Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Noodle had to give it to Murdoc. It wasn’t a bad album.

She asked Murdoc one night when he was drunk and examining his empty rum bottle what the album meant, and he just muttered something about looking for all the plastic in the sand before he passed out with his cheek pressed against the table. It wasn’t like she was going to get an answer while he was sober, and a drunk half-truth was better than nothing.

Though, she sort of got it without having to ask anyone. Looking for plastic in the sand. Looking for all the junk among the beauty. Looking for what was different, unnatural, what didn’t belong, and finding meaning in all that. Noodle sometimes sat by the door to the basement, listening in on Murdoc’s radio show, remembering that Murdoc had wrote every lyric of that album, and managed to forgive a small piece of him.

That’s all she was really trying to do nowadays. Forgive small pieces of the past few years, a little bit at a time. Noodle hoped that listening to the album might help.

It did in a sad sort of way that made her wish for those days when she was still only 10 and she could curl up in Murdoc’s arms for a nap without him bellyaching about it. Or when 2D spent all morning sprawled out on the floor coloring with her, listening to her chirping in Japanese like it was a sweet song he could hum along to. Or when Russel would take her out to buy her new shoes and clothes and helmets and hats because she grew like a weed and because he loved spoiling her.

Noodle propped her legs up on the kitchen table, turned the volume on her earbuds up, and yawned. It was too early to be thinking about that stuff anyway.

She picked up her acoustic and tried to remember the chords she had worked out yesterday. As an official member of the band, she figured it was her job to get up to speed with everyone else and properly familiarize herself with the albums she missed, starting with Plastic Beach. Besides, Noodle always gravitated towards her guitar when she was bored, and this gave her something to do to fill up the house with some noise.

Noodle was still half asleep, so she cycled through her iPod for one of the sleepy sounding songs on the album that she could strum along too without much trouble. “On Melancholy Hill” started playing and Noodle couldn’t help but laugh. Sometimes, it surprised her that Murdoc could write something so gentle.

She rested her chin on her guitar and let the song play a couple of times before she pulled her earbuds out and fell into strumming an easy little acoustic cover of the song that she had come up with last night. Noodle smiled and closed her eyes to the sound of it. She hadn’t touched her acoustic in a few weeks, what with the excitement over the move, figuring out what to do with Russel, the whole thing. But so far, it was the most at home she had felt in this house with its rickety floorboards and peeling paint and piles of clutter. She rarely got a chance to record any songs with it. Murdoc always said she could shred better on an electric.

Noodle idly wondered if she should write any of this down or grab her phone and record it. It was the kind of thing she wanted to listen to later and add to. Her mind was immediately thinking of different instruments to layer on top of it — a mellow bass line and a keyboard to refine the melody a little would really make it pop.

In reality, she wasn’t sure what the band would use it for. Touring, interviewing, and press events seemed so removed from her, like something she outgrew and was too old for. That the band was too old for. But her head heard music and her mind immediately started whirring, so she decided to just go with it rather than try to question it.

Eventually, she was tapping the side of her foot against the table and humming out the lyrics to the song when she heard someone clopping down the stairs. Probably 2D. Murdoc didn’t rise until at least noon, and Russel was still on the roof, lightly snoring.

The singer stumbled into the kitchen, blearily blinking the sleep out of his eyes and feeling around the kitchen for the toaster. Noodle laughed. His jeans were unzipped, his trainers were untied, and his shirt was on inside out and backwards. She wondered if he remembered that he didn’t have work today.

2D rustled around the kitchen counter for a few seconds before yawning and turning to Noodle. “Love, you know where Muds hid the bread?”

Noodle looked up from her playing and jutted her chin above 2D’s head. “I think he stuffed them in the cabinet.”

“Ah,” he nodded, pulling the slightly squished loaf of bread out from behind the cans of soup that Noodle bought yesterday. “Thanks, Noods.”

She nodded and smiled at him. “You do know that it’s Saturday, right?”

2D turned to her and frowned. “No...wasn’t yesterday Thursday?”

“No, yesterday was Friday,” Noodle chuckled. “You get your cheque on Fridays, remember?”

2D looked out towards the front door and furrowed his eyebrows. He suddenly shook his head and rubbed at his temple. “Oh that’s right.” He looked down at his shirt and grumbled. “Then I went and got up and dressed for nothing!”

Noodle stopped playing for a moment and dropped her feet down from the table. She slouched in her chair, and reached her foot out underneath the table to push out the chair across from her. “Well, you already started breakfast. Come sit with me.”

2D smiled and grabbed his toast the moment it popped out of the toaster. It was burnt nearly black in the middle and Noodle wondered if he kept burning his toast in the mornings on purpose because he liked it that way. He bit into his breakfast and collapsed into the chair, his long legs falling open and bobbing back and forth. He looked down at her guitar. “What were you playing?” he asked through a mouthful of food.

Noodle looked down and gently ran her fingers over the strings, a soft, muted chord filling the kitchen. “Oh just...some stuff off the old album,” Noodle muttered. “I couldn’t sleep and I was bored.”

“Sounded pretty,” 2D hummed in approval. “Haven’t heard you play in years.” It sounded like an exaggeration, but Noodle realized that it really wasn’t.

“Murdoc will probably make me learn it all anyway,” Noodle teased. She started messing with the tuning pegs on the head of the guitar and plucked along the strings to make sure they sounded right. “At least this way, I can get a head start.”

“Oh come on,” 2D grinned, leaning over the table and tipping her chin up. “I know you, Noods. Can’t keep your hands off of anything with strings and you know it.”

Noodle rolled her eyes with a smile and didn’t bother to deny it. She strummed the strings a couple of times to make sure she was in the right key. She poked her tongue out, and fiddled with the D string one more time.

2D looked at her hands with interest. “You trying to play something else?”

Noodle nodded and strummed the strings again. “Sort of. I haven’t practiced it yet…”

2D spread his hands out in front of him and leaned back in his seat like he was preparing for a grand show. “Well go on. Let’s hear it.”

“Alright, alright, give me a second.” She tried to remember the song she fell asleep to last night, towards the end of the album. Noodle adjusted her grip on the neck and strummed out a chord progression that she was pretty sure matched what she heard. She wasn’t so good with the songs at the end of the album, but 2D seemed to recognize it because he smiled and nodded along to it. Noodle kept on through it, but realized that it was just her repeating the same four chords and looked at 2D apologetically. “Nah. I don’t know that one well yet.”

2D turned around and looked back up the stairs to his room. “‘To Binge’, right?”

Noodle nodded enthusiastically. “Yeah, that’s the one. Haven’t figured out how to play the melody and the harmony together yet.”

The singer held up a finger and stood up from his chair. “Hold that thought. Be right back.”

Noodle heard him and his loud footsteps barreling back up the stairs and flinging open a door on the way. He came down only a few seconds later with his Casio slung under his arm. 2D grinned at Noodle childishly, thrumming with more excitement than she had seen from him in a very long time. She started laughing when he threw himself on the floor to look for an outlet to plug the adapter into. Noodle peeked her head under the table to watch him flounder around. “What are you doing?”

“Gonna help you play the song,” 2D replied. “Just gotta find the bloody outlet.”

Noodle pointed to the counter top. “Put it in by the toaster so the cord will reach,” she told him. “What do you mean, help me play it?”

2D crawled across the kitchen floor and leaned over the counter to plug in the adapter to his Casio. He flicked it on and Noodle watched his fingers run across the keys to play a few practice scales. “Well like you said, you haven’t got the song down yet. So we’ll finish it together! Go on, keep doing what you were doing.”

Noodle stared at 2D strangely, but he was sitting up straight, his fingers ready over the keys and waiting for her to start playing. She shrugged and figured that 2D knew what he was talking about and knew what he was going to play. She adjusted her guitar on her lap and started playing through the same four chords again, watching 2D stare at her hands strumming along without him. He nodded to himself, bit at his bottom lip, and then started tapping out on the keys.

Noodle immediately recognized it as the intro to the song and laughed in delight when she heard the singer start to play. Sometimes, Noodle focused so much on 2D as their lead singer that she tended to forget how talented he was when you sat him in front of a piano and just let him play. He carried the airy tune well and it sounded almost lazy and whimsical against the acoustic. Noodle could count on one hand the amount of times she and 2D had ever really played together like this. Noodle and Murdoc did it all the time, but that was a given. Watching 2D play instead of sing was a sight to see.

He looked up at her and started smiling, the gap in his teeth wide and prominent and charming. “See? What’d I tell ya? Not bad, right?”

She shook her head. “No not bad at all,” she affirmed.

2D was tapping his foot away under the table and Noodle already felt herself bobbing her head to the slow beat. She didn’t know what made her decide to do it or where it had suddenly come from, but she cleared her throat and started singing the first lines of the song. “Waiting by the mailbox, by the train…”

Noodle never paid attention to how her voice sounded. It was hers. You never noticed things like you getting taller or your voice getting deeper or your hips getting wider. It wasn’t something you noticed until someone else pointed it out. 2D didn’t have to say anything in order for Noodle to realize that he was noticing a change, and now she noticed it too. His piano playing faltered for only half a second before he picked the tune back up. But his head was tilted to the side — the way he would tilt it when he was really into a movie he was watching — and he was smiling softly at her like he couldn’t believe that he was just noticing something for the first time.

It had been awhile since 19-2000, and even since DARE. He probably wasn’t used to the quality of her voice and how it had changed. Now that she was hearing it herself, neither was she.

Just when she was about to trail off at the end of the verse, 2D picked up the lyrics again, singing just like he sounded fresh off the track. Noodle was smiling so hard that her cheeks were hurting because they sounded good together, his voice layering on top of hers, and she missed these days when the four of them would sit together in the studio, pick up some instruments, screw around with random notes and chords, and eventually create something that was meaningful. Something that the four of them could be proud of and would unite them no matter how far apart they wound up and how long they’d been without each other.

2D finished off his verse and winked at her from across the table. Noodle winked back and couldn’t help but throw her head back and bark in delighted laughter, because really, this was more fun than she was expecting to have early on a Saturday with only a few hours of sleep.

They were close to the end of the song, harmonizing the last few lyrics when Noodle finally looked behind 2D’s head and saw a familiar shock of dark hair leaning against the doorway.

She didn’t know how long Murdoc had been standing there, but she knew it had been long enough for Murdoc to start looking at her like 2D had been earlier — like she was this new, precious thing that had changed right before his eyes, quicker than he could keep up with, and how had he not noticed it before? Noodle’s strumming didn’t falter and 2D kept playing along as well, even after he noticed that she was distractedly staring behind him.

