Chapter Text
In the end, the worst part was that he really, really didn’t need Rick.
It was as simple as travelling to the Citadel and impersonating a Morty, as f*cking easy as that. Rick even made things easier for him by leaving him a portal gun, so he wouldn’t have to figure out how to survive outside this dimension. There was nothing holding him back.
(His family? They weren’t really his family. His Rick abandoned him for two brainless birds, his dimension was a post-apocalyptic world.)
And yet, he found himself waking up every day, hoping this was all some kind of cosmic joke. Hoping, wanting him to come back. Rick and Morty for a hundred years, right?
What a liar.
The first day he didn’t get out of bed, controlling his breath because a panic attack was the last thing he needed. He told himself that he would never, ever again. That he would fall asleep in this bed and wake up in this bed and not on the garage floor with a hangover. He could control it. He wasn’t Rick. He didn’t have a goddamn problem with this.
Fake it until you make it.
And so he spent a week without Rick, going to school, listening to his classes and somehow managing to drink beer at a normal speed at his classmates’ parties. He asked a girl out or whatever, just to feel normal. Kids his age do that sort of thing, right? Just a little game of complicit silences.
(He also brought scented candles for his room and a mint mouth patch. His father was happy that Morty was finally acquiring ‘normal’ hobbies, happy enough to no question why he now needed two cups of coffee to really wake up in the mornings and why he smelled like a flower shop all day.)
He wasn't a coward. Well, he was. But he was in the expected way, the way all Mortys were: stuttering and trembling when the air was filled with bullets, hiding behind Rick when things went bad.
But certainly not the kind that talked about things. Not the kind that would break down and cry in his mother's lap.
Besides, that would be pretty stupid and pointless. Beth had always been more Rick's daughter than Morty's mother.
What did normal people in his position do?
Look to others for emotional support? Did people reallydo that?
What a depressing thought.
It was a stupid decision, obviously. But there were little shame in being a Morty and making stupid decisions. That was the standard, after all.
4:00 AM. A party in the suburbs and a late Uber. It had been really boring, to be honest. He'd kissed a girl, maybe, and then had about 5 shots before deciding he should have more self-control than that. Should be the key word.
He had been looking for a way to distract himself and, well, there were some guys snorting PCP in a corner. Compared to that, taking another guy to bed was almost innocent.
In part, it reminded him of Rick, which made it slightly more personal. An awkward kiss here, a caress here, and then the mechanical action to seal the deal.
Morty didn’t ask his name, nor did he linger looking at his body like people in erotic novels did.
He was missing something. He always knew he was missing something. But know, seeing the expression on that face, the same expression he had seen on the faces of the girls he had been with in the past, and only being able to respond with a fake smile…
It felt good, he supposed.
He then went downstairs, sat on the couch and sent an audio insulting the unpunctual Uber driver, then asked his mother to take a detour on her way to work and pick him up.
He ordered another shot.
It was good.
This should have meant something to him. If he didn’t feel anything for girls, he should feel something for guys, right? That makes sense, only it didn’t because he hadn’t encountered anything but the same emptiness as before. Like he could recite verbatim what made people feel attracted to other people, but he just couldn't feel it himself.
It was different with Rick, he thought bitterly. The old man was far from being anything resembling 'pretty'. He was too thin, he smelled of alcohol even in the morning, and his hands were bony and, if anything, cruel by definition, as if they were made to inflict harm. And yet Morty would admit to himself that he found what they were doing exciting. The feeling that they were one mistake away from dying, being caught f*cking, and both at the same time. It was how their lives worked.
(Past tense. Past tense)
That was what drove him to think he was gay in the first place, that maybe he was just in denial, that one night with a boy his age, receptive and conventionally attractive, might awaken something in him. That thing that everyone seemed to have but him.
He... he supposed it was a stupid thought to begin with.
Rick came back, after all. He always did that.
Morty poured the contents of his last vodka bottles down the toilet.
A tremor lingered in his hands as he buried his other self, even as his expression was calm, almost bored. That was, at least, one thing he and 'Evil Morty' could agree on: show too much emotion and you'll lose.
He couldn't say it particularly bothered him because, truth be told, there had come a point where there were few things that could make him feel that way. But the similarities between him and the other Morty were... uncomfortable, to say the least.
