Other Ricks and Mortys Die Every Day

Summary: Through no fault of his own, Morty get switched with another Morty and ends up in a dimension where everyone is in an endless irritable, violent rage. Morty is stuck with an overly angry and violent Rick while Rick winds up with an even more violent and destructive Morty.

Note: There are two Ricks and two Mortys in this story. Most chapters only include one of each, but there are a couple times when all four of them are present. I think I did a fair job being clear which ones are in each chapter, but just in case, I'll begin each chapter by stating which versions of the characters we're dealing with. I'm going to call our regular Rick and Morty from the show Rick C-137 and Morty C-137. My other Rick and Morty will be referred to as Angry-Rick and Angry-Morty.

In chapters where we're dealing with "Angry-Morty" and "Angry Rick," they may be referred to by other names depending upon how the POV character perceives them. Since "Angry Rick" and "Angry-Morty" are not their actual names, sometimes when they are being spoken about or when they come up in Rick's or Morty's thoughts, they describe them with different adjectives, or just as "Rick" or "Morty."

Another Note: I wrote this legit a year or two ago... I've been uncertain about it as it's got a different sort of tone than my other Rick and Morty stories... It's dark in a different way. I think people still might like it... I hope so... I guess I've held off publishing it long enough... The thing's been written since about the time I was publishing my other Rick and Morty stories... so what am I waiting for? You can have it:

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Chapter 1 Characters:

POV: Morty C-137

Other, in order of appearance: Angry Morty, Rick C-137, Angry-Rick

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Chapter 1

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Sighing, Morty looked down at his chest, touching the magnetic tag that had been thrown hastily and without explanation onto his shirt when he arrived here. It had a number on it - 502. That was no doubt so that Rick could identify him when he returned - for he was presently in a room full of Mortys, many of whom looked identical to him.

It still offended Morty that Rick didn't just somehow know which Morty was which... Of course, he couldn't tell the Ricks apart either though... and part of him was just grateful Rick cared enough to get the right version of him back that he even bothered labeling him.

For some reason Rick had decided to leave Morty here rather than to allow him to go on whatever adventure or mission the old man was partaking in today. It kind of annoyed Morty that he was here right now, wasting time he could have spent sleeping, going to school, or just watching tv or playing video games. He wasn't even doing anything productive... Just standing around in a room filled with rejected Mortys - other versions of himself whose Ricks had abandoned them here just as Morty's grandfather had done to him.

As Morty looked around the space, he observed the other boys. A majority of them looked pretty much exactly like him - it was like looking in dozens of mirrors all at once. Like a fun-house at a carnival, but these weren't reflections, and there was certainly nothing fun about any of this.

It was always unsettling for Morty to see other versions of himself, no matter how much he thought about there likely being nothing sinister behind it. Before he knew about other dimensions, Morty used to think up crazy science fiction/horror plots just for fun, and one of the ones he kind of obsessed over until he scared himself was the age-old evil twin/doppelganger plot. He always thought it would be so terrifying to be walking down the street and look across the road only to find himself looking back, or to go up to his bedroom and find someone else in his bed, to pull back the sheets, and see his own sleeping self. It always seemed as though any other version of Morty would just have to be evil in some way or another. Morty was the normal version, and if any crazy mirror-land version of him somehow existed, he'd exist only to try to destroy the original and take his place.

Of course, these Mortys didn't seem to be up to anything nefarious. They didn't exist just to attempt to replace him. They were each their own valid 'original' Morty... It was a little more complicated than the typical 'evil twin' plot line. They were just other versions of him - sort of a 'what could have been' that actually was in another place. They were just as much Morty as Morty himself was, just molded slightly different due to their own slightly different lives. They were normal kids. Regular, anxious, confused, pushover Mortys, just like he was, but it was still weird to see them all.

Most of the Mortys looked somewhat nervous in this room full of different versions of the same kid. Many sat alone, looking around with wide eyes and rigid postures. A couple of the boys had struck up conversations with each other. About 80% of these conversations still seemed awkward and uncomfortable, but the other 20% seemed to be enjoying each other's company.

There wasn't really much else to do in here other than talk to one another. Besides for a few plastic tables and chairs, the room was devoid of future. There weren't any books or games or tv... There weren't even any windows to look out of. It reminded Morty of a giant school cafeteria only with most of the tables missing and not even cheap school food to eat. It figured all the Ricks in existence would choose such a boring, uninviting place to force their Mortys to stay. They didn't care about their grandson being comfortable or entertained. They just wanted him out of their way.

