Tyler Vaughn stared at his parents out of the front window of their house on the beach in Fiji. They were doing their own landscaping, a task they insisted upon performing themselves since they moved there nine years ago. He hated having to go outside and break up the happy scene. Since his mother and father had told him about that Italian prophecy with his name written all over it on his sixteenth birthday, happy days of domestic bliss were few and far between.

He stared down at the acceptance letter to UCLA he had received in the mail the day before. It was like being able to hold all his hopes and dreams in his hands. At least all the hopes and dreams a nineteen-year-old who was doomed to die by the hands of a woman he didn't know at some point in the future could have.

"Elsie would get a kick out of my situation," he said to himself with a laugh, thinking about his best friend. As soon as her picture had popped into his head, he scolded himself. Elsie was not the person he had wanted to be dwelling on at this moment. She would hate him for leaving her in Fiji to fend for herself.

"That's not entirely true," he whispered, taking a deep breath and letting it out slowly. "She has Derrick."

Derrick Scott had only lived on Fiji for six months, but somehow, he had gotten Elsie to fall in love with him in that little amount of time. Tyler had no idea why his incredibly intelligent and sensible friend had fallen for a large bank account and a great pair of abs. In all the years, he had known her there really hadn't been any talk of boys she was interested in in a romantic sense. And then Derrick show up, and her life suddenly revolved around his every move.

When, the night before, Elsie had hand delivered the letter she had received at her house from the Office of Admissions at UCLA because he was too scared to let his parents come even moderately close to realizing he wanted to go to college in California, she had told him the "wonderful" news.

Turns out Derrick loved her, too, and they were moving in together. He asked her what about their plans to move back to the States together, and she had just laughed, asking him if he really thought they had been serious all those years back when they had made a promise to get off the island together as soon as they had a chance.

"Don't you love it here?" he said out loud, mocking the excruciatingly happy tone she had said that in the night before. He knew that he had no right to be mad at her for wanting to stay or for finding a man she could love. But he couldn't help feeling slightly betrayed by her. Fiji was great, but it wasn't for him the way it seemed like it was for Elsie. So, he had no other choice but to leave her behind.

Again, he scolded himself for thinking about her too much. Elsie was not the real problem at hand. Growling, he pushed away from the window, opened the door, and took the first few steps on his journey back to the place he used to call home.

Neither Lauren nor Vaughn noticed their son until he was practically standing on top of them. Tyler had never made an effort to help with the yard work so his presence outside was extremely odd. That was probably the reason both of them felt their hearts freeze a little at the sight of him.

"What's wrong?" Lauren asked, setting down the rake she had been using.

He smiled at her weakly. "You're going to hate me, Mom."

"What did you break this time?" she asked. "It had better not be that new vase your grandmother sent me from Germany the other day." When he shook his head, she continued, "Who did you fight? Where did you get banned from? What law did you break? How much money is this going to cost us? Just let me know before I worry myself to death, Tyler"

Vaughn stood up and placed his hand on Lauren's shoulder. "Let our son talk, Lauren. What did you want to say, Tyler?"

"I got accepted to college," he said, holding out the letter that was still grasped in his hand. His father took it from his warily and unfolded it.

"Oxford!" Lauren squealed happily and flung her arms around her son in a hug. "That's wonderful! I knew they would take you. They had to. You're so smart."

Tyler tried to shrug away from her. "No, Mom. You don't understand."

"Neither do I," Vaughn said, holding out the letter so his wife could see the return address. "Why is this coming from UCLA? You never applied there."

"Actually, I did apply there. It turns out that I really am as smart as you guys have always been telling me. I got accepted. That's where I want to go to college, Dad."

"That's unacceptable," Vaughn said, throwing the paper onto the ground. He grabbed the chainsaw he had been using to trim back some of the bushes off the ground and then turned back towards his son. "There's no way you're going that far away from your mother and I."

Tyler's face filled with disgust. "Don't play that card. We all know that it's just a convenient excuse for your real reasoning to keep me close. You're afraid I can't watch out for myself on my own. I promise I'll be fine, whether I'm in England or the US."

"It's not that."

"Then what is it? You guys have been tiptoeing around the subject of going back home to the States for years. Ever since you told me about that stupid prophecy."

"It's not a stupid prophecy," Lauren corrected. "It's your probable future. And something you should take very seriously, Tyler."

"I know. You've lectured me on that fact time and time again. I still don't see why this relates to me going to UCLA."

"You're not going to UCLA," Vaughn amended.

