Archive of Our Own

Morty's the one that suggests keeping track of the days, even though he knows--fundamentally--that it doesn't really matter. Not in the cold, dark expanses of space, where time is only the increment of starlight as the dome drifts through the universe. Rick doesn't even know what dimension they're in anymore. There's glimpses of rifts here and there, but they're too unstable for the entire dome to pass through.

"It'd--i-it'd be a lot easier if we just g-go through, Morty," Rick observes, on the first day. Morty sits in silence in their little control room, artificial light bleeding over Mortyburg below. "Just us. Just us two. No one's gotta--erp--gotta know."

"We would," Morty says quietly.

Rick doesn't press it. 

It's day three when the Mortys start trickling upwards to the control room. Exhaustion weighs over Morty as he lies on the floor, his thoughts and emotions still a conflicted knot deep inside his chest--

you were bred for it

that's what they all say

"M-Morty, right?" Morty jerks his head upward. The question's not particularly sharp, especially with the speaker coming from another Morty. The other Morty looks just like him except for a pair of thick glasses resting on his nose. Two Mortys linger behind him, one more heavyset than usual, the other a lizardlike countenance poking out from the typical yellow shirt and dark jeans. Morty stares at them through the glass, still too tired to engage.

Finally: "Yeah."

"You're...you're the rogue, aren't you?"

Is that what they're calling him and Rick now? Morty can't quite feel the same way. He still remembers the screams of Mortys and Ricks as they're blended into a mess of blood and viscera. the lines and lines of cloned Mortys stretched out in blood-drenched rows. How many of the Mortys are even real? How many are just mass products, shaved off and casted aside?

"I guess," he says. He's not--really interested in talking to another Morty right now. He's never had that problem before, but everything about President Morty still makes panic and repulsion churn in his gut. He doesn't know if he'll ever forget the other Morty's quiet voice, as plain as if he's noting the weather.

The Mortys glance at each other.

"S-so--you saved us? You saved us, right?"

"S-sure."

"We saw the Citadel col-llapse," Lizard Morty chimes in. "Everything just went--fucking exploded, m-man. I thought Mortyburg was screwed for sure--"

"Shut up, L-Lizard Morty, you were asleep."

"I was not!"

"You didn't even know we were moving until I-I told you, you dumbass!"

Morty lets the voices wash over him. Dimly he's aware that they're arguing now--bantering, whatever--and for a moment a pang of loneliness hits him hard and cold in his chest. Even here, in a world resting on enslaved versions of himself, they still have friends. They have each other. Morty can't remember the last time he sat down and talked with a friend. Went out for a movie. Messaged someone not from his family.

"So, w-where's your Rick?" Apparently, the Mortys think of him as more amicable. Or something. Morty curls further on the floor, the thin blanket doing little for comfort. "The--the Rick, y'know? I can't believe half of the shit he does."

Me neither, Morty thinks with such spiteful intensity that it surprises him.

"Glasses, idiot, he--he doesn't wanna be bothered. He's tired."

"Aw geez, I just wanted to ask--"

There's a smacking sound.

"Okay--okay!"

The three Mortys glance at him, something like sympathy flickering over their faces, and then their footsteps fade away and Morty can only curl tighter around himself.

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Day five starts off unordinarily. Rick had once lectured to him on how easy it was to adjust--"y-yeah, you'll fucking cry and get all s-scared for a few hours, and then you're fine. Your fucking brain can't--can't handle it if it didn't"--and there's nothing in this case that makes Morty particularly distrusting of his grandfather's word. 

Except for everything.

I-I didn't know, M-Morty. Okay, don't look at me like--I did, but I didn't, but I...

I did.

Rick has left him food on the console panels. At least, Morty assumes it's Rick--the first thing Rick had done to the control room was to rewire its mechanics so that only he and Morty could enter. Dimensional DNA, he had said without any trace of irony. Not that it'd stop another Rick--or hell, maybe another Morty--if they really put their minds on breaking the barrier.

He eats it. It's typical, standard food that his mom might cook on a busy evening. When he's done, the plate disappears in a series of holographic glitches.

Outside, the sky doesn't change. There's no day or night, no sense of visible time, just the ache in his bones and the soreness in his limbs. He wants to go back and lie down on the blanket again. He wants to go back home. He wants to roll out of bed to his mom and dad arguing, to Summer rolling her eyes at everything he says, to go to school and watch Jessica and ignore Brad's taunts on his skinny little stature and he wants to barely pass his classes, go home and masturbate, play video games, and let the day repeat, over and over, but there's nothing in the entire multiverse that can give him those days again. All those days for nothing. Or maybe he could time travel back, but apparently it breaks all laws of the universe--but then again, didn't everything they do already break anything he's ever known? His grandfather can't die, there's infinite versions of himself, there's infinite universes with things much, much more worse than Rick.

It's that fear that compels Morty to gingerly poke his head out of the room; the air isn't stale or fresh, just aggressively there, and he slowly makes his way down to the dome ground level. Several Deformed Mortys stare at him warily, opting to stay up in the control room's surroundings rather than join the Mortys below. Morty can't blame them.

The moment he steps out into the city, he's instantly lost in a crowd of yellow and occasional splashes of colour. Amazingly, most of Mortyburg's infrastructure has withstood the dome's abrupt departure from the Citadel. Morty has a sneaking suspicion of why, but he quickly stamps it out in a flash of resentment. He jams his hands in his pockets and tries to amble through.

"Hey! Hey! It's that Morty!"

"T-The Morty?"

"Y-Yeah, I-I've stared at his face--he's got t-that weird wrinkle near his eye when he squints--"

A pair of Mortys gawk at him, one wearing a blue-and-white cap, the other one a fuchsia headband.

"Is that--oh my GOSH, that's C-137 Morty!"

"Shh! He doesn't want to be pointed at!"

C-137 Morty. But that's not his dimension. That dimension is one where Rick had--had morals, and loved his wife and daughter genuinely; one where he hadn't left Earth until he did. Morty doesn't even know what his original dimension's number is. It's all gone now, a mass of Cronenberg monsters and humanity reduced to ruins. The one he's currently in--the one he doesn't even know if he'll ever return to--

I miss my family.

There's a Rick every now and then. They stand out all too well, shocks of pale blue hair and white lab coats amidst a sea of brown hair and yellow shirts, and Morty tries not to look at them. He knows--logically--that not every Rick is like his own. There's some good ones. There has to be. Hell, he knows his own Rick...cares? about him, in some warped, twisted way, but he doesn't know if it's anywhere near enough.

"Rogue Morty, huh?"

Morty instinctively whirls around and raises his hands, even though he's completely weaponless--not that it'd do much, with a Rick in a cop uniform standing a metre away. Surprisingly enough, Cop Rick doesn't even make a motion towards the gun on his belt.

"I-I'm not here to start anything," Morty says quietly. He lowers his hands slowly. He can feel hundreds of eyes on him, assessing his every move--from unabashed curiosity to repressed fear. It hasn't really occurred him until now about his own reputation; if his Rick is the destroyer of worlds among the Citadel, then he has to be his...what? Sidekick? Partner? Right-hand man?

I never wanted to be.

"I didn't think you were. Are you looking for your Rick?" Cop Rick's tone is casual, businesslike, and despite the skepticism of his expression Morty feels slightly reassured. Slightly.

"...yeah. I g-guess."

"Okay. I can t-take you to him."

The innate fascination never dies in him; as they wander the streets, Morty can't help but drink in the sight of other Mortys. There's a few he thinks he might recognise--one with two green antennae poking out of his head, another with the hammerhead for a head, a Deformed Morty that blinks back at him unflinchingly. Cop Rick keeps close to him, and there's some part of Morty that expects more hostility from the other Mortys, but no--they just step aside without much fanfare.

"Are you doing okay?"

The question, coming from a Rick's mouth, is so jarring that Morty nearly stumbles. He quickly rights himself. He doesn't even know if a Rick is capable of asking that question.

"I-yeah?"

"You looked a little peaked there, kiddo." Cop Rick shrugs. "There's a Mortypital a block away, if you want y-your vitals to get checked."

