She woke.
She hadn't remembered going to bed. Bits and bobs of her memory were starting to feel fuzzy lately. Lots of reasons that could be. Not worth getting too concerned about.
The house felt still. Not even the frequency buzz of electricity that she always heard but never noticed. Until it was gone.
"Russel?"
Her bedroom door was open. She kicked out of bed and headed to the hallway. Her feet made no noise as she did so. That was odd, too. Had she gone deaf? "Russel?!"
She heard herself without a problem, so it wasn't that. Fine, it'll go on the list of things to investigate. Not hearing things is probably better than seeing things, anyway.
The hallway was longer than she remembered. She also didn't remember her bedroom being on the ground floor. Not a bad idea though, meant that kitchen and living room were right there for her to access.
She peered into the kitchen. The fridge was open, and what food she saw carried green and black buboes of mould. It almost looked dusty. The entire kitchen did actually, the only part that didn't was the pool of water encompassing the freezer.
"Hello?"
She turned back into the hallway. She must've wandered off without realising. The grey, undecorated cinderblock walls of the underground hallway to the garage surrounded her.
Down here, there weren't even street lights coming from windows to help with her eyesight. There wasn't much to trip over in the hallway, luckily. Just walls and a door. She looked at the door.
It slowly waved open in a greeting, creaking a hello. The first sound she had heard other than her own voice.
Silently, though not by choice, she approached the door. Her eyes had familiarised enough to the darkness, but past the door remained an abyss of black. That was fine. It's a long garage, when all the lights are off it'd be normal to not see anything beyond.
Feeling the wall as she walked, her hand contacted something wooden. It was heavy. An axe.
Who'd put this down here? Especially in the dark, someone could hurt themselves on it. She picked it up with surprisingly little effort. Must put it somewhere safe.
A scrape emerged from the other side of the door. Almost like someone tripping over.
She squinted, trying to decode the other side.
"Someone there?"
There were footsteps. Lots of them. Hundreds of people. They were running. Above her, too.
The first ones crashed through the door. Many of them were young, younger than her. Their faces grey, their eyes white. Expressions all conveying a mindless, bloodthirsty fury. Their mouths looked to be screaming, but no sound was coming out. Only their footsteps. They were sprinting at her.
Up the stairs behind her, the door burst off its hinges. They were coming in from behind, too.
She swung the axe. She had to. They got so close, and were so angry, and they kept going, so so did she. Swinging and hacking and screaming and running, heads and arms and legs covering the floor. She could hear her own screams. She couldn't hear theirs. She didn't want to.
She closed her eyes as she kept swinging, stopping only when contact with someone enforced it, and even then only briefly. She didn't stop until a long time went by without connecting with a bone or a brain.
She opened her eyes. The hallway was certainly decorated now. Not to her liking. She'll clean it up tomorrow, it was a tomorrow job.
Bodies and heads were frozen, paused in their pain and anger. They looked up at her, unforgiving.
She stepped over them, heading back upstairs. The bodies, the blood, were upstairs too. It was everywhere.
At her bedroom door were three bodies she hadn't remembered seeing. Must've done them in while her eyes were closed.
The first was a large black man with his gut disembowelled. The second was a ghoulishly green old man who'd taken a few shots in the heart. The third man had blue hair. His head had been hacked to pieces, to the point it no longer resembled a human face.
They looked at her. Unlike the others, they seemed more sad than angry.
She woke.
Good thing, too. She must've dozed off at the wheel. Speeding down the motorway at 90mph. At least the road was quiet at this time of night.
She passed a junction to Crawley. That was helpful, at least now she knew she wasn't far from home.
"Think you were supposed to take that one."
She looked over to the passenger side. A blue haired man was sitting there, holding onto his seat belt strap a little dramatically.
Wasn't he the one she just hacked up with an axe? Why was he trying to talk to her?
"I realised the other day, don't think I ever said sorry. For how I was when Murdoc was banged up. You kinda saved me, I think. You did that a lot, actually, sorry I never really did it back."
