a/n: A short epilogue here, featuring Rick, Morty and Summer.
Rick had been looking for a powerful fuel source, and remembered the one on Fyralog, perhaps the crystal was still there? It was certainly worth a shot.
Taking Morty along with him as normal, they were flying around on Rick's ship, looking for the remains of Fyralog. Rick grinned excitedly when they finally come upon Fyralog, and landed on it. The planet look barren, desolate and deserted, the buildings destroyed and there was no life in sight.
"Jeez Rick, what happened here?" Morty asked nervously.
"This Morty, is all that's left of the Fyralogin Empire, once the dominant force in the galaxy before it collapsed and was replaced by the F-Feds." Rick explained. "But g-guess who took it down? Me!" He proudly proclaimed, pointing to himself.
"You took down an entire e-empire?" Morty responded in shock.
"Hell yeah dawg! Years ago I stole a chunk of the fuel source we're here for, they tried to get it back but it collapsed before they could!" Rick laughed.
He knew he shouldn't be surprised, this was Rick after all. But to know he took down an entire empire single handedly? It was both shocking and amazing.
"So...why are we here now Rick?" He wondered.
"To get the another chunk of that fuel source obviously! What else would we come here for?" He hissed. Morty realized that maybe he shouldn't have asked.
As the duo wandered together, Morty found himself really creeped out by the place. The combination of the lack of life when there clearly had been some at one point, the broken and boarded up buildings and the feelings of emptiness made him uneasy. "This place is really cr-cr-creeping me out Rick.." He mumbled.
"Don't be a baby Morty, y-you've been to worse places, this'll be cake." Rick brushed him off. Morty sighed and continued walking with him.
He started to realize they were headed towards the large building in the center, and so figured that the fuel source must be in there.
When they arrived in the building, it was completely dark, so Rick took out a flashlight and turned it on, using it to help him look around and traverse the building. Morty clung onto his lab coat as they walked, even more frightened than before.
As they walked around, they saw a green glow and headed towards it, where they the crystal-like fuel source, Even now, it still had broken and mangled wires connecting to it.
"Jackpot!" Rick grinned, pumping a fist in the air.
But as soon as he started heading towards it, a figure with two pairs of golden glowing eyes appeared in the darkness. Startled, Rick used the flashlight to get a better look at the figure, and wasn't surprised when he saw it was Pyri, the former empress of the Fyralogin Empire. There was a look of pure malice and insanity on her face, which made sense, she had been here, alone in the darkness for decades.
"You.." She snarled, glaring at Rick. "You took everything from me! My planet, my people, my empire, my pride.."
Rick ignored her and she watched as he took out another of the crystal. Her eyes wandered around and landed on Morty, and she became confused, unsure who he was. Pyri had expected to see Julie, but she wasn't there. She'd never seen what Julie actually looked like, but assumed she would've seen a woman around Rick's age, not whoever this was.
"Where is Julie?" Pyri asked, making Rick stop dead in his tracks. When she didn't get a response, she asked again. "I asked you, where is Julie? What happened to her?"
Rick still wasn't responding, which gave her a hint on what had happened. "Oh I see, so she's dead huh? Did you kill her or something?"
At this, Morty noticed he was shaking and had a horrified expression on his face. He wasn't sure who Julie was exactly, but knew whoever she was, she must've been important to Rick.
"So you did kill her after all huh? Should've known...she loved you and killed her!"
Morty didn't know what to do when he saw Rick clench his fists as he started to tear up.. Something was wrong…
Pyri kept egging Rick on and taunting him. "Poor sweet Julie, you dragged her into your bullshit and tricked her into loving you. She died because of you, it's all your fault!"
Rick snapped at this, and pulled out a weapon with him. "No!" He screamed as he shot her. "I didn't do it! I didn't do it! I didn't…" When Pyri collapsed dead on the ground, Rick sat down on his knees and sobbed.
Morty was concerned and worried for him, what was he supposed to do now? He didn't want to stay here any longer and so tugged on Rick's shoulder to get his attention. "W-We should go Rick…"
Rick looked over at him and wiped his tears away. "Yeah...whatever.."
On their back, Rick and Morty were both silent, neither saying a word to each other. What could they even say? Morty had seen Rick in such a vulnerable moment, he had let his emotions get the best of him, he wanted to avoid doing something like that again.