"That's..." Morty fumbles for words. He doesn't know what to say. "That's fine. Thanks."

"Okay. Just let me know if you feel, you feel otherwise."

It's not a bar they halt at, but Morty can't stop the swell of disappointment at the sight of the pub-like building sandwiched between an antique Morty shop and some sort of small clothes store. Cop Rick hesitates as Morty heads towards the door.

"Do you want company?"

Morty shakes his head, still rattled by the kindness. Cop Rick gives him a nod before stepping away.

The lights are dim inside. There's no smell of alcohol--a universality recognised by universal Mortys, apparently--but there is copious amounts of fruit juice sloshing in what looks like sippy cups, all lined up on the counter. Morty slings off the weird feeling of being paternalised and glances around. 

"Hey! New M-Morty! You wanna drink or what?"

"I'm looking for Rick." It's a stupid statement, especially in the fucking middle of nowhere in Mortyburg, but Bartender Morty jabs a finger over to the corner. Morty doesn't have to get close to know that it's his Rick, spindly limbs and messy hair, the flask firm in his grip. The sight reverberates down to his bones. He can't even count how many times he's walked into the garage, sees Rick passed out in a puddle of his own sick; how many times he has to clean it up, tuck Rick in on the cot, his clothes smelling vaguely of booze. This isn't even my Rick. He wonders where his original is.

Only Rick can give him that answer.

"MoourghTy..." Rick glances up at him blearily, drool trickling down his chin, but Morty's upset must have shown enough that his grandfather flinches. Actually flinches. Rick's never looked his age, but there's definitely more lines bracketing his eyes and mouth now than what Morty remembers. "Oh man, Morty, you gotta--they got fucking sippy cups, that's, that's fucking hilarious. Next thing you n-need a straw and a spoon, Morty, and you'll probably still--" Rick's body shakes, like it's ready to expel vomit, but miraculously Rick keeps it down. "Fucking idiot," his grandfather mumbles.

Morty's heard every possible variation of the insult, but it still doesn't stop the small, sharp pang of hurt that ripples under his ribs.

"W-Whaddya want, Morty?"

"I want answers." The other Mortys look at them. The famed Rogues, arguing over something that makes no sense at all. Morty could almost laugh. "I want--Rick, I want answers." Rick owes him that much, at least.

Rick belches contemptuously. "What, my whole fucking downloaded m-memories weren't enough for you? H-Here"-- Rick fumbles around, and some part of Morty jolts in horror as Rick casually pulls out the memory...thingy from his pocket and tosses it around. "Just--plug it back into your neck, will you? Save me some bitchin--"

Morty could argue. He could argue that he wants to hear it from Rick's mouth, that there's still so much that didn't fit on the memory drive, that the pieces he's seen only makes him want to see more. He could stay here, yell at Rick for being drunk when they're stuck in space and there's enough resources, but it's not infinite, and they'll be lost and they'll die out here, far out beyond the boundaries of time and space. He could do that. 

He walks away without a word.

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On Day 10, Morty has his first nightmare on the Citadel.

Which is a weird thing to say, because he's only been here twice and it's two moments that he'll never forget in his life. First, with the day leading to the dozens of Mortys strapped to the dome. Second, with the utter chaos of Ricks and Mortys and Gromflomites swamped in complete bloodbath. And third--

He's back in the dining room. No food, no pleasantries, no light streaming through--it's just the void of space outside, and he's still strapped to his chair. Rick sits across from him, staring at him with apathy. 

Cold fingers brush his neck.

"Still care about your Rick, don't you?" The other Morty's voice is calm. Calm, no stutter, no hesitation--ultimate confidence flows in every syllable. He turns Morty's chair towards the window. "I'm surprised, sometimes, at how malleable you all are. You're bred like dogs."

Morty can't stop the cold panic that claws in his chest.

"I'm not--"

"I don't actually know." The other Morty sips from a wineglass, and in the dimness the liquid looks just like blood. The eyepatch is over his right eye. Morty tries to close his eyes, but the other Morty pinches his eyelids and forces them open. "Maybe you're an 'authentic' Morty. Do you really think it fucking matters?"

"Y-you're fucking messed up, you k-k-k-killed--"

"Y-you k-killed," the other Morty mocks, the faintest of smiles lingering on his lips. "Newsflash, Morty--your grandfather is a mass slaver and genocider. He's strangled children in their beds before. He's murdered so many people that it'd take infinity to count. I've really got nothing on him."

"He--he saved me," Morty whispers.

The other Morty glances over, amusement clear on his face.

"How's that working for you?"

The fingers don't leave his neck. They press, and press, and Morty can only sob in the ocean that swallows him; the pain erupts in a dark scythe, but he's completely, utterly alone. The other Morty never hesitates. Never falters. The hand doesn't release his throat, and his Rick watches, like it's a passing cloud in the sky.

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Day 12, Morty lugs back a sleeping bag to the control room--he can do his little own act of rebellion against the Mortels all he wants, but his back is starting to get really fucking sore--and joins ground level again. Still in space. Still lost, time meaningless, only the own biological deadline of his body. He bumps past a One True Morty cult member, another one that wears a blue shirt, a heavily balding Rick that's muttering something about "those stupid, fucking wafers", a Guard Morty, and...he loses count, and it doesn't matter, because even if every Morty dies on the ship there's still infinite numbers of him, and outside the Curve they'll be even more.

But some part of him, some deep, unearthed part that the Detoxifier had caved out, can't stand the sight of pain on another Morty. Can't bear to hear another scream of pain. He should be used to it.

Weak. Soft.

He doesn't try to find Rick. Rick knows where he is, and it's no coincidence that Morty wakes up alone each day. He's not--surprised, he knows that his grandfather would rather run away than address an iota of the problems, but it still hurts each time. It's a dull, reverberating pain, like he's been living with it his whole life.

Instead, he walks around some more.

There doesn't quite seem to be a concrete form of organisation--and maybe that's a good thing, considering President Morty--but there is a plaza outside a Mortymart with a fair number of Mortys ambling through. Morty ducks under one's elephant trunk, barely avoids Scissorhand Morty's grip, gingerly avoids Cronenberg Morty's puddle of slime.

There's a little raised podium at the centre. Morty inhales slowly and lets the breath settle in his lungs--no matter how adventures he goes on, he can't quite master public speaking. Still, at least he's not a stuttering mess like he was back at school. No mic, no loudspeaker, no klaxon--he'll have to use his voice alone.

"H-h-h-hey, can uh--" Or not. "C-C-Can you guys, um, listen to me? I've got something really important to say."

A Morty glances at him in idle curiosity. Morty can feel his bravado visibly deflating, not that there was much to begin with. He's so tempted to just step off the podium, let his fucking grandfather sort everything out, but he thinks of an empty console room and his family's smiles and President Morty smiling at him, just so slightly, like he's a pet that happened to be amusing. 

"Can you--just listen to me? For a second?" No one stops. Morty pulls in more air, letting his chest swell. "It's gonna save our l-lives! We're fucking stuck in space!"

No answer. 

He doesn't want to do it. He doesn't want the eyes to swivel to him, the expressions of shock and awe and fear reflecting back at him. But it's not about him, anymore, it's about all the Mortys.

"I'm the Rogue Morty!"

That snaps the Mortys' attention. A Morticia bumps solidly into Eric Stoltz Morty, both collapsing into a mess of yellow. Morty can feel his palms sweating.

"Y-Y-Yeah, that's right, that's, that's me. I'm C-137's Morty, I'm--" he doesn't even remotely know where to begin. "I--I don't know what that means, but I do know--this Citadel. It's a goddamn lie."

"Rogue Morty?" Probably a Skeptic Morty, the sneer sharp and directed. Mortys are crowding around the podium. "Really. That's like the most common moniker anyone tries to--"

"My RIck blew up this fucking Citadel! He made this place!" Morty hates how there's still some kernel of pride in his chest, knowing all the terrible things the Citadel has done. All the things Rick has done. "We killed Evil Rick! And the whole time, your f-fucking president was evil too, yeah, capital fucking E, and he's gone--he used you and left you to die, and we're going to die as well if we don't find a way to get off this ship!"