Murdoc would never admit this, and Noodle would never be able to prove it, but the bassist looked like he had wanted to tell her something — tell them both something. Or like he wanted to go up to them, or maybe sit down at the table and listen to them play, or pick up his bass and start plucking along with them. Of course, all of those were just vague feelings and guesses that she couldn’t explain or articulate. But Murdoc rarely looked so downcast, and she wondered if he realized he was missing out on something more than just a jam session.

The bassist shut his eyes and looked away from the scene for a moment, and Noodle finally stopped playing, 2D following immediately after. The singer turned around and raised his brows. “Oh, uh...hey Muds. You’re, um...you’re up early.”

Murdoc snarled and muttered something under his breath as he tended to do when he had nothing to say. He sniffed and crossed his arms over his chest. “Singin’ woke me up, that’s all,” he mumbled.

Noodle rested both of her arms on the the body of the guitar and muttered through her arms. “Locking yourself up in the basement again?”

Murdoc scowled and went on the defensive. “What’s it to you?” he grumbled back, rifling through the fridge and digging through all the half-filled take out boxes and expired cartons of milk for a bottle of whiskey he kept in the back.

Noodle wasn’t fazed by his brash responses. Never was. She shrugged. “Just asking,” she explained. “You could stay up here for a bit, you know. Won’t kill you.”

2D was looking at her like she was crazy, and he was waiting for Murdoc to snap or start yelling or — God forbid — start hitting him. But Noodle knew he wouldn’t do anything. Murdoc had a temper that could make the floorboards shake, but he never raised his voice to Noodle Never could. She secretly thought that it was because Murdoc could never get the image of her as a little girl who couldn’t speak a lick of English poking her head out of a pile of packaging peanuts from the inside of a FedEx box out of his head. And really, how could you ever get angry at something like that? It was unfair, but Noodle used it to her advantage whenever she could.

But the bassist clutched the top of the refrigerator door for a few seconds before he slammed it shut in front of him and screwed off the top of the whiskey bottle. He tipped his head back, took a long swig that only his throat could stand, and turned around towards the basement door. “I’ll pass.”

Noodle heard the door open, and slam shut with a small rattle, and wrinkled her nose. Murdoc seemed to like that tacky basement and his radio show more than anything else these days. Surely he thought he had more to hold onto than that.

2D looked back at Noodle. He frowned, looking puzzled. “What do you think that was?”

Noodle sighed out through her nose and shrugged her shoulders. “Nothing new,” she said simply, and left it at that.

Noodle looked back down at her guitar, let her eyes flicker to 2D’s keyboard, and got another idea. She picked her guitar up again. “Do you know how to play Empire Ants?” she smiled hopefully.

The singer frowned at her for only a second before his grin came back and he laid his fingers out on the keys again. “‘Course I do.”

Chapter Text

2D nudged some freezer burned meat out of the way and called out from the freezer. “All we’ve got is meat and bags of vegetables.”

Murdoc cursed under his breath and held his hand out. “Well give it here then! Before my whole damn face blows up.”

The singer pulled the bag of peas out from the back of the freezer and tossed it to Murdoc who was sitting at the kitchen table and covering his left eye with one hand. The bassist leaned his head back over the back of the chair and laid the icy package over his eye, sighing in relief when it finally made contact. “Fuck me,” he muttered. “Shit’s gonna bruise for weeks.”

2D closed the freezer and leaned his back up against the counter, making sure to stay at least five feet away from the older man. It was a habit he had fallen into when he had realized that a crank Murdoc wasn’t someone you wanted near you. If you happened to be 2D, you were brave to even be in the same room as him.

Still, it wasn’t like Russel was in any state to come inside the apartment and help out — not that he would want to anyway — and Noodle was certainly in no state to be offering any sympathies for the bassist. She had stomped up to her room and was currently shredding at her Les Paul, amp cranked up to full volume, and producing some violent riffs that were reminiscent of that heavy metal shit that Murdoc loved as a kid.

“Noodle’s always been bloody strong, you know that,” 2D offered, trying to speak over the music. “‘Sides. You pissed her off good and proper, you did.”

Murdoc rolled his good eye and reached blindly around on the table for his box of cigarettes. “Well I can’t be pussyfooting my way around her to keep her from blowing up at me,” he argued back. He lifted the box to his mouth and pulled out a fag between his teeth. His hips shifted forward in the seat as he began digging through his pockets. “Girl’s been havin’ mood swings since we got to this shit pile. How the fuck am I supposed to keep up?”

2D turned, opened up one of the kitchen cabinets, and plucked a lighter from the top of a box of cereal. He turned and tossed it to the bassist who caught it and muttered what 2D hoped was a thank you, but couldn’t quite be sure. He watched Murdoc light his cigarette up and said, “I don’t think it’s mood swings, mate. She’s not usually like this.”

He wanted to say that he wasn’t like this with him or with Russel, but 2D knew better. That’d get Murdoc pissed, leave him to give 2D a matching shiner so that he wouldn’t be alone in his pain, and leave back to his ruddy basement where he’d keep avoiding his problems and not talking with anyone anymore. At least now with 2D trying not to say anything to tick the man off and with trying to keep his distance, Murdoc would listen long enough to realize that he’d gone and fucked up. Again.

Murdoc kept thinking Noodle was fine, but that’s because Murdoc only ever saw Noodle when she was with 2D. When they were both together, 2D could pretend things were normal. They had their zen bond back. She’d be strumming along in the kitchen or in the living room, and she’d always smile sweetly at him whenever he came and joined her with his keyboard or even just his voice to fill up the room. Some days, when his migraines weren’t that bad, they’d scamper off into his room, crawl along the floors looking through his piles of dirty laundry, and pull out some old zombie films or fighter video games in order to waste away the rest of the afternoon. Noodle looked like that ball of joy and soul that she had always been when they were living at Kong and when things were still normal.

It was when she was alone that 2D noticed that something was still wrong, and that things really had changed.

Poor girl slept worse than Murdoc, either sleeping through the afternoon or lurking around the house at four in the morning because she could never get back to sleep. Nightmares, she told him. But about what, she wouldn’t make clear. What a young, healthy girl like Noodle would have nightmares about was beyond 2D. She never talked about what happened between that disaster of a music video and her miraculous appearance on Plastic Beach. Didn’t like it. She either walked out the room, plugged in her iPod, or started playing her guitar over you whenever you asked.

But 2D had an idea. It was the dark little scars that peppered her legs, her shoulders, and her back that she insisted were “nothing” but that 2D knew had never been there. It was that black eye that she had sported when they had finally reunited. It was the way she would sit in the living room, frown lines showing on her face, staring up at the ceiling as if the chipping plaster were a movie reel filled with years and years of memories that she was too young to have so many of. It was the way she’d stare out the window, or down at her guitar, or at their basement door like she knew the horrid secrets of the world. That magic wasn’t real. That tomorrow probably wasn’t going to be a better day. That trying wasn’t enough. That love hurt. That what you had now wasn’t ever going to last.

2D winced as a particularly shrill guitar note rang through the rest of the house.

Murdoc growled and jumped from his seat. 2D immediately hopped up on the counter to keep out of the way, afraid that even bumping into him on accident would incite a rage. The bassist kept the bag of peas pressed to his eye, the fag hanging from his lips, and picked up a broom from the corner of the kitchen that no one ever used. He jogged up part of the way up the stairs and banged the handle of the broom against the ceiling.

“You’re gonna wake up the whole bloody neighborhood if you don’t quit it with that fucking racket!” Murdoc shouted.

The guitar riffs immediately stopped, but 2D heard a door fling open from the floor above them and heard a shout ring out. “I’ll wake up the whole world if I have to, and you have no right to be telling me otherwise!”

“You goddamn tart!” Murdoc shouted back, flinging the broom behind him with a high pitched clatter. “You’re giving me a bloody headache. It’s bad enough you practically knocked my eye in, I don’t need you and your music making my head pound for the rest of the day!”

2D covered his face with his hands, not wanting to see or hear anymore. Muds didn’t get it. He really didn’t get it.

Small feet began clambering down the stairs and suddenly he heard Noodle’s voice coming from the top of the stairs. “Good! I hope it hurts. Let it make up for a quarter of the shit you put all of us through, because you don’t seem to care unless it affects you directly.”

“Aw quit it with the bellyaching, love,” Murdoc groaned. “I get it. I’m a right git. Everyone knows that, and you’ve known that since the moment you agreed to be part of this band.”

Noodle was laughing darkly. “Don’t...don’t use that as an excuse. That’s your problem. You think that your default is to be an asshole, and you don’t even notice when you do things wrong anymore.” 2D heard Noodle sniffling. “You don’t care…”

2D stood up from the counter and peeked around the fridge so that he could finally see what was happening. Noodle looked perfectly livid, her hands balled at her sides, her ears flushed in anger, and looking like she was about to cry angry tears. She was blinking them back hard and trying not to let them fall, but it was too late. It was damn well obvious, and Murdoc noticed.

The old man’s shoulders slumped and 2D wondered if he had finally realized how serious all this was. Murdoc wasn’t ever a good chap, that much he was right in saying. None of them ever really expected him to be a good person. But Murdoc had limits. Maybe he didn’t have them with Russel, and hell he certainly didn’t have them for 2D. But it was an unspoken rule that he always had them for Noodle.

Murdoc sighed and looked up at her in annoyance. “You’re exaggerating — ”

“Leave me alone, Murdoc,” Noodle sighed turning on her heel and heading back upstairs. “I really just want to be alone.”

Murdoc growled. “Damn it, get back here!”

But she didn’t. He was met with the sound of her door slamming and that was it. Not even her guitar picked back up. It was just silent.

Murdoc plucked his fag from his lips and threw it at the wall, letting it burn out on the floor. He stomped back to the kitchen table and flung the chair out from under the table before collapsing into it. 2D got up from the counter and picked up the lit cigarette before Murdoc started another fire like he did in the basement last week. The singer was ashing the cigarette in the ashtray on the kitchen table before he asked, “What did you say to her?”

Murdoc groaned. “Damn it, Faceache, I’m not in the mood for your griping too.”

“I’m not griping,” 2D promised. “Just wanna know what you said. Poor thing’s probably crying up there, and I want to make sure she’s alright.”

