Chapter Text
A loud beeping becomes the first thing to invade his senses, followed closely by a weightless push to the cold, hard, metal floor of his sub-basement lab.
Rick chokes on the last bits of quantum fluid to invade his nose and mouth, spitting the sour taste somewhere in front of him and hoping the garage will clean that later. With shaking limbs, the scientist rises to his hands and knees, an instinctual groan leaving his throat. He shivers, the cool steel below him a welcomed pain to ground him back to reality and away from the dreamlike lifelessness of Operation Phoenix’s rebooting vats.
Somewhere in the distance, he's vaguely aware of his garage’s voice congratulating his successful rejuvenation, welcoming in whatever generation clone of a clone of a clone he is now, but it all sounds just like mechanical buzzing in his ears.
If he's oriented himself correctly, Rick should be facing the direction of his lab wardrobe. All it takes is just getting there first.
With a heave, Rick pushes himself off the floor and upright, opening his eyes for the first time.
Information flooding is a normal part of his cloning process. His mechanical gears hum and creak under his skin, and his brain runs through all the systems like the clockwork they are to make sure he's functional.
He's had enough experience body hopping and cloning his consciousness to know when a new body is a dud or not, and as he stumbles on jelly-fied legs to his tiny closet, he thinks he can confidently say which one this is.
He wasn't even supposed to need it this time, Rick thinks. It was supposed to be a simple supply run to get some rare precious metals from a dwarf planet he can't even remember the name of. It's not like it was his fault they were only on a mountain top and it was storming.
Being made of more metal than flesh has its advantages, but today there are absolutely none to be found.
Rick doesn't know why that memory decided to lodge onto him as his body was getting ready to turn on. Sure, he's thought about it in passing, but it's not exactly like he keeps it in a scrapbook with a play-by-play script for everything that happened. It was just… How he lost his eye.
Hurt like a bitch afterwards too, he hums, pulling on a dusty blue shirt he hasn't washed in weeks. Supposedly, he woke up days later on the Rebellion’s med bay ship with a blindfold on and a nasty puss-filled-extremely-swollen-migrane-inducing infection from his head trying to reject the scanner out of his skull. Only through a combination of his instruction, Birdperson’s gentle and guiding hands, and a painkiller drug Squanchy snuck on board from God-knows-where did Rick actually manage to get a fitting prosthetic in. It took hours for blinking to stop being painful. Even longer than that to get used to how the world looks.
Rick doesn't see the way he used to.
As most people get older their sight just gets worse and worse and eventually goes away entirely.
But not him.
With time, his sight has only gotten better.
There's dust particles in the air, floating around for exactly 3.2 seconds until they'll descend to the ground. Rick sees it, barely thicker than his own hair, as it wafts past his breath, fluttering back.
Properly dressed, Rick turns to the elevator, shutting the light off of this level of the lab. His gaze meets the fluorescent tubing, and Rick watches as a light both a million years old and just a couple minutes alive fades away in slow motion–the prismatic rainbow afterglow it left behind was beautiful for the second it lasted. There's a color in there Rick can't name. Can't even think of what to call it or how to describe it. It's utterly inhuman to look at, and were he more so, it would have been horrifying to see.
But Rick is not. Inhuman has stopped being an insult a long, long time ago.
The elevator pings and begins its ascent towards the top. Rick meets the speckled wall, squinting at the cream color. There's bacteria there, one of its cells just split. The former whole became separated and divided and small. A lesser sum of its parts. A parody of what it once was. The bacteria wanders, continuing its microscopic trek across fields of concrete too large for itself to comprehend. He holds his gaze, deeper still and watches as one billionth of a billionth of its pieces comes to life. A new atom just formed, electrons dancing across its field collide with its sister atom on the left. There's a pulse when the two meet, some recognition of another life there, but they are atoms, and to reconcile with one another is to spell destruction, so they detach once more like it never happened. The atom could never see its electrons, bacteria never its cell, the human never its germs.
But Rick can. He can see better than any person alive. Probably any person dead, too.
Try hard enough, Rick can count the number of dying cells on his hands. Just as much the newest ones born of mitosis in the blink of an eye.
It's objectivism at its finest. Reality to a point unbound by observational bias.
