I hear the door open.
My heart stops, sinking down to my stomach.
"Gwen?"

He shut the door after him, following in behind him was a silence brought on by just the sheer suddenness of the situation. It didn't feel awkward, at all. It couldn't. That was impossible for us.

It came to me first like an illusion. Like I was imagining the man I was seeing before me.

Thinking my eyes were deceiving me, I reacted accordingly. The first few seconds of staring at him in the doorway really had me questioning my sanity.

Welp, so much for the plan. I bet it would've looked pretty good animated, but... the episode was fantastic, nothing will ever top that.

After that pause in time, after feeling myself fall back down to reality with my feet gracing the earth, it was like an instinctual reaction to yelp and launch myself across the garage.

"Don't ever put us through that shit again." I banged my fist on his chest, gripping his lab coat with my free hand. I whimpered. My face naturally buried itself into his teal shirt, staining it with the warm tears that stained my eyes. "I know you had to do what you did, but..." I'm so pathetic. I can't even keep my voice from shaking. I had this all planned out in my head. Ignoring my vague plan in the last chapter, that was all if I had actually rescued him. I'd have this smug little pep in my step when he'd face me, but... evidently, he escaped all on his own.

I felt his long arms wrap themselves around my shoulders, pulling me in closer. His chest moved up and down gracefully, feeling his exhale blow down on the top of my head and move some my hair in the process. He sounded exhausted. I knew he already had his welcome back with the rest of the family. I almost didn't realize he had been running a hand through my hair, tugging at locks of it closer to my face to pull them out of the way. Rick wanted to get a better look at me. He slid both of his hands onto my cheeks, softly raising my head up to face him.

"I've missed your hugs so much."

"I've missed you so much. I'll never leave again, baby."

My hands found themselves on top of Rick's, my thumb caressing the back of his hands. I broke our gaze, shutting my eyes and furrowing my eyebrows together. "Somehow..." I breathed. "I feel like you're just saying that."

The warm sensation of Rick's hands on my face went cold. I opened my eyes up cautiously, one eye at a time, to see Rick at his counter aligning dead flies into a row to reveal his secret stashes of weaponry and gadgets.

Well.

Somehow I've seen the episode and yet couldn't have used that to my advantage... what an inconvenience.

"I can only do my best to promise you something from happening because you're technically my wife, but not at all, and I care about you. But--"

"But you're just saying it to keep me sedated it until the next time you pull that crap. Did I hit the mark?"

Rick stopped what he was doing, getting up from the bottom cupboards to turn around with a look on his face that really questioned what he had actually heard. "That crap I pulled was the most necessary thing I had to do. You make me giving myself up to the confederation sound like the most selfish thing I've ever done."

I scoffed, folding my arms over my chest before tucking some of my hair behind my ears and out of my face. "I never made it out that way," Rick flashed me a look over his shoulder. "... at least I didn't mean to." I shrugged, joining him at his little work station. "You can't blame me for taking that promise as an insincere gesture. You did abandon our daughter once..."

"My daughter, you mean." Rick snarled at me, snapping around to fully face me. "And there's nothing you can tell me that'll guilt me into--"

"No, no my apologies. It's the actually second time you abandoned Beth." I cocked a smug eyebrow at him, popping my hip out and leaning all of my weight on my left foot. With his eyebrow furrowed downward and his eyes winced in a raging manner, all he did was stare me down. "You're lucky I find you so cute. It's one of your more patronizing traits." He smirked, leaning back on the counter. I rolled my eyes at him, "Was that supposed to offend me?"

He shrugged. "Maybe..." Rick chuckled, "I know which buttons to press to get you pressed."

"You're a crabby old shit shaped like one of those centipede things from Men in Black," I laughed in his face. "How's that for cute?"

"I'm not going to take shit from someone who's supposed to be dead..." Rick said with a deadpan voice, his eyebrow stiff and as straight as a board. "I'm signing off for the night."

I was able to catch him in the nick of time, grabbing him by the sleeve. Rick looked back at me.

"Yeah, sooo about that..." I chortled, gritting my teeth. "While you were gone, Beth let me live in your room since you've been gone. She was going to let me bunk in Summer's room, but I sort of insisted and she gave in."

Rick's face lit up. "And I'm not sharing," I giggled, punching him in the arm. "It's the couch or bust, sweetheart." He frowned playfully at me before shrugging, "Not like I've slept in that bed for years or anything--"

"Oyy, I think you've got something against comfort, because that cot you call a bed is like sleeping on hard trampoline." I laughed, skipping out of the garage and into the mudroom hallway near the kitchen. "Just go back to living across the street from us and give me back my beautiful cot!" Rick added in jokingly. I stopped halfway up the stairs, leaning over the banister. "Aww, but then you'd miss me, wouldn't you?" I smiled devilishly.

