This is my first time writing a Rick and Morty fic, the show really sucked me in, so I hope you all enjoy! This story takes place several months after the Season 2 finale.

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Chapter 1

He doesn't know where he is or how he came to be here, his surroundings are faded and indistinct – a room, he thinks; steel paneling and bolts, braided wires hanging down and glowing shapes in his peripheral. He doesn't turn to look though, doesn't try to focus his vision and figure out where he is, because there's a mirror in front of him, crisp and clear unlike everything else around him.

It's the reflection staring back at him that catches his attention, throws him off, because it's… it's wrong. The reflection is wrong.

It's himself, sure; same mussed brown hair and pale complexion, but whereas Morty feels nervous and confused, his reflection looks calm and in control—and the most distinct thing of all, the most unsettling, is the eye patch bound over his reflection's right eye.

He startles back a step, one hand flying up to his own face to check, but there's no eye patch there, only a dull pain and a sticky liquid pooling in his eye. He blinks, fat drops of it dripping down his cheek and over his fingertips, and he pulls his hand away quick, expecting to find blood. His reflection watches him, completely still, not copying his movements, but Morty only vaguely notices this once he catches sight of the strange blue substance coating his fingers. It's clear and thick like liquid soap. It doesn't burn though. It makes his eyelashes stick together, but it doesn't feel like much of anything.

"You're in over your head," his reflection says, and Morty's attention snaps back up to the mirror. There's no sign of a stutter in his copy's voice, another clear distinction between them.

"W-what?"

"Frankly though, I'm curious to see what the results will be," his reflection continues, seeming to be speaking more to himself than to Morty at this point. "You'll have to tell me how it goes… if you can."

"W-w-wait," Morty tries to say, but he can't get the words out. His head feels fuzzy and everything around him is growing more out-of-focus. "What are you—?"

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Morty's eyes peel open and his breath hitches in his chest. He's on the bathroom floor, porcelain sink looming above him and cool tiles pressing patterns into his face. There are puddles of water on the floor around him, soaking into his clothes and flattening his bangs to his forehead in wet strings. Someone's pounding on the door, rattling at the doorknob to be let in and calling out to him—his mom. It's his mom and he's at home. Right. Home.

"Morty?"

"I-I'm okay," he calls out to her automatically. He shifts in place, testing his limbs. Nothing seems hurt. "I think I fell."

"You 'think'?"

He shuffles up into a sitting position, and immediately has to press his back against the bathtub when his head throbs and the room spins. That ache in his right eye is definitely very real. His hand fumbles up to his eye, but there's no thick liquidy substance there this time, blood or blue something, just water dotting his face. "Yeah," he finally concludes. "Y-yeah, I fell. 'M okay though. J-just a little dizzy."

"Open the door, Morty." She sounds stressed, worn-out.

Morty's quick to stumble his way over to the bathroom door, gripping at the toilet and sink along the way to keep his balance. His hand slips over the edge of the sink and into even more water, the stopper having been put in and the sink filled up to the brim… for whatever reason. Morty shakes his hand out, counts himself lucky that at least the faucet was turned off so that it didn't flood the place while he was out. He has to blink rapidly to keep the spots out of his eyes, and by the time he slumps against the doorframe, his mom starts to rattle at the knob again.

"H-hang on."

He flips open the lock, yawning and ruffling a hand through his hair, sending flecks of water flying, and he tries to adopt a nonchalant look on his face when his mom jerks the door open, because he may have fallen, yeah, but he really doesn't feel that bad. Just a little rattled. He's gone through much worse in the past than just a little spill, and he tries to demonstrate that now by waving a random hand in the air and smiling, as if to say 'See? Perfectly okay.'

His mother seems to think otherwise though, if her startled wide-eyed look is any indication, and her hand snaps up to her mouth, covering a gasp. She crosses the few steps between them in an instant, nervous hands fluttering from his shoulders up to his face.

"Oh my god," she says, voice pitching high, "Morty, what did you do to your eye?"

His brow furrows in confusion, but as she prods gently around his right eye socket, that faint ache turns into a sharp stab of pain. He flinches back from her touch, twisting around in place to face the mirror and finally get a good look at himself. There's no eye patch, but then, he wasn't really expecting there to be one, his weird dream aside. There is, however, a vicious looking bruise circling his right eye. Black with shades of blue streaking over the bridge of his nose; his eyelid is puffy and his sclera is completely bloodshot.

