Author's Note: None of the characters belong to me except for Kaylee Derevko. The situations in the Season 1 of Alias occurred, but the Season 2 has been slightly altered to fit my purposes. Irina never turned herself over to the CIA's custody, but SD-6 was still taken down. The story will follow the vague plotline of seasons 2 and 3 up until Season 3 Episode 10 "Remnants" with a few significant changes.




Sydney Bristow woke up to her alarm blaring. Sighing to herself, she rolled over to hit the snooze button for another solid nine minutes sleep. "Why don't I just set this thing a half-hour later and get some solid sleep?" she wondered out loud to herself as she jammed a pillow over her head to block out the morning sunlight that was creeping in her window.

Just as she was starting to feel that sleepy haze come on her once more, her cell phone rang obnoxiously.

"Wha..." she managed to mutter after locating her cell phone in the pants she had flung on the floor the night before. She was never too neat after coming in from a mission in the wee hours of the morning, but at least she had learned over the years to create the same mess over and over again. That way, it was always easy to locate where she put things the night before.

"Joey's Pizza."

"Vaughn? Is that you?" Sydney asked, highly confused by the greeting she had received. It had been at least two months since SD-6 had been brought down and her double agent status had been canceled. There was no longer any need for the subterfuge the CIA used to contact her.

"Yeah, Syd. It's me," Michael Vaughn said. "I don't know why I said that. Old habit, I guess. Or maybe I just wanted to hear your reaction. Then again, I could have just thrown it in for nostalgia's sake."

"Very clever," Sydney said. She turned over and checked the clock at the side of her bed. "But don't you think that it would have been better if you saved the cleverness until after 8:23 in the morning? I might be amazingly witty during my 'day job' but that doesn't mean I'm witty at all hours." She paused as she tried to take in what was really happening. "Why are you calling me, Vaughn? You know I just got home from Bombay four hours ago."

"We need you to come into work as soon as possible. We've hit a minor problem in our dealings with your mother. It's not a huge deal, but we just thought you'd like to know what was going on as soon as possible. Don't worry."

"Sure," Sydney said softly while she heard Vaughn hang up. Her face scrunched up in concern as she looked at her phone. "What would be so important with my mother that they would rush me into work?" she mused.

The CIA had been investigating Irina Derevko since she had surfaced in Sydney's life the previous year. Not many leads could be found as to why she had revealed herself to her daughter as "The Man" and then mysteriously disappeared without any explanation. Assistant Director Kendall was constantly making Sydney relive the short time her mother had her in custody so that the agency may be able to form some clue as to why Irina would want the world to know she was alive after twenty-four years of hiding.

"Why would they get a lead now after a whole year of nothing?" Sydney rushed to get dressed as she realized that no matter how much Vaughn downplayed it, something enormous has transpired.

~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~

Sydney calmly walked into the briefing room at the CIA Headquarters. She didn't want Vaughn to know how much his phone call had upset and confused her. Walking past all the desks, she began to notice that people were stopping their work to stare at her when they thought her gaze was focused elsewhere. Sydney tried to piece together why everyone seemed to be in on a secret that she didn't know about as she pushed open the large glass door leading into the small conference room. She took a seat at the briefing table next to Dixon and began to look around the room at everyone who was present.

Her father sat opposite her and was looking through some information on the computer screen in front of him. If Sydney weren't so familiar with him, this behavior would have seemed normal. But in all of the mission briefs and meetings she had gone through, never once did Jack Bristow fail to make eye contact with her immediately when she entered the room. "Something is definitely up," she thought.

On Jack's right was Vaughn who was doing the polar opposite of Jack. His gaze was so intensely fixed on Sydney that she automatically could tell that whatever was about to happen was going to probably hurt her or shock her greatly. Vaughn's body language was never very hard to read especially when it came to matters that concerned Sydney. He had never been able to mask his concern for her.

Rounding out the table was Weiss and Marshall. Marshall seemed a little nervous himself. "But then he's always nervous," Sydney thought, "but Weiss, the king of calm, is also fidgeting a lot." Director Kendall was standing at the head of the table, seemingly gathering his thoughts for the impending brief.

Tired of sitting in silence, Sydney finally said, "Could you please tell me what's going on before someone hurts himself trying to avoid my eyes?"

Weiss chuckled softly at Sydney's bluntness as Kendall pressed a button on the keypad in front of him. A young woman's picture appeared on the screens in front of each person. The woman was of average build with short brown hair. She was seated at a cafe in what looked to be a French city, probably Paris, talking with another woman seated across from her. A passerby's body blocked the other woman's face from identification.

"Who is that?" Sydney asked, knowing that the answer couldn't be good.

All the other occupants of the room began to shuffle in their seats, and no one made a move to answer her question. Sydney looked pleadingly at Vaughn, knowing that if someone was going to inform her of what was going on, it would be him.

"That's your sister, Sydney."