Chapter Text
Rick C-1902b stares at Rick C-236.B and takes a long swig of his flask. It’s purposeful, and a dick move at that. C-236.B’s flask had been confiscated after they’d finished patting him down (they’d completely missed the vials of high toxicity neuron gas he’d shoved up his ass so at least he had that if it came to it) and his hand twitched. His brow pushed down, and he glared at C-1902b, who made a show of shotgunning the rest of the vodka before tucking away the flask in his lab coat. “So, you’re being dem-ugh-demoted, huh?”
He wished he was that level of shit-faced right then. Sobriety wasn’t a good look on him. “Apparently.”
“Heh.” C-1902b flipped through a stack of papers. “You’re getting a bughh- a defective. Sign here.”
There’s no real argument to be had. He was just another Rick who’d tried to topple the oligarchy of Rick’s. It had been done before. It’d be done again. He was just another cog in a pattern. And each one of them, of which there had been many, was eventually given the temporary sentence of a defective Morty.
It usually lasted a few short months before the sentences were retracted for a lighter, more manageable one.
Toppling the oligarchy was, after all, an every day sort of thing. It didn’t warrant much more than a slap on the wrist. And a few months with a shitty side piece was usually all they got for it.
He signed Ape Aids on the paper (for which the proctor only snorted and filed somewhere next to Chimp Fuckers), handed in his number card, and walked around the desk. C-1902b got up and followed in step. He fiddled with his portal gun and pointed it at the bare wall. “They got you a real nice place, shit bag. Real nice.”
“Shut the fuck up and do your job.”
C-1902b guffaws. “You’re gonna fuckin’ love this.” He shoots. The green portal opens with a resounding braaaaaaawwhhhh and C-236.B huffs a heavy sort of sigh that smells too much like vomit and booze.
This whole place smelled like vomit and piss and booze. Home, the Rick’s would call that. He saluted the other Rick, and with a chirp of -”see you later, pussy” and a high held middle finger, he steps through, into the suburbia that greets him on the other side.
There’s a social worker at the front door. Which is… strange. Because he’s standing on the lawn and there’s a social worker sort of just standing around like he doesn’t know what the fuck is going on either, and he looks at Rick for a second like he’s some sort of old vagrant before knocking on the door again. “Mrs. Smith-?”
“That’s my daughter.”
The social worker ignores him in favor of pounding on the door. “Mrs. Smith!”
Rick steps forward. He still doesn’t have his flask. Or anything. Except for an ass full of neuron gas but this seems like too much effort to pull a squat just to wriggle that thing out. He groans and pushes forward again, whipping out an arm to snag at the mans coat. “Hey. Dipshit.” The man finally turns enough to ogle Rick with huge, owlish eyes. “I’m her father. Whatever she did, you can fucking talk to me.”
“She abandoned her kids.”
Well. That didn’t sound like Beth.
That sounded like him. Not like Beth.
“I don’t think so.”
“She got drunk again.” said the social worker, by ways of moving the conversation forward. “It was stipulated in her parole-” blah blah blah
“My daughter wouldn’t do that. She” (loves? adores? tolerates?) “likes her kids.”
“Sir, she’s an alcoholic with a long streak of theft. She’s only been on parole for three days. She ran.” The small graces were that the world made some logical sense. He'd always wondered what would have happened had Beth inherited his more questionable bits. It would seem this was the reality for the realities to unfold. Rick's not sure whether he should be horrified at the concept or delighted by the execution.
The latter seems more bearable. “Smart choice. Avoid the government.” He always knew his Beth was a good one.
“She left her kids!” He wiggled his files in the air. “Again!”
“Kids get in the way of the whole, avoid the government.”
“Sir-”
Rick cut him off with a snort. “So what? So do you… go find her or something? She’ll go… go to rehab and do some shit and what? What’s gonna happen.”
“I don’t know, sir.” The social workers tone became clipped and slow. Like he was talking to a three year old and not a galaxy renowned scientist. Rick clenched his jaw. “She’s missing. She ran away. Again. As if her husband was any help-” (well… at least they were agreed on one thing…) “-he’s off god knows where and now her kids are alone. If a neighbor hadn’t called…”
Oh… oh this was good.