Morty nervously rubbed one of his arms and glanced over at Rick. "Rick...whose Julie?"
Rick clenched his fists on the steering wheel of the ship, tightening his grip on it. "Shut up, just shut up...:" He growled before looking away.
Morty knew he wasn't going to get an answer out of Rick, so he thought on his own who Julie could be. She was someone clearly very important to him, who was also dead. With this, Morty wondered if Julie was his grandma. He'd never met, seen or even heard of his grandma before, no one seemed to want to talk about her, there was no pictures of her in the house, but why? Considering Rick's reaction to her being mentioned and all, maybe it was just too hard to talk about her. Though Morty was curious about Julie, he wasn't sure if he would ever get to learn about her, he hoped he could though someday.
When they returned to Earth, Rick immediately went up into his room, refusing to even look at anyone. Summer had seen this and walked over to Morty, just as confused as he was. "Uh...what's wrong with Grandpa Rick?" She asked.
"I...I don't know.." Morty admitted. "When we went to go get something on another planet, someone there mentioned a person named Julie, she told Rick that he caused Julie's death and he freaked out and killed her. He wouldn't say a-anything about it on our way b-back."
Summer was surprised by this. "What? Really? Who do you think Julie could be?"
"I was thinking that she's our gr-grandma. I mean...with Rick's reaction and all, I think she was important to him, but she died…" He answered.
"Makes sense, it would explain a lot wouldn't it?"
"Yeah...I just h-hope either R-Rick or Mom will want to tell us s-something about her eventually.."
Rick sat alone on his bed, tears flowing down his face. When he had brought Morty to Fyralog with him, he hadn't thought Pyri would even be there, he presumed she'd died, but he'd been wrong unfortunately, at least until he'd killed her himself. But he should've known better...he'd came there for his own personal gain, and Pyri had ended up blaming him for Julie's death.
The truth was that Rick did actually blame himself for Julie's death. He felt if he hadn't left her all those years ago, that she would still be alive, that they would still be together and be happy. He could wake up in the morning and be greeted by her lovely face, he could still taste her kisses and feel her warmth, and Julie would continue to be there for him, loving and supporting him as always.
Even if she had developed the condition that killed her anyways, Rick knew he could cure her, but he couldn't cure her now that she was dead. Despite his genius, Rick couldn't reverse death. He didn't see cloning as an option either, because while he could do that, it wouldn't be the same, the clone wouldn't be the Julie he fell in love with, it would be someone completely different.
Before Julie had entered his life, it had been lonely, miserable, empty and depressing. But once she had become apart of it, his life instantly became better. She'd brought out the best in him, made him feel genuinely happy, probably for even the first time in his life, and was the first to show him love and kindness.
Now she was gone, and the empty feelings had returned to him, the only way they could be filled, the only way his heart could heal is if she came back into his life. But because she was dead, that was impossible. Rick believed he was doomed to remain a depressed, suicidal alcoholic for the rest of his miserable life.
He took out the crystal rose he'd gotten for Julie, before they'd even started dating. She'd loved it so much, and he could still remember the day he took her to that gemstone planet visibility. Rick remembered they'd even had their wedding there. He clutched onto rose and angrily threw it on the floor, but it didn't break, there wasn't even a crack, it stayed still and intact.
Rick pulled out his flask and opened it, downing some alcohol as more tears stained his face.
a/n: Ooooh boy, it's finally done. But I will be going back to fix things, add new things and anything else I feel is needed. And oh, about Beth's nose, it's meant to be a combination of Rick and Julie's noses. Julie and Beth though, do have the same eye shape(always thought it was weird that Diane doesn't...). BTW, even if Diane is confirmed as the canon or someone else, I don't care. I'm far too attached to Julie to get rid of her, ever.
This is my passion project essentially. As the story's description says, I made Julie all the way back in 2014, Mark and Vivian as well. I spent 4 years developing these characters and their relationships. The only characters that are newly created are Cyn and Pyri. 4 years ago I started watching Rick and Morty, and ended up getting the idea to make a design for , leading to Julie's creation and now..this.
if enough people like this, i will upload the midquel that expands more on some stuff, and the one-shots collection. They're both up on ao3 right now, and the link to my ao3 account is in my profile.