Murdoc looked like he wanted to pick up one of his cuban heels and chuck it straight at 2D’s head, or at the very least leave the room and escape to some corner of the apartment where no one could find him. But 2D didn’t move because, for once, he knew he wouldn’t do it. Not with the possibility of their little girl upstairs in her room, by herself, crying over something that Murdoc said. 2D didn’t like when Murdoc was an arse to him, but he expected it. Noodle wasn’t like that. Noodle was different.

The bassist sighed, dropped the now-warm bag of vegetables on the table and stared blankly across the tabletop. His eye was already to purple and bruise, and 2D couldn’t help but mentally cheer in his head that Muds seriously deserved it. “I said…” he started. He huffed and stood up straighter in his chair. “I told her I’d given up looking for her after she’d gone off,” he finally admitted, not looking 2D in the eye and keeping his gaze anywhere else. “Told her there was no point.”

2D couldn’t help but laugh humorlessly at the news. No wonder Noodle had gone and decked him. The damn bastard really did deserve it.

The singer looked up at the ceiling and things were still silent. He wondered if he could still find that old driving game that he had showed her the other day that had yet to play together. Maybe that would cheer her up after she’d had a good cry. Or maybe they could pop in one of those funny movies that Noodle liked to have around whenever she had cramps and spent the day eating ice cream in her pj’s. She always seemed to like those.

2D pushed himself off of the counter and headed for the stairs. “You need to apologize to her, mate,” the singer implored. “That wasn’t right and you know it.”

He didn’t bother to wait for a response, because 2D didn’t want to be bothered to see how long a proper one would take to come of out the man’s mouth. Instead, he jogged up the stairs, rapped his knuckles on Noodle’s door, and waited until she opened it just a crack, her reddened eyes peeking out of the dark room. She rubbed the heels of her palms against her eyes to try and clear away the tears and scratchiness. 2D smiled sadly and tucked a couple strands of her hair behind her ears.

“Wanna talk about it?” he offered.

Noodle sniffled again and nodded, opening her door wider and letting the singer into her room.

Chapter Text

“Come on, ‘D!” Noodle called back, leaning over the edge of the roof. “Hand it up!”

2D was sticking his head out of the window and looking up at the Asian guitarist. “You sure about this, love? I dunno if I can drag this out the window. Might drop it.”

But Noodle waved away the singer’s worries and motioned upwards towards the top of the roof that she was sitting on. “Don’t worry. Just prop it outside of the window and pop the handle up. I’ll pull it up.”

“But it’s heavy!” 2D called back worriedly, nibbling on his bottom lip.

Noodle rolled her eyes and pointed to her arms. “2D, I’m stronger than you. I’ve got it, trust me.”

An oversized Russel was sitting cross legged behind Noodle who was leaning precariously over the edge of the roof, shouting down at 2D who was leaning out of the highest window of the apartment. The perpetual parental soul within Russel wanted to pluck both of the kids by their collars and pull them away from their perches. While Noodle was making him nervous, he was also a little worried about 2D who was never really known for his coordination.

Russel laid a large finger on Noodle’s shoulder, getting her attention. “Listen, baby girl. It’s alright. You don’t have to go through all of this trouble for me.”

Noodle grinned up at him and patted him gently on his large index finger. “It’s no trouble at all, Russel,” she replied sweetly. “I’ve got it all handled.” Noodle leaned back over the edge of the roof, eliciting a worried hiss from Russel who prayed to God she wouldn’t accidently pitch herself off the roof for leaning over too far. He kept his hand near her in case she did accidently fall and heard her scream down, “Okay, 2D. Careful now! Lift the handle!”

Not trusting these two kids to handle anything responsibly, Russel peeked over the edge of the roof to see what was unfolding below him. A large, blue cooler was half hanging out the window, and the drummer could just barely see 2D’s hand trying to force the handle up so that it was sticking in the air and ready for Noodle to grab it and presumably drag it onto the roof.

Russel sighed. Part of being unable to fit inside the apartment meant that he wasn’t really too informed on the going ons of the apartment. He saw when 2D left the house for his job early every morning on the weekdays, and he also saw Noodle leaving the house late in the afternoons on the weekends to go to her job as well, because apparently 2D sometimes slept in and forget to go to work and they needed a little extra money to keep up the rent and to keep the fridge filled with groceries. Sometimes, when fights between Noodle and Murdoc shook the roof of the apartment, Russel would hear it.

Sometimes, Noodle would climb up to the roof and sit next to him, hugging her knees tightly to her chest and leaning against his side for some support. Sometimes, though this happened a lot less often, even Murdoc would come up on the roof and complain about not meaning to offend the girl, but not knowing how to deal with feelings and apologies and explaining to the girl what was really going through his head. Hell, sometimes 2D would climb on the roof just to get away from the yelling and to get some fresh air while he smoked and talked to Russel about a song he was humming on his way to work that morning.

That was about it. What happened during those long silent periods in the house when nothing was brought to his attention was beyond him. Noodle tried to come up often and keep him updated and make him feel like he was in the loop, but there was always something missing from his interactions with everyone else. It just wasn’t the same. Murdoc did say that he was getting smaller by the day. Hopefully once all that toxic junk was out of his system for good, he’d be able to actually step through the front door.

But for now, he’d just have to accept mystery as part of life in this apartment. He supposed that included why in the world Noodle was currently trying to fit a cooler that was nearly as long as she was tall onto the roof.

“Okay, I’ve got it, let go!” Noodle called out. 2D shouted back that he was letting go and Noodle immediately began to tug the cooler up onto the roof. However, her foot had slipped a little against the roof and Russel watched on with horror as Noodle began leaning too far over the edge of the roof. Thinking quickly, he pinched Noodle’s waist between his index finger and his thumb and plucked her back towards him, helping her drag the heavy cooler safely onto the roof.

“Noodle!” he admonished. “Be careful! You almost fell off the roof.”

The guitarist wiped some sweat from her forehead and winced playfully. “Oops. I thought for sure I had it.” She looked back over the edge of the roof. “Come up, ‘D.”

Russel frowned as he watched the lanky singer maneuver his way to the top of the roof. “You know, I could have brought that up for y’all,” Russel reasoned. “Wouldn’t have been very heavy for me. Would have saved you guys the trouble.”

“Yeah, but then it’d ruin the surprise, mate,” 2D announced, patting Russel on the knee. “Wanted to make it a mystery and such, ya know?”

Russel stared curiously at the cooler. “Where did you even get a cooler that big, anyway?”

Noodle shrugged. “Murdoc kept it in the basement. I think he was using it to keep all his drinks inside, but I’m borrowing it.”

Russel sighed tiredly. “Noodle…” he began.

“Eh, leave her,” 2D assured with a smile. “God knows Murdoc owes her big time. ‘Sides, we’re gonna give it back.”

“I just don’t want to deal with him coming up here and yelling at y’all,” Russel explained.

Noodle didn’t seem too worried about this and waved away the comment. “It’ll be fine.” She kneeled down, undid the large plastic latches on all sides of the lid, and popped open the cooler. Russel peeked over the top of the lid to look inside and saw Noodle begin to unpack one of what was potentially twenty or so footlong subs wrapped up in sandwich paper and stuffed thick with deli meats, cheeses, and all sorts of mouthwatering toppings. Russel didn’t think he’d ever seen so positively appetizing since those amazing deli sandwiches he used to pick up in Williamsburg back when he still lived in Brooklyn. Noodle must have noticed him blinking dumbly at the sight because she started chuckling when she reached over and handed him the sandwich.

“We didn’t have enough money to buy the three foot bread like we wanted, so we just got a bunch of footlongs,” she explained sweetly. “Hope that’s okay.”

Russel hesitantly took the sandwich which fit easily in the palm of his hand. “Did you buy all of these yourselves?”

“Nah, mate,” 2D interjected. “Too expensive. Cheaper just to buy all the stuff and make it ourselves, of course. More fun that way, eh Noods?”

She nodded enthusiastically in response and reached over to hand 2D a sub sandwich. He smiled gratefully and ruffled her hair in thanks. “I felt bad when I saw you eating a take out sandwich up here all by yourself the other night. So we thought you could use some company for dinner. Besides,” Noodle added, pointing out towards the sunset that was dipping behind the rest of the apartment buildings on Wobble Street. “It’s supposed to be a nice night out tonight.”

“Yeah,” 2D agreed. “Sorta like camping. Did that once when I was a kid. ‘Course we weren’t eatin’ no sandwiches or nothing. But we ate them graham cracker and chocolate things and watched the sun and whatever when it was goin’ down. Was nice.”

Noodle pulled out one of the sandwiches and held it up for Russel to take. “Sorry if the bread’s a little over toasted. 2D and I forgot to check the toaster oven a couple of times. Should still taste good though.”

Somehow, the idea of Noodle and 2D in the kitchen alone wasn’t very comforting. 2D tended to forget when he put things in the microwave or the over, which led to a lot of mishaps with smoke alarms and singed TV dinners. Murdoc was always the one that had to talk down the neighbors whenever they saw smoke billowing out of the windows. Noodle was a little bit more careful when it came to the appliances, but she was an experimenter and always had been. Russel still remembered that time when they were still living in Kong and Noodle had decided to whip up a soup that she had while she was in Osaka. Except that the other three bandmates had mutually agreed she must have remembered something wrong because when was the last time soup had bananas in it?

There was evidence of their tag team effort in the sandwich Russel was holding. The ends of the sandwich were a little charred, but nothing too horrible that couldn’t be scraped off before eating. There was a lot of meats and cheeses packed into the sandwich, but Russel could have sworn there was some potato chips in there somewhere. Or really pale looking pickles. Still, the strange looking meals were an amalgamation of earnest efforts, and Russel couldn’t help but laugh at himself as he stared down at his other two bandmates, eagerly awaiting for him to take the first bite.

Deciding that a few burnt pieces and salty bites weren’t the worst thing that could happen to him, Russel opened his mouth and took a bit out of half the sandwich as if it were nothing but an hors d'oeuvre that you were meant to down in one or two bites. The extra crunch told him that Noodle had definitely placed in some salty treats along with something else that he could taste but couldn’t but a solid name to. Still, the meats were fresh and the cheese was nice and melted. He chewed happily and turned back to the other two guests. He gave them a large thumbs up. “Not bad, kids. Tastes pretty good.”