What a stupid thing for someone you've just killed to say. Whoever he was, he was stupid.
"I was making a list of things I was gonna say, that was the main one. You'd probably be all like 'we need to leave to get back home' or whatever you said to me that first night back, can't quite remember. But basically, you'd sound all forgiving without actually saying you forgive, and then I'd worry that you didn't forgive. Not that you'd have to."
He definitely felt familiar, but she wasn't enjoying what he had to say. If she ignored him and sped it up a bit, he'd probably go eventually. The car went over 100mph. The lights from the lamp posts flickered over their faces.
"Starting to think I was stupid for saying you're gonna be alright." He looked down, fiddling with his fingers. "I still believe it, but maybe it's something you gotta think, not say. I didn't even touch wood after I said it. Maybe I did this. I mean, I know I did, but maybe I made it worse."
The blue haired man enjoyed taking long, winding routes to get to his point.
"If there's one thing I am happy with" He said, perking up slightly "It's my last words to you. 'I like how you think', think it was. I stand by that, think that sums it up pretty good. Could've been way worse, remember when we were in H&M and I told you I'd shat myself by the snoods? Imagine if you died then instead, couldn't tell no one that." He gave a little chuckle. At least he was enjoying his own company. He was doing a remarkable job of not being bothered by the fact she was pretending he wasn't there.
"Ooh, hello." He said, sounding curious. She noticed something ahead in the road, likely the thing that had piqued his curiosity.
A figure that looked remarkably similar to the blue haired man. He was standing in the middle of her lane.
He'd move eventually, when she got closer.
"Is that something? A little movement?" The blue haired man pestered.
His counterpart had not, in fact, moved an inch. He didn't seem even aware of the cars existence, instead facing up the road away from them. She couldn't see his hands, they were up at his stomach. Maybe he was holding them together like a proud farmer overlooking his land. Or maybe he was holding something small.
He'd move.
"Can you hear me?" The original said softly.
Ah, good. He was catching on to the fact that she wasn't going to respond to him. She flashed her headlights at his double as a warning sign. It was bright, it felt like they were being shined back into her own eyes.
He'd move.
She kept thinking it even as she felt the front of the car collide with him, even as she heard his cries while his head smacked off the bonnet, even as he flew off at an angle and landed at the side of the road.
Why hadn't he moved?
She woke.
Her hands still gripped a steering wheel that wasn't there. They unclenched with effort as she shifted to a sitting position in the living room.
The sun was up. She must've driven home safely and taken a nap, she clearly had needed it.
If that was real at all. It was getting so hard to tell.
The pills. Those damn sleeping pills, she must've started taking them and forgotten, they're fucking it all up. She had a good thing going. The dreams were ok. Safe. Now she wasn't safe anywhere.
She ruffled her jacket and heard a familiar rattle. Perfect. She opened the bottle to check how many she had taken.
It was empty.
That couldn't be right.
She shook it again and sure enough, a rattle responded.
Now she remembered. She couldn't trust the things she was seeing. That meant if she tipped the bottle upside down…
Pills poured out, overfilling her hand and flooding onto her lap.
She watched with a curiosity as they continued to fall. That was a lot of pills. At least she got her moneys worth.
Tipping it back up to avoid having to do too much cleanup, she stood and dusted herself down.
A mirror caught her attention as she went to leave and she looked at it. She looked odd. Off.
She did used to be younger, she thought. Maybe it was that.
A bright fluorescent light was coming from the hallway. The lights on in the middle of the day. What were they, made of money?
She went to the hallway to turn it off, and stopped.
"Oh, sorry."
A black saloon with a large dent looked at her. It's headlights resembled big, white, empty eyes.
It's engined hummed as it awaited an order.
Stupid thing. She'd only tried to help. She'd listened. The thing he always worried no one ever did. She always did, and look where it got them. A stupid man with stupid ideas, and stupid her for listening and trying to make him happy. Was he even surprised nobody listened?
