* * *

Previously –

He chooses his wife, in this reality.

But are they happy? Or do they fail in the end?

* * *

a)i) Fulfillment?

He resigns from the CIA a week after he makes the phone call to Lauren. She goes on desk duty two months later, when the doctor tells her that she's a month pregnant.

She's an analyst now, and rising rapidly up the ranks of the CIA, just as he once had.

He's proud of her, but a corner of his mind tells him that it could have been him, the CIA's brightest rising star….before he met Sydney Bristow. He keeps his twinges of jealousy under wraps most of the time, anyway.

He's got a successful career as well, after all. He's a lawyer, and he's about to make partner at his firm. It pays well, and he even enjoys his work some of the time. But most of all, it's normal.


He works 9-5 most days, more some of the time, and a little on weekends. But he's home by 8, at the very latest, each night, to a beautiful wife and a happy home.

They live near the beach where they were married, a little way out of LA. It's a bit of a commute for both of them, but the beauty of their neighbourhood more than makes up for it.

Their first child is a daughter, a beautiful little thing with Lauren's blonde hair and Vaughn's brilliant green eyes. They both dote on her, but she's Vaughn's little princess and her daddy's special little girl.

They take her to the park on weekends, and it is there that he and Lauren watch her on the carousel, swinging around squealing at the top of her lungs.

It is there, on a day a little after Meg's second birthday [she was named Margaret for Lauren's favourite aunt, but it's a bit of a mouthful for such a little girl], that Lauren tells Vaughn that she thinks she might be pregnant again.

Eight months later, Lauren gives birth to William, an infant with the strongest lungs Vaughn's ever heard.

He's happy, and some days he barely even thinks about the woman he gave up.

It is four years after the call from the pier, and he's almost forgotten about Sydney [nearly], when he gets a phone call from Weiss about her.

"Mike, it's Eric. I'm calling about Sydney – I wasn't sure if you'd heard yet."

* * *

In one world, his best friend brings him sorrow and grief and overwhelming guilt.

In another, he brings him regret and loss, but maybe, just maybe, hope for her future happiness as well - and freedom from guilt.

* * *