3. Not All There

Tristan groaned when he looked at the clock. Six o'clock. All of four hours after he went to bed, and it hadn't been a restful four hours, either. He knew there was no way he was going back to sleep no matter how tired he was. It was probably jetlag; it was four in the afternoon in Egypt.

With another groan, he rolled out of bed and headed to the bathroom. After relieving himself and taking a quick shower, he went out into the living room where Duke was asleep on the couch. Or lying on the couch, anyway. He had his hands cupped behind his head and his eyes were open, staring at the ceiling.

"Couldn't sleep either?" Tristan asked.

"Nope. Haven't had a good night sleep since you all left for Egypt."

"Jetlag."

"Maybe."

"Well, I'm gonna go downstairs and start some coffee. Maybe make some breakfast, if there's any food in the kitchen."

"Are you kidding?" Duke grinned. "You know Serenity. The first thing she did when we landed was go to the grocery store."

"Dude, it is good sharing a house with women."

"For so very many reasons." Duke's dreamy smile turned into a scowl. "But don't rub it in. I still don't see where one more apartment here woulda killed Pegasus."

Tristan rolled his eyes. "Oh, quit harping on that."

"Why should I? We're talking one more apartment. Or hell, Joey should just give me his place. It's not like he's ever there."

Tristan rubbed the back of his head. "But then where would he escape to when he and Mai have a fight? Which is like every other day."

"He could sleep on your couch."

"So either way, I end up with some slacker on my couch. Great."

"I resemble that remark." Duke sniffed, then sat up. "But hey, speaking of women, what do you think of Cady's friend, Paige?"

Tristan narrowed his eyes suspiciously. "Why?"

"'Cause she's totally into you, dude. Talked about you a lot after you left London. She's gonna e-mail you, and she might even call you. She's got this super cheap calling card to the U.S. so she can call her dad. Hope you don't mind that I gave her the number here."

Tristan cocked his head, still wary. "So are you saying you're actually not gonna turn this into another competition?"

Duke sighed theatrically, his hand over his heart. "You wound me! No, I'm not gonna compete with you. She's not my type. Besides, she's Cady's best friend. Not that Cady and I are serious or anything," he hastened to add, "but still, I don't even wanna go there into that kind of ugly. So she's all yours. You like her, then?"

Tristan shrugged. "Yeah, I guess. Definitely enjoyed talking to her that night at the pub."

Duke raised his eyebrows. "Do I hear a 'but' in there? You're not still hung up on Serenity, are you?"

"Nah, we're cool just being friends."

"But you wouldn't turn her down if she suddenly came onto you, would you?"

Tristan leaned back against the back of an easy chair and thought about it a moment. "Would you?"

Duke laughed. "Hell, I wouldn't turn down any hot girl who came onto me. Besides, it would be funny to watch Joey's head explode."

Tristan grimaced, remembering their altercation on the flight to London. "He's a mental case."

"So is Serenity why you're hedging, then?"

"No. I like Paige. I'd really like to get to know her better."

"Then what? The distance?"

"Well that, yeah." Tristan's hand went to the back of his head again, a habit whenever he was thinking about something, but then he brushed it off. "I dunno what it is. Guess it's just been a long time."

"Too long, my friend. Time to get back up on that horse and ride, if you know what I mean."

Tristan rolled his eyes. "Yeah, like I'm gonna take relationship advice from someone who wears more eyeliner than his girlfriends."

"You're just jealous 'cause you couldn't pull it off." Duke smirked, flipping his hair for effect.

"Riiiiiight. It'd go over really well with my CO." He clapped his hands together. "Okay, I'm gonna go downstairs and start some coffee. We'll be needing it if we're all gonna spend the day poring over books on ancient Egyptian rituals."

Duke groaned. "I can hardly wait."

Tristan left his apartment and headed toward the stairs. As he passed by the library, he saw Yugi inside, already at work. No wait, scratch that. Still at work—he was wearing the same clothes from last night. Tristan stood at the top of the landing, debating whether to go in and talk to him, then decided coffee and breakfast would be better.

Half an hour later, he was back at the library door, carrying a tray with coffee, rice, miso soup, some scrambled eggs, and sausage. "Hey there. I come bearing coffee. And breakfast. But mostly coffee."

Yugi looked up at him over his reading glasses, and Tristan was alarmed at how exhausted he looked. "Thanks, Tristan, but I'm not hungry."

"I know." Tristan balanced the tray with one arm while he pushed aside some of the papers to make room for it. "But you should eat anyway."

"Well, coffee maybe."

"You can't live on just coffee. Besides, caffeine will stunt your growth."

Not so much as a smirk or even an eye-roll in response. "I just wanna get through these scrolls before the stuff from Ishizu's library arrives today."

Tristan finally made enough space for the tray and set it down, then took the chair diagonal to Yugi, which for some reason was overturned. He righted it facing backwards, then sat astride it with his arms resting along its back. "Yugi, I know what happened was bad, and I know how important it is to find a way to get Atem back quickly, but I gotta tell you, man, you're not all here right now, okay? What? It's true," he said when Yugi gave him a slightly startled look. "And you need to be, because if anyone's gonna figure this out, it's you. But not by killing yourself."