Wobble Street may not have been anything to sneeze at — though, if you asked Russel, the mediocrity was almost comforting after all the mess he’d been through — but the roof of their apartment always gave Russel a good view of the sunset on those rare days when the sky wasn’t mugged up by clouds and smog. Today was one of those days. It was warmer than usual today, allowing for comfortable weather as Noodle had promised, and various fractals of warm colors were spilling onto his face, against the roof, and all over the other apartments on the block. Russel smiled against the warmth. “This ain’t such a bad place to be for a while, you know?”

Noodle spoke through a mouthful of her sandwich. “Could be worse, I guess,” she mumbled. “It almost makes you feel normal, you know?”

“Yeah,” 2D said wistfully. “Kinda reminds me of me old neighborhood. With cars and kids going to school and people leaving for work and what not. Don’t you think?”

“Looks a little like the nicer parts of Brooklyn,” Russel commented. “The ones they fixed up to look all nice and suburban.”

2D hummed and tilted his head to the side as he kept staring over the neighborhood. “You lived in Brooklyn, Russel?”

Russel laughed, his shoulders shaking with the effort. “Yeah, ‘D. For a little while.”

Noodle’s legs were kicking the side of the building as they hung over the edge of the roof. “It’d be nice if we could travel again. Not for the band or for the music just...as a break. If Muds will let us anywhere near the money, that is.”

“That old bastard’s saving as much as he can for our next big break,” Russel replied sarcastically. “If we ever have one that is.”

Noodle didn’t seem concerned over that. “There’s time for that,” she mentioned, reaching over for another wrapped sandwich. “Not like people don’t know where we are. We can spend our money doing something relaxing and then have a come back if the time is right.”

2D’s ears perked. “‘If’?”

Noodle shrugged. “If, when...I’m trying not to force anything. Murdoc does enough of that for all of us.”

In a show of almost perfect timing, a husky, broken voice called out from one of the windows of the top floor. “Yeah, you lot are lucky I’m thinkin’ big picture. Some appreciation would be nice.”

Noodle rolled her eyes and shouted while keeping her eyes on the sunset. “Eavesdropping, were you?”

The sound of Murdoc’s cuban heels scraping against the windowsill were heard before his head popped up from over the edge. He rested his arm against the ledge to hold him steady. “Wasn’t eavesdropping,” he growled moodily. “Just happened to hear you takin’ the piss out on me, as usual.”

“I can name ten people off the top of my head that have said worse things than that,” Russel pointed out.

Clearly, that didn’t seem to matter to the old bassist. “Eh, it’s the principle of the thing.”

Noodle chuckled and finally turned to face Murdoc. “What do you want?”

“Fuckin’ hungry!” Murdoc complained. “You and the dullard cleaned out the fridge with them sandwiches you were making and now I can’t find any of them.”

“That’s cause they’re all up here,” Noodle explained, pointing to the cooler filled with subs.

It took him a moment to come to the realization, but Murdoc squinted at the cooler right before his face morphed into annoyance. “Oi, is that mine?”

2D shook his head. “It’s just a borrow, Muds. All in good fun.”

Murdoc cursed under his breath and held out a demanding hand. “Hurry up and pass one of those things over here, will you? Ain’t nothing else in the house.”

But Noodle merely straightened her back, looked back towards the sunset, and kept eating her sandwich. “If you want one, you have to pay for it.”

“The fuck are you on about?”

“As I said. If you want a sandwich, you’ll have to give us something for it.”

For a moment, Murdoc pulled a face that made it seem like he was talking to an idiot. “You took my cooler that had all my drinks in it. And I have to pay you for the sandwiches you’re keeping in it?”

“Muds, it really was just a borrow,” 2D felt the need to clarify. “It’s not like we’re not going to give it back— ”

“Oh, shut up, will you?” Murdoc snapped. He turned back to Noodle. “Since when was this a pay to eat thing?”

“Since 2D and I spent all this time making the food. We did our part.”

Murdoc seemed to be resorting to petulant whining now. “Russel didn’t have to do anything!”

“This was for Russel, silly,” Noodle corrected, as if it were glaringly obvious. “He doesn’t have to do anything. He’s the guest of honor. You, on the other hand, have to give us something we want.” She nodded her head resolutely as if she had just decreed a law, and continued to eat in silence.

It may have been poorly timed, but Russel couldn’t help but laugh as he reached for another sandwich. Murdoc was staring in disbelief at the young guitarist and was waiting for her to jump out smiling, say that she was kidding, and offer him a sandwich like the good little girl that she was. Except that Noodle wasn’t really forthcoming with all that childish kindness nowadays. Not that it was necessarily a bad thing, Russel had to admit. If it put Murdoc in his place for once, Russel would actively encourage it.

Seeing that he wasn’t about to get his way this time, Murdoc sighed, slammed his forehead against his arm in frustration, and looked up tiredly. “Fine. What the hell do you all want?”

2D’s hand shot into the air as he announced, “Drinks! We forgot drinks!”

Murdoc rolled his eyes. “All we’ve got is beer. Take it or leave it.”

Noodle lifted one brow. “For Russel too?”

Russel could hear Murdoc gritting his teeth from over where he was sitting. “...fuck, alright, fine. I’ve got a keg he could use since he’s still a bloody fucking giant. But you gotta help me bring that shit up here. I ain’t breaking my back because of you.”

It took a while for Noodle to pretend to agonize over the decision before she shrugged happily and agreed to the terms. Soon enough, Murdoc had grudgingly relinquished two cases of bottles and had complained the entire time Noodle helped him lug a large keg that he had every intention of emptying himself in private. Still, Russel thought the fact that Murdoc had even agreed to this despite his complaining was pretty impressive. It wasn’t like Murdoc had suddenly turned into less of a headache over the years. He was certainly still as insufferable as he had always been, perhaps even more.

But Russel wasn’t an idiot, and Murdoc always had a conscience. He would never admit to feeling or guilty or to wronging anyone, but the kicker was always looking at the way he acted. It was the way he let 2D have close to three or four beers without bothering to make a big stink about it, and the way that Murdoc helped Noodle pop open her own drink with his switch knife.

By the time they had all gone through all the drinks and the food, it was incredibly dark out. The streetlights and the moon, which was particularly bright tonight, were the only things offering any light on that small roof that they all barely fit on. It was a tight fit, but for some reason Russel found their positions oddly comfortable. It was just like a little picture that could have easily been plucked from their times in Kong. 2D was leaning against Russel’s legs, singing some old song from one of their albums that Russel had nearly forgotten. Noodle had fallen asleep in Murdoc’s lap, and the bassist was absently brushing her hair away from her face while he also started dozing off.

Russel couldn’t help but look fondly at the sight. Well, it certainly didn’t look like any of them were going to be moving anytime soon. Still, a sleepover on the roof wasn’t their worst idea.

Chapter Text

Murdoc didn’t know when Noodle started smoking.

Then again, there were a lot of things that he didn’t know about her now that he had missed out on a huge gap of her life spanning four years. He supposed in a way it was his fault. He ignored her distress signal. Waited too long. Didn’t bother searching further and merely booted up Cyborg as a last fix to his deteriorating band instead of just ditching the damn music and getting her back in one piece. There was no telling what Noodle had been up to. It wasn’t like the girl was forthcoming with much information about her travels. He only knew little snippets. She was in Hell. He heard her. She got out. She followed the pirates straight to him.

Everything else in between was fair game. Apparently that included her penchant for Marlboro’s.

At first, it was a bittersweet process of learning the things about Noodle that changed since she was fifteen. She knew how to drive, although who she learned from was beyond him. She was legal enough to drink, and he sometimes saw her mixing sweet drinks with vodka and lychee liqueur late at night when she couldn’t sleep. She had taken over the cooking of their meals now that Russel was too big to even fit his damn head through the door, and was pretty damn good at it. She’d grown a couple of inches, her hair had gotten longer, and her Japanese accent had lessened to a point where he could actually pick up on a lovely English lilt.

But Murdoc had woken up early one morning, craving a cig like he usually did first thing, and wandered into the kitchen, hoping to find one of the boxes that he had left lying around near the toaster. But when he passed the living room, he saw Noodle sitting on the couch, strumming her Telecaster, and cradling a cigarette loosely between her lips.

If she had noticed him come in, she didn’t acknowledge him and simply continued to play. Murdoc stared out the window, saw that the sun was barely up, and muttered, “Your sleeping schedule is pretty shit, dollface.”

Noodle laughed and stopped strumming, reaching up to pull her cigarette away and tap the ash over the ashtray on the coffee table. “That’s rather funny coming from you.”

Murdoc rolled his eyes. “Yeah, well, ain’t no surprise that I’m fucked up. That’s sorta my status quo. Band image and all that.”

The guitarist nodded sagely. “Ah, yes. We wouldn’t want to sully that, now would we?”

Noodle wasn’t usually one for sarcasm — that was usually more his style — but now, the sarcasm was practically suffocating. Murdoc was slowly starting to realize that it was her passive aggressive way of dealing with Murdoc without blowing up at him like he suspected she really wanted to do sometimes.

Deciding that sitting next to her on the couch was probably not going to be received well, Murdoc walked around and sat in the edge of the coffee table so that he was directly diagonal of her. Murdoc dug around his pockets for a lighter or a book of matches. He jutted his chin towards the half full pack that Noodle had on the arm of the couch next to her. “Mind if I bum one?”

Noodle raised a brow and inhaled deeply before expelling the smoke in her lungs out through her nostrils, then out her mouth. Murdoc’s face took on a similar look of bewilderment. Ever since he was a teenager, he had always thought that birds doing smoking tricks was some of the coolest shit he’d ever seen. Didn’t know why, but it was a right sexy thing to watch. Just one of those things.

But there was a difference between some made-up, tight looking groupie with a gorgeous rack blowing smoke rings outside the club he had just finished playing at, and watching Noodle — little Noodle — sitting in the living room all by herself handling smoke like she’d been doing it for years. That bothered him. Noodle wasn’t some run of the mill bird. Noodle was...well, Noodle. The rules were different for her. They always had been.

Still, she reached over and pulled out one cigarette from the box, holding it out to him. He reached out, grabbed the end of it between his teeth, and pulled it out of the box. Noodle was already there, clicking her lighter and holding the flame over the end of his stick for him. The familiar, comforting rush of a cig first thing in the morning immediately rushed to his head, filled his lungs, and calmed him right down.

Noodle had gone right back to strumming a few notes on her guitar — maybe some Led Zeppelin circa 1971, but he wasn’t quite sure. They both took a couple of hits before Murdoc wrinkled his nose. “You know...never liked Marlboro’s. I’m a Benson & Hedges man, myself.”

