By request: Sentinels and Guides Shipping Meme

[grinded]

 

Sentinels and Guides Shipping Meme
A Sentinel!AU Meme

 

There are special people in the world: Sentinels--whose five senses are incredibly enhanced, sometimes to the point of overwhelming and who can easily lose themselves in fugue states--and Guides, the empaths with the ability to ground a Sentinel and focus them. Meant to be the protectors of the Guides, for every Sentinel there exists a guide that is their perfect match. In some universes, when matches are made, a Sentinel and Guide form a soulbond to fill the feeling of emptiness.

How easy was it for you to find yours? How are Sentinels and Guides treated in your universe? Or maybe you're one of the normal, unremarkable people. Do you fear Sentinels and Guides? Despise them?

 

Rules
1) Post with your character/canon in the subject header.
2a) Choose whether your character is a Sentinel or a Guide
or
2b) If you don't know or don't care, just leave it blank!
3) Information about Sentinels and Guides can be found here and here. Information on 'The Sentinel' which this meme comes from can be found here.

 

4) All the tagging! Have fun 8D

Prompts
oo1. The Meeting: 
How did you meet? Was it at an event organized specifically for finding your other half? By accident? Did you follow a mystical calling to them? Some other way?

oo2. The Bonding: 
Do Sentinels and Guides in your universe soulbond? How does it go down? Is there a ceremony or do you just retreat to the bedroom?

oo3. Rejection: 
Sometimes Sentinels or Guides propose a match but it's just not perfect. You don't feel the pull or maybe you think there is someone better or maybe you're already claimed. Maybe you were claimed and someone better came along?

oo4. Protection: 
Sentinels are meant to protect Guides, any Guides, but it's even worse when they feel their Guide is in danger. They go feral; blind to anything but stopping and killing whoever threatened their Guide or the bond. Maybe someone attacked your Guide or you haven't bonded yet and you feel threatened or maybe you're the one doing the threatening. Whatever the reason, Sentinels in a feral state are dangerous and only their Guides can stop them.

oo5. Lost: 
Sentinels often lose themselves in their senses. Either you're a Sentinel who has lost themselves or a Guide that has stumbled on one or a friend trying to draw them out. Unbonded Sentinels will find it hard to escape without a Guide. Or maybe you're bonded already which means you just need yours to come home.

006. Persecution: 
Sometimes normal people or the government fear the power of Guides and Sentinels. Guides are empaths, feeling the emotions and sometimes passing thoughts of others and it can make people feel violated. Sentinels often have enhanced strength, which can make them dangerous. So they scorn them, hurt them or in the case of governments, regulate them.

oo7. Death: 
Unbonded Sentinels and Guides eventually lose themselves to the empty cavern inside them. Torn apart from the inside by the feeling of something missing. Breaking the soulbond of a Sentinel and Guide is agonizing and horrifying, leading quickly to death for the remaining partner. 

oo8. Old-School: 
Guides used to be treated on the same level as slaves. Unable to work unless their Sentinel said. Not allowed out on their own. They used to wear collars and couldn't own land or inherit money. Maybe the old ways haven't completely fallen out of style. 

oo9. Unbonded: 
Nothing is worse than being an unbonded Guide or Sentinel. Always looking for your other half to fill that empty feeling but you probably have friends that aren't your match or who are trying to set you up with someone. Maybe you're skeptical about the whole love at first sight thing and haven't been looking.

o10. Wildcard: Some mish-mash of the above or anything else you can come up with!

Image from weheartit / original meme by imadeamistake 

Comments

[doesntrunaway]

[Balance via crowd works, or just an equilibrium between themselves, maybe a little of both. And yes, they need to have that talk]

[make_it_hurt]

"So you're a Sentinel now?" It had been silent in the jet for close to an hour now. Their last words they'd spoken still hung in the air, but Bucky brushed them aside, pushed away Steve's insistence that what he had done as the Soldier hadn't actually been him when it had (he hadn't been in control, but it was him, and he was responsible for all those deaths) to focus on something else.

They had never really mentioned the fact that after the serum, Steve had apparently gone from Guide to Sentinel. They had never really had a bond, so it wasn't like it was a loss (it was, but Steve was his own person, and Bucky refused to ask Steve to keep him regulated), but now...

Now Bucky was a Guide. It made sense: a Sentinel could be uncontrollable at times, or out of commission for one reason or another, but his emotions had already been eliminated by the programming, so empathy was not a thing he could feel so therefore he was close to 'normal' as he could get. A Guide without emotion or empathy wasn't really a Guide at all.

