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Morty spends more time than usual in therapy nowadays. Not of his own accord, not by far– Beth and Jerry had simultaneously decided their sessions were enough for now and the time they freed up could be used by their son. It was a coincidently good decision, regardless of their own private reasons for quitting. Depending on how Morty’s week was going, he now spent around two hours talking with Dr. Wong.
Morty was mostly happy with that time being spent productively, focusing on just himself for a bit, reliving all the instances of his health tipping into a dark, endless basin of problems. He knew that the sessions were not meant to drive him further into a wall. He was aware they meant to just show him the outlines of his squiggly, rattled brain, of what ticked him off as an unstable child, of how to unravel the road to feeling better. Going to therapy was supposed to slowly help him solve his emotions.
His stuttering got better - or lessened, technically. His voice has settled on breaking down just in moments of high emotions, making his normal sentences feel smoother and lighter. He feels he can pull himself together better nowadays, more ready to be spiteful and get on the offensive if he needs to.
Morty’s changed significantly. He hasn’t gone through a wholly good type of change nor an entirely bad one, it just was there for him to experience.
Everything and everyone around him has changed too, Rick included. His category of change, however, was far too convoluted to be placed between good and bad. Morty’s regular clashes with therapy have made it just that much more obvious.
“You don’t always seem.. optimistic talking about Rick’s progress.” Dr. Wong comments during one of their sessions, her tone entirely judgement-free and mindful.
She had been carefully trying to steer their conversation onto Rick for the past thirty minutes, but only now she’s finally decided to go a more direct route.
Morty can’t really blame her for her carefulness nor the time she took for the shift. He’s been dodging her about a few topics recently, clinging to normality as if it were still any good for him. If he were any type of pissed with Rick right now, he’d gladly rant about his experiences, however outside of moments of anger or frustration, he can’t exactly separate guilt from the truth. It just doesn’t seem right to recollect all the bad things that have happened when Rick’s trying.
(It doesn’t matter that Rick attempts to be better shift on-and-off, constantly. It doesn’t matter if he lashes out at the stupidest shit and settles at their more dangerous or unpleasant situations. Mom’s- Moms are happier, Jerry’s unevenly happy, Summer’s as content as she can get about the whole thing - it’s all worth it. It has to be worth it if his family’s happier with Rick now.)
The teen stares at Dr. Wong and stares, and forces himself to abort the idea of calling his grandpa to get him back home. (Rick would pick up, sure, he’d even bitch about making an unnecessary trip before immediately showing up at Morty’s location, but he’d press on the why. His grandpa would want a reason, in any shape or form, as long as it was truthful. Morty can’t exactly imagine himself admitting that he hates the possibility of Dr. Wong being repulsed with Rick for Morty talking about how awful their relationship used to be.)
“I guess I don’t know what– what to do with it anymore.” He replies shortly.
“Do you feel conflicted?”
“Not really. I am happy Rick’s getting better.” The words come out more pointed than he means them to, tainted with defensiveness. “He’s – more patient? At least more often. He freaks out a little less at everyone. Our adventures have been more manageable too.”
Dr. Wong doesn’t squint at the change of his tone, moving on seamlessly. Her pen and notepad is still safely laid open on her lap, too angled for Morty to take a peek at, but surely filled with notes on the bits of unhealthy behavior he must reveal too often. He used to feel stressed out at the thought of every part of his thoughts and emotions being put to shame on plain paper pages, but talking to Dr. Wong truthfully turned out to be a bigger problem.
“But his change of behavior doesn’t make you feel relieved.”
“No.” Morty confirms and tries not to hold himself too nervously. He knows she’s noticed his habit already - holding his arms, crossing them over to feel smaller than he is - and hasn’t commented on it since that first time in their solo meetings. They’ve already talked about his anxiety, about him replacing his need for another person with self-comforting, bad as he was at it. Dr. Wong had gently pointed it out to him, telling him to watch out for its clear hint at his feelings. She most definitely had meant to warn him from expressing his emotions too clearly when he was on another trip with Rick, in case of real danger, but Morty had accounted it under the list of things he needed to avoid doing around his family.