"B-b-bullshit!"

"Yeah, right!"

"You--you don't even have a cool eyepatch! Or, or, a s-scar!"

He has scars. There's a tiny array of papercuts around his knuckles, there's a faded, raised one over his stomach that one time he had tried to land the ship and the shrapnel had torn a hole in his guts, and he remembers it so clearly because Rick had dragged him out, and he remembered tears that weren't his own dripping over his face, salt intermingling with blood. There s a shallow scar across his shoulderblades, courtesy of a Xorjhan trying to slash his spine in half. There's probably dozens of needle marks over his skin when Rick injects him with weird shit--there's two, one on each side of his throat, from the memory drive. There's so many more invisible to the eye. They lurk under his skin, scab over in his heart, each time Rick's gaze slides over him dismissively, each time he's left behind, each time he's reminded that he's nothing more than a human shield.

"I do." He doesn't elaborate. "You don't have to believe me. You--you don't even have to listen. But there's..." he gazes out at the faces, so many that look like his own. "There's not much time left."

The crowd of Mortys stare back at him.

Then someone snorts, and someone else laughs, and it's a wave of scoffs and chortles that ripple through the crowd like a parting current, even as they start to disperse. The humiliation and hurt and fear hit in one strike, just one, and it feels like someone's taken another knife to his guts.

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It's Day 18, and Morty still has Rick's memory drive.

Rick hasn't sought after it. Rick hasn't come up to the console room, Rick isn't anywhere--he's still on Mortyburg, if word-of-mouth holds true, and Morty hates himself for the crushing of relief that Rick hasn't abandoned him. He feels pathetic and weak for still trying to rely on the piece of dirtbag that has designated himself as his grandfather, but it's a feeling that's wired so deep into his body by now. Rick's voice still makes him jolt out of bed, duck, lunge to the side. If RIck tells him to jump, he doesn't have to ask how high.

What do you mean, you knew?

I-no, I didn't personally get involved. It's--it's fucking barbaric, Morty, I'm not a fucking--

You knew and y-you didn't do anything.

Morty can't help himself.

This time the needletip of the drive goes down a bit easier, and then he's falling straight into the memories--he doesn't know what he's looking for, and there's the weird feeling, knowing that he's the sole possessor of an object that infinite universes would deem valuable. Rick Sanchez's memories. It's the kind of thing that can destroy cosmos. The same thing that Rick had so carelessly given him.

Morty swims through them aimlessly. He's seen photos of his grandmother--a cheery woman in both dimensions that he's lived in--but he sees her as a young woman, bouncing a baby version of Mom in her arms, and Rick--Rick is laughing. Not a mean, cruel laugh, not the mocking, sharp kind he does when Morty messes up something that's apparently rudimentarily simple, but a genuine laugh. A warm laugh. It's a rare sound.

"She's about to say her first word!" Diane's smile lights up her face, and Morty can feel through the memories how much adoration swirls around inside Rick. An endless sea. "Alright, Beth, say it..."

"...p...pay! Pay--!"

"Pay?" Morty has never heard his grandfather's voice so full of warmth before. It feels unreal. "Wow, I gotta say--not one that's blowing off my socks, Diane."

Diane laughs. "I think she's trying to say space, sweetheart. C'mon, baby, try again--"

"...puh...payuhh...!" The baby Beth giggles, feet kicking in her mother's grip, and Morty feels it--Rick's happiness, so sudden and bright that it ignites like a star in his stomach. It feels so...rare and it feels amazing and Morty can only be lost in mind, watching his grandfather scoop Beth into his arms, tickling her scalp and kissing his wife's cheek and...and...

He doesn't realise he's crying until he resurfaces, the cold contours of the control room bleeding back into his sight. It's not his usual messy, snotty cry; it's just a silent trickle of tears, sharp breaths entering and leaving his chest. He doesn't know why he's crying. It's not even his own dimension; it's just some random people he's never seen before, a life so long ago that there's nothing remotely similar in the current day. His Rick doesn't smile like that anymore. He doesn't even feel half the time. He's bitter and cynical and petty and he has the power of the universe at his very fingertips.

No one means anything to him.

The clasp of the time-collar around his neck. The glimpse of his grandfather's face in the void, right before he's ripped back to reality. Rick had been certain--so damn certain, even as fear transformed his face. Not a single moment of hesitation. Morty remembers it now, as clear as a mirror.

It would so much easier if Rick was always horrible to him--if all he did was spit at him, yank his hair, beat him and drag him and leave him to die. But he isn't. Rick doesn't even think twice of shielding him with his own body, tossing some invention at him just so Morty could have an easier time, carts him off to Blitz and Chips after a bad test day. "Are we sure we can't have ice cream?" Rick will yell at him for a few minutes. They'll go on an adventure that they'll escape from the seat of their pants. Almost in a careless gesture, Rick tosses him some tub of his favourite Chaos Chocolate as they fly back home.

I'm almost proud of you grandkids. Beth, sweetie, let me insta-wash these dishes. Okay, fine, Jerry, you're right for once, okay? Stupid f-fucking clock in a stupid f-fucking world.

"I hate you," Morty whispers out loud in the room.

No one responds.

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On Day 25, Morty heads towards Central Unit.

Most Mortys had some degree of gadget experience, having been dragged around with their Ricks all over the universe. Morty can admit that he's definitely on the extreme side of things. There's a single Processor--it's a bit unfortunate that it was probably a Morty that named all the components--that runs the electricity, oxygen, and temperature control within the dome, but without the recursive energy from the portal fluid the fuel's slowly, but surely, running out. The ability of portal fluid to create an infinite loop was what had powered the Citadel in the first place. The single thing that made a Rick the smartest thing in their universe.

"But we don't have portal fluid," Engineer Morty observes. Morty ignores him.

Even a little droplet can power a building, and the bubbling vats could probably rip a black hole in the fabric of spacetime. No, it--it had. For that one, fleeting second, Morty had seen fear flash across Rick's face, the dome not quite able to break away from the gravitational pull. We're going to die.

Then Rick had stretched out his hand towards Morty, and there had been zero hesitation.

"We don't need green portal fluid," he tells the engineer version of himself. "We only need to find a dimension to, u-uh, land in, and then we can start from t-there."

"We can't. We're still transdimensional--we c-can't slow down to stop at any dimension, there's not really any booster fuel left, we gotta--"

"Blue."

"...what?"

Blue portal fluid. Morty remembers the one at customs from one of his earlier adventures--along with the soreness of the megaseeds up his ass--and the one from Rick's memories. The last thing he had created in the garage until the other Rick stepped through. An intradimensional portal. Even the fucking U.S. President had one; it's not inconceivable that the Mortys couldn't stitch one up as well.

Engineer Morty glances up at him, confused. "B-blue fluid?"

"Yeah."

"I don't know what that is!"

"I don't either." Morty swallows down his trepidation, hating how his hands shake a little. "But I-I don't see another way out."

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"Blue fluid?"

Day 32, Morty manages to snag a Rick on the streets. It's a fairly typical-looking Rick, save for a single blue antenna stalk that sticks out of bluer hair. A little younger too. He's wary enough, but not a completely acerbic asshole, and that'll have to do for now. 

"Y-Yeah. Blue fluid." Morty twists his hands together. "I know--um--you probably made some form of it, and I wanna know h-how."

"What makes you think--"

"I know things. I'm the Rogue." He hates wielding his reputation, but the Rick's eyes widen imperceptibly and for once, it almost feels satisfying. "You d-don't have to believe me, but there might not be any fucking way off the ship."

"Well, you twerp, why not g-green fluid? Why don'tcha ask your Rick to w-whip a whole fucking platter up?"

Morty's answer comes easy. "There's a chance that it's corrupted. By the President," he adds, and a slight flicker of understanding crosses the Rick's face. "C-c'mon. Even if you don't wanna help, you probably, uh, you want to live. See other dimensions."

"You didn't answer the second part."

Do I have to?

The Rick seems to get the memo, at least. He follows Morty to Central Unit.

