So I really really miss Rick and Morty and I thought I'd give my spin on what will happen to the characters after the Season 2 finale (God rest my soul because that thing was just a giant punch to the fucking gut).

First chapters pretty much a prologue/exposition dump, so the real meat of the story will start in Chapter 2. I had a lot of fun writing this but I do have some other stories I need to work on so my updates will try to be regular but I can make no promises.

I don't own anything in Rick and Morty except for the characters I created. Enjoy!

All his life, Morty couldn't really remember ever wanting to be like anyone.

He never had an idol growing up, unless you counted the sports stars he saw on Sunday Night Football, and for a little bit he thought he'd look up to someone like Peyton Manning until he discovered that his love for sports could never compete with his lack of talent for the real thing. He spent the last fourteen years of his existence sort of wandering aimlessly, wondering where he was going with his life. He wasn't super smart, nor athletic, nor talented. He felt like a bargain-brand human; the off-brand kind you could buy cheap in a grocery store that was never as good as the real thing. Totally generic. Totally unremarkable.

He thought everything would have changed with the arrival of his estranged grandfather one autumn day a few years ago. When he opened the door to a lanky, gray haired, balding man in a lab coat who looked like he had taken one too many shots of bourbon before coming. He had heavy circles around his eyes, and they held a clouded and disinterested look in them. Morty wasn't too lost on the concept of drunkenness—his mother got drunk on wine so much that she resorted to buying three cases of boxed wine a week at Costco, much to his sister's disdain—but this strange man took it to a whole new level. He eyed Morty carefully, his gaze full of intelligence behind that cloud of alcohol. Something shot up Morty's spine in that moment, because this man was staring at him like he already had met him.

"H-hey, M-k-urrp-kid," the man greeted Morty with a less than dignified burp. "Your mom around?"

Morty hesitated. The old man didn't even give him a name. Instead, his mouth twisted into a smile as he reached into his lab coat and pulled out a flask.

"Not v-very talkative, eh kid?"

Morty was at a loss for words.

"No matter," the man proceeded to barge through Morty and collapse on the couch in the living room, downing the remainder of his drink in one swift motion. "I'll jus-urrrp-just wait he-here until she gets back."

Not really sure what to do, Morty retreated up the stairs to his room and kept one ear out for any signs of trouble. He did his homework from the top of the stairs, one eye trained on this man who did nothing but lounge and drink on the couch. When his parents came back, Morty retired back to his room for a second time. He came down the stairs after the old man and his parents engaged in a shouting match that lasted until the nighttime. Grabbing a can of soda, Morty found the old man passed out on the couch, and Morty's mother hastily explained the situation. How this tired, dirty, drunk old man was not only his grandfather, but now a part of the family.

"Your Grandpa Rick will be a great companion, Morty," Beth finished with that. "He's so smart, and he's always wanted to meet you. He's a great scientist, you know. He'll love to show you his inventions. He used to do that with me when I was a kid. Who knows—maybe you'll even want to be a scientist when you grow up? I know Dad would love that."

There was a hurt in his mother's eyes that Morty couldn't really comprehend. She seemed so sincere in talking about this man who had been her father, yet who had also abandoned her when she was only his age. Morty couldn't help but glance at this man, Rick. He was snoring, alcohol dripping down his chin, looking like a mess.

His mother must've noticed it too. Morty didn't miss her slight cringe. "Just…just give him a chance, okay?" she asked politely. There was a hint of begging in her voice that made Morty squirm guiltily. "Please? He might not look like it, but my dad's a good guy. And, well, you deserve to know your grandfather."

A scientist? Morty never considered being a scientist. He never really disliked his science classes and was much more at ease with those subjects when he was younger. Maybe this was a good idea. Only, was his grandfather Rick, a drunk old man, the right person to do it with?

Beth must have sensed his doubts. "Can you try, Morty? Just for a little while?" she placed a hand on his shoulder. "Promise me?"

Morty promised her.