Yugi sighed and took off his glasses. "You're right, Tristan. I know you're right. I just… I can't seem to keep all the pieces together."

Tristan nodded. "So I've noticed. It's not like you, Yugi. You're always the one who keeps a good outlook, no matter how bad things get. Even when Téa got hurt, you lost it for a little while, but you snapped back pretty fast, and that was in spite of being in a cave full of Orichalcos stones. How come this is so much harder?"

"I…" he started, then stopped shaking his head. "I don't know. I feel so… divided."

"From Atem?"

Yugi hesitated, then said slowly, "Something like that."

"You know what? You kinda remind me of how he was in California. After… well, you know. After he lost that Orichalcos duel and you…."

"After… he lost my soul, you mean." His voice was bitter and full of self-reproach.

"Yeah. He was kinda lost without you, too."

Yugi clenched his fist around his glasses. "I know. I remember."

"Yeah, I guess you do." Tristan sighed. "You know, you'd think after three years I'd be able to wrap my mind around how you two can be separate and the same all at the same time, but it still catches me off guard sometimes. I'll either be thinking of you as one person, like watching you duel, and remember that there were two of you, or else, like now, I'll be thinking of you as two separate people and remember that you weren't really all that separate."

"We're not the same. But I know what you mean." He looked at the food at Tristan's elbow and gave him a weary smile. "And you are right about the food. I should eat, and it does smell good. Is that miso soup?"

"That it is. And rice and eggs and sausage. East meets West, all in one breakfast."

"That can't all be for me. You're going to eat too, right?"

"There's more downstairs. This is for you."

Yugi looked like he was going to put up an argument, but he relented and Tristan slid the bowls and plate in front of him along with the coffee mug. Yugi took a sip of coffee and scooped up some rice with chopsticks.

"I take it you didn't sleep at all?" Tristan asked.

Yugi shook his head. "I did get a lot done, though. Went through a bunch of these scrolls we brought back with us and also found everything we already had here that might be useful." He nodded over to a stack of books on the floor by the bookshelves. "Most of Pegasus's books are in English or Japanese or, oddly, French. There are only a few of those, thank God. I'm hoping maybe Mai's French is good enough to go through them. Otherwise, they'll have to wait until Rebecca gets back. Then this stack," he indicated the scrolls on the table, "are all in Egyptian hieroglyphs or hieratic."

Tristan eyed the three piles near the bookshelves compared to the texts on the table. "Well, at least there are more English and Japanese books than Egyptian. Shouldn't take more than a couple of days to get through those with all six of us helping, and you and Sara could probably burn through this stuff in a few hours."

"You're forgetting the texts from Ishizu. They're almost all in Egyptian or Arabic. It will take weeks to get through them all, and we don't have weeks."

Tristan groaned. "Yeah, that's right. And the rest of us can't help with those."

"As much as I didn't want to suck anyone else into this stuff, I'm really grateful Sara volunteered to come help. I'd never get through all this alone. And when Rebecca and Professor Hawkins get back from Boston, they can help, too, but still. It's so much. And even with the Ishtars and Bakura doing that vigil every night to help sustain their souls in the Shadow Realm, we just don't have a lot of time."

"Maybe we'll get lucky and hit the right scroll right off the bat," Tristan said hopefully.

"Maybe." Yugi took a spoonful of miso soup and then tapped the spoon against the bowl, pensive. "We need more help, though. I'm gonna have to call Kaiba."

"That's right! I forgot he can read this stuff! But do you think he'll help? You know how he is."

Yugi shrugged. "Probably not. But I have to ask. I'll call him when it's a more decent hour."

"In the meantime, should I get everyone else up so we can get started?"

"No, let them sleep. Especially Joey. He needs to get rid of whatever bug he picked up in Egypt."

By the time Joey crawled out of bed, it was past ten o'clock and Mai was already gone. He took a very quick shower and then grabbed the cleanest jeans and shirt he could find—at least half his clothes were at Mai's, but most of them were dirty after their trip. He so needed to do some laundry.

He emerged from her apartment to find Tristan and Duke coming from the elevator lugging boxes of books and scrolls. Ishizu's texts had arrived.

"Hey, Sleeping Beauty awakens," Duke said.

Tristan, panting under the strain of the heavy box, set it down, then straightened, stretching his back. "Yeah, figures, just as we're finishing bringing up the boxes."

Joey crossed his arms, defensive. "You coulda woken me up, you know."

"Aw, but you're so cute when you're sleeping." Tristan pinched his cheek like a visiting matron aunt.

"Stop that!" Joey jerked his head out of Tristan's reach, then shook a fist in his face. " I got your cute."

Duke put his own box down. "Stop fighting, girls. We've got work to do."

Joey gave his fist one final shake under Tristan's nose. "So what's the plan?"

