bakerstreet | By request: Sentinels and Guides Shipping Meme

By request: Sentinels and Guides Shipping Meme

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

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[Throw me a thing, I'll roll with it! Maybe Snoke found her instead of him when she was young? IDK how much that would shake things up, but I'm game. Or maybe he's been pulling at them both to pit them against each other later?]

[Thanks gmail for not letting me know I got a response until an hour after it actually happened.....]

It was a New Republic Guide's worst fear, to be captured by the First Order. The Order was heavy on Sentinels, but attracted few Guides, and it was little-discussed fact that if the First Order captured you and you were a Guide, you'd live the rest of your life in their hold, stabilizing and de-escalating Sentinels, until the stress on your body finally killed you.

It was additionally worse for Ben to find himself strapped to a table because he was Ben Solo. His mother was General Organa, his uncle Luke Skywalker, and was Force-Sensitive himself. Not trained as a Jedi, no, but he still had skill. And he would still be useful to the creature that had captured him, overpowering his senses and his mind in a flash that left him reeling until unconsciousness.

Ben shivered in the cold air. He was alone, his arms forced out away from his body. He was fairly sure even being a Guide wouldn't spare him torture, but it would likely trade him a short death for a protracted one where his body gave out under him, his mind strained and fractured.

He closed his eyes and tried to meditate, but every time one of the six Sentinels they had on patrol in this part of the ship walked by, he was jolted out of his thoughts. He couldn't relax, couldn't sleep - they were just unstable enough that he ached to help them, despite his brain being vehemently opposed.

[It does that, especially with phone replies, which is what I was doing earlier, because I wasn't at home, but I am now!]

Aside from the easy overpowering to bring him in that Rey had done, she'd left him alone once he'd been delivered to the ship, mostly because she wanted to observe for a while, just to see how he reacted to the others. There were a handful of Guides among the First Order that she'd been in contact with, and all of them had grated on her for one reason or another and so for the most part she'd been self-regulating with various degrees of success.

But this one, Snoke had sent her in this one's direction, had told her that if she could actually control him, she could keep him, that he'd be a better balance for her than any of the others, and given as how she'd gotten close enough to put him under, she suspected her master had been right about that.

She left him alone for nearly two hours, just watching on the security feeds, a little amused by the sudden surge of alertness whenever one of the Sentinels got too close, and then, deciding that she'd had enough of the game, she swept down to the detention level herself. It was difficult to be imposing when one was a good three inches shorter than most of the stormtroopers, but she managed, mostly due to the mask like the skull of some predatory animal over her own. She tilted her head a little, regarding him coolly through the blue-tinted lenses, "You know who I am." It wasn't a question, as such, but at the same time it was, how she proceeded from here depended entirely on how he addressed her.

What little rest he'd managed to snatch was blown away in a rush by that presence coming towards him. It was overwhelmingly Dark, forceful, and his breath hitched in his chest. Ben had known the instant the Sith got within range of his senses, but it was enough time that by the time the door opened and she stepped in, he was at least breathing a bit more normally.

A Sentinel, and a Sith, and he was a half-trained Force-sensitive with no real talent to speak of, and also a Guide. Ben clenched down on the fear in his gut, hands curling into fists, and said, staring into that skull mask, upper lip curled with more derision than he could really muster himself into feeling, "Sithscum."

Still, he was unable to ignore how she was just on the hair's edge of control, balanced on the point where all directions led to feral or fugue. He got the sense that she was keeping herself there through sheer force of will alone - was she really that powerful, to be able to use the Force to override her own mind like that?

He knew how to fix it, though. He knew which strings he could pull in her mind to have her on a flat and level plateau, instead of balanced on the tip of a needle. He wasn't going to, but he knew how.

The laugh in response to that epithet was high and bright, surprisingly joyful and almost childlike for that, she edged just a little closer, still just out of arm's reach, but only barely.

