When Morty woke up, his head was absolutely splitting. What the hell had hap--
The second that question came to mind, Morty felt physically ill. It was such a strong feeling he didn't even make it to his kitchen sink, let alone his bathroom, making a mess on his kitchen floor.
The brunet gave out a scream he didn't realize had been bottled within him, thoughts pervading his mind. It felt like he was being beaten with a baseball bat, repeatedly, while somebody put his heart in a vice and kicked him in the stomach with cement shoes.
"No!" he barked out, heaving once more as violent tears sprang forth.
Morty felt like a dam had cracked, flooded with his own thoughts from years ago. He knew who he was yesterday, knew who he had been for months, but now he knew who he had been for years.
He was Morty Fucking Smith. Morty Smith. He was a walking bomb, a high power.
With a splitting headache and weak limbs, Morty stumbled through his house, dazed and confused.
But mostly he just felt ill.
He hadn't remembered shit. At all. He had lived in fucking la la land for months, and nobody fucking told him.
Morty - - Jesus, every time he thought of it, he couldn't control his body. Suddenly, Morty wasn't stable anymore. He was too weak to move, holding too tightly to the sudden burst of remembrance.
The brunet curled up on the floor, having collapsed, giving out gutteral screams that would put anybody either to shame or tears. The tears falling down his face felt like liquid metal boring lines into his flesh. His heart hurt so bad he thought it had stopped beating, the world slipping away from him every few seconds, his body wracked with sobs and screams he had never thought he would experience. His throat was already sore, the memory replaying over and over and over again in his mind.
That son of a bitch took his son away. That motherfucker had the audacity to come to Morty's home - his home, with his son - and take it all away.
Morty couldn't breathe. He felt the strain from lack of oxygen tightening up the muscles in his face, the pressure behind his nose, his eyes feeling like they were about to pop, but he couldn't force himself to pull air in.
It was gone. His entire life was destroyed. Sure, the three had been kind enough to try and piece the brunet together, but he felt like a piece of porcelain, dropped on the ground and swept away.
"AJ," Morty grunted, drawing in harsh breaths and curling in on himself in the hallway. He could see his son's old room, the door ajar, and realized it was all gone. He had boxed it all away. He had trashed it all. His toys. His bed. His furniture. John's lion. His bowtie. It was all in a trash heap.
But Morty was running before he had even thought about it. He ran to the shed, not caring who saw him, and grabbed that stupid fucking box his dumbass self put away. He wasted no time dumping it all out of the couch, shoving the picture frames into some sort of order. The tears only fell faster as he saw the photographs he had of AJ, the pictures of the smiling baby boy all lined up. Morty and AJ, AJ on his own, Rick and AJ, Gary and AJ, Gene and AJ, everybody and AJ, AJ's birthday. Wiping tears away, Morty couldn't believe he had been so stupid.
Who just boxes something away like that? Who doesn't try to put it all together somehow? Why didn't they tell him? Why did nobody try to explain it all to Morty?
And that's when it hit him. He had hardly believed that his memories were anything more than nightmares; more than terrors. He hadn't put it together. He had just accepted his life, had just gone through like it was all hunky dory. He had just accepted it, not putting up a fight. He had enjoyed that life, it seemed. He had begun anew, with nothing but the twenty years of memories that had remained forever engrained in his mind.
So, as Morty felt like the world had just broken everything he stood for, the brunet curled up on the floor, surrounded by photographs of his son as he cried for AJ until his lungs gave out. He fell asleep, bodily exhausted, cradling an image of his son in his arms as though it would call him back to this world.