There were so many questions Morty wanted to ask: Why had Rick frozen like that? Why had he looked terrified, when he'd been all over the universe (and multiple dimensions) and faced creatures far worse than the aliens that were chasing them? Why had he suddenly seemed so completely and utterly….lost, when Rick was always the one who knew exactly what to do?

Instead, he held his tongue. The entire ride, he tried to figure out how he was going to breach either one of those questions, which he wasn't even sure he really wanted to know the answer to. The entire ride, he kept hoping beyond hope that Rick would offer some kind of an explanation for his own behavior. However the silence persisted, and Morty was forced to accept that the possibility of that was becoming more and more unlikely.

When they got home, Rick didn't even look at him. He simply exited the car, hands stuffed deep inside his pockets as he prepared to exit the garage.

"Rick? Um-" Morty called out to him meekly. "D-don't, um-Don't you think we should, um-" He rubbed the back of his head and blushed. "Should-shouldn't we, uh, t-talk about-"

"Nope!" Everything about his grandfather's posture indicated that he was done with communicating.

"But-" Morty swallowed hard. "B-b-but, Rick-!"

"Good night, Morty!" The door slammed shut in his face, leaving Morty standing alone in an empty garage, wondering what he should do, and knowing that he could really do nothing.


That night, Morty couldn't sleep. He'd been having nightmares recently, mostly about alien civilizations taking over the planet. The insane part was that this had actually happened right before he and his own sister Summer had managed to play a major role in Rick in rescuing himself from intergalactic prison, and finally Rick had managed to return everything back to normal again. Yet, his nightmares were completely different. In his dream world, Rick never came home. As a result, humanity was stripped completely of its freedom, denied basic rights like shelter and clothes. Humans were forced to fight naked in the streets, sometimes killing each other for what they needed in order to survive. When they were fighting, they changed into monstrous beings that didn't even look human.

Sometimes, the humans looked like mutants, like when he and Rick accidentally Chronenburghed Earth in his original dimension.

Sometimes, they looked like the (hundreds?) of Gromflomites he'd killed.

Then, sometimes they looked like a hundred versions of him, and he'd be fighting with himself, killing different versions of himself over and over again.

On this particular night, Morty preferred not to entertain the seemingly endless possibilities of what the inhuman humans could become. Instead, he lay awake, staring blankly at the ceiling, wondering what went wrong.

Why had Rick left him and the others on Tiny Planet to be returned to Earth without him?

Why had he allowed himself to get captured by the Federation? (Rick could easily have escaped, he had a full arsenal of super-strength weapons on hand at all times).

These were the questions that kept Morty up at night. He wondered if he'd ever know the truth of what had happened.

Rick was the smartest person he'd ever known, and he'd let himself get captured by the beings he despised. It didn't make any sense to Morty, and he figured he'd probably never understand.

Sometime around 4 am he had to pee. He got out of bed and meandered down the hallway, quietly so as not to wake his parents. He was just finishing in the bathroom and heading back when he heard something strange. It was the sound of moaning or whimpering, and to his horror, it was coming from Rick's room.

In between moans, there were words, but he couldn't understand them. Morty tiptoed back down the hall, pressing his ear to Rick's door, trying to make out the words over the sound of his own heartbeat pounding in his ears.

"PLEASE! No….NO! GET-GET THE HELL AWAY FROM ME! L-LEAVE ME ALONE!-PLEASE! JUST GET THE HELL AWAY FROM ME AND LEAVE ME THE FUCK ALONE!"

With each word spoken, Morty's heart rate increased as his defense mode kicked in-was Rick getting attacked in his own bedroom!? Every fiber of his being screamed at him to intervene, and yet he couldn't move. Suddenly, the moaning stopped, and then there was only silence.

He was shaking as he opened the door, terrified of what he might see on the other side, wondering how he was going to save his grandfather without any weapons-only to stop dead when he realized, to his amazement, that the room was completely still-and Rick was sound asleep-and he was snoring, as though he'd been sleeping the entire time….

That was when it hit Morty in the gut. His grandfather had been sleeping the entire time. He'd been talking in his sleep-because he was dreaming-but it didn't sound like any typical kind of dreaming-from the way he had sounded, it sounded like one of the most hellish nightmares Morty had ever heard.

Morty tiptoed over to Rick's bedside. He stared down at his sleeping grandfather, wondering what was going on in his head.

What happened next took him completely by surprise: as suddenly, Rick's eyes snapped open, two hands flew up, and suddenly those same two hands were clutching his own neck. He couldn't cry out to stop them-because suddenly he couldn't breathe-the hands were bearing down on him like a boa constrictor encircling its prey; tears spilled from Morty's eyes but he couldn't scream.

Meanwhile, he could feel his entire body being lifted off the floor, dangling in mid-air as though he weighed nothing. Morty clawed desperately at the hands that were slowly crippling his windpipe. In a last-minute effort with the last bit of energy he could muster before the lifeblood was drained completely from his body, Morty dug his fingernails deep into the flesh that threatened to obliterate him-and Rick let out a yelp of pain, instantly dropping Morty to the ground with a thud.

He hit the ground hard, but the impact knocked the air finally out of his lungs, and finally, he could breathe again, but now he wasn't sure if he should scream with terror or cry for help. His throat was already sore and the bands of his neck were already becoming swollen, and he wasn't sure he could scream for help if he tried. He turned to face his grandfather, who had somehow become his assailant. His entire body was shaking-however not from fear this time, but from rage.

"M-MORTY?" Rick was leaning over the bed, staring at him wide-eyed, as though he'd just seen a ghost. "What-what the hell are you-"

Suddenly his head spun sideways, as something rock-solid connected instantly with his jaw, knocking Rick right off his army cot in one fell swoop. Blood trickled into his mouth from his lower lip which had busted open. In shock, he turned to face Morty, who was retracting his knuckle-white fist as he glared daggers at his grandfather. Connecting the dots, Rick's eyes grew wide. "MORTY?"

"THAT," Morty hissed through clenched teeth that were shaking with barely suppressed fury, "is for almost KILLING me today-TWICE." He didn't wait to see if Rick would apologize. He knew no apology was coming. He turned on his heel and stormed out of the room, slamming the door shut behind him.