What followed was two years of insanity as Rick dragged him across dimensions. What Morty had assumed would be pure scientific fun and innocence had dissolved into munitions runs, liquor binges, a blown up planet or two, and more deaths than Morty could even comprehend. Rick, long since jaded with the perils of space travel, never batted an eye to the craziness that the universe had to offer, and often scoffed when Morty reacted how he did. In Morty's eyes, it was perfectly normal to have a panic attack after seeing a strange alien creature tear another to shreds because it's handwriting was too crooked ("it's common, Morty; Trufflewups pride the-urrp-emselves on craftsmanship"). Near-death experiences, burying his own body, memory-infesting parasites, spending months among a tribe of primitive tree-people. It was all too much for him to take at times. All of this was confirming only one thought throughout Morty's head; that he did not want to be a scientist when he grew up. At least, not if it meant becoming like Rick.

In retrospect, it wasn't all bad. Sort of like how a roller-coaster was all good until you stepped off and puked on the way down the stairs. Of all the memories he had with his grandfather, maybe about five or ten percent of them were decent. Driving through the highway of stars like it was Route 66 would always be a favorite of his. Some of the worlds were interesting when Morty could actually take in his surroundings. And when Rick wasn't drunk, high, or berating him—those times few and far between—he could actually be sweet in his own weird Rick-ish way.

Back on Earth after every adventure he, Rick, and sometimes Summer would find themselves on, Morty would curl up into his bed for a few precious hours of sleep. He'd always pass out pretty quickly. Maybe wake up safely the next morning to breakfast from his mother. His sister pretending to ignore them from the top of her phone. His father keeping the family entertained in his own dumb way. Home was a safety net. It changed sometimes, but not forever. And not always for the worse.

So when the buildings dropped from the sky, Morty felt his last sense of innocence drain away.

And he meant literally dropping out of the sky. When the Federation came, they brought their own buildings. Sixty stories of alien metal came crashing through downtown. With them came the ships. The aliens. The tourists.

Morty couldn't recall the wedding with sharp detail anymore. He supposed he'd blocked most of it out in the wake of all that had happened since. There was a murder. An assassination, more like. The five of them fled to some dwarf planet in fear, Rick proclaiming that they'd never live in peace and safety again. That his safety net was probably overrun with aliens who'd view him more as an attraction than a person. He remembered his grandfather: his asshole, abusive grandfather, taking off without him to save his own skin. He still remembered his feeble attempt to stop Rick from going; it played over and over in his head every night like a broken tape.

"Rick, I can handle it if you go,"

Liar.

"but you'll break Mom's heart,"

You can't do this to me.

"and I won't forgive you for that."

Promise me. Promise me you won't leave.

But he didn't promise. Rick did leave. And Morty had never felt more powerless and alone.

Morty should've hated Rick. In some ways, he figured he must've, because the first thing he wanted to do was to punch Rick if he ever saw him again.

But in that moment, and for every moment after, all Morty could do was cry.

It was stupid and ridiculous, and Morty resented himself for doing it. But goddamnit, he missed Rick so fucking much. It was absurd how miserable he felt with the absence of this disgusting man. But this disgusting man was part of the family, no matter what happened to him, no matter how far away he ran.

The Smith family was picked up after nine days (or about two hours) and were quickly put on a shuttle back to Earth. Only, it wasn't Earth as Morty had remembered. It was now packed and crowded, almost suffocating with the millions of alien tourists that wanted to visit on some sort of vacation and gawk at the locals. Robots wheeled around, offering assistance to any passerby. Aliens of all different shades and sizes and types, some Morty recognized and some he didn't, milled around and took photos or ate food. One alien rushed up to Summer and tried to take a picture of her, but his sister was clearly having none of it. She yelped with shock and pushed the alien away, nearly making it break the camera. Creatures all around the Smith family muttered darkly to each other and cast stolen glances over to Summer, who clutched her elbows and looked away in disgust.

His father managed to flag down a taxi and they crowded into the back seats, staring out the windows to see the new world that had stepped on the old. Massive structures that Morty could have sworn weren't there before stood on every corner. There were some new restaurants on the streets, packed booth to booth with aliens and nothing else. Every billboard was written in those rune languages that Rick could translate but Morty was lost upon. They seemed to advertise different popular locations on Earth. The Statue of Liberty. The Eiffel Tower. The world's largest rubber band ball. Popular tourist places, Morty realized. That was what Earth was now. A giant, federally run tourist trap, like a national park. The comprehension sent his heart sinking.

