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 9: The cave, take two"What happened?" Irina asked as the plane Sydney and she was in started it's descent toward Ezeiza International Airport. The news of her younger daughter's death hit her hard. She'd been quiet the entire flight, ever since Sydney told her Nadia had been killed. She'd heard no more after that and was finally able to start thinking clearly again. Now she had questions.
"Sloane," said Sydney simply, watching as her mother grimaced in displeasure.
Sydney couldn't know it, but in that instant, Irina hated herself. She should have told them, lifted Jack's doubts…now he was dead, and Nadia too. She should have spoken up, told them 'Jack is Nadia's father'. Everything would be different if she had. Nadia wouldn't be dead because she wouldn't have come near Sloane.
"What happened after Sovogda?" Irina hated being in the dark, but she should have asked Katya after she woke up from…being dead. Instead, she'd shut down and split as soon as she was strong enough to walk on her own. She'd been hiding from her demons in Chawolo ever since, until Sydney found her.
"It was hard, but eventually, she came out of her coma. I made the mistake of trusting him with her. It's my fault and I'll never forgive myself for letting him near her."
"Sydney…"
"It looked like they had a fight and she fell or he pushed her. It was in his house, there was a glass table...it shattered, slit her throat."
"God…" Moreover, in that moment, despite everything, Irina still couldn't bring herself to tell the truth, too ashamed she hadn't done so sooner.
"Mom, I didn't take you here just to show you her gravesite so you can grieve for her," confessed Sydney, earning herself a puzzled look from Irina. "I don't want to grieve for her anymore. I want her back. We can do to her what Katya and I did to you…"
"What? What did you say? You were there with her?" Irina looked pale.
"I…I left…before you came back. I'm sorry, I just couldn't…I didn't know what to do…"
"It's alright. I'm here now, and I'm grateful to you for…at least trying." After a few minutes of silence went by, she added, "Why is she…here, in Argentina?"
"Well…she didn't have any family for her whole life except her friends. LA was bad luck for her. I thought she'd be better here."
"She had you in LA."
"I didn't protect her. I failed her."
"I wasn't there, but Sydney you have nothing to feel guilty about!" Irina put her hand on her eldest daughter's arm.
"Come on Mom, I swore I would never trust Sloane again and…"
"And you didn't. It's nobody's fault, but Sloane's." Irina pushed the hair falling across Sydney's face behind her ear.
Sydney knew there was no point in arguing and she didn't want to make a scene on the plane.
"I'll just feel better when she comes back to us."
They went to the cemetery to visit Nadia's grave. Sydney left her mother alone after a few minutes, to give her time to say goodbye, just in case it didn't work. They then drove to the funeral home Sydney had picked to handle her sister's burial. Sydney was Nadia's next of kin on the burial certificate and as such had all power of decision upon her mortal remains.
She told the man in charge she'd decided to move Nadia's body to Los Angeles so she could be buried with her father. She almost choked on the lie but it was the most common cause of exhumation, which suited her since she didn't want to attract attention to her or the name Nadia Santos. It was bad enough that Nadia could never come back to her country since all her friends knew she was dead.
They took a flight back that evening with Nadia's casket in the baggage hold. Katya was waiting for them at LAX.
"Irina!" She hugged her sister fiercely before kissing her on both cheeks. "I was worried about you. Are you okay?" she asked, eyeing Sydney suspiciously.
"I'm fine. Thank you. For getting through to her. I know how stubborn she can be," she added with a smile.
"She reminds me of you actually."
"Will you two stop talking about me as if I wasn't there? Hi Katya." She kissed Katya on the cheek, surprising her aunt and mother, before climbing in the backseat of the sedan that would take them to Katya's private jet.
They flew directly to Mongolia and were glad to have each other. Katya knew if it failed her niece and sister wouldn't have the strength to support each other, too engulfed in their own grief...
"Everything is going to be fine," she told Sydney when she came back to her seat facing her niece and sister.