('Evil' Morty, certainly. The only one capable of making that term mean anything. Perhaps the only one who deserved to be called this way.)
Maybe, he thought, because he wasn't the only one seeing them.
A hand on his shoulder snapped him out of his thoughts. Rick, again.
He wondered if he should act traumatized, like last time. Or if he should instead be the picture of calmness itself, that of someone too used to having his world fall apart over and over again without being able to do anything about it. He finally decided that his habit of faking emotions was another thing he should talk to Dr. Wong about.
"Hey, little buddy, are you okay?" was the first thing out of Rick's mouth.
Morty would've liked to laugh, but honestly, there was nothing funny about it.
"Like I'm not used to this." he rolled his eyes. "Cut the crap, Rick. I'm not telling you where Summer hid your whisky."
Rick stepped back and made that face Morty knew all too well: like he'd been spit in the face. It was the same one he'd had the days after Unity broke up with him.
But he didn't flinch, he decidedly didn't flinch.
Partly because that was what a grandson concerned about his grandfather's alcoholism should do and partly because, if this universe was really identical to the last except in the pronunciation of one word, that alcohol was already gone.
(Somewhere, he wondered if his sister knew . She had to; she had always been a smart girl, as Rick liked to call her.
Whether she cared was another matter.)
The next few months passed in a blur.
Morty continued to get into trouble at school (it wasn't like he actually went to school regularly, but when he did go he caused trouble. Semantics). The only good part was that after the 'Akira incident', as his father liked to call it, the teachers stopped bothering him and the school counselor decided to look for another job. Which suited Morty just fine.
Then there was the Roy game incident, of course.
It was more humiliating than anything else, letting Rick delve into the deepest parts of his psyche only to see the mess of chaos, war and power struggles that a world where everyone was Morty became.
To be honest, he hoped that a larger part of him was happy with having a normal life.
He looked at the papers he'd hidden months ago under his bed, covered in dust and filled with the things he never wanted to hear. But he was a damn coward, and had simply pulled them out of sight without even finishing reading them. What was the point? He already knew what they said.
He remembered him again, him . And he wondered what was wrong with his genetics. What had come from this horrible man that made his grandson so different from the grandsons of equally horrible men. But that was too mundane a way of putting it, because, of course, none of the Primes would ever settle for being second best at something, and especially if that something was bad.
He remembered N-034's words. ' You're smart.' The 'smart' blurted out as if it were an oddity, the kind of thing you'd say in front of an albino parrot or a blue crab. You don't talk to a person like that.
But all in all, that was the only good thing. Morty thought as he ran his finger along that single line of text. He was overcome with some sort of pride, a pride that didn't take long to die after the next intrusive thought took over:
'Evil' Morty sitting in that chair at the end of the table, with his suit and tie and a look so neat he wished to throw a bucket full of dirt on him.
No Morty should look like that. As if he could defend himself, as if he was in control, as if he could be stronger or crueler or smarter than anyone else. That wasn't how the universe worked.
He put the papers away again, not sure what scared him more: the truth or what might be.
Morty knew who Rick saw when he looked at him. Sometimes he almost resented it, sometimes he celebrated it as another way to keep him under control, to keep him close.
Because getting rid of Morty, getting rid of this Morty, would be as painful and traumatizing as losing her again.
Morty prided himself on having made sure of that.
He knew he was nothing more than a fragile reflection of a dead woman. All her bad parts, wrong. The thinly veiled lies, the playful tone in front of a game of pleasure and aggression, the bottle of cough syrup and amphetamines he slipped into his flask while he wasn't looking.
But that was the best he would get and far more than he deserved.
His parents suspected something.
Morty took the memory gun, put it in Rick's hands and whispered some lies about bravery.
It was almost funny. He was sure his original would have fallen for something like that too.
Like all great inventions, this one also started with a few pieces of metal and a lot of desperation. He drew some very rudimentary plans on white paper with exaggerated codes and measurements that only he understood. He couldn't let Rick find out what he was doing.
He had a distant memory of him , the other one, talking about this abomination during a particularly dark night. A memory of sitting on a high stool with a black eye and his legs crossed, with a pile of cotton balls and gauze compressing the wounds on his ankles.
