Thank you to everybody who read or reviewed the last chapter. You are all lovely. We are still in the gamma timeline. Sorry.

As I was writing this chapter, I realized how much I miss Tony & Clint's interactions from the first story. They definitely have a friend relationship in the gamma timeline. Clint is living at Tony's house out West for a reason. I am going to have to do more of that in the future.

Also, considering everything going on, it feels oddly appropriate we're getting a Clint chapter right now. This was written way back in November.

Conversation 64: The Difficult Conversations Continue

Chief mechanic: I need you to get Clint on a Quinn jet in 30 minutes. What's the over/under that he'll leave the kids with you?

May 2.0: It depends on why you need him to leave.

Chief mechanic: We have a casualty.

Chief mechanic: I hate even calling this that.

May PR: It's not Laura, right?

Chief mechanic: As far as I know, she's still safe in the other timeline. They would've messaged us if something went wrong.

May PR: Coulson?

Chief mechanic: He's okay, but he won't be in about three hours when I tell him that as fiancé is dead.

Chief mechanic: Actually, I can be honest now and admit they were married. It was just a secret from most people.

M. Parker-Riley: That explains why my Shield designate kept changing for the last couple of minutes. Clint won't leave the kids to deal with the loss of their godmother alone. I've been hearing about other May since we got here. They adore her.

Chief mechanic: I didn't even think of that. She's their favorite auntie after Natasha.

M. Parker-Riley: Phil should come here. You can't keep him on active duty. I was a complete wreck when Ben died. I was useless for weeks. I wouldn't have made it if it wasn't for Lola feeding me and making sure the house was clean. She even put the funeral together.

Chief mechanic: That's an entirely natural reaction. Unfortunately, you can't be useless during an apocalypse. I am already worried about honey bunny losing another one of his friends. The last time something like that happened, he crashed a plane into the Arctic.

Chief mechanic: Thinking about this in a non-singular timeline way, the last time would be when he decided to create a whole new timeline because me and Natasha died. Honey bunny does not deal with loss in a very healthy way.

M. Parker-Riley: I am missing a lot of crucial information. You make less sense than usual, but that could just be the nine-hour time difference.

Chief mechanic: Sharon's neighbor is a Steve variant under the alias Grant Roth. His timeline also dealt with the purple prick and got their asses handed to them. The good news is they successfully got the ring pops together from different points in time and brought everybody back. Bad news me and Natasha died in the process. When dropping off the borrowed ring pops, Steve decided to start over by fixing things. Some of which got fixed more than others.

M. Parker-Riley: Are you okay?

Chief mechanic: Not at all, and I really wish my AA sponsor was in this timeline. Actually, I would just like time to go to a meeting. I'm getting ready to leave for DC right now to tell Agent. Wheels up is in 20 minutes.

M. Parker-Riley: Clint is reading this over my shoulder.

M. Parker-Riley: He's angry.

Chief mechanic: We all are. I'm sending the report and some of Dr. Leopold's messages to his husband. The ones that Hunter was ready to share.

M. Parker-Riley: Clint agrees with me that Phil should come here. He needs to be around someone who understands this, and I understand this.

Chief mechanic: You're not wrong. We'll figure out how to get him to Malta. We can drop him off on the way to Wakanda. Or have Simmons drop him off. She can help remotely from the Malta labs. I rather keep her away from Ground Zero.

M. Parker-Riley: That's best. Let us know when you're on your way.

Xxxx

Loss was something Clint was used to at this point in his life. He was a retired Shield Agent, after all. And yet word of Melinda dying still made him unbalance. He read the messages from Dr. Leopold and still couldn't quite grasp what had happened. Clint was still in a state of numbness when Olivia walked into the room.

"Hey, I handled bedtimes because I figured you were doing something urgent. Most of the kids are in bed except for Cooper, who doesn't believe he needs a bedtime anymore. Which I agree with. Also, Lila is still mad you're making her go to sleep before we talk to her mom."

"Cooper still has about two hours before I take his Stark pad away. I already told Lila we'll have more important things to talk about. It's going to be worse now. Honestly, I would like all the kids to get a good night's sleep before they find out." He really doesn't want to have this conversation. This coming battle was not going to be easy, but he didn't think May would be the first person to die.

"What happened?" Olivia asked. Clint wasn't sure how to answer that question. Thankfully May responded for him.

"One of the stones requires a sacrifice to get it, and Agent Melinda May decided that she would be that sacrifice," May explain to her girlfriend.