The guitarist snorted and shook her head. “Old man,” she teased. “I’ve never seen anyone under forty smoking those.”

Murdoc scowled. “That’s a load of shite and you know it, you tart.” The girl did nothing but laugh and reach over to ash her spent cigarette before plucking another one right out of the box and lighting it up, returning to her guitar again as if she were only bothering to give Murdoc only the barest fraction of her attention, as if that’s all she had the energy for. He eyed the butt of her cigarette, still lying in the ash tray without about four others that Murdoc knew he hadn’t put there.

The bassist frowned. “‘Sides,” he continued gruffly. “How would you know? When the the fuck did this start up?”

The strumming finally stopped and Noodle looked down at her toes that were curling into the carpet. She shrugged and answered without looking at him. “I don’t know,” she admitted. “Just sort of...picked it up, I guess.”

“Nah, love,” Murdoc said, reaching to ash his spent cigarette as well. “You ‘sort of pick up’ a coin off the ground. You don’t ‘sort of pick up’ smoking. Haven’t you learned anything from growing up with sacks of shit like me and ‘D?”

Noodle rolled her eyes and set her guitar aside on the couch next to her. “You know, it’s funny, but it almost sounds like you care,” she replied bitterly. “But, it must be my imagination. Murdoc only cares about himself.”

The insult made Murdoc chuckle. Alright, fine. He deserved that. But that didn’t mean he was done. “That shit makes you rot from the inside, love,” he tried to tell her. “Not the kind of thing a sweet girl like you should be doing.”

“Well, in case you haven’t noticed, this sweet girl has gone through her fair share of rot,” Noodle grumbled.

“I don’t give a shit, Noodle,” Murdoc argued as he leaned towards her, using her full name to try and get her full attention. “I don’t want to see you with this fuckin’ crap anymore. You were ten years old and hiding my packs all the damn time ‘cause you hated the stench. Now you’re suckin’ on these things like they’re candy! Gimme a fuckin’ break!”

“You smoke them too!” she argued back, raising her voice. “You’re telling me you and ‘D are allowed to do whatever you want, but the minute I do something you don’t like, it’s a bad thing?”

“I’m different, Noods,” Murdoc growled. “I’m a piece of shit, if I wanna fuck up my lungs and sell my soul and be right arse, that’s my damn prerogative. But you’re not doing this shit.”

Noodle threw her head back and laughed — a bitter laugh that was reminiscent of all those horrid fights the two of them seemed to get into all the time. “Oh, here we go! Murdoc is such a bad person. Murdoc is such a low life. Murdoc is such a screw up. Murdoc has an excuse for everything. Don’t be surprised if Murdoc can’t do anything decent. He can’t help it!”

Murdoc winced and tried to calm his temper, suddenly feeling like he was dealing with a teenager instead of a twenty-something year old woman who should know better than to start things that she knew could kill her. He huffed out his nose and stared at her pointedly. “I’m not kidding. Put that damn thing out!”

Lord, he didn’t think he’d ever seen that girl to angry and downright bitter. And if that wasn’t an even stranger sight than seeing her not sleeping or seeing her blackening her lungs with things she used to spit at in Japanese when she was still little. Suddenly, it wasn’t so much that he was pissed about the smoking, but suddenly he was pissed about all the changes — the ones that he didn’t like, the ones that weren’t fun to learn about, the ones that made him cringe and feel like he’d failed at something else.

Before she could even open her mouth to protest, Murdoc immediately plucked the fag out from between her lips and snatched up the pack that was still resting on the arm of the couch. He felt Noodle’s fingers reach out to grab back her stash, but he was already climbing over the piles of clutter that were by the window. She was reaching around him while he flew open the window and flung her pack and her lit cigarette out the window and down two stories before slamming it shut.

“Kono yarou!” Noodle shouted, following Murdoc as he bursted out of the living room and started stomping up the stairs. “Ittai nani wo yatten da?”

But Murdoc wasn’t bothered by the noise she was making. Let her wake up the whole house. He didn’t give a flying fuck. “Can’t understand you when you talk like that, Noods,” he shouted over his shoulder. “You know that.”

He made a sharp left on the next landing and felt Noodle shove him on the back of his shoulder. “What was that all about? Throwing it out the window? Really? Are you crazy?”

Murdoc scoffed. “Oh, you ain’t seen nothing yet,” he warned. “I wasn’t kidding. You’re cutting this shit out.”

Noodle made a few frustrated noises and nearly stopped dead in the hallway as if she had never seen him act irrational or out of his head before. “What are you even — what are you doing!? Get out of my room!”

But Murdoc wasn’t listening to her screams or her curses. He walked over to her bedside table and plucked up another pack that he found there, stuffing it into his pockets. He opened the drawers to the table one by one until he found another pack hidden underneath a pile of guitar picks and sheet music. He slammed the drawer shut and stuffed that pack into his pocket as well. He made his way over to her clothing drawers and flung them all open. He pointed one finger menacingly into the overflowing drawers and growled, “I’m confiscating your stash. Hand them over.”

“What are you, my father?” Noodle spat out. “You’re not confiscating anything. They’re mine!”

“You don’t get it, love,” Murdoc stated. “I don’t care if they’re yours, ‘D’s, or mine. I don’t want you having them, so hand them the fuck over!”

“Why do you care so much?” Noodle finally shouted out, bringing her hands up to rake roughly through her hair. “It’s my business what I’m doing, and I have no idea why you’re trying to get involved. It doesn’t concern you.”

Murdoc slammed one of the drawers shut and bounded towards Noodle until he was standing right in front of her, staring down at her and shouting louder than he had meant to. “It does concern me! I already fucked up looking out for you once and I ain’t doing that again. So if I have to rip this house apart and find every goddamn pack you’re hiding just to make sure you don’t put yourself in an early grave, I damn well fucking will!”

His voice was still reverberating through the thin walls of Noodle’s room, and his last curse was still hanging heavy in the air. Noodle was speechless, staring at him wide-eyed as if Murdoc had just said something so fantastic that she hadn’t expected to hear it out loud, especially not directed at her. Murdoc closed his eyes and sighed, suddenly realizing that was probably exactly why she was staring at him so strangely.

He and Noodle had been strange since they’d gotten to this place. Some days they got along and some days they were like this — screaming and shouting because they kept saying things at each other that brought up bad tastes and horrible memories and neither of them felt like talking to the other about it. If anything, this was the first time something constructive had come out of his mouth and the first time that Noodle had heard it. He was trying to put off a conversation between the two of them, but this wasn’t how he had wanted to initiate it.

Suddenly feeling drained and annoyed, he turned and sat on the floor and leaned his back against the edge of Noodle’s bed, the fight and anger already leaving him. He placed his feet flat on the ground and propped his arms up on his knees. His hands wiped down his face tiredly and he suddenly felt the early hour in his bones. He stayed there for a while, staring at the open door until Noodle finally quietly walked across her room and sat down next to Murdoc, mirroring his position and not bothering to say anything.

They sat like that for a while and let the silence between them simmer. For a moment, Murdoc remembered those days after he had gotten out of that Mexican prison and had made it back to Kong where Noodle was bunkering down and dealing with the zombie infestation that had plagued their studio. It was just the two of them for a while before 2D and Russel eventually got back, and it was then that he realized what a bright girl that Kyuzo bloke had sent him. They used to sit on the floor of her bedroom, sitting just like this, listening through the demos she’d recorded on her Tascam four-track and giving her notes and comments on what was a pretty decent start to what would be one of their best albums.

What the fuck happened to the two of them?

Murdoc lost track of how much time went by, but the ringing silence was interrupted by Noodle softly muttering next to him. “Did you mean it?”

He turned to her and looked down at the top of her head. He smiled to himself. She was still as small as ever. “Mean what?”

“The other day...when you said you stopped looking for me...that there was no point.” She swallowed audibly and looked up at him. “Did you mean it?”

It was very rare that Murdoc ever regretted the things he did, and even rarer the things he said. But seeing that imploring look in her eyes — like he was holding her heart in his hands — made him wish he could go back to that ridiculous fight they had and take back every single word of what he had said to her. She didn’t deserve this shite. She was far too good for it.

He swallowed and spoke gruffly. “Not in the way you think, love,” Murdoc muttered. “I looked, I did. Called up demons that had no good business with me. Looked up every illegal contact, ever scum of the Earth that would want me dead...but nothing,” he sighed. He stared down at his knuckles — rough, scabbed over, and uneven from multiple breaks. “For a while, I thought they’d want you dead too,” he admitted quietly. “And I didn’t want to look for something and be scared shitless of what I might find.”

He straightened his legs and let them fall open. “So yeah...I stopped looking. But not because there wasn’t any point. But because I didn’t want to find you dead somewhere because of something I did. I figured if you were really okay...well, you’re a clever girl. You would have found your way back.”

Noodle tucked her knees to her chest and rested her chin on top of them, making her look about five years younger than she actually was. “I could have been alive,” she muttered into her jeans. “I was alive.”

Murdoc nodded and couldn’t bear to look at her. “Yeah, I’d thought of that. Guess I was bein’ selfish.”

Noodle didn’t say anything in response, and Murdoc didn’t really blame her. There wasn’t much you could really say that. Murdoc was scared of what he’d find, so he just didn’t bother looking. He should have tried harder. He promised her when she was a little girl that he’d look after her. Of course, his excuse was always because it’d be a bitch to find another guitarist with a quarter of her talent, but he knew in his heart of hearts that wasn’t totally true. He’d grown fond of the girl — the only bird he could be around for an extended period of time that didn’t want to make him take a drink. He owed her a lot more than he was giving her, and he’d been wondering how to make things right with her again.

Right when he thought she was going to go ahead and give him the silent treatment for the rest of the night, Noodle stood up and walked across her room to one of the drawers that Murdoc had flung open earlier. She shuffled around her tank tops until she pulled out two more packs of cigarettes. She grabbed Murdoc’s hand and slapped them into his palm. She bit on her lip and looked up at him. “That’s all of it. I promise.”

He stared down at the packs, and mumbled. “You don’t have to quit if you don’t want to, love.”

“I know,” she smiled back. “But keep them anyway.”

Murdoc curled his fingers around them and stuffed them into his back pockets. He’d probably give them to 2D — god knows that idiot blew through two packs of these a day. He nodded to himself and grinned back at Noodle. “Thanks love.”

