Settling

Pairings: (one sided) Jack/Mikage, Jack/Carly, Ushio/Mikage

Rating: T-M

Summary: Nobody is ever really happy in the end, but they pretend to be.

Notes: Because we all know Mikage's angsting over Jack angsting over Carly. I ship Jack/Carly like buurrrrning, and I like Mikage with Ushio better in my opinion, but it would almost feel like a rebound. To each their own. CREATIVE LICENSE, I'M USING IT. SORT OF.

Disclaimer: I don't own Yu-Gi-Oh 5Ds, I'm only borrowing the characters for my fan fiction. Enjoy.

It started with the dirty look she shot Carly.

Jack wasn't stupid, he was standing right there watching Mikage give the reporter the evil eye before leaving. At least Ushio had shown her some politeness.

Jack owed Carly. Considering the circumstances of how they met, how she took most of the damage for him when she didn't even have to, yeah he could say he owed her. She let him sleep in her bed while she took that uncomfortable looking couch, he opened her black tea, ignoring her facial expressions and how she stammered to find something to say to him shortly afterward. She let him use her shower, she cooked for him, and she even went to the dry cleaners with his clothes. He could only imagine how mortifying it must have been for Carly.

Mikage insisted that he return with her when they 'reunited', she seemed dead set on it. He didn't want to go back with her, not until he had come to grips with his own battles. He didn't want Mikage there, and he didn't need her there. In a sense she was simply nothing more than a caretaker to him.

A caretaker who had fallen in love with him. At first Jack tried his hardest to pretend like he wasn't aware, but he failed miserably. He could see her attempts to get closer to him, her constant need to be the one by his side even from far away.

He may have been with Carly for the past couple of days, but he was smart enough to know that Mikage and Ushio had been watching him on their excursion to the amusement park. At first he thought he repaid Carly by getting on those stupid rides, but that wasn't the case. He kept it to himself that he had gotten attached to the journalist, even more so when she finally knew where he had wanted to go earlier in the day.

"You were trying to come here from the very start, weren't you?...You can't see Satellite from here."

After that, he told her the truth, what had been on his heart and mind as of late, he said had nothing to hide, that he would press forward on his own path and she could write about whatever she wanted to concerning him. Carly made a promise of her own that day: the promise she wouldn't write a single article that was designed to hurt him or another duelist.

As dusk turned into evening, Carly had asked him if he wanted anything in particular for dinner that night. Whatever he wanted, she made for him even if it meant going out of the apartment and down to a nearby market. Sure she had foolishly left the oven on and he had to turn it off, lest she come back to a burned down apartment, but he was taken by the fact she was more than willing to do things for him. Anybody could have said it was just what Mikage had been doing for him, but there was a difference. It seemed like Mikage had done it simply because she was told to, because it was her job to do it whereas Carly did it without a moment's pause.

Another thing that stuck out the most was the pink color of Carly's cheeks as she did all of these things for him each passing day. Jack found it utterly cute when she blushed and stammered around him, it was entertaining.

When dinner had been done, she bid him a goodnight and shut the door behind her and he immediately sat up. He contemplated going out to see her. Most of the times he had, he found her asleep at her desk still in her clothes from the day laptop screen open, cards, papers straightened and crumpled alike, and empty bottles around her desk and at her feet. He never wanted to wake her, so he settled for returning to bed and waiting until morning when he heard her up and about.

On this particular evening, he had gotten up out of bed and found her in the same position again. She had always seemed to be at that laptop, writing or attempting to write something after all the things she did with him. Today had to be especially taxing considering she was the one who dragged him around the amusement park.

Walking over to Carly, Jack picked her up gently ignoring the slight pain in his arm which was obviously still trying to heal itself, and carried her back to her bedroom. That couch still looked uncomfortable when it came to lying down on it, and he had decided that she had been hospitable enough. He took her bed without asking, and although she could have complained, she didn't.

Putting her down against the mattress, he tucked her in before reaching to take those glasses off her face and set them aside on the nightstand. Without those covering her eyes, he thought, she looked pretty. He leaned down just a little bit, careful not to wake her and pressed his lips to hers. They were warm, and tasted of something sweet. Raspberries when he thought about it.

~*~

It wasn't a surprise that he panicked when amidst the rubble of the Arcadia Movement he found her broken glasses, those things that she wasn't seen without. He had wanted her to be safe...he didn't want her to get involved because she couldn't handle it. This was the destiny of a signer so to speak.