Sydney gave her a small smile. "I just hope there's…not too much damage. If we can't…if we can't bring her back, I don't know what I'll do. I didn't get enough time with her, she only saw Isabelle once, and…there's so much more I wanted to do with her, so much more for her to do…"
"It's okay. We'll bring her back; it worked for Irina, there's no reason it wouldn't work for her. She'll be alright." Her sister was in no shape to give Sydney a pep talk and actually needed one herself she could tell from Irina's closed off expression. She knew Irina saw the glass as half-empty and not half-full. That way, she could never be disappointed.
"I'm sorry, I'm so selfish, you barely got to exchange a few words with her," Sydney told her mother, "and she was your daughter!"
"Don't apologize to me for missing her sweetheart." A few minutes of silence went by, and then Irina squeezed Sydney's hand to get her attention. "Tell me, what kind of sister was she? Please, tell me."
Sydney smiled. "She was what I always wanted. Sweet, caring…like a best friend but better." She couldn't help but feel a flash of guilt for replacing Francie. "We'd talk about boys, work, fashion, movies…we weren't comfortable enough yet to get more personal, but we were pretty close. She was great."
Irina nodded and watched in a daze as they approached the runaway. Finally, they hit the ground and disembarked in Mongolia, land of promises for them on this day.
The tension grew as they neared the caves and the three of them were on edge by the time they had Nadia's casket down by the pool of water.
Katya stepped forward to open it, to Sydney and Irina's relief. They sobbed as they laid their eyes on Nadia's body, which, to their relief, was well preserved. She was dressed in a black dress with equally black high heels and was wearing earrings. Not just any earrings but those Irina had given Sydney, which both Katya and Irina recognised.
Sydney shrugged shyly, wondering how her mother would react. "I wanted her to have something of both of us. Those earrings meant so much to you and to me…"
Irina simply kissed her on both cheeks with a teary-eyed smile.
"Should we undress her?" Asked Katya after giving them some time do composed themselves for what was to come. "You were naked," she told Irina in way of explanation.
"No, Sloane was fully dressed when he fell in there," said Sydney, pointing to the pool of reddish water.
"Alright, are you ready to do this?" Katya asked them. When neither of them answered, she added, "I'm going to need help."
"I'll do it." Sydney stepped forward. It was painful for her to see and touch Nadia's body just as much as it was her mother's, but she had Irina's best interest at heart at the moment, not her own. No matter what, a mother should never have to feel what their dead child felt like.
The mortuary home had done a good job at sewing up Nadia's throat, or maybe it was the coroner, she didn't know, but neither could have put enough make up on her to make her forget the gaping hole she'd seen upon identifying her sister's body at the morgue.
Between the both of them, they gently deposited her in the reddish water and stepped back.
"Now what?" Asked Irina, not familiar with the process.
"We wait." Sydney looked over at Katya to confirm since she'd run away before Irina woke up.
"I don't know how long it takes exactly. I assume it depends on…how long the person was dead, and how she died. I just…turned around and your eyes were open. Sydney, you should stay close to Nadia, she'll be disoriented when she comes to. Don't you dare run away again, alright?"
"I won't. And I'm sorry I let you down before."
"It's okay. It took a lot of guts to come here in the first place."
Irina didn't seem to hear them, mesmerized by bloodstains on the wall and floor of the cave. "Jack," she said.
"Yeah."
"We could have…if he hadn't…"
"Blown him and Sloane up. I know." Sydney sighed. "I miss him."
"I miss him too," confessed Irina, more to herself than to anyone else.
The three of them sat side by side on nearby rocks, waiting for their daughter, sister, and niece to resuscitate from a mortal wound inflicted upon her weeks earlier.
Sydney was on her feet in a second as she heard the telling 'smack' she'd been praying to hear. Katya and Irina were right behind her, but when they looked at Nadia, they still saw a dead corpse.
TBC
