They were going out to dinner, something the Smith family rarely ever did.

They were going out to dinner, and she was driving. After all, Summer had just gotten her permit, and they were going out to celebrate her win.

They were all laughing and joking about something, but what it was about she could never remember. She just remembered laughter, then laughter turning to terror when the impact occurred. First, there was a loud BANG, then screaming, then nothing but pain, and then, an eerie silence, and then, only darkness. So much darkness, too much silence, too much pain. And she wanted to scream, but her voice was muffled by the darkness, and the silence, and the pain. Her voice seemed to echo against the walls of eternity, and it seemed as if the screams inside her head went on forever-

"MOM! DAD! MORTY! NO!"

Summer awoke with a start. She was alone in her bed, but it took her a moment to remember where she was. She could see shadows mixed with moonlight. She remembered the paramedic's face looking down at her, as they cut her out of the car, holding her hand. She remembered waking up again in the hospital, on white sheets. Sheets that were far too white and clean. There was no blood anywhere. Why wasn't there any blood?

Why was she alone in her room? Where was everybody?

Then it hit her like a freight train, and Summer gasped, falling out of bed in her shock. She narrowly missed the nightstand, but she landed hard on the floor. She wished she had hit her head on the nightstand. Then she would be with them. Summer crawled along the floor, suddenly blind to her surroundings.

"MOMMY!" The sobs exploded from deep inside her chest. "DADDY….MORTY…" She reached desperately for anything she could hold. She grabbed a pillow that had fallen along with her and curled herself into a fetal position. She rocked and sobbed until she felt herself suddenly being picked up, as easily as though she weighed nothing. She felt herself being carried by someone tall and strong. The hands placed her gently in the bed, and she felt long bony fingers gently brush against her hair. Summer stopped crying for a moment, blinking with surprise as the outline of Rick's face slowly became visible in the dark. His expression remained neutral, but his eyes couldn't belie their sadness.

"...Why…?" Summer choked out before she lost her nerve. "...why did I have to live and why did they have to die?"

"Why are any of us born at all, Summer?" Rick responded as matter-of-factly as though they were talking about the weather. He sat on the bed beside her. "The easy answer? Don't think about it."

"But I...I killed them…." Summer sobbed into her pillow. "...I was the one who was driving...It was me….I did it….It should have been me…."

"Bullshit, Summer." Rick didn't face her as he spoke, but she could hear clearly his every word. "You're young. Young people are bound to make mistakes, but you didn't even make the mistake that caused the accident. You weren't the one who was driving drunk, were you?" Rick demanded, stopping Summer cold.

Summer sat up suddenly and looked at him. He was looking back at her, his expression stoic, but she could hear the conviction in his voice. "...No…" Summer allowed. He was right, she hadn't been driving drunk. She had just been driving. She had been doing everything right.

"You just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time." Rick looked away again, his voice sounding distant as he spoke. "Nobody knew what was coming, least of all you, understand? You couldn't have stopped it."

"Just like you couldn't have stopped what happened to Morty," Summer added suddenly, without thinking.

At this statement, Rick's entire body grew stiff. "Yes I could have, Summer," he replied, his voice hard and rigid and tinged with a surprising amount of bitterness and self-hatred.

"...But how…?" Summer pressed. She knew she was entering dangerous territory, but he genuinely wanted to know the truth about his Morty.

And yet, to her disappointment, Rick stood up abruptly, only his back facing her. "I'm a genius, Summer," he replied through tightened lips, his voice cold, though she couldn't sense any resentment towards her. "I'm not supposed to make mistakes. But this isn't something you should worry about," Rick added hastily, "because you-you're still young, and you have far too much potential to let that pass you by."

He thinks I have 'potential'? Summer couldn't believe her ears. Was Rick actually being nice to her? She realized then that he had been acting strange all day. Like he was trying to bond with the both of them or something. She almost had to wonder if this was still the same Rick.

"Rick…" Summer watched as he retreated towards the doorway. "...are you….okay?"

Rick froze in the doorway. "I'm fine Summer," he said, but she didn't believe him, his voice betrayed him. "Get some sleep. You've got school in the morning."

School? Summer didn't respond, and he left the door open. Since when did he care about school? Summer was beginning to get worried. She wondered if he was planning on leaving her. A couple of weeks ago, she wouldn't have cared. She wasn't sure she could handle that now.

Rick couldn't sleep, but that was okay. After that kind of day, Rick was ready to get wasted. He had given Mortimer a taste of domestic life through Roy 4. He had taken him to the Sugar Flats. He had given him some good memories to take with him to his new life. Summer was asleep. Their talk would have to wait another day.

Rick took his fifth beer into the garage and climbed into the spaceship. For a moment he just sat there, enjoying the silence of the garage. Then he opened the glove compartment, where he kept a permanent reminder of his past.

There, in the glove compartment, were the remnants of a tattered yellow shirt. The shirt was bloodstained, but Rick hadn't had the heart to clean it. For a moment, Rick just stared at the yellow shirt. He hadn't had the nerve to touch it. "Hey, there, Morty." Rick spoke to the shirt. "I buried you again yesterday," he said. "I hope-I hope I chose a good spot for you, Morty." Rick took a long, long swig. It was good, going down, lessening the frog in his throat. "You, you were a good kid, Morty," he said. "A good, good kid." He had never gotten a chance to tell Morty the truth. The truth was that he'd planned on teaching Morty everything there was to know about everything. That he'd planned on making sure that Morty would never become anything like him. He'd heard of too many horror stories of Mortys becoming too much like their Ricks. He never wanted that to happen to any Morty ever again.

Rick closed the compartment and sat in the darkness for a long time, without moving, not thinking about anything, because thinking was dangerous sometimes, and sometimes he didn't want to think about anything ever again.