Alternate Termination

Sequel to Alternate Existence and Alternate Infatuation. Sydney and Michael finally had a perfect life. A real family with no lies. Friends who knew the truth. And then they lost it all.

Chapter 4: Two Minutes

Disclaimer: No, Alias is not mine. Nor is Sydney, nor Vaughn, nor Irina, nor Jack, nor Khasinou, nor Kendall. But Jeffrey is! He's all mine! No touchy!

A/N: vaughn is hot, may be I should have clarified what I meant by that a little more. I meant more along the lines of liked by none, ungrudgingly respected...ect. Everybody kinda kicks themselves for respecting him sometimes, ya know? And even though my character recognizes him as human, that doesn't mean she likes him...Misty may be a kinda stock character, but she's not stupid...Okay, yeah, I know how stupid that sounded. I just don't care right now!

A/N: Natalie, THAT'S A BAD MR. KITTY! Don't ask, I'm not even exactly sure where that came from, it just sounds funny. You must be punished...Hmmm...I need a beta reader...wink wink...That might be appropriate torture...And, I haven't divided all the chapters up exactly yet, but we're looking at around 5 or 6.


"Why can't I go outside, An' Missy?" Alex begged again, pulling on the hem of her t-shirt. "Where's all my toys?"

"We have to stay inside, sweetie," Misty said gently, untangling his fingers from her shirt. "You heard Mr. Kendall. Nobody can know we're here, and if we go outside someone will see us. Okay?"

"Okay," Alex said disgustedly, wandering off to pout by himself.

Jeffrey was pacing the kitchen of the CIA safe house frantically. His forehead was all wrinkled up, his hands twisted behind his back except when he reached up to yank both of them through his hair.

"Jeff, honey, why don't you sit down?" Misty pleaded as she tried to hold Emily, get her bottle ready, and avoid Jeff all at once. "You're making me nervous."

Jeffrey stopped to turn and look at Misty.

"I feel like I'm letting them down," he said desperately. "Syd and Michael. They trusted us with Alex, and now we're on the run. Miss, this is exactly what they didn't want for Alex."

Misty laid Emily carefully in her car seat-which they'd sat on the table-and turned to wrap her arms around him.

"Honey, we're doing the best we can. They left Alex with us because they knew we'd do everything we could to protect him. That's all they wanted, Jeff. For us to take care of him."

"What if our best isn't good enough?" Jeff murmured, laying his cheek against the top of Misty's head. He could just catch a whiff of strawberry scented shampoo.

The sound of feet stopping just inside the kitchen doorway shook them out of the momentary reprieve they'd found. A woman Misty had never seen before stood in the doorway, watching as they broke apart.

The woman had an apprehensive look on her face, and seemed almost weary of Jeffrey.

"Please don't scream," she said quietly. "I'm not here to hurt anyone."

Jeff's face was hard when Misty looked back at him, and she could see just a trace of fear in his eyes. Why was he afraid of this woman? Who was she?

"Jeff? Who is this? What's wrong?" she demanded, never turning completely away from the brown-haired woman. Was she SD-6? Had they already gotten Alex? But then, why would Jeffrey know her?

"She's not SD-6," Jeff said, his tone far from soothing, but calm. "This woman is former Russian KGB."

"And...Sydney's mother," the woman added softly, may be even regretfully.

Misty started to speak, but Jeff beat her to it, almost as if he knew what she wanted to ask and tried to stop her.

"What do you want?" he demanded.

"Alex," she said timidly. "I want to keep him safe. I know you are here because there was an attempt to..."

"Hell no!" Misty snapped, instantly furious. "I don't know where you came from, but Alex is like my son! My own son!"

Jeff placed a restraining hand on her shoulder when he feared she might advance.

"How do I know you weren't behind the attack on Alex? Only the CIA knew about it. How did you find out?" Jeff demanded calmly. He wasn't concerned that she had someone else grabbing Alex. He'd kept tabs on her, via Eric, since Syd had been attacked by SD-6. Irina Derevko was not a woman to be trusted, but she'd worked alone ever since Syd had revealed she'd been a double agent for the CIA all along.