The suburbs were fairly less crowded than the city, so Morty was thankful when the taxi pulled in front of the house and there was nothing in front of it like it was Stonehenge. The four of them paid the driver, headed into the house, and three of the four members of the family went upstairs to sleep off what had happened. His mother stayed downstairs; Morty figured she was going to indulge in some wine first. Maybe it was the right thing to do. Morty felt like he could use a drink himself.

Six months had passed since then, and Rick never came back. Never sent a letter, never stopped by in the middle of the night. Never gave any sign of where he was. Time passed slowly now that Rick was gone. No longer did Morty go on wild adventures with his grandfather, exploring the furthest corners of the galaxy with him. He found himself feeling almost a certain nostalgia for the days he spent running for his life. When he actually felt occupied during the weeks that passed. Nowadays, Morty felt stagnant—trapped in a world that was going by much too fast for him. Especially with the Federation changing the Earth into the galaxy's prime attraction.

Rick's presence in the house faded quickly like an old smell. No longer did the four of them argue about trivial problems over breakfast, nor dispute about Morty's schoolwork or his friends or anything else about the matter. They behaved almost like a normal family.

It bored Morty to no end.

Granted, Rick's presence wasn't always the best. He did start a lot of fights and he was generally unpleasant to the normal person, but he was like a cog in the machine. Sure, they could work without him, but there was that constant, echoing feeling that served as a reminder of their missing piece. Or at least, it served as a reminder to Morty, and for a while, he thought he was the only one.

It happened during the summer, when his sister was beginning her college applications. She had been spending the past half hour pouring over the common application and filling out the basic information, Beth and Jerry at her side. When Summer reached the desired major part of the forms, however, she hesitated.

"Well, Summer, what do you want to study?" Jerry had asked her. Morty, watching TV from the couch, twisted his head slightly to hear the conversation.

Summer continued to waver. She was now biting her lip, and Beth and Jerry exchanged a concerned glance. Finally, she said something, but it was so soft that Morty couldn't hear it.

"Engineering?" his mother piped up, clearly bewildered at the choice. "Since when have you been interested in engineering?"

Summer cast a helpless look to her brother, which caught Morty off-guard. Biting her lip again and sensing her brother wasn't going to give her help, she turned around and began to mumble. "Grandpa…he said once that I could be a good engineer. He said that I should give it a try. I just...I just thought…"

The following silence was so heavy that Morty practically sprinted back up to his room and blared music to drown out his resurfacing thoughts. Just once, he wanted to go so mind-numbingly blank and to not think about Rick, but he knew that could never happen.

After that moment, Morty kept a closer eye on his sister and what he saw surprised him. He never noticed that she was spending much more time in the house, refusing to go out or to go to parties or to hang out with her friends from school even though she probably never lacked in opportunity. The time she spent clicking away on her phone was now devoted to mobile games that made it seem like she was texting and communicating with her classmates. Once, in a time that didn't really make him proud, Morty snuck into his sister's room and poured through her apps. She'd sent a few texts to him and their parents, but almost all the girls and boys her age had unanswered messages of some sort. Facebook was a mess with neglected invites and ignored messages. She was completely shutting herself out.

It baffled Morty that Summer, who once would have eaten her own foot if it meant that she could have been popular, would be distancing herself from everything in relation until it clicked for him one night. Tammy was popular, and they'd been good friends before the whole wedding fiasco. Enough to invite Summer in the first place. Or, so she thought, until his sister realized that Rick was a wanted intergalactic terrorist. After that nice little betrayal, it wasn't really a shock that Summer was keeping herself so aloof. Broken trust was hard to mend; Morty knew that firsthand.

The more he looked, the more he noticed the little things. Like how his mother seemed to be dumping more and more bottles of wine into the garbage can every week when Morty wheeling the recycling out. Or how he'd caught Summer more than once in Rick's old room or in the garage, looking through the tools and blueprints. It comforted Morty to know that he wasn't alone in his grief.