This close, in the confines of the jet, Bucky can feel Steve's anxiety thrumming off of him in veritable waves, but isn't really all that sure what he can do about it. He's not a natural-born Guide, and definitely hasn't had any training. And Steve's his own person, so Bucky's not going to go trying to adjust his emotions unless he's asked and even then... Bucky's not sure he'd want to even try.

[doesntrunaway]

"Yeah." A pause, brow furrowing, "Sort of." It wasn't something he'd had to explain to anyone for a while, SHIELD medical had needed to know, back at the beginning, just in case there was some kind of emergency they'd have to know how to handle him, who to send.

But he knew that answer, short as it was, wouldn't be enough for Bucky, and he also wanted to shake off their last conversation, and replacing it with a new one was the best way to do so, "The Serum, Erskine's, it was supposed to make me better..." He shook his head, "No, not better, just more of what I already was."

He shrugged, "Guess I always had it in me, I mean, ma' was, makes sense that I would be too, but it just never developed because of everything else." His laundry list of health problems overrode whatever genes would have allowed his Sentinel abilities to develop when he was younger, "But her folks were both Guides, so I had that in me too." And those abilities had already started to develop either because of or in spite of the health problems.

A twitch of a smile followed, "So I guess the short answer is 'I don't know'."

[make_it_hurt]

"They made me into a Guide, I think. But not a very good one." Bucky looked around the cabin of the jet, finding it easier to look at anything else other than Steve. "I mean, I wasn't a very good Sentinel, either." Steve had always been suited to be a Sentinel, even when he was smaller. He was fierce and loyal, and even if his body hadn't been strong...

"I think it's right, that you're a Sentinel. You always were one, your body just couldn't do what your mind said was right." Now, Steve's body matched his heart.

Bucky swallowed, then turned his attention to his own hands, curled in his lap. One flesh, one metal.

[doesntrunaway]

"I don't know if they did." He replied, brow furrowing, glancing back at Bucky just briefly, "I mean, I'm still anxious as hell about this, but it could be worse, and I can't..." He shook his head, "I mean, you always kept me calm before, so that doesn't feel any different."

There had been times when the rest of the Commandos had just left the Sargent and the Captain alone for a few hours just to settle each other, and Steve still wasn't sure if it was just out of respect or because the rest had known something about the two of them that they hadn't been willing -or able- to admit.

[make_it_hurt]

"I'm not trained, I don't know how to make you less anxious." Bucky swallowed, guilt welling up inside of him. "I probably should, but. I don't know how." And he was honestly a bit afraid to try. He was still barely able to deal with his own emotions, how could he trust himself with Steve's?

"I don't feel like a Sentinel. And before, when I was... Before you found me. I met Sentinels, and they all thought I was a Guide." There hadn't been any of that inborn aggression to another Sentinel, like he so distinctly remembered from before, especially if there was an Unbonded Guide around.

[doesntrunaway]

"No, hey, that's not what I meant, Buck." He said at the first, almost able to taste that wave of guilt himself, "I'm used to this, this is..." He shook his head, "It's kind of how it's always been."

He gave a shrug, "And people think Sam's a Guide too, even other Sentinels." Steve knew he'd done so at first, until he'd actually had a chance to get to know Sam better, get a feel for him.

[make_it_hurt]

"I thought it was supposed to be one or the other, what's with all this... both shit." Bucky looked away, mouth tight. "I don't care if I'm a Guide now, I just want to be a Guide. Or a Sentinel." He wanted to establish his own stability, and if he was fluctuating between Sentinel and Guide, how could he? Bad enough that he could be controlled and turned against anybody around him including Steve, but also he could barely catch his breath when he wasn't being controlled.

[doesntrunaway]

"I don't know if it's both or if it's just that things aren't as black and white as we were taught." He shook his head, "Either that or it's the Serum, it's supposed to make you better than what you are, more of what you are."

He shrugged, "If you were already a Guide before they gave it to you, it would have enhanced that, but... at the same time they were taking your emotions away, burying them, and that's..." He shook his head, "I don't know, it had to have some kind of effect."

[make_it_hurt]

"Except I wasn't a Guide, before. There wasn't even a hint of it." Bucky's hands curled into fists in his lap, frustrated. "You were always meant to be a Sentinel, but me... I can see you getting the body you should have always had made you a Sentinel, but how can they have just made me into a Guide..." It didn't make all that much sense. You were a Sentinel or a Guide if you were anything, and that didn't change. It wasn't supposed to be able to be changed.

He gritted his teeth.

[doesntrunaway]

His brow furrowed more deeply, "Not even a little? You always managed to calm me down." Which might have just been on account of their having been friends for so long, but it had always felt like more than that.

But then again, Steve hadn't been fully sure, or even fully aware of his own abilities, either, so he probably wasn't the best judge.