"The new Captain America?" Olivia questioned. This makes sense because May only recently told her girlfriend about her nephew's superhero life. Mostly because she wanted the woman to come with her to Malta. Although Olivia was delighted to have full access to the Malta Avengers labs.

"Melinda is more than just another superhero. She was Peter's driving teacher and first Shield liaison. She sort of became a friend of the family. us Mays have to stick together." May said as a tear rolled down her cheek. Olivia walked over to her to hug May. Clint was envious that she had someone. Even if Laura was in this timeline, he wasn't sure if he was allowed to take comfort in her. It was his own fault that he was here. Other Clint was right about that.

"She is Lila's godmother." Clint stopped himself when he realized he had used the wrong tense. "Was her godmother. Fuck."

"This is a mess." May sighed again.

"An absolute clusterfuck. I'm going to have to tell the kids in the morning. I don't want them to find out by overhearing a Shield conversation that they're not supposed to." Considering Miles can make himself invisible, that's very probable.

"If they are anything like Peter, they will. We'll just make sure not to have any of those until morning."

"Although you will probably need to tell the Khans now," Olivia mentioned.

"You're right. I'll take that one. And we'll figure out when to tell the kids together."May offered.

"It wouldn't hurt to get the other parents in on this. Should we wait until Phil gets here?" Clint asked the other adults.

"I wonder if that's the best thing to do. Kids know when something is wrong. They're very observant. They'll know we're not okay."

"Their mom is still trapped in another timeline, and we haven't figured out how to get her back yet. Also, we discovered that in that timeline, Laura's counterpart and our three kids are dead. I've been a mess for the last week in general. Melinda being gone is just one more thing." Clint sighed exhaustively.

"And we're hiding in another country because a purple alien wants to kill half the universe," Olivia added. "This is already not ideal circumstances."

"There's a good chance the kids might miss more things being wrong."

"Not these kids. Their baby Avengers in training." May commented.

"I wish they weren't, but it's already too late," Clint said, resigned as he got up from his chair. "I will leave you ladies alone to tell the Khans. I'm going to read over the rest of what Tony sent over, and then I will work on my message to Laura."

"You still haven't worked on that yet?" May asked.

"I am not sure of what to say to her. Especially after getting yelled at by the version of me who lost her and the kids." Clint explained.

"So, he is mad at you for pushing your wife away when his Laura is dead?" May asked.

"Yes."

"I understand that. Too well, really. Olivia, I love you, but I still miss Ben a lot." Olivia responded by kissing her girlfriend on the cheek.

"I know that, and I'm not angry that you still love him and a part of you wishes that things were different. I'm sure you would be jealous of a version of yourself that didn't go through that trauma, and that's okay."

"Your husband died during a robbery, right?" Clint asked, vaguely remembering what Tony told him about Peter early on.

"Yes. Peter and Ben got into a fight. Peter left to go to his favorite sandwich shop to cool down, and Ben followed behind. He pushed Peter out of the way and got shot twice in the chest. At least, that's what I was told. Peter never talked about it, still hasn't."

"And two weeks later, a guy in blue and red sweatpants started saving people in Queens?" Clint asked.

"Yep. And I didn't put it together because I was too caught up in my own grief. Peter doesn't know that Ben and I were fighting, like considering a divorce level of fighting. I was already looking at lawyers. Ben snapped at Peter because we were already on edge." May confessed.

"I didn't know that," Olivia told her girlfriend.

"I don't think I've told anybody that my marriage was falling apart before my husband died. I really didn't have that many friends back then besides Lola. Honestly, she's really just everybody's grandmother. Before I knew about time travel being real, I wished I could've fixed us before losing him or that I had made different choices. Even if we still ended up parting ways, at least he wouldn't be gone. Now I have all this regret that I will never be able to work through."

"I never met Ben, but I think he would've forgiven you and want you to be happy with Olivia," Clint told her.

"I'm sure he would be. And I am happy because I let myself move on." What was left unspoken was other Clint did not. He really hopes Phil doesn't become that person.

"We'll talk more in the morning. Everything will be better with coffee."

"I hope you're right."

"We are going to make it out of this crisis. We owe that to other May."

"We do."

To be continued.

Yes, I wrote a chapter where May Parker Riley was the main character. Every time I dictated the name May, I kind of cried a little. I did this to myself. I feel like Clint also cringed in his head, which is why he kept using Melinda to differentiate as much as possible. Clint's letter was originally in this chapter, but it would've been too much. It would make the chapter too long by at least a good thousand words.