A WOMAN WITH A PLAN Eyghon

Author's notes: This story was not beta read. All mistakes are mine and mine alone. Please review, and I hope this story makes you feel better cause I was very disappointed by the crappy finale.

Summary: Katya is not happy about her sister's death, something that should have never happened. She's going to make things right again. She is a woman with a plan.

Chapter 2: A mother's secret

"So this is what it comes down to, you want revenge for a stupid accident?" Sydney clenched her jaw. "I did not kill her. Get your facts straight." Attack was a classic defence, but that's all Sydney could do not to crumble in a puddle of tears.

Sydney knew that despite everything, Katya Derevko loved her sister dearly, and would go through heaven and hell to avenge her. She took a second to wonder how Katya knew about Irina's death but had more urgent matters to worry about. Like, if she would live to tell the CIA they had a mole, again.

Irina's death was classified information. Only the agents on site that night and a handful of CIA higher ups knew about it. Her body had been retrieved by the team and was currently stored in a secret facility, along with Lauren Reed's body and many others. The CIA and NSA didn't want certain people's death to become 'public knowledge', from fear that it would tip the balance of the Intelligence world. Plus, since the discovery of the Helix technology, they were worried bodies could be 'accessed' to be cloned.

Katya chuckled humourlessly. "No. There was a time, I would have sought you out, gouged your eyes out, tortured you in the most gruesome way possible and killed you. And that is just for being there, even if you'd had no part in Irina's death, which is the case here. I know you didn't kill her, that no matter what you tell yourself, you are incapable of hurting another human being unless provoked."

"Why am I here, listening to your blabbering if you're all knowing aunt Katya?" Sarcasm felt good, yes it did.

"Irina was the all knowing one. Not me. I merely needed to know your feelings toward your mother, I wasn't sure how what happened in the last few months had affected you."

"So what, this is some kind of…test? This is all just a game to you? You dragged me here to psychoanalyse me? My mother is dead Katya, what more do you want me to say?" Sydney always had a hard time grasping the twisted motives and plans of the Derevko family. Today was no exception. She hated being manipulated. Filthy Derevko habit.

"This is no game, child. Funny you should mention psychoanalysis." She shook her head. "But first, Sydney, you must tell me, in detail, what happened that night in Hong Kong?"

"I must?" She had to bite her tongue to keep from asking what would happen if she didn't obey. She wasn't talking to her mother this time. She was not in Taipei now. There was no mother to defy anymore.

"I just…" Katya looked away nervously. "I…need to know if she suffered, if she saw it coming…I…this may seem a bit morbid I know, but…I just need to know. To get closure I suppose." Katya hated to show weakness, but she didn't have anyone to share her grief with, and Sydney was the closest she had to family. She wasn't expecting a hug, since the girl was still tied down to a chair, but she hoped whatever Sydney had to say would maybe, just maybe, help stop the questions in her head, the pain in her chest.

Sydney sighed, looking away in remembrance. She couldn't bear to look at her aunt as she recounted the fateful night that resulted in Irina's death. "I didn't mean for her to die you know. I came to Hong Kong to stop her from bombing London and Washington. To stop her from achieving the evil work of a lifetime. The usual. I never thought that at the end, she would…be gone." Her voice was shaking and close to inaudible but she didn't notice, she was in another place, in another time. Now, Hong Kong wasn't the city she'd woken up into after her missing two years. It was the city where her mother had died. Katya was lucky not to have the visual of her dead sister, while Sydney, would forever remember the sightless, empty eyes of her mother's corpse, fixed upon her.

"I kicked her and she fell on a glass roof. It started to crack but she could have come back to safety. She had time. I begged her to come back. "I never begged her to stop hurting me, but I begged her not to stay there and risk dying. I held out my hand to her, but she didn't take it, didn't listen. She only cared about the Horizon, not even about her own life." Bitterly, she added, "the glass cracked just as she grabbed the Horizon and she fell. She died when she hit the ground. The damn thing was still in her hand."

After a heavy silence that stretched on for several minutes, Katya finally looked back at Sydney, who'd be watching her expectantly.

"Thank you…for sharing this with me. I am glad she didn't die alone." Taking a deep breath, she put on a warm smile on her face and squeezed Sydney's hand. "There is one more issue we need to address. I am very, very proud of you for killing Arvin."

Sydney gave her a puzzled look but didn't have the chance to question her aunt as the woman continued talking, an odd look in her eyes.

"I'm just sorry it took your father dying to prompt you to kill the slimebag."

Sydney gasped, stung by the implication, but she herself was angry over her reluctance to just kill the bastard in cold blood and be done with it. "How dare you!" she still said. Katya had no right to talk to her like this.

"Sydney, you are not a killer, good for you, I don't blame you. And Jack was a bastard, don't get me wrong he was a good lover, but still an ass. I will miss him." She smiled, amused by Sydney's constant gaping. The girl had no clue she was trying to lighten the mood, for both their sakes. She wasn't particularly proud of jumping in the sack with Jack. "Here is the reason I brought you here, there is something you need to know about your mother."

"What could you possibly tell me that is so important? The woman is dead Katya."

Her aunt sighed and looked around her with a grimace. "This place is rather inadequate for this conversation. If I untie you, will you behave?"

"I'm not a puppy," snarled Sydney, a hint of murder in her eyes.

"Play nice little girl. Please. I don't want anything from you but your undivided attention."

"Fine." Sydney hated being treated like a child, or talked down to, and Katya had a knack for doing just that. From the day they'd met, Sydney knew the woman had a gift to get under her skin.

Katya made quick work of the plastic ties that bound her niece to the chair and took her arm to help her stand up. Sydney quickly shrugged her off.

"Follow me please." She smiled at her niece's reaction, so much like her mother. Irina would have slapped her for daring to consider her weakened. Katya led them upstairs, and Sydney discovered she'd been in the basement of an apartments complex in construction. She let her gaze linger on the gates in the lobby as they got to the ground floor. "Don't make me hurt you," she heard her aunt say. She smirked at Katya who was following a few steps behind and kept on climbing the stairs as directed by Katya.

Eventually, they entered a nice, furnished apartment on the third floor. "It's the model apartment. What do you think?"

Sydney shrugged, a little put out by the small talk. "Thinking of buying here?"

"Already did. I own this building. It's almost finished. I thought of giving Irina this apartment as a gift. So she could be closer to her girls. But this was in another life." Sydney detected an unmistakable note of regret in her voice and refrained from commenting. Instead, she took a seat on the beige sofa and waited for her aunt to join her. Katya choose a matching armchair.

She took a deep breath, bracing herself for the battle that was to come. There was the idiotic people, the assholes, the arrogant bastards, and the worst of the worst, the stubborn people. Sydney, Katya herself and the Derevko family in general all belonged in the last category. Jack belonged in the first three. She would truly miss him.

"What I'm about to tell you is the truth Sydney, the truth Irina tried desperately to hide for years. From me, from you…even from herself for the most part of her life. I need you to keep an open mind and not interrupt me until I'm finished. This is something Irina never wanted you, or anyone else, to find out. She made me swear on my life that I wouldn't try and contact you to seek your help. This…this is going to…rock your world." She said the words with obvious distaste, and, if it weren't for her precarious situation, Sydney would have smiled at hearing Katya use slang. Instead, she merely allowed herself a discreet raise of the brow.

Now she was more than intrigued though. She was worried even. She didn't like the tone of Katya's voice, didn't like her hesitancy at revealing her big bad secret. Even from the grave and indirectly, Irina still managed to make Sydney's toes curl up in her shoes.

"Irina was ill Sydney."

TBC