b) ii) Happy Ever After
When he was younger, and his mother still read him bedtime stories of gallant, perfect heroes overcoming evil and rescuing beautiful, flawless princesses, he'd often dreamt of himself battling evil overlords or dark wizards in armour with a sword in order to rescue the beautiful damsel in distress, who would miraculously and instantaneously fall in love with him upon the moment of rescue.
They'd get married, of course, and become the King and Queen of whatever good country they were in, and have perfect, talented children.
He's older now, of course, and he outgrew his mother's fairytales many years ago.
And he learnt many years ago that heroes are rarely perfect, and women rarely helpless damsels in distress needing to be saved.
He's not a hero [he'd like to be one one day though] but he sees them at work every day. They don't fight with swords or spells, but the demons they battle with technology that no medieval knight ever thought of are far more deadly than an evil knight ever was.
His princess isn't flawless, isn't perfect, not by a long shot, and they're not living a fairytale life.
But they're happy, and somehow he thinks that that's all that matters.
Their relationship isn't perfect...she's impulsive, he's overly cautious, and they're both as stubborn as hell. They argue sometimes, over trivial things, loudly and not caring about the other's feelings...but in the end the kiss and make up, and that's half of the fun, anyway.
They married six years to the day after they met, two years after her return and a year after his divorce became final. He proposed to her on her birthday, at the pier where they fell in love the first time around, and where he returned to her four years later, and they were married nearly eighteen months later.
It was a small ceremony, in a beautiful stone chapel, the same one, in fact, where his parents were married over forty years before.
Weiss was his best man, of course, and Will was her maid - no, he corrects himself with a mental chuckle, man of honour [she'd always imagined Francie as her maid of honour...but life doesn't work out the way we want it to, does it?]. He can still remember the look on Will's face when they asked him to be her maid of honor - his expression torn between utter horror, pride...and well, shock. He's pretty sure that Eric still hasn't let Will live it down, not unless he was getting mellow in his old age, because he knows Eric far too well to think that he would so quickly move on given such great material with which to make fun of someone. Plus, it was Will, who had always been way too easy to get a reaction from...
His mother was there, of course, and Sydney's father as well. He thinks somehow that Irina Derevko was there as well, in some way, even with a wedding party involving no less than five CIA agents, plus a few more in the congregation.
But he's made some sort of peace with Irina's actions....he'll never accept her fully, of course, but he knows how much she means to Sydney, and so he's learnt to tolerate her over the years. And Irina's mellowed a little with the years, and her retirement, he reflects with faint amusement, something he attributes squarely to Jack Bristow's influence.
They say that time heals all wounds.
He doesn't agree, but he thinks that maybe the pain lessens with years, and so, when he sees Irina Derevko these days, the urge to draw his service pistol and shoot her is a little less insistent, and the gutwrenching anguish he felt all those years ago as a boy doesn't hurt him quite so much.
Time doesn't heal all wounds, no, but it makes it easier to deal with the pain.
They're both still with the CIA, although neither of them are full-time field agents anymore. She works mainly as an analyst now, and they promoted him to the role of deputy director a little while ago, much to his surprise.
She moved out of field missions when she was pregnant, and while she still does the occasional mission - just to 'keep her hand in' as she insists, they're few and far between. He still doesn't sleep when she's in the field, and he doesn't think he ever will.
She gave birth to a beautiful little girl, Catherine, two years after they married.
They've talked about having more children - certainly, he'd love a son, but he loves his daughter more than he's ever loved anyone except her mother, of course.
She's the most precocious and highly intelligent infant either of them have ever seen - not that they're at all biased, of course. She has her father's green eyes, and her mother's brown hair, and she's the most adorable thing in the world, even when she's throwing a temper tantrum, which, even at such a young age having inherited both her parents' stubbornness combined, she does with an amazing frequency.
It's her third birthday today, and he enjoys the silence of the early morning, knowing that his peace and quiet will be disturbed soon by an overly energetic little girl hunting for birthday presents.
But until that happens, he's more than content to lie in bed bathing in the warmth that the sunlight streaming in through their bedroom windows brings, watching it envelop his still-sleeping wife in a seeming halo of golden light, every inch an angel. He lies with one arm tossed over her back, trying not to wake her at such an early hour. He knows how stressed she's been in the last few days, what with all the fuss over Catherine's birthday party. So he lies in the tangled white sheets of their bed, waiting for his daughter's entrance, and reflecting on how lucky he is.