Engineer Morty glances up sharply from the Processor, lifting his welding mask. Sweat trickles down his neck.

"Um..."

"I have the blueprints for blue portal fluid." There's a cold certainty gnawing away at Morty's insides. He knows his eviler counterpart has looked through the memories, much more than he ever did, and there's absolutely no guarantee that the other Morty hasn't hijacked blue portal fluid as well. Yet somehow, he doesn't think so. The Citadel is inherently transdimensional. The ability to move within a dimension is child's play. Yet...

It's not useful. Not when other portals can take you anywhere, anytime, in a continuum of infinity that has no beginning or end. Blue fluid can't rip a black hole in space. It's mundane. It's borderline useless. No one on the Citadel would have bothered with it.

Idly, Morty wonders where the other Morty is. On a spaceship somewhere--maybe the cold of space had gotten to him, and it was only his body floating out in the abyss, not even rotting. Forever preserved. 

"Um...Morty? R-Rogue Morty?" Engineer Morty twiddles his thumbs. "Y-You said something about the blueprints?"

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On Day 40, Morty finds Rick in the control room.

It's probably around sleeptime. Morty hasn't slept in the room the past week, opting for a corner cot to rest near the Processor while Engineer Morty and Antenna Rick whittled away--but it's much easier for him to fall asleep back in the room, even if the nightmares flicker at the threshold of consciousness. Still, the sight of Rick--his Rick--sitting there, gazing out of the window, roots him where he stands.

Rick doesn't glance up. Doesn't move. Morty hesitantly takes a breath--no whiff of alcohol, no stench of vomit. Rick, for once, is sober.

"Rick?"

"You're alive." 

RIck's voice is dull. Listless. Morty can't even remember the last time he's heard his grandfather like that; a voice defeated, ragged, like he's on his last edge. Some part of him swells in empathetic hurt, the overwhelming urge to put a hand on Rick's shoulder and give him some sliver of comfort. The rest of him, the part that still simmers and seethes, freezes him to the spot.

"Was I...not supposed to be?"

"Well, I d-don't fucking know, Morty. It's not like, it's not like I came back here and you weren't here and maybe--hear t-this out, Morty--maybe I thought your little bony, scrawny ass got jumped by who-the-fuck knows and they spaced your body. It's not like we're any different from any every other fucking dimensional clone here, you know?" Rick's fists clench. "I m-mean, you didn't even leave a note, and you always complained when I had that t-tracker in you, and I fucking took it out and--"

"I'm not dead," Morty says softly.

Rick whirls around to glare at him, and the sheer intensity makes Morty take a step back. His grandfather looks like he hasn't slept in years; dark bags under his eyes, his hair a complete mess of spikes, face thin and exhausted. The emotion on Rick's face is so goddamn rare that it looks utterly unnatural. 

Fear.

"Rick--"

"You know what I would've done if I couldn't find you? I would've torn this fucking place to pieces just so I could drag your stupid, s-sorry corpse and dump it on your mother's lap. Yeah," Rick snarls, even as Morty shrinks away. "Yeah, that's f-f-fucking right--I'd burn your shitty town with all your shitty copies if any of them tried to jump on you. You want those Mortys' deaths on your hands, you fucking idiot? You want a bunch of 14 year old shitheads to die?"

And deep down Morty knows, knows, that Rick's lashing out, that Rick--despite not giving a shit about collateral--generally tries not to hurt a Morty, that Rick had helped save Mortyburg in the first place. It doesn't stop the words from cutting into his heart, vicious and sharp and raw. Horror and guilt churn in his stomach, and he honestly feels like he's about to vomit. Or pass out. Or both.

"R-Rick, you're--"

"Scaring you? I better fucking be. What do you think, I'm gonna f-fucking hug you and wipe your little baby tears away because you ran off like a deadbeat evading his taxes?" Rick is standing up now, pacing with a mad, frantic energy that sets Morty's teeth on edge. "You're about to cry? It's your d-d-default look; don't wear it out. C'mon, w--"

"You're a coward," Morty says, and he hates how small his voice sounds but he knows there's steeliness in it. There has to be. "I d-didn't know you were such a, a, a-f-fucking coward, Rick."

His words hang in the air, and for one, raw second, Morty thinks Rick's going to hit him. Rick has hit him before. Not frequently, not with enough force or expectancy that makes Morty innately afraid--save for the black eye that one time--but the predilection is there. He braces himself, ready to taste the coppery tang of blood in his mouth.

"...shit..."

Suddenly Rick's in front of him, and Morty doesn't have time to reach before spidery hands grab his shoulders, fingers trembling hard as they press into skin. The smell of something sour and metal envelope around them. 

"F-fuck, you're - you're flinching, you thought I was gonna..."

Morty doesn't know what to say.

"I'm a piece of shit," Rick finally mutters, the anger from a few seconds previous completely winked out. "I'm--what kind of fucking grandfather hits their own grandkid, and you're not even - you're su-supposed to yell at me, it's not right, but it's--f--fuck--" Rick rests his forehead on Morty's shoulder, like he's the one that needs comfort, and Morty can't help it. He can't help that weak, soft part of him that makes him reach up, pat at his grandfather's hair clumsily. Rick's breathing is ragged.

"You don't deserve this," Rick finally says. His voice is half-muffled.

Even though Rick can't see him, Morty nods his head hesitantly.

"Morty..." Rick withdraws, sits himself on the floor. Almost against his will, Morty lets himself sit as well. He feels like a little kid again. He is a little kid. He's supposed to be in high school and fantasising about Jessica and trying out for the football team. He's not supposed to be out in space, so far from every dimension existent, lost in a sea of himselves. None of them are. 

He's not supposed to have a kill count in the dozens. Hundreds. He's not supposed to know a Xlofrthan's blood cooling instantaneously on his skin; he's not supposed to bury a version of himself a few metres from where he eats. He's not supposed to know how to operate a plasma-condenser gun, the kind that tears an organism apart down to each little segment in their DNA. He's not supposed to wake up with nightmares of drifting through the void as reality dissolves into nothingness around him.

And that doesn't even hold a candle to what Rick does to him. You l-little bitch--stop, stop, I can't, but his arms keep swinging down and plunging the blade in over and over--yeah, this, this whole fucking planet? Gone. You should've kept your mouth shut--memories that swirl inside him, gaping, ragged holes where his thoughts should be--that's right you little bitch, you killed these Mortys, you killed them--Rick is all-encompassing, all-devouring, and he's not a school bully or a Gromflomite or even a Jellybean; he's an immortal, infinite being that Morty can never escape from, not even in death. Rick would go down to Hell and bodily drag him out. 

Somewhere in the multiverse, Morty thinks, there's a Rick that loves freely. Maybe there's a normal Rick, a normal grandpa that takes his kids to baseball on Sundays and teaches them Spanish from a picture book. Would he even be a Rick anymore? Someone without that poisonous, ravenous need to control?

"You're a shitty person, Rick," Morty tells his grandfather. 

Rick doesn't try to deny it. 

"You shouldn't have to put up with me."

"You make me put up with you." There's never been an alternative. "You'll never cut yourself out of our lives until y-you do. And y-you'll drag me with you."

"You should've left with the other Morty," Rick says quietly. "Even--even I can't find you, beyond the Curve."

"I shouldn't have to."

"God fucking--" Rick yanks at his hair, his knuckles tight and bony as his hands curl into fists. "I wish you left. I wish you fucking left. And yeah, I would've--I would've looked for you, I would never stop, but I'd never find you. I wouldn't even know if you died. That's a life free of me, Morty." He looks at Morty, desperate and angry. "Why the fuck did you stay?"

"Why the fuck do you want me around?"

"I want a yes-man, Morty! I want someone to laugh at my jokes and simper over my accomplishments! I want a goddamn cloaking device! I want someone to hand my f-fucking screwdrivers. What the hell do you think?"

"Then why don't you brainwash me? Why don't you just stuff my waves in a box and c-carry it around?" Morty doesn't even know what he's trying to argue for--that Rick cares for him, or that he doesn't. Does he? He doesn't even know. "Come on--kick me out! Do it!"