Science, his eye seems to mock him, is in your vision to a fault. For what need does a god of logic and innovation have for the subjective and sublime of the world?
Truthfully, Rick can fix that if he wishes. He can find a hundred ways to off himself in less than ten minutes and reroute himself to a new clone built with human eyes and calcium phosphate in his bones where titanium now lies. He can reinvent the human body a million times over and create the ideal Him, human in every way possible and able to experience the world that way.
Maybe then the freak hallucinations and echoes of things that haven't been around will stop torturing him.
It started years ago, really. From his first experiments with Operation Phoenix’s rerouting system to figure out the logistics of transferring a consciousness. A snag he'd found was the subjectivity of a new mind attempting to gain control of a body. At first, his new clone bodies were unable to speak, walk or sometimes breathe. Over time the transition became easier and easier, nearly seamless. But a new mind is a weak mind, and in its attempts to stabilize itself, tends to latch on to whatever it was thinking of before the new body awoke.
Which is why Rick hesitates to say he's surprised to see his daughter's six year old face smiling brightly at him, before continuing to spin in circles across the small elevator.
Yes, Rick can fix this. Make himself more human than he has been in decades, get rid of these godawful hallucinations and tech that serves as nothing more than a reminder of how separated he is from his species.
But like it or not, this is his body now, and Rick's never been one for life-bettering change. He lived as a sad old pathetic dirtbag, and that's how he'll die.
The elevator chimes as the door slides open, little Beth barreling her way out with an inaudible laugh as Rick trudged paces behind her. She turns around in wonder, same as she always does, gazing at the various bits of glowing machinery with stars in her eyes and excitement pouring through her seldom-visible body.
He knows it's pathetic. Getting attached to a hallucination of his dead daughter? How much worse can he get?
But it's not exactly like he can get rid of her, much less move or interact with her in any tangible way. (A part of him wishes that the dead alien really did make it. That his eye would be gone for a good reason and that even some fake version of his daughter he could hold. When Birdperson had told a slightly delirious and still healing Rick that it was long dead, he had wept for hours. Sometimes it feels like he's never stopped.) So he might as well make peace with his stupid backstory staring him in the face for a couple hours.
Diane's voice comes through the microscopic but appropriately loud speakers strewn about the garage ceiling, cheerfully asking if his disorientation is from the malfunctioning new body or some alien drug/drink he's somehow managed to near-blackout on already. Rick grumbles what he thinks is a cuss at the empty space, more focused on getting his legs to stop shaking long enough for him to reach his workbench.
In front of him, little Beth waves him along, motioning to the chair he's got strewn somewhere in the middle of the room. She smiles, dimples present, as her hands clutch its top. Humming at her directions, Rick all but flops onto it with a half-sigh-half-grunt, feeling his fresh 70 year old muscles release their tension.
Rick lets his head fall backwards on the seat, taking an unfocused view of the fluorescent light overhead.
Without Beth in his field of view, the mush that is his reconstructing brain decides to shift to her voice, laughter echoing from two rooms over, Diane-style. Like fake mother like fake daughter, he supposes. Beth always was a curious person, fascinated by morbidity and the natural world, much like her mother was.
Rick wonders if she would have hated or loved having eyesight like his. Maybe she would have liked it for her work, high depth surgery where she can pinpoint the exact cells that need healing would've made her the envy of every elite medical school from here to fuckin’ Gloppydrop. Or maybe his daughter would've been a bit more like her current space-faring counterpart, a laser-guided sharpshooter just as deadly and desirable as he was, She'd be so fucking badass, he's sure of it.
Maybe he can just sleep off this reconstruction, let his subconscious mind handle all the bullshit that comes with a dud clone body. He'll take some manipulated memories of a 30-year-old him cussing real-him out over involuntary hallucinations making him--eugh–sentimental and sulky.
Drugs won't even make it go away. Trust him, he's tried.
Yeah, sleep sounds nice. He can just close his eyes, kiss the world goodbye for a couple hours, and regroup with a better plan to get those crystals he needs when he wakes up. Yeah, he should do that. Good plan. Good…. pla-
“Dad, it's dinner time! I don't care how busy you are, you promised me you'd show up for this meal today!”
…Fuck.
