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weird ricks took over the citadel.

Lightly, she shook her head, not in any kind of denial, but simply in a sort of thought. It ain't natural, she wanted to say. People die when they're meant to. The little church-going girl in her soul still thought it was all God's decision and Violet never did have the heart to finish her off.

"Nineteen's an awkward age t'be paused at," She confessed. "Grown, but not nearly enough. Did ya choose your age or was it just when ya happened to figure it all out?"

Rick spoke before she could because of course he did — it was his nature. She didn't argue, not when the stomach pains were beginning to radiate. Prior to her little guest's arrival, Violet could go a day without so much as thinking about food, too caught up in what she was doing to remember. The passenger felt differently.

She threw in the knock-off Dr. Pepper and the lava cake for after. Cracked a joke about eating for two with a pat to her stomach and a grin. When congratulations were offered, she followed it up with a far too overly enthusiastic comment about how she'd finally gotten a tapeworm. The waiter found it less funny than she did — maybe more annoying than anything. Fine by her. By her metrics, she was hilarious.

Orders written down, he was gone and her attention back to Rick. She squinted. Imagined his hair wild and thin, his decidedly stereotypical sci-fi get up replaced with something more Doc Brown-ish. Then, she snorted, which melted into a giggle.

“Nah.” He cut in, quick, decisive. “Don’t lay the clones on me. That circus isn’t my ticket. My job was simple—hand the originals the key to infinity. Whatever they do with it after? That’s on them.”

Lava cake, huh? He’d seen that play before. Violet wasn’t built to clear a mountain of food, and experience with both Diane and Beth told him she’d shove the dessert across the table once her stomach white flagged it.

“At least you’re not stuck at fourteen like my grandson,” Rick said, dry as ash. “Not that it stops him. Kid does whatever the hell he wants anyway…”

That was the fallout of the experiment—the Rick experiment. The Central Finite Curve. A legion of Ricks barricading themselves behind their families like rats hoarding crumbs, refusing to walk into bigger things because it meant letting go. It all made no difference to Prime. He didn’t have a family left. Never really did. Grandson didn’t count, and Beth—Beth was the one he’d almost been close to. Almost… Once. And even then, he left her to rot.

None of that has perturbed her as deeply as seeing Rick smile. Worse, still, that it lingered. That it looked good on him. Anything she felt about the sight was swallowed. Making a scene would only make this weirder than it needed to be, she suspected.

"Ain't that old." Drink was nudged over to her and she took a sip from the straw. They'd shared far worse than spit — half his DNA was gestating inside her, two months down already. Seven more, give or take, and there'd be a mercilessly blue-haired mini-them in her arms.

The thought scared her, as much as she tried not to show it. Maybe not for the reasons one would expect.

"Y'know, it's always weird t'think'a other yous, 'specially older ones." Just as she couldn't imagine Rick dockside with a daughter, she couldn't see him any other way than he was now. So self-assured he was, so put together he came off. The notion of another him making other choices would be purely theoretical until she saw it for herself.

At his question, she bit her lip. These weren't exactly happy memories, though trudging them back up didn't sting quite so bad as she worried it might.

Self-healing injuries? Rick had the same tech under his skin, only his wasn’t some half-cooked knockoff slapped together in a panic. Hers was likely training wheels compared to the system running in him. The smirk on his face evolved into a chuckle, head giving a slow shake.

“Self-healing comes married to age-halting, sweetheart.” Rick spoke with his head canting to the side, but those stormy greys never left her. “Cells age, cells break down. Breakdown registers as failure, and the system corrects the failure. Suddenly you’re not dying, you’re just… paused.” He watched her sip from his straw without a comment.

The waiter broke the moment. Rick didn’t even glance at the menu. “We’ll do two of your Wallaby Way Feasts.” He took the wheel before Violet had the chance to. “And a sunset bevvie for me.” Strawberry pulp and orange juice, dressed up with a tourist-trap name.