Irina stood her ground, but her posture slipped into the more comfortable stature of the woman Jeff had grown up knowing as Laura Bristow.

"I loved Sydney, and the only way I could keep her with me was to agree to train her. I hoped to get out before she reached eighteen. But he demanded to begin sooner. Khasinou was a very powerful man. If I'd refused then, he'd have killed Sydney, more horribly than he did Jessica."

Irina realized immediately that she'd make a mistake mentioning the girl, and she paused to allow Jeffrey to rail at her as she was sure he would.

"Khasinou was powerful?" was all he said.

Irina nodded.

"He was killed three months ago."

Jeffrey glared at her. Yes, he definitely realized she had been the one to kill him.

"If Sydney knew the whole truth, I know she'd want me to protect Alex. I'm the only one who can hide from...Sloane," she finished, unsure how much Jeffrey knew about the man.

Jeffrey closed his eyes for a moment as if resisting the urge to strangle her, then turned to Misty.

"Miss, take Emily and make sure Alex stays where he is. I need to have a word with Mrs. Bristow." He cast a wary eye her way as he put a sarcastic emphasis on the name.

"But Jeff, I..."

"Misty, it's okay. Just go, please."

"Misty hesitated. There were things Jeff hadn't told her, she knew that. He'd explained to her that many secrets he kept about the time between when they met and the time he was sixteen were mostly Sydney's secrets. But if Sydney's secrets threatened the little boy she loved so much, and potentially her husband, she had a right to...

"Misty, I'll explain everything later. Take care of Alex," Jeff begged.

Jeff watched as his wife gave a little shake of her head and walked past Derevko and out the door.

"My wife doesn't know, as I'm sure you do, that I was held by Sloane. She doesn't know who you are or what you did to Sydney, and she sure as hell doesn't know what Sydney went through to get away from you. Sydney rightfully wanted every damn thing about you to stay as far in the past as possible, even when she rejoined the CIA. She opted to leave her previous file sealed. You will not show up and threaten the child she worked so hard to protect, nor my family."

Irina could almost see the smoke pouring from Jeffrey's ears, but she ducked her head with the appropriate remorse for disturbing them now.

"I was glad when Sydney got out. I was never even saw it coming, and I've never been so proud of her as when I saw her holding a gun to my secretary's head demanding to know where I was." A small smile crossed her face.

Jeffrey remembered the night after the CIA takedown. He'd had no idea that anything had even happened.

It was raining cats and dogs; it had been all day. The rain was pouring, and it was thundering and lightning like nothing. The iffy electricity in the old dorm house Jeff shared with almost a dozen other guys had finally gone out, and six of them had pooled their selection of flashlights and battery-powered lanterns in the common room. When the almost timid knock sounded on their front door, Jeff was somehow commissioned to go see who it was.

Armed with a flashlight, he'd opened the door to find Sydney, dripping wet, with no sign of a car behind her, standing on his step.

"I ran," she offered when she saw him looking behind her blankly.

"You're soaked," he said finally, grabbing her arm to pull her inside. The dean would have a fit if he found out, but only a fool would be out in this weather.

So what was Sydney doing here?

He gave her a pair of his sweatpants and a t-shirt to change into to get her out of her wet clothes-which didn't seem to phase her, even as she stood there shivering-before retreating to the kitchen with a single flashlight.

Before Jeff could even ask her what was wrong, Syd broke down, and cried, and told him everything she hadn't been able to in the last year and a half that she hadn't seen him.

She told him in horrifying detail about the takedown, about seeing all those people she'd pretended to work with being shot or cuffed and dragged away, and about seeing her mother smile back at her before the woman had pulled off a Houdini-like disappearance.

May be Irina Derevko had given him a genuine glimpse into her persona…but then again, he didn't trust her with the truth anymore than he'd trusted a rabid dog with a small child.

"If you're not gone in two minutes, I'm alerting the CIA," he said calmly, clearly signaling the end of their impromptu tête-à-tête.


Hehe…to all those who wanted Irina, you've got here! I killed Khasinou, of course, because I never really liked him, but anyway. Ya'll are still gonna kill me later, but for now, you're happy, right? Review please!