He didn't drink, or do drugs, which didn't make him any less violent, though perhaps less explosive. He also didn't have sex with anyone, and not for lack of opportunity. He once told Morty that the whole thing was 'more boring than the new Star Wars trilogy'. Because his grandfather talked to him about a lot of inappropriate sh*t he didn't want to know.
One of those things, Morty was grateful for. And it was an image that, after a little digging, had come back as vivid as the first time he saw it. Some blueprints, how could it be otherwise. His head was full of blueprints.
Maybe his only way to defend himself, he thought as he welded two pieces of steel together. He had convinced Rick that some mechanical lessons would make him a more competent sidekick, so he had the afternoon free to work on this project. Although he had a few excuses ready in case he was interrupted.
He took another look at the missing diagram, because the memory was pretty good, but not perfect. Morty actually had an incredible advantage, one without which he knew he wouldn't have gotten half as far, but there were still holes to fill with a little reverse engineering.
God bless Ricks' massive ego.
Morty drew a line between the two diagrams and realized he still needed to correct some calculations. Basic crap compared to what he had already done.
Then he stood up, stretched and sat down at his desk. The hand in which he held the pencil began to tremble.
He told himself that Rick, surely, set out on his quest having death as a possibility, if not a certainty. He was that kind of idiot. And, if he ended up digging deep enough to drag them both into a no-return sh*t hole, then Morty was well within his rights to save himself no matter what.
If you've ever been sick of him, you'vebeen evil, too
Hopefully, it wouldn't come to that. Morty was simply being paranoid.
Still, he rested pencil to paper and continued to plan.
Because he was sick of him. Of all versions of him, to be honest. And if that made him evil, then the word evil meant nothing.
There were pools of blood at his feet and empty faces staring at him, haunting him in his sleep. Accusing fingers and judgmental eyes. And none of it was from being sick of Rick. It was from being too much like him.
He wondered if Evil Morty had noticed that.
When it was done, he hid the device in the walls, its shape adapted to small spaces. He would have to deploy it when it was time to use it.
If. He held on to that. If.
Finding a Rick was the easiest part in retrospect. At first he thought about using one of the Project Phoenix clones, but he wasn't sure if it would work and it wasn't like he could test it.
It would have been a simpler matter if the Citadel was still standing. He could have gone to some dingy bar and taken home a drunken Rick. He was used to groping and terrible flirting and drunk Ricks, both because of the alcohol and their habit of believing themselves invincible, were easy to handle.
Relatively.
"Because I b-believe in you and you believe in me." he said, legs crossed in front of the bed and that tearful tone filling his voice. "And I d-don't have anyone else anymore."
It was a dingy place, not unlike the bar of his imagination, only there was no longer a Citadel to speak of. There were space rats in the closet, bruises on his skin and blood on his lips.
Protect me. He begged with that scene.
Morty saw the exact moment when Rick fell into his trap, when his expression turned into something pitiful and his touch softened. When he reached over and parted Morty's legs with less lust and more contemplation, more compassion. When he stopped looking at him as something to dominate and began to look at him as something to guard.
One night. A few scratches and the feeling that he would never be clean again. One more day.
Morty clung to his neck, whispered a few lies and thought.
That was what Rick wanted, for the most part. And this Rick was no exception. The right to act like a child while being admired as a father, as a god. Uncaring. The universe was his sandbox and Morty was just another one of his toys. That was just the way things worked.
(How dumb do you have to be to let a Morty do this to you?)
The moment he cum inside Morty was the same moment a hypodermic needle found its way into the skin on the back of his neck.
He only had enough time to let out a truly pathetic moan before his head fell, limp, onto Morty's body.
How anticlimactic. He thought as he placed his unconscious body on a makeshift stretcher.
He saw him die this time. Well, he didn't exactly see it, he just saw the blood and heard the sound of breaking bones. But it doesn't matter, because he pretended that hugging him, him, the other, was a statement. "You're my original now" that kind of sh*t.
And, when they got home, he helped Rick clean up the blood with a damp cloth and a lot of patience. Rick had a machine that could do it in only a quarter of the time needed, but he was too far gone to remember and Morty didn't want the family to see him in that state. Beth would ask questions and Morty would have to make up some lie and Rick would just stand there, staring into space like a dead man.
