Title: the beautiful short-lasting things
Warnings: angst, character death
Pairing: Sango/Prince Kagewaki, mild NarSan
a/n: Written for Inuvember, Day 11 (AU Week). Avengers: Age of Ultron AU starring Sango as Wanda and Prince Kagewaki as the Vision. I included shades of NarSan, where Naraku is Ultron. What can I say? It's my reverse NarSan pairing.
I watched the movie for the first time a couple days ago and knew I had to make an AU with a ship I'd originally thought was going to be another painful ship, but turned out to be canon. So I'm going to exploit it in any way possible – it's weird not to be in emotional turmoil.
This is ridiculously late, and I apologize profusely.
Spoilers for the movie are included in the story.
The Vision: Humans are odd. They think order and chaos are somehow opposites and try to control what won't be. But there is grace in their failings. I think you missed that.
Ultron: They're doomed!
The Vision: Yes... but a thing isn't beautiful because it lasts. It is a privilege to be among them.
- Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015)
The view is nice, here.
Black Widow – Kagome, she corrects herself – had thought something along those lines in the midst of battle. Sango hears too much now, after becoming Enhanced. Thoughts, she's learned, are just as loud as words, if not louder. There are a thousand voices in her head and its just so crowded and painful and loud loud loud; but right now, above the clouds, atop a crumbling city, the world is silent, save for the sound of gravity pressing against her chest, strangling the life from her lungs.
She can feel, see, hear herself dying, and that is all right. Her brother is dead like her parents are dead; Kohaku, her lifeline, oh-so-brave and oh-so-foolish, sacrificing himself for the woman with the bow (Hawkeye? Kikyou?) and a child who was not his own. The bullets that burst through Kohaku's flesh at the hands of that hideous, miserable monster Naraku might as well have pierced her, too.
Sango is unafraid of dying because she already is dead.
.
.
.
"Sango," Naraku had whispered, staring at her from his crumbling form. "If you stay here, you'll die."
When they'd met, Sango had been fascinated with him – Naraku was clever and charming to the T, constantly rebuilding himself, and expressed almost-human approval through his crimson gaze. More than once, she'd looked over his strange body, unsure what to make of this alluring, unholy creature whose cold silver tongue promised revenge time and time again, smirking all the while.
Sango used to like the idea of revenge – her hatred for that man, that InuYasha, had burned long and hard for years on end. Naraku had promised her justice, promised her retribution for his role in her family's death (bomb, smoke, Stark until Kohaku sank his teeth into his tongue and Sango nearly went mad from staring at the grenade from their hiding place), and she accepted with the heartfelt rage she'd carried well into adulthood.
But now –
"I just did," Sango had hissed back, tears blurring her vision so that Naraku's cool, constructed, concerned features melted and morphed to reflect the true nature of his sort-of soul. "Do you know how it felt?"
And she poured all that hatred she had for them – for InuYasha and his suit of iron, for Kikyou and her arrows, for every single one of the Avengers – into ripping out Naraku's ugly, sinful heart straight from his chest. Holding it in her palm, noting the many inhuman pieces that made it and the many inhuman pieces that made him, Sango thinks that, too, will fall apart.
"It felt like that."
.
.
.
Sango is glad she's dying in such a beautiful place; everything hurts, and she's so weak, so tired of it all – so tired of red mist and poisoned dreams and men who break and break her in turn.
What had Kagome said?
'There are worse ways to go. Where else am I gonna get a view like this?'
Inwardly, Sango smiles, agreeing wholeheartedly.
Suddenly, before she knows what's happening, someone is holding her; Sango's eyes widen, but she is half-dead already, and couldn't move against the strength of gravity. Cold, horrible fear grips her heart for the briefest of seconds, because this man – this being – who caught her looks just like Naraku, all sharp features and long, black hair that blends with her own in the frigid, harsh winds.
But the fear dissipates rapidly, for she realizes his gaze is not a bloody, brutal red, but a dark, soothing shade between onyx and amber – they seem to radiate calm and peace and everything she'd ever wanted, ever needed; his porcelain face is inches from her own, and she gasps, lips parting as if she planned to kiss him.
Unconsciously, her powers flicker, tentatively filtering in the man's thoughts, seeking out any malevolence.
There are none – only a comforting, gentle sense of preservation, which envelops Sango's weary, wary mind like dressings on a wound, stitching her back up again, holding her body together instead of letting her fall and shatter.
Vision, she thinks hazily. Vision's…here…
As if he, too, could hear her thoughts, the man looks to the sky, clings to Sango just a bit tighter, and begins to fly, up, up, out of the wreckage, out of death, and into the clouds.
