14. Superheroes

Téa had been awake for less than fifteen minutes and was sitting at the little table in her kitchenette, waiting for her coffee to finish brewing, when Sara Drake came in. Téa raised her eyebrows. "Hey, there you are. I was worried when I got home last night and you weren't here, and then woke up and it didn't look like you'd been here all night. Where were you?"

Sara looked embarrassed. "I'm so sorry about that. It was terribly rude of me. It's just… we worked later than I anticipated, and I fell asleep and never thought to call. Oh, Mokuba Kaiba came back with me. He wanted you to go down and say hello when you get a chance."

"Mokuba Kaiba?" Téa was completely lost. "How did you end up with Mokuba Kaiba?"

"By working with his brother on the texts."

Téa frowned, confused. "Excuse me?"

Sara sat down at the table with her, sitting at the edge of her chair as if she were ill at ease. "Didn't anyone tell you? Seto Kaiba was having trouble knowing just what to look for in those texts you brought to him, so Yugi asked me to go over and work with him to help him sort out what was useful and what wasn't. We got rather, um… absorbed in what we were doing, and I ended up just falling asleep over there and neglected to call. I'm sorry."

"Oh." Téa blinked. "Who knew Kaiba would actually put effort into helping." She shook off the weirdness of it. "Don't worry about it; it's not that big a deal. I'm just glad everything's fine. Did you guys find anything useful?"

"Sadly, no. Plenty of the regular death rituals, but nothing that would help after a body has been destroyed."

Téa sighed. "Well, I suppose I should go down and say hi to Mokuba before he leaves. I didn't get to see much of him in London before we had to leave for Egypt."

"I believe he's staying to pitch in until we go back to meet with his brother this afternoon." Sara rose from the table. "I'm going to go change, all right?"

"Sure." Téa didn't move from the table. After a moment of trying to talk herself into going downstairs, she gave up and decided if Mokuba was going to be here a while, she'd see him later. Right now, she didn't want to see anyone. Well, mostly she didn't want to see Yugi—

He's not Yugi.

Yes, he is. He's Yugi.

She gritted her teeth. It was bad enough picturing Atem trapped in the Shadow Realm, waiting for them to find a way to bring him back. But Yugi? She shuddered. No. He was wrong. It was a trick. There had to be another explanation.

Her coffee maker finished brewing, and she got up and poured herself a mug, then sat back down trying not to think. But Yugi's—Not Yugi—YES, YUGI!—his words kept coming back to her. What do you think would've happened if the almighty Pharaoh had decided it was Joey who was the bully? That it was Joey who needed to get his comeuppance in a Dark Game?

No. He was wrong. That's all there was to it. Atem was their friend. He was someone they loved. He was someone she loved.

But he doesn't love you.

That thought hit her hard, despite the fact she'd had it many times since her talk with… with him last night. The way he'd been pushing her away, it all made sense if he could somehow only access the part of him that was Atem.

That part of him that didn't love her and never had.

It was a thought she'd managed to avoid thinking in the three years since Atem had been sent to the afterlife, leaving his memories and a good chunk of his personality behind with Yugi. She'd thought how she felt about that, how relieved and thrilled she was to think that a part of him would always be with Yugi. That way she wouldn't have to choose.

Just like he'd accused her.

But how could she choose? He was a part of Yugi. The thought of loving Yugi without Atem was like trying to imagine Mai only loving half of Joey. It didn't work that way. Even if Mai didn't like Joey's every personality trait, she didn't stop loving him. So how could Téa stop loving Yugi when he was Atem? She couldn't.

But she'd never considered the reverse, how he felt, the part of him that was Atem. If Atem was half of Yugi and Atem had never loved her—at least not in that way—then half of Yugi could never love her, not really.