He wasn’t sure what possessed her to do it, but she dropped down to her knees, crawled into Murdoc’s lap, and wrapped her arms around his neck like she was ten years old again. He immediately wrapped his arm around her waist and let his other hand rest on the top of her head, smoothing down her choppy strands of hair that never knew how to sit flat on top of her head.

He heard her sniff and bury her face into the crook of his neck. “I’m sorry for yelling at you,” she mumbled quietly.

Murdoc pulled her tighter and kept patting her head, trying to make everything alright. “You don’t have to apologize, doll. You didn’t do anything wrong.”

The one who had a lot of apologizing left to do was him.

Chapter Text

"For the love of God, Murdoc, did you even try to code her with a personality?"

Murdoc spoke through the screwdriver he was holding in between his teeth while he struggled to untangle the wires of the circuit board sitting against his knees. "Well, considering me and and God ain't so close, I guess there's your answer."

Noodle looked up from Murdoc's computer and glared at him before rolling her eyes and looking back down at the split screen in front of her. "You turned her into a Simon Says machine instead of an actual intelligent being," she mumbled, quickly typing out the last bit of the code that was meant to be devoted towards emotional processing because wow Murdoc really didn't put any effort into giving this poor thing any empathy.

"Look, get off my case, alright?" Murdoc he snapped at her. He was pulling out a cluster of red wires from the board and crossing them over to other circuits. "I just needed the thing to play guitar and keep me from gettin' killed. I didn't give a shit about her sterling conversational skills." He lifted his hands and wiggled his fingers in exaggeration at the last part like the perpetual child that he was. Noodle did the intelligent thing and ignored him.

Murdoc was shocked when Noodle proposed to try and reprogram Cyborg and put her back into commission. Like everyone thought Noodle would have nothing but vitriol for her. But she was smart enough to know that it wasn't Cyborg's fault she was programmed to practically be evil - thanks, Murdoc - and perhaps with a little bit more care put into her coding and her reconstruction, she could be a valuable addition to the band. Just the thought of layering together two live guitarists was too irresistible. Besides, it wasn't like the she and Murdoc had much to do these days aside from bumming around the house. Might as well pick up a little pet project and try her hand at some artificial intelligence software. You know. Classic pastimes for a lazy Sunday.

Noodle stared at the program that was still running on the left side of her screen and started to fiddle with Murdoc's original code that she was trying to rewrite on the right side. The fingers of her right hand were flying across the keys of the number pad whilst she reached over with her left to make sure the wires running from Cyborg's back to the laptop were all connected properly. "You wonder why she wound up attacking you," Noodle berated. "You went through so much trouble to program her with a terabyte worth of weapons knowledge, but you didn't think to teach her how to discern the difference between a hug and a chokehold?"

"Ay, well what the fuck did she need to know that for, I mean, honestly, Noods," Murdoc insisted. He reached forward, opened up one of the panels on the back of Cyborg's thigh, and started to fit the circuit board inside. "Can't think of everything. Had an album and whatever. But you stopped her and saved me so no harm done."

Noodle rolled her eyes, stopped the program for a moment, and started to apply some of the adjustments and corrections she was working on for the past five hours, give or take. "You're lucky I was even there," she told him. "And that I had the sense to shut her down instead of trying to shoot her in the head when she was blocking every one of your bullets. And by the way, you quite literally can't shoot a gun to save your life."

"Oi, fuck you, I was doin' pretty good considering the circumstances."

"You were off by three feet! That's pitiful."

"You try an' shoot a fuckin' killing machine that's headed straight for you. It was a stressful situation!"

"Oh please, she was two feet away from you at one point and you sent a bullet over by the ocean. You weren't even close."

"Well fuck you too, Miss 'I'm a crazy super soldier that can kick ass and shoot guns and swing swords and code a fuckin' cyborg.' The fuck else did that old codger even teach you lot?"

Noodle snorted. "More than you'd like to know, actually. We were trained to be able to infiltrate highly secure government databases. This is nothing. I'm more curious about how you even know how to do all this stuff."

"Noodle, let me tell you. Prison was fuckin' boring as shit. I had a lot of free time."

Noodle wasn't sure of the quality of what Murdoc learned out of self-taught boredom, but he was a lot better at circuitry than Noodle was, and there was a lot of rewiring that needed to be done considering that Noodle practically ripped out six circuit boards to shut Cyborg down.

"Are you done with those things, by the way?" Noodle asked, trying to restart her program again. "I want to turn her on soon."

"Yeah, yeah, almost done," Murdoc muttered, screwing in the last circuit board in the back of Cyborg's thigh. Noodle watched him adjust the board, screw, unscrew, until he finally shut the panel closed and tapped it with finality. He pointed the screwdriver at her computer. "You done with that shit yet? Thought you were some kind of prodigy. What's taking so long?"

Noodle scowled at him. "Would you be patient? Give me a few seconds. Kusojijii..."

"Oi, the fuck did you say?"

"Nothing, nothing. Just make sure everything's screwed up tight and be ready to flip her switch when I say so."

"Aye, aye, Captain Midget."

"Would you please try and act like you're a man in his sixties? Honestly..."

"I swear to fuck Noodle you call me old one more goddamn time..."

"Shut up! I'm trying to concentrate."

"...fuckin' tart."

It only took Noodle a couple of more minutes of double checking all of her diagnostics before she shut the laptop closed and pulled out the wire leading from her laptop to the back of Cyborg's neck. It took Noodle days to show Murdoc a far more efficient way of charging Cyborg that didn't involve sticking wires in ports in every single mechanism in her body because not only was it unnecessary, it also made the poor thing look positively creepy and made her leak too much machine oil. Cyborg now only needed two ports on the back of her neck that had to be connected to her charging station, and Noodle decided to pull those out as well, deciding that Cyborg was charged enough for a little test run.

"Okay!" Noodle nodded, moving around Cyborg so that she was standing right in front of her. The robot stood only a couple of inches shorter than her. "Let's turn her on!"

"You sure you got everything right?" Murdoc asked her again, swiftly moving behind Noodle as a form of protection. "Don't need that thing killing me once we flip her on."

Noodle smirked at him as she reached around to press the on switch on the back of Cyborg's head. "I'm sure."

They had done a lot of maintenance on Cyborg, and Noodle was pleased to see that she didn't shudder, click, spark, or buzz as she powered up. There was just a soft humming as her processors booted up, and Noodle held her breath as Cyborg's eyes gradually blinked open. Murdoc didn't have time to make her look too realistic the first time around - time constraints and something about needing her in the studio recording as soon as possible - but Noodle was proud of close to a month's worth of work of putting in little details to help make Cyborg look more like who she was meant to be modeled after.

Noodle marveled as Cyborg's hair shifted while she straightened up and looked around the room. She also noticed little things like her eyelashes, her fingernails, the lines on her hands, and the texture of her lips. They'd really done a good job on her this time around.

Murdoc was already gripping Noodle's shoulder, prepared to shove her towards the machine in case it started getting out of control. But, it didn't seem like it was at all necessary. If anything, Cyborg looked more confused than anything else, observing the surroundings of Noodle's room that she wasn't familiar with. It seemed like her fear and anger response weren't activating, which was good. That meant they wouldn't get attacked this time around.

Noodle lifted her hand and waved in a small greeting before Cyborg turned to her and blinked rapidly in a manner that looked so positively human. It only took Noodle a few seconds to realize that she was probably perplexed by Noodle's appearance. Sure, she was a few years older, but the similarities were probably still there and very much apparent. Besides, Cyborg knew who she was modeled after. Noodle took care not to touch any of her memory banks.

She cleared her throat and decided it was time to test her baseline knowledge. "Hello," Noodle tried innocently.

Cyborg blinked before nodding and repeating the greeting. "Hello."

Noodle turned to Murdoc. "See? Perfectly pleasant? What did I tell you?"

"Alright, alright," Murdoc complained. "Just make sure she even knows who the fuck we are."

Noodle turned back to Cyborg and cleared her throat. "Um...do you know who I am?"

Cyborg's head dipped again in a smaller nod. "Yes. You are Noodle. The lead guitarist for the band Gorillaz. I was modeled after you."

Noodle grinned. "Perfect!" She pulled Murdoc out from behind her until he was standing right next to her. "Do you know who this is?"

"Murdoc Faust Niccals. Bass player for the band Gorillaz."

Murdoc frowned. "Hey! What the fuck happened to 'sir'? Or 'master'?"

"I got rid of all that. She's not a slave, you know." Murdoc opened his mouth to complain but Noodle slapped his stomach and told him to be quiet. She turned back to Cyborg and gestured between herself and Murdoc. "Do you know the other members of the Gorillaz band besides the two of us?"

Cyborg nodded once more. "Stuart Pot. Lead singer. Pseudonym 2D. Russel Hobbs. Drummer."

Murdoc's eyebrows raised up. "Huh. She was always forgettin' who the dullard was..."

Noodle frowned. "That's because you half-assed her language processing." She turned back to the Cyborg and nibbled on her bottom lip. "Do you know where you are?"

Cyborg paused for a moment, did a quick sweep of her surroundings, and shook her head slightly. "Unfortunately I do not."

Noodle gestured to herself. "Well, right now you're in my bedroom."

Cyborg's eyes squinted slightly, as if she were allowing herself a moment to process the information. "I see. These are your sleeping quarters."

Noodle smiled in amusement. She might have to remember to program some more colloquial language databases for her later on so she wouldn't sound quite so formal all the time. But she nodded regardless and pointed behind her at Murdoc. "Yes. This whole apartment is where we live. Where the Gorillaz band lives."

Cyborg tilted her head to the side in wonderment - yes!, all those physical indicators of human expression seemed to be working just fine. "So this is your home. Where you live."

"Exactly!"

"Am I meant to be protecting this home?"

Noodle whirled around and frowned and Murdoc. "I I thought you took out all that bodyguard crap. I'm trying to make her feel welcome here."

"Do you realize how long I spent on that coding?" Murdoc countered back. "'Sides it can't hurt. Someone tries to fucking rob us now we've got two of you birds to deal with the fucker. I'm being practical."

Noodle turned back to Cyborg. "No, you're not meant to be protecting this home. In fact, we want you to live in it."

Cyborg's eyes widened. "Live...in it?"

Murdoc groaned. "Sweet Satan, Noods, stop makin' this so sentimental - "

"Yes," Noodle answered Cyborg. "That's why we helped rebuild you. We were hoping - well, I don't know about Murdoc, but I was hoping that you might want to stay with the band. We'd love a new guitarist."

