AUTHOR'S NOTES: Well, we've nearly reached the end of this little exploration of alternate realities and the inside of Vaughn's head; I hope you've enjoyed reading it as much as I've enjoyed writing it. You've been an amazing group of readers, and your feedback has inspired me in so many ways. So thankyou so much!

Special thanks must go out to bailsgal, Patricia, and aliaschick4mv, otherwise known as Elle, who have just been the most incredible supporters of me throughout this fic and other fics, along with so many others [angvau57 [Angela] and freedoms are just two who spring to mind.]

More A/Ns at the end; just bear in mind that for the purposes of this fic, Vaughn's mother died before Season 1.

b)ii)2 Belief

It's been thirty years since they finally brought down Sloane, over forty since they met.

Their children are adults now, or close enough to it, and they've even got their very first grandchildren, two little girls who are doted on as much as possible by her very proud grandparents. They've been enjoying their retirement for a few years now, but they're still busy people, because, really, they were never meant to be idle.

It's Christmas time, and they've all come home for the holidays, to the house they moved to when all their babies had finally flown out of the nest a few years before.
They've finally moved out of California, although not too far. They live in Idaho, outside a small town called Ketchum near a ski resort named Sun Valley, and it's ruggedly beautiful and hot in summer, and idyllically pretty and cold in winter.

They have a lovely house, not too big but not too small either, on a sizeable piece of land which is really a little big for them at their age, but it gives them a lot of room for their dogs and Katie's horses, which she keeps on their property because trying to find enough room to keep horses in New York is a near impossible task unless you've got a few million to spare.

She never had outgrown that obsession with horses, he chuckles, remembering days when his hair was a little less streaked with grey [or, really, he admits, a little less white], and his back a little more able to cope with giving piggyback rides around the house.

She'd been joined by a sister, Sophie, when she was four years old, and a brother, Adam five years later, when she was nine and Sophie five.
Katie's thirty-five now, and is married and lives in New York with twin daughters of her own. Sydney had been nearly right all those years before when she'd said that her daughter would become a literature professor like she had once aspired; Katie, not content to merely study other people's work, had become an author, and her third novel was due out early in the next year.

Sophie is thirty-one, and although there's no sight of a husband or any children, she's happily single and still living in LA, working as a doctor. She's the spitting image of him, with his sandy-blonde hair and green eyes, and she's every bit as passionate about doing the right thing as he was at her age. He just hopes that she'll never lose that passion, as he had come so close to doing in later years.

Adam is twenty-six now, and is working on a law degree at Yale, Vaughn's alma mater. Adam wants to join the CIA after he graduates, a possibility that both thrills and scares him – he's so incredibly proud of his son wanting to serve his country in the same way he and his wife did, but at the same time he can't help being afraid for him knowing the sort of things he had faced in the Agency. His son doesn't look like Sydney or Vaughn, but anyone who has seen pictures of Jack Bristow and William Vaughn at the same age can see the family resemblance.
He can't resist being proud of his three beautiful, talented children, although he knows he's more than a little biased, of course.

And as for Sydney? Well, Sydney is every bit as beautiful in his eyes as she was the day he met her, and practically unchanged, except for a few more wrinkles and a little bit more grey in her hair.

And she still calls him Vaughn, he thinks with a grin, having given up trying to persuade her to call him Mike or at very least Michael many, many years before.

Her mother had died about twenty years ago, from breast cancer. He remembers watching her fade away, withered and made frail by the chemo, her long hair falling out and then being replaced by a wig. The hardest part of seeing Irina Derevko die, though, for him, was trying to accept that someone so strong could die from something as insidious as cancer.

Jack had died almost exactly a year later, of a broken heart, he'd always thought. He'd never been quite as scared of Jack as he had been seeing him after Irina's death, his slow, continuous disintegration so that the once powerful, confident CIA agent that he'd been so accustomed to seeing was nothing more than a broken old man who grieved for his wife desperately.