It put their whole relationship into a disturbing new light. Out of the two of them, she'd always been the assertive one, the one who instigated things, the one who made things happen. Well, not entirely—he'd been the first one to say I love you. But it had taken him two years to muster up the courage after she'd confessed she had feelings for him. Then when he did say it, from that point on, every initiative had come from her. The first time they'd slept together, back in Japan just before they'd all moved to San Francisco, she'd practically had to bolt the door to her room to get him to stay. At the time, she'd chalked it up to nerves. It was the first time for both of them, and Yugi, typically, seemed to have a hard time believing she really wanted him, despite everything she'd done to prove to him just how much she did.

But what if it wasn't nerves so much as the fact that half of him just didn't want her? The thought made her feel queasy and dirty, as if she'd forced herself on him somehow. She did have a reputation for being too pushy—

"Téa, what do you know about Seto?"

Téa looked up from her mug, startled, to find Sara standing next to the table wearing different clothes than what she'd had on when she'd come in. Téa had been so preoccupied, she hadn't even realized Sara had finished changing and had come back out of the bedroom.

"Uh—" Her mind fumbled for an answer as she tried to drag it off Yugi. "I dunno. Not much. I'm sure you know more than any of us. We know much more about Atem."

Sara cocked her head, looking confused, then chuckled. "Oh, no, not the Pharaoh Seto. I mean Seto Kaiba."

Téa frowned. "Kaiba? Oh, okay." She grinned sheepishly. "Sorry. No one calls him 'Seto' but Mokuba. And occasionally Rebecca Hawkins when she's trying to put on airs, so I thought—" She shook her head. "Never mind. You wanna know about Kaiba. Must've been a joy working with him all night. Did he just totally drive you nuts or what?"

"Uh… something like that." Sara sat down at the table across from Téa in that same strange, stiff, edge-of-the-seat posture that made her look like she was getting ready to bolt. "I just… I couldn't quite get a handle on him. He's so…"

"Arrogant? Cold? Stuck-up? Aloof? Conceited? Self-absorbed?"

"Hm. Yes, I suppose he is all those things." She looked a little hesitant, though.

Téa relented. "Oh, he's all right, I guess, despite all that. He really wants to do the right thing, he just would rather die a slow and painful death than admit it. And I guess 'self-absorbed' isn't totally accurate, either, 'cause he's really all about Mokuba. Mokuba's like… I dunno." She reached for a way to put words around the Kaiba brothers' relationship. "He's like Kaiba's human credential, if that makes sense. Just the fact that Mokuba can be the kind of person he is proves Kaiba can't be all bad. Everything he is, he became to protect Mokuba. He's had to take care of him since they were kids. Their dad was a real creep."

"So I've heard. He was their adopted father, though, right?"

"Mm-hm." Téa took a sip of her coffee. "Kaiba called him 'stepfather' for some reason. But meeting Gozaburo suddenly puts Kaiba in a whole new light. Kaiba's a sweetheart compared to his stepfather."

"Oh, you met him, then?"

She hedged. "Uh… in a manner of speaking. But only briefly. And it really did make me appreciate Kaiba a little more." She tilted her head. "And, of course, there's the fact that I owe him my life."

"What do you mean?"

"Kaiba saved my life. Twice, actually."

Sara gaped at her. "What, do you mean literally?"

Téa nodded as she took another sip of her coffee. "Of course, he'll tell you it was payback because both times happened to be after I'd helped Mokuba, but I don't believe it for a second. He has a heart; it's just buried deep down under a really, really thick crust."

"How did he save your life?" Sara's stiff pose was gone as she leaned forward with interest.

"Uh, let's see. The first time I was chained to a chair with a crate wrapped in dynamite hanging from a crane over my head." She rolled her eyes when Sara gaped at her again. "I know, it sounds like something out of a silent movie. You'd be surprised how much of my high school life involved this kind of high drama. Yugi wasn't exaggerating when he said things involving the Millennium Items tended to get ugly. But anyway, Kaiba used one of his remote-controlled helicopters to pull the crane over into the ocean and then knocked the remote detonator out of one of the kidnapper's hand so he couldn't release it while it was still over my head."

"You can't be serious!"