Noodle couldn't pretend what it was like to have been programmed for the sole purpose of replacing one human and protecting another, and then to be suddenly ripped free of all that programming and be allowed to simply...be. It must have been a terribly conflicting situation to be found in, because for an artificially intelligent cyborg, she looked terribly perplexed and unsure of how to answer. Cyborg looked pointedly over Noodle's shoulder, probably staring at Murdoc, before turning back to Noodle and frowning sadly. "...I was only meant to be the guitarist of the band Gorillaz until your return. Now that you have returned, I have no purpose."

Noodle chewed on her lip. "Well...you're right. You have no purpose. We didn't program you with a purpose this time."

Cyborg glared angrily. "Then what have I been reconstructed for?"

"That's for you to decide, isn't it?" Noodle shrugged. She walked closer to Cyborg and pushed back the bangs that were hanging in front of her face. Noodle could still perfectly remember wearing her hair this way, and looking at Cyborg's face was still like looking into a strange, realistic mirror that left her fifteen year old self immortalized in surprising detail, right down to the green of her eyes. "We didn't give you a purpose because...we were hoping you might find one for yourself. We don't want you to be a weapon or a replacement. We just want you to be part of the band. Wouldn't that be nice?"

Noodle expected talking to Cyborg to be an experience too strange to stomach. It was in some ways. Cyborg and Noodle had the same voice, although Noodle's was just a little bit more rough from age and from smoking. Their eyes and build were the same, and hearing Cyborg play on all of the recent albums was probably the strangest thing to get used to. But Noodle couldn't believe Murdoc's claims that Cyborg was just a carbon copy of Noodle. Perhaps it was Noodle getting too attached and sentimental like Murdoc feared. But there was something about Cyborg completely unique to her. Perhaps it was her reaction to kindness and her reluctance to do something selfishly - all feelings that were perfectly natural coming from a being that probably spent all of her existence not quite knowing who she was.

Noodle was what Cyborg lived up to. What room was left for any individuality? It wasn't her fault that Murdoc programmed her to be a killing machine that malfunctioned at the drop of a dime. Surely she deserved better than that. A second chance perhaps?

Cyborg watched Noodle's hands as they combed back her hair. "Would that be an acceptable arrangement? To be part of the band?"

Noodle smiled. "Of course! The more the merrier. Besides, what better addition to the band could there be than another guitarist who plays just as good as I do? We'll make you feel right at home, and you can stay with us for as long as you'd like."

Murdoc finally chimed in, looking positively bored from his position leaning against the wall on the other side of the room. "Yeah, yeah, alright, the bucket o' bolts can stay. Whoopty fucking do. Can we get on with this shit? You birds are makin' me want to drink myself dead."

"Ignore him," Noodle soothed. "You know how he can be. He's always bitter. But he's more than happy to have you here. Do you want to see everyone else? I'm sure 2D will be amazed at how much your programming has changed."

"Oi, I ain't bitter! Stop bad mouthing me!"

Noodle wrapped an arm around Cyborg's shoulders. "We'll have to get you some clothes of your own, but you can borrow some of my old ones for now. We can leave your charging station in my room until we can find you a room to yourself."

Cyborg nodded and gave Noodle a very small smile. "I think that will be satisfactory."

"Perfect!" Noodle grinned. "Oh, we can take you shopping tomorrow and buy you all new things. Then we can get you your own guitar and equipment. It'll be so much fun, you'll see."

Murdoc was staring on at the scene in disgust. "Am I witnessing some weird as fuck female bonding or whatever? Cause if I am, I'm fuckin' outta here."

Noodle was already leading Cyborg out of her room. "I hope that purchasing possessions for my extended stay won't be an imposition on the band."

"Of course not," Noodle promised. "We have more than enough money, and the important thing is to make you feel at home. We can spend as much as we need to. Whatever will make you comfortable."

Murdoc followed them out into the hall. "Let's not get crazy now. We're close to dippin' into emergency funds, Noods. You hear that? Emergency funds! Meaning the dirty money! Gotta be careful with that shit. There ain't no time for shopping sprees. Noodle? Dammit Noodle I know you're listening to me! Noodle!"

Chapter Text

“Okay, I’m about 70% positive I have this set up properly!”

Russel sat in the front yard worriedly and tried to look into the house through the front window. He could only just see Noodle standing on one of the kitchen chairs and leaning over the kitchen sink, but couldn’t make out much else besides that. “And the other 30 percent?” Russel called back into the house.

“Well, this faucet adaptor I got offline? The instructions came in Swedish, so…”

“I thought you knew Swedish!”

“Barely,” Noodle grumbled back. “It was my worst language, I have no idea what this says. But don’t worry!” she corrected quickly. “I’m pretty sure I’ve got it.”

Noodle was doing that thing where her voice got all high-pitched when she was trying to pretend everything was fine when it really wasn’t, and Russel did a small prayer that their kitchen plumbing was still intact. They didn’t have the money to be hiring someone to fix it, and Murdoc would more than likely try and strap on a tool belt and pretend that he knew anything about how to fix a pipe. Last thing they needed was to deal with another house flooding. There came that annoying desire to go into the house and supervise again, just to make sure nothing was going wrong while he was banished outside, but Russel needed to start getting used to the fact that the rest of the band would have to deal with these kinds of messes themselves. He heard a particularly discordant clang of metal piping, and Russel called back inside the house. “Noodle?”

Another loud screech of metal rang through the house before Noodle shouted in victory. “Got it!” She leaned dangerously over the back of the chair and poked her head out so that Russel could see her. “I’m gonna turn it on now. Let me know if it works.”

Russel nodded and pulled out the rest of the garden hose that was still sitting in the hose reel left inside the house just underneath the open window. He pulled over the large inflatable pool that Noodle had found stashed away among Murdoc’s things down in the basement and stuck the end of the hose inside. He held up a thumb and waited patiently as Noodle turned the taps on full blast and heard the pipes shudder a little in response. It took a little bit for the water to make it through the hose — maybe they should have gotten one that was a little shorter — but sure enough, the water started rushing through the rubber tubing and splashing into the inflatable pool. Russel grinned and called back inside the house. “It’s working, Noodz!”

Noodle cheered in response and Russel heard her shuffling around in the kitchen before she kicked the front door open and walked into the front yard carrying a large pot, a small satchel, and a sword sitting in its hilt hanging off her back.

Russel pointed warily at the sword. “Please tell me that’s not that samurai sword you picked up the last time we went to Tokyo.”

Noodle wrinkled her nose, placed the large pot — what the heck was all that stuff inside of it? — by the pool before digging through her satchel. She sat down in front of Russel, pulled out a whetstone brick, set it on the ground in front of her, and unsheathed the blade. “Absolutely not. That’s an antique. Far too precious to use for shaving.” Noodle passed the sword over the stone and began sharpening it while she grinned sheepishly. “No offense.”

Russel lifted a hand. “None taken.”

“It’s just an old machete I had lying around. Should work just fine once I sharpen it.”

Russel jutted his chin over to the large metal pot still sitting a few feet away. “And that? What’s that?”

“Homemade shaving cream,” she announced, her brows furrowing in concentration as she lifted the blade, scrutinized the edge, and put it right back against the stone “Bought everything in bulk online and cooked it up in the kitchen. Way cheaper than just buying fifty cans of shaving cream from the store.”

It looked a little bit like whipped butter, and Russel curiously swirled his pinky finger around inside of it. “I didn’t know you could make that kinda stuff naturally.”

Noodle chuckled. “Just like you thought I couldn’t figure out a way to shave you properly. I’m full of surprises,” she teased.

Russel chuckled as he rubbed his hand along his jaw, the salt and pepper beard scratching against his palm and growing longer and longer by the day. It was bad enough that his size was enough to offput everyone in the neighborhood, but having the beard added into the mess was enough to have people look up at him sitting on the roof like he was some old, wisened giant out of a fantasy RPG that was prepared to give them their next quest. There was only so much trimming you could get away with by using a pair of shears picked up from the home improvement store.

He always liked being shaven anyway. Made him feel ten times cleaner. Noodle had sworn to him that she could figure out a way to do it for him properly, and, just as he suspected, he was in awe of how much work and honest thought she had put into making him comfortable. It made the whole “being mutated and oversized” debacle a lot easier to deal with.

He was making faces at the stray dog trotting along across the street and trying to call him over to this side of the street when Noodle nodded firmly and put away her whetstone. “Looks good to me,” she declared with finality. She stood and tapped the side of her jaw. “Want me to smear it on?”

“Nah, I’ve got it.” He scooped out the shaving cream from the pot and used the reflection of the windows as a mirror while he smeared it all over his chin and jaw. He inhaled and smiled. “Smells great! How’d you do that?”

Noodle climbed on top of 2D’s car in the driveway and sat with her legs crossed while she watched Russel work. “I crushed up some mint and put it inside because I know you love how it smells.”

Russel laughed and darted his eyes to the left to smile at her. “You still remember that? I feel like I mentioned that years ago…”

Noodle shrugged. “I’m sure you did, but I wouldn’t forget something like that about you. What on Earth kind of friend would I be?”

She waited for the pool to fill up completely before Noodle scurried back inside to turn off the faucets. She came back with an armful of towels that she dumped on the hood of the car and pulled out her sword. “Give me a lift?”

Russel let Noodle climb into his hand and lifted her up high enough so that she was perfectly level with his jaw. She turned the sword over in her hands a few times and turned Russel’s head to the side so that the left side of his jaw was facing her. “Try not to move okay? I don’t want to cut you by accident.”

The blade scratched against his skin harshly, and he was sure for a moment Noodle sliced his cheek open, but he opened his eyes and breathed a sigh of relief when the shave came out clean and Noodle swiped the shaving cream off the sword to rinse it in the water. Noodle’s tongue was poking out from the corner of her mouth as she took extra care to make sure that she didn’t press down too hard and leave him with bumps or cuts. A few passerby were staring at the sight strangely, but Noodle wasn’t letting herself get distracted.

She pulled out a pair of scissors and was snipping away at the stray hairs that she missed when she spoke up. “Can I ask you something?”

Russel tried to speak without moving his lips too much so that she wouldn’t distract her. “You don’t gotta ask permission. Of course.”

Noodle pursed her lips, swallowed, and spoke carefully. “Do you...like how things are right now? Like, with you, and… you know…”

“The whole being oversized thing?” Russel joked.

Noodle laughed nervously. “Yeah.”

