I open the front door with my key like I'm breaking into someone else's life.
It smells like cinnamon.
And body spray.
And Bear.
That weird little combination that tells me I'm home.
Auggie tackles me before I can drop my backpack.
"YOU LIVE," he announces, full tackle force, as if I've just returned from war.
In a way, maybe I have.
"Do I?" I grunt under his weight. "I'm pretty sure my ribs say otherwise."
Bear appears in the hallway, shirtless, wearing a blue towel tied around his neck like a cape. "She lives," he confirms. "Commence chaos."
They don't know what happened.
Not really.
But they know I've been gone.
Not just at school - gone in that other way I get sometimes.
Where my eyes go distant. Where my smile feels stretched and paper-thin.
Where my jokes are rusty and my hugs take effort.
Auggie tugs me to the couch and insists we play "Guess That Cringe Song" using his broken speaker and a weird YouTube playlist.
I get 4 out of 6 right, and he acts like I've won the lottery.
Bear, meanwhile, is trying to do flips off the arm of the couch while yelling, "I AM THE NIGHT," every single time.
Some things never change.
They don't ask questions.
They just pull me back in.
Like I never left.
Like I'm still whole.
I find myself laughing.
Actually laughing.
Ugly-snort, head-back, belly-laughing.
At Auggie's stupid sound effects.
At Bear calling cereal "wizard beans."
At nothing.
And everything.
Later, when the cartoons are low in the background and they've half-fallen asleep against me, Bear mumbles:
"You look sad sometimes."
The sentence slices through the room like a whisper-shaped knife.
I go still.
He lifts his head.
Eyes too sharp for a 10-year-old.
"Not like when you're mad at us. Like... the inside kind."
"Bear-"
"It's okay," he shrugs. "You don't have to say stuff. I just notice."
Auggie blinks awake and climbs into my lap like he used to when he was five.
He wraps his arms around my waist and says, "You don't have to be happy every day. Just some days. Okay?"
I nod.
I don't trust my voice.
So I kiss their heads instead.
Hold them like they're the only thing keeping me stitched together.
Because maybe they are.
When Mama comes in and sees us like that - all tangled up on the couch, cartoons still playing, me in the middle like a worn-out star - she doesn't say a word.
Just turns the volume down and leaves a blanket on the armrest.
I sit there a while longer after they've both fallen asleep.
Tracing the lines of their faces with my eyes.
These boys I'd die for.
These boys I live for.
I don't know how to explain everything that's happened.
But maybe I don't have to.
Maybe this is enough.
Their warmth.
Their breath.
Their blind, endless belief in me.
Tomorrow, I'll go back to school.
Back to whispers and stares and people who think silence is weakness.
But tonight?
Tonight I'm just Senna.
Big sister.
Half-hero.
Still trying.