Sydney….Sydney had, quite understandably, taken her parents' deaths badly. He sighs, remembering the depression she had slipped into after her father's death, and the nights spent holding her in his arms as she cried herself to sleep. And even now, nearly twenty years after they died….he still sees her grief around the time of their deaths.

It will be Christmas Eve tomorrow, the nineteenth anniversary of the day when Jack Bristow fell asleep one night and just….didn't wake up the next morning. It hadn't really come as much of a surprise, really, because they'd all been worried about him, all watched him carefully to make sure he still ate and drank regularly, all known that the end was surely near…..but still, the shock and pain of finding him sleeping one morning, unable to be woken….well, that pain still lingers with all of them, but with Sydney most of all.

But it's still Christmas Eve, and all their children [and grandchildren] are here with them to celebrate the holidays.

And so he watches the gates to their property swing open in the distance, and Syd's SUV, which she insists on driving still, despite its antiquity, comes roaring up the drive.

He shudders briefly as he remembers countless other trips with his wife, who he does love dearly, down that very drive.

Whatever age has changed about Sydney Vaughn….one thing remains the same, even now.

Her driving.

"Pop!"

"Popppppy!"

He winces slightly, hearing his granddaughters' rather piercing voices. He turns in the direction of the shouts, only to be bombarded by flying tackle hugs to his legs by two rather hyperactive five year old twin girls, his first grandchildren, named for their great grandmothers on their mothers' side, Laura and Marguerite, which, being a rather stuffy name for a five year old, is usually shortened to Meg.

"Well, look at how you two have grown!" he says, trying to disentangle the two girls from his legs. And grown they have, he thinks with a fond grin. Meg, who looks almost exactly like her mother, is brown-haired and green-eyed, and has surely grown at least four inches since the last time he saw them, and Laura, blond-haired and blue-eyed like her father, at least that much, if not more.

"Hi, Mike," calls his son-in-law, Jack Malone.

"Hi, Jack," he replies, walking down the stairs of the front porch, "Let me give you a hand with your bags, won't you?"

"Nah, I'm fine, but thanks," Jack replies, shaking hands with him.

His daughter hops out of the car then, and exclaims, "Dad!"

"Hello, sweetheart," he replies, hugging her warmly. She may be thirty-five, and older than he was when he had met her mother….but she's still as energetic as she was as a toddler…and, he thinks with a shudder, as a teenager. "You look wonderful. How was your trip?"

She shrugs before answering. "You've been on one plane, you've been on them all, really. The girls had fun though, didn't you, darlings?" She reaches out and ruffles Meg's hair affectionately as they play a game which involves a great deal of giggling and running with their border collies, Burns and Smithers.

He watches with amusement as they ignore their mother's question, instead choosing to chase off down one side of the house with the two dogs, skipping excitedly towards the room at the back of the house that they always stay in when they come to visit.

He watches Katie sigh exhaustedly, but he has absolutely no sympathy for her whatsoever.

"You know who they remind me off at this age?" he says, a grin creeping across his face.

"Daddd…..I can't have been that bad."

"No, you were worse," agrees his wife, coming up behind him from the house. Somehow, he concludes, she must have snuck into the house with some of Katie and Jack's bags and doubled back to sneak up on him.

"But…twins. What did I do to deserve it?"

"You married a man whose mother had a twin, and who has two sets of twin sisters," chuckled Jack, kissing Katie on the cheek as he grabbed more bags from the trunk of the car.

"Still….I swear, they just never stop. And they never sleep."

He starts to laugh at this, remembering years of being woken before dawn by an overly exuberant daughter bouncing onto their bed at disgustingly early hours.

"Something funny, Dad?" His daughter asks, with a hint of irritability in her voice.

"Not really….I'm just remembering how many mornings of mine you disturbed by cannonballing onto my stomach at 6am," he says through his laughter.

"Hmph," she pouts. "When are Sophie and Adam getting here?"

"Well, that was a sudden change of subject," Sydney remarks with a grin. "Conceding defeat are we, Katie dear?"