This car was the stupidest thing of all. Always showing up like she still had use for it. She must remember to check her emails to see its return policy.
She noticed a bloodied axe on the floor in front of the car.
Had she made the axe bloody? Hadn't that been weeks ago?
She picked it up and brushed off some of the blood and blue hair with her sleeve.
The car revved in protest.
"You would say that."
She swung as hard as she could, aiming first for the dent. Then the windscreen. Then the roof. Then anywhere that still looked unscathed.
The car screamed in pain but never moved.
Maybe there was still time. Maybe this would send her back to before this all happened. If she destroyed enough of it, removed enough of it from existence, no one will remember it was ever there, and then he'd come back. They'd all come back.
"Noodle?"
Noodle woke.
Or maybe she'd always been awake. Or still wasn't.
Whatever state she was in, a familiar face provided reassurance. Russel shook her gently where she sat, slumped over the kitchen counter.
It tumbled back to her, not quite in chronological order. She'd gotten some label-less hypnotics from Murdoc's weird friend. She'd retrieved the Geep and driven around for a while. She'd stopped at an old skate park she remembered from when she was young, to people watch. Incredibly, some old tags from 2D had yet to be covered up.
She skipped ahead internally. She'd made it back, put the pills away under 2D's floorboard so that Russel wouldn't find them easily, and gone to the kitchen for some water.
And she was Noodle. It was hazy. But she remembered that.
Russel shook her again, and Noodle looked up at him. The dusk cast a calming orange light over his face that juxtaposed the tired trepidation he expressed.
He carried a large backpack over his shoulder.
"Sorry to wake you. Feels like that's all I do lately. You alright, can I get you anything?"
"What's with that?" She asked, nodding at the backpack.
"That can wait, is there anything I can do?" He dropped back into responsible mode so effortlessly.
Noodle straightened up on the barstool and brushed her hair back to convince him of some togetherness. "What's going on?"
Russel chewed him bottom lip. Turning away, he took a few steps towards the door, slouched solemnly. His had grasped the doorway for support.
"I, uh…"
Deciding he couldn't do this with his back turned, he faced her with eyes that looked sunken back with regret.
"I'm going away for a little while."
Noodle jumped off the barstool but stopped herself getting any closer. He'd made the distance for a reason.
"What?" Was what she decided to say, but the who, why, when, where and how all could've been substituted in just as easily. Even if Noodle herself knew the answers to a couple of those already.
"I've been reading up on grief from a, uhh… my perspective. I guess. It said you're full of nothing but pain, and suffering, and loss, all you're gonna do when you try and help is project that onto the people you love. I think I've been doing that with you."
Noodle was frozen in place. He thought all of this was his fault.
Without a barrier of protective instinct, his reliable safety net of kind words and reassurance, with no fires left to put out except the one that was beyond his control, Noodle saw the man's emotions in that moment, in a way she never had before. She saw a man who was broken from the loss of his friend. The despair of losing his family for good. Someone who had run out of answers for the first time in his life.
Had she even once asked how he was doing since 2D died?
The realisation made Noodle's heart scream in pain and glued her feet to the floor. He wouldn't admit it. He probably didn't even realise it. But this was her fault too.
She was losing another.
"Where?" She whispered, her voice crack making her sound 10 years old again.
"Down to Devon, spend some time in the moors for a few weeks, maybe a little longer. Not seeing Damon or anything like that, just need to be alone for a while, learn how to be…. well, me. Again."
You are you. You always will be you. And you will always be enough.
She thought it. She couldn't say it. It was too late for her to deserve it.
If Noodle did, he'd probably stay. If she said that she needed him because her sanity was slipping more and more by the day, he'd probably stay. If she told him she'd bought illegal strength sleeping pills because she can't bear to face the waking world any more, he'd definitely stay.
She didn't say any of that either. Not because she didn't want to. Not even because she didn't feel she deserved it.