“Is there a chance you’re not used to Rick being, well, "nicer"? In a manner of speaking.”
“Probably,” he shrugged, struggling to put his thoughts into words, “but him being that way, unfamiliar, felt good at the start of all this. I knew his problems with attachment and grief and all that wouldn’t disappear just because Prime’s dead - I just thought it would help- He acts wrong now.”
The woman nods in understanding, putting off her response to his reflection in order to write something down.
“What would you say bothers you the most about it right now?”
Morty pauses at the question, rolling over the answer in his head twice before discarding it, muttering out an uncertain answer.
“Everything?”
He gets a minor squint from his doctor in return, forcing himself to reform the one word into something more definite.
“He feels guilty about how he treated me, he always feels bad whenever he hurts me now, accident or not, however it just doesn’t feel like enough.”
The sentence comes out of him somewhat hurriedly, steadily feeling more like a crawling series of noises. Fragments of his chest feel hotter now, like something is burrowing deeper inside him at the slightest hint of shame, at his childish admittance.
“I don’t need him to apologize for all the stupid things he says in one of his bitch moods or when he’s angry at me for messing up and putting us in danger. I can handle that now, it doesn’t really matter, but he still has these moments when I feel like he’s being cruel and dumb, and knows he’s overdoing it, and guilt still isn’t enough to reel all of that anger back.”
(He should still feel better about it. Things with Rick used to be much worse before. Morty used to be woken up with a shadow dragging him out of bed, with every mistake being met with verbal lashes or a knock to the back of his head, every other day filled with reprimands being said back and forth between slurred words. He doesn’t want to go back to being shamed for his miserable existence, for being so close to nothing with his naivety and imbecile behavior that Mom used to frame as a "disability". He still liked being Rick’s best friend enough, he still wanted him in his life, he needed Rick as much as the man used to need to drink himself unconscious over his life. And though it got better, his hands and eyes got gentler as they hovered over Morty daily, there was distance now. There is nothing but distance.)
“I know he’s not even really pissed at me most of the time anymore, he’s- He’s messed up after losing Diane and the whole revenge thing, and losing so much.” He reasons, pressing his fingertips into the scratches and scars over his arms, fingertips trailing over the bumpy healing scabs. He knows better than to scratch at them, too soon to pick the scabs off his skin, but the impulse to reach blood is there. He’s done worse anyways.
Dr. Wong makes a light sympathetic hum, unintentionally shushing the tirade of Morty’s thoughts.
“You can empathize with his loss and still acknowledge that his behavior towards you all those times was unnecessary, Morty. His grief and past have been heavily impacting his character for years, but they’ve never been a valid justification for treating you how he did before and does now, even if the destructive behavior appears occasionally.” Her words are right, of course, carefully picked out as to not antagonize Rick or pull apart their antics too much. In theory Morty could handle the psychological dissection, he could comprehend the magnitude of what Rick’s influence had done to him, but he isn’t keen on it.
There’s already enough hurt lurching inside his body already.
“There’s nothing wrong with holding his wrongs against him while wishing for him to heal. You can be hurt and angry at someone you love and still want things to get better for them.”
That much Morty knows to be true by himself. He’s rationalized it, he’s measured his fondness of Rick with his resentment of him, he’s done the necessary comparison in the privacy of his room. It hadn’t made him feel any better about the whole concept. The thought of hating Rick forever seemed greasy for more than a few reasons.
“Isn’t that unfair though?” His impulsivity had finally spilled out, the question coming off uneven, pitchy.
“Hasn’t his treatment of you been often unfair throughout all these months?” Her ready cutting counter of an answer is enough to throw the teen off again.