"You could say that. Kura Ren, leader of the Knights of Ren, but I think you knew that already." And another half-step closer, still regarding him intently, "You aren't afraid of me." A thoughtful little sound, quiet in her throat, more of an animal's coo than anything, "No, you are, but you're not letting it win, and you want to help, but you won't let yourself, which is admirable, but I wonder how long that resolve will last."

She'd squirmed past his mental defenses so easily and quickly he hadn't even had time to fight and he swallowed hard, trying to push out the miasma of Dark currently riffling through his surface thoughts and emotions. At the same time, he forced the curling fear - so much stronger now - down farther.

"As long as it needs to," he said, not looking away from that mask. If he blinked or looked away or closed his eyes to escape, she would seize on that weakness. He was strong enough to fight her if he had to, but she would win, possibly at the cost of his mind. Deflection was the safest route out of this with his sanity intact.

She smiled, the expression barely visible under the helm's maw, but just as predatory as the mask's rictus was, if not as toothy, "You know, I don't like sharing my things. But I may make an exception in your case, let you help some of the others so you know for a fact just how bad that can be."

At the moment even she wasn't entirely sure if she planned on doing so or not, mostly she was curious to see what kind of reaction even the threat of doing so got. She was also, slowly, working her way deeper than just surface thoughts, still rifling through those even as she did so, her fingers twitching, just a little, the only outward sign of the effort, worming her way into the deeper parts of his mind, like oil seeping into dry earth, tainting everything on the way down, clinging and heavy.

Ben's expression flickered. He couldn't help it, the thought of being left to the ship's Sentinels had fear flickering through him, and more openly than before. He flinched and looked away, and it took longer than it should have for him to return his gaze to her mask.

He could feel her presence in his mind, seeping in. His thoughts were slowing under the pressure of her mind. He forced himself not to fight her - she was so incredibly strong, and he knew she could rip his mind apart in an instant if he gave her a reason to.

The Resistance had a policy of not telling Guides anything more than they absolutely had to know, and Ben was glad of it, though it used to make him angry. Now, no Sentinel, Bonded to him or not, could force or coerce him into spilling secrets.

Her grin went all the wider when he looked away, because that was no small victory. Really she wasn't looking for any sort of Resistance secrets, she was just digging because she could, wanting to learn more about him personally, what made him tick, something she could use against him later.

There was that pleased, quiet, half-animal coo again when she realized he wasn't fighting her and she finally stepped close enough to touch, one hand hovering at his temple, not touching yet, but only barely. Her head tilted again as she studied his face, meeting his gaze when he finally turned back to her, "There we are. Curious. You're more scared of them than you are of me. You know that I could destroy you, utterly, right now, and yet you're still more afraid of having them wear you down little by little."

Ben jerked his head to keep her touch from him - useless, and now she would touch him because he flinched from her fingers, but he couldn't help it. She was an imposing, impossible presence, and this close he could hear her breathing. He didn't speak. She was right, he was more afraid of them than of her. There was one of her and so many of them, and even if she could tear him apart, he wondered if she would really destroy something she was already considering hers just because.

If she ripped him to shreds, he wouldn't have a mind left to feel pain. But if he was turned over to the Sentinels, he would be fully aware as he was chipped away. The descent to death would be slow, it would take years and years, maybe even a decade or two if he was lucky. He swallowed, gaze flickering again as he looked down, trying to steady himself for just a moment, before he looked up again.

There was another laugh at the flinch, just as bright and almost childlike as it had been the first time, and as predicted she did thread her fingers through his hair, mostly just because she could.

Her voice was soft when she spoke again, not sympathetic, really, but something close, "You're right about that, at least, I wouldn't." She shook her head a little, "Not right away." Which was when she applied just the slightest amount of pressure to the tendrils of the Force she already had rooted in his mind, enough to cause discomfort, even emotional distress, but no actual pain, not enough to cause panic, just enough to prove her point, "I'd make it last."

That said she withdrew almost completely, leaving enough of her presence, a sort of residue in his mind, as a reminder, giving the hair between her fingers a slight tug before letting that go as well, stepping back again, "Do try to get some rest, I'll be back to see you tomorrow."