"Don't fucking tell me what to do, Morty."

Morty seizes the lapels of his grandfather's coat. He rarely instigates aggressive action towards Rick--unless it's an emergency, or anger overwhelms him in a red wave--but never to prove a point. Until now. Rick looks as surprised as Morty feels, but Morty drags him forward and he's honestly shocked at his own strength. Adventuring had paid off, apparently.

"Come on," Morty's voice is a low snarl, "c-c-come on, you--you monster."

Rick pushes him away.

Morty loathes the sudden, sharp pain that tears through him--even now, even now, Rick won't give Morty what he wants for once, and Morty thinks he might throw up. He hasn't been sleeping well, hasn't been eating, and the sudden combination of--of everything--makes his head swim and his stomach churn. His throat tightens. He hopes his vomit hits Rick's shoes.

He doesn't remember falling, but there's a distinct feeling of arms catching him.

.

.

.

"Day 42," is the first thing Rick says when Morty slowly, messily, reemerges back into consciousness. "Yeah, try not to keep the s-surprise on your face too long. Might get stuck that way if the wind blows wrong."

"...w-w-wha?"

"I know you've been keeping track of the days. But geez, Morty, it's not like your good ol' grandpa might possibly have some internal clock so that he doesn't ever get hour-inside-year-outside-trope-fucked in the ass. Sure, grandpa can build an AI robot at the k-kitchen table, and he can wall off a whole f-fucking section of infinity, but a clock?" Rick burps. "Naw, dawg, a clock--that's really pushing some boundaries of suspension, man. R-r-really outta this dimension."

Some part of Morty wants to just roll over, to sink back into--blankets? There's multiple blankets now. It looks like a weird nest of one, and it oddly reminds Morty of Birdperson's home. Rick must have confiscated or upgraded his sleeping bag.

"'Course, it's measured in Earth time," Rick continues as Morty slowly pushes himself into an upright sitting position, exhaustion making his eyelids sag. 

Then Rick's words hit him.

"Forty...42 days? How long was I sleeping?"

"Calm your tits, Morty. Like a day and a half. Nothing's going anywhere."

"N-no, I have to meet up with--" Morty struggles to kick off his blankets, but suddenly Rick is looming over him, and thin, strong hands push him back down on the makeshift bed. Morty sputters, going beet-red. "W-w-w-what the hell, Rick, get off me!"

"You little shit, you haven't slept for a whole week. You think I'm just gonna let you w-waltz off and work yourself into an early grave?"

"What do you think our adventures were?" Morty mutters back.

He feels Rick still beside him, and then Rick is sitting next to him, hand moving through silver-blue hair. 

"Jesus, Morty, I, I...I really fucked up, didn't I?"

"Smartest man in the universe," Morty says quietly. He picks at the frayed ends of his jeans. Come to think of it, he can't remember the last time he showered--the temperature's flat enough that he hasn't sweated considerably, but he should probably go wash off sometime. "I-I don't get it, Rick. How can you not know?"

If Rick tries to deny it, Morty thinks he will actually scream.

"I ignored it." The confession drops solidly from Rick's lips, and Morty tugs harder on the frayed ends, words drying up in his mouth. Beyond the control room, the dome moves everywhere and nowhere at once. "I kept telling myself--you l-liked the adventures, you like visiting new worlds, you'll pick up shit that your crummy little school can't ever get you. So what if you--you fucking cried sometimes, or I saw you tryna scrub nonexistent blood from your hands? I've done it, your space mom probably did it, you're--you're a tough kid."

Morty shakes his head.

"That's not a good thing."

"I know that. Jesus fucking Christ on a stick, I--" Rick's hands clench. "I know I'm a cancer on your family. I know I don't belong. But--it's a fucking addiction, to--to pretend to live like a person, even if it makes everything rot. G-G-God, sometimes I wish I never came back. I'm--I'm sorry."

Despite himself, Morty feels a pang at the words. There's so many times that he wished Rick had never entered his life, that he wished the hardest thing he ever had to face was a math test, but he can't even remotely imagine that life now. It feels like someone else's. It's not even erasable by memory anymore--the golden wonder bubbling in his stomach when he saw the Triple Suns, the razor-sharp exhilaration when he had flew the ship through the Melt Star's chute--they're forever imprinted in his body, fingerprints dug deep into his DNA. The multiverse is a cruel, heartless concept, but he can't deny its beauty.

"Don't leave," Morty whispers.

"I won't."

"Don't run away. You're just proving my point on being a coward."

Rick's laugh is utterly humourless. "What else did you think I am? I turned myself into a fucking pickle so I didn't have to t-talk about my feelings."

"Stop being a secretive bastard." Morty doesn't remember when his hand had grabbed his grandfather's sleeve, but somehow he can't let go. "Suh-stop--stop holing yourself away, and making us pick up the pieces. You forced yourself into our family. The l-l-least you could, you could do is--" Morty swallows. "--is help us be one."

"Gay." But Rick doesn't mock him, doesn't belittle him for the small, genuine request, and Morty allows himself to grab onto the sleeve. Just a little tighter.

.

.

.

Day 45, Rick looks through the memory again. "I haven't touched blue p-portals in fucking decades, Morty," he gripes to his grandson. "And it's a completely fucking different mechanism from interdimensional travel--you gotta break down a dimensional barrier and have your molecules completely readjust, but intradi--urp--mensional means you gotta destroy your current atoms and simultaneously recreate yourself in another location. Don't hate the player, hate the game."

It's a painful memory. Morty knows it because Rick wrenches the drive out, his eyes glistening, and by the third time Morty realises which memory it has to be. 

The one where his grandmother and his mother had died.

By the sixth time, Morty can even tell when Rick reaches that moment--Rick jerks a little, his hands making an aborted reaching motion--and on the eighth time, Rick makes a small gasp. A quiet cry. It doesn't quite escape his throat.

By the tenth time, Morty yanks away the drive.

"Morty, what the fuck? I'm trying to find out those blueprints--"

Morty might hate Rick, sometimes. He might wish that this monster of a man could just go away. But right now, with Rick cursing at him even as his eyes shine from dampness, he can't find that anger to keep wishing.

"I'll do it," he tells Rick.

He remembers the first time he had seen the memory. Rick so rarely mentions his original family--marriage is a f-fucking social construct, Morty, it's made by our stupid neurochemicals that want us to breed it out--and Morty thinks back to the one time, the day Rick had returned from prison, him spitting and slurring as he loomed over Morty. I'm not avenging my dead family, Morty, I'm here to--and Morty had forgotten it, that single word lost amongst Rick being a complete fucking sociopath. The whole dystopian Mad Max world and the pickle incident and after. He remembers seeing the garage, seeing a young version of his grandfather fiddle with malfunctioning blue portals, a young Diane in the flesh.

Another Rick in a tracksuit. The green portal after.

A memory drive is a snapshot. A marker of time long gone. But there's memories much, much deeper than what's shown, and Morty can still hear Rick's quiet sob as he lets himself fall into the memory. The moments right after.

Young Rick, crumpled on the driveway. There's nothing left of Beth and Diane except for a smear of blood and viscera. Smoke billows around the house, the flashing red-and-blue lights of sirens waving over the concrete. The paramedics carry him away--

Rick doesn't move. Not when they shine a light into his eyes, not when they patch up the burns on his skin. His first movements are to walk out of an apartment and all the way back to the house, even as cold snow nips at exposed skin. The second movement is to build a forcefield around the house, forever shielding it from the neighbours.

A tomb.

The third is to scan the blueprints.

It's--not easy. It's nowhere easy. Morty can't stop the sympathy that rolls through him as Rick scans his half-assed blueprints, and then tears swell up and drip onto the sheets in a string of dark smears. Sketches of the other Rick litter the walls, strokes harsh and heavy. Rick soundlessly beating the remnants of a filthy bed, pictures of Diane and Beth scattered over the floor. Mould creeps over the wallpaper.

I should've taken the offer. Night after night Morty watches Rick mouth these words, sleeping with a photo curled to his chest. Sometimes, chillingly, Rick places a gun in front of him. Stares at the trigger. Looks at the photograph.