It was then that Rick’s silence gave room for Violet to tack on whatever extras she wanted next, slouching back into his seat with tongue pressing to the inside of his cheek as the thought of his other selves crawled in.

"Sooo... steak, loaded baked potato, Caesar salad. Sound fair?" Gaze flit to the menu again, pondering whether or not she'd want dessert after. Stomach growled and the reminder of what rested beside it nudged her towards yes. "We could split a lava cake after. It's too sweet fer me to get more than half way done with it."

Violet had grown accustomed to certain things in life. Cruel and crushing realities that may have destroyed someone else had left her receptive. Resilient, in her own way. She'd survived worse than Rick had thrown at her thus far and she intended to continue on that path.

Mindlessly, she chewed her inner lip. Turned over how she wanted to tell him, if she truly needed to. Fingers picked at chipping nail polish. Thinking, thinking. Finally, speaking.

"It's... been longer than ya think, actually," She eventually landed on. "I been nineteen for awhile and kinda will be for the foreseeable future. No vampire shit — just a nanotech experiment gone pretty fuckin' wrong. You ain't ever wondered why I never was all that scared'a nothin'?"

Nanotech gone sideways? That finally punched through the static. Sparked light in his otherwise unbothered eyes, shoulders uncoiling like someone just shifted the conversation onto his field of knowledge.

“Fair.” Rick slouched into his seat, voice cool—hell, he even cracked a small, rare smile. And god, he looked handsome wearing one. “If you told me you were in your forties, I’d call bullshit. Then again, I don’t exactly look my age either.” A loose shrug ensued with nothing casual about it. Then, Rick nudged his glass towards Violet, wondering if she’d drink from the rim, or pull from the same straw as his.

Either way, it told him something.

“I’m the only Rick who bothers keeping the clock where it makes sense. Most of ’em plateau at their seventies, park it there like it’s a goddamn badge. Bodies rotting, minds sharp as knives.” His mouth twisted around the thought, disdain written in the curl. “Smart enough to hack the multiverse open, but not enough to shave a few years off the chassis? Talk about self-destructive.”

Prime never got it. Why rot when you could rebuild? He’d left himself a touch of grey, a streak of white pulling over his ears—late forties, maybe early fifties on the readout. Old enough to command a room, young enough not to creak when he stood.

Those stormy greys tightened on Violet now, scalpel-clean. Smile still there.

Fishing had been fine, but hunting was always more Violet's sport growing up. Squirrels, rabbits, deer. She was pretty sure she'd learned how to clean, load and shoot a rifle at the same pace her peers were learning how to ride bikes. It didn't matter what she was doing though — only that it was with her father. He'd taught her how to get a clean shot, how to break down the body and how to respect every piece.

She wondered, too, what his daughter was like and what he meant by civilize her. Questions for later — she didn't feel like taking the risk of agitating him.

"Guess so," Violet shrugged. "Momma went when I was fourteen an' my dad stuck around a lil' longer. Honestly, I think he was just waitin' t'die, but wanted to be sure I was alright on my own first."

Well, look how that turned out.

“So it hasn’t been that long.” Rick arched a brow, stare cutting sharper now that her age was out in the open. Except now, it didn’t rattle him any more. What got him back when she told it to him was the symmetry. How his daughter had gone down the  same road, and now here was Violet, stumbling into the same cliché—with his involvement baked into the equation.

Cosmic irony, if anything. What comes around doesn’t just go around, it slams the door on its way through.

At her question, Rick shrugged, lazy in posture but keen in his intent.

“I was planning on having whatever you wanna have.” Casual on the surface, but it was his version of a tether, a way to clock her choices, measure her appetite, map Violet’s likes and dislikes in numbers and habits. Bonding, sure—if you stretched the definition thin enough to snap it.

Normally, Rick didn’t do company. Didn’t do warmth either. He’d already been cruel with her—sharp around every edges, dismissals, forceful, the usual stuff—and she hadn’t told him to fuck off. Not once. And that was enough to file her as different.

