#angsty time travel au where melinda saves the day

[ussjellyfish]

would you ever write a time travel au?

sure! here’s the somewhat angsty middle of the night version my brain likes. 

Phil dies in Tahiti, Melinda May scatters his ashes into the sea. Later, the team comes back to pick her up (they need her) and they’re back from space, with Enoch.

She’s destroyed (as is the team, of course) and Enoch mentions that this is only one potential timeline, and he’s sorry that this is the one where everything works out except Phil Coulson. Everything else is fine, Fitz and Simons are together, Robin is safe, Deke lives…but Phil is gone. 

May sits with Enoch on the beach, asking him about the other potential timelines, eventually, out of pity, he explains that there’s a piece of the monolith left, he has it. This timeline is fine, everyone will be fine, but there’s a hole where Coulson should be. 

Changing it will be difficult, she might have to do it over and over, one little change will change everything. 

But only she’ll remember.

Melinda decides that’s fine and back she goes. 

The first time, she forces herself to leave her cubicle after Bahrain and join the Avengers Initiative. She saves Phil from Loki’s scepter, but the Avengers come together too slowly to defeat the creatures destroying New York, and millions of civilians die. 

She allows him to be stabbed, but just in the lung, not in the heart. She sits on the deck with him, trying to keep him alive until help arrves. They end up together, years before they did in the normal timeline, but without what they learned about the Tahiti project from Phil, they can’t save Daisy later, when she gets shot by Quinn. 

After several more tries, she realizes Phil has to die for the Avengers to save the world and she’s pretty pissed about that. The team also doesn’t form correctly if she joins him too early. He has to be the reason she leaves her cubicle, they have to have Ward (as much as she hates it, in one timeline she murders Ward the first time they share a bed, it’s satisfying, but makes a mess of everything.)

She resets over and over, making lists of things she has to get right. Phil has to die. The teams has to include everyone that it does. Daisy has to be shot, she has to turn, Fitz and Simmons have to fall from the plane into the sea, she has to lose the Bus. She can’t save Trip, or keep Bobbi and Hunter with them. 

Sometimes she makes a mistake and gets too close to Phil too quickly. If he doesn’t fall for Rosalind, Ward doesn’t die and become Hive.

In one timeline, Andrew walks in on her kissing Phil goodbye before the timeline resets and she has a conversation with Andrew out of time, out of place, about how much she loves Phil Coulson. It doesn’t change how she feels for Andrew, she loves him, and always will, but she has this too. They talk into the night, watch the sun come up over the Playground together. Andrew remarks that she’s older, and she’s just going to reset everything so she tells him the truth. She’s changing the timeline, over and over, and she can’t save him. (she’s tried) Andrew has to become Lash to save Daisy. 

“That’s how I go?” he asks her. 

Crying, she nods, and he touches her face. 

“Daisy’s like a daughter to you, I always thought you’d be great with a daughter. Find your way home, Melinda, whatever it takes.”

She kisses him and ends that timeline, starts again. Andrew has to die. Rosalind has to die. So much suffering and pain has to occur just to get to the right point.

It’s after the framework, after Phil lifts her down from that fake reality, when she wanders almost sick with all the memories in her head, that she stumbles into the conversation where Phil decides they need to take a step back.

He’s made that deal with the Rider, and he will die. 

Maybe that’s the point she needs to find. Get before. She corners Robbie, demands to speak with the demon itself. Phil made a deal. The rider knows, he sees right through her, she’s not supposed to be here. 

She no longer gives a fuck. Make the deal with her instead. She has no alien blood, she can host the rider just fine. 

She won’t like it. 

She’s literally already seen hell, watched members of her team die over and over, even watched the world end, a little fire doesn’t scare her. the rider takes her over and she fights Aida, destroying her. 

Phil stares at her with awe, even surprise. When the Rider’s gone and she falls to her knees, sweaty and spent, he holds her. “I had the same idea.”

They go to the diner and don’t get any pie. 

Her leg is still impaled (fuck she forgot how that much that hurt) she keeps waiting for something to go wrong, for the timeline to collapse and the team to die, but things happen as they should, Flint puts the pieces together, Phil saves Daisy, they arrive back in the future and he’s not dying, there’s no veins on his chest.

He doesn’t collapse while they’re arguing, she doesn’t have to watch him drag himself up.  She’s not angry with him, not so furious she can’t breathe when he turns himself over to General Hale.

He’s fine, but now she’s the broken part. She hasn’t said she loves him. Everything’s moving along, Fitz and Simmons get married, Deke’s annoying, he gets shot but they save him, Phil comes back, and May wants to be angry with him, she wants to tell him how much of an idiot he is, but she can’t.

He’s not dying. He’s fine. 

Time slips away from her, mixing with her memories, but then it slips. Daisy doesn’t get the centipede serum. If she doesn’t get that, she won’t be able to defeat Graviton. 

She meets with the Candyman herself, finds the last centipede, and this time when they discuss how to fight, the vote goes in favor of the Odium. Everyone thinks that’s the best idea.

Melinda throws it on the ground.

Phil takes her in the hall and tries to figure out what she’s hiding, what she’s been carrying around and she loses it. She’s been through way to much for him, always for him, to let him lecture her like that. 

“I love you, and I’m not going to let you die.”

“Die?” (even here, he can’t deal with I love you). 

She tells him the whole story, and she’s never talked so much in her entire existence as she does that night. 

In the end, he sits beside her on the bed in his quarters, hands folded in his lap. 

“You did that for me?”

“I love you.”

“you mentioned that.”

“Don’t make me watch you die again, I can’t, I won’t–”

And he kisses her. It’s too early. They’re not supposed to kiss until the alien ship and she can’t just collapse into him like she does but she can’t help herself, she’s tired. She’s worn to a thread of who she is. She’s been through hell, but he’s still alive.

And he stays alive.

Phil kisses her anyway, while bullets fly around them. Daisy teases him. He slips the centipede into Daisy’s gauntlet, so she can save them all, and then they’re done, standing there, hand in hand while the world doesn’t end. 

She has to watch Fitz die, again, and it hurts just as much as the first time, but she needs the other Fitz, she needs Enoch.

Enoch stares through her. Reads it all in her face. She hasn’t even been to Tahiti, she and Phil went to space to help find Fitz and yes, she’s snuck into his bunk, but it feels like her skin’s on fire whenever she closes her eyes. 

“You saved Coulson, and the world. Can you live with this one?” he asks her when she returns the piece of the monolith.

The rider has no price to extract from her, she’s already paid in deaths and suffering, in all that she carries with her. Phil knows, he can feel it when she lets herself fall into his chest at night. 

it’s worth it. 

This time, when she scatters his ashes into the sea, she’s surrounded by family. Fitz and Simmons’ oldest just got married, Daisy’s youngest just finished high school, Mack and Elena are about to be grandparents. 

The Rider comes for her years later still, at the momemt of her death, when her hair has gone pure white and her fingers no longer respond to her wishes.

She smiles at that creature. What else could it possibly want?

They made a deal.

She paid her end.

That she did.

Melinda wakes up on the beach, asleep on Phil’s chest and the scent of him drags her back through the years. She’s in Tahiti, again, but Phil’s heartbeat is strong beneath her.

She lifts her head, stares at him in wonder. the veins are gone, the Zephyr left them here, his face isn’t mapped in lines and her hands move. 

“What happened?”

“We fell asleep.”

“But your chest…”

The lines are gone. Phil remembers nothing, her own memories evaporate as if they sun’s burning them away. The hint of sulfur carries on the wind, and then they’re alone.

But he lives.