"Oh yes, I am. Unless you finally give me the reason why I shouldn't go that you think is so worthwhile. Tell me the truth for once."

Vaughn looked over at his wife, pleading for her help. She shook her head at him. "I don't know what to say, Michael. There's not much we can do."

"But I don't want our son to run into her."

Before Vaughn could continue, Tyler interrupted, "See who? Who's in California that I shouldn't see?"

Tyler felt his heart freeze as his father turned away from his mother to look at him. He had never seen that look on Vaughn's face before. Vaughn was mad. His father never got mad. Worried, yes. Mad, no. If he didn't know better, he might fear for his life right about now.

"You really want to know, don't you? You've been angry at us because we haven't told you before. We said that it was for the best, but you just couldn't find it in yourself to trust us that much. Fine. Don't say that your mother and I didn't warn you. Don't say we didn't try to protect you for as long as you would allow us to. The woman who is going to kill you is in Los Angeles. She's just sitting there waiting for you to come to her."

"Now, Michael," Lauren said, placing her hand on his arm gently. "Don't be melodramatic. There's no way Hope could kill Tyler."

"Hope?" Tyler said, looking back and forth from one parent to the next. "Her name is Hope? You knew her name?" A realization hit him. "You've known who she is this whole time."

Lauren nodded. "We didn't think it wise to tell you."

"You didn't think it was wise? That's nice. Real nice." He shook his head. "Listen. I am going to UCLA because I've been dreaming about it for four years, but I really couldn't tell you that, could I? Didn't want you guys to have time to figure out a way to keep me from it. Plus, maybe I didn't think that was wise to tell you," he mocked. He paused and took a few deep breaths, knowing that if he was going to persuade them, he would have to keep his temper in check. "I'm nineteen years old. That's old enough to make it on my own. I don't want to, but I will. This is the only thing I've ever really wanted in my life, and I'm going to see it through."

Vaughn's face paled. "Oh god. You sound like me whenever I would give a speech about Syd when I worked in the US."

Tyler reached out and placed a hand on his father's shoulder. "I know you don't realize it, but that was the first time you've mentioned Aunt Sydney to me in eight years, Dad."

"I didn't think you remembered her."

"I don't really that much. There are a lot of vague images in my mind of a pretty woman who used to play tag with me when I was little, but nothing else that really makes any sense. Maybe I would remember her if you talked about her a little more often."

"He had his reasons," Lauren explained.

"He always does," Tyler said, shaking his head in frustration and letting go of Vaughn's shoulder. He was tired of being lied to. His temper might be in check, but that didn't mean he still couldn't let himself get completely pissed off inside.

"Fine," Vaughn said quietly. When his son and wife swung their heads around to stare at him, he cleared his throat and spoke a little louder. "Fine. You can go to UCLA. I don't want to hold you back any more than we already have. You deserve to have the life you dreamed about, even if you never thought you could tell us about what that life was."

"I can't believe you just said yes, Michael." Lauren was shocked at this new development. Vaughn had been the one who kept telling her time and again over the nine years they've spent in this one location that there's no way they could let their son make his own, reckless, fool hearted decisions about his life. It had been determined that it wasn't safe by Lennox.

"I can't believe he did, either," Tyler added. This whole thing was too easy.

"Lennox is going to hate this."

"No, he's not. Jim's been encouraging me to look into colleges in the States since I was a sophomore."

"But I'm sure he didn't intend for you to go to California."

"No one really did," Vaughn pointed out. "But it looks like you're going."

"We should call Jack."

"Jack Bristow?" Tyler asked. "Isn't he some big man in the CIA who everyone seems to be scared to death of?"

"He's a personal friend of your father's," Lauren said with a smug smile. "Your father used to date his daughter."

"No way! You and Aunt Syd dated."

"You really do have a good memory, don't you, Ty?" Vaughn couldn't believe his son remembered that Jack Bristow was Sydney's father. The last he had spoken of Jack to Tyler was eight years earlier. Shaking his head, he reached into his back pocket and hit the three on speed dial. "Lennox. Get Jack on the phone. We need to have a conference as soon as Lauren and I get in. We're bringing Ty with us." He paused. "No, you heard me right. Tyler's coming in with us." Another pause. "Don't argue with me. You have no idea the deep shit we're going to be in with Jack. Tyler has to come with me." Vaughn sighed and hung up the phone. "He was not happy."

Lauren nodded her understanding and turned to her son. "So, it looks like you get to come into work with your parents finally."