Dangerously different.

She reminded him, in fleeting ways Rick hated to admit, of Diane. The only other woman who hadn’t walked. Who hadn’t recoiled from his less than ideal tendencies.

She climbed in with a decent sense of familiarity, adaptable as she was. Didn't matter if this had been her first or her thousandth time in the passenger seat. Violet always carried herself the same way. Bag was unceremoniously tossed to the back before she settled down, buckling herself in.

Quiet trip. She didn't mind — it wasn't too long, either. Just enough for her to daydream, gaze settling out the window and following the familiar lines of the city. Her city.

Violet acted in contrast to Rick once they were inside. Polite, though false, smile. Small talk. Hello's and how are you's exchanged. In the end, she ordered a decently sized steak, loaded baked potato and a Caesar salad, all rounded out with an De Ville industries rip off of Dr. Pepper. There was a joking lament about her current inability to have a beer between her and the waiter.

“Huh? Yeah.” Rick stared back at Violet, bringing the straw back to his mouth and pulling at it. Carbonated hiss, cheap sugar, nothing worth savoring. “Took my daughter out to go fishing once. Wasn’t about the water, wasn’t about me either... I guess I kust wanted to see if playing dad on a dock might civilize her.”

Rick let that hang for a beat, then cut the silence off himself.

“It didn’t. So I stopped trying.”

Truth was, he’d learnt since then that Beth hadn’t hated it. She actually wanted more of that father-daughter time Rick was so quick to dismiss as wasted energy. Figures. He’d always known he wasn’t built for the role. Never pretended otherwise.

Stormy eyes drifted back to Violet, not soft, not searching—just measuring.

“You said you’re an orphan.” Statement, not question. A shard of memory dug up only because it might matter tactically. He rolled the word in his mouth like it was foreign, and then: “Rough.”

That was as much of an invitation as she’d get. He didn’t dig for pasts. Didn’t care enough to. But he left it there anyway, a crack in the door, to see if she stepped through.

She hadn't, to be fair, not yet. Nerves had kept her stomach churning. Waiting. Looking for the right words, waiting again. She'd been nonchalant on the phone because, in her experience, that was always the best way to be with Rick. Never giving too much. She'd never been afraid of him before, but a new addition to their fucked up little dynamic meant uncertain variables.

All in all, it was going better than she'd thought it would.

Instinct told her to resist, to fuss and refuse. Experience told her that there'd be no point in it. Rick liked having control of every possible situation and as long as he wasn't making things worse, she saw no issue in letting him guide this one.

"Heard loud an' clear." So, she did was instructed. He had the duffel — she took her backpack. The rest would come later when Krueger and Leland stopped by to help put all her books and tapes and trinkets in boxes. She never realized how much she'd collected.

Rick was already waiting outside, his version of a car wasn’t really a car—it was a ship, welded together from carbon fiber and paranoia. Solid, functional, built to keep him alive first, everyone else a distant second. Still, he hadn’t resisted dressing the hull in strips of pink and blue neon. It wasn’t vanity so much as a flex; a reminder that even war machines could look good tearing through a skyline.

When Violet showed up, Rick didn’t move. Just watched her wrestle with the seatbelt after having settled in. “Bag goes in the back.” A jerk of his chin towards the pile already there. Trunk was off-limits. That was his space.

First stop: some food chain he parked his spaceship just outside of. Likely this place’s attempt at an Outback Steakhouse of sorts. Place even had the gimmick—bloomin’ onion, neon beer signs, balcony with a view engineered to sell sunsets: endless blue horizon, waves crashing endlessly against the shore.

Maybe it was the hour, maybe the day, but the place was thin on bodies. Meant food would be quick, which was all he cared about. Waiter handed him a menu, and Rick didn’t even glance at it, just slid the thing across the table to Violet. Leaned back, braced against the chair’s spine, pulled on a straw sunk into some glass of Italian soda.

