Author's Note: My apologies for the delay in posting the conclusion of this story - I had planned to post it sooner but I got sick and then my muse seemed to want to take a long unauthorized vacation.

See disclaimers and notes in Chapter 1.

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Five months later…

"Happy birthday to you! Happy birthday to you! Happy birthday dear Is-a-belle! Happy birthday to you!" Sydney placed a small cake before her 1 year old daughter, kissing her head before the baby dove face first into it. Everyone laughed a few seconds later when she came up and Vaughn snapped a picture, the flash making her eyes go wide. The crowd who had gathered to celebrate Isabelle's first year was a small one since the only people her parents had only invited were all the surviving APO family members: Weiss, Dixon, Marshall, Carrie, and Rachel.

Sydney hadn't long finished serving cake and ice cream to everyone waiting until they were all preoccupied before she slipped into the kitchen. About a month after they married, Sydney and Vaughn had moved their family out of her apartment into a more roomy house in a quieter part of L.A. They had both decided to leave the CIA since Sydney had made the decision to take up teaching and Vaughn had didn't see the point of staying in without Sydney there as well.

Now Sydney leaned against a cabinet that was out of everyone's line of sight, fighting back tears as she listened to everyone talking and laughing. Oh she was happy and couldn't believe that Isabelle was already a year old. But someone was missing from the celebration and more importantly from their lives. Sydney couldn't help the aching sadness that present and causing her to wipe away tears now.

"Just came to grab something to drink. I'm out," Dixon said, walking into the kitchen.

Sydney quickly turned to face away from him, and began busying herself with some nonexistent task. Speaking in her best cheerful voice she said, "Sure, go ahead and help yourself to anything we've got."

Dixon stopped moving all of a sudden, recognizing her forced overly cheerful tone, "Syd, what's wrong?"

Sydney went on with loading up a few dirty dishes into the dishwasher, careful not to let him see her face, "Nothing's wrong. Why do you ask?"

"Because I can tell you're crying," Dixon replied, going up behind her. He turned her around to face him and he saw the drying tears there. One look in the eye is all it took for her pretense to crumble, and her face contorted as the tears began again. Dixon just pulled his friend to him and hugged her while she cried. He asked gently, "What's wrong?"

"I miss Dad." She pulled away to grab a paper towel to wipe her eyes with. "I know we're celebrating my daughter's first year of life, and I should be smiling not crying but this hit me like a ton of bricks. When I was watching Isabelle, I started to think about when she was born, about how we'd never made it through that if Dad hadn't been there." Sydney paused to take a deep shuddering breath before continuing.

"And then I started to think about how it isn't unfair that he's not right here right now to celebrate his granddaughter's birthday!" The tears started flowing again but this time Dixon didn't have to pull her into a hug as Sydney sought him out herself. Dixon just held her and let her cry knowing from experience that sometimes you just had to cry for the now gone loved one you missed. He knew because he had spent a lot of his own tears for Diane.

They stayed like that for a couple of minutes until Weiss stepped into the kitchen, "Uh, Syd, Mike wants to know if you'd like to start opening up Isa -" He stopped talking when he saw Sydney pull away from Dixon, wiping her eyes.

Sydney gave a smile of gratitude to Dixon, "Thank you." He smiled and nodded a reply at her before she looked back to Weiss, "I'll be out in a second."

Weiss nodded, "Okay." He left the kitchen.

Dixon resumed getting himself a drink while Sydney washed the drying tears away off her face. She exited the kitchen first, followed closely by Dixon where they rejoined the others in the living room. Vaughn sat on the couch with Isabelle in his lap with gifts from their friends to the baby sitting on the coffee table before them. The others had found seats all around, and were waiting for Sydney to take a seat beside Vaughn.

One by one all the gifts were opened with Isabelle immediately latching onto the ear of the stuffed dog she'd received from her Uncle Eric. The last gift received was marked as being from the Flinkmans, and Marshall seemed somewhat serious when Vaughn picked it up to start helping Isabelle open it.

Marshall spoke up, "Uh, I think Sydney should be the one to open this one."

Vaughn looked at him and nodded, "All right." He handed the flat package over to her, and watched as she carefully began to tear away at the paper.

Sydney gasped loudly when she tore off enough of the paper to see what was inside. In a beautiful yet simple wooden frame was a picture of Jack in which he had one of his rare smiles gracing his face. Tears immediately flooded Sydney's eyes, streaming down her face as she jumped out of her seat, and went over to give Marshall a hug.

As she pulled away from the abashed Marshall, Sydney asked, "Marshall, how? Devlin told me every picture the CIA had of my dad was classified and that he couldn't let me have any copies."

Marshall nodded, "Yeah I heard it through the grapevine that Mr. Devlin had denied your request for a picture of Mr. Bristow, and I thought that was just wrong they wouldn't give you a picture of your dad. Uh, so I started to comb through the old Alliance archives looking for a picture they wouldn't object to you having a copy of."

Dixon spoke up here, "I hate to have to say this but Syd, Devlin has a few stipulations about letting you have this picture." Following Jack's death in Mongolia, Dixon had been appointed the new director of APO.

"Which I'll gladly agree to," Sydney replied.

Dixon actually took out a piece of paper for her to sign and smile apologetically to his friends, "Sorry but Devlin insisted." Sydney nodded, and grabbed a pen to sign the paper. "You have to sign it too, Vaughn."

After they had both signed and returned the paper to Dixon, Sydney approached Marshall again, this time giving him a kiss on the cheek, "Thank you so much."

FIN