"I know when I've lost a battle," his daughter replies, with an aloof expression on her face.

"Smart girl," he says, leaning in to kiss her on the forehead. "Your brother and sister will be here…when, Syd?"

"They should both be at Salt Lake City Airport….now," she says, checking her watch. "Meaning that their flight should be leaving in about two hours, so they'll be here…oh, by 3pm? And Vaughn, you're doing this run, okay? I've had more than enough of Ketchum Airport for one day."

"Okay, sweetheart," he says, picking up one of Jack and Katie's bags and carrying it inside.

*

"Daddy!"

That would be his daughter, he thinks with a smile, who, while not so constantly hyperactive as her older sister, has always managed to make herself heard in a crowd, which, he thought, looking around the airport with a frown, was certainly what he was in.

"Sophie, what on earth have you done to your hair?" he manages to gasp out, as he catches sight of her properly.

It's red.

And blue.

Fluoro red and blue. In dreadlocks.

"Do you like it, Dad?"

"Um," he chokes out, "It's interesting."

She moves forward to hug him, and all he can think of is that his daughter's hairstyle is just about the only hairstyle he's ever seen that could possibly begin to rival some of the wigs his wife had worn in her years with SD-6.

And then he just begins to hope that his son hasn't done something similarly interesting with his hair, although he's pretty sure that his rather strait-laced son wouldn't show up for Christmas with his family with a hairstyle that resembles the American flag.

Or so he hopes.

He breathes a sigh of relief as he catches sight of his son pushing through the crowd.

He hasn't done anything with his hair….although, he seems to have attached himself to a rather beautiful young blonde.

"Hi, Dad."

"Hello, Adam," he says, raising an eyebrow at his youngest child. "Is there someone you'd like to introduce me to?"

"Um, yeah," says his son rather sheepishly.

"Dad, this is Eleanor Lawley….my fiancée."

"Oh," he says, wondering whether or not any other members of his family had anything else likely to cause a heart attack to show him or tell him today. Because he'd really appreciate them getting all the surprises over and done with, really.

"Elle, this is my father."

"It's a pleasure, Elle," he says smiling at the young woman, who's obviously rather intimidated by meeting her future father-in-law.

"It's wonderful to finally meet you, Mr. Vaughn. Adam's told me so much about you!"

"Please. My name's Michael, or Mike. And welcome to the family. Now, can I help you with your bags?"

"Oh, I'm fine thanks," she says, wheeling her bags behind her.

"All right then. If no one else wants to give me a heart attack today, then the car is right this way."

All three of them grin, and follow him out of the crowded airport and into the carpark.

He can't wait to see Sydney's reaction to their daughter's new hairstyle…and their son's unexpected companion.

*

"Sophie, what have you done to your hair?"

He's content to just watch this one play out, really, seeing the look on his wife's face – and the one on his daughter's. This could really be quite interesting, he thinks with an amused grin.

"Nevermind," Sydney says, and he deflates inside. He'd really been looking forward to seeing how loud she'd get in her reaction to Sophie's rather interesting haircut, and he's almost tempted to pout like Katie had done earlier that afternoon. No fun.

And then he realises exactly how old he is….and it's really a quite depressing number that he won't bother dwelling on for any longer than he really has to. Thank goodness that medical technology has improved in the last forty or so years…

His wife's voice snaps him back into reality and away from dwelling on his age, thankfully.

"Elle! Hello! So nice to meet you. Adam, go help Elle with her bags," she says, a smile plastered on her face. As his son walks past her, however, he sees her very discreetly pull him aside and say, "We'll talk about this later, young man."

"Yes, Mom," his son replies submissively. As Adam walks past him with Elle's bags, he shoots a pleading 'please get me out of the doghouse Dad' look to him, and he resists the urge to grin. His son really has made his own bed here…and he's tempted to just let him lie in it for a bit longer. But, after all, it's Christmas, and he'd may as well talk to his wife about it.

"Syd, do you really think that was fair?"