"O-oh hell," he says, reaching up to the injury, hands hovering but not touching, "Oh jeez, I must have hi— when I fell I must have hit it agai-against something."

The sink faucet? Most likely. He's lucky he didn't drown himself or split his head open.

His mother's hands clasp down on his shoulders. Her grip is too hard. When he turns to look at her though, it's not anger on her face, but worry and concern in a way he doesn't think he's ever quite seen before.

"You were up again all night, weren't you?" she asks, and he can feel a slight tremble in her hands as her grip tightens further. "Doing school work?"

School work?

"Mom—"

"You can't keep doing that, Morty," she snaps, cutting him off. "Your dad and I are happy you're working so hard, but you need to sleep normal hours. Otherwise, you're going to do more than just fall and hurt yourself, you're going to make yourself sick."

He… he doesn't know what she's talking about. Sure, he's stayed up late or missed sleep altogether going on adventures with Rick in the past, but she's never been bothered by it before. Not after the first few times at least, and this isn't even that. She said… she said school work? He stayed up doing school work? That doesn't really sound like him, but maybe he was just catching up on a project after yet another set of adventures with Rick. That… that sounds accurate enough.

Oh jeez, he hopes he doesn't have a concussion. Can you even get a concussion getting hit in the eye? Maybe he should have her take him to the doctor, or—

No. No, it's fine. He can just have Rick take a quick look later. Use some science to make it all better, problem solved.

So he smiles at her, eases her hands off his shoulders and says, "I'm fine. R-r-really." She doesn't look convinced though, so he quickly adds on, "I just need—I'm gonna get ready for school a-an-and then I'll be right down."

It is a school day, isn't it? It has to be if he'd been working on school work the previous night. Despite his confusion though, the blanks in his memory, it seems to be the right thing to say, because his mom backs off a step, lets him pass by to go to his room. She doesn't follow him, but she doesn't look away either, and he ends up closing his bedroom door for some privacy. He only needs to wait by the door for a few seconds before he hears her heading back down the stairs.

Morty breathes out slowly and slumps back against the door, right on a wet spot on the back of his shirt. He grimaces at the sensation, and quickly peels off the sodden material, shucking off his pants for good measure too so that only his boxers remain. What had he even been doing last night? His room doesn't reveal much; it's even messier than usual, with papers and clothes and a bunch of other random shit strewn about.

School work though, his mom said he'd been doing school work, and as much as he doubts this—something about the explanation just doesn't feel right—it's the only real clue he has, so he stumbles his way over to his desk, kicking up papers and tripping over junk. Sure enough, there are folders stuffed full of papers and several stapled reports stacked on top. He shuffles through the reports briefly, but nothing rings a bell. Some kind of history report on a Federation of some sort, a couple biology reports on various insects, an art class paper on color spectrum (he thinks?), and a report that only looks half-finished on… what? Ultrasonic audio frequencies?

"If th-there's gonna be tests on any of this shit, I'm d-definitely gonna fail."

Not knowing what he needs or doesn't need, he grabs it all and shoves it into his backpack. Skipping school for the day is sounding more and more appealing—he almost hopes Rick bursts in and drags him away on an adventure like usual. At the very least, he should see the man to get his head looked at before class, make sure nothing's wrong.

First though, he needs to make an appearance downstairs. He's not sure what's going on this time to make his mom look so stressed out, but he doesn't want to add to it. Grabbing some moderately clean-looking clothes off the floor and pulling them on, he makes his way downstairs, his backpack dragging behind him and one hand pressed up against the wall for balance, just in case the fading dizziness decides to come back with a vengeance and kick his ass.

His mom and Summer are the only ones in the kitchen, both seated at the table and picking at their breakfast. Neither one looks overly interested in the food, his mom staring off into the middle distance and Summer typing away at her phone, ignoring everything around her. A normal morning… sort of.

He pours himself a bowl of cereal, sits down at the table with them.

"Wow, mom wasn't kidding, you really killed you eye," Summer says, attention drawn away from her phone for a brief moment. "What'd you do, take a header into the doorknob?"

"Fff-faucet," he guesses.

She snaps a picture of his face and goes back to her phone, her interest gone. Seconds later her phone chimes a happy little beat.

He turns back to his cereal.

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A plate of scrambled eggs sits before him, just a bit watery; he added too much milk. Still, he can't help but feel a little proud of them. He's getting better at this whole cooking thing, and if he keeps practicing, his skills will only improve. There's a new recipe he wants to try for dinner later. Simple but filling. Pretty soon they won't need to survive on take-out food alone.