Since he was stuck here anyway, and he pretty much knew what all the other kids might want to talk about, Morty decided he might as well talk to one of the versions of himself. They were probably just as bored as he was. It couldn't do any harm. Morty scanned the room until he found a Morty who looked like he might be a good candidate to talk to. He skipped over all the ones who were already engaged in conversation and decided to approach a rougher version instead. He felt like doing a good deed today - so he tried to find a more miserable-looking Morty. Maybe one who might be lonely. Maybe one who had been in here too long and was being ignored by everyone else, a Morty who needed a reminder that he still mattered. Morty knew if he were trapped here a long time, or otherwise has a worse life than he did now, he'd want someone to reach out and be kind to him... These other Mortys were practically him... so... it made sense.

They all mostly looked identical, but the one he decided to talk to looked tired, yet on-edge, and somehow haunted. He had a hint of dark circles under his eyes, hair that was a bit longer and unkempt than the others, a torn collar on his shirt, and a cautious, watchful stare. The boy looked like he might have been through something traumatic recently. He even looked somewhat skinny. Maybe his Rick had left him here for a long time and truly abandoned him. Maybe he could use a friend.

"H-hey," Morty offered a small smile as he walked up to the other boy.

The other boy stared back, saying nothing, but looking a strange mixture of annoyed and anxious. He almost looked like he was trembling slightly.

Morty swallowed and averted his eyes for a moment when the other kid refused to look away. This was awkward as hell already. He cleared his throat and looked back. "Y-you okay?" Morty asked. "Have you been here very long?" The other boy still stared silently. "Um..." Morty hesitated. Maybe he shouldn't have bothered trying to make friends with the Morty who looked like he needed it. Maybe he should have played it safe and found a more friendly, less-damaged one.

The other Morty continued staring at him. He looked like he was thinking, but wasn't saying anything back. He just stared and breathed in very slow, cautious, measured breaths. Like he was on the edge, ready to lash out at anyone who looked at him wrong.

"Well..." Morty exhaled. "Nevermind then. See ya." He shrugged and turned to walk away.

"Wait." The other boy's voice was low and cold, almost a whisper.

Morty turned back and blinked down at the other boy, who remained sitting on the ground where Morty had found him.

"Where's your Rick?" The boy asked.

Morty shrugged. "I don't know. He had stuff he had to do, I guess. He didn't ever actually tell me. Just left me here. Is that what happened to you?"

The boy shrugged. He was still staring up at Morty, failing to blink as often as Morty felt he probably should have been. He looked extremely anxious, and Morty now noticed he had a bruise on his lower lip. Morty narrowed his eyes. Were the dark circles under his eyes due to him being tired? Or were they bruises.

"Are you alright?" Morty frowned. There were infinite possible Ricks and Mortys. That was something Morty was fully aware of. That meant that every single possible outcome of every aspect of the world did indeed exist. It was perfectly logical to assume that some Ricks might be abusive to their Mortys in a more significant way than usual. Of course, all Ricks seemed to be abusive on some level, but perhaps this Morty was being abused physically... like, a lot.

Anxious-Morty shrugged and shook his head.

"Y-you're not okay?" Morty frowned with furrowed brows, feeling his breath leave his lungs and his stomach flip. What was he supposed to do about this? If this Morty's Rick was physically abusing him, what should Morty do? He couldn't just ignore it. "Did your Rick hurt you?"

Anxious-Morty narrowed his eyes and smirked for a moment before scoffing and laughing.

Morty pouted and crossed his arms over his chest. This Morty was being really frustrating, but he did hear once that abused kids were sometimes the most difficult kids to get along with. He looked over the other boy some more. He had faint bruises on his arms too - they certainly looked finger-shaped, like someone had grabbed him way too hard numerous times. His knuckles were scraped up too.

"You're one of the sheltered ones, aren't you?" Anxious-Morty wondered, seeming much less anxious and much more condescending now. "Like really, really sheltered. Like sickeningly so."

"No." Morty frowned. "I'm most certainly not sheltered. Is any Morty? Rick nearly gets me killed almost every day."

Anxious-Morty shook his head and smirked again. "But you're sheltered for a Morty. Your skin is smooth and un-marked. No scars. No bruises or cuts. You seem nervous and innocent like a little boy. I'll bet your dimension is one of the ones without any sort of apocalypse or massive infection of any kind. You've clearly got it easy."

"Hey!" Morty scowled. "That's not true at all. I've seen all sorts of disturbing shit. I've been through a lot. I don't even live in my original dimension anymore because of the sort of apocalypse that happened there... In the dimension I'm from now - which isn't even mine - I buried my own dead corpse in the yard and have to see my grave out the window-"

"It's not you though, idiot." Anxious-Morty reminded him. He looked legitimately angry and pulled his hands into fists. He was definitely shaking now and looked like he was seconds away from attacking.