"What? Oh, sorry, Vaughn," replies his wife, snapping out of her own little reverie and turning around to face him.

"I mean, I can kind of understand him not wanting to tell us about something like this over the phone…"

"Oh, I'm not really annoyed about that. Remember how long it took for us to tell my Dad that we were getting married?"

He winces; that wasn't really a period of time he was all that interested in reliving. Really. The less amount of time spent dwelling on the circumstances of his proposal, the better.

"I thought as much. It's just that he could have at least told us he was bringing someone…"

"I suppose," he concedes. "She seems like a very nice girl, though. And they obviously get along well."

"Oh, yes. They remind me of us, a little, especially all the longing looks and significant touches, especially," she adds with a smirk.

"Do you need any help with dinner?" he offers, aware of how stressed cooking for so many makes her.

"No, it's fine. The girls have already offered to come and help me out."

"Good," he says, kissing her on the cheek before adding with a grin, "Then I can go and watch the game without feeling guilty."

She whacks him playfully on the arm, and he really doesn't think that age has changed them very much at all, really. It certainly hasn't calmed them down much…or made them any less crazy about each other.

*

They all sit around the dinner table that night, and he just watches, watches them all talk, and laugh, and squeal [in Meg and Laura's case].

And he can't get over how lucky he is.

Some men may say that their lives are better than his.

They may say that they're happier because they earn more money.

Or because they have had easier lives.

He's not a millionaire.

They're comfortable, but not rich.

It doesn't bother them that much, though, because they have each other, and that's all they've ever needed.

There's a favourite passage from the Bible he knows very well. Man cannot live on bread alone.

No, he thinks, as he looks at everything he lives on, he doesn't live on bread alone.

He lives on love, and trust, and hope, and laughter, and faith.

He has his family and his faith, and he's happy.

And it's all he needs to get by.

"What's up with you tonight, Vaughn?" Syd asks him with a smile. "You've been staring off into space all night."

"Oh, I was just thinking."

"Well, that's dangerous."

He sees his children repress smirks, and he can't help but grin himself. "Yeah, tell me about it."

He looks at his children, and his grandchildren, and his wife, and he says, quite seriously.

"Don't let anyone ever tell you that money or fame or success can make you happy. And never let anyone tell you that anything is more important than love. I know you probably think that I'm just a rambling old man, and that I'm a bit off my rocker," he laughs now before continuing, "I know I probably would have if my father had ever told me something like this….but when you're my age, you'll realise the importance of all these things."

He's not sure whether or not they understand what he's saying, or whether or not they do think that it's anything but the ramblings of an old man…but in some ways it doesn't matter.

Those who understand will understand, even if it takes them awhile.

And somehow he thinks that his family understands.

But as he looks into the eyes of his wife, he knows that she does.

And that's all that matters.

The most important thing you'll ever learn, is just to love, and be loved in return.

*

He knows that there will come a day when one of them will go to sleep and just not wake up.

He knows that the other one will cry, and weep, but at the end of the tears they'll smile again, because they know that they'll see each other again.

And then one day, they'll go to sleep, and just not wake up.

But it doesn't matter.

Death doesn't scare them.

Because when they say farewell, it's only goodnight, not goodbye.

After all, to the well-organized mind, death is but the next great adventure.

And death cannot stop true love…all it can do is delay it for a while.

This he knows.

This he believes.

*



Okay, quotes from "Moulin Rouge", "A Princess Bride" and "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's/Sorcerer's Stone" all scattered in there.

I'll be back with more author's notes after "Alias" airs here, okay?

ETA: Well, I actually didn't write as much angst in this chapter as I could have; it was rather surprisingly fluffy, actually. Hehehe. Fluff is fun to write. And I really hope that my two best friends don't mind me stealing their first and last names for Adam's fiancee. And even if they do, there's really not much they can do about it.

And any "Without a Trace" fans who thought the name of Katie's husband was weird...yeah, blame watching way too many WaT clips on that one. Even though this Jack Malone looks nothing like the show's one.


Em