Rick didn’t offer much in terms of conversation, keeping his eyes on the water—observing a handful of idiot fishermen dotting the cliffside, rods pitched against an ocean that could swallow them whole without a ripple.

That kind of gamble amused him.

"Orphan," Violet corrected. Probably the most confessional she'd ever been with him since the Blood Meridian rant. The word rolled off her tongue easier than expected. "And far from an exile."

That second part offered some brevity, only to herself. If the past forty-eight hours had taught her anything, it was that she was so much less alone than she ever thought. Funny how that worked.

"I'm actually gearin' up to spend a night at a friend's," She continued, pausing to glance around. She really did love the Starlite, but she didn't bother to explain. Rick wouldn't appreciate it. "... and once all the details are worked out, I'm movin'. Boss Man said this ain't no place fer a baby—"

Outside, there was a sound of glass crashing followed by shouting and then, something wet and disquieting. Normal occurrence. Her eyes followed it and then settled back on Rick.

It wasn’t exactly hard to assume that Violet was gonna be raising some hillbilly project at her heels, and now she wanted to shack up in the outskirts as well? Next step: the brat would be greeting him with a howdy and spitting out mottos like crazier than a run over dog.

For some reason, the image entertained him.

Rick didn’t hesitate. “Damn. No carbon dioxide air and overpriced coffee? Kid’s gonna grow up defective… spoiled straight out the gate.” There was truth to the fact bouncing conversation back and forth with Violet came effortlessly. It wasn’t often that somebody snagged the scientist’s interest the way this girl did…

It had been some time since the last.

“You even eaten today?” His tone wasn’t concern, just inventory. Rick’s spent enough jumps with her to know she forgot the basics—like feeding herself. While the scientist didn’t require a lot of sustainment himself, not with the augment stack shrinking his biological necessities down to trivial upkeep. But Violet? She still looked like she could’ve been drafted straight out of an ana-mia PSA. Less skeletal these days, sure, but the tell was still written in her bone structure.

He cut the thought, bent down, and plucked up the heaviest bag without asking. Portal gun primed in his other hand, humming. “Whatever. I’ll park the car outside. Get the rest of your baggage and drag it out there. I’m taking you to put something in your stomach before I ditch you at your friend’s.”

It wasn’t charity. Wasn’t kindness either.

Rick didn’t do nice.

Call clicked dead and she set her phone to the side. Duffel bag stuffed unceremoniously under her bed for later and she mindlessly straightened out a few things. Just to give her hands something to do. At least the wait wasn't long, a minute in change and there he was. Damp, covered in remnants of where he'd been.

Across from him, she looked the same as ever — maybe a bit better. A bit fuller in the figure, sweatpants hanging low on her hips and tank top fitting her better than before. Her habit of forgetting to feed herself would no longer fly now that she was eating for two.

The experiment — her foray into death — happened when she was nineteen. There, her body has remained stuck, though years passed around her. She shot him a mild glare at the unintentional reminder.

‟ I'm nineteen, jackass, ” Both true and not, she answered regardless of his lack of curiosity. ‟ Though, by yer timeline, I might as well be thirty. ”

Violet turned, popping into her bathroom to grab a towel, then back out to throw it at him.

Alright. Now she was just cracking jokes at his expense.

 “Christ, what part of I don’t wanna know failed to register?” Rick snapped.

Nineteen. Of course. Teenage pregnancy wasn’t just cliché, it was hereditary in this goddamn gene pool. And like it or not, that’s what she was—family. The word rotted on his tongue, bitter as battery acid. Not because of her age, but because it meant the organism was still replicating, still metastasizing, when he’d separated himself away from it a long time ago.

Rick looked at the bags with his arms folded. Brow arched in mild intrigue.

“So what now? You speedrunning every trope in the book? Runaway teen, knocked up, exile with a sob story to tell?” Violet’s little quip on him dripping everywhere was met with a scoff. “Doesn’t look like you got a reason to give a damn about what happens here with all that luggage stacked up.”

Or maybe she did.