Puts the gun away.

Nights stretch into weeks, into months. The seasons change. Rick was already thin, but he grows thinner--facial hair is cut haphazardly, tufts of silver-blue detaching from his scalp. His hands tremble from lack of rest. More small blue portals emerge. Apples still charred, but one day--one day--

--an intact apple comes through.

.

.

.

Day 46, Rick and Morty step together into Mortyburg for the first time.

This time there's no hushed curiosity or excitement. Morty might be Morty, but somehow, Rick is automatically distinguishable--a quiet falls over the Mortys and occasional Ricks as they make their way down the street. Morty hears snatches of rogue flitting in and out, but no one voices it audibly.

Morty remembers how he had once hid behind Rick's lab coat, shrinking away from the stares of thousands of Ricks and Mortys. The same wariness still lingers, and Morty remembers his last foray into visible public--the jeers, the mocking laughs, the disbelief. There's none of that this time around.

Maybe it's the look in Rick's eyes--blank, scarily determined--maybe it's that Morty walks side-by-side, and he's not proud of it, he can't say that, but there's a bizarre courage that flickers in his chest. He glimpses familiar faces--well, more familiar faces; the Cop Rick, the three Mortys from the earliest days, more and more he's seen from the Citadel, from the prison of Mortys, from Interdimensional Cable, run-ins in other dimensions, run-ins in his own dimension, lives and worlds he's only seen the barest minimum of.

A universal constant. But it's not universal. Morty remembers the other Morty's words--

an infinite crib

Engineer Morty and Blue Antenna Rick wait at Central Unit. As far as pairings go, Morty thinks it's not the worst outcome for a Rick and a Morty--they're quietly discussing over some half-drawn blueprints, and occasionally the Rick pats at the Morty's welding mask. Both of them glance up as Morty and Rick draw near.

"About f-f-fucking time." 

.

.

.

Day 47, Rick can't resist himself. "We're gonna need a bigger portal," he jokes, and then frowns at the resultant silence. "R-right, Jaws doesn't exist in half of your fucking universes. You're missing out on the best and only shark movie that'll ever exist. A whole fucking multiverse and they still can't get up to Jaws caliber? Maybe it's a goddamn cosmic law. Shit that goes up has to go down--"

"Not in our dimension," a Morti pipes up, who's having difficulty staying on their feet. The effects of actual gravity, Rick had explained to Morty with an eyeroll. 

"Yeah, no one gives a shit. Hand me the flathead."

There's something reassuringly familiar about watching Rick work--Morty knows the mechanics of the blue portal are beyond his capability, and he lets himself sit with a small, but steadily growing pool of onlooker Mortys and Ricks that increases by the minute. Rick is in his element. His hands, thin and strong, heft up blocks of metal that must've weighed hundreds of pounds, and the same hands never twitch or shake once as he ties wires thin as hairs together. "We need a frame that can withstand the portal fluid," he had told Morty hours before. "Yeah, buh-blue one's not as potent as the green one, but it's still enough to completely obliterate 99% of materials that's ever existed. Good thing Mortyburg's stocked up on some shit, else creating them by hand would be a major pain in the a-a-ass."

"Sure, Rick."

A day passes. Another day. It took months for Rick to perfect the blue portal; it took even longer to develop the green one. They don't have months. Already there's signs of wear and tear at the edge of the dome; it can't handle transdimensional pressure well without the infinite loop of an inexhaustible supply of green portal fluid. The sky is starting to flicker, flashing dark every now and then.

Of course, the Ricks--few as they are--bicker amongst themselves. 

"The fuck is wrong with you? You add the Volacell here--" Blue Antenna Rick jabs at a vial with writhing purple liquid--"and then you stabilise it so it doesn't blow out half the dome! Where the hell did you get the idea to stabilise before?"

"Maybe because I also invented it, dipshit!" Morty watches his grandfather start to make a shoving motion, before realising his grandson is watching. Rick grumbles but retracts his hands. "Okay, f-fine. Let's try a Volacell Lite, maybe that'd reduce the potency--no, no, there--"

More Ricks join in. More Mortys. Someone expands the building of Central Unit so that they can comfortably fit; Morty finds himself lost in a sea of himselves, but Rick always finds him at the end of every hour. His grandfather's hands are covered in burns, and it's probably effortlessly easy to whip up a healing batch, but he lets Morty bandage his hands. Mortys join in the portal, too. Engineer Morty directs the reconstruction of the frame, and Blue Shirt Morty is the first to realise that interdimensional blood is a pretty great way to fuel something close to an infinite recursion--specifically, when he and Morticia tussled and both screamed as the gurgling beginnings of blue portal fluid sliced their arm cleanly from the shoulder.

"Don't worry 'bout it, Morty," Rick says as Yellow Shirt Rick and a Rita regrow the arms of their respective Morty and Morticia. Morty stares a bit at the female version of his grandfather before shaking his attention away. "First thing when you're dippin' your toe into space, you gotta--you gotta make the best healing serum. We're not regenerators."

"S-s-so...blood powers the portal?" Morty remembers the Ricks and Mortys blended into viscera, the minute that the President had escaped. The screams that echoed around the chamber.

"No, idi--Morty," Rick catches himself. "It's like--it's like, fuck, okay, basic biology, but it's a modulator. Like a, a, a fucking GABA receptor or something. Blood itself doesn't power it, but when you got another dimensional version of it, the combined effects--it's enough to preserve the recursion so that you're still you when you emerge from the other side."

Morty feels queasiness churn in his belly. "Does--that mean we need to give up our blood?"

Rick looks at him for a long, hard second."

"It's--it's what that Morty did, I don't see how--"

"We can replicate your blood, genius. It only takes a single drop. That other Morty--he could've just taken a drop from everyone and mass-produced it so it could kickstart his stupid spaceship."

"Then why didn't he?"

"Geez, Morty, I dunno, maybe because he hated every Rick and Morty in the whole goddamn multiverse? Why do you think he used a wholeass matrix of Mortys? We're--we're a stain to him, and I'd know, I killed enough of myselves--" Rick breaks off. Takes a breath. 

Looks at Morty.

The faint sounds of machine clinks, the voices of Mortys and sometimes a Rick--they all fade into a background hum. Morty can't stop the surprise that flourishes in his chest at Rick's sudden, miserable expression.

"Morty," Rick says, all seriousness. "If--when--wh-when we get back home, what are you going to do?"

"What?"

"You--and actual little American psycho you--are the only people that's ever seen my shitty backstory." Rick's voice is glib, but the weight of his words sink slowly into Morty's brain. He remembers the second time he had gone into the memory drive--the knowledge that he held one of the multiverse's most sought-out secrets--and it scares him, that these memories are in his memories as well. His feeble, human mind against the eldritch horrors outside of Rick's bubble. "You know you're not my Morty. You know I'm not your mom's original dad either."

Morty's voice is small. 

"Did you kill him?"

"W-what?"

"Did you kill my--my actual Rick?" Morty tries to cast his mind back into his childhood, to remember, but he can't. 

Rick swallows, and looks away.

"No," he finally says, and his voice shakes. "It--it was an empty dimension, Morty."

Some small pinch of relief sharpens in Morty's chest. Not that it would matter, since Rick had only crashed into his life--literally--a few years ago, but Morty can't stop his brain from spiralling on the what-ifs. What if Rick had killed his original Rick, somewhere, in the countless Ricks he murdered; what if he had had a normal grandfather, and their biggest adventure would be driving to the edge of town; what if, what if, what if. 

But he can't deny that it's not something that would fill up this big, gnawing desire inside him anymore--the facade of normalcy, the illusion of the mundane, not when he knows it's not like that. Not even remotely. Even in the sanctuary of his own house, monsters periodically burst from the garage, alien parasites ooze down the cracks in the ceiling, the TV flickers with infinite channels.

His actual Rick. It never even mattered, at the end. His mother wanted her father to come back, and come back he did--drunk, the wreckage of a ship in flames, a piercing, empty sadness as he stood in the ruins of the garage. Morty remembers huddling behind the threshold of the door, Summer right next to him, watching this strange, blue-haired man embrace his mother with a tired relief. How his eyes had fallen on Summer, and then on him. How the gaze had stayed.