He yelled her name over and over again as more debris fell. He wanted to look for her, he really wanted to but it was either look for her and risk himself and the unconscious Aki Izayoi getting crushed, or escape while there was still a way out.

Since he left the crumbling building, he couldn't help but feel a dull ache in his chest.

Every time he looked at those broken frames, he saw her smiling face and it hurt.

It hurt even more when the thoughts of her being sacrificed for those Earthbound Gods ran through his head. Carly couldn't be gone...She was what he wanted to protect.

The more that fact became apparent, the easier it was for him to tune Mikage out.

~*~

Jack was sure his heart tore into pieces when the pale blue eyes that were staring back him were lifeless, whites of them now turned black, that evil, horrible triangular mark on the corner of her left eye.

The woman across from him wasn't the Carly Nagisa he had grown attached to. She was not the Carly Nagisa he loved.

She was a Dark Signer, controller of the Earthbound God Aslla Pisc and therefore someone he had to destroy.

It wasn't supposed to hurt, but it did. A thousand questions ran through his mind: How did this happen, why would she be with the Dark Signers, How did she die? He asked, and she answered.

This woman was not his Carly, and three words rang in his head.

Defeat means Death.

If that was true, that was probably why it hurt when he was the one to deal the final blow and bring her life points down to zero.

Carly had never hit the floor, Jack was the one who caught her. The only thing he could say was her name.

"Carly.....Carly...."

When she looked up at him, a small smile on her face, and her body trembling in his arms, that was when Jack had seen his Carly. The one who was klutzy, annoying, and cute in her own right.

"I...I cried for you, Jack...I wanted you to save me...and you did..." she told him.

"Carly...I...I…didn't want this..."

"....I didn't either....I loved you, Jack Atlas...I loved you..."

"...I loved you too, Carly.."

He didn't want to believe she was dead when she stopped trembling in his arms. He didn't want to believe it when he could hear he breathe, and he didn't want to believe when he didn't hear her heartbeat.

When he wanted to say he loved her, he never wanted it to be in the past tense.

~*~

Jack had lost track of time.

Mikage had been the one to tell him he had been doing nothing for days on end, just looking at newspaper articles discussing the large Missing Persons list, each one of them talking about reporter Carly Nagisa. He knew the truth, he knew everything and seeing those papers just made him angry.

"Atlas-sama..." he heard Mikage say as she opened the door.

"What is it."

"Atlas-sama...you've been sitting in this girl's apartment for days..." she began.

"Carly." Jack said. "Her name is Carly, not 'this girl'."

Before he could say anything else, Mikage had been the one to throw herself into his arms and cry into shoulder.

"I want the old Atlas-sama back...! I don't like seeing you like this!"

When Jack pulled away to look at her, all he saw was Carly's face.

What Mikage couldn't see, couldn't hurt her.

~*~

Ushio never questioned why Mikage asked to see him so late. Everytime they met, she seemed to be upset over Jack.

"Mikage-sama," he started, looking up at his ceiling while the blue haired woman remained nestled in his arms, "If Atlas-sama makes you so upset, why are you sleeping with him?" He had to know, especially since he knew he was the one who could take care of her. Jack only saw her as a caretaker shoved onto him courtesy of Godwin and Jaeger.

"I love him..." was the soft response. Mikage did love him, even if Jack had slipped and called her Carly on more than one occasion. No matter how deep he could have cut, she still loved him.

"If you love him...why is it that you see me every night?" Ushio asked.

As usual, Mikage pretended to be asleep and Ushio had to keep his thoughts to himself.

His lack of sleep had been hampering his work.

~*~

"I made breakfast." Mikage spoke softly, setting two dishes onto the table.

"Thank you."

The pair ate in silence until Jack had been the one to break it.

"How's Ushio?" he asked.

Mikage dropped her fork and looked at the purple eyed man. "J—Jack..."

Jack wasn't stupid. Sure there were times he had gone astray, but this was one of those times it was plain as day right in front of him. He didn't give her the chance to to explain, he simply got dressed and left the apartment they shared.

"Mikage isn't Carly," Yuusei told him over the phone a half hour later. "You can't keep doing that to her."

It had been established that none of them were happy in the end, and they pretended to be. It was just the matter of waiting for it all to come crashing down, waiting for the moment where one of them got tired of it.

~*~

Nero: Ohhhhh the angst. I wasn't shooting for a happy ending here. I so wanted to write Jack/Carly smut, but the fic didn't call for it.