When the shitty mobile phone he keept tucked in his back pocket starts ringing mere seconds after he crashed his current spaceship into a tree that had acid for sap on Placitide XIV, Rick knew in his gut that he wasn't going to like whatever was on the other end of the line. Burping loudly, he fished the vibrating phone from his pocket and picked up the call.
"Yeah?" He answered warily, wondering what nonsense his young daughter's idiot husband needed bailing out of this time. He'd given her the number to this phone the last time he saw her (about five years ago, when she'd given birth to the chubby little gurgler, Summer) for emergencies or for when she finally got tired of her loser husband and needed help getting rid of the body. He perked up. Maybe the time had finally come?
"Mr. Sanchez? This is Detective Knight from the Muskegon Police Department…" the voice, a tiny bit reedy from the lightyears' worth of distance between them, paused expectantly. The niggling nugget of foreboding sitting heavy in his stomach began to blossom into actual concern. Beth should have been the only person with this number, so why was a cop calling him?
"WhaaAAat is it? Where -eugh- where's my daughter?" He demanded, heedless of how tightly he was gripping the phone. The detective sighed, and the sympathy and compassion he heard in that drawn out breath made his throat constrict. Beth..
"Your daughter and son-in-law were in a car wreck early this morning. I'm very sorry, but neither of them made it."
For a moment, for the briefest second in time, the detective's words didn't register in his mind. In that infinitesimally small moment in time, he was able to continue living in a dimension where his daughter, his baby, his bright eyed girl, was still alive. He'd only just seen her; five years wasn't so long. She'd just been here, tired and beaming at him as she carefully handed over her wrinkly infant who looked up at him with his own eyes. Sure he knew of other Ricks, older Ricks, who didn't have their Beths, but they weren't him, they -
"Mr. Sanchez?" The voice, female he absently identified, interrupted his thoughts.
"A-A-A-Are you sure? Are you sure it's my - my daughter?" He couldn't stop himself from asking. The detective hummed sadly, and he wanted to reach through the phone and snatch her eyes out.
"I'm sorry, sir, but her i.d. was found in the car. We will need you to positively identify her, but that can wait until after you've gotten settled for the night with your granddaughter."
Fuck, he'd forgotten all about Summer. What the fuck, what the fuck was he supposed to do with a child, Beth's child?
"I-I'll be there soon." He disconnected the call and dropped his head on the steering wheel. He stated blankly out the view-ports, only absently aware of the tree acid beginning to eat through the reinforced plexiglass and metal body of the ship. He couldn't care; he didn't care. His daughter was dead, his baby, the only worthwhile thing he ever made. She was gone, and his eyes were burning.
Later, he wouldn't be able to recall how or when he got to the hospital the detective's call had originated from. He was operating on a detached autopilot as he identified his daughter and her shit husband's bodies, swiftly blanking out the sight of her mangled face from his conscious and not daring to reach out and touch her by now ice cold flesh lest his numbness shatter like the thin wall of ice it was and he descend into the spiral of endless, shrieking grief that threatened him with every breath, as he filled out a mountain of paperwork and arranged things for their bodies. He was still sitting in front of that stack of paperwork, staring at the pen in his hand as if he couldn't believe it was real, when the social worker walked in, a sleeping child slung on her hip.
"Mr. Sanchez?" He looked up sluggishly, and the woman gently set the child in his lap. The little girl pouted in her sleep, the sour expression so similar to her mother at that age that it took everything he had not to portal out of there and never look back. He brushed a lock of red hair from her forehead with slightly shaking fingers instead.
"This is Summer. You're all she has now." The woman left, and he sighed, slumping.
Fuck.