The pause in their conversation is longer, more uneasy than before. It’s not unexpected - they’ve talked about Rick enough for Morty to develop a pattern of nerves at the topic - but it’s much more awkward now that Rick’s trying. It felt safer to talk about his grandfather before, when he was miserable in a different way, more explosive. Every time Morty has had a conversation about Rick since his growth, he’s felt like pulling his own teeth out to shove them down his throat. It’s as if each of their past and current, new issues, was a newly punctuated bullet shot into the spine of an already dead animal.
“I can’t believe he’s trying to grow.”
Morty’s comment steers into an uneven giggle, wide eyes dropping to the floor as glass ornaments would, hysteria teething at the edges of his skull.
(Rick is trying, that’s something, that’s potentially genuine goodness stirring in him to make a dent in his detachment from the world.)
“I’m sure reconciling how he was with who he is now is hard-”
The smile fades as fast as it came.
The windows to his soul become hazed, then hardened, showing empty barns of patience and joy. If the beginning of Dr. Wong’s words hadn’t tipped him into a different world of horror, he would have been content with disbelief. He could have been content with resuming their conversations with shock and unsurety, and ended their session with the reassurance that he and Rick still have lots of time to grow outside of each other and heal.
“It’s not about that. It’s about me. I’m wrong.”
The horrors as always come from inside him - a genetic disease at the ready.
“How are you wrong?”
“I’m wrong because sometimes I wish he hadn’t gotten better.” His head hangs low at the admittance, at the vile, bitter need in his own words. “Sometimes I wish he had gotten worse so I could have accumulated all my feelings and hated him, and been justified, and have my family believe my bitterness is justified.”
Morty picks at one of the scabs on his arms openly, running his nail over and under it, pushing until he feels a tiny burning point sensation. The blood under it wells up into a droplet, hanging onto him dearly, refusing to fall down. He can’t bear to look at Dr. Wong’s face, but looking at his own miniscule wound seems somehow worse. Maybe he can’t stand the thought of hurting Rick without hurting himself too. Maybe his issues really are just genes.
“I can’t do it now. I can’t hate him and love him at the same time, I can’t separate his growth from what he’s done to our family, to me, to Rick and Morty for a hundred years.”
He can almost imagine Rick’s face if he were to hear everything Morty’s been saying for the past few minutes. He can almost imagine the exact way his blue eyes would turn into pools of hazy ice, hollowing from the inside, leaving nothing but sorrow inside. Rick would twitch at the end of Morty’s venting, fiddle with the ragged side of his coat before turning away, intending to burrow somewhere dark and quiet to drink the heavy acknowledgement of his mistakes away. He wouldn’t break at the words, there’s no way for him to split apart even further, but the glacier of his fondness would dip that much more under the water.
Morty knows there’s close to no chance of Rick ever hating him, of Rick willingly letting go of him again. They’re partners for the worst of it, against everything, a wrong pair of best friends. Rick needs him and Morty’d kill to stay needed forever just as much as he’d tear himself apart to be free.
“I can’t live like this.”
Dr. Wong’s words of comfort pull through his ears like slush, coming to his consciousness like waves and dissipating just as quickly. She holds out her hand for him with a tiny white band-aid, gesturing to the scratched open scab. His mind sloshes, focusing on it with a last effort desperation. Flashes of a lullaby come back to him as a thread wrapped around his throat, settling his twitchy breathing, forcing his voice into silence. His doctor’s pointed look of concern is flushed and blurred away by tears welling up in his eyes, becoming nothing, uncaptured.
He reaches out for the band-aid and responds with nothing to her. The droplets of blood stick and seep into it without issue and Morty loses his unnerving itch to speak entirely. As much as he’s in the room still physically, his mind has fully retreated to its own depths. It’s not like any of those other times when he’d heaved and cried at every accident, injury and death. It’s nothing like the times Morty scratched his arms open, letting his nails be like claws, focusing on the pain just so he wouldn’t fall asleep; resting was always a gamble with Rick around. Sometimes Morty would wait and wait until the sky brightened to turn his back to the door to his room. There were occasions he’d even lock the door to stop his grandfather from bursting in. He dreamed of them holding steady once, keeping him away.