"I'm not gonna tell," Morty decides, and prides himself for not stuttering. His voice is warbly, but it holds. "Mom--probably knows a lot more than she shows, anyways."

Rick scoffs, but it's a fond sound. "That's at least reliable."

"You should tell her, though." Morty wonders if his mom--moms--would even be upset. Or surprised. "There, uh, there shouldn't be secrets. Big secrets. If we're gonna t-truh-try to be a family." It sounds so corny at the end, so simplistic and downplaying of all the terrible, abhorrent shit that Rick has put them through, put him through, but he doesn't know what else to say. He's never been a master with words. 

"...okay." Rick takes a breath. Exhales it out. "Okay. It's--it's the least I can do. To both your moms. To the Cronenberg-world one, if she'll let me."

Morty thinks of himself buried in the backyard. Summer hadn't--taken in stride, necessarily, but she had understood. His parents wouldn't take it so smoothly. A stranger, living under sheep skin. He'll have to tell them someday. He'll have to sit down before them, and straight to their faces--I'm not your son.

Of course you are, is everything okay? We're always here for--

No, no--Mom, Dad, I'm--I'm not your actual son. He's in the backyard.

They could accept that Rick was an interloper--this bizarre, eccentric man who pranced between dimensions like a child through the toys' aisles--but Morty, quiet, shy Morty, who peed at school and still chewed on the nub of his pencils and sweated when he talked to a pretty face--and the horror, the realisation, the fear and how did I never notice and the distance--

And he thinks of his mother, coming up to his room after he had broken up with Planetina; of his father coming back from Pluto, clothes torn and haggard, but still smiling at him, and he thinks of Summer, standing before the Council of Ricks, even though they were just kids against infinite versions of their cruel, callous grandfather, infinite light-years from home. He thinks about Rick's smiles, Rick's laughs, in his memories of Morty.

Darker memories crash like ships in the sea, and it's frighteningly too easy to pull them up--his mother choosing Summer over him in a heartbeat, his dad hiding behind a door as Morty fought off against aliens, Summer laughing at him in the school hallways--Rick's thin, mean smile as the realisation of the do-over slammed into Morty, Rick hitting his eye and watching him squirm on the ground--

Love. Does his family love him? Morty thinks he loves his family. Even before his mind catches up with his body, he leaps to save them, to push them out of harm's way. Internally, structurally, his organic frame loves what his family mean to him. Can he say the same in return? An answer coagulates in his head, and he doesn't know why he even asked.

He loves his family. It might--wouldn't even matter if his family didn't love him back. Sometimes, he's sure they do--yet there's too many times when he can't be sure.

"I'll tell Mom and Dad, then," Morty says, and Rick doesn't have to ask to know what he's referring to. It'll take decades for the bones to decay. Maybe they need to be unburied.

.

.

.

Day 53, Morty waits at the podium. There's not much Morty traffic at this time of the day, but time is meaningless, especially with the cracks of the dome visible even from here. There's probably a week or two left, at most. Each crack accelerates damage. Sometimes there's faint tremours in the ground, and Morty has heard rumours of the Mortys closest to the edge being disintegrated from the transdimensional passage, the combination of empty space and a lack of space-time continuum rendering an entire life void.

"Hey," he calls out, and this time his voice doesn't shake. It doesn't matter if it does. Morty can't control the other Mortys to leave the dome--well, Rick could probably do so--but he thinks he owes his other selves this much, at the very least. Maybe not.

But it's never been a matter of choices for him.

"I'm the Rogue Morty." A flicker of attention. There's some scoffs, some grumblings, but Morty ignores them. "And--uh--yeah, last time? Not a success. So I'm not here to p-puh-passionately rile you up and make you fight for your freedom, or whatever. I'm just g-g-gonna say, we found a way." 

He pauses. Takes a breath.

"We found a way off the dome." A stronger ripple of voices. Morty wonders if Rick is watching, somewhere from Central Unit. "We--it's an intradimensional portal, and it'll counteract the, um, the transdimensional locomotion. I-I don't know how exactly it works. It's not c-corrupted, like the green fluid, and..." God, this is embarrassing. "It'll eject us into a random, livable dimension. In the Curve, outside the Curve, we don't know. But once we stabilise in a dimension, we-we can make green fluid, and..." he trails off. "We can go home."

"This is our home," a Morty interjects.

"Not if you want to die here." Above, a spiderweb of cracks spreads across the sky. "There's--there's worlds outside of the Curve, and we can--we can find families. Maybe there's another Citadel. A Citadel of Mortys." Morty doesn't quite get the Curve, himself, and it looks like most of the Mortys don't either. "Aw, geez, this is hard to explain. It's like, uh, basically Ricks built this wall thing that--"

A hand hauls him off the podium.

"H-hey!"

"They're not gonna listen to your t-t-theory bullshit, Morty, unless they see it with their own goddamn eyes or something." Rick burps in his sleeve, but Morty's relieved to find that there's no smell of alcohol. "You wouldn't even believe it until the jackass version of you gave you a nice, neat visual. Brains aren't meant to understand infinity."

"But I gotta--"

"You don't have to persuade them, Morty. They want to live. They'll go into that portal. You're not us." Rick gestures to himself. "Maybe you hate yourself, maybe you thought it, but--you don't think of yourself as a fucking pathogen, Morty. To wipe yourself out before you do it to someone else."

Morty thinks of a younger Rick staring at the gun. He thinks of another memory--the one after Unity, the deep gut-punch of despair. Rick is a broken man, Morty realises. A man with an incomprehensible intelligence, a brilliance that outshone stars, and the feelings and torments of a stormy river, the stream dropping into an endless, agonising cataract that only brought ruin. 

"Then I'll just have to make sure they live," he tells Rick. Rick sighs, frustrated, but Morty thinks there's the faintest glimmer of pride on the older man's face.

"Heh. You wouldn't be y-you if you didn't--try to be some fucking hero."

.

.

.

On Day 61, Morty sees him in his dreams again.

This time it's an unfamiliar place. It looks a bit like his house, except the house is empty and the whole neighbourhood seems to be abandoned. The sky flickers a deep, dark grey, like a shroud pulled over the sun.

The other Morty isn't wearing a space suit, or a dress shirt, or the yellow shirt. It's a simple white teeshirt, black jeans, and he looks like any other Morty that drifts through the Citadel. He's sitting on the grass, tugging absentmindedly at green blades. Morty stands at the sidewalk, frozen.

"Well, come on," the other Morty finally says. "Sit down. Don't be shy."

Carefully, Morty sits a good distance from his other self. The grass is dry and brittle under his legs, but somehow they're still a lush green. There's no wind, no stray breeze; no sound. It's absolutely still, except for his own breathing.

The other Morty isn't wearing an eyepatch. One normal eye looks at him coolly, but the other--Morty swallows, and the right eye seems to watch him as well. A dead, pale iris, the cornea a rotted grey.

"Got it all out, didn't you? You're probably the only Morty that knows even half of what I know."

"I know he's a monster," Morty says softly. "I--I've know that for a long time."

"And yet you still haven't cut his throat in his sleep." The other Morty turns an eyepatch over and over in his hands. "He's not immortal, you know. There's ways to circumvent his resurrection."

Morty remembers the blenderised Ricks and Mortys all too well. 

"I'm not you. I can't do that."

"Hm."

Morty waits for the threat. For the cold, amused contempt from the other Morty, like watching a fly struggle in a spider's web. Casual threats against his entire family, an unspoken promise of obliterating his life with the twitch of a finger. A hand that presses down his throat with the same casualness as opening a door. 

"Mortiest Morty, aren't you." It's not a question. The other Morty sets the eyepatch down, and in the grass it looks like a small piece of fabric. Nothing notable. "What are you doing now?"

Morty's hands shake. 

"I'm n-n-not gonna tell you."

"It's a dream, what--C-130 Morty? C-133?" The other Morty shrugs. "Your little clump of C-dimensions. You think your life has any sort of meaning, that you can change anything, but not in your little, dreamless prison."

