Chapter Text
You spend most of your life trying to connect with the only family you had: trying to salvage a relationship out of the lot you’d been thrown in life. She never saw you like that. She wasn’t your sister then. She was just another daughter of Thanos trying to survive the childhood she seemed to be winning. She never saw how you struggled and fell apart every time she did something else to prove that she was the favourite daughter. She never saw you as her equal: also suffering, also hurting. She never saw the pain and the loneliness you went through every day.
It took years for her to see it and it took years for you to stop fighting, but you did. You reconcile the past and formed the bond you always wanted with her. She put down the swords and took you into her arms and you relaxed into the hug, as unfamiliar as the whole motion was. It was all you had been waiting for since the moment you found each other.
By the time she sees you as her sister she has another family, a better one, who love her and care for her and do all the things that a family would do. She never chooses them over you. When she realises she can have both she welcomes you into her family and after a little apprehension they welcome you back too. You get the brother and the friends you never thought you wanted. You get the family you never thought you needed but you find them all the same. You find kindred spirits who have seen hurt and pain and death and loneliness and who have come out of it better people. They have grown into stronger people because they have each other to rely on and they want to welcome you in and help you grow to. They want to make you safe, make you part of something, make you loved.
It’s too much, too fast and you can’t go with them. They don’t detract the offer because family is family no matter how far apart they may be. This is your family now and even knowing that they’re off somewhere makes your heart feel lighter as your vengeance weighs heavier.
At the end you lose your sister first. You don’t process how little time you got to call her that with love in the name, not at first. You watch his face as realisation cracks right across it and grief turns the laughter on your brother’s face into a deep and painful sorrow. That’s when you realise what you lost, what you both lost. You lost the most precious thing in your life because she was loved by someone more powerful than the both of you. You watch his face and you know that he shows everything that you feel, that deepest of heartbreaks.
You never get to hold him later. You never get to talk to him about her afterwards or whatever it is that people do when they lose a mutual loved one. You never get to tease Drax or hug Mantis and feel safe and loved and with family again.
You lose your sister first but you can’t even grieve her for a minute before the rest of your family fades away one by one until you’re left alone reeling at a feeling you never thought you’d feel again because you never thought you’d be with family again. You never thought you’d lose family again, not like this. You hang your head and let grief settle into your skeleton and cloud your mind as you accept that you’re all alone again, fighting for survival in a cruel universe.