He had many futile dreams like that, most of which had already gone to bury themselves without Morty’s help.
Rick will never hear about any of them.
Another time next week Wong will have to talk over with Morty the topic of dissociation and parentification, but for now she lets the matter rest.
Dr. Wong asked him once about Rick’s drunk behavior. She’d asked how his memory of all their interactions was, of what he did usually in such a time, and whether Morty was often made to deal with Rick’s antics by himself. During their conversation about it, she had gotten odd at a few points, harshly pulling off a crease in her expression to go back to well-mannered neutrality. She was getting at something, a conclusion she hadn’t liked, but Morty refused to let either of them spell it out to the end of their time. In between the four walls, in the frail privacy of their sessions, he had at least that last bit of control over what happened.
He couldn’t pull out the words to describe the many, many times Rick bothered him while intoxicated to all hell. He couldn’t explain the times he’d be woken up by sounds of retching, vomit and spit staining his bed covers. He couldn’t point out that it was always Morty that Rick went to in his worst states, that he’d always be the one holding him through drunk rants, cries and shows of misplaced affection.
He couldn’t say Rick came to him and his bed for comfort in the middle of the night - it wouldn’t have sounded right. Rick never held him like that, like he would hold Diane if she were still alive. He held him as one would a corpse. He didn’t care about Morty’s ability to breathe or the smell he’d bring or the tears he’d inevitably cause or smear into the boy’s floppy hair.
Rick had a habit of rambling incoherently for hours on end as he laid over Morty and the rest of his bed. He’d gurgle about how sorry he was over a past interaction, over screaming his voice hoarse berating the younger one, over being the worst, worst man there ever could be to take care of Morty. He’d plead guilty over every instance of shaming the slightest of his grandson’s stutter, admitting to the awareness of his own cruel behavior, over how he just needs something to destroy other than himself. It wasn’t every night he regretted being a bad person though. Maybe if it had just been his guilt, his grief eating at him for years and erupting at proximity, then Morty would have an easier time internalizing all of it.
His grandfather was caring when drunk. He’d scribble over Morty’s abandoned homework to correct it, replace his pens with modified shit that would get him higher than the moon, get into bed to Morty with a piece of junk that he claimed was the last gameboy still worth a fuck and viable as a gift. He’d press his lips to Morty’s hair, kissing over the boy’s curls, forehead and sometimes cheeks, gushing over how lucky he was Jerry didn’t completely run his genes. He’d hold his grandson so close Morty would be stuck with the stench of alcohol to his pajamas until the next time anybody in their house does laundry. Morty could stay awake through half the night just memorizing the scarred figure of a body half-heartedly petting him to sleep, counting the times Rick’s bones intrude on Morty’s pudgy bits of skin.
Rick would constantly be the happiest ever at moments of pure adventurisque moral failure or at moments of drunkenly getting Morty to give his "poor grandpa" the smallest smidge of affection and time and pity, as if they didn’t all belong to him already.
Morty would be the happiest not present during either of those occasions.
Morty would like to still believe his bed is just his, that his skin is only dirtied by scars and bruises, that his mind is full and not completely worthless. He’d like his memories to stay his, to stay separate from Rick and Morty forever.
Morty would like to never be left behind again, to be found worthy without the constant threat of a nothing-filled existence. He likes having a best friend. He likes Rick. He likes having a member of the family be the oddest one of the sort for a change.
He just needs Rick. Needing him doesn’t require anything Earth-worth anyways, nothing Morty could pitifully try to offer.
Rick only needs him. It’s the best form of reassurance of worth Morty could ever be given.