Time in Abyss City wasn't so normal either, but she'd adjusted to it over the years. Here, it got no brighter than dusk except for the outskirts. A marvel of De Ville's engineering — or a symptom of something far deeper, far more primordial than she could ever understand. She didn't know. She stopped asking questions a long time ago; it'd never done her any good.

‟ Two months. ” Violet affirmed. Duffel bag was zipped shut and she paused for a moment, thoughtful. Rick being the father aside, there were objective upgrades to her life coming her way. A new apartment, for one. The idea of that still felt strange and maddening. Moving out of the Starlite felt like sacrilege.

Rick stared dead ahead, expression flat, as if the answer would etch itself into the air if he glared long enough. Unamused didn’t begin to cover it. Couple months for Violet, sure. But for him? It had been a whole fucking year and then some. Time fracture, dimensional drift—call it what you want. Point was, Violet saying home had become a punchline he wasn’t laughing at.

With a sharp exhale, he switched the call onto his bracelet, fingers already dancing across a hologram interface. Tracking Violet’s IP was child’s play with the connection live. Location locked, he killed the screen, thumbed the coordinates into his portal gun, and ended the call without ceremony.

Less than two minutes later, he was there.

Rick looked like he’d just walked out of an aquarium demolition—algae clinging to one shoulder, a starfish hitching a ride on his boot. Hair damp with saltwater, brine clinging to his jacket. Spiky as ever, slicked half-back by whatever current had tried and failed to drown him.

Typical Prime entrance: dragging the wreckage of another dimension behind him like it was nothing.

Stormy greys narrowed once they registered Violet, already packing up. “Huh. Don’t remember you being that young. So either pregnancy gave you a chemical peel or—” he waved a hand, cutting himself off. “Actually, fuck it. Don’t wanna know your age.” He knew Violet was young. Question was—how young? Rick preferred not to pull at that thread.

‟ Anyone ever tell ya you've got the attention seekin' behaviors of a depressed teenage boy? ” Violet questioned, pausing to debate which make-up products she wanted to take with her. Maternity leave would be a whole sabbatical for her — Donna wouldn't want her at the bar and De Ville would prefer she did nothing at all. At least she had a little more time before she firmly started showing. A pretty basic array got stuffed into her bag.

‟ I just don't get why yer bein' shittier about this than necessary, ” Deadpanned. She paused for a moment. Tried to remember the bus schedule and when she's need to be at her stop. Debated if she wanted to bring a book or two and then, tried to remember which ones she needed to bring back to the library. ‟ Be here or don't, send cash or don't. It's yer choice. ”

Ideally, he'd stay out entirely. Neither she nor this baby needed anything from him. She'd just guessed, stupidly, that she'd outstretch the offer of a connection. Fuck her, right?

“Huh. Do depressed teenage boys usually threaten to stab pregnant women? Guess I’ll have to check with my grandson on that one.” That one poured dry, needling. And Violet, she still didn’t hang up. Almost like she wanted the punishment, wanted his company, even if it came at the price of getting hurt in the process. If anything could hurt that woman at all.

And truth be told? He didn’t mind hers either. For what little that was worth.

Two months, she said. Felt like a goddamn year since he’d last seen her. But then again, time had a way of bending in the multiverse—he could live out decades in one corner and step back into another where barely a week would have gone by. Violet’s clock wasn’t the same as the one in the dimension he’d disappeared into.

“Shit,” Rick dragged a hand down his face, cigarette smoke billowing up from between his fingers. “Years of hopping realities and I still can’t get used to the jet lag. You’re telling me it’s only been two months since the last you saw me?” A laugh, sharp and humorless, escaped him, then Rick clapped his palm to his forehead. “Alright. Tell me where you are. I’m coming over.”

The lit cigarette was then carelessly flicked over into a bottle of something combustible without a second thought. The detonation that unfolded tore through the bar below, glass and flame erupting in a bloom of chaos. Rick didn’t so much as flinch, walking away from the railing through a rain of shards like it was nothing.