A defective Morty with no Beth. No Jerry. Him and Summer alone without anything. Oh this was perfect! Rick began to compose the speech in his mind. He’d throw it right back at those other Rick’s ballsacks. He’d say too bad! Sent me to the wrong place! Return my belongings and give me a new, functional shield, and go fuck yourselves while you’re at it! He’d be home free.
And it was looking like all of this would turn out this way. Like it was all going to tumble into a perfect little pile of Hell Yeah I’m Rick until…
Until the social worker turned on him.
“You,” said the social worker.
“Me.” stated Rick.
“You’re their grandfather?”
“Uh.”
“I mean, I’ll have to check the paperwork! Make sure you’re really- I can go get that now! Oh my god, sir, this is going to make my life so much better! Oh and the kids, of course, but… but god this is so much paperwork and time saved!”
“Uh-”
“If you wan’t to come into the office? I can get you all the things you need! I assume you’re going to be living in the house or do you have your own residence-” He was wearing cufflinks and they winked at Rick as if to say "suck it".
"Hold on-"
"This would only be temporary of course, sir. Until the mother can be found. Or the father. Just temporary. But gee whiz this sure makes my job easier! Real easier, sir!"
“Hold the fucking phone.” Rick lifted his palms and shook them in front of the mans face until they resembled little, albino trees on a blustery, blustery day. “Hold the mother fucking phone. You want me to-”
“You’re their next of kin!”
“I’m an alcoholic.”
“I can have you everything by tomorrow! Does that work?”
“I’m definitely abusive.”
“Or would you rather come in today? The sooner the better!”
“I’m going to scar these kids. Like… l-like totally. Beyond redemption. They will be fucked. up.”
“Today. Today is the best.” The social worker beamed up at the abusive, alcoholic, child-scarring man with an earnest sort of glee. “Oh this is wonderful, sir, just wonderful. You already know the children, I’m sure, but I think it best if you explain it all to them, don’t you? Don’t you think that that’s best?”
There were two options.
He could just walk away.
Scratch that. He’s walking. Now.
“Sir? Sir, where are-!”
“Are you… are you my grandpa Rick?” He turns. Oh. Ohhhh fuck.
The social worker kneels down. “Yes, Summer. He’s your grandfather. You know him?”
Summer is at the door. Only she’s not as tall and not as fake-blonde and not as anything. She’s younger. And her eyes are bigger. And she’s doing a fan-fucking-tastic job staring at him with them.
The girl shook her head, but opened her mouth to declare that she’d “met him once” but a long time ago, since Beth had stopped seeing guests in favor of the bottom of a bottle. She didn’t talk about the fact that he’d left voluntarily. He didn’t have to be a part of this universe to know that. Rick’s always left. And they always came back just to screw everything over a few times.
He takes a step back. Summer’s eyes are on him again.
“Where are you going, Grandpa Rick?” There’s a noise behind her, and a younger child, two or three or just spectacularly short, toddles up and takes her hand and peers around at the older man like he’s seeing him for the first time. He probably is.
“Morty, look! It’s our…” her eyes flicker up, then down again, “Grandpa?”
“Rick. Just Rick.”
“Grandpa,” she amends. She’d always been that way- declaring the world her own through whatever words she chose. The Morty behind her shifted and hid his face against her back. “He’s gonna take care of us?”
“He is,” said the social worker, who holds out a pen. “Right, Mr. Smith?”
He probably should say no, and watch them get hauled into the stupid pussy green Pries that's sitting on the road. Off to some stupid godforsaken government fondled foster center. They'd be separated and one or both of them would end up in some shitty situation with the whole "hard knock life" vibe. And that didn't matter. He didn't care. He could wait until they'd been weathered by someone else besides him, and then sweep them back up, the hard work of shattering two innocent souls completed and the lazy, aftereffects left for him to do with as he pleased. Except... a few years, alone, in suburbia. That sounded like a borefest beyond all borefests.
Entertainment came in all forms, he supposed.
