Index deleted in Cluster

Just a quick note so no one does the same oops that I did (and also reply if this one has happened to you):

I had 2 nodes in a cluster with matching data

I removed node 2 from the cluster and manually deleted the data directory

I stopped both nodes

I started node 2 first and then node 1

Node 2 was the master and did not seem to be picking up the existing index that remained on node 1

I thought maybe if I did a create of that same index on Node 2 that it might get it to "see" the configured index on node 1

Instead Node 2 basically obliterated node 1 with a blank new index?

OOOOPS (luckily it was a dev/poc environment)

Is this even possible? Did something else happen?