"I think I'd manage..." He leaned up towards me. "I did before, didn't I?" He whispered loud enough for me to hear.

I shook my head. "You were pretty lonely before you figured out who was living right across the street." Thank God both my hands were gripping the banister, because in the dark hallway only lit by the overhead ceiling light leading up the stairs, I swear I could have fallen forward and over the stairs. I just kept leaning in towards Rick, staring deeply into his star-blotted pupils. "I was never lonely, baby. I always thought of you... even if it would depress the living hell out of me every single time." Rick was so close to me now that his whispers didn't even sound like whispers.

I knew where this was going. I could see him begin to lean in with his lips.

I (very awkwardly) guffawed, tussling his spiky blue hair in his eyes while gently pushing his forehead forward. "I still can't believe you kept that from me for sooo long!" I searched Rick's eyes for any sign of pain from my very messy rejection. Just an apathetic gaze stared back at me. He dryly chuckled back, forcing it as best as he could. "Yeah. I just didn't know what would happen to you if I told you who you were."

"Heheh y-yeah, well--"

"I'll let you get to bed then." He started to step back away from the banister

"Yeah! I-I'm happy to see you again, Rick."

He grunted in response, stuffing his fists into the pockets of his lab coat. "Happy to be here."

"Good night!" I smiled, raising a hand up to wave at him before stopping myself halfway, realizing how weird that would look.

Rick doesn't turn to face me as he drags his feet into the living room, flopping down on to the couch, using the back of his arm as a pillow. My eyes stayed him on, getting lost in thought before I snapped myself out of it. He never really answered me.

Ripping my eyes away from the couch, I slunk quietly up the steps and into the hallway. Turning into Rick's room, which I've now glamorized to fit my style, I rested on the cot I plushed up for months with several thick and fluffy comforters and pillows galore.

Even though I made the space cozy enough to hibernate in, it felt so cold that night just knowing that Rick slept a floor below me.

****

"It's been ten minutes, ca-can we switch now?"

Morty had his pants rolled up to his knees as he trudged through the thick pink mud, surrounded by bright yellow and blue plantation, that Summer easily glided over with one of Rick's gadgets. "No way. Grandpa Rick, it hasn't even been that long and Morty just used it--!"

"Allllllright, no one gets the anti-gravity belt."

Morty, Summer, and I all groaned in frustration, with Morty mostly blaming Summer for hogging it over the noise we all made. I had to catch myself in time before I tripped, almost landing head first into the fluorescent mud of this alternate universe. Rick caught sight of this, I'm assuming. I mean, why else would he pull me up into his arms and carry me through the mud? "Careful..."

I don't know how to feel about him. Especially since the staircase thing last night.

The way Rick woke me up this morning was just awful.

As soon as I wake up, not even a step I take out of bed and I'm falling through a portal into Universe Z-028. Evidently, we're along for the trip to help out with Rick's groceries. I wasn't even invited to come out, I was just sorta forced into it.

"How much longer, Rick?" Morty whined, slowing down and allowing his hands to fall and sink into the neon mud.

"We're close, just cut that shit out and for shit's sake, stand up! Grandpa's too lazy to find a replacement Morty --or Summer-- for when we get back."

"Heheh... g-good one, like you'd ever replace me." Morty nervously chuckled with hesitation in his voice. Rick didn't reply. "Right?" Rick ignored him.

"Rick?"

"Shut up! We're here already!" Rick piped up, adding a spring in his step that almost made you question if he was really running in thick thick mud. He set me down gently back into the mud, digging deep into the brightly coloured vegetation to pluck a golden-stemmed plant with a royal blue fruit hanging off of it. It looked almost like a very large plum. Like a tomato the size of a navel orange. "Great, now just two more things." Rick reached into his inner coat pocket to pull out the portal gun, aiming it low at the mud so that we could push through the mud to dip in.

Summer reached it first, then Morty. Rick pulled me up out of the mud, lifting me up and hugging me close, practically a part of his hip. I thought nothing of it, I kinda liked being held and picked up like a ragdoll.

When Rick and I dipped into the portal, we dropped and touched the new surface. We stood just steps away from a high drop, giving us both a good look over the horizon of this new planet (which I could only presume was another alternate Earth).

His face dropped when he saw the landscape, watching Summer and Morty bickering over a lustrous substance over the cliff we oversaw.

"Let's get down there," He pulled the anti-gravity belt out from his coat pocket, quickly wrapping it around his waist and notching it tight.

"Wh--" My eyes widened at the sight of him putting it on. "You're not going to--"

Before he could even let me finish that thought, he'd already pulled me by the waist into him. His grip was tight and concentrated, like he was worried of dropping me.

Dropping me... like that was ever an option.