Morty took a cautious step back, but continued. "Well, it kind of is... But there's more than that. This past year's been really traumatizing. I have a half-alien son who grew up and tried to take over the world." Morty explained.

Anxious-Morty shrugged. "So?"

Morty exhaled and thought of more things to prove to this other boy that life recently had been no picnic. "I tried to save an innocent life once, ended up getting a bunch of people killed... and had to kill the guy anyway in the end so he didn't destroy all carbon-based life."

"Whatever, kid. Sounds pretty sheltered to me. Why are you so disturbed by other people trying to destroy the world? How is that disturbing? It didn't even happen, so what's the problem?" Anxious-Morty laughed with a cocky grin. "You destroyed your own dimension and then left... So you still have it easy."

"You know what? I don't even have to explain myself to you!" Morty grumbled, turning to leave. "My life's not sheltered. Really awful things have happened to me, but it's not your business anyway, so screw you."

"That's what I thought." Anxious-Morty called after him with a disinterested yet somehow mocking tone.

Morty paused, feeling his hands clench into fists. He had been through a lot... Not that he wanted to share the worst of it with this rude kid he didn't even know... Still, it made him angry that this boy was making light of situations and events he knew nothing about. Calling Morty sheltered after everything he'd suffered through this past year was pretty harsh and inaccurate. The traumatizing experiences he'd encountered were very real, very damaging, and very serious. This kid had no right to claim otherwise.

For a moment, Morty contemplated telling Anxious-Morty about Mr. Jellybean attacking him. He was that determined to prove to this boy that his life wasn't easy and sheltered. But after a quick, calming inhale, he shook his head and changed his mind. He never even talked to Rick about that. He didn't want to relive that horrifying, traumatic moment ever again - not out loud, and especially not to someone who would probably tell him it wasn't even a big deal.

He frowned, but still didn't turn around when he heard the other version of himself laughing a hollow laugh from behind him. "It's not a competition or anything. Don't get all offended. Damn. I'm just commenting the truth. You're sheltered. You're lucky. Don't know why it pisses you off so much, but it's true."

Morty shook his head.

"Your Rick is using this place as a babysitting service, you know." Anxious-Morty theorized.

"So is yours!" Morty spun back around and glared.

"You can't handle your Rick. My Rick can't handle me. You're here so you don't die. I'm here so other people don't die." The other boy smirked a cocky grin.

"Yeah, right." Morty scoffed and rolled his eyes.

The other Morty narrowed his eyes and stared silently back, blinking a few times. He looked like he was thinking, but was once again awkwardly silent as Morty contemplated turning and walking away. Talking to this kid wasn't worth it. He was rude and weird and just stopped talking in the middle of conversations for no reason. Maybe he really was a violent killer. He was certainly strange. It wasn't uncommon for weirdos to end up being dangerous in some way or another.

"What's wrong with you?" Morty finally asked when Anxious-Morty never responded.

Anxious-Morty smiled slightly and shrugged. "Come here." He waved his hand slightly toward himself.

"Why?" Morty frowned.

"I've gotta tell you something." The other boy's eyes had that dark, haunted look again. Morty couldn't tell if he was up to something. Or maybe he was going to confide in Morty somehow - tell him why it was that he was covered in bruises and looked scuffed up, hungry, anxious, and angry.

"What?" Morty stepped closer, letting curiosity get the better of him.

"Closer..." Anxious-Morty requested.

Morty grimaced and hesitated. "Why? Is this a trick?"

Anxious-Morty shook his head. "You wanted to know what's wrong with me... I'll tell you. But you've gotta get closer. I don't want to broadcast it to every little dipshit in here."

Morty frowned again. That was a pretty harsh way to talk about Mortys considering this kid was just as much a Morty as the rest of them. Even so, he stepped closer and bent down so the boy could whisper whatever secret he had to share without being overheard.

Anxious Morty leaned close, but didn't speak quite yet. He simply leaned closer and closer, breathing even breaths that Morty could almost feel due to their proximity.

Morty gasped softly when he felt Anxious-Morty grip his wrist, but it wasn't a harsh grip. He swallowed and remained still.

Then suddenly, without warning, Anxious-Morty's free-hand shot out, palm-up, slamming right up against Morty's nose.

"Ow!" Morty groaned, bringing his hands up to his face and holding his now-bleeding nose as he stumbled back a few steps. He felt tears stinging his eyes as he choked out a somewhat pathetic-sounding whimper. "Why did you do that?" He whined.