Right, he told Beth (adult Beth, stranger Beth, his daughter-not-daughter, the only person he'd take his other eye out for-) that he's got things to do in space, but after her insistence of their therapist’s insistence that he'd make it back for dinner. Something about low-stakes quality time to deepen bonds as if running for your life with death two steps away from you isn't the best bonding experience he knows of.
Well, Rick supposes in a way he got the best of both worlds here. A version of him did make it back for dinner, even if it wasn't the one who made that promise in the first place. Either way, he came out on top, fulfilling his daughter's request and sticking it to authority. Ha.
Rick hums back what he hopes is an audible response–judging by Beth's sigh, it is–and slowly works himself off the chair. His eyes remain closed until he's all the way up--vertigo be damned, he's not about to keel over for a second time today–and upon opening he comes face to face with fake Beth, clapping in some form of congratulations for getting up. He gives her a quick nod, halfway between an acknowledgement and a bow, and heads towards the main house door.
He walks slow, trudging his feet along the wooden panels. If anyone asks, he can just say he's drunk or whatever as an excuse for being a snail, who cares. The smell of the food more than anything is what guides him to the dining room, making him stumble down unceremoniously at the head of the table to the half-open seat waiting for him.
He's not the first to arrive, but he's not the last, either. Jerry gives him a nonchalant and completely disinterested, “How has your day been” that Rick promptly ignores as he peers over the table to the stairwell, where Morty comes barreling down with a rare completely stretched smile on his face.
He had a date with Jessica today, their fifth first date at this point, but the kid always acts like it's the fourth of fucking July each time. It makes Rick's own lips twitch upward, just barely, as he thinks of how reminiscent his grandson is of an excitable puppy. He begins stammering through a recap of what the two did, much to Jerry's relief of having someone to talk to that isn't Rick, and the scientist himself watches Summer walk in at her own “idgaf” pace, gaze transfixed on the phone in her hand as she sits down next to her brother.
Beth walks in last, firmly holding a glass bowl of (non-suicide sourced) spaghetti and meatballs and sets it down in the middle of the table. Her eyes squint with the barest hint of a grin at the sight of family-full seats as she sits down, clearing her throat before announcing a short “Dig in!” and lifting a serving to her own plate.
Dinner follows as it normally does. Long-winded side conversations, the chirping of birds outside, the awful noise of someone chewing and fuckin’ banger food.
Rick lets himself ease into the lull of it all, hoping this'll finally mean the end of his unnecessarily nostalgia-trip-ridden day, before an unwanted presence makes itself known circling the table.
The fork Rick is holding screeches against his plate as Rick does his best to hide his surprise and glare at little Beth circling the table. She echoes the ghost of a silent laugh, hair billowing by the wind of a world only real to her and to Rick's eyes. She waves her hands across the faces of each family member, apparently careless at their lack of response. There's a humming sound, Rick notes as he stares at her, his eye attempting to analyze something that isn't there.
He whirls his gaze around to his food, suddenly finding himself fascinated by the shape poured spaghetti can make, and tries to make zero reactions to the hand now waving in front of him. He can do this, he can do this, he just needs to get through dinner and use his sleep-inducing gun and be done with today, just focus. Just focus on the food, just foc-
His eye zooms in uncommanded, and the tomato sauce turns into a parade of salt crystals towering over millions of bits of crushed tomato paste. Rick blinks and he can see the potassium atoms breaking apart sodium with ease, lycopene drowning everything out in a vibrant red nobody else has ever or will ever see. Rick blinks again and the fork he stabs into the noodle on instinct shreds through microstrands of starch and flour and he can see everything and he can practically hear it and he can practically see Her blood on his hands again-
A laugh shirks his ears. Blinking rapidly the world melts back to its normal size, participants of the meal none the wiser as to Rick's far away (and yet far, far, too close) stare.
He gazes out the window. A cumulus cloud formation is headed their way. Approximately an hour from now it'll be overhead, with rain following in twenty minutes. It'll become a cumulonimbus in half that time.
Rick twists his head again, a snarl working its way to his lips. The wall has a new layer of dust on it, the specks of miniature hair and otherwise all landed there a day ago. Nobody else can see it. Nobody else will even think it's dirty. Nobody can see the way the cloudy sunset is causing tiny prismatic refractions over it. The rainbow is beautiful, the colors he can never name.