Ben shuddered as she applied pressure through the Force to his mind, and let out a noise somewhere between a groan and a whimper. He flinched shut his eyes at her touch as well.

When she stepped back at last, withdrawing from his mind, he gasped in relief. The strain her pressure put on him was insane. And with her touching him, it was nearly impossible to keep from wanting to stabilize her. The fact that he was a Guide was betraying him right now, his body reacting when his mind didn't want it.

By the time he got his eyes open, she was several steps away and Ben was gasping for air. He hung limply in his restraints, hands curled into fists.

"You should have one of the Guides stabilize you as soon as they can," he said quietly, eyes half-lidded. "Or you're going to tip into a fugue state tonight." He knew it in his bones that she was starting to teeter - she might not be able to feel it yet, but he could. "Or don't, and I guess I'll belong to the Sentinels on this ship after all."

"You sound so certain of that." She didn't ask how he knew, she didn't need to, "And they've tried." There was a certain sort of childlike upset in the tone there as well, not so much that she wasn't getting her way as that things weren't working the way that they should.

"I don't doubt they'll try again, but it won't work, it hasn't yet." They could, for a few minutes at a time, but whether it was because of an incompatibility or because she'd been keeping herself stable with the Force and sheer force of will alone for so long, none of them could maintain that stability for long.

Ben's prediction had been correct, however, because during a mission briefing she'd had another altercation with Hux -something that was happening more and more frequently as of late, likely a sign of her increasing instability- he'd dug at what he knew would hurt, calling her 'an insecure child' and she had practically launched herself across the table at him.

To his credit, he realized that he'd gone too far, and knew to get out of her way. So even as his chair, console, and that side of the table took the brunt of her attack he was already doing damage control, ordering the rest of the officers out of the room so as to reduce chances of collateral damage, ordering someone else to go fetch one of the ship's Guides so they could at least get her back to her quarters, and ordering a third party to retrieve the prisoner to have him brought to Ren's quarters as soon as she was situated, that maybe he'd be able to pull her out of it this time and the entire ship wouldn't have to suffer through two or three nights of night terrors until she managed to reel herself in again.

By the time they got Ben to her quarters, the Guide that was with her was obviously in pain, not just from the mental and emotional strain of trying to stabilize her, but physical as well, hands and arms reddened as if they'd been scalded or sunburnt, and despite the fact that Kura wasn't moving, or even looking at anything directly, just kneeling on the floor, gripping the Guide's wrists as if they were a lifeline, there was the definite sensation that she was the eye of a storm.

Ben, who hadn't gotten much of a chance to really rest after his encounter with Kura (the Sentinels had kept patrolling and prevented him from really recovering), had to be supported by a trooper on either side of him, their hands under his arms, keeping his legs from going out from underneath him.

As soon as he got close enough to feel her, his legs really did go out from under him. She was so strong. This was a fugue state, but like none Ben had ever experienced. He got his legs under him after a few steps and dug in. No Guide wanted to face that, that kind of strength would tear him apart more surely than anything else. Still, he was carried towards Kura, and he could feel that there was indeed a Guide there with her. Ben wasn't sure what the Guide could do besides try to hold on.

He could feel the Guide's pain and knew that he had to help her. He had no intention of helping Kura, but the Guide... she was going to die if he didn't do something.

Ben swallowed hard then said, "I don't know if I can stabilize her. But I think I can withstand her better." He was released by the troopers and though he wavered, he didn't fall. "The other Guide, as soon as she's free you'll have to get her to medical. Any other Guides you have you'll need to help her recover, or she could die from the shock."

He had to do what he could for the Guide.

Carefully, he stepped forward. Every step made the storm worst and worse, and by the time he kneeled down next to the other Guide, it was like standing in a tornado. He brushed first against the other Guide, slowly but surely shouldering the burden of Kura's power onto himself. He knew the instant the other Guide gave up the rest because he bent forward, shoulders hunched. Kura's hands were on his forearms, and his hands cradling her elbows, and he had no mind left to worry about the other Guide. First, he had to right himself in this storm. He was stronger than the other Guide, and his own Force-sensitivity allowed him with withstand that part of her power.