"God's honest truth." Téa held up her right hand in solemn oath. "The second time was last May. We were all at a tournament that was supposed to take place on this cruise ship to Alaska, but one of the crewmembers sabotaged the ship and sunk it. We ended up on this island, and the guy who sunk the ship attacked me and knocked me unconscious while I was standing at the edge of this huge ravine. I would've fallen in if Kaiba hadn't caught me. Not that I remember that one, having been unconscious at the time, but that's how everyone else said it happened."

"I… well. That is quite… He's rather dramatic, isn't he?" Sara looked flustered.

Téa snorted. "Oh, yeah. He can't take off his coat without making it into a sweeping statement."

Sara seemed to chew on this a while, and Téa went back to sipping her coffee, her mind starting to drift back to Yugi, so she'd almost been too distracted to hear when Sara asked, "What about women?"

"Women?" Téa blinked.

"I suppose a rich, attractive bachelor like him is quite the playboy."

"Kaiba?" Téa wrinkled her nose into her coffee, trying to imagine Kaiba with a girlfriend. "You know, I don't think I've ever seen him with anyone. He's always seemed too aloof to date. Although I don't imagine he's exactly a monk either. He does have a bunch of Duel Monster fangirls always looking for his attention." She shrugged. "I've never really thought about it before." And then a thought occurred to her, and her eyes widened as she regarded Sara over the top of her mug. "Wait a minute. Do you like him? Like… like like him?"

At the accusation, Sara lost all self-composure and banged her head down onto the table. "I don't know! I've known him less than a day, and he's all the things you've said, and I have never in my life been attracted to someone so… so…"

"Arrogant, cold, stuck-up, aloof, conceited and self-absorbed?"

"Exactly! And yet, there's something about him that just… oh, I don't know. I'm an idiot, aren't I?" she asked without raising her head from the table.

"I, uh… no, not at all." Téa floundered, not quite sure what to say. "He's just… Kaiba. I really never pictured him with anyone, that's all. But I guess he's sorta hot, and does have that whole dramatic thing going for him, so it's not totally impossible to imagine."

Sara sat up and looked at Téa. "But he's not the kind of person who'd have an actual relationship with someone, is he? Oh, what am I saying?" she slapped herself on the forehead. "I've known him for all of twenty hours and I'm going back to Cairo in less than a week. I really am an idiot."

"Whoever said attraction is logical? Besides, the guy's like a billionaire. If he wanted to, he could fly to Cairo just because he felt like having some falafel."

"You're not helping." Sara rested her head on her palm. "You're supposed to be telling me I'm an idiot."

"Okay, you're an idiot. Better?"

"Much." She smiled, but then it faltered and she looked embarrassed again. "Oh, this is ridiculous. I came here as a scholar, and here I am, fancying someone I don't even know, acting like some bloody Essex girl. Forget I even asked. It's nothing."

"It's no big deal."

Sara leaned back in her chair. "He really saved your life, though? I don't picture him as much of a Superman."

Téa scowled in distaste. "Ick, no. Not Superman. Batman, maybe. He certainly has Bruce Wayne's money. But Superman is way too lame."

Sara laughed. "So you're an aficionado of American superheroes, then?"

"Yeah, well, I tend to get sucked into the things the guys I hang out with like, in case you haven't noticed." She grinned. "When I lived in New York, I dated a guy who collected comics. Superman and Spider-Man, mostly, and the whole secret identity thing kind of intrigued me, so I read a bunch of them. Never liked Superman. I always thought he was an idiot for falling for Lois Lane."

"What've you got against poor Lois?"

"She's just obnoxious. Although in fairness it's really the Margot Kidder movie version that ruined her for me. It just annoyed the hell out of me that she didn't give a damn about Clark until she found out he was really Superman, and then he goes and gives up his powers for her and there's that whole awful exchange where she says 'I want the man I fell in love with' and instead of telling her to go to hell like she deserved, he just says 'I wish he were here,' like somehow he's not good enough—"

She stopped short as something that felt like a small boulder hit her in the gut. "Oh, my God."

"Téa, what's wrong?"

Téa closed her eyes, covering her face with her hand. "How could I be so stupid? No wonder she makes me crazy. She's me."