Noodle didn't say anything because she was watching the door behind him. Because there was a chance, the slightest chance, that 2D would walk through that door and she would know then that this wasn't real either, that Russel wasn't really leaving, and there was still an opportunity for her and Russel to make each other ok again.
She waited. Russel watched her eyes pass over his shoulder. She seemed distracted enough for him to successfully wipe away the tears that were forming in his eyes.
"If you need me." He said, his voice faltering, unsure. It seemed like he had not yet decided whether or not to include this as part of his goodbye. "Call me. I will come back. I promise."
I do need you. And you know it. But what you don't know is you need me. You've needed me this whole time. And I haven't been there.
Instead of saying that, she heard herself say in the faintest of whispers,
"Take as long as you need."
She felt no need to hide her tears from him. She never had. Russel watched them fall with agony, before nodding.
He waited a little longer to see if Noodle would close the distance. If anything, it only seemed to be widening.
"Baby?"
Noodle nodded.
"If…when… you see D again. Could you tell him... tell him I love him. And I miss him. More than I think I realised."
Knowing better than to wait for a response that wouldn't come, Russel turned and left the kitchen, making an effort to keep his steps quiet as he walked down the hallway.
"Please, D…" She thought out loud. "Please, this time…this time we both need you."
She heard the front door open and close.
Noodle hadn't woke.
Noodle was alone.
"Nice callback. Needed the guitar, though."
"Shut up."
Deciding that was enough of a welcome as was needed, Murdoc turned and headed straight back into the new, more domesticated looking Kong Studios, leaving Noodle to clamber out of the FedEx crate, scoop up her few belongings and follow him inside.
"The old crate was smaller, too." Murdoc continued to critique as he strode along the hallway.
"So was I," Noodle pointed out as she stretched and cracked her neck, "you expect me to travel halfway across the world in a 3 by 3?"
"Just would've been more faithful, is all I'm saying. Not to mention cheaper."
He turned the corner, bringing them into the kitchen, where he fished a half empty rum bottle from the cupboard, poured some into an icy glass that looked like it had been used a fair amount that day already, and turned to Noodle, sipping expectantly.
Noodle looked around the kitchen absently, hands buried deep in her jacket pockets.
"Well?" He said, sensing that further prompting was needed.
"Well what?"
"You're back."
"I've never been here before."
"Don't be petulant." Murdoc said with a roll of his eyes.
"I wanted to come home. But this isn't it."
Murdoc sighed and looked around the kitchen. The word Noodle was probably looking for was 'clean'. Murdoc hadn't been there long enough to give it that distinct Gorillaz - or maybe just distinctly Murdoc - sense of contamination. Noodle hopped up to sit on the kitchen counter.
"That place burned down, love. Coming up on 8, 9 years now, nearly."
Noodle looked down. The occasional drip of a tap punctuated the gentle yet incessant hum of the refrigerator.
"I'll give you some credit," Noodle said with a sigh, "half expected to end up outside HMP."
"I was. Record company jail technically, the bastards. For once, being associated with you lot actually helped me, rather than the other way around. They let me out to make another album."
Noodle shook her head. There was no sentence for any crime that Murdoc Niccals couldn't wriggle his way out of with enough time. "Unbelievable."
"What do you say, Girlie? Think you got another one in you for old times sake?"
An album featuring only the two of them didn't exactly excite her. It'd be doable, of course. An emphasis on collaborators and Gorillaz being an open door. Plus there were plenty of old unused 2D demos lying around that they could use.
Noodle shuddered and dismissed the thought as soon as it arrived. No, no more puppeteering ghosts for the sake of an album. She wondered if Murdoc was capable of recognising such ideas as being bad. Perhaps they just spiralled and escalated, and before you knew it, cyborg replicas were running amok. That'd have to be her role for this album, as much as being a guitarist. She'd also have to watch for similar thoughts, box them away somewhere. No one was completely immune to Murdoc's creatively exploitative mind tricks, not even her.