Rick sighs. His plan forgotten and his spirits, for the most part, dashed, he eased forward and took the pen. “It’s Sanchez,” he said, signing the bottom. “And bring the stupid fucking paperwork tomorrow.”
“Will do, sir!”
There are at least a few good things here, Rick thinks, when he shuts the door and looks down at the two tiny children who stand in front of him.
Morty, who still hides his face still against Summer’s back, is young.
Young enough to make an impression.
A lasting impression.
A I’ll-Do-Whatever-Without-Complaining sort of impression.
The kind that could make all those other Rick’s realize who’d gotten the best part of the deal. When he walked through the citadel with his loyal, no questions asked Morty. They’d see. They’d all see.
“So,” says Summer, reaching behind her to hold Morty’s shoulders at an odd angle. “Your our… parent?”
He breaks out of his reveries long enough to look down at her. “No. I’m your grandparent. You got booze?”
“No. I’m six.”
“Okay. But is there booze here.”
“I don’t know. I’m six.”
He draws out a long sigh.
“Are you going to stay here forever?”
“No,” says Rick, who’s turning around to go find booze. The two kids march fast to keep up with his legs. “I’m going to stay long enough to break you two into obedient little servants who will bend at my every will.” He points to the little boy. “Especially you.” Morty, who had peeked over the curve of Summer’s neck, pushes his face between Summer’s shoulder blades. “And then once I’ve gotten there, I’m going to shove it into the stupid Citidel’s face and they’ll take me back as a hero. O-or I don't know. But I can get my apartment keys back at least. And then you,” he points again to Morty, “will be my mental shield, and you,” the finger inches over to Summer, “are going to be a nagging bitch. Sound good?”
The impressive little speech hangs in the air between them.
Summer squints up at him until her nose wrinkles. “Okay. But are you going to make dinner?”
The moment is promptly lost. “Probably not.” says Rick. He goes back to the cabinets. There really was no booze. The parole officers must have snagged it. Fucking government pawns. “Eh… you guys eat pizza?”
“Yeah.”
“Pizza it is.”
“I want pineapples on mine.”
“Pineapples are for whores, Summer.”
Morty pokes his head over, his brown curls bobbing. “I want pineapple,” he squeaks, mimicking his sister with his own desire for the whorish fruit.
They end up ordering a pie with half pineapple, half anything else, and eat in silence around the table. Summer helps Morty with his. Rick just watches. She takes care of the younger, it looks like, down to silently lifting his hand when the cheese begins to drip down his wrist. Beth must have been in a fucking state not to. She’d never been mom of the year. But this was… something new.
The two are mostly self sufficient, and so teeth are brushed and beds are turned down without a fuss or help. Morty shuts his door and Summer leaves hers open, and Rick wanders to his own bedroom to find its an office, and so he ends up wandering to the couch downstairs and claiming it as his own.
Well. It could be better. It could be worse. But for all that it was, he would break them. And then… then they would see. Then they would all see just what happened when you messed with a Rick and his deficient Morty.
It’s two weeks in, when the house is actually functioning (albeit very loosely) with a sort of schedule, when Morty is still not talking to him that he the whole “breaking” plan is seeming a little harder than before.
As it turns out, it's quite difficult to convince children they're subservient or that you're as close to a God as they'll ever know or that their true purpose is to be dragged along on near fatal adventures for your own selfish, ego jack off, game. Especially when one won't speak and the other crosses her arms and glares up and says "make me". And so attempts mostly fail with glares or curses flung this way and that while he storms off to who knows where to stew.
Morty and him had always clicked. Clicked like two puzzle pieces being shoved and broken together. But at least they’d worked. This Morty peers at him from behind couches and shoves cereal in his mouth to avoid letting words out.
He learns a few things about each kid. Things he knew from their older versions. And things that he’d missed when he’d missed the whole young kid age.
Summer hates artichokes and tuna fish, but is okay with salmon as long as it’s mixed with mayo.
Morty likes drawing. And that’s about it.
