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It had been an important occasion. His first day of school. A chance to get outside, meet new kids, make friends and learn all kinds of new and exciting things.
His parents, sister... even his grandparents all showed up to celebrate this meaningful event with him. He remembered his parents accompanying him to school that day; he remembered Summer - already a snarky kid for her age - teasing him about the upcoming years of math tests and homework he had to look forward to; he remembered his grandparents showering him with sweets and compliments and the way he had shyly smiled at them in return.
And he also remembered that same night, when he was both exhausted from the day and high on sugar from all the candy, and he just couldn't sleep, no matter what he tried. There was an open carton of milk in the fridge and Morty had quietly sneaked down the stairs, planning to drink some of it without his mom finding out. After all, she had already scolded him for eating all of his candy at once.
But as it turned out, his mom was already standing in the kitchen - and arguing with his dad. Both tried to subdue the volume of their voices, but not the intensity of their words. Hard, almost vicious, accusations and insults bounced around between the two of them, in stark contrast to their usual daytime demeanor.
None of them noticed the little boy standing in the doorway and Morty, for his part, went back to his room, never getting his glass of milk.
After that day, life went on as usual and no one seemed to care about Morty's school life anymore.
Summer liked comparing Morty to Snuffles sometimes. After all, according to her, both were dumb, clingy and just ruined everything wherever they went.
She usually said stuff like that whenever her brother ruined yet another one of her social outings. Like when their parents forced her to cancel her meetup with her friends, just so she could babysit her little brother, while mom and dad went out to some restaurant.
Or when Morty did something super creepy or embarrassing at school, attracting all kinds of negative gossip to both himself and Summer.
Or when he followed her around at school and at home and tried to insert himself into her social life, because he didn't know what else to do with himself and he didn't want to face his parent's arguing or his bullies' torment.
In that last case, Summer did have a point. He sometimes did cling to her like a kicked puppy. It was a habit he had developed as a child and it hadn't been an issue for the first few years. But Summer was a teenager now, living in an environment where social status was everything and she couldn't afford to hang out with the local weirdo, blood-related or not.
And so Morty stopped following her.
It had been the third parent-teacher conference this year and it still yielded the same results: Morty was falling behind and he was falling behind hard. Bad grades, bad anxiety and a history of weird, awkward behavior.
As with most cases like this, the first thing on the agenda was to find out the cause for this - to lay the blame at something or somebody. As for Morty's parents, they wasted no time in arguing about it, simultaneously laying the blame on the other person and their parenting. And as for the teachers, they mostly seemed to just write the boy off as a lost cause, instead focusing their attention on the rest of the students in class.
The other students never showed the same issues that Morty did, so it couldn't be the teachers fault. Summer never had any issues either, so it also couldn't be their parents. Which only left Morty as the one at fault and the one to blame.
He tried, so very hard, to fix this problem. To work on himself and his school performance. But it was an uphill battle that he could never win, especially not after his grandfather entered the picture.
His parents were still arguing over insignificant little things. His sister was still avoiding him at school and calling him a creep and a weirdo. His teachers were still mostly ignoring him and the bullies were still picking at him. And Jessica still rarely noticed his existence. It was all just the same as it should be...
...except for the fact that this wasn't his dimension.
He had assumed that at least something would have changed after that whole Cronenberg-incident. That there would have been some difference, no matter how minor, between his old dimension and this new one. Or that someone would notice that something was amiss with Morty; that he was an impostor, taking over the role of a dead boy.
But no one did. To them Morty was the same as always. It didn't matter that he often had that haunted look in his eyes, as he stared blankly down at his food. It didn't matter that he stopped pursuing Jessica for a few weeks, not even wanting to talk about her or school in general. None of it mattered.
Just like his old dimension didn't matter, according to Rick's own words.
Just like Morty didn't matter, judging by the way his different behavior went unnoticed.
Just like the two graves in the backyard never mattered.
Morty sometimes wondered if his parents secretly hated him or something. He wondered how much of their bickering and their current divorce was his fault.
After all, he never met their expectations and always embarrassed them at school. (He sometimes remembered that moment his father openly talked about his learning disability back in the garage).
He was always occupying grandpa Rick's time, which left his sister and his mother in the background and both craving for just a smidge of the same attention he was getting. (He sometimes remembered his mother choosing Summer over him and leaving him to die - at least until Rick mercifully removed that memory yet again.)
He was always thrown into all kinds of dangerous adventures, which always drew his dad's ire and made the arguments between his parents so much worse. Even Summer's experiments with drugs and her indifferent behavior never caused quite an argument like Rick and Morty's adventures did.
And sure, Summer was an unwanted pregnancy and her birth had thrown his parents into their dilemma in the first place. But there was a difference between them: Summer had learned to become independent and self-sufficient - Morty had not.
Whereas Summer just lived her life without giving a shit, Morty's existence always seemed to cause issues - for others and especially for himself.
Rick always preached that love didn't matter and frankly, Morty was starting to believe it himself.
How could he pursue love after all, when he never had the time for it, thanks to Rick? When all of the girls he tried to flirt with either ignored or belittled him?
How could he form a close bond with a partner, when he always fucked things up? When he accidentally destroyed dimensions over his hormones or dragged Jessica into some bullshit of his and got her stuck for hundreds of years in some other dimension? Or when he finally formed a healthy relationship with a nice girl, only to have it all be for nothing, because he left the save point remote out in the open like the dumbass that he was?
Maybe Rick was right. Maybe Morty should just give up on girls.
Throughout their time together, there has always been one constant in Rick and Morty's relationship: And that was that, for as bad as their adventures sometimes got and for how vicious they might argue, in the end, they always had each other.
Rick and Morty, a hundred years.
Morty had truly believed in that. It was the one thing he always clung to, whenever his ordinary life became too much to bear or whenever Rick made him feel small and insignificant with his poisonous words. They might fight, but in the end, Rick always needed him and would come back to him. That was what Morty had believed.
But ever since his grandpa had replaced him with these damn crows, that believe had been utterly shattered.
Of course, Rick ultimately came back to him, just like he always did, but that whole incident still left a foul taste in Morty's mouth. If his grandpa could just callously abandon him for some birds, what else could he replace Morty with in the future? If one stupid argument was all it took for Rick to run, what else could cause their separation? And if Rick, of all people, could leave him, who else could? Who else would leave him behind? Who else would discard him and not even care about it?
And would someone care if Morty left them first?
Morty had always been around. Until the day he wasn't anymore.
It was Summer who had discovered him first. Her bladder had woken her up, somewhere around midnight, and had forced her out of her bed and to the bathroom. When she had encountered the locked door, she had thought that the bathroom was just occupied and waited... and waited... and waited some more...
When no answer came from inside, even after her knocking and shouting, she had hurried down to the garage, with Rick's name on her lips and ice in her stomach...
There was nothing that could've been done. Not for Summer and her gnawing sense of guilt. Not for her parents and their shared anguish. Not for Rick and his self-loathing. And certainly not for Morty and his cold, lifeless body.
There was never a question of "why". They all knew, right from the moment they found him in the bathtub, why he did it. Maybe that was why it was so hard; why each day they were all consumed in this never-ending cycle of guilt and shame and mourning and anger at themselves.
Because they all knew the reasons and yet they never bothered to help, until it was too late. And all that was left now was to pick up the pieces.
Morty had never mattered.
...Until the day he did.