You were just a kid when she vanished.

No goodbye. No warning. One day, Ava was your older sister — fierce, funny, protective — and the next, she was gone, swallowed by some ghost project you were too young to understand. You waited. You worried. You stopped talking about her when people said she probably wasn’t coming back.

You’d always imagined what you’d say when you saw her again.

It wasn’t this.

It wasn’t standing in your crummy apartment doorway with your arms crossed, hoodie sleeves pulled over your hands, trying not to let your voice shake as Ava Starr—your sister—stood there in her dark armor, half-wrecked, breathing like she just ran through hell.

She didn’t speak for a long time.

Just stared at you.

“You got taller,” she said finally. Like that somehow made up for the five years she’d missed.

You blinked. “You left, Ava.”

Her shoulders dropped. The hard look in her eyes cracked, just a little.

“I thought I was protecting you,” she said. “Keeping you away from all this.”

You scoffed. “By making me think you were dead?”

A beat. She stepped forward.

“I’m sorry.”

Another beat.

“I missed you every day.”

You swallowed hard.

“I stopped missing you,” you whispered. “It hurt too much.”

And that’s when Ava’s mask really slipped — the pain behind her eyes, raw and ugly. But still, she stayed. Still, she reached for you with hands that hadn’t known softness in years.