"Jesus, Morty," Rick grumbles, his fork scraping across the plate in a loud screeeech, "if you're gonna take this hh-OOHME-maker thing seriously, y-you gotta learn what spices are. This tas-tastes—this is bland as shit."

He could take offence. He could stand up from the table and throw a fit, rant about how if Rick doesn't like it, hecan do the cooking from now on. Just throw Rick's plate and storm away. Things tend to be tense between them, so it certainly wouldn't be unexpected. Despite all Rick's complaints though, the older man always eats every last bite of whatever Morty cooks, and although he's complaining about the spices, he doesn't once mention that the eggs are too runny. He never does; never actually points out a real cooking mistake when Morty makes one.

Morty slides a bottle of hot sauce across the table. Rick catches it with a grin.

"NooOOOww we're talking!"

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His arm hits the bowl of cereal when he jerks back, knocking it from the table and spilling it on the floor. Milk soaks into his socks, but he hardly notices. His mom and Summer are watching him, a mix of emotions on their face that he doesn't take the time to decipher. He eyes dart around the table, but it's just the three of them. No Rick. No runny scrambled eggs.

"What the hell, Morty?" his sister snaps.

"I-uuuhhh… w-wh-where's Rick? I just remem—I, I, I need to talk to him."

It appears to be the wrong thing to say. Summer's looking at him like he's lost it, and his mom stands up from her chair, a look of clear concern on her face along with something else—a look of hurt, there and gone in a second. She has one hand out, starts walking around the table to him.

"Honey—"

He backs up before she can get too close. He doesn't know why, he just doesn't like the way she's looking at him—all overly concerned and careful, like he's a scared animal. It's not normal. It's not how anyone in his family looks at him. He blurts out quickly, "I'm-I—it's fine! I'll just go get him myself." And then he bolts for the garage, ignores his name being called out behind him.

Did Rick dump him in some alternate universe again, he wonders, or is this another experiment? Some chemical in the water? He vaguely remembers Rick mentioning something about aliens that kidnap you and stuff you in a shoddy virtual reality of your home, but he's pretty sure Rick blew all those aliens up, so… probably not very likely.

He slams open the door to the garage, his grandfather's name on the tip of his tongue—

And he stops, hands falling limp to his sides.

Because the garage is empty, completely stripped clean of anything that could have ever belonged to Rick. All that remains are some boxes marked Christmas Decorations, Halloween Decorations, Garden Supplies, Morty's Room, Summer's Room—all normal things one would usually find in their garage. His eyes dart to where the hatch to Rick's secret underground lab should be, but even that's been covered up by several oil-stained pieces of cardboard, ignored, like it was never there.

A hand comes down on his shoulder, but he pulls away, walks into the center of the mostly empty garage and paces in a circle, taking everything in. Something nags at him, some knowledge just out of grasp. He feels like… like this shouldn't be a surprise, like he should know what this all means. He does know, he does, because this is all old news now, isn't it? But the answers slip through his fingers, and an ache pulses from his eye all the way to the back of his skull.

'You're making a scene,' he tells himself. 'Stop it.'

His attention snaps to the garage door as it rumbles and slowly starts to rise. Morning light filters in, bright and blinding, and the silhouette of a vehicle stands before him, the sound of an engine running. He steps towards it, one hand up to block the glare from his eyes, and he can't stop himself from calling out, "Rrrick?"

It's not his grandfather's ship though. The shape of the silhouette is all wrong, far too boxy and with no wings attached. The vehicle slowly pulls forward, a car, and as Morty's eyes adjust, he sees his dad sitting in the driver's seat. The garage door creeps the rest of the way up and Morty finds his gaze drawn past the car and outside… at a neighborhood that's no longer one he recognizes. Alien architecture looms high above Earth houses and streets, consuming everything that was once normal.

He remembers.

"Morty," his mom says, her tone dead, "your grandfather isn't here."

Yes, he knows. Rick is gone; hasn't been here for quite a while now. How long has it been? Seven months? Eight?

"Yeah, he ditched us, remember?" Summer says. "Abandoned us on that tiny planet to get picked up by the stup- the Federation."

Something inside him flares up at this remark, a feeling of protest—except it's true, isn't it? It all happened exactly as she said, he knows this.

And yet… something about it digs at him.

His dad steps out of the car, jumps into the conversation, "What about Rick?"

"I'm going to school," Morty says dully, and he turns back to the house to go grab his backpack.

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TBC for now!

More chapters to come. Let me know what you think. :)