He draws on everything. Everywhere. There’s little sneaky dots on the walls that he hides with the Fisher Price toys scattered around, and a few on the legs of the couch. Paper is everywhere, crumpled up, and covered with different strings of terrible art. Summer is the one who usually picks them up and throws them away, shoving them deep into the trashcan next to the beer cans from Rick’s late night science binges. “Just leave him alone while he draws,” Summer advises, sounding like she’s ten years older than just six, but he doesn’t comment. “It’s how he coped.”
“With what? A drunk?” Rick shakes the can in her face and she swats it away.
“It’s how he coped,” she says again, before throwing the rest of the drawings out.
He’ll find Morty “coping” every so often. And each time, he tries to make some sort of… conversation? Mind bending alteration? … breakthrough? …mental scar? Today, the chosen place is from under the table, with a crayon in each hand, and a paper in front of his feet. Rick bends down. “Hey, kid, you gonna talk now or w-ugh-what.”
Morty nearly snaps the crayon in two and crawls out, hurrying to find a new place to hide. His drawing (it’s a whale. or a dinosaur. or… maybe a weird vagina creature or something?) is left behind.
Rick picks it up. He turns it one way. He turns it the other way. “Huh,” says Rick.
He hangs it on the fridge with a super magnet he’d created to attract quarters (a mostly failed project- it’d gotten him pennies and not much else).
The next day, Morty is once again coloring something that resembles a group of drowning people. Rick snorts. “Hey, not bad!”
That’s enough to send the kid into an anxiety ridden spiral and he dives under the couch and stays there until Summer drags him out by his ankles.
The picture, which is a lot of blue shit, goes up on the fridge.
By the end of the week, their fridge is mostly covered with Morty’s “coping”.
He’ll find Morty standing at the foot of it, staring up. He gives the kids leg a little kick. “Not bad, right?” The kid blinks at him. Better than running away. “I bluhhh- I got this fridge to magnetize to substances containing traces of tree pulp and wax. Set it real low, s-so it’ll only work for paper and crayons and shit. You like?”
Morty looks back at it. And then he hands Rick a new drawing. “Sure,” says Rick, thwaking it onto the fridge. “That good?”
Morty nods.
“You want dinner? Pizza?”
Morty shakes his head.
His grandfather groans. “Right. Okay. So I can’t cook much shit b-but…” he opens the fridge, and the paper flutters and whisks around, “how -how are eggs. You like eggs?”
Morty nods.
They eat a pile of party burned eggs for dinner. Morty helps his grandfather bring the plates to the kitchen, and hands them off before scurrying up to bed.
They never ask where their mother is. Or their father. They never really mention their names or faces. Summer doesn’t seem at all torn up at the concept of a sudden and uncaring guardian, and Morty is content to hold his sisters hand and tag along.
Rick feels bad for them in the kind of kicked puppy way.
“You want to call your mom or… I dunno… something?” asks Rick one day to the kids.
Summer is brushing her hair in the mirror and doesn’t bother to look away from what she’s doing. “No,” she says. Morty, who’s next to her sitting on the toilet lid and watching, doesn’t do anything. “She’ll call if she wants to.”
She doesn’t call.
That tells Rick a lot about this reality, which is sort of more fucked up than the other ones he’s been to.
He didn’t think that was much possible.
The fridge is literally drowning in paper.
Between that and eggs, Rick is basically running a household.
Which is… different.
The plans to break the kids get put off in favor of other, more important things. Like trying not to burn eggs.
Morty’s first words to him were supposed to be something like “what can I do to serve you” or “I’ll be your eternal slave forever and always” or “gee whizz, Rick, don’t you think this is dangerous?” or something Morty-ish like that.
“Can you reach the ice cream.”
That’s the first words. The first fucking words.
“What?”
Morty points to the paper swamped freezer. “The ice cream.” He’s got a little bit of a lisp, and two of his teeth are missing. He’d never opened his mouth, so the elderly man never noticed. “I want chocolate.”
“Oh.” Rick opens the freezer. It’s the first one, on the bottom, and it’s still full. He doesn’t even comprehend the magnitude of the fact that his grandchild is finally talking to him, or the fact that his first words to him are so puss poor and definitely not in line with his plans at all -I mean for real, isn’t he supposed to be the one giving directions?- but he’s sort of overtaken by the fact that holy shit there’s ice cream.