Duke leaned back against the wall and crossed his arms. "Well, now that the stuff from Egypt has arrived, Yugi and Sara are gonna go through that, and the rest of us are gonna go through the English and Japanese ones from Pegasus's library."

"And what exactly are we looking for?"

"Death rituals," Tristan said, "anything involving sending the Akh to the afterlife, especially anything to do with grave desecrations."

"Death rituals and grave desecrations." Joey shuddered. "That's just great. Nothing like some light reading."

"Especially when you consider that the Egyptians were all about the death rituals." Duke rolled his eyes. "We're not exactly talking narrow range of topic here. Oh, and there are a bunch of gods and stuff to look for, too. Osiris, Ammit, Ma'at, Anubis… um, Nephthys."

"Can I just get the Cliff Notes version?"

"No doubt." Tristan huffed out a weary breath. "It's confusing. Yugi and Sara are gonna have to help us know exactly what to look for."

Joey grimaced. "Well, as fun as that sounds, I'm gonna need some food first. Is there anything to eat?"

"I made some eggs and stuff, but that was, like, four hours ago. You'll have to nuke it. Look in the fridge."

"Nuked eggs. Works for me. And where's Mai?"

"Downstairs. We brought all the non-Egyptian books downstairs into the common room. Mai's trying her hand at the French books Yugi found in Pegasus's library. Yugi and Sara are gonna work up here in the library on the Egyptian and Arabic stuff."

"Gotcha."

Joey went downstairs to find Serenity, Téa, and Mai each curled up in different spots on the semi-circular sofa around the coffee table, reading. Téa looked hunched and tense like she was ready to kill the first person who interrupted her, so he gave her wide berth as he walked into the sitting area. Serenity looked up from her book and gave him a smile, but Mai was absorbed in her reading and didn't seem to notice him. He went over behind her and kissed her on the neck. "Having fun?"

"Oh, just loads," she said dryly, looking up at him. "My French is good enough to order châteaubriand and escargots, and get directions around Paris. Maybe enough to read Le Petit Prince without a French-English dictionary. But Egyptian scholarship in French? Let's just say it's not my forte."

He leaned over her shoulder, pretending to look at the foreign text. "How you doing?"

"I'm good."

He gave her a sideways look. On the surface, she seemed fine, but he knew her well enough now to see through her masks and, underneath, her eyes looked haggard. Haunted, even. "Yeah, right."

Before she could answer, he straightened up. They were going to have to talk to Yugi and Serenity at the very least, but not until he'd woken up properly and done some of his share of the work helping to get Atem out of the Shadow Realm. "Okay, I'm gonna get some chow, and then I'll grab a book and pitch in."

He ambled off to the kitchen in search of breakfast. He found some eggs and sausages—and was that miso soup?—in the fridge and heated it in the microwave, then brought the plate back out into the common room. Picking a seat on the sofa near Mai, he balanced the food on his lap and began eating, happy to feel hungry again for the first time in days.

From the top of the stairs, Tristan called down. "Okay, Joey, looks like it's your turn to lug a box." He indicated a box by the elevator.

"I thought you said you were finished," Joey said over a mouthful of eggs.

"Well, we were leaving that box to send over to Kaiba. Yugi was hoping to talk him into helping out with some of the Egyptian stuff, but he's not interested, so you get to take it up to the library."

"Kaiba doesn't wanna help—now there's a surprise." Joey rolled his eyes as he took a bite of sausage.

Téa, however, was not so resigned to Kaiba's refusal. Slamming her book down hard enough to make Joey jump and almost choke on his breakfast, she scoffed in disgust. "Oh honestly! Yet another stupid, pig-headed male being a stupid, pig-headed idiot."

"Hey!" Tristan stopped at the bottom of the stairs. "Why do we all get lumped in with Kaiba?"

But there was no interrupting Téa on a rant. "Well, not this time. I'll go over there myself and get that bloated pompous ass to remember who he is and do the right thing for a change. Joey, grab that box and help me get it over there." She disappeared up the stairs, almost knocking Duke over as she blew by him, leaving the three men blinking at each other. Serenity and Mai, however, both stayed bent over their books, studiously ignoring the outburst.

"What brought that on?" Duke asked after a moment of stunned silence, but before anyone could answer, Téa was back, storming down the stairs carrying her coat and her purse. She turned to Joey, her hands on her hips.

"Well? Are you gonna help me, or do I have to carry the box myself?"

"Can I at least finish my breakfast first?"

She gave him a murderous look, and he quickly set down his plate on the coffee table. "Okay, okay, I'm coming, keep your shirt on!" Then without waiting for him to even get up from his seat, she stomped over to the elevator and pushed the call button.

As Joey got up, Mai looked up at him. "Where are you going?"

He gave her an incredulous look. "To serve as Queen Téa's lackey, apparently."

"I heard that, Joey Wheeler!"

Mai gave him a quizzical look.

"Never mind, baby. Go back to your French," Joey said, shaking his head. Women!