You and Russ always dealt with it, so I just. I left it. The account's still open and that. But I ain't touched it.'
'Russel has Noodle's account,' Murdoc murmurs, and wonders how that's going to work.
He has no idea where the daft bastard is. He'd tried to find him, but the man did not want to be found. 2D had been easy, Murdoc had found him after only hours, but Russel was an enigma. It wouldn't be a surprise if he'd gone and got himself a new ghost or a demon, dropping him out of Murdoc's line of sight.
2D nods quietly, and twists in his seat to see Noodle playing on her game again, earbuds in, the tinny music blaring too loud. It's a wonder they aren't all half-deaf with how loud they play audio.
'Did you look at it?' 2D asks. 'Your account, I mean.'
Murdoc shrugs. 'Before this? Not really. Had no need to. Can't access it now. Tried, though.'
'You were a multi-millionaire.'
He considers this number. These numbers. The multiple zeros. He thinks long and hard about them. He glances at the dimple in Noodle's knee, just visible in the rear-view. He can see her foot bobbing in the wing-mirror.
'So?'
2D hums to himself, as though deep in thought, and frowns out of the window for the remainder of the journey.
They arrive at the remnants of Kong late in the evening. Murdoc had forgotten what it smelt like, the stink of the landfill and the bodies, and now, the burnt smell of stone and wood and metal. The place had been falling apart long before the demons came, but it's totally collapsed now. Maybe two walls are more than rubble, and there isn't anything to suggest it was their place.
He feels a pang of sadness; he spent a long time working on that place, getting it to something liveable, something nice. He hadn't planned to stay, not forever. But it was a nice thing to have. Something that was his.
Still. Onward to better and brighter things.
'What are we going to do?' 2D asks. He is clinging to Murdoc's hand again, a little more desperately than when Murdoc was trying not to trip over his own feet.
Noodle is holding 2D's.
It's oddly fitting.
'We're going to find Russel,' Noodle says, too loud. 'Right?'
They both look at Murdoc, who is somewhere between green and death, and 2D squeezes his fingers as tight as he dares. Murdoc shudders back to normal, and breathes deep. He'd stopped, then. They hadn't noticed.
'Yeah,' he breathes. 'Yeah, we're gonna find him. Then we'll get ourselves new digs, and we'll start from scratch. A new album. Something bigger than before. Best Gorillaz album yet!'
2D grins at him. Noodle beams from just behind 2D's arm.
He smiles back.
- E N D -
NOTES::
Chapter title from Clint Eastwood.
I don't know what it is about it, but Head and Shoulders is literally the quickest way to strip dye from your hair. I get hair dye out in like, two or so washes.
I have it on good authority that hitting someone with a peach, especially when it's been in the fridge, hurts like shit. Don't try it at home, kids.
The inverted cross and the octopus are both tattooed on Murdoc's right arm (inverted cross is seen on a Making Music mag cover, and the octopus can be seen in one of the pictures in Rise of the Ogre. The seven sins are also canon.
Murdoc sees the boogieman behind 2D.
The burnished gold is, of course, Murdoc's cross.
Noodle is trying to catch a shiny Ditto.
Clacton Pier is an amusement park and arcade in Essex. During the 80's, it wasn't great.
Everyone I know who has a Barclays account complains about them, it's quite entertaining. And the giant cheque is mentioned in Rise of the Ogre.
Thanks for reading, lovelies!