His life isn't perfect, because there's no such thing as a perfect life, at least not those described in such flowing prose and imagery that decorated the pages of his storybooks as a child.
But he thinks that he wouldn't exchange what he has for all the fairytale lives in the world.
He has a wife who makes him whole, makes him feel complete, a woman who he loves more than anything in the world, except, perhaps, the daughter she gave him.
They're his angels, his guiding light.
He can't describe in words what they mean to him, really. He just knows that he'd rather die himself than see either of them hurt, would willingly give up anything to protect them - not that his 'I can kill a man with two punches' wife needs protecting, he thinks with a grin.
They're all he wants in this world, all he needs in the world.
They're his everything.
He's normally not a religious man, but it's moments like these, when he remembers how lucky he is that he found her once, thought he'd lost her but got her back again in the end....it's moments like these ones that he feels like praying. Because he doesn't think he can chalk it all up to luck, or making good decisions, because luck's really not that powerful, and he'd made some pretty appalling decisions along the way.
His mother, a devout Catholic, had always brought him to church on Sundays as a child. But as he grew older, he began to find more and more excuses to avoid church - because it was hardly the coolest thing for a teenage guy to be seen doing, was it, or so he thought at the time.
But he can remember liking church, remember enjoying the feelings of tranquility and peace that had washed over him as he had listened to the sermons and the hymns sung.
And so he thinks that maybe church - and religion, weren't really all that bad, and that maybe it's time he started seeing if sermons and hymns could still evoke the same feelings that they once did.
After all, God does deserve some thanks for bringing them both into his life, doesn't he?
"Mommy! Daddy! It's my bwirthday!" At that moment, a ball of hyperactive toddler lands squarely on his stomach, and all thoughts of religion promptly fly squarely out of his head.
"Good morning, angel," he says with a slight grimace as he rubs the area of his stomach which had, moments before, served as a landing pad for said angel.
"Daddy, it's my bwirthday!"
"Birthday, sweetheart, birthday," says his wife, rubbing sleep from her eyes and sitting up in bed. "What time is it?"
"Just a bit before seven, dear," he says, kissing her on the cheek as he rolls out of bed and grabs an old Kings jersey from the chair near their bed. "Now, angel, what was it you were trying to say?"
"Daddy, it's my bwirthday!"
"Yes, Katie, I think we had realised that," Sydney replies with a laugh from the bed, their daughter in her arms.
"I'm three! I'm three!"
"Yes you are, princess."
She screws her face up in sudden seriousness before speaking again. "Mommy, Daddy...can I have my presents now?"
He opens his arms wide, and she flings herself into them, arms wrapping around his neck as her legs wrap around her waist. "Do you want to go and hunt them down with me?"
"Yes pwease, Daddy." She twists herself around so she's on his back, and shouts, "Giddup, Daddy! Giddup!"
He sighs. She's still obsessed with horses, apparently. He'd hoped that maybe she'd have grown out of it overnight - his back really is getting sore from being a pony.
When he returns, Katie at his side and his arms full of presents, she squeals, "Mommy! Look what we found!"
"Wow! What a large stack of presents! Are they all for you?"
"Mommy, it's my birthday. I think that they're for me. And guess what?"
"What, sweetheart?"
"Daddy was a horsie for me! All the way downstairs, too!"
She looks away as she nearly starts shaking in her efforts to restrain her laughter, before looking at him with a perfect poker face and saying, "I'm sure Daddy makes a very good horse."
As he gets back into bed with her, their daughter at the end of the bed with all the presents, she kisses him on the cheek and whispers, "You're a good father."
"Yeah, well, I'd better be. My back is killing me now." He's complaining, but it's all in good fun, despite the exaggerated way in which he's rubbing his back.
"Can I open my presents yet?"
It's this question from their offspring which snaps them back into the present.
"Yes, sweetheart, go ahead," she says, leaning down to help her unwrap her gifts.
No, his life's not perfect, and neither is he.
But somehow he thinks he's living happily ever after.