He spoons it into three cups and shouts something like Summer get your ass down here up the stairs, and plants them all in front of the television and says “alright Kids, I’m gonna introduce you to the wonders of ball fondlers.”
The usual Morty liked it more than this Morty. But this Morty at least stays quiet. He crosses his legs and watches and drops half the ice cream onto the couch, which Rick is going to have a shit time cleaning but he doesn’t care.
“I liked the crocodile,” says Morty after, yawning and trailing after his grandfather. Rick grabs a paper towel and runs it under too-hot water and scrubs down the kids face. Morty protests, but it doesn’t matter much.
“It’s an alligator, dumbass.”
“I liked him.” His chin is all red and blotchy after Rick had scrubbed it raw, but at least it’s clean. He throws it away and grabs Morty’s arm.
“Come on. Bed.”
“I have to brush my teeth.”
“Fine. Teeth. Then bed.”
Morty allows himself to be dragged along. Which is such a Morty thing to do, and that’s at least a small comfort through all of this. “I like Elmo better.”
“Elmo ain’t got shit. Can Elmo castrate an entire commune of nazis?”
“Elmo says I can do anything if I dream it.”
“Dreams are just chemicals reacting in your brain and Elmo is a puppet. Like you.”
“Oh,” says Morty. Then: “I like Cookie Monster the best anyway.”
And that was Morty. Always seeing the best.
Rick helps him get toothpaste onto the brush and shoves him into his room and watches him sternly (or as stern as he thinks he needs to look for a grandfather running a household that basically lives off pizza and eggs and ice cream) from the doorway. The kids pajamas are too small, but he wriggles into them anyway. The last good pair he had must have been given to them before his daughter had gone bananas on reality and fucked off. He wondered how Summer was faring. And then he shakes his head and stops himself from wondering.
He wonders anyway.
No one says goodnight, except for Summer who shouts at Rick to shut off the light already! and that’s sort of the same thing.
Rick collapses on the couch that night and stares at the ceiling. His plans… they’re not shattered? But they’re not… in order. They’re chaotic and messy. And a little scattered.
But that’s what they sentenced him to. A Morty that had been deemed defective until further notice. And his… was a work in progress. Progress that he didn’t want to do.
But hell. He’d done worse. And this was just going to be one in many days ahead that he had to work with what he’d been dealt…
… and what he’d been dealt apparently went down the drain with one huge fuck you old man because by the end of the month he’s standing in a Target looking through the pajamas while an acne covered employee drones “what are you looking for sir?”
“What the fuck does it look like?”
“I’m only here to help, sir,” says the teen, who’s basically dripping oil and cologne.
Rick sighs. “I need a size six. My kid’s fucking tiny as shit. You got a size six? In dinosaur. He only likes dinosaurs.” Which is evident enough by the stack of dinosaur shaped chicken nuggets also in the cart next to the carrot sticks that the mom next door said were essential to a Childs growth. He'd picked out pajamas for Summer already, next to a few different shirts that had looked about their size, and some jeans with elastic ankle bands because he had to be cruel to them somehow. “And if you don’t have it, I’ll have to shoot your f- ughhh-cking face in.”
"Sir, are you drunk."
"I wish."
"Sir, are you carrying a concealed weapon."
"Not concealed. It's here." he pat his pocket.
"Sir, you can't have that in here. It's dangerous."
"it's only dangerous if you d- ughh- don't got dinosaurs! Size six, motherfucker."
The teen can only find Star Wars, and he hands it over with a monotone, "sorry, sir, will these do" that tells Rick his shift is almost done so please hurry the fuck up. Rick takes them and hopes the kid knows what Star Wars is. And also hopes that he hates it. That fake science wasn't worth shit.
"Thanks for nothing."
"Always happy to help, sir." says the teen, who resumes his wandering to search for more victims. Rick does the same, only after loading two more cartons of chocolate ice cream into his cart. The kids, it seemed, were still fond of ice cream, sans flies. Some things didn't change.