The only truly happy person seemed to be his own father, who now had a steady job working for the government. Morty didn't really know what it was he did. Something with filing and reporting that of course served his skills in civics. Jerry didn't miss Rick, and that didn't surprise Morty, Summer, or his mother. It was something that put him and his wife at constant odds, but Beth would never ditch Jerry, no matter how much she probably wished she could. Not to mention that Jerry was bringing back surprisingly good money from his job at the Federation. He paid off his debt for the anti-depressants relatively quickly and the rest went back into the bank accounts. It was so much that Beth almost didn't even need to work anymore, but she never gave up her job at the clinic. Morty didn't know why, but he figured his mother would probably go insane if she wasn't occupying herself for a majority of the day.

The rumors of what the Federation was actually doing were always on the tip of everybody's tongue. Like people wanted to say them aloud, but there was some unspoken fear that prevented them from speaking their mind. The entire thing was wrapped in an air of mystery. The reason for the governments submitting themselves to the Federation was kept a secret, and speculation ran wild. Some said that they were forced into it. Others said it was mutual agreement. The most popular opinion was that Earth sought to join for protection after gaining new knowledge of otherworldly intelligent life due to events of the past year (many of which Morty had a firm hand in either causing or fixing). Most said it wasn't too bad, because the Federation offered them galactic protection for what they considered to be a very small price.

Morty wasn't too sure.

There were very few things Rick said that Morty would trust right off the bat, but the way he spoke about the Federation made his insides crawl with doubts. How could they be good when they killed someone in cold blood, with a teenage deep-cover agent posing as his wife? The Federation may be treating them like equals in the eyes of the populace, but Morty wasn't fooled.

They think they can control the galaxy; I disagree. Don't hate the player, hate the game, son.

Those words rattled around in the back of Morty's head. Keeping him on edge. Keeping him in line.

Summer vacation passed by and school started back up again. The Federation was not too subtly making changes all over the world, but Morty never assumed that it would affect him too seriously. That changed when Morty headed to his first class of the day and was shocked to discover that the walls outside of all the rooms were replaced with glass.

"Wha-what's going o-on?" Morty had mumbled aloud, more to himself. A few kids shrugged a response.

It didn't take very long for Morty to get an answer. When the class started, the wall was suddenly crowded with alien tourists. Morty could see a few kids shuffle uncomfortably in their seats under the gaze of hundreds of eyes. When the teacher spoke up, or when a kid gave an answer, the aliens would howl and hoot and cheer with glee in a way that made Morty's insides fizzle. Then came the flashes of the camera, the glass doing nothing to stop the blinding lights.

They were less of a destination at this point, it quickly dawned on him. They were a zoo. Something to be gawked at.

The crowds of aliens roamed the halls during the day and made traversing from class to class difficult. They stared with their hundreds of eyes, pressing faces against the class. "Federal requirement," was what the principal said over the loudspeaker about the change. Some kids were so scared shitless that they didn't bother coming to class after a few days. Of the ones who stayed, some had panic attacks, others cried a few times a day. From what Morty could tell, the aliens found it interesting, a source of entertainment, like this was normal human behavior. But no matter what they felt, no one dared to speak up to one of the aliens. Lunch was easily the worst. Morty would sit off at the end of a crowded lunch table, picking through his lunch halfheartedly with a fork. The tourists were, of course, allowed into the cafeteria, and were even offered free samples of some of the lunch food. Some of the younger ones were rowdy, and with no barriers to protect them, would often lose control. Grabbing skirts, hair, and legs. Throwing their free samples at the students without consequence. Lunch was now mostly spent in silence for everyone as they tried to eat speedily to get away from the ogling creatures. Some even took their meals to the bathroom, desperate for privacy. Summer had gotten her drivers license and now went home for lunch every day. Lucky.

The new school environment led to strange shifts in the social circle, because now everyone was so scared with their surroundings that the idea of leaving someone alone in a potentially hostile situation would be guilt-racking. Pretty soon, even those on the lowest tiers of the social ladder were absorbed by the larger circle of people. Brad studied with some Chris from his math class. Jessica walked close through the halls with Laurie from the band club. But hey, at least they weren't picking on anyone anymore.

