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Artemis used to look for Jade, after she ran away into the night. Not very hard because she was secretly afraid that she'd find her and then dad would drag Jade back to them. It wasn't that she didn't want Jade back, but she knew Jade would just leave them again and she couldn't take the thought of losing her sister twice.
Still, she used to look for her.
She started reading the newspaper everyday, something her dad actually encouraged, checking the reports and the obituaries for people matching Jade's description. At school, if she managed to get some time alone in the computer lab, she would do random Google image searches for people matching Jade's description. She never found Jade, never even came close, and that made her happy. Because it meant Jade was staying hidden, like the Cheshire Cat, like she'd promised. And maybe that meant that Jade had found somewhere to be happy.
After Jade's 18th birthday she had a fantasy. In it Jade would show up at the door, or school or just somewhere random in Gotham, and smile and take her away from dad. Jade would take her off to wherever she'd been hiding and they'd be sisters again. Sometimes Jade was living in the Caribbean on a tiny island, other times she lived right in Gotham under everyones nose, and sometimes it was a quiet farmhouse in the middle of nowhere, but it was always wonderful and perfect. It wasn't important where Jade was, just that she'd come back.
Sometimes she'd imagine that Jade was dead. It made her feel sick inside, but sometimes she imagined all the ways Jade could die and she would never find out. It was only when dad was being particularly horrible because she couldn't stand to think that Jade had really left her with dad for forever. But, still, in her darker moments, she'd imagine that Jade was dead and she hated herself for it.
After mom got out of jail and kicked dad out she started expecting Jade to come back. If she wasn't dead she had to be keeping tabs on the family. Jade had to check up on them at least sometimes. She was certain that once Jade realized dad was no longer around she'd come back. They could still be a family, just the three of them. They'd do real family things and maybe Jade would do real big sister things. She wasn't sure what those things were entirely, but she knew that her friends had families that ate dinner together and went to the carnivals together and never, ever, practiced killing people. She liked to imagine that she'd come home from school and Jade would be lounging on the couch, reading Alice in Wonderland. She'd look up and smile and they'd hug before making dinner for mom.
The hardest part about finding Jade isn't letting her disappear again. It's knowing that despite everything Jade did, their dad still won. Jade had been the same age Artemis was now when she left and she still couldn't escape the Shadows. What chance did Artemis have?