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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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."

"If you hadn't been ripping at her, she wouldn't have tried to keep you away," he snapped back. "It was your emotions that kept her from being able to help you, but you also wouldn't let her go when it was clear she wasn't able to help."

Ben had been strong enough to withstand her, but he wasn't sure how many times he could do that until he too was unable to keep himself grounded. "And the only reason I could help you was because I'm not worn down from helping dozen or hundreds of Sentinels keep their cool." He was half expecting to have a Force hand around his throat at any second, punishment for talking back to her, but he didn't care. He cared about the Guide who very well might have died trying to help this sithling.

She wasn't the sort to just go around Force-choking people willy-nilly. She did, however, press a hand flat against his chest, fingers curling just slightly, using that unseen Force hand to curl around his heart just as easily as she'd wound her way into his mind the day before. It wasn't hard, just enough to prove that she could do damage if she wanted to, enough to be noticed, "If I could have let her go I would have."

Her voice had dipped, not a cold edge as much as some kind of regret, or something close enough to it, "Once they're caught like that I can't let go either." She shook her head, releasing that invisible hold, but keeping her hand right where it was, "It hasn't been that bad in a while, months. Most of the time they still survive." Her brow had creased a little, focused on some middle distance, "But you..." She shook her head then, actually focusing on his face once more, "No, you're mine, you won't serve the others."

"You can let go, you're just too weak to," he said, refusing to let his breath catch in his throat. "And I'm not a dog. I don't belong to anybody, least of all you. There might not be a way off this ship for me except through an incinerator, but you can believe I'm not going to help you if you're just going to rip me to shreds when I try." He picked apart her emotions, separated the regret from the quiet anger from the even more quiet fear. He knew her emotions, the way they twined in this instance. Given enough time rooting around in her, he could rearrange the way she thought or acted.

"You rode it out after someone else had already gotten halfway through and suddenly you're the expert?" She almost scoffed, shaking her head, "You know nothing about it. Stop talking." That one was definitely an order, and more than that she ran her fingers from his chest up to the underside of his chin, not damaging his vocal cords, just numbing them, preventing him from talking back for the time being.

It was only a temporary paralysis, it wouldn't last more than a few minutes, but it got her point across, "Maybe next time I'll let you take the brunt of it, maybe next time it won't be as bad so you won't have to understand the power of it and how I can't let go any more than they can." She shrugged, "Maybe it will, I suppose that all depends on what else I've been doing." What new horrors training had in store for her, what missions Snoke sent her on, any number of factors.

"But for now, you're going to have breakfast with me and I'll see about sending you to medical, let me see your hands." She didn't think he'd been as badly burned as the other Guide had been, but she was going to keep him as hale as possible whatever the case.

Ben had already opened his mouth to respond when she touched his throat and he coughed around a numb throat instead. He kicked out as best as he could with bare feet, forcing her hand away from him. At the same time, he tucked his arms to his chest, hiding the burns around his forearms. There was no 'halfway through' he wanted to shout at her. You only made it out of that because I was there, if I hadn't you'd be dead right now!

He yanked on the tiny sliver of guilt she felt about the other Guide, then shoved some of his own energy into it, forcing it to blossom inside her mind. Controlling a Sentinel's emotions was dickish at the best of times, but using it in retaliation went against all of Ben's training. Still, she was no ordinary Sentinel and if she wanted to keep him as her Guide, she was going to have to prove herself to the Guide part of him. Until then, he would do whatever he could to keep her away.

Apparently physically silencing him hadn't been enough to keep him from 'talking', even if she didn't get it word for word, the intent was still there and that was good enough, but then that magnified, expanded guilt had her own breath catching in her chest and she very nearly snarled, more like a cornered animal than anything, and she lashed out, not with the Force, but physically, backhanding him sharply, "Don't you dare do that again."

He had, apparently, perhaps inadvertently, struck a nerve. It was alright to be upset about the loss of a Guide in the frame of them being a much needed, sorely limited resource, but guilt, that meant it was personal, that she was thinking of them as people, and that wasn't widely encouraged.

He let out a quiet noise as he was slapped and the force was enough to send him onto his side on the cot, but he pushed back again, grabbing that anger coursing through her and turning it inside out into fear.

What did he have to lose, after all? Either she was going to kill him or she wasn't, and it was now clear to him that she thought she needed him, so she was less likely to kill him. He was still unable to speak, so instead he glared up at her, daring her to do something to him to punish him for manipulating her emotions like he did.

Fear had probably been the wrong thing to push at her, because fear, like anger, was something she could use, something she could throw back at him in turn, amplifying it, smothering him with terror in return.

She hadn't started digging through his mind again, yet, but that would be her next tactic if he didn't let up, visions of loved ones dying in pain had, so far, been a useful tactic for her, though as she honestly wasn't sure if it would work on him, she wasn't too eager to try it right away, the shapeless, unnamed fear often worked just as well.

It was too bad for Kura that she was tossing fear back at the Guide who had made her feel it in the first place. So while he was hit with it, he was able to turn it back into anger as it did so - or, at least, enough of it - and anger was more useful in this case. He pushed himself more upright, anger pushing alongside fear on his face. He was afraid yes, but it wasn't a directed fear. It was amorphous and, truthfully, a lot like the fear he'd been feeling since his capture.

This was a battle of wills, and when the weapons were emotions, he had the upper hand. No Sentinel could match a Guide's ability to manipulate and control emotion.

He reached out and instead of amplifying or twisting a single emotion, he amplified them all. It would be sensory overload for her, too many emotions at once, hopefully it would scramble her brain enough into leaving him be for a time. Or she'd beat him into submission.

Emotional overload, while problematic in its own way, wasn't as dangerous as a physical sensory overload, less likely to lead to a fugue state in most cases. Of course, given as how she'd so recently been so deeply in a fugue state, that emotional overload was enough to drop her to her knees, especially as some of them weren't emotions she could recall having had before, let alone be able to identify.

It did, however, have the desired effect of causing her to retreat from his mind at least, aside from the pathways she'd already left there, that mental residue that made it easier for her to get back in again.

Ben took his chance to sit up fully again, and found he could speak when he opened his mouth. "You don't own me, Ren, and if you try to control me by using emotions, I'll do this again to you." He scooted to the edge of the bed then stood, shoving at the strings tying them together. He worried at the knots, taking his chance, and felt three come loose - not all of them, but enough.

He didn't have the strength to keep up the assault on her mind, not after dragging her out of the fugue state, but hopefully she would think twice about trying to force him to do things.

"Perhaps, perhaps not, but I am your best chance of surviving here." She replied, managing, if barely, not to sound as shaken as she felt, pushing herself up to sit on the edge of the bed herself, breathing steady and slow, packing each of those emotions down again, the ones she couldn't identify first, followed by the rest.

"Now will you let me see your arms?" She figured explaining herself couldn't hurt, worst case she could actually force him to do what she wanted, but he was meant for something more than just being her puppet, "If it's something I can heal myself I would like to, if it's something that medical will have to handle, I'll take you there."

"I would like to go to medical," Ben said, meeting her gaze without looking away. "Then I need to be alone to recover from getting you out of your fugue state." He needed sleep where he wasn't crammed up in a ball against a wall, preferably without any Sentinels around at all.

"And best chance or not, I'm not a thing you can own, alright?" He could do his best to set himself apart, but eventually she would come down on his head, break into his mind, and force him to be her puppet. But he had to delay that as long as possible, so he had time to try to find a way out of this place and back home.

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