It was interesting to hear everyone's speculations about the aliens, especially considering Morty knew a small portion from his former adventures. Faux names flew around for certain species of aliens that were common visitors in the halls. Purple-tongues, Spot-backs, that sort of thing. "There goes some six-legs," some kid whispered to their friends as the aptly-nicknamed family of aliens crossed the hall. Morty held his tongue, knowing full well that Sedexians probably would have hated that nickname.

Morty only corrected his classmates once about the names of aliens, against all his better judgment. When a group of Federation officials came in one day, everyone buzzed with both fear and curiosity. These weren't like the normal tourists. They were bug-like, with compound eyes and wings and claw-like arms. Even more terrifying was that they carried around guns—large laser rifles that could take an arm off with a single shot.

Names for these creatures spread like the flu. Buzzers. Bug soldiers. Those guys with the big guns.

"They…th-they're called Gromflomites," Morty spoke up once at the lunch table during a naming session. At once, everyone went silent, and Morty felt himself shrivel with the weight of everyone's attention falling on him.

"What are they called?" some kid asked.

Morty shrugged. "I mean, my grandpa called them Gromflomites," Morty offered his weak excuse. "It-it's just…what they're called…"

And just like that, in the span of a day, Morty was suddenly the go-to guy for alien knowledge. It was more awkward than anything, because now every kid seemed to know his name and wanted to ask him questions that more often than not he didn't know the answer to. Morty tried to downplay himself. Said he didn't really know that much. He didn't even want to think about what would happen if the Federation pegged him as the grandson of an intergalactic terrorist. But any kid that had knowledge of the aliens was an instant celebrity. Before Morty, it was some kid a few grades above him named Jack, who claimed his father was abducted by aliens and he spent a year living with them. But the difference was that Morty actually knew about aliens. Or, at least, some things. As much as he could remember from Rick.

Rick…

Morty wished Rick was here. Morty wished Rick hadn't left him alone to fend for himself against a Galactic Federation that had their objectives shadowed. He wished that Rick hadn't left his mother alone, where she spent most nights curled against the sink with a bottle of wine in her hand. He wished that Rick hadn't left his sister so crushed and alone and paranoid about the world.

There were times that Morty found himself in the garage or in Rick's room. It was probably more often than Summer visited them, not that he'd ever admit to it. He'd dig through the blueprints and the scraps and the inventions, broken and functional alike. He'd wonder if he could find something that could save his grandfather. Maybe find him, bring him back to Earth. But nothing that he found could do that. He considered trying to rebuild a portal gun, but he had no idea how to. He thought of calling anyone; the council of Ricks, Unity, any being he thought of as an ally. But it was useless.

Rick's space phone sat on the small nightstand. Morty had tried calling it a few times but it always went to voicemail. It was pointless, because how the fuck was Rick supposed to answer it when he didn't have it, but it made Morty feel better anyway.

"Hey…hey Rick? It's Morty. Where are you? Ca-can you just t-tell me? I swear…I sw-wear I won't tell anyone…"

"Mom's been getting dr-drunk lately, R-rick. She misses you. We a-all do…"

"I-I'm sorry…"

"Please come back…"

Nothing.

Morty would settle himself into bed, the door closed, the windows cracked a tiny bit. Some nights, he'd find himself crying at how unfair it all was. Others, he'd wake up Summer and the two of them would talk it out. For most nights, he couldn't be damned. He'd just try to roll over and get some sleep. Repeat the process. Hope for a change.

There was one night were he climbed onto the roof of the house. He sat there for a while, above the garage. The night air was pleasantly cool against his skin, autumn just now settling into the neighborhood. He could see the distant glow from the faraway city, with the alien buildings twinkling madly in hundreds of colors. There was now so much light pollution that it obscured the stars, much to Morty's misery. He felt contained and confined, like Earth was in a glass jar and he couldn't get out of it.

He hoped Rick would be back soon.

He had to.

I really wish I could have gone into more detail in this chapter, but I really couldn't push it out without it dragging on forever. So oh well. Next time I suppose.

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