"Let's do it." She said with about as little enthusiasm as she felt.
"Careful, you'll hit the ceiling if you leap for joy any higher." Murdoc chuckled, immediately starting to lighten. "Now, I have on good authority that Hobbs is somewhere here in ye olde London, got a couple guys—"
"What?"
"Mmm?"
Noodle stared, mouth agape.
"Russel's alive?"
Murdoc narrowed his eyes at her, unsure if she was being serious. "Course he is. He's been in the news… where have you been, actually?"
Noodle shook her head frantically. She'd had no intention of talking about Chiyoko and Mazuu even when the alternative was awkward silence. But now something much more important had come up. She'd had some hope that Russel had been able to find somewhere he could nurse himself back to health. But she also knew better than to believe that things worked out for anyone in or associated with the band. Then a new life began, and it felt superfluous to hope or even speculate, when there were people in front of her that needed her immediate help.
"He washed up in North Korea." Murdoc explained, once he realised she wasn't going to answer. "He was their big tourist attraction for a while, saying he was some mythical monster. It was all over the tabloids. Paul Merton did a bit on it on that show he does with the Tory bloke, god it was funny. Anyway, he shrank eventually, they kicked him out, rumour is he held up somewhere in the big smoke."
Noodle hopped off the counter and began pacing.
"Oh my god…Murdoc. I swam in his blood."
"Well he looked mighty healthy from what I saw, you'll be happy to know. Emphasis on mighty, the big fucker."
There was no certainty he would return. Noodle wouldn't blame Russel in the slightest for wanting stay as far away from Murdoc as possible. But to know he was alive, that she could see him, that she could make sure for certain that Murdoc wasn't taking Gorillaz, and herself, in some unpleasant direction? Now she could've leaped.
"Murdoc, that's….that's fantastic."
"So yeah, once I track down the ol' runaway hippo, he'll be back," Murdoc continued, much more certain of Russel's consenting return than she was, "Then I just need to wait until face-ache gets tired of braiding hair or whatever he's doing, and he'll be back and all."
Noodle froze her pacing and stared at Murdoc, unblinking.
"Fuck off."
"Oi! I can't remember what he's up to, giving out peace sign stickers or some shite."
"Don't you dare mess with me. Don't you dare."
"What are you on about?"
Had he forgotten? Noodle hated that she had to bring up something she'd managed to move on from in spite of herself, deeming it a reasonable conclusion when one really thought about it. The worst possible ending to the worst possible chapter in her life. They all knew it had happened. They'd talked about it on the island, while a war erupted around them. She hadn't hoped 2D was alive. There'd been nothing to hope for.
"D got eaten by a whale." She said slowly.
"Swallowed by a whale, turns out. Which apparently is a big enough distinction. Ended up in Guadalupe, the jammy sod. He called me when I was in the slammer last year, trying to brag about how happy he was. Shut him up when I when I told him you were alive, mind. Surprised he didn't try and find you, figured that'd be the first thing he'd get up to."
Noodle remained frozen in place, the only change being that tears were beginning to stream down her cheeks, unbeknownst to her.
"But I reckon once he finds out it's the three of us here, that'll twist his arm enough to get back on the horse. Drunk 20-somethings can only give you so much joy, you can trust me on that." Murdoc said smugly. "So you thought both Russ and Dents had kicked it. And you still gave me that greeting when you arrived? As far as you knew, the only other one left standing? Charming."
"2D's alive." Noodle clarified. "Alive now. And ok. Today."
"Yes." Murdoc confirmed, drawing out the word and nodding condescendingly.
He jumped in surprise as Noodle let out a shriek of joy that echoed throughout the house. He had just enough time to put his glass down before Noodle flung her arms around him, laughing and crying in a messy combination.
"He's alive! Toochi's alive! Russel's alive!"
"We're all alive, love." Murdoc murmured as he patted her back.
She sniffed. "We're all alive."