He planted himself firmly, then started plucking at the strands that held together this storm. A fugue state was a mobius strip of emotion and sensation, he had to find the right place to cut to unravel the whole thing.

Unlike the other Guide, who had tried her best to keep Kura from digging in, he allowed it - he wasn't going to move, and if she held to him in return, it would be that much easier to stop the swirling.

Slowly, steadily, he unraveled the threads, cutting through knots, and the winds started to die down. He could breathe now, at least. He opened his eyes at last.

She latched onto him more easily and more readily than she had the other Guide, one that was already being hustled away to medical, it wasn't so much that they were following Ben's orders as that they simply couldn't afford to lose any of the few Guides that they had.

Kura swayed forward, just a little, gripping Ben's arms tightly enough to bruise, and aside from the physical hold she had on him, she also snaked her presence across his mind, following the channels she'd left before, digging in there as well, using him to anchor herself. She was so used to grounding herself through someone, working against resistance, that she didn't realize right away -already too caught up in the fugue- that he wasn't fighting her, not really, all she'd parsed was that he was stronger than the other one, he might actually be able to outlast the maelstrom instead of collapsing partway through to leave her to coast through the rest of it on her own.

Even without the mask she was still terrifying simply in her intensity, she was young, certainly, twenty, twenty-five at most, but emotionally fierce in a way that most couldn't fathom, let alone match.

Ben let her dig in - it was steadying her, to be able to hook in, and it left him able to cut a few more threads at a time. He watched her face closely, watched the tension, then cut through another knot.

It seemed to be the keystone to the whole storm, because it took just a few more tugs and it unravelled around them both.

Without the weight of the maelstrom on him, he pushed back hard in return, surging along the connection between himself and Kura before he could hold himself back.

He got a flash of the roiling Darkness, the massive pit of power, before he was pulling away. They were still hooked together, she had yet to let go, but they were still mostly separate.

And he was tired. He was caught by her hands and her mind, but he was fading fast. He'd never been in such an unrelenting fugue. He wasn't sure how long they'd been sitting there, but it had to have been hours.

Carefully, he started to wriggle out the hooks she'd dug into him, easing them out one by one and soothing her emotions as best he could as he did. She wouldn't be perfectly on the even, he was so tired, but she wouldn't slip back to a fugue state in the next few days, at least.

They would likely both be surprised to find that the whole ordeal had taken a half hour at most, and even a little less than that.

She was just as exhausted as she was, and for once she wasn't entirely concerned with showing it, he was right there and keeping her from slipping into a relapse, though she didn't feel like there was a relapse hanging over her like she usually did when she clawed her own way out of a fugue.

It seemed that her Master had been right to send her after Ben, that he was, indeed, the key to mastering her power, or at the very least a release valve for when it all became to much, as it occasionally did.

She was also trying to get her feet under her again without actually letting go of Ben's arms, something that made her look more than a little like a baby deer that hadn't quite figured out how legs were supposed to work in unison yet, and what she said, voice rough as if she'd been screaming, was: "Bed. Sleep." Even she wasn't entirely sure if it was a demand or a command, what she needed or what he needed and right at the moment she didn't particularly care, either.

Ben was too weak to even attempt to stand, just sat there while she used him to push off against to stand. As soon as her hands came away from his arms he shivered and slumped into the arms of the trooper that had apparently come close just to catch him. He was too tired to care that he was a prisoner, that he had sworn he would not act as a Guide.

The trooper carefully laid him back so he didn't just collapse and Ben shivered again, curling onto his side on the floor.

"Lady Ren," another of the troopers said, "Do you need the Guide to stay?"

"Yes." She wasn't sure why that was even a question, he was hers and she was going to keep him, and the fact that she felt cold now that the connection between them was broken was a sign of something, though she had no idea what.