When all he heard was laughter from the other boy, Morty could no longer help himself. He wasn't going to play nice anymore. He was through giving this kid the benefit of the doubt. He no longer cared if Anxious-Morty's Rick abused him or if anything else bad happened to him. It didn't matter anymore. If his Rick hurt him, maybe he deserved it.

Before he could convince himself not to, Morty lunged forward, tackling the other Morty to the ground, punching the boy quite hard across the face. He was rewarded with what certainly felt like a much harder punch right back, landing on his cheek.

He soon found himself pinned to the ground with the more violent version of himself holding him down by his arms.

"Get off of me, you son of a bitch!" Morty screamed, thrashing as best as he could and groaning in frustration and gasping in a bit of awe of how strong this kid was.

Anxious-Morty, who was seeming less and less anxious by the second, continued striking out against him until finally Morty felt himself being pulled up off the ground by his arms. A guard of some sort was holding onto him. The other Morty was pulled back in the other direction by someone else.

Morty exhaled and inhaled deep, quick breaths as he glared back at the other kid who was practically growling in the other guard's hands as he struggled to free himself. Morty wished he could hit him again. As it were, Anxious-Morty got in a lot more good hits than Morty did.

"Get their Ricks back here." one of the guards ordered to someone else before glaring down toward Morty, looking from him to the other boy and then speaking to them. "This is not that kind of a facility. You two should be ashamed. This is meant to be a safe place to house Mortys whose Ricks need a place to store them. There's no fighting allowed in here."

Morty frowned. "I didn't start it! He did!"

"You're both leaving." The guard informed them.

"Fine." Morty growled. "I don't want to be here anyway! You know, it's really demeaning to say you're storing us here. We're human beings."

Morty's breaths were still quick and angry as he watched two Ricks show up, somehow teleported here. One looked extremely drunk. The other looked extremely annoyed. Either one could logically be his Rick. They looked mostly identical. Except the drunk one's hair was messy and the angry one had a bruise on his cheek. Morty still didn't know which was his. His Rick didn't have a bruise this morning, but Morty didn't know what the man had gotten himself into since then. The drunk one certainly seemed like a probable candidate.

"Take them with you. They're being violent," the guard ordered.

Drunk-Rick stuck his hands in his pockets and fished out a ticket - probably with his Morty's number on it - to tell which one was his. The other Rick simply stared from one Morty to the next and then toward Drunk-Rick, waiting on the other man to claim his Morty first.

"What's- uggh..." Rick slurred and narrowed his eyes at the ticket in his hand and then squinted toward Anxious-Morty's number-tag. The old man glanced back down at the ticket, blinking slowly. "Two- uh that's a... um... Is that a fuckin' Earth number? What the fuck is that? Seven? Wh-" He finally scoffed and shook his head, grabbing Anxious-Morty's arm and dragging him away. "Whatever..." Drunk-Rick muttered.

Morty felt his mouth drop open. He certainly hoped that wasn't his Rick. It sounded like him. It looked like him... but so would almost any Rick. He certainly didn't seem to have been able to read his ticket though. It looked like he just settled on whichever Morty was closer to him.

"Come on." The other Rick reached out his hand and put it on Morty's shoulder, gripping him rather hard and leading him away.

"W-wait... A-are you sure I'm your Morty? What's your ticket say?" Morty wondered, pulling the magnetic tag off his shirt and offering it to the man. "Five o' two..." He read his number. "Is that what your ticket says?"

"Sure." Rick answered, but didn't even check his ticket.

Morty swallowed and looked around. Drunk-Rick was already gone. No one else around here seemed that concerned with making sure the right Morty went home with the right Rick.

Rick took his portal gun out of his pocket and pulled the trigger to create a familiar green portal in front of them.

Morty shook his head and took a step back. "I don't think I'm your Morty..."

Rick glared at him for a moment before narrowing his eyes and looking him over. He nodded slightly as though agreeing, but then shrugged. "Close enough."

"No!" Morty gasped, stepping back again when the man reached for his arm. "You're not my Rick! I'm not going with you!"

Rick exhaled and scowled. "Yes, you are." he demanded, reaching out and grabbing Morty's arm in a firm, bruising grip.

"No!" Morty screamed, trying to pull his arm away and looking around at the guards who had broken up his and the other Morty's fight earlier. "He's not my Rick! Check his ticket!"

One of the guards rolled his eyes and turned toward the other as they continued whatever conversation they had been having. No one seemed to care that this strange Rick was taking him. Not even his own Rick, who'd just grabbed the other Morty and left without even trying to think it through. The other Morty had longer hair. He was skinnier, maybe even shorter... He looked like he was starving, yet was also somehow unreasonably powerful. How could Rick not know that wasn't him?

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