"Rick..."

"Just keep your legs straight, walk normally with one stride at a time, and just don't look down." With a click, he activated the anti-gravity and started to float, walking on the air ahead of him as if this were normal. I yelped when my feet started lifting up off of the ground, holding tighter onto Rick, but following his instructions as best I could.

With my eyes shut the entire time, it felt surreal. Feeling literal air beneath your feet as you stride forward, like I was using clouds as stepping stones. Reluctantly, I outstretched both of my arms out. Doing this made Rick's grip around my waist tighten, but I didn't care at all. I felt a huge grin grow on my face, I was really enjoying this.

That is, of course, before I eventually looked down.

I broke the illusion.

I felt myself get heavy with every panicked breath I took and, knowing that me panicking made it worse, panicked some more.

Rick was struggling to keep me up. It wasn't just my weight pulling us down, it must've been the added gravitational pull of the earth below us. I could hear Rick struggle as he grunted and puffed, trying to keep me up but it was no use.

I had already slipped out of his grip.

I must've being falling for a split second because I landed back in Rick's arms. I was facing him when he caught me. The green portal above our heads disappeared. Instinctively, I wrapped my arms around his neck and my legs around his waist as he continued to carry me, walking on air like there was a set of invisible set of stairs going downwards.

When he set me down, I supposed I must've been so shaken up that I could barely speak. "I-- Th-thanks, hon." He grunted, deactivating the belt and pacing towards Morty and Summer.

"Don't! Get away from that!" Rick snapped at his grandkids, slapping the gold-like material from Morty's reach. He grabbed a hold of his shoulders, shaking him just a bit. "Yo-you didn't happen to touch any of it, did you?" 

"No, why n--?" Out of the blue, a loud growl erupts from underneath us, rupturing the dirt to reveal dozens more of this gold substance in a hole that appears pretty deep. From the dozens of gold rocks slithers a black ooze that slowly forms itself into a slick eyeless ginormous snakelike creature that looked as if it were made of gel or tar. It bares its fangs at the kids and snarls so ferociously, it spits up blue saliva onto them as it growls. "Shit!" I heard Rick curse over the sound of the beast, before it speeds off into a chase after Morty.

I'm freaking out, going into full "I'm going to sacrifice myself for my family and I don't care what happens to me" mode.

Still standing next to Rick, I quickly reach into his coat pocket and dial in the universe we call home on the portal gun before shooting out ahead of Morty to send him back by force. "Morty! Over here, Morty!" I've got his attention, he turns on his heel to reach me. He leaps into it and it disappears just before the beast could reach it.

"Gwen! Goddamnit, watch out!" Rick grabbed me by the waist and yanked me back out of the way, just as the beast was stampeding straight for me.

CRACKKKKK

"Aiiiiii!" Why in the hell did my back do the Lindy hop? "GOD! It burns like fireeeee!"

Rick tossed me aside, most likely not knowing how hard he threw me to the side, to pull out another gadget from his coat to attack the beast. The earth below me started to give out and I felt myself begin to sink in. Into the hole full of golden rocks where I could hear another one of those tar-like creatures form underneath me and screech. I called out to Summer for help, calling out again and again as I began to lose my grip and my footing on the slippery soil.

I heard the sound of a portal opening up again and closing just before seeing a light green whip crack, wrapping itself around my wrist before yanking me out with all its might.

The loud and evident POP! caught me offguard because the pain came after. It was my wrist. I yelped, landing on Rick's arm as he finished off the thing with one last blow to the head. Quickly pulling out a vial from his inner coat, he drained out the entry wound and filled it with the thick tar that was its blood.

"Thanks, Rick, I-I guess you ought to call me a Slippery Sally..." I pointed hand guns at Rick with the goofiest smile on my face, just waiting for a reaction. I did not get one. "... if you know what I'm—"

"Do you know how much shit you let yourself get in today? What are you? Fucking dumb?! Do you have any idea how exhausting it is trying to carry your ass around like you're my geriatric dog—?"

The earth beneath began to growl and shake, like it did before, crumbling first into huge chunks trying to split Rick and I up.

"Gwen!"

Rick tried to whip out the portal gun and set it to the right dial, but falling debris and collapsing earth smacked it out of his hands and crushed it. There was a rock landslide of earth, threatening to pin us up to other chunks of dirt. The handful of rock I had been struggling to balance on top of had split down the middle, and I let myself fall without a care.

I watched from below as Rick dived in after me, but there wasn't an endless space out from under me, but just more rock and dirt. I slid down and tumbled into a stalagmite, causing my back to ache even more.

Rick tumbled in after me, landing on his hands and knees as he watched the cave fill up with jumbled boulders blocking and sealing up our only entrance and thus only means of escape.

We were stuck.

Stuck with each other.