She looked beautiful standing next to him on the beach. With his bare feet in the sand, the sun setting in the background, and his daughter at his other side, Vaughn knew that this was without a doubt the best moment in his life.
It was their wedding day, but he knew that nothing would change between them. He had been in love with her since she had walked into his office with her crazy red hair, and he knew that nothing would ever change that. This marriage was just a piece of paper, legally declaring them together. In reality, they had been acting as if they were married since he had come back from Nepal.
It was a very small and simple affair, and it was a perfect representation of their relationship. Weiss had once called them boring, and at Liberty Village they had been mistaken for cold, but Vaughn knew that they just expressed their love differently. He didn't need to take her bowling after ten o'clock to show that he cared—their bond was apparent in the simplest of actions. Acting had never been required for them.
The differences between their wedding and his first to Lauren were apparent. With Lauren the wedding had been a massive affair coordinated by wedding planners and attended by foreign dignitaries and political big wigs, it had been a gigantic networking event for the Senator with enough pomp and circumstance to distract him from the fact that he was marrying the wrong woman. This time around, he and Sydney had taken Isabelle to Santa Barbara, and shown her the zoo with the crooked neck—he had had no idea that giraffes could even live that long—and afterward they had come to the beach with the minister for the ceremony.
It was just their family, the minister and the beach, and he wouldn't of had it either way. As his daughter handed him the rings, he looked at his soon to be wife, with her brown hair flowing, her simple white sundress, and the small star necklace he had had made for her in remembrance of Jack and his star on the wall of heroes at Langley, and knew that no matter what life threw at them—traitorous mothers and wives, deceased parents, deadly jobs—they would make it. That nothing could destroy their bond.
Dixon had given them the weekend off from work, but unfortunately hadn't been able to wrangle them more time for any type of vacation or honeymoon. As much as he had wanted a week off with only his wife and his daughter around him, he understood the difficult position he had put Dixon in, and that his position as director of APO sometimes trumped his role as friend in matters of national security.
Sydney had quit APO after taking down prophet five and opted to stay home with Isabelle, refusing to let her grow up without a mother as she had. The pull to come back to work had been too much though-she was a Bristow after all, it was in her blood to be a spy-and she had come back six months later in a reduced capacity. Originally they had gotten a sitter whenever they went on missions, but as they increased in number and became more and more erratic, they had begun bringing Isabelle to APO and leaving her with Marshall when they went away. At first Dixon had been adamantly against it, but she was a sweetheart, and Dixon could not say no (she now has her own corner and box of toys in his office).
He had stayed with APO after the end of prophet five and the demise of Sloan, but had switched to the more managerial aspect of the department. He was now second in command under Dixon, and rarely went on missions, except to accompany Sydney. They had talked about pulling out—ending their relationship with the CIA on a much more permanent basis, she had even mentioned having another child to accompany Isabelle, but he was doubtful that she could ever fully leave the spy profession, no matter how many times she claimed that teaching was looking more and more like a plausible profession.
He heard the minister tell him that he could kiss the bride, and he did, enjoying every second of it, knowing that for the rest of time Sydney Bristow would be Mrs. Michael Vaughn (he was still working on her changing her name). They thanked the minister, he picked up his daughter, took his wife's hand, and they walked off down the beach, excited to share the rest of their lives together.