"Is it a dream? Or are you," Morty gulps. "Uh, you're--Maybe you got tech that could t-talk to me through the Curve. I dunno."

"Does it matter? You'll still do the same. You're blind, Morty. You can't even see what's going to happen."

Rick is a monster. A broken, walking monster of glass, one that leaves billions of bodies in his wake. Morty can picture it too clearly.

Morty, look at this--a whole planet destroyed, bodies curled into ash. Morty, look, you stupid little idiot--aliens, people, pleading, realities of possibilities too awful to contemplate, blood and bones over his hands again. Sometimes he can't even understand the magnitude, that the lives Rick has annihilated is something beyond even the most evil, depraved human on Earth. 

If I was really a hero, Morty thinks, then I'd do everything in my power to stop him.

His power. He has no power. He can take care of himself in a fight; he can't invent a fraction of what Rick has. If Rick wants to kill, he can only clean up the body afterwards. 

C'mon, Rick, let's not kill him. L-let's just get ice cream, okay?

H-h-hey, we can juh-juh-just talk it out. Oh geez, let's not shoot, alright?

That's my power, Morty realises, and it's a slow, burning realisation. His power to turn Rick away from his worst impulses. A small power, barely negligible, but--

It's the only one he has.

For now.

A memory floats up, low and hazy. One of many. A Rick drifting in the void, resigned to true nonexistence.

Be good, Morty. Be better than me.

There's only one person that's ever utterly, completely defeated Rick, so swiftly and brutally that Rick didn't know he was in the game at all, and Morty's staring at him.

The other Morty holds up a torn blade of grass. There's a smile on his face--it's faint, and not a nice one at all, but it's different than the amused ones back at the Citadel. If Morty didn't know better, the smile almost looks...

Contemplative.

"Dog on a leash," the other Morty remarks. For once, Morty thinks that it's referring to something else. "You and your unremarkable little family. I'm amazed that you lived so long."

For a single second, Morty wonders--if--if the other Morty had a family too. A Mom, a Dad, a Summer. A dog. A school, a crush, a home life. There's nothing that separates this Morty from the endless sea of Mortys. He wonders about the other Morty's eye. What might've happened to it.

"What do you want?" Morty finally ventures.

The other Morty stays silent, and Morty's brain races with thoughts--I want every Rick and Morty dead, I want every of my families obliterated, I want you to die. I want you and your shitty grandfather to hang themselves as a concession to every other fucking person in the multiverse.

"To not be one of you," the other Morty replies plainly. There's no malice in his tone; he might as well be remarking on the colour of the grass. "I don't want anyone to know me beyond the Curve."

The utter disassociation of an identity.

The dream starts blurring at the edges. The sky hasn't changed colour or have any movement at all--it's like everything is trapped in a snapshot of time, with only him and the other Morty existing at all. Everything else is washed-out, liminal.

"This was my home," the other Morty says, so, so quietly. It's the first time Morty has heard any emotion from him that wasn't cruel satisfaction or cold amusement. Shock rockets through Morty, but there's little time to process before the next words come--"It's a dead world. It's a dead dimension."

Morty can't breathe.

"Yeah." The other Morty laughs softly, and it contains no mirth at all. It almost sounds pained. His hand twitches, unconsciously, and Morty watches the hand briefly hover over his right eye. "I'm the only thing left." Another laugh, and as the dream begins to fade, Morty swears he can see a glistening of tears. "Just me and the grass. I'm the only thing that matters."

Morty lets himself drift, the words echoing in his head.

.

.

.

Day 63, the first group of Ricks and Mortys walk through the blue portal.

They must've appeared within the Curve--or the ruins of it--because a nearby screen lights up, and Morty watches Surgeon Rick, Nurse Morty, Hammerhead Morty, and a Deformed Morty wave from a screen, with the Rick holding up the middle finger instead. It appears to be a desert world, but there seems to be trees in the distance. 

"Everyone stop g-gawking and move," Rick grumbles. "The more people go through, the more unstable this bootleg fluid is. You wanna end up inevitably in the Blender Dimension, go right the fuck ahead."

"I came from the Blender Dimension," a Morty chips in. Come to think of it, Morty can't look at him properly--he looks 2-D, but also 3-D, but--

"You're a fractal self, you can survive it, no one gives a--" Rick glances at Morty. "--uh, I mean, right. Cool. That's--so cool to know."

Morty refrains from rolling his eyes.

The next group is Plant Rick with 5-6 Deformed Mortys and Flower Morty, and then next is Rita with three Morticias, a robot Morty, and a pizza Morty. Then a Rick with the blue-and-white cap and the fuchsia-headband Morty twins, along with four typical Mortys, and then the Cop Rick with the three Mortys Morty had first encountered in the control room, and--

Some screens flare up with their signals. Some don't. Rick rubs his mouth, brow furrowed. 

"R-rick, are they--"

"They're not dead, Morty." Rick stares hard at the lifeless screen. "They're beyond the Curve. They're--they're on their own."

"Rick? What if--" Morty tugs at the hem of his shirt. "What if we end up there as well?" He thinks of the other Morty's words. He wonders if they'd end up in that empty, lifeless dimension. 

"Then we end up there."

"What if there's something stronger than you?" Zap. zap. zap. More Mortys. More Ricks. The blue of the portal swells, distends; Morty can't quite focus on it. "Do we--do we fight it?"

"We run away."

"But what if--"

"Morty," Rick says, and his voice is harsh, but his expression is strange. "We'll live. Okay? We've made it so far." I'm amazed that you lived so long. "We're--" Rick reaches over and Morty thinks he's going to grab his wrist, but then Rick is holding out a hand to him, just like he had when they had been escaping the Citadel. Trust in this. Trust in me. "We're Rick and Morty, okay? Yeah, maybe a shit-fuck of infinite universes don't even have us anymore, but we exist just as much as them. We'll be okay. We'll make it back home."

Morty takes in his grandfather's ramrod posture, the way his eyes never leave the blue portal. The slightest, barely detectable tremor in his hand.

"You're scared."

It's not a question.

He expects Rick to yell at him. He expects Rick to vehemently scream--"no, Morty, what the fuck? Just because your pussy little brain can't handle it"--he expects Rick to scoff, to roll his eyes. Rick looks over at him, and for a second, Morty realises how old his grandfather looks.

Outside, cracks spread across the dome, splinters of unbearable magnitude, and the ground quakes violently. Inside, it's only the steady zap, zap, zap. Fewer screens are lighting up.

"Yeah," Rick admits, and his voice has never been so quiet before. "Yeah, I am."

"Rick..."

Rick smiles, just a little, and it's a tired smile. "Your old man's g-getting worried now, huh? Must--must be new." He's still holding his hand out. 

There's only handfuls of Mortys and a few Ricks left. Zap. zap. zap. The ground shakes, so intensely that Morty almost falls over. Instinctively, he grabs onto Rick's hand. He can feel Rick's trembling now, long strong fingers wrapped tightly around his own. 

Morty thinks of the first time he's held that hand, as Rick pulls him alien world after alien world, the kaleidoscope of colours and sights and sounds that crash into his normal, human mind. His first time in the spaceship, looking down at Earth; his first time through the portal, the sheer feeling of dissociating from every single atom in your body. He remembers dark, seedy corners, neon nightclubs in different light spectrums, four suns in the sky, sand that breathed and lived. Bodies, cast aside, broken bones and shattered corpses, oceans of blood and empty, hollow eyes. His own selves, infinite in their scale, staring back at him with despair. His other self, a boy with a ruined eye. 

"Me too," Morty says, and unlike Rick he's said it so many times before. This time, Rick listens. This time, Rick squeezes his hand in comfort, in sympathy.

I know what you feel.

Morty thinks of a lone traveller in space, with only a portal gun and a photograph of a murderer to keep him company.

He thinks of himself, another traveller, another number in the multiverse.

One of many.

"L-let's go, then." He tugs his grandfather to the portal.

Morty goes, and Rick follows, and the blue light swallows them whole.