With a twitch of his nose and deep squeeze of his eye, Rick attempts to settle back to his food. The sooner he can finish it the better. He sets his fork down, reaching for his cup of water, and almost chokes.
Little Beth is sitting on his lap. Fuck, she's sitting on his lap and smiling right at him. Fuck, fuck, it looks exactly like Her at that age. She's swinging her legs in the air, just content to be with him and Rick's gonna fucking hurl.
Someone across the table laughs, little Beth echoing the sentiment as if she's part of the conversation, her fingers drumming along the outside of his thighs and he has to resist the urge to itch himself until he bleeds. Her straw-blonde hair invades his nose as she leans back against his chest, sticking herself in the crook of his neck. Rick's gaze lifts to the area between the window and the ceiling, determined to remain unfocused until he can control his breathing confidently enough to look down.
He can feel her weight as she shifts to pick up his glass of water. He can feel her breath, steady but excitable as she listens to Morty talk about his date. He can almost imagine the stars in her eyes.
Eventually, the conversations die down, as everyone focuses on their plates. Hopeful to finally be able to eat without every single sensory-related part of his brain going haywire, Rick lets his head drop down to everyone's eye level, going around the table before accidentally making eye contact with Beth.
Quickly, Rick tries looking away but he's caught before he can.
“Dad?” Beth starts, worry curving her brows, “You alright? You've been kind of… spacey all dinner.”
Fuck, where's his acting skills when he needs them, huh? Did this clone just not have it downloaded in the program?
“Nah, I'm fine, sweetie.” Rick lies. “Just thinking about my last sexcapade up there. Smashed some serious action today.” He adds for good measure, taking a satisfied smirk at Summer's gagging noise.
Beth seems unhappy with the answer, but lets it go with a hum anyway.
With a distraction settled for a while, Rick gets back to his plate and swiftly feels his mechanically-cased heart drop into his stomach.
Looks like Little Beth got tuckered out and decided to take a nap. Right on top of his food. Her eyes are closed contentedly, arms folded under her smushed up cheek. Her expression is neutral, as anyone's is when they're asleep.
Beth's focus is still on him, he knows. If he doesn't eat soon she'll ask again.
With a shaking hand, Rick picks up his fork, and slowly brings it to his plate. He brings it to his plate of spaghetti because the Beth on his lap is not real. He can lower it and only reach wet noodles and nothing else because that's what's real and his daughter is dead and he's alive and eating spaghetti.
That's what's real, Rick repeats in his head, trying not to cringe at the squish of it all. He reaches down through Little Beth's temple, just above her ear, and somehow finds it surprising there was no reaction from the sleeping girl. The cybernetics pick nothing up either, except for the expected list of ingredients in his food (at least before he deactivates it so it won't bug out again) and alien-ceramic plate below.
On some level, he can't actually see what he's picking up, blocked by the fake sleeper claiming his dinner as a pillow, but the weight of it on his fork is as good indication as any that he's picked something up.
Real Beth's eyes are still on him. He can't dally forever. She's real and he's real and his daughter is dead.
He's real and his daughter is dead. He's real and he's lifting meat sauce to his mouth. It isn't blood. It isn't trailing down his daughter's face because his daughter isn't here. He can analyze everything in front of him until the very number of atoms on his fork he can predict with ease. He's chewing food made in a kitchen and it is not his daughter's brain. It isn't real and he didn't pierce anything because there isn't anything to pierce. He's fine. Beth is fine. His daughter is dead and not sleeping on his lap and he is fine.
The pasta tastes like ash on his tongue, and goes down about just as easily.
Rick can't take another bite. His stomach is lined with metal created to endure a week of both starvation and deadly poisonous injection.
It's cruel, how the world Rick built around himself is full of juxtaposition. It's cruel that the uncertainty principle of his daughter is at the forefront of his mind when a real version of her is right at the edge of the table, staring right at him.
“Dad?” she asks. “are you sure you're okay?”
“Yeah,” Rick croaks. “just… thought I saw something.”
Beth puts a hand on his in sympathy.
His daughter leans up for a hug.