She knew she'd be able to move him easily once she was recovered and felt that she could control both herself and the Force without overloading again, but even the thought of trying to drag him off to bed herself was even more exhausting, and so she pointed instead, "Bed. Take him there, leave him there and leave us be. I can deal with the rest."

Though mostly that was going to consist of crowding him in against the wall side of the simple cot so that he couldn't get away without waking her, before all but passing out herself.

Ben was exhausted enough that he didn't even bother to struggle as he was lifted and then deposited in on the cot and indeed being able to lay down on something that wasn't cold, hard floor was a relief. He slumped forward, pushing his face into the thin pillow. He was awake, but only because there was still so much noise in the room. His bare skin felt like it was burning, and his hands were numb below where Kura had been holding his arms.

Finally, though, it was quiet, just himself and Kura, and he sighed. He was too tired to struggle against her, all he wanted to do was sleep.

Realizing that not only was he still shivering, but she was as well, she dragged the blanket up over them both, and then, exerting just a little of the power over him she knew she had, she said: "Sleep. Sleep while I sleep and wake when I wake."

She was tired enough, and shaken enough, that she didn't know if the command would hold once she was asleep, but it was better than nothing.

The thing with Kura was that she wasn't cold, not physically, at least, in fact she ran warmer than most, it had rarely been commented on, but it would be more than a little like having a person-shaped space-heater stretched out along his side. And as she was used to having the cot to herself, there was every chance that she would wind up sprawled halfway across him by morning.

Ben allowed the command, mostly because he was too tired to resist, and fell asleep. He stayed caged up against the wall by her, arms tucked against his chest.

When he woke, it was indeed to her sprawled over him. He had his face smushed into the bare cot - she'd taken the pillow in the night - and all his limbs were asleep - her leg was over his thighs and he had his own arms jammed up under him. He blinked tiredly, stretching out to feel out the damage done to his mind. He was bruised and beaten, but he was whole, and her hooks were out of him. There was the start of a Bond between them, which he set to work immediately trying to work free, breaking it off. He didn't want a Bond with the monster that was Kura Ren. He didn't want to be tied to her, and if he was, there would not be an escape, even if he did manage to get free.

Not entirely awake yet herself she just grumbled something at the movement, voice muffled against his shoulder and probably not actually using real words in the first place.

Except that she realized that there was movement just a moment later and went completely still herself for the span of a few heartbeats, shoving herself upright then as suddenly as she could, at least until the events of the night before settled into place in her mind, leaving her more confused than before, because she felt fine, more than that, even, she felt better than she had even before she'd gone off in search of Ben, which was bizarre, but also an indicator of just how long she'd been on the brink of collapse.

Her brow furrowed as she blinked down at him a wry smile twitching into place, "That resolve of yours didn't last long at all, did it? Six hours? Eight? And thanks to you the other one's still alive, so that's something to be proud of yourself for, at least."

"I didn't do it for you," he said, voice hoarse and deep from sleep. He freed himself from the tentative Bond. "You were going to kill her if I didn't step in." He shifted and rolled onto his side, wriggling his fingers to wake up his arms. "You still might have." He stared up at Kura. She was stable now, and though he could easily tug her around into real equilibrium, he didn't. "I'm not a monster like you, I'm not about to let a Guide die because a Sentinel can't let the Guide do her job."

Ben sat up. "Believe me, it won't happen again."

She drew back at that, confused and a little offended, "You think that they die because I don't let them help?" There was a very real anger simmering under the surface, still quiet, still level, but one wrong move would send it boiling over, "That somehow I'm refusing to let them in?"

She snorted, shaking her head, "You saw what it was like, felt it. They can't get through that, it's nothing to do with me. No, of course, I love having to try to keep myself stable because no one else is strong enough, that's exactly what I'd like to be spending my energy on instead of actually learning the ways of the Force." Another head shake as she rolled to her feet, "No, of course, it's because I'd rather literally burn through the guides we already have few enough of than let them help. That's exactly what's happening."

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