IV. LOSE YOUR MIND

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IV. LOSE YOUR MIND
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Luna checked her phone. Again, just like the last 10 times she checked it in the past five minutes, it said nothing. She huffed, ran a hand through her now-shoulder-length hair and leaned back into the cushions of her crappy couch. It was eerily quiet in her cramped apartment as she waited for an update from Shuri.

The two had kept in contact for the past year, when Luna had left Wakanda and went back to New York. She hadn't wanted to leave, she didn't want to leave her brother alone in a strange country, she didn't want him to be alone if— when he woke up. But T'Challa had insisted Derek would be taken care of, besides, Luna needed to 'deal with her repressed trauma in a familiar space,' or some other bullshit T'Challa had fed her. Luna herself suspected that now that the King and Queen were back, they were getting tired of her.

Luna sighed and thought back to the time she had realized she'd have to return to Brooklyn:

"Luna? Are you okay?" T'Challa asked softly as he walked into the lab.

Luna lay with her head in her arms, sprawled across the desk in front of her. Around her lay papers with the research and test results they had done on Derek, and a couple feet into the lab stood a bed; Derek's bed.

T'Challa chuckled as he heard quiet snores coming from the younger girl. But as he walked closer, he could see she was shivering. He put a hand on her shoulder and she jumped awake.

"What—wh—who's dead?" Luna exclaimed before she spotted T'Challa and calmed down.
  
He sat down at the other chair at the desk and asked softly, "you were having a nightmare?"

Luna made a weird throaty sound, like a snort. "What? No." Her voice was higher than usual. She cleared her throat and diverted the subject, "anyways, I've gone through the books again—thanks for letting me use your library—and it only has one mention of a 'weird spirit attack' and it's so old, that it's impossible to decipher anything. It's also in some ancient form of Chinese characters, so it's basically impossible to translate," Luna said and visibly deflated, resting her head on her hand.
   
"Luna, you have been at this for months. Maybe... it is time for you to return home, to Brooklyn," T'Challa said.
   
"Is this your way of saying I've overstayed my welcome?"
     
T'Challa chuckled. "Maybe..." he joked. "No, you are always welcome. But you are not helping your brother by disregarding your own health. Physically and mentally."
  
Luna sat up straighter, saying, "okay, first of all, don't psycho-analyze me."
    
"It is not psycho-analyzing if Shuri heard you crying over your coco-puffs a week ago."
   
"That's a completely normal way of dealing with things, thank you. Second of all, I can't just leave Derek. He's gonna need me when he wakes up."
    
"What about the people who need you in America? Peggy, was it? Where does she think you disappeared to for the past year?"

Luna fell quiet. She hadn't thought about that. About her Gran, her apartment, about... "Amy," she realized quietly.
  
T'Challa looked behind Luna, a guilty look on his face.
  
Luna frowned. "What?" She turned to look at Shuri behind her.
    
"Well," Shuri started and approached the desk, leaning on it in between Luna and T'Challa. "Amy is actually not at the shelter anymore." She hesitated, "I thought to check since you mentioned her so much and—"
     
"She's been adopted by some nice happy couple," Luna finished her sentence.

It was bound to happen sooner or later. She never had any actual hope of staying with the young red-head forever. Amy was young, still a kid. Luna had long grown out of the 'adorable kiddo' phase of adoption. No one would have wanted her if she stayed, and she soon realized she was dragging Amy down with her.

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