He didn't wonder what this meant for him, because he knew it intimately. His grandfather was dead and he was here, cleaning up the killer. Telling him that everything is okay now, that they survived, that they are complete.
(They are not complete at all. Two strangers playing at being family. Removing the rough edges and ingrown wounds with carpenter's sandpaper.)
He will never change.
Rick didn't cry, but the social smile he flashed her at dinner was almost worse, made him want to curl up in a dark place and die.
Is this what revenge did to people?
Morty wondered how many sacrifices Rick had made, how many things he had lost, things he neither knew nor would ever know. All to return to the same place as in the beginning, sharing a meal with his family of strays and replacements. Was it all worth it?
(And all for her)
(Was it worth it, Morty?)
Rick drank until 4 a.m. and Morty was by his side the whole time, as he always was. Summer could brag all she wanted about how smart Rick thought she was, but when push came to shove the only person willing to clean up his vomit was Morty.
He didn't push Rick's hand away when it tried to sneak into the valley of his thighs. If it would make him feel better, Morty repeated to himself, then that was fine.
Rick pulled down his pants and dragged his tongue around the area around his co*ck, laughing like he was telling the best joke in the world. He grabbed the head with his fingers and stroked it, telling Morty what a good boy he was or something as he stumbled over his words.
He had to admit, there was something about the way drunk Rick touched him. The kind of childish frustration that invaded his face on the days when he couldn't get Morty to play along, when it was all too odd even for someone so used to pretending. And another thing, the wild longing for something more: either for Morty to punch him in the face and drive him away or to beg him to continue, to f*ck him.
Morry has done both in the past, it all depended on his mood and how big he considered the chances of Rick ending up puking all over him.
That night he decided he could indulge him.
He interrupted Rick's exploration by reaching down with his own hand to start undressing him. He ripped off his robe in one practiced motion, ignoring his incoherent moans. He trailed his fingers down his abdomen and finally wrapped them around his grandfather's co*ck.
Rick made a choked sound as Morty began to stroke it, teasing the tip with his thumbnail. Swift, hard, with the kind of pressure of someone who wants to finish as quickly as possible.
Morty felt Rick cling to his shoulder and a slight pink tinge flooded his face (one he certainly couldn't attribute to drunkenness), and stifled a laugh. Rick had always been hilariously sensitive to this sort of thing, especially when drunk.
It was fine that way, Morty thought. Rick usually preferred to take the initiative, but he was easy enough to subdue when he couldn't even walk without staggering. And, at least for Morty, it was much less uncomfortable to touch than to allow someone to touch him.
He died laughing.
Morty wondered if, after all this, they were still playing.
"My sister’s dead, my mother’s dead, literally my whole dimension is dead," he lowered his tone a hundredth. " My grandfather is dead, who's next, you son of a bitch, who's next?"
He knew he was being a big mouth and that this was just for his own benefit. This Rick didn't even know what he was talking about, if his pained babble was any clue.
It was the most unpleasant part of the surgery: keeping him conscious enough to be able to assess in real time the effects on his brain. He didn't want the motor part to be harmed in any way, since designing other brain prostheses might take a few weeks, and he deduced that multiple skull openings in a small time frame might be detrimental.
Rick squealed openly as Morty finished removing exactly half of his frontal lobe. It was interesting to watch, as his eyes went from utter terror to confusion and lethargy as Morty placed the piece in a food tapper. He would have to remember to get rid of it later.
"Who's next, Rick ?"
He pulled the replacement lobe prosthesis out of a container and knew he had to be quick about placing it. He certainly didn't want to blow this opportunity.
He thought about putting the receiving device in the spine, just to innovate, but he guessed the safest thing to do was to go the classic eye route.
He walked to the corner of the room and turned up the volume on the radio, loud enough that he couldn't even hear his own thoughts.
He was dead. Dead. Prime, the other, his f*cking grandfather.
He wiped the blood from his hands. He straightened his shirt. He began to formulate the lies he would tell to explain his absence.
He had just performed a lobotomy on a version of his grandfather. He put a chip in him to control him, direct him like a puppet. He had planned to use it to erase all versions of him from existence if necessary. But, he supposed, that scenario was more unlikely than ever.
And he was dead. Morty had watched him die.
It shouldn't hurt as much as it did.