Russel shrugged his shoulders when Noodle turned to rinse off the sword again. “I can’t necessarily say if I like it or don’t, because there ain’t much to be done about it right now, know what I mean? This is how things are, and it may stay like this, or it might not. But if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that you gotta roll with the punches when they hit you.”

Noodle wrinkled her nose. “So, just get used to it?”

“Yeah,” Russel agreed. “It ain’t all that bad, I swear. Kinda sucks when it rains, and buying food’s a little expensive, but I think I’m getting smaller by the day. Hopefully this is just temporary.”

Noodle laughed softly and switched to the other side of his jaw. “You’re so optimistic…”

“And you’re not? You were always the optimistic one…”

Noodle shrugged. “It’s not that I’m not optimistic, it’s just…” She breathed in deeply and mulled over her thoughts. “Well...you never talk about yourself anymore.”

Russel raised a brow. “Not true. The two of us talk everyday.”

“Not like that,” Noodle explained. “You’re always telling me about your day, and always telling me about the silly things you see outside, but nothing else.”

Russel shrugged. “Not much else to tell. Gets kinda boring out here most of the time.”

“You know what I mean, Russel,” Noodle said firmly. “There’s a lot you’re not telling anyone...a lot you’re not telling me. And I worry about you.”

He shifted in his seat a little bit when Noodle lifted the blade from his skin. “You mean….”

Noodle smiled sadly. “Yeah, that.”

There was a time a while ago — only a couple of days after everyone was all moved into Wobble and effectively hidden away from any angry gun-wielding scum that Murdoc had mixed himself with — where 2D suggested they all just sit down in the living room together and catch the group up on what they’d all missed. Especially in the cases of Noodle and Russel, there were going to be so many fans asking a huge breadth of questions, and it seemed better for band dynamic to just get it all in the open in one shot, no leaving out details, and no leaving anyone in the dark.

Needless to say it was a lot harder than everyone thought it would be. It was half an issue of rehashing less-than-pleasant memories, and half an issue of not knowing how to articulate them. Noodle at first didn’t even know how to describe what she went through and what she saw. “Something that can’t be put into words,” she used to say cryptically. Considering her later admission that her rumored time in Hell was actually a legitimate claim, he couldn't exactly blame her for being tight lipped.

Noodle served as a convenient excuse for Russel to be vague about his own travels and experiences. He was usually the quieter one anyway, so it didn’t seem as if anyone was too interested in hearing dirty specifics. It was always easier to say nothing, and Russel didn’t quite mind doing that. Besides, things not brought up were best not remembered, and Russel also didn’t mind sticking by that statement.

But Noodle had already buckled up the nerve to map the past ten years out, not just for everyone else, but for herself, she claimed, and it was a long night filled with questions and stories and elaborations and frustration. No one pushed Russel to take his turn, so he never did.

Noodle moved on to shaving underneath his nose when he answered. “Just...never came up.”

“I don’t think that’s totally true,” Noodle explained. “I don’t mean to push you. That’s not why I’m bringing it up. But you look like you want to talk. Like this is something you need to tell someone. And if that’s true, then I think you should.”

“Is it really written all over my face?”

Noodle shook her head. “I doubt it. But I pay attention to these sorts of things. I know you, Russel. You can’t pull the wool over my eyes that easily.”

Russel chuckled in agreement. Noodle was always the most considerate one of the group, and easily the most attentive.

He didn’t reveal anything right away, instead choosing to let Noodle finish up with his face, let him dry off his face, and scrutinize the shave in the reflections in the window while she packed up everything and shoved it back into the front hallway of the house. It wasn’t a bad job at all, he noted with relief. It was nice to finally have his face clean again, and he was wondering what would happen to him if he were unable to find disposable razors in his size. But Noodle looked underneath his chin once she was done cleaning up and held up both of her thumbs to give her own approval as well. Russel smiled easily and leaned against the side of the house. “Didn’t think it’d come out so well.”

“You doubt me,” Noodle said with her tongue sticking out. “But you look more comfortable. And not so old.”

Russel snorted. “Thanks.”

Noodle stayed standing in front of of him and gestured to his hand, silently asking if it was alright to stay. Russel uncurled his fingers and let Noodle step onto the palm of his hand so that he could lift her up and let her sit on the top of his knee. She curled herself into one of the folds of denim and turned her face up towards the sun, enjoying what was probably the first sunny day they’d had in the past two weeks. Her fingers were clenching and unclenching the fabric of his jeans, and she turned her face towards his before asking, “Was it hard?”

“Was what hard?” he asked back.

“Being alone,” Noodle clarified. “That was the worst part for me. I mean I’d been without you all before, but not like this. This felt different. At least beforehand I knew I was going to see you all again. Because it was just a short break, you know?”

Russel did know, and he heard himself take in a shaky breathe. “Yeah. I know exactly what you mean. Being alone was real tough. Nothing can prepare you for that feeling.”

Noodle frowned. “How did you manage?”

Russel stayed silent for a few beats, struggling for an answer. “Not really sure I did, to be honest,” Russel admitted quietly. “After you were gone...well,” he paused. “Things got complicated. It’s kinda like you said about it being different this time around. We weren’t sure if you were. Well. You know.”

Noodle nodded. “You weren’t sure what happened. Or if I was coming back.”

Russel sighed. “I dunno if you know this, Noodz, but you held everyone together. We all wanted to try because of you. You made things easier. But then when you were gone, it was sort of like, ‘well, what’s the point?’ The glue was gone and we were all finding it real hard to stay together after that.”

Noodle’s knees were hugged to her chest. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s not your fault, baby girl,” Russel promised. “Not in the least. You know, thinking on it more...it wasn’t anyone’s fault. Maybe we all could’ve made better decisions, but no one really planned for any of this to happen.”

Noodle nodded glumly. “We don’t do well when we’re by ourselves,” she noted. “Maybe it’s because we do so well when we’re together the magic kind of falls apart.”

“Yeah, maybe,” Russel commented. “It kinda felt like that. Like something special was just gone.”

“What did you do?” Noodle asked. “Where did you go? What happened?”

Russel looked away from her and chewed on the inside of his cheek, trying to figure the best way to phrase everything. “I didn’t do much,” he admitted. “Compared to all of your stories, mine is kinda boring. I went back home for a bit. Moved into New York. Kept an apartment there for a couple of years. Moved to Los Angeles and hated it. Moved back to New York. Decided to come back to London. I was trying to make my own music. Look into production. Maybe start playing again, but...I dunno nothing felt right. I always stopped somewhere to leave right after. Like no matter where I laid my roots, the soil didn’t feel right.”

Noodle moved to lay on her stomach along his thigh. She was resting her chin in her hands. “Were you sad?”

“A little,” Russel said. “Mostly lost. I couldn’t keep anything down. I was just jumping from little jobs here and there to keep the cash up. I didn’t know where I was going or what I wanted. It wasn’t like before when I thought I was going crazy. I just felt real empty this time around. Just going through the motions, days blending together. I barely remember most of it. It was like the world could explode and I wouldn’t feel anything. Cuz...well, it was like the world already did explode.”

Noodle tilted her head. “What do you mean?”

Russel leaned his head into his hand. “Losing Del really screwed me up. I always thought he’d just be there for as long as I needed him. But I needed to let him go, he needed to go where he belonged and I had to move on. But it took a real long time before I felt like myself again. He was the only important person I had for a while. Then you came along. And then you got ripped away too.”

Nothing could possibly describe the dead feeling in his chest when he saw that island go down. It was the worst scenario he could imagine, and it was playing in real time right before his eyes. At least with Del, his departure was definitive. Noodle’s fate was nothing but snatches of rumors, most of them drunk ramblings from Murdoc, others from sketchy accounts of her being spotted from supposed fans. She could have been dead, maimed, missing, kidnapped, running away, hiding, and a whole other slew of possibilities. She was an unknown. She was literally lost in the world, and no one knew anything. It was very easy for him to become lost altogether as well.

“Is that why you didn’t want to talk about it?” Noodle asked gently.

“I didn’t want to worry you,” Russel told her. “You and Mudz needed to talk more than the two of us did, and I didn’t want to add my nonsense on top of it all.”

He could barely feel Noodle drawing little patterns into his jeans. “You don’t ever have to feel like a burden, you know. You and I are friends. We’re supposed to tell each other things.”

“I know, you say I have things I need to get off my chest, but I don’t really even know what they are,” he admitted. “Things feel wrong and awful, but I’m not sure why. I know I missed you. I missed you so much, Noodz, and finding you again made everything feel so much better. But now we’re here and it feels awful again.” He sort of remember Del telling him a very long time ago that strong emotions left long scars. That even though things on the outside were fine and adjusted, you still had to fix up your head to get used to it all. It made sense applied here. Like his head and his heart weren’t completely understanding that they could stop being so down and out now. They could hurry up and be normal again.

Noodle chuckled humorlessly. “If fixing people were that easy, the whole world would be a lot happier than they are.”

Russel twisted his mouth. “That’s true.”

He rubbed a hand along his clean jaw, staring into his lap, unsure of the words he wanted to say, unsure of what he was meant to disclose to please Noodle and not make her think he was shutting her out, but he looked up when he felt her walk forward and place a hand on his elbow. She was rubbing her thumb into his skin and waiting until he looked her in the eyes before she spoke. “You don’t have to have all the answers. I know you’re so used to taking care of me, but you can come to me, too. Not right away, and not to tell me everything. But I care about you. And I care that you’re feeling awful. So if you need to just talk your feelings, even if they don’t make sense, I want you to come to me.” She grinned brightly, a grin that seemed so reminiscent of ones she used to sport years and years ago. “We’re all together again, and that’s already half the journey. The rest will figure itself out.”

Russel couldn’t help but grin back at her. He remembered a time where he always had to make sure he was available at nights in case she woke up from a nightmare, always had to cook her meals, always took her clothes shopping, and always sat with her to hear what she had to say. She always came to him for things, and he was more than happy to give more than he took. But taking felt nice. It didn’t fix everything, but it at least made things feel a little normal, like he could finally root himself in relation to someone else — whether it was to chat or to ask for a quick shave. He always thought he’d have Del around for this kind of thing, but Noodle was older and more seasoned now. Knew what it was like to hurt and knew what had to be done to heal. They were equals now, and Noodle seemed willing to bear some of the weight for him.

He reached a finger down and very gently smoothed down Noodle’s hair. “Thanks, baby girl. I really don’t know what I’d do without you.”

“You won’t have to know,